Part 8 (1/2)
XXIV
MONCHY-AU-BOIS
We were now able to settle down to training and manoeuvres. The country round Monchy was well suited for this, for there were many old German trenches about, and the villages were all smashed to bits, giving a realistic touch to field training. B.H.Q. were under canvas, but I selected an old German dugout which I thought would be drier when the rains set in. It was also cooler in the hot weather, and its only drawback was rats. I kept them in check, however, with a small trap that the Germans left behind; they were always good at inventing killing machines. My own job was now to train as many infantry men as possible in the use of the rifle-grenade. And between May 29 and June 16, 190 men went through the course. Also Lieut. Odell brought his signal company of twenty-nine men one evening to be shown the working of the rifle-grenade, as it was thought that the rifle-grenade (empty) might be used as a message carrier.
The course of instruction was somewhat as follows. In the first place I gave a short lecture on the mechanism of the grenade and methods of firing it. Then the party of ten was split into two squads and firing practice took place. The men were trained to fire kneeling and lying, behind cover and without, and also out of a deep fire-trench. I was greatly a.s.sisted by Sergt. T. Matthewson, who was a really expert bomber, and by my orderly--L.-C. Fairclough. This training took all morning, and as far as I could judge the men were interested in the course and did their best to learn the intricacies of this new weapon.
In the afternoon I was free to wander round and examine the surrounding country. It was of considerable interest, for it was part of the ground evacuated by the enemy when he retreated to the Hindenburg Line. The trenches were magnificently built, and revetted with wood or wattle-work, and provided with deep dugouts and concrete machine-gun emplacements. The latter were not only wonderfully strong, the forerunners of the German 'pill-box'--but sometimes wonderfully decorated with coats of arms and mottoes.
Very little equipment was left behind, and many of the dugouts were blown in before leaving. Some of the gun emplacements, too, were very cleverly concealed. The guns were kept in shelters in a line of reserve trenches and a set of dummy emplacements was dug out a little distance away for the benefit of our aeroplane observers.
It was an education in military engineering and fortification to walk round these wonderful defences. The wiring too was most ingenious and often carefully concealed in the hedges or ditches. Inside the gun shelters, you found that the gun was fixed on a central pivot and worked round a wooden platform with every degree carefully marked.
Whilst on the walls stood a painted board with every barrage line and target carefully worked out, and the range and code call set out as well. The O.P. was sometimes in a high tree, with the ladders to get up and the telephone wires still remaining. It had been a quiet part of the line, and consequently the patient industry of the German had had full scope.
The 50th Division began to take over the line west of Cherisy and Vis about the middle of June; but only two brigades were in the front trenches together, and it was our turn to remain behind. On June 18 the Brigade moved from Monchy-au-Bois to Boisleux-au-Mont, where B.H.Q. were in a canvas camp. From June 20 to 23 I continued the rifle-grenade training. The recruit training was now practically over and these days were given to showing the handling of a rifle-grenade section in open warfare. Forty-one officers, nine N.C.O.'s and sixty-two men took part in these schemes. I had also two or three rather important court-martial cases to attend to during the evenings.
Before going back into the line I was given nine men to act as Brigade observers; the 6th N.F. sent L.-C. Chappell and Ptes. Wright and Hume; the 7th N.F. Ptes. Fail and Ewart; the 4th N.F. Pte. Brook and another; the 5th N.F. L.-C. Roxburgh, who had once been in the 7th N.F. and Pte. Garnett. Pte. Brook I found came from Meltham, only seven or eight miles from my own home. He was a typical lad from these parts, with the bright red face and the speech that I knew so well.
Naturally I took an interest in him and I was sorry when he left us about the end of November 1917. He has come through the war safely, I am glad to say. Ptes. Fail and Ewart were destined to act as my observers both with this brigade and in the 42nd Division in 1918. And I cannot speak too highly of the excellent work done by Pte. Fail.
Owing to exceptional eyesight he was a first-cla.s.s counter-battery observer, and later on his skill with the pencil did the Germans a lot of damage. On this front he spotted the flash of a 4-inch gun battery that used to sh.e.l.l B.H.Q., with the result that the heavy gunners fired on this battery and silenced it completely.
I had also the services of L.-C. J. Cowen and Pte. J. King (both 7th N.F.) when the 50th Divisional observers were disbanded. Pte. King went shortly afterwards back to the battalion. But both these men did magnificent service in collecting intelligence during the remainder of the war.
XXV
TRENCH WARFARE--VIS-CHERISY FRONT
From June till October 1917 the 50th Division held the line of trenches running from the Hindenburg Line west of Fontaine-lez-Croisilles to Cavalry Farm on the Arras-Cambrai Road. With heavy fighting going on in Flanders this was a comparatively quiet part of the front. Our trenches were good and got better every week, and the high ground about Wancourt Tower Hill gave us excellent observation on the enemy's country, especially towards the left. This part of the front was divided into two sectors, and they were held by two out of the three brigades. So that each brigade spent sixteen days in the line, and then eight days in the rest area about Neuville Vita.s.se. Also each brigade held in turn the trenches on the right, known as the Cherisy sector, and then the trenches on the left, known as the Vis sector.
My time was given to Intelligence in the line and to Salvage when out of the line.
Intelligence work included, selecting a convenient O.P. for the Brigade observers and arranging and supervising the method of holding it; making panoramic sketches for the observers; writing out the Brigade Intelligence Report between 10 A.M. and noon every day; supervising the work of the Battalion Intelligence Officers[14]; marking the Brigade Intelligence maps with all features of interest; studying and cataloguing the aeroplane photographs which came in large numbers every few days; destroying obsolete and useless doc.u.ments (not a small part of my job either!); and sending to the Machine-Gun Officer, Major Morris, every week the targets for indirect machine-gun fire at nights. Field work, i.e. actual observation and sketching, formed really a comparatively small part of my duties, though I tried to get up to the observation post once every day. The most important part was office work--and I had a fair-sized shelter at each Head-quarters, the walls covered with maps and the table loaded with aeroplane photographs and reports of all kinds.
Besides the Corps and Divisional Intelligence Reports which came in daily, there were Daily Reports from the two adjoining brigades, and generally a goodly sheaf of miscellaneous papers from the Army Intelligence Department. In this way a great deal of interesting information came into my hands, as to how things were going on; and I have never before or since been so well supplied with information as to what was going on and what was intended to take place. When out of the line, in a camp near Neuville Vita.s.se, I had to give the observers a certain amount of practical training in the use of the compa.s.s and protractor, and map reading. But after that I was free to do what I liked within reason, and I generally devoted my spare time to salvage.
The observers often turned out to a.s.sist me in this, and Lieut. Odell on several occasions gave me most valuable a.s.sistance with his signallers and orderlies.
Salvage was left very much at this time to the discretion of the commanders of infantry units. Naturally when the soldier man got out of the line, he was not much inclined to do much salvaging on Army Account. Some of the transport officers made a specialty of it, and Capt. B. Neville of the 7th N.F., the prince of quartermasters, rescued tons of salvage of all kinds. I dare say, however, a good many things found their way into his own stores as well, for I never knew a quartermaster so well supplied as he. There were certain small parties of men employed at Divisional and Corps Salvage dumps, but they never seemed to me to take the job very seriously. Perhaps the officers in charge were not exactly the sort of men to hustle, or to see that their men got busy. Every one knows that there was a vast amount of waste, and that the Germans had this matter much better organised than we.
The Germans were particularly active against our field artillery on this front. Although we had the advantage of ground for most purposes, and could carry out infantry reliefs in daylight, there were few places satisfactory for concealing our field guns. They were mostly concentrated about Wancourt and Heninel, and these two places consequently received frequent and heavy punishment from the German heavies. It was well to keep your eyes and ears open when pa.s.sing through these villages and not to linger there unnecessarily. The pieces from the German 8-inch sh.e.l.l carried a long way, and I had L.-C. Chappell wounded through the hand and sent down to hospital through a splinter that carried over a quarter of a mile. We saw a lot of the 50th Divisional R.F.A. about this time and a fine lot of fellows they were. On the left our H.Q. were next door to the B.H.Q.
of the 251st Artillery Brigade, commanded by Lieut.-Col. Moss Blundell. I got to know and like him well, and he did everything he could to a.s.sist our brigade, and especially in matters of intelligence. Any news that he got he sent on to us at once and vice versa. I have never known the liaison between Field Artillery and Infantry more close or more effective than at this time.
One of the most important operations carried out by the 50th Division was a double raid and gas projection on September 15, 1917, and the following night. It was carried out by the 151st Infantry Brigade in the right sector, and at the time the 140th Infantry Brigade was holding the trenches on the left. I believe the 9th D.L.I, supplied the raiding parties. It was such a novel and effective raid that some account ought to be given of it. The scheme was to deceive the enemy as to the exact extent and nature of the attack. For this purpose a great many smoke-sh.e.l.ls were fired to screen the operations from the enemy's observation. Also along the flanks of the actual raid a number of dummy figures were arranged to represent an attacking force and so to draw the enemy's fire away from the actual raiding parties. The dummies were put out in No Man's Land the night before, face downwards, and at the right moment they could be raised or lowered by means of ropes worked by the men in the trenches. Also a dummy tank was prepared and hauled forward 200 yards by means of ropes. The combination of smoke-sh.e.l.ls and dummies was wonderfully effective, and the enemy reported that he had been attacked in great force and with tanks along a large part of this front.
What really happened was this. After a preliminary bombardment of great intensity by our guns and trench-mortars (including many thermite or flame-sh.e.l.ls), about 2 P.M. three companies of the 9th D.L.I, dashed across and captured the German front and support lines covering Cherisy. They killed and captured a number of Germans without suffering many casualties themselves, and then returned at once to our own trenches. At the same time the dummies in No Man's Land were lowered again. After waiting five or six hours, another short bombardment started, the dummies were again raised and one company of the 9th D.L.I, dashed across into the same trenches and killed or captured more Germans. They then returned to our trenches and the dummies were again lowered. After dark our men went out and removed the dummies, so that the Germans never had a chance of discovering the ruse. The same night at 3 A.M. fifty cylinders of gas were projected over the German lines. This gas attack cost the Germans dear, probably more than the two raids, for the next day they were seen burying or removing large numbers of the men caught in the gas cloud. My own observers reported 200 gas casualties and the total number reported reached a figure between 300 and 400. Gas casualties were easily distinguished, as the Germans removed them in blankets slung between two men on a pole. Besides, as it happened, the gas cloud drifted north and caught the Germans during a relief nearly half a mile away from the scene of the two raids. For example, the Germans were burying dead all day in the neighbourhood of St. Roharts Factory, which is some distance from Cherisy. The German report of this operation showed that they had failed entirely to realise the nature of the attack. And a similar raid was repeated shortly afterwards near Monchy-le-Preux with great success. Our aeroplanes swooped down to 300 feet and took photographs of the first raid from that height. And I was lucky enough to secure some very interesting copies of these photographs, which showed our men crossing No Man's Land and entering the German trenches.
I got my fourth leave, ten days, about August 30 and travelled home via Boulogne and Folkestone. It was the first leave that took me out of the line, which it did for about four days. All the previous leaves had occurred during Divisional rests.
We were relieved in these trenches by the 51st Division about the beginning of October, and the 50th Division moved out of the line to the neighbourhood of Courcelles-le-Compte for a short rest.