VII THE MEN WHO FOUGHT AT FRICOURT

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July 6

There is something strangely inhuman in the aspect of a battle watched from the edge of its furnace fires, or even as I stood watching it within the crescent of our guns. Battalions move forward like ants across the field, and one cannot see the light in men’s eyes nor distinguish between one man and another.

In this war and in this latest battle I have seen the quality of manhood uplifted to wonderful heights of courage beyond the range of normal laws; and these soldiers of ours, these fine and simple men go forward to the highest terrors with such singing hearts that one can hardly keep a little moisture from one’s eyes when they go passing on the roads.

They picked wild flowers and put them in their belts and caps—red poppies and blue cornflowers—and when the word came to march again they went forward towards the front with a fine swinging pace and smiling faces under the sweat and dust. Yet they know what battle means.

I went to-day again among the men who fought at Fricourt. Some of them had come back behind the lines, and outside their billets the divisional band was playing, but not to much of an audience, for of those who fought at Fricourt in the first assault there are not large numbers left. The officers who came round the village with me had a lonely look. After battle, such a battle as this, it is difficult to keep the sadness out of one’s eyes. So many good fellows have gone.... But they were proud of their men. They found a joy in that. The men had done gloriously. They had won their ground and held it, through frightful fire. “The men were topping.”

There were a lot of Yorkshire men among them who fought at Fricourt and it was those I saw to-day. They were the heroes, with other North Country lads, of one of the most splendid achievements of British arms ever written down in history.

Some of them were still shaken. When they spoke to me their words faltered now and then, and a queer look came into their eyes. But, on the whole, they were astoundingly calm, and had not lost their sense of humour. Of the first advance over No Man’s Land, which was 150 yards across to the enemy’s front line trench, some of these men could remember nothing. It was just a dreadful blank.

“I was just mad at the time,” said one of them. “The first thing I know is that I found myself scrambling over the German parapets with a bomb in my hand. The dead were lying all round me.”

But a sergeant there remembered all. He kept his wits about him, strangely clear at such a time. He saw that his men were being swept with machine-gun fire, so that they all lay down to escape its deadly scythe. But he saw also that the bullets were just washing the ground so that the prostrate men were being struck in great numbers.

He stood up straight and called upon the others to stand, thinking it would be better to be hit in the feet than in the head. Then he walked on and came without a scratch to the German front line.

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Here and in the lines behind there was a wreckage of earth from our bombardment, but several of the dug-outs had been untouched and in them during our gun-fire men were sitting 30 feet down, with machine-guns ready, and long periscopes, through which they could see our lines and the first wave of advancing men. Before the word reached them, those German machine gunners had rushed upstairs and behind the cover of their wrecked trenches fired bursts of bullets at our men.

Each gun team had with them a rifleman who was a crack shot, and who obeyed his army orders to pick off English officers. So they sniped our young lieutenants with cool and cruel deliberation. Two of them who were dressed as privates escaped for this reason. Many of the others fell.

“With so many officers gone,” said one of the Yorkshire lads, “it was every man for himself, and we carried on as best we could.”

They carried on as far as the second and third lines, in a desperate fight with German soldiers who appeared out of the tumbled earth and flung bombs with a grim refusal of surrender.

“Well, if you’re asking for it,” said one of our men—and he hurled himself upon a great German and ran his bayonet through the man’s body.

It was bloody work for boys who are not butchers by instinct. Passion caught hold of them and they saw red.

“I don’t know how it was,” said one of them with a queer thoughtfulness in his eyes as he groped back to this moment of fierce excitement. “Before I went over I had no rage in me. I didn’t want this hand-to-hand business. But suddenly I found myself fighting like a demon. It was my life or theirs, and I was out to kill first.”

There was not much killing at that spot. When most of our men were within ten yards many of the Germans who had been flinging bombs lifted up their hands and cried “Mercy!” to those whom they had tried to blow to bits.

It was rather late to ask for mercy, but it was given to them. There was a search into the dug-outs—do you understand that all this was under great shell fire?—and many Germans were found in hiding there.

“I surrender,” said a German officer, putting his head out of a hole in the earth, “and I have a wounded man with me.” “All right,” said a Yorkshire sergeant; “fetch him up, and no monkey tricks.”

But out of the hole came not one man, but forty, in a long file that seemed never to end, all of whom said “Kamerad!” to the sergeant, who answered, “Good day to you!—and how many more?”

They were a nuisance to him then. He wanted to get on and this was waste of time. But he sent back 42 prisoners with three lightly wounded fellows of his company—he could not spare more—and then advanced with his men beyond the German third line.

Bunches of men were straggling forward over the shell-broken ground towards the German line at Crucifix Trench, to the left of Fricourt.

They knew that this trench was important, that their lives were well given if they could capture it. And these Yorkshire boys from the hills and dales thought nothing of their lives so that they could take it.

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They unslung their bombs, looked to the right and left, where German heavies were falling, cursed the chatter of machine-guns from Fricourt village, and said “Come on, lads!” to the men about them. Not one man faltered or turned back, or lingered with the doubt that he had gone far enough.

They stumbled forward over the shell craters, over dead bodies, over indescribable things. Crucifix Trench was reached. It was full of Germans, who were hurling bombs from it, from that trench and the sunken road near by.

The Yorkshire boys went through a barrage of bombs, hurled their own, worried through the broken parapets and over masses of tumbled earth, and fought single fights with big Germans, like terrier dogs hunting rats and worrying them. Parties bombed their way down the sunken road.

Those who fell, struck by German bombs, shouted “Get on to ’em, lads,” to others who came up. In bits of earthwork German heads looked up, white German faces, bearded, and covered with clay like dead men risen.

They put up trembling hands and cried their word of comradeship to those enemy boys.

“Well, that’s all right,” said a Yorkshire captain. “We’ve got the Crucifix. And meanwhile our guns are giving us the devil.”

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Our gunners did not know that Crucifix Trench was taken. Some of our shells were dropping very close.

“It’s time for a red light,” said the Yorkshire captain. He had a bullet in his ribs, and was suffering terribly, but he still commanded his men.

A red rocket went up, high through the smoke over all this corner of the battlefield. Somewhere it was seen by watchful eyes, in some O.P. or by some flying fellow. Our guns lifted. The shells went forward, crashing into Shelter Wood beyond.

“Good old gunners!” said a sergeant. “By God, they’re playing the game to-day!”

But other men had seen the red rocket above Crucifix Trench. It stood in the sky like a red eye looking down upon the battlefield. The German gunners knew that the British were in Crucifix Trench. They lowered their guns a point or two, shortening their range, and German shells came crumping the earth, on either side, registering the ground.

“And where do we go next, captain?” asked a Yorkshire boy. It seemed he felt restless where he was.

The captain thought Shelter Wood might be a good place to see. He chose ten men to see it with him, and they were very willing.

With the bullet in his ribs—it hurt him horribly—he climbed out of Crucifix Trench, and crawled forward, with his ten men to the wood beyond.

It was full of Germans. At the south-west corner of it was a redoubt, with machine-guns and a bomb-store. The German bombers were already flinging their grenades across to the Crucifix.

The wounded captain said that ten men were not enough to take Shelter Wood—it would need a thousand men, perhaps, so he crawled back with the others.

They stayed all night in Crucifix Trench, and it was a dreadful night. At ten o’clock the enemy opened an intense bombardment of heavies and shrapnel, and maintained it at full pitch until two o’clock next morning.

There were 900 men up there and in the neighbourhood. When morning came there were not so many, but the others were eager to get out and get on.

The Yorkshire spirit was unbeaten. The grit of the North Country was still there in the morning after the first assault.

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Queer adventures overtook men who played a lone hand in this darkness and confusion of battle. One man I met to-day—true Yorkshire, with steel in his eyes and a burr in his speech—it was strange to hear the Saxon words he used—rushed with some of his friends into Birch Tree Wood, which was not captured until two days later.

There were many Germans there, but not visible. Suddenly the Yorkshire lad found himself quite alone, his comrades having escaped from a death-trap, for the wood was being shelled—as I saw myself that day—with an intense fire from our guns.

The lonely boy, who was a machine-gunner without his gun, thought that things were “pretty thick,” as, indeed, they were, but he decided that the risks of death were less if he stayed still than if he moved.

Presently, as he crouched low, he saw a German coming. He was crawling along on his hands and knees, and blood was oozing from him. As he crawled, a young Yorkshire soldier, also badly wounded, passed him at a little distance in the wood.

The German stared at him. Then he raised himself, though still on his knees, and fired at the boy with his revolver, so that he fell dead. The German went on his hands again to go on with his crawling, but another shot ripped through the trees, and he crawled no more.

It was fired by the man who had been left alone—the young man I saw to-day. “I killed the brute,” he said, “and I’m glad of it.”

Our shells were bursting very fiercely over the wood, slashing off branches and ploughing-up the earth. The lonely boy searched about for a dug-out and found one. When he went down into it he saw three dead Germans there, and he sat with them for more than eight hours while our bombardment lasted. There was another lad I met who was also a machine-gunner, and alone in the battle zone. He was alone when fourteen of his comrades had been knocked out. But single-handed he carried and served his gun, from one place to another, all through the day, and part of next day, sniping odd parties of Germans with bursts of bullets.

Another sturdy fellow I met came face to face with a German, who called out to him in perfect English.

“Don’t shoot. I was brought up in England and played footer for Bradford City.... By Jove! I know your face, old man. Weren’t you at the Victoria Hotel, Sheffield?”

It was a queer meeting on a battlefield. One of the grimmest things I have heard was told me by another Yorkshire boy. A German surrendered, and then suddenly, as this lad approached to make him prisoner, pulled the detonator of a bomb and raised it to throw.

“I put my bayonet right close to him so suddenly that he was terrified, and forgot to fling his bomb. Then a queer kind of look came into his eyes. He remembered that the blooming bomb was going off. It went off, and blew him to bits.”

That is war. And the men who have told me these things are young men who do not like the things they have seen. But, because it is war, they go through to the last goal with a courage that does not quail.

The men of this division next day took Shelter Wood and Fricourt, and captured many prisoners.