XI THE BATTLE OF THE WOODS

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July 12

For several days now I have been giving a chronicle of hard fighting at several important points on the way to the second German line, with such scenes as one eye-witness may describe in a great battle in which many different bodies of troops are engaged upon a wide front.

The fortunes of war have varied from day to day, almost from hour to hour, so that positions taken one evening have been lost in the morning and again captured by the afternoon. Writing as events are happening, one’s narrative becomes as confused as the confusion of the battlefield itself, where troops know nothing, or very little, of what is doing to their right and left, until some general scheme of operations is completed.

By the capture of Contalmaison and ground to each side of it a general scheme of progress has been achieved, and, although fighting does not cease about these points, it is now possible to give a clearer idea of the battle as it has developed up to the present moment.

I think it may very well be called the Battle of the Woods, for the chief characteristic of it has been the determined effort of our troops to take and hold a number of copses and small forests between the first and second German lines.

On the left of Contalmaison is Bailiff Wood, north-eastwards of the Horseshoe Redoubt. If we could get that and keep it Contalmaison itself could be enfiladed and attacked from the west as well as from the south. Away to the right of Contalmaison is Mametz Wood, even more important, both in size and position with Bernafay Wood still further eastwards and Trones Wood on the right again. Other small woods or copses to the south of Contalmaison were strong fighting points, from Shelter Wood to Round Wood and Birch Wood at the top of the Sunken Road and Peak Wood to the left of the Quadrangle Trench.

Some of these places are but a few shell-slashed trees serving as landmarks, but Bailiff Wood, Mametz Wood, Bernafay Wood, and Trones Wood are still dense thickets under heavy foliage hiding the enemy’s troops and our own, but giving no protection from shell-fire.

It is for these woodlands on high ground that our men have been fighting with the greatest gallantry and most stubborn endurance, suffering more than light losses, meeting heavy counter-attacks, gaining ground, losing it, retaking it, and thrusting forward again, with a really unconquerable spirit, because they know that these woods are the way to the second bastion of the German stronghold.

It would be good to say something about the different battalions who have been fighting the Battle of the Woods, and it is hard not to give some honour to them now, by name. But there are reasons against it—the enemy wants to know their names for other reasons—and we must wait until some weeks have passed. They are men from nearly all our English counties—from Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, from the Midlands, the Home Counties, and the “West Countrie.” Welshmen were there, and Irish, and Highlanders and Lowlanders. It was a British battle, but the greater share of it fell to England alone, and it was English lads from the North, and English lads from old county towns like Worcester and Northampton, York and Bedford, Guildford and Arundel, Norwich, and old London Town itself, who fought on the way to Contalmaison and took this stronghold of the woodlands.

I passed some of them on the roads to-day. They were the men who captured Contalmaison the day before yesterday, and they were marching with such a steady swing that it was hard to think they had been through such fighting and fatigues, and that they had left behind them many good fellows who will never come back along the road.

They were bringing back trophies of victory. On their wagons, beside their own steel hats, were German helmets. Some of the enemy’s machine-guns were passing back with them, and although the men were tired, they held their heads high and there was a fine pride in their eyes. An officer who watched them pass called out the names of their regiments and said, “Well done!” and one of their own officers waved his hand and called back, “Cheery-O!” It was the greeting of gallant fighting men.

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But before the taking of Contalmaison the day before yesterday there were other men who had done their best to take it, and did take it for a while, in spite of bad luck and every kind of hardship.

Their attack depended a good deal upon the progress made by other troops who were fighting for Bailiff Wood on the left, and by troops who were attacking up to the line of Pearl Alley on the right.

Neither of these attempts was successful at the time, and the men who had been ordered to take Contalmaison were not in a happy position. The weather had been foul, and it was this which on July 7 and 8 made all attacks difficult. When the troops of the attacking columns tried to get forward the ground was bogged, their rifles and bombs and machine-guns were covered with muddy slime, and they stumbled through water-logged trenches. Apart from this the way was perilous and tragic.

The main trench leading up to Contalmaison was the Sunken Road which goes up between Round Wood and Birch Wood, and this was being heavily barraged by the enemy’s guns sweeping down the valley from Pozières.

Further up and slanting right to Pearl Alley was a shallow trench.

Dead bodies lay there in the mud, and soon it was choked with wounded men. How could any one pass? How was it possible to bring up bombs and ammunition and machine-guns and all the stores which must follow an attack? That was not done, but our men, fellows who know the chimes of Worcester Cathedral, struggled forward over open ground and made a dash for Contalmaison, enfiladed by machine-gun fire from Bailiff Wood and Mametz Wood, which were not yet in our hands. Round the western side of Contalmaison was a shallow trench in which the enemy also kept his machine-guns, but when the remnants of the attacking force rushed forward these were withdrawn into the village, from which the German gunners swept the ground.

It seems to me quite an astonishing feat of arms that our men, in such small numbers and in such adverse conditions, should have penetrated a good way into the village. And it is wonderfully to their credit that they should have taken eighty prisoners at such a time.

They found themselves “up in the air,” as soldiers say, and they were being badly hurt by machine-gun fire. It was a bad position, and after rummaging through some German dug-outs and taking their prisoners they fell back to a strong point to the south of the village, which they held for two or three days, establishing a machine-gun post which did valuable service in the next attack.

They did not succeed in holding Contalmaison, and in war, which is a hard thing, it is only success that counts. But I see nothing to blame in the adventure of those companies who got through at great hazard. Luck was against them, and against their other battalions. Luck, and the weather.

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In the meantime great fighting was in progress for the woods around. A very splendid body of men, among them true descendants of Sir Hugh Evans and other brave men across the Marches, had fought their way up on July 5 to Birch Tree Copse and Shelter Alley, to Quadrangle Trench on the 6th, then to Caterpillar Wood and Marlborough Wood, and they had placed, with a cunning that belongs to the genius of war, a machine-gun which covered an exit from Mametz Wood, where the enemy was still in force.

At 3 o’clock on Monday afternoon last our troops advanced to the capture of the wood—a wood whose bloom was brightened by the frightful flash of shells, whose tree trunks were broken and splintered and slashed by sharp axes hurtling through the leaves, and about whose gnarled roots, in shell-holes and burrows, German soldiers crouched with their bombs and machine-guns. A wood of terror. Yet not dismaying to those men of ours who went into its twilight. Our own guns were shelling it with a progressive barrage.

Our men were to pass forward in short, sharp rushes behind the barrage, but some of them in their eagerness went too fast, and too far, and went through the very barrage itself until a signal warned a gunner officer sitting in an O.P. behind, so that he suddenly seized a telephone and whispered some words into it, and made the guns “lift” again.

Waves of bullets were streaming like water through the trees from German machine-guns. Many of our men fell, and the others, checked awhile, lay down in any holes they could find or dig. All through the night shells broke over them, and through the glades there came always that horrible chatter of machine-guns.

It was a night to which men think back through a lifetime with a wonderment that it brought any dawn for them. But when dawn came their spirit was unbroken and they made a new attack, and went forward with bombs and bayonets to the encounter of other men not less brave. Not less brave, in truth and in fairness to them. There was a fierce fight before the last of them surrendered, so that Mametz Wood was ours, for a while, at least.

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Meanwhile to the left of Contalmaison—our left—other men had worked their way up into Bailiff Wood and had established posts there. It was still impossible to attack Contalmaison from the south, and, as it happened, perhaps a lucky thing because the enemy had expected an attack from the south and had most of his machine-guns facing that way when our troops advanced upon him from the west.

They advanced after a series of artillery barrages from a great number of batteries working in most perfect harmony with the plan of the infantry attack.

At 4.50 the infantry went forward to their first stage in four waves and in extended order. They had to cover about 1,100 yards of open ground, and they travelled light, without their packs, fighting troops, searching parties for house-fighting, and consolidating troops.

“They went across magnificently,” said their General, and in spite of the enemy’s shells and machine-guns penetrated the town. They worked across in time to the successive barrage which preceded them, and at 7 o’clock they had the whole of Contalmaison. The enemy defended himself bravely, and there was some fierce hand-to-hand fighting, in which 200 Germans were killed, refusing to surrender. Many prisoners were taken in the dug-outs.

So at last the stronghold of the Woods was ours, and there is good hope that we shall keep it.

One other wood in this stretch of woodlands is still not ours. It is the Wood of Trones, where also there has been desperate fighting by the men who captured Bernafay Wood and Caterpillar Wood and the ground about Montauban, shelled and shelled again by the enemy, who hates to have us there.

We have taken it several times, but the evening’s shell-fire forced us from part of it. When they come, our shell-fire slashes them to death. So much of it is No Man’s Land, and a devilish place.

But we hold a great stretch of ground after the Battle of the Woods.