XVI THE LAST STAND IN OVILLERS

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July 18

In all the fighting during the past fortnight the struggle for Ovillers stands out separately as a siege in which both attack and defence were of a most dogged and desperate kind.

The surrender of the remnants of its garrison last night ends an episode which will not be forgotten in history. These men were of the 3rd Prussian Guard, and our Commander-in-Chief, in his day’s despatch, has paid a tribute to their bravery which is echoed by officers and men who fought against them. It is a tribute to our own troops also, who by no less courage broke down a stubborn resistance and captured the garrison.

I have already described the earlier phases of the siege; the first attack on July 1, when our men broke through the outer network of trenches and advanced through sheets of machine-gun fire, suffering heavy casualties, the seizure of separated bits of broken trench-work by little bodies of gallant men fighting, independently, gaining ground by a yard or two at a time and attacking machine-gun posts and bombing posts by hand-to-hand fights; the underground struggle in great vaulted cellars beneath the ruined town; the surprise attack at night when a number of fresh troops sprang upon the defences to the western side of the town, and then, linking up with the men in the captured trenches and ruins, cut the place in half, took many prisoners, and isolated the enemy still holding out in the northern half of the position.

Many different battalions had taken a share in the fighting, all had suffered, and then given way to new men who knew the nature of this business, but set grimly to work to carry on the slow process of digging out the enemy from his last strongholds. It was almost literally a work of digging out.

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The town of Ovillers does not exist. It was annihilated by the bombardments and made a rubbish heap of bricks and dust. When our men were separated from the enemy by only a yard or two or by only a barricade or two the artillery on both sides ceased fire upon Ovillers, lest the gunners should kill their own men.

They barraged intensely round about. Our shells fell incessantly upon the enemy’s communication trenches to the north and east so that the beleaguered garrison should not get supplies or reinforcements.

We made a wall of death about them. But though no shells now burst over the ground where many dead lay strewn, there was artillery of a lighter kind, not less deadly. It was the artillery of machine-guns and bombs. The Prussian Guard made full use of the vaulted cellars and of the ruined houses.

They had made a series of small keeps, which they defended almost entirely by machine-gun fire. As soon as we advanced the machine-guns were set to work, and played their hose of bullets across the ground which our men had to cover. One by one, by getting round about them, by working zig-zag ways through cellars and ruins, by sudden rushes of bombing parties, led by young officers of daring spirit, we knocked out these machine-gun emplacements and the gunners who served them, until, yesterday, there was only the last remnant of the garrison left in Ovillers.

These men of the 3rd Prussian Guard had long been in a hopeless position. They were starving because all supplies had been cut off by our never-ceasing barrage, and they had no water supply, so that they suffered all the torture of great thirst.

Human nature could make no longer resistance, and, at last, the officers raised a signal of surrender, and came over with nearly 140 men, who held their hands up.

The fighting had been savage. At close grips in the broken earthworks and deep cellars there had been no sentiment, but British soldiers and Germans had flung themselves upon each other with bombs and any kind of weapon.

But now, when all was ended, the last of the German garrison were received with the honours of war, and none of our soldiers denies them the respect due to great courage.

“They stuck it splendidly,” was the verdict of one of them to-day, and though there is no love lost between our army and the enemy’s, it is good at least that we should have none of that silly contempt for the foe which is sometimes expressed by people—never by British soldiers—who unconsciously discredit the valour of our men by underestimating the courage and tenacity of those who fight us.