XXIV THE ATTACK ON THIÉPVAL

1

August 25

The doom of Thiépval is near at hand. By a series of small, sharp attacks, in short rushes, after enormous shell-fire, our troops have forged their way across a tangled web of trenches and redoubts until now they are just below the row of apple trees which still show a broken stump or two below the southern end of the village. They have bitten off the nose of the Leipzig salient, and yesterday I saw them take the Hindenburg trench and its strong point, which is almost the last of the defensive works barring our way to the south entrance of the village fortress.

On the west our trenches have been dug for some time through Thiépval Wood, within four hundred yards of this place, and on the east they have been pushed forward to the left of Mouquet Farm; so that we have thrown a lasso, as it were, around the stronghold on the hill, from which its garrison has only one way of escape—by way of the Crucifix, northwards, where our guns will get them. That garrison is in a death-trap. The German soldiers in Thiépval must be praying for the end to come.

As I stood watching the place yesterday, from a trench only a few hundred yards away, it seemed to me astounding and terrible that men should still be living there. I could see nothing of the village for there is next to nothing left of it—nothing at all but heaps of rubbish which were once the roofs and walls of houses. But on the sky-line at the top of a ridge which slopes up from the Leipzig salient there still stand a hundred trees or so, which are all that is left of Thiépval. They stood black and gaunt against the blue sky, without a leaf on their broken branches, and all charred. The brown hummocks of the German trench-lines encircled them, with narrow strips of grass, vividly green, between these earthworks and below, falling away to our own lines, a turmoil of upheaved soil where a maze of trenches had been made shapeless by incessant shell-fire.

All through the afternoon, as all through the morning, and the mornings and afternoons of many yesterdays, our guns were firing in a steady, leisurely way, one shell every minute or two, at the ground marked out by the black tree-stumps. They were mostly the shells of our “heavies” firing from long range, so that for several seconds one could hear the long voyage of each shell, listen to the last fierce rush of it over our heads, and then see, before the roar of the explosion, a vast volume of smoke and earth vomit up from the place between the trees, or just below, the line of trees where the enemy’s trenches lay.

A friend of mine, sitting on some sandbags with his steel helmet just below the tops of some tall thistles which gave friendly cover in our fore-ground above the parapet, said “Beautiful!” every time there was a specially big cloud-burst. He is such a hater of war that his soul follows each shell of ours with a kind of exultation so that it shall help to end it quickly. But I kept thinking of the fellows below there, under that shell-fire.

It was only previous knowledge, explorations in German dug-outs, talks with men who have come living out of such bombardments, that made me still believe that there were men alive in Thiépval, and that before we take the place they may fight desperately and keep machine-guns going to the last. There was not a human soul to be seen, and the earth was being flung up in masses; but underground a garrison of German soldiers was sitting in deep cellars, trying to turn deaf ears to the crashes above them, trying to hide the terror in their souls, a terror invading all their courage icily, and looking into the little mirrors of long periscopes which showed them the vision of things above ground, and the stillness of the British trenches, from which at any minute there might come waves of men on a new attack.

2

With a few others in the trench where I stood I knew that our men were to make another bound yesterday afternoon, though not the exact time of it. For nearly two hours I watched the bombardment, steady and continuous, but not an intense fire from all available batteries, and every few minutes I looked at my wrist-watch and wondered “Will it begin now?” Down below me was the hummocky track of our front-line trenches, in which the attacking parties had assembled. Only now and again could I see any movement there.

In our own trench some signallers were carrying down a new wire, whistling as they worked. A forward observing officer was watching the shell-bursts through a telescope resting on the parapet and giving messages to a telephone operator who sat hunched at the bottom of the trench with his instrument. A couple of young officers came along jauntily, swearing because “these silly asses”—whoever they might be—“never tell you where they are.” An artillery officer came along for a chat, and remarked that it was a fine day for a football match.

3

It was a day when the beauty of France is like a song in one’s heart, a day of fleecy clouds in the blue sky, of golden sunlight flooding broad fields behind the battle lines, where the wheatsheaves are stacked in neat lines by old men and women, who do their sons’ work, and of deep, cool shadows under the wavy foliage of the woodlands.

Behind us was a ruined village, and German shells were falling into the corner of a wood not far away to our left, but the panorama of the French countryside beyond the edge of the battlefield was full of peace. Above our heads some British aeroplanes came flying, and the hum of their engines was like big bees buzzing. They flew straight over the German lines, and presently the sky about them was dotted with white puffs of shrapnel, and above the noise of the guns there was the high “ping!” of the German “Archies,” as each shell reached up to those soaring wings, but failed to bring them down.

Another officer came along the trench and said “Good afternoon! The show begins in ten minutes.”

The “show” is the name soldiers give to a battle.

By my watch it was longer than ten minutes before the “show” began. The leisurely bombardment continued in the same way. Now and again a German “crump” replied, like an elaborate German guttural. Then suddenly, as though at the tap of a baton, a great orchestra of death crashed out. It is absurd to describe it. No words have been made for a modern bombardment of this intensity. One can only give a feeble, inaccurate notion of what one big shell sounds like.

When hundreds of heavy guns are firing upon one small line of ground and shells of the greatest size are rushing through the sky in flocks, and bursting in masses, all description is futile. I can only say that the whole sky was resonant with waves of noise that were long-drawn, like the deep notes of violins, gigantic and terrible in their power of sound, and that each vibration ended at last in a thunderous crash. Or again it seemed as though the stars had fallen out of the sky and were rushing down to Thiépval.

The violence of this bombardment was as frightful as anything I have seen in this war in the way of destructive gun-power. The shells tore up the German trenches and built up a great wall of smoke along the crest of the ridge, and smashed through the trees of Thiépval, until for minutes together that place was only to be known by tall pillars of black, and white, and brown smoke, which swayed about as though in a great wind, and toppled down upon each other, and rose again.

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A voice at my elbow, speaking breathlessly, said: “Look! They’re away.... Oh, splendid fellows!”

Out of our front line trenches scrambled long lines of men. They stood for a moment on the top of the parapet, waited for a second or two until all the men had got up into their alignment, and then started forward, steadily and in wonderful order. Some of the officers turned round, as though to see that all their men were there. I saw one of them raise his stick, and point towards the ridge. Then he ran ahead of his men. They were on low ground—lowest on the right, in front of the parapet where I stood, but sloping up a little on the left by the Leipzig redoubt. Beyond them the ground rose steadily to the ridge on which Thiépval stands. Our men had a big climb to make, and a long way to go over open country, for four or five hundred yards is the very devil of a way to go when it is swept with shell fire.

The enemy was not long in flinging a barrage in the way of our men. A rocket went up from his lines as a signal to his guns, and perhaps half a minute after our men had sprang over the parapet his shells began to fall. But they were too late to do any damage there. Our men were out and away. Some message seemed to reach the enemy and tell him this. He raised his barrage on to ground nearer to his own lines, and his heavy crumps fell rapidly, bursting all over No Man’s Land. Now and again they seemed to fall right into the middle of a bunch of our men, in a way frightful to see, but when the smoke cleared the group was still going forward. On the right of the line one great shell burst with an enormous crash, and this time there was no doubt that it had caught some of our men. I saw them fall in a heap.... Perhaps they had flung themselves down to avoid the shell splinters. Perhaps not one of them had been touched. It is extraordinary how men can avoid death like that.

Nothing checked the advance of the long lines of figures going through the smoke; not all the German barrage, which was now very fierce. The men had to cross one of those narrow strips of grass land between the earthworks before they came to the first line of German trenches, and they showed up black and distinct against this green belt whenever the smoke of the shells bursting above them drifted away.

They were not in close formation. They went forward after the first few moments of advance, in small parties, widely scattered, but keeping the same direction. Sometimes the parties themselves broke up and separated into individual figures, jumping over shell-craters, running first to left or right as the shriek of an enemy shell warned them of approaching death. I saw then how easy it is to lose all sense of direction in an attack like this, and the reason why men sometimes go so hopelessly astray. But yesterday it was quite marvellous how quickly the men recovered their line when they had drifted away in the blinding smoke, and how the groups kept in touch with each other, and how separate figures, running to catch up, succeeded in joining the groups.

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We watched the single figures, following the fortunes of each man across the fire-swept slope, hoping with all our souls that he would get through and on. Then he would pick himself up when he fell face forward.

For a little while the men were swallowed up in smoke. I could see nothing of them, and I had a horrible feeling this time none of us would ever see them again. For they had walked straight into the infernal fires, and all behind them and all in front the shells were bursting and flinging up the earth and raising enormous, fantastic clouds.

It seemed an hour before I saw them again. I suppose it was only five or six minutes. The wind drifted the smoke away from the Thiépval ridge, and there, clear and distinct to the naked eye, were the lines of our men swarming up. Some of them were already on the highest ground, standing, single figures, black against the sky. They stood there a second or two, then jumped down and disappeared. They were in the German trenches, close to Thiépval.

“Magnificent!” said a French officer who was standing close to me. “By God! your men are fine!”

They were wonderful. The German barrages did not stop them. They went through and on as though proof against shells. Some men did not go on, and fell on the side of the slope, but it seemed to me there were not many of them.

In the centre of the German trenches was a strong point or redoubt, with machine-guns. It was one of those deadly places that have often checked one of our attacks, and cost many brave lives. But I could see that our men were all round it. One single figure was an heroic silhouette against the blue of the sky. He was bombing the redoubt, and as he flung his bombs the attitude of the man was full of grace like a Greek disc-thrower. A German shell burst close to him and he was engulfed in its upheaval, but whether he was killed or not I could not tell. I did not see him again.

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Up the slope went the other men, following the first wave, and single fellows hurrying after them. In a little while they had all disappeared. They were in the enemy’s trenches, beyond all doubt.

New sounds of an explosive kind came through all the fury of gun-fire, which had slackened in intensity, but was still slashing the air. It was a kind of hard knocking in separate strokes, and I knew it was bomb-fire. Our men were at work in and about the German dug-outs, and there were Germans there who were not surrendering without a fight.

One fight took place on the top of the parapet. A man came up and stood on the sky-line—whether an English soldier or a German it was impossible to see. I think a German, for a second after another man came up as though chasing him, and the first man turned upon him. They both had revolvers and fired, and disappeared. Other men were running along the parapets of the German trenches. They were ours, and they were flinging bombs as they ran. Then a curtain of smoke was wafted in front of them again, and they were hidden.

From our own trenches another wave of men appeared. I think it wanted more courage of them even than of the first line of assaulting troops to go out over that open ground. They had to face the German barrage and to pass over a way where many of their comrades were lying. But they went on steadily and rapidly, just as the others had gone, splitting up into groups, running in short rushes, disappearing in the smoke of shell-bursts, falling into shell-craters, scrambling up, and on again....

Another wave came still later, making their way to that ridge where their comrades were fighting in the enemy’s trenches. They, too, disappeared into those ditches.

Only in the ground near to me could I see any sign of life now. Here some of our wounded were walking back, and the stretcher-bearers were at work. I watched a little procession coming very slowly to our trenches with their stretchers lifted high. It was a perilous way of escape for wounded when the enemy was flinging shells all over the ground and there was no safety zone. Somewhere on our right a shell had struck a bomb-store or an ammunition dump and a volume of smoke, reddish-brown, rose and spread into the shape of a gigantic query mark. Other fires were burning in what had been No Man’s Land, and out of an explosion in the enemy’s trenches there was flung up a black vomit in which were human beings, or fragments of them. Over the ridge by Thiépval the enemy’s barrage was continuous on the far side of the slope between our trenches on the west and the ground just gained, and the top of the smoke-clouds drifted above the sky-line as though from a row of factory chimneys.

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Suddenly out of all this curtain of smoke came a crowd of figures, leaping and running. They were Germans trying to get to our trenches, not in a counter-attack, but to give themselves up as prisoners, and to get some cover from their own shell-fire. Terror was in their attitudes, in their wild stampede and desperate leaps over the broken ground where the shells of their own guns were bursting. One great German crump crashed close to them, and I think it must have killed some of them.

Then for more than an hour as I watched other figures came back from the high ground towards our old front line, sometimes in groups of two or three, sometimes alone. They were our lightly wounded men, with here and there a German.

It was with a sense of horrible fascination that I watched the adventures of these men, separately. One of them would jump down from the sky-line, and come at a quick run down the slope. Then suddenly he would stop and stand in an indecisive way as though wondering what route to take to avoid the clusters of shell-bursts spurting up below him. He would decide sometimes on a circuitous route, and start running again in a zig-zag way, altering his direction sharply when a shell crashed close to him.

I could see that he was out of breath. He would halt and stand as though listening to the tumult about him, then come on very slowly. I wanted to call out to him, to shout, “This way, old man!... Quick!” But no voice would have carried through that world in uproar. Then perhaps he would stumble, and fall, and lie as though dead. But presently I would see him crawl on his hands and knees, stand up and run again. He would reach our line of trenches and jump down, or fling himself down. Some cover at last, thank God! So it happened with man after man, and each journey was the adventure of a man trying to dodge death. It was horrible to see.

High above the Thiépval ridge there were perpendicular streaks of white smoke and light, strangely spectral, like tall thin ghosts wrapped in white shrouds and illumined in a ghastly way. I think they were the long tails of rockets fired as signals to the guns. The German black shrapnel and their green “universal” shell was hanging in big puffs above the denser pall below, and there was the glint and flash of bursting shells stabbing through the wall of smoke.

Our aeroplanes were right over Thiépval all through the battle, circling round in wide steady flights, careless of the German anti-aircraft guns, which were firing continuously. Two hostile planes came out and our men closed about them, and flew to attack, but after a little while the Germans fled back in retreat. The only observation the enemy had was from two kite balloons, poised well forward, but often lost and blinded in all the clouds.

So I watched, and knew, because our men did not come back from those trenches on the Thiépval ridge, that they had been successful. It was only the prisoners and the lightly wounded who came back. The assaulting parties were holding the ground they had captured in spite of all the shell-fire that crashed over them. They had tightened the iron net round Thiépval, and drawn it closer.

So at last I went away from the battlefield, back to the quiet harvest fields flooded with the golden glow of the sinking sun, luckier than the men who had to stay, and ashamed of my luck. The enemy was flinging shells at long range. The harvest fields were not quite so safe as they looked.

There were ugly corners to pass, shell-trap corners, where it is not wise to linger to light a cigarette. But hell was behind me, up there at Thiépval, where the storm of shell-fire still raged, and where, below ground, the German garrison awaits its inevitable fate.

8

August 26

Following the official communiqué, I can now say that the troops whom I saw advancing so splendidly and steadily across a great stretch of No Man’s Land to the higher ground round Thiépval were men of Wiltshire and Worcestershire. They deserve the honour that has been given them by Sir Douglas Haig in his report, because after their great assault they had to sustain last night a strong attack by Prussian Guardsmen, following a long and fierce bombardment. The courage of these English lads—among them being boys who once followed the plough and worked in the orchards of those quiet old counties—did not fail against the finest troops of the Kaiser’s armies, and that phrase in the official communiqué which records their achievement is a fine memorial:

“The success of our defences is largely due to the steadiness and determined gallantry of Wiltshire and Worcestershire men, who, in spite of being subjected to a very heavy bombardment, steadily maintained their positions, and repulsed the determined assault of the enemy.”

It seems to me probable that the enemy will make a big effort to check our continued advance along the ridge from Thiépval to High Wood, and especially to rescue Thiépval itself from its impending fate. The position our troops have gained by two months’ fighting of the most heroic kind has put the enemy at a great disadvantage from the point of view of artillery observation, which is all important in modern warfare.

On the ground in front of us now, beyond the Windmill, and the switch-line, the German battalions are in an untenable position if our attack is pressed on, until they fall back upon what is known as the Flers line, more than 2,000 yards behind Martinpuich and High Wood, and meanwhile their present line of defence is open to our bombardments, so that the enemy’s casualties must be very heavy and, as we know, the moral of their men in these shell-craters and ruins is badly shaken.

It is obvious that the German Headquarters Staff realises the gravity of the position, and is endeavouring to organise a method of defence by attack, which will stop or check the British advance. They are probably too shrewd to believe that this can be done by bringing up fresh troops to replace those who have been worn out, and stand with shattered nerves beyond the British lines.

Fresh troops or old troops are food for our guns, greedy for them. It is only by guns that the enemy can fight against guns, and he is drifting down batteries into a great concentration for the defence of Thiépval.

It will be the greatest duel of artillery ever seen on the British front, for as I have seen myself the sweep and fury of our own shell-fire in the neighbourhood reaches the most astounding intensity. Meanwhile we have in this sector, beyond any shadow of doubt or exaggeration, the mastery of the air, and that is of supreme advantage to our gunners, and to the infantry who are supported by them.

So far our progress has not been brought to a dead halt, and we have made further ground yesterday, by wonderfully fine fighting on the part of English and Scots battalions, to the north and east of Belville Wood. Our hurricane bombardment preceding the attack of these troops was countered by a heavy barrage from the enemy, but our men went forward with an unflinching spirit to a line striking across the Flers-Longueval road, and joining on the left—by a curved salient—our old position south-west of High Wood.

The hardest part of the fighting was on the left of the attack, where there was a great deal of machine-gun fire, but the enemy’s trenches were carried and prisoners were taken to the number of ten officers and 214 other ranks. Several machine-guns also were brought back after being captured by hand-to-hand fighting at the strong points.

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August 28

I have already described my own visual impressions of the great assault made south of Thiépval by men of Wiltshire and Worcestershire, which I watched from a neighbouring trench. But there are still things to be told about this memorable achievement—as fine in its way as anything our men have done. The name of Wiltshire will always be specially remembered on the ground of the Leipzig salient, which barred the southern way to Thiépval, for they were troops of this county who, as far back as July 8, captured the butt-end of that stronghold, and, working with other county troops on their right, made the next advance, on August 22, which preceded the greater attack two days later.

That affair of August 22 was extraordinary fine and brief and successful. Twelve minutes after the attacking time, the Wilts men had gone across the one hundred yards of No Man’s Land, captured the enemy’s nearest line of trenches, and sent down their first batch of twenty prisoners.

The Wiltshires had only three casualties in getting across the open ground, though they afterwards suffered more under the enemy’s shell-fire. Most of the German dug-outs were blown in, but there was one big subterranean chamber which was not badly damaged, and wanted only a little work to make it a place of comfort for the new-comers. As their colonel said to me to-day: “It always gives us great pleasure to take lodgings in these German apartments.”

The attack on the Hindenburg trench which I saw on August 24 was complicated because the Wiltshires had to advance partly across the open—300 yards of No Man’s Land, which is no joke—and partly, on their left, through a network of trenches climbing the high ground from the Leipzig salient to Thiépval.

It was necessary therefore to organise the attack so that those advancing over the open should not arrive at the Hindenburg trench sooner than those worrying their way up through the broken earthworks, not at all an easy proposition.

Also before the Hindenburg line could be seized securely it would be essential to “kill” a German strong point at a junction made in the Hindenburg trench by a communication way running up from the Leipzig salient.

The penalty of not doing so would be certain death to many of our men by an enfilade fire of machine-guns. These are little details that worry the souls of commanding officers and company commanders before they get the men over the parapet with thousands of bombs and the supplies of picks, shovels, sandbags, Lewis gun “drums,” Very lights, and other material of war.

10

On the day before the last attack on the southern way into Thiépval the enemy, who suspected bad things coming, tried to thwart our plan by hurling a terrific storm of shell-fire all over the Leipzig salient.

He seems to have brought up new guns for the purpose, and his heavy five-point-nines “crumped” the ground in all directions. But all this did not stop the Wiltshires and the Worcesters, who went on with their own little scheme.

On Thursday afternoon last, everything went like clockwork from the moment that our artillery opened with the intense bombardment described by me in a former despatch.

The Worcesters attacked on the right, the Wiltshires on the left. Over the parapet they halted a moment, and then went forward in a steady and ordered way. I could not see the men working up through the trenches on the left until they sprang up to the crest of the ridge, but only those who went across the open. The last eighty yards was covered in the quickest time, and soon after our shell-fire lifted off the German trench the Wiltshires and Worcesters were in among the enemy.

But not close together. There was a gap of fifty yards between the two parties, and in order to get in touch with each other they bombed left and right. It was at this moment that a company officer distinguished himself by great gallantry.

There were Prussian Guards in the trench, and they fought fiercely, using the gap as a bombing centre. Unless routed out this group of men might have spoiled the attack. The officer saw the situation in a flash, and was quick to get a rifle to his shoulder. He was a dead shot, and shot, one after the other, five men who were trying to blow him to bits with their hand grenades.

At the same time a sergeant scrambled up into the open, and running along outside the trench flung his bombs at the enemy below, “to rattle them,” according to the description of his commanding officer. Another young soldier fixed his Lewis gun over the parapet and fired down into the trenches, so that the enemy had to keep quiet until our men were all round them.

The strong point by the Koenigstrasse had been rushed, and the Hindenburg trench was ours.

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Sharp and fierce fighting had carried the trenches on the left and captured a strong dug-out belonging to the German company commanders. Here also the Prussian Guards fought with great courage, firing up from their dug-outs and only surrendering under the menace of immediate death. One sergeant here on the left walked about in the open with a cool courage and shot twelve Germans who were sniping from shell-holes. The ground was already strewn with their dead, killed by our bombardment, and over this graveyard of unburied men there was bayonet fighting and bombing until all the Prussians who remained alive became the prisoners of the Wiltshires.

There were several officers among them wearing the Iron Cross, and all the officers and men were tall fellows with brand-new equipment which showed that they had just come into the trenches.

Two captured machine-guns were turned against the enemy’s line, with their own ammunition ready for use, and both the Wiltshires and the Worcesters settled down in the new line, badly smashed as usual by our shell-fire, but with a lot of useful dug-outs still intact, to hold on under the inevitable retaliation of the enemy’s guns.

All through the night there was a steady bombardment, but nothing of extraordinary ferocity. It was the usual night’s “straf” in the neighbourhood of Thiépval, which is not really a nice place.

On the following day—last Friday—the hostile shell-fire increased. Five-point-nines were joined by eight-inches, and, as one of the officers described it, “every durned thing.” It quickened and strengthened in intensity until towards evening it was a hurricane bombardment meaning one obvious thing—a counter-attack. Our men were well down in the old German dug-outs, grateful to their enemy for digging so deep and well, but it became most necessary to warn our “heavies” that the Prussians were gathering for a smashing assault.

Runners were sent out to get back through the barrage if they had the luck, and several of these brave men tried and several failed, dying on the way. But one had more than human luck. Owing to the appalling character of the ground, “pitted and ploughed as though by a gigantic harrow”—it is his officer’s phrase—the man lost his sense of direction, staggered and stumbled on through the smoke and over the shell-craters, and then—amazed—found himself looking over a parapet into a trench full of Germans with fixed bayonets. They were crowded there, those tall Prussians, awaiting the moment to launch their counter-attack.

The runner turned back. Before him the ground was a series of volcanoes, tossed up by German shells and British shells. He knew that he had to pass through our barrage and the enemy’s barrage. The chances against him were tremendous. In his own opinion he had no more chance than a “snowflake in hell.” But he ran back, dodging this death, and—came through untouched!

The “heavies” did at last get the message, and were quick to answer it. “In three shakes,” said an officer of the Wiltshires, “they were smashing the German lines to glory.”

Those tall Prussians crowding there were caught by this storm. Their trench became a ditch-full of mangled bodies. Only a thin wave of men came out into open country, and of these not many went back.

The Prussian counter-attack was killed. The Worcesters and the Wiltshires held their ground round Thiépval, and their losses were paid for heavily by German blood.