XXVI THE AUSTRALIANS AT MOUQUET FARM

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September 3

To-day, Sunday, September 3, many of our troops have been engaged in hard fighting.

The main facts of these battles will be told officially before what I have to write is published—the capture of Guillemont, the advance at least as far as half-way through the village of Ginchy, the taking of ground eastwards beyond Mouquet Farm—and put even as briefly as that it will be known by people at home that our men have again gone forward in a great attack and fought tremendously.

Again all this countryside above the Somme has been filled with those scenes of war which I have described so often since that morning of July 1, when we began the great attack, pictures of a day of battle, when many troops are engaged, and when the power of our artillery is concentrated in a tremendous endeavour—stabs of fire from the muzzles of many guns, smoke-clouds rising above the ridges of the hills and lying dense in the valleys, the bloody trail of the walking wounded, groups of prisoners tramping down, ambulance convoys swirling through quiet lanes, bandaged men in casualty-clearing stations or sitting in harvest-fields behind the lines waiting for the Red Cross trains, guns going up, ammunition columns crawling forward, transport, mules, motor-cars, field-guns, troops—everywhere the movement of a great day of war.

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Looking back on to-day’s battle pictures two of them rise before me now as I write, most vividly. One of them was just a smoke picture as I stared down into the boiling heart of its cauldron this morning. I was in an artillery observation post, from which on ordinary days one may see each shell burst above the ruins of Thiépval and the ragged trees of its woods and the broken row of apple-trees, and a charred stick or two of Mouquet Farm, and beyond, very clearly on the ridge, the conical base of the windmill above Pozières.

To-day one could see nothing of this. Nothing at all but a hurly-burly of smoke, black rising in columns through white, white floating through and above black, and all moving and writhing. That was where our men were fighting.

That was all the picture of this struggle, just smoke and mist. Thousands of shells were bursting there, but one could see no separate shell burst; no single human figure dodging death or meeting it. So I stood and stared and listened. It was like a world in conflict.

The noise of the guns was tense. The hammer-strokes of each explosion met each other stroke, and gave out an enormous clangour. Dante looking down into Inferno may have seen something like this, and would not have heard such a noise. It was most like the spirit of war of anything I have seen, and I have seen men go forward and fall, and watched their single adventures.

The other picture was more human and less frightful, though sad and tragic and wonderful. It was a field behind the battle lines, into which the “walking wounded” first came down after their escape from those fires further up. It was a harvest-field with rows of neat corn stooks near a wood in heavy foliage, in spite of shells which came from time to time to break the branches. Some wounded men lay about on the stubble. Others came limping between the corn stooks, with their arms about the necks of stronger comrades.

Horse ambulances halted by the side of the road, and groups of Red Cross men ran forward and brought back very slowly stretchers heavily laden with human bundles, who were laid by the side of those who could sit up with their backs to the wheatsheaves. Many of the men’s faces were caked with blood. There was every kind of wound except the worst. But men with bandaged heads called out to others who came with their arms in slings, and men gone lame gossiped with men whose jackets had been cut away at the shoulder—and I saw again the wonder that one always sees after battle, which is the cheerfulness of men who are not too far gone to hide their pain, the courage of the British soldier, which is sublime.

There were a few men there from whom one’s eyes played the coward, but it was good to see the happiness of those who had come out of the zone of death into this harvest-field, where there was safety except for chance shells. Guns were firing all round them. But they were our guns. These men were the heroes of a great day of battle, and they had been touched by fire, but had not been burnt in the furnaces to which they had gone before the dawn. They had had all the luck.

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It is too soon to tell the story of this day. Our men are still fighting as the sun goes down this evening with a red glow in the sky after a sharp burst of rain. In those wet and broken ditches, which we call trenches, north-east beyond Mouquet Farm, and on the right by Guillemont, the enemy is still being routed out of shell-craters and trying to rally to counter-attacks, and the German guns are flinging out barrages to drive our men back if they can. At this hour, when all is confused and uncertain except the main facts that we have taken Guillemont and part of Ginchy, and far beyond Mouquet, with great news from the French on our right—the capture of Clery and 1500 prisoners—I can give only a few glimpses of the incidents of all this fighting.

On the left our attack was made on the German lines north and south of the Ancre. Our troops went over their parapets this morning almost before the first glimmer of dawn had lightened the sky. They could only see the ground immediately before them, and it was, of course, pitted with shell-craters, old and new. The new craters had just been made by our hurricane bombardment, which had laid the enemy’s parapets in shapeless ruin, killing a great number of Germans in what had been their trenches. Their light signals called to their gunners, and at the very instant our men came into the open an accurate barrage swept our lines. But the men were away, and as far as I heard from them this morning, the line on the left did not suffer uncommonly in the scramble across No Man’s Land.

A number of them forced their way into and through the enemy’s first and second lines, bayoneting the Germans who tried to resist them, and clearing the ground of strong snipers and machine-gunners. They fought—these English country fellows—in heroic style to the south of the river. The enemy’s machine-gunners played an enfilade fire upon the successful troops across the Ancre, and the enemy’s artillery was able to concentrate on this ground. Ours held on to the German second line against this overwhelming fire with a most stubborn endurance, but afterwards when a body of Prussians advanced to a counter-attack drew back to get into line again with the men on their right, south of the river.

“It was the shell-fire which made our position untenable,” said one of the officers who had been fighting here. “But in any case we put a large number of Boches out of action, and that is always worth doing, and brings the end of the war a little closer.”

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Much more lucky and valuable was the advance made by Australian troops upon Mouquet Farm. These men knew the ground intimately, and had already penetrated the ruins of the farm by a strong patrol, which went in and out some days ago, bringing back some prisoners, as I described at the time. They were confident that they could do the same thing again, though the site of the farm might be difficult to hold against hostile fire. Our guns did not fail them this morning.

One of these clean-cut Australian boys with those fine, steady, truth-telling eyes which look so straight at one even after a nerve-breaking ordeal of fire, told me to-day that the bombardment preceding their attack was the greatest thing he has ever heard, though he has fought under many of them hereabouts.

“Our shells rushed over us,” he said, “with a strange, loud ringing noise which pierced one’s ear-drums with a violent vibration. It was just marvellous.” But the enemy’s guns were powerful, too, and he replied tremendously as soon as our own “lifted” and lengthened their fuses.

The way across No Man’s Land, which was about 200 yards, I think, was a passage perilous. There was no level ground anywhere, not a foot of it. It was all shell-holes. Our men fell in and scrambled out and fell in again. Some of the holes were full of water and mud, and men plunged up to their armpits and were bogged.

There was nothing in the way of trenches to take. The Germans were holding lines of shell-craters. In these deep pits they had fixed their machine-guns, and were scattered all about in isolated groups, with little stores of bombs, and rifles kept dry, somehow. It was extraordinarily difficult to attack such a position because there was no definite line.

The Australians found themselves sniped by machine-guns—horrible little spasms of bullets—from unknown quarters, to the right and left, even behind them. By the time the line of Mouquet Farm was reached the battle was broken up into a number of separate encounters between small parties of Australians and small parties of Prussians.

There were bombing duels between one man and another over a shell-hole. Prussians sniped Australians and Australians Prussians at short range from the cover of craters.

But in spite of all this hugger-mugger fighting the Australians pushed forward, and advanced parties went into Mouquet Farm and 200 yards beyond it on the other side. Mouquet Farm—or “Moo-cow” and “Muckie” Farm, as it is variously called—only exists as a name. Of the farm buildings there is nothing left but some blackened beams no higher than one of the Australian boys.

The enemy, however, had his usual dug-outs here, tunnelled deep and strongly protected with timbers and cement. Into one of these went a group of Australians, ready for a fight, and surprised to find the place empty of human life. It was quiet there out of the shell-fire, and it was pleasant to be in the cool dark room, away from the battle. The men searched about and found cigars, which they lit and smoked.

“Good work!” said a boy.

As he spoke the words there was a scuttle of feet and dark figures appeared in the entrance way. They were Germans, and an officer among them said: “Surrender!” “Surrender be damned!” shouted the Australians. “Surrender yourselves.”

Bombs were flung on both sides, but other Australians came up, and it was the Germans who surrendered. I saw one of them to-day, sitting on the grass and smoking a pipe among some of his comrades, who lay wounded among the men who had helped to capture them.

Other dug-outs were being searched, and other prisoners were taken—how many is still uncertain. But what is quite certain is that the Australians have taken ground beyond Mouquet Farm to the east and defeated Germany’s best troops—the 1st regiment of the Prussian Guards reserve.

They were sturdy and fine-looking men, as I saw some of them to-day, and they did not hide their joy at being alive and well treated as wounded prisoners. One of them spoke quite freely, and answered all questions put to him, though with what truth it is difficult to judge.

I think he told the truth, according to the knowledge that had been given to him and the lessons taught him by his warlords. One of his most startling statements, which he made quite definitely, is that the German Emperor has issued a proclamation to his troops, declaring that there will be no winter campaign.

With regard to the coming in of Rumania, he said that it did not surprise them, as they had expected it for a long time. “It will make no difference to the real war,” he said. He disclaimed that there was any shortage of food in Germany, and, as for the soldiers, said: “At least the Prussian Guards feed well. I had two eggs for breakfast.”

“It is the same with all our men.” In the captured districts of France the French people, he says, live on good terms with the Prussian soldiers, but do not like the Bavarians, who are rude fellows. “They were glad to see us back from Russia,” he added.

They seem to have been brought back hurriedly from Russia to resist our offensive, and one man to whom I spoke a few words—a house painter in Berlin in days of peace—told me that he had only been here in France since the early days of July. He said that the war was far worse in France than in Russia, because of the intensity of artillery fire. “We are weary of it all,” he said. “Our people are weary of it. The world is weary of it.”

“And you are glad to be out of it?” I asked.

He smiled, and said, “It is good to be here.”

The Australians were giving their tobacco to these men, and there was no sign of hatred between them. It seems that the Prussian Guard behaved well to-day with regard to the wounded and the stretcher-bearers. After the battle the bearers went out all across No Man’s Land to rescue the wounded and we allowed the same privilege to the enemy, so that parties of Germans and British came close to each other in this work of rescue, and there was no sniping.

With regard to the Guillemont fighting, I can write very little as the battle there began only at mid-day, and I could not get in that direction. But I learn that in co-operation with the French, who were advancing magnificently from the south, and who had linked up with us near Angle Wood, our troops fought their way forward from Arrow Head Copse by way of a maze of little saps which had been dug all about here. They went straight through Guillemont, knocking out machine-gun posts and clearing out dug-outs, and established themselves on the Sunken Road from Ginchy. The Prussian Guard put up a big fight near Falfemont Farm, but suffered great losses. The other German regiments against us were the 73rd, 76th, and 164th.

Fighting still goes on, and the exact issue is uncertain, but at the end of this Sunday the advantage of the day lies with us, and the enemy has submitted to heavy blows.