XXXI MONSTERS AND MEN

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September 18

In all the accounts of the fighting since Friday the story of the Tanks—those weird and wonderful armoured monsters—runs like a humorous thread. Full of humour and fantasy, because of their shape and qualities, they are also filled with very gallant men, to whom great honour is due. The skippers and crews of these land-ships, as they are called, had to go out alone in many cases in advance of the infantry and upon hazardous chances, which each one of them knew were weighted with the risk, almost the certainty—for it was a new, untried experiment—of death. They had astounding adventures and a large measure of success, and it was due not to any kind of luck, but to great skill and great courage.

I have already told the first stories of their actions. To-day I obtained a full narrative of their achievements, and it is one of the most dramatic and gallant records in the history of this war.

Two of them who set out to attack the line from Combles to Morval made a rendezvous at Wedge Wood, and took up their position at night. One of them set off and ambled slowly until it came within 400 yards north-west of Combles, far in advance of the infantry. Here it sat for five hours, fighting the enemy alone, and shooting down German bombing parties, until it was severely damaged.

The other Tank in the neighbourhood of Bouleaux Wood reached the enemy’s trenches near Morval, and, finding that it had left the infantry behind, went back to inquire for them. They were held up by German bombers in a trench, so the Tank came to the rescue, bucked over the trench, and crushed the bombers into the earth before backing into a deep shell-crater and toppling over. Here for an hour and a half it formed a barricade between British and German bombers, and the crew got out and tried to hoist it out of the shell-hole under heavy fire. One of the men picked up a live bomb flung by the enemy, and tried to hurl it to a safe distance, away from his comrades, but was blown to bits. Finally the “skipper,” with his surviving men, came back to our lines, leaving the derelict monster still used as a barricade.

North of Ginchy telegraph one of the Tanks attacked a machine-gun emplacement and killed many of the men. East of Delville Wood another advanced upon a German trench called Laager Lane, and so frightened the enemy that about a hundred of them came out under white flags and surrendered to it, following the monster back to our lines.

The attack on Hop Alley, by Delville Wood, was led by a Tank which attacked a number of bombers and put them to flight, so that the trench was cleared for the infantry. Afterwards, under a heavy German barrage, it could advance no further, and the skipper and his crew, after doing this fine work, came out of their monster and, with splendid heroism, helped our wounded for three hours.

The officer who did what the soldiers call the great “stunt” in Flers told me his story to-day, and I found him to be as modest a fellow as any naval officer on a light cruiser, and of the same fine type. He went into Flers before the infantry and followed by them, cheering in high spirits, and knocked out a machine-gun which began to play on him. The town was not much damaged by shell-fire, so that the Tank could walk about real streets, and the garrison, which was hiding about in dug-outs, surrendered in small, scared groups. Then the other Tanks came into Flers, and together they lolloped around the town in a free and easy manner before going further afield.

The Tank which went through High Wood did great execution over the German trenches, and another wandered around shell-craters “killing” German machine-guns. The casualties were slight considering the great success of the experiment, and on all sides among our soldiers there is nothing but praise of the gallant men who led them. They are still going strong.

To-day one of the monsters—it was old “Cordon Rouge”—came waddling over shell-craters, climbing over broken trenches, and fetched up outside the door of a brigadier’s dug-out. From the inside of the beast came a very cool and grave young man, who saluted in a naval way, and said, “I await your orders, sir, for going into action.”

“And I’m very glad you didn’t bring your monster down into my dug-out,” said the brigadier. “But it’s very kind of you to call, and no doubt we shall want you shortly.”

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I have been to-day, and for four days, among the men who have broken the Flers line and given the enemy the hardest blows he has ever suffered on this front. Sir Douglas Haig has named them this afternoon in his great bulletin, paying a tribute to their valour in a broad, general way, without letting the enemy know too much about the battalions facing him. They were all splendid. For the big battle on Friday was a hard one, and not a “walk over,” so that our men were put to the supreme test of courage by most damnable shell-fire and fierce concentrated barrages by which the enemy’s gunners at long range endeavoured to support their lost and suffering infantry.

What touched me most, perhaps, though Heaven knows the experiences of all our soldiers made one awe-struck, was the way in which our newest and youngest men went through with their business. There were some of them Derby recruits, who had never yet seen what shell-fire means in the Somme battle. Older men among them, who knew, were sorry for them, wondered how they would “stick it,” and said, with a view to encouragement, “Cheer up, you’ll soon be dead.” They did not hang back, these new fellows. The rawest recruits among them strained forward with the rest, floundered over the shell-holes like the others, leapt into the German trenches, like men of old fighting spirit.

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The London men did gloriously and had one of the hardest points of the attack, and came under some of the heaviest storms of fire. These young Civil servants and men of the London suburbs, who used to go to City offices by early morning trains—do you remember how they spoke once of “London pride”?—fought sternly and endured with stoicism, and had a laugh left in them after the battle when they forgot the frightfulness of it all and remembered the fantastic adventures of the Tanks which waddled into the German lines, knocking down tree-stumps, climbing over heaps of ruin, and “putting the wind up” in the enemy’s ranks. “It was a fair treat!” said one of them. “Every time I think of it I can’t help laughing!” And yet it was no joke, after all, but very grim and deadly work.

There was hardly a county of England which did not have its sons in this battle, and all those English regiments of the north and the south were so good, so fine, so full of spirit, that it made one wonder at the stock that has bred these men, giving to them out of the strain of England some quality of blood that has withstood all the weakening influences of factory life and city life. And yet, having written that, I see it is foolishness. For men of all the Empire were here, and it was the spirit of the whole race that rose at dawn out of the trenches and shell-craters and went forward into the furnace fires.

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About the Scottish troops I can say no more than I have said a hundred times, loving all those Lowlanders and Highlanders “this side idolatry.”

I was with some of their officers to-day again, and heard stories of their men who took one of the German strongholds after a serpentine plan of attack difficult to perform because in attacking men will go straight, and coming under shell-fire which would have broken the spirit of weaker men. But they went on in waves over the German trenches and into the village where some hundreds of men surrendered to them, coming up out of the dug-outs as soon as the Scots were about their hiding-places.

The German soldiers had been thoroughly frightened by the Tank, which had come nosing in before the infantry, and many of them huddled piteously under its flanks in order to escape from its rapid fire. Sixty men came out of one dug-out and surrendered in this way. Afterwards the Scots pushed on beyond the stronghold and established posts and dug cover for themselves against the enemy’s gun-fire, which threw an enormous number of high explosives into their old place of defence, which was stacked with timber for dug-outs and other stores of war material.

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The Canadians gained great glory on Friday and Saturday. After their long and hard experiences in the salient they came down to the Somme battlefield determined to “get their own back,” and do great adventures. Their attack was finely organised, and when all the difficulties are known will be put down to their credit as a really great military achievement. Among them is a body of French Canadians, dark-eyed fellows whom it is strange to meet about the villages of France speaking volubly with the peasants in their own tongue, a little old-fashioned, as it was once spoken in the days of Louis XIV, when Canada was one of the brightest rays in the glory of the Sun-King. These fellows, close in likeness to the provincial Frenchman, though perhaps more dour and reserved, went away like wolves a-hunting, and raced forward to a German stronghold which they had asked leave to take.

They were swept by machine-gun fire and checked by a stubborn defence on the part of the enemy, but with the help of the two Tanks, called “Crême de Menthe” and “Cordon Rouge,” who sat on the enemy’s machine-gun emplacements and knocked out his machine-gun crews, the French Canadians carried the stronghold and captured hundreds of prisoners.

Later I hope to write the full story of the Canadian victory which will thrill through all the towns and fields of the great Dominion like an heroic song, for these men from overseas were very careless of death so that they might win.

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Then there were the New Zealanders, those clean-cut, handsome fellows in the felt hats with a bit of red ribbon round the brim, which I looked for down village streets and in French harvest fields before they went into battle. Australia has set a great example to them, being first in the fighting round Pozières, where they fought as wonderfully as in the Dardanelles. They were not less gallant in the great charge they made at dawn on Friday, going forward very far to a distant place across No Man’s Land, and across German trenches, under heavy fire, and out “into the blue” in pursuit of retreating men.

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Sir Douglas Haig mentions last of all the Guards, but not because they were least in valour. They fought as the Guards always fight, with superb discipline, and with a tradition, that is sacred to them. I saw them before they went into battle, and had a meal in the mess of the Irish Guards, and saw them marching up to take their line in the battlefields.

They are not the old Guards who fought at Ypres and in many bloody battles when we were hard pressed, and afterwards at Loos, when they had some fearful hours. Many of those brave men lie under the soil of France, and new men have taken their place. But the tradition stays, and the physical standard of the men has not been lowered by a hair’s breadth, and their discipline is still upon the same high and hard level. Every one knew they would put up a great fight, and they did.

They had a very difficult part of the line, and had to pass machine-guns which swept upon their ranks in enfilade fire, and had to advance over ground covered by whirlwind fire of high explosives. But they gained their way forward in a series of charges which went straight through three lines of German trenches, and captured large numbers of prisoners after heavy fighting, and held on to their ground against strong counter-attacks. The tradition of the Guards has been upheld, and a new tradition has been given to them.

I must put into a line some late important news of the day, which is the great casualties inflicted upon the enemy in the neighbourhood of Guedecourt. A body of the enemy’s infantry was observed to be retreating through the mist, and they were caught by some of our advanced patrols, who cut them to pieces with machine-gun fire. Elsewhere the enemy is surrendering in small batches, unable to stand the fearful slaughter inflicted upon them by our guns.

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September 19

Some of the most noble fighting qualities in the great battle of Friday last were shown by the troops who were responsible for the centre of the attack directed against Flers and the country immediately to the right of that village. Those who were given the task of assaulting Flers itself were mostly recruited from the London area.

They had not seen much fighting before going into the great fire of the Somme battle. Their General, who had raised and trained them, was sure of them, and had taught each man the task expected of him on this great day, so that whatever might befall their officers, the men should not be mere sheep without a sense of guidance or direction.

When they formed up in line to the north of Delville Wood (with awkward bits of German trench thrust down upon their right flank), they had three lines in front of them over a distance of about 2,500 yards barring their way to Flers. It was a long way and a hard way to go, but they leapt forward in solid waves of keen and eager men following a short and violent barrage from our heavy guns.

In a few minutes from the start the first two waves dropped into the German switch line running diagonally from the real Flers line. They found it choked with German dead, killed by our gun-fire, and among them only a poor remnant of living men. The first two waves stayed in the trench to hold it. The others swept on, smashed through the Flers line, and forged their way over shell-craters under machine-gun and shrapnel fire, to the outskirts of Flers, which they reached between nine and ten in the morning.

Some London men were held up by barbed wire protecting a hidden trench which had not been previously observed, and a call was made for one of the Tanks which had come rolling up behind. It crawled forward, walking over the shell-craters, and smashed the whole length of barbed wire in front, firing rapidly upon the enemy’s bombers in the trench and putting them out of action. This enabled the whole line to advance into Flers village at the tail of another Tank now famous for its adventures in Flers, which I have already narrated.

The victorious troops found but little opposition in the village. Curiously enough, it was not strongly defended or fortified. There were few of the tunnels and dug-outs which make many of these places hard to capture, and the enemy was utterly demoralised by the motor monster which appeared as a bad dream before them. The enemy flung a heavy barrage, but our men had few casualties.

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An attempt was made to reach Guedecourt, and, as I have already told, one of our Tanks reached the outskirts of that new objective. The infantry attack failed owing to massed machine-gun fire, and the men fell back to a new line of trenches hastily dug by the enemy before their defeat, which now gave us useful cover. This was 2,700 yards from the starting point at dawn, and was almost a record as a continuous advance.

The enemy rallied and made two counter-attacks, one at three o’clock in the afternoon, the other between four and five. They were tragic attempts. Some of our machine-gunners lay in waiting for them and mowed down these rows of men as they came bravely forward. It was such a sight as I watched at Falfemont Farm when solid bars of tall men crumbled and fell before a scythe of bullets.

At 6.30 on the following evening our troops made another attempt to reach Guedecourt in co-operation with the men on their right, but they were unable to get the whole distance in spite of a most heroic assault after two days of heavy fighting.

The force attacking on the right of Flers on Friday morning had similar experiences and more difficulties. They are men who know all there is to know about the Ypres salient, where I met them first nearly a year ago. They are men who have old scores to wipe off against the enemy in the way of poison gas and flame jets, and they went very fiercely into the battle.

To start with, they had to clear out a place known as Mystery Corner, to the right of Delville Wood, where they captured fifty-one prisoners, and afterwards a trench a little to the north of that, thrust down as a wedge between their left flank and the right of the troops who had started out for Flers.

This second strong point was wiped out by the Tanks who came and sat down on it, and by a small body of north countrymen working with the Tanks. Their particular job was done, and they might have stayed there, but, seeing the long waves of their comrades streaming forward to the main attack, they could not hold back, but followed on, all through the fight keeping touch in a most orderly way with the men ahead of them, and doing, as they put it, “odd jobs,” such as knocking out machine-guns and killing snipers.

It was so with other men. Having done their allotted task they would not stand and hold, but streamed after the tide which went through and past them, determined to be in at the death.

In the attacks upon Guedecourt that day and on the evening of the next they had a hard bad time like the men on their left. They were under enfilade fire from machine-guns, which chattered hour after hour, never silent. “The air was stiff with bullets,” says one of the officers. Men finding their only cover in shell craters could not put their heads up, so close did the bullets slash the earth. And in other shell-craters not far away were many German riflemen picking off any man who appeared for a moment out of the tumbled earth.

It was a hellish neighbourhood, yet when the moment for the second attack came mixed companies of men from various regiments who had mingled in the inevitable confusion of such a place and time (it was now thirty-six hours since the dawn of Friday) rose out of their holes in the earth and formed up as on parade, and went forward in a fine gallant style.

It was impossible in the face of all those bullets about them, and they fell back to the original line of advance well to the north of Flers, which was good enough for that day after such heroic work. There was no Division in our armies who could have done better, nor who did better, on a great day when all did well.

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And now I must tell a little more in detail the story of the Guards in this battle. It is hard to tell it, and not all can be told yet because of the enemy. The Guards had their full share of the fighting, and of the difficult ground, with strong forces against them. They knew that would be so before they went into battle, and yet they did not ask for better things, but awaited the hour of attack with strong, gallant hearts, quite sure of their courage, proud of their name, full of trust in their officers, eager to give a smashing blow at the enemy.

These splendid men, so tall and proper, so hard and fine, went away as one might imagine the old knights and yeomen of England at Agincourt. For the first time in the history of the Coldstreamers, three battalions of them charged in line, great solid waves of men, as fine a sight as the world could show. Behind them were the Grenadiers, and again behind these men, the Irish.

They had not gone more than 200 yards before they came under the enfilade fire of massed machine-guns in trenches not previously observed. The noise of this fire was so loud and savage that although hundreds of guns were firing, not a shot could be heard. It was just the stabbing, staccato hammering of the German maxims. Men fell, but the lines were not broken. Gaps were made in the ranks, but they closed up. The wounded did not call for help, but cheered on those who swept past and on, shouting, “Go on, Lily Whites!”—which is the old name for the Coldstreamers—“Get at ’em, Lily Whites!”

They went on at a hot pace with their bayonets lowered. Out of the crumpled earth—all pits and holes and hillocks, torn up by great gun-fire—grey figures rose and fled. They were German soldiers terror-stricken by this rushing tide of men.

The Guards went on. Then they were checked by two lines of trenches, wired and defended by machine-guns and bombers. They came upon them quicker than they expected. Some of the officers were puzzled. Could these be the trenches marked out for attack—or other unknown trenches? Anyhow, they must be taken—and the Guards took them by frontal assault full in the face of continual blasts of machine-gun bullets.

There was hard and desperate fighting. The Germans defended themselves to the death. They bombed our men who attacked them with the bayonet, served their machine-guns until they were killed, and would only surrender when our men were on top of them. It was a very bloody hour or more. By that time the Irish Guards had joined the others. All the Guards were together, and together they passed the trenches, swinging left inevitably under the machine-gun fire which poured upon them from their right, but going steadily deeper into the enemy country until they were 2,000 yards from their starting place.

Then it was necessary to call a halt. Many officers and men had fallen. To go further would be absolute death. The troops on the right had been utterly held up. The Guards were “up in the air,” with an exposed flank, open to all the fire that was flung upon them from the enemy’s lines. The temptation to go farther was great. The German infantry was on the run. They were dragging their guns away. There was a great panic among the men who had been hiding in trenches. But the German machine gunners kept to their posts to safeguard a rout, and the Guards had gone far enough through their scourging bullets.

They decided very wisely to hold the line they had gained, and to dig in where they stood, and to make forward posts with strong points. They had killed a great number of Germans and taken 200 prisoners and fought grandly. So, now they halted and dug and took cover as best they could in shell-craters and broken ground, under fierce fire from the enemy’s guns.

The night was a dreadful one for the wounded, and for men who did their best for the wounded, trying to be deaf to agonising sounds. Many of them had hairbreadth escapes from death. One young officer in the Irish Guards lay in a shell-hole with two comrades, and then left it for a while to cheer up other men lying in surrounding craters. When he came back he found his two friends lying dead, blown to bits by a shell.

But in spite of all these bad hours, the Guards kept cool, kept their discipline, their courage and their spirit. The Germans launched counter-attacks against them, but were annihilated. The Guards held their ground, and gained the greatest honour for self-sacrificing courage which has ever given a special meaning to their name. They took the share which all of us knew they would take in the greatest of all our battles since the first day of July, and, with other regiments, struck a vital blow at the enemy’s line of defence.