At this point the Royal Welch Fusiliers came up Maison Rouge Alley. The Germans were shelling it with five-nines (called ‘Jack Johnsons’ because of their black smoke) and lachrymatory shells. This caused a continual scramble backwards and forwards, to cries of: ‘Come on!’ ‘Get back you bastards!’ ‘Gas turning on us!’ ‘Keep your heads, you men!’ ‘Back like hell, boys!’ ‘Whose orders?’ ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Gas!’ ‘Back!’ ‘Come on!’ ‘Gas!’ ‘Back!’ Wounded men and stretcher-bearers kept trying to squeeze past. We were alternately putting on and taking off our gas-helmets, which made things worse. In many places the trench had caved in, obliging us to scramble over the top. Childe-Freeman reached the front line with only fifty men of ‘B’ Company; the rest had lost their way in some abandoned trenches half-way up.
The adjutant met him in the support line. ‘Ready to go over, Freeman?’ he asked.
Freeman had to admit that he had lost most of his company. He felt this disgrace keenly; it was the first time that he had commanded a company in battle. Deciding to go over with his fifty men in support of the Middlesex, he blew his whistle and the company charged. They were stopped by machine-gun fire before they had got through our own entanglements. Freeman himself died – oddly enough, of heart-failure – as he stood on the parapet.
A few minutes later, Captain Samson, with ‘C’ Company and the remainder of ‘B’, reached our front line. Finding the gas-cylinders still whistling and the trench full of dying men, he decided to go over too – he could not have it said that the Royal Welch had let down the Middlesex. A strong, comradely feeling bound the Middlesex and the Royal Welch, intensified by the accident that the other three battalions in the brigade were Scottish, and that our Scottish brigadier was, unjustly no doubt, accused of favouring them. Our adjutant voiced the extreme non-Scottish view ‘The Jocks are all the same; both the trousered kind and the bare-arsed kind: they’re dirty in trenches, they skite too much, and they charge like hell – both ways.’ The First Middlesex, who were the original ‘Diehards’, had more than once, with the Royal Welch, considered themselves let down by the Jocks. So Samson charged with ‘C’ and the remainder of ‘B Company.
One of ‘C’ officers told me later what happened. It had been agreed to advance by platoon rushes with supporting fire. When his platoon had gone about twenty yards, he signalled them to lie down and open covering fire. The din was tremendous. He saw the platoon on his left flopping down too, so he whistled the advance again. Nobody seemed to hear. He jumped up from his shell-hole, waved, and signalled ‘Forward!’
Nobody stirred.
He shouted: ‘You bloody cowards, are you leaving me to go on alone?’
His platoon-sergeant, groaning with a broken shoulder, gasped ‘Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they’re all f—ing dead.’ The Pope’s Nose machine-gun, traversing, had caught them as they rose to the whistle.
‘A’ Company, too, had become separated by the shelling. I was with the leading platoon. The Surrey-man got a touch of gas and went coughing back. The Actor accused him of scrimshanking. This I thought unfair; the Surrey-man looked properly sick. I don’t know what happened to him, but I heard that the gas-poisoning was not serious and that he managed, a few months later, to get back to his own regiment in France. I found myself with The Actor in a narrow communication trench between the front and support lines. This trench had not been built wide enough for a stretcher to pass the bends. We came on The Boy lying on his stretcher, wounded in the lungs and stomach. Jamaica was standing over him in tears, blubbering: ‘Poor old Boy, poor old Boy, he’s going to die; I’m sure he is. He’s the only one who treated me decently.’
The Actor, finding that we could not get by, said to Jamaica: ‘Take that poor sod out of the way, will you? I’ve got to get my company up. Put him into a dug-out, or somewhere.’
Jamaica made no answer; he seemed paralysed by the horror of the occasion and kept repeating: ‘Poor old Boy, poor old Boy!’
‘Look here,’ said The Actor, ‘if you can’t shift him into a dug-out we’ll have to lift him on top of the trench. He can’t live now, and we’re late getting up.’
‘No, no,’ Jamaica shouted wildly.
The Actor lost his temper and shook Jamaica roughly by the shoulders. ‘You’re the bloodv trench-mortar wallah, aren’t you?’ he shouted.
Jamaica nodded miserably.
‘Well, your battery is a hundred yards from here. Why the hell aren’t you using your gas-pipes to some purpose? Buzz off back to them!’ And he kicked him down the trench. Then he called over his shoulder: ‘Sergeant Rose and Corporal Jennings! Lift this stretcher up across the top of the trench. We’ve got to pass.’
Jamaica leaned against a traverse. ‘I do think you’re the most heartless beast I’ve ever met,’ he said weakly.
We went up to the corpse-strewn front line. The captain of the gas-company, who was keeping his head and wore a special oxygen respirator, had by now turned off the gas-cocks. Vermorel-sprayers had cleared out most of the gas, but we were still warned to wear our masks. We climbed up and crouched on the fire-step, where the gas was not so thick – gas, being heavy stuff, kept low. Then Thomas brought up the remainder of ‘A’ Company and, with ‘D’, we waited for the whistle to follow the other two companies over. Fortunately at this moment the adjutant appeared. He was now left in command of the battalion, and told Thomas that he didn’t care a damn about orders; he was going to cut his losses and not send ‘A’ and ‘D’ over to their deaths until he got definite orders from brigade. He had sent a runner back, and we must wait.
Meanwhile, the intense bombardment that was to follow the forty minutes’ discharge of gas began. It concentrated on the German front trench and wire. A good many shells fell short, and we had further casualties from them. In No Man’s Land, the survivors of the Middlesex and of our ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies suffered heavily.
My mouth was dry, my eyes out of focus, and my legs quaking under me. I found a water-bottle full of rum and drank about half a pint; it quieted me, and my head remained clear. Samson lay groaning about twenty yards beyond the front trench. Several attempts were made to rescue him. He had been very badly hit. Three men got killed in these attempts; two officers and two men, wounded. In the end his own orderly managed to crawl out to him. Samson waved him back, saying that he was riddled through and not worth rescuing; he sent his apologies to the company for making such a noise.
We waited a couple of hours for the order to charge. The men were silent and depressed; only Sergeant Townsend was making feeble, bitter jokes about the good old British Army muddling through, and how he thanked God we still had a Navy. I shared the rest of my rum with him, and he cheered up a little. Finally a runner arrived with a message that the attack had been postponed.
Rumours came down the trench of a disaster similar to our own in the brick-stack sector, where the Fifth Brigade had gone over; and again at Givenchy, where men of the Sixth Brigade at the Duck’s Bill salient had fought their way into the enemy trenches, but been repulsed, their supply of bombs failing. It was said, however, that things were better on the right, where there had been a slight wind to take the gas over. According to one rumour, the First, Seventh, and Forty-seventh Divisions had broken through.
My memory of that day is hazy. We spent it getting the wounded down to the dressing-station, spraying the trenches and dug-outs to get rid of the gas, and clearing away the earth where trenches were blocked. The trenches stank with a gas-blood-lyddite-latrine smell. Late in the afternoon we watched through our field-glasses the advance of reserves under heavy shell-fire towards Loos and Hill 70; it looked like a real break-through. They were troops of the New Army division, whose staff we had messed with the night before. Immediately to the right of us we had the Highland Division, whose exploits on that day Ian Hay has celebrated in The First Hundred Thousand; I suppose that we were ‘the flat caps on the left’ who ‘let down’ his comrades-in-arms.
At dus
k, we all went out to get in the wounded, leaving only sentries in the line. The first dead body I came upon was Samson’s, hit in seventeen places. I found that he had forced his knuckles into his mouth to stop himself crying out and attracting any more men to their death. Major Swainson, the second-in-command of the Middlesex, came crawling in from the German wire. He seemed to be wounded in lungs, stomach, and one leg. Choate, a Middlesex second-lieutenant, came back unhurt; together we bandaged Swainson and got him into the trench and on a stretcher. He begged me to loosen his belt; I cut it with a bowie-knife I had bought at Béthune for use during the battle. He said: ‘I’m about done for.’* We spent all that night getting in the wounded of the Royal Welch, the Middlesex, and those Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who had attacked from the front trench. The Germans behaved generously. I do not remember hearing a shot fired that night, though we kept on until it was nearly dawn and we could see plainly; then they fired a few warning shots, and we gave it up. By this time we had recovered all the wounded, and most of the Royal Welch dead. I was surprised at some of the attitudes in which the dead stiffened – bandaging friends’ wounds, crawling, cutting wire. The Argyll and Sutherland had seven hundred casualties, including fourteen officers killed out of the sixteen who went over; the Middlesex, five hundred and fifty casualties, including eleven officers killed.
Two other Middlesex officers besides Choate came back unwounded; their names were Henry and Hill, recently commissioned second-lieutenants, who had been lying out in shell-holes all day under the rain, sniping and being sniped at. Henry, according to Hill, had dragged five wounded men into a shell-hole and thrown up a sort of parapet with his hands and the bowie-knife which he carried. Hill had his platoon-sergeant beside him, screaming with a stomach wound, begging for morphia; he was done for, so Hill gave him five pellets. We always carried morphia for emergencies like that.
Choate, Henry, and Hill, returning to the trenches with a few stragglers, reported at the Middlesex headquarters. Hill told me the story. The colonel and the adjutant were sitting down to a meat pie when he and Henry arrived. Henry said: ‘Come to report, sir. Ourselves and about ninety men of all companies. Mr Choate is back, unwounded, too.’
They looked up dully. ‘So you’ve survived, have you?’ the colonel said. ‘Well, all the rest are dead. I suppose Mr Choate had better command what’s left of “A” Company: the bombing officer will command what’s left of “B” [the bombing officer had not gone over, but remained with headquarters]; Mr Henry goes to “C” Company. Mr Hill to “D”. The Royal Welch are holding the front line. We are here in support. Let me know where to find you if you’re needed. Good night.’
Not having been offered a piece of meat pie or a drink of whisky, they saluted and went miserably out.
The adjutant called them back. ‘Mr Hill! Mr Henry!’
‘Sir?’
Hill said that he expected a change of mind as to the propriety with which hospitality could be offered by a regular colonel and adjutant to temporary second-lieutenants in distress. But it was only: ‘Mr Hill, Mr Henry, I saw some men in the trench just now with their shoulder-straps unbuttoned and their equipment fastened anyhow. See that this does not occur in future. That’s all.’
Henry heard the colonel from his bunk complaining that he had only two blankets and that it was a deucedly cold night.
Choate, in peacetime a journalist, arrived a few minutes later; the others had told him of their reception. After he had saluted and reported that Major Swainson, hitherto thought killed, was wounded on the way down to the dressing-station, he boldly leaned over the table, cut a large piece of meat pie and began eating it. This caused such a surprise that no further conversation took place. Choate finished his meat pie and drank a glass of whisky; saluted, and joined the others.
Meanwhile, I took command of what remained of ‘B’ Company. Only six company officers survived in the Royal Welch. Next morning we were only five. Thomas was killed by a sniper while despondently watching through field-glasses the return of the New Army troops on the right. Pushed blindly into the gap made by the advance of the Seventh and Forty-seventh Divisions on the previous afternoon, they did not know where they were or what they were supposed to do. Their ration supply broke down, so they flocked back, not in panic, but stupidly, like a crowd returning from a cup final, with shrapnel bursting above them. We could scarcely believe our eyes, it was so odd.
Thomas need not have been killed; but everything had gone so wrong that he seemed not to care one way or the other. The Actor took command of ‘A’ Company. We lumped ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies together after a couple of days, for the sake of relieving each other on night watch and getting some sleep. I agreed to take the first watch, waking him up at midnight. When the time came, I shook him, shouted in his ear, poured water over him, banged his head against the side of the bed. Finally I threw him on the floor. I was desperate for a lie-down myself, but he had attained a depth of sleep from which nothing could rouse him; so I heaved him back on the bunk, and had to finish the night without relief. Even ‘Stand-to!’ failed to wake him. In the end I got him out of bed at nine o’clock in the morning, and he was furious with me for not having called him at midnight.
We had spent the day after the attack carrying the dead down for burial and cleaning the trench up as best we could. That night the Middlesex held the line, while the Royal Welch carried all the unbroken gas-cylinders along to a position on the left flank of the brigade, where they were to be used on the following night, September 27th. This was worse than carrying the dead; the cylinders were cast-iron, heavy and hateful. The men cursed and sulked. Only the officers knew of the proposed attack; the men must not be told until just beforehand. I felt like screaming. Rain was still pouring down, harder than ever. We knew definitely, this time, that ours would be only a diversion to help troops on our right make the real attack.
The scheme was the same as before: at 4 p.m. gas would be discharged for forty minutes, and after a quarter of an hour’s bombardment we should attack. I broke the news to the men about three o’clock. They took it well. The relations of officers and men, and of senior and junior officers, had been very different in the excitement of battle. There had been no insubordination, but a greater freedom of speech, as though we were all drunk together. I found myself calling the adjutant ‘Charley’ on one occasion; he appeared not to mind in the least. For the next ten days my relations with my men were like those I had in the Welsh Regiment; later, discipline reasserted itself, and it was only occasionally that I found them intimate.
At 4 p.m. then, the gas went off again with a strong wind; the gas-men had brought enough spanners this time. The Germans stayed absolutely silent. Flares went up from the reserve lines, and it looked as though all the men in the front trench were dead. The brigadier decided not to take too much for granted; after the bombardment he sent out a Cameronian officer and twenty-five men as a feeling-patrol. The patrol reached the German wire; there came a burst of machine-gun and rifle fire, and only two wounded men regained the trench.
We waited on the fire-step from four to nine o’clock, with fixed bayonets, for the order to go over. My mind was a blank, except for the recurrence of S’nice S’mince S’pie, S’nice S’mince S’pie… I don’t like ham, lamb or jam, and I don’t like roley-poley…
The men laughed at my singing. The acting C.S.M. said: ‘It’s murder, sir.’
‘Of course it’s murder, you bloody fool,’ I agreed. ‘But there’s nothing else for it, is there?’ It was still raining. But when I sees a s’nice s’mince s’pie, I asks for a helping twice…
At nine o’clock brigade called off the attack; we were told to hold ourselves in readiness to go over at dawn.
No order came at dawn, and no more attacks were promised us after this. From the morning of September 24th to the night of October 3rd, I had in all eight hours of sleep. I kept myself awake and alive by drinking about a bottle of whisky a day. I had never drunk it before, and ha
ve seldom drunk it since; it certainly helped me then. We had no blankets, greatcoats, or waterproof sheets, nor any time or material to build new shelters. The rain poured down. Every night we went out to fetch in the dead of the other battalions. The Germans continued indulgent and we had few casualties. After the first day or two the corpses swelled and stank. I vomited more than once while superintending the carrying. Those we could not get in from the German wire continued to swell until the wall of the stomach collapsed, either naturally or when punctured by a bullet; a disgusting smell would float across. The colour of the dead faces changed from white to yellow-grey, to red, to purple, to green, to black, to slimy.
On the morning of the 27th a cry arose from No Man’s Land. A wounded soldier of the Middlesex had recovered consciousness after two days. He lay close to the German wire. Our men heard it and looked at each other. We had a tender-hearted lance-corporal named Baxter. He was the man to boil up a special dixie for the sentries of his section when they came off duty. As soon as he heard the wounded Middlesex man, he ran along the trench calling for a volunteer to help fetch him in. Of course, no one would go; it was death to put one’s head over the parapet. When he came running to ask me I excused myself as being the only officer in the company. I would come out with him at dusk, I said – not now. So he went alone. He jumped quickly over the parapet, then strolled across No Man’s Land, waving a handkerchief; the Germans fired to frighten him, but since he persisted they let him come up close. Baxter continued towards them and, when he got to the Middlesex man, stopped and pointed to show the Germans what he was at. Then he dressed the man’s wounds, gave him a drink of rum and some biscuit that he had with him, and promised to be back again at nightfall. He did come back, with a stretcher-party, and the man eventually recovered. I recommended Baxter for the Victoria Cross, being the only officer who had witnessed the action, but the authorities thought it worth no more than a Distinguished Conduct Medal.