B00D2VJZ4G EBOK by Jon E. Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

with them and lost to the nation for ever?
    Here also we took part in our first battle, the attack on the Aubers Ridge, on May 9th. We were to support by fire an attack straight up the Ridge, and afterwards to join in the advance. The usual notice was given by a feeble bombardment, the Germans were well wired in and quite ready, and the attack achieved nothing but the destruction of several good battalions and a very few Germans. Assembly trenches had been dug for a brigade in a ten-acre field just behind the line and in full sight from the Ridge. If you had not known they were assembly trenches, you would have thought the field had been ridged up for potatoes. This may have been an early effort at camouflage, or pure stupidity – the result was the same.
    The next day I re-armed my company from those assembly trenches with short rifles and bayonets and handed our obsolete rifles into store. It was watching this tragic performance from the tower of Laventie Church which convinced Sir John French of the obvious fact that he had not enough guns or shells, and started that famous agitation which resulted in his losing his command, in the replacement of Asquith by Lloyd George, and in the all-too-successful search for some place to send Kitchener whence he would not come back.
    In those days generals used to visit us on blood horses, with an orderly carrying a lance with a little flag, in case the troops should fail to appreciate the extreme salutability of these high personages. But Rawlinson, who was our Corps Commander, would go about with one A.D.C. for company, and have a friendly chat and pass on the latest news of the capture of three Germans, six yards of trench, and a sanitary bucket to any humble officer he might meet. He even came up into the front line, where his red hat stuck up over the breastwork. We believed that the Germans would never intentionally shoot a British general, for fear his successor might do something unexpected. But it was a good thing that they did not shoot ‘Rawly.’
    In June, we moved off northwards, and relieved, in the Ypres Salient, a Regular division which had been badly cut up in the Second or Gas Battle.
    We took over the northern half of the Salient, with the 6th Division on our right and a French Territorial division on our left. Our line, as is well known, was a semicircle overlooked in every part by the foe, and fired into at close range from three sides. We held that line without divisional relief for six solid months. We went in with companies 250 strong, and were reduced by losses to less than fifty per company before we came out. The trenches were cut deep in the rich black soil. This ground was full of corpses, mostly French, and when we dug any new work we resurrected bits of them. My first dug-out in the front line was adorned by a boot (with foot more or less complete) sticking out of the wall. It was unpleasing to the senses and unreliable as a clothes-peg, so I sacrificed one-sixth of my space by walling it up.
    All reliefs, trench repairs, carrying, and general labour had to be done at night, but whilst the dry weather lasted we had communication trenches by which ‘brass hats’ could visit us in the day-time and wake the unfortunate officers to make suggestions for filling up our spare time and stimulating the fighting spirit of the troops. When the rain came in autumn, the trenches disappeared and the area became a lake of mud.
    Our Divisional gunners had still the obsolete 15-pounders, for which no new ammunition was being made. They were restricted to three rounds per gun per day, which they saved up for emergencies. Day after day, we were shelled and shelled and shelled-whizz-bangs, gas shells, trench mortars, 9-inch and, occasionally, 17-inch ‘heavies.’ Our guns could only afford ‘retaliation’ when the shelling was exceptional; and if they pushed over twenty 15-pounders, we usually got about 100 ‘five point nines’ back.
    Steadily and surely, we filled