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Chapter XVII Of the Battle of the Somme and of How the New Zealanders Were a Tower of Strength on the Right Hand and on the Left

—A German Soldier.

—Sir Philip Gibbs.

—A Report of the Battle of the Somme.

The New Zealanders entrained at Steenwerck and for the first time travelled in the famous trucks of 40 hommes et 8 chevaux en long. How the eight horses en long fared on these journeys it is hard to say, but the quarante hommes have made their sufferings vocal on many occasions since. The trucks were of the box variety without windows and fitted with sliding doors in the centre. The unfortunate forty were herded in and found that with packs up there was just about standing room. The real problem was how to sit and lie. This was never really solved except by the fortunate few who, when the weather page 161was fine, were able to sit at the open doors and dangle their legs outside. The remainder perched on packs or wrapped round rifles or, leaning up against the hard wall with a heap of equipment wedged uncomfortably underneath, made libellous remarks anent French and British railway transport officers, while the trucks jolted and banged at low speed and with the maximum of halts through beautiful country-side that was of course invisible to the majority of the imprisoned sufferers.

They detrained gladly enough, and marched away to pleasant villages about Amiens. The red-roofed, white-walled houses clustered together in lovely valleys among the wooded hills. Any barn was comfortable in the beautiful autumn weather. The French were friendly and kind, and loved their new guests well. When there are only a few days for the business, and death looms not far ahead, friendships are formed wonderfully quickly. Years afterwards there were soldiers who had beaucoup correspondance with the village maidens.

Early in the morning men swung out on the march to their training grounds, drilled and manoeuvred and practised the new evolutions of the shock battle; and then, still fresh and fit, marched back to their billets for a real good night's fun. Everyone ate well, drank well, and slept well. These days were perhaps the pleasantest spent in France,

At the beginning of September the division was on the move again, and day by day the men drew nearer to the battlefield. From the hills above Picquigny the German flares could be seen rising like page 162faint stars along the distant fighting line, and the thunder of the guns was like the sea surf rolling in on a distant bar. The anticipation of battle commenced to grow upon all.

This moving without haste but with deliberate purpose to a great storm of conflict in which life is the hazard, is a stern and yet a joyful thing. It is the nature of men that they match themselves with fate and chance and circumstance, and find their most profound satisfaction in deeds that call for heroic venturings.

They marched on, and each night the flares burned more brightly and the sky winked and flashed with flame, and the long roll of the guns rumbled like giant drums. The artillery went into the gunpits on 5 September, and three days later the infantry battalions bivouacked among the sheaves of wheat in fields not far behind the batteries of 12-inch naval guns that marked the beginning of the battlefield. Along the Albert-Amiens road that ran straight and tree-lined through wide unfenced fields, went one continuous line of guns, of motor lorries full of provisions, and wagon loads of ammunition, all moving in; Red Cross cars, worn guns, broken and empty limbers, moving out. Men gazed for hours at the unending cavalcade that moved up and down the great highway of war.

On 9 September the New Zealanders marched on to the battlefield leaving Albert and its hanging Virgin on the left, and moving up through Fricourt, Bazentin and Contalmaison to Mametz Wood. Men marvelled as they went through broken villages and page 163torn woods at the artillery power that had caused so frightful a destruction. They came to the long-barrelled naval guns, and great howitzers under canopies of camouflage netting to hide them from the enemy aeroplanes. The 6-inch howitzers were in lines. Veterans of Anzac who had seen a campaign lost for lack of a couple of dozens of them noted their number with amazement. Farther up towards Green Dump were the 18-pounders. And about the guns everywhere were piles of ammunition. The men went in between High Wood and Delville Wood, facing the famous Switch Line on which wave after wave of assault had broken in vain. The hillside was a torn brown slope covered with dead English and Scottish, the debris of the battalions that had melted away in the German barrage and before the withering blast of the German machine-guns. And with them in the strange comradeship of death lay the enemy who had held trenches that were now flattened mounds of earth gapped with shell craters.

The Rifle Brigade took over a line that was merely a series of disconnected posts several hundreds of yards from the Switch. They immediately dug a connected line and pushed up to close the gap. Second Auckland and 2nd Otago took over the front line, and during the afternoon of the fourteenth dug assembly trenches within striking distance of Crest Trench. Night came with a chill drizzle; but all through the New Zealand Division there was stern elation, for it was known that the attack was to go forward at dawn. All night there was the ceaseless mutter of guns and the flickering in the sky. All page 164night the flares shed their green radiance over the torn fields, and as the hours went on the New Zealanders made ready, moving by battalions and companies and platoons to their allotted stations.

Towards morning the gun fire grew more intense. At six o'clock there was a considerable rattle of machine-gun fire, and a constant sighing and droning in the air as the big howitzer shells rushed down to make the stationary barrage that was now falling in the rear of the enemy line. The infantrymen tightened their equipment and lay gripping their rifles staring toward the ridge which now showed dimly against the lightening sky.

At 6.20 a.m. in a wide circle of flame and a great crash of sound the "creeping barrage" fell on the German trenches. They disappeared in smoke and dust through which rose dark columns of spouting earth. From the midst of these shot up the S O S rockets in frantic appeal. In the light of dawn the German outposts saw, as it were, the whole earth full of moving men. Aucklanders and Otagos were moving forward in four long lines of assault with fifty yards between each wave, and behind them, as far as the eye could see, were the battalions of the Rifle Brigade in sections in artillery formation. To the right and left were the files of Guardsmen, South Africans, Irishmen, English Territorials. Here and there, not quite keeping pace with the infantry, were the tanks, the mysterious new weapons of war, of whose advent there had been a confused rumour.

This whole mass was surging forward like a tide at flood. For perhaps ten seconds hardly a man page 165fell, and then the German barrage crashed into No Man's Land. It took a terrible toll. Men dropped by twos and threes and lay quietly. Sometimes a whole section was blown out, but the torn lines went on, pressing eagerly on the heels of the barrage. Eager men went into the wall of shells that stamped and hammered in front of them, and they, too, were stricken down. Crest Trench was reached. A few shots and bayonet thrusts and it was passed. Pulses quickened for below, in the rain of shells, lay the Switch. They closed down upon it. Forty yards from the broken parapet the leading waves merged, waiting for the barrage to lift. The line of gleaming bayonets, of staring eyes, of fixed set faces, waited, straining for the signal to dash in. There was shooting at close range. The stick bombs came flying over in showers for there were brave men in that packed trench who saw that, if they could halt the attacking line, hold it at bombing range until the barrage passed over, then the machine-guns would come into play and the verdammt Engländer would be mown down again as they had been time after time during the last weeks.

But all along the line platoon commanders, section leaders, private soldiers, took the initiative, and even as the barrage lifted the wave broke and flooded over the German line. Some of the enemy died fighting very bravely; some were shot down as they ran back; some were bayoneted screaming' for mercy —but all died except the wounded. So Switch Line was carried and the victorious battalions of the 2nd Brigade commenced to dig in farther down the slope.

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Close behind came the 4th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade deploying out to cover the whole divisional front. They moved down the gentle slope and penetrated almost another half-mile, and by 7.50 a.m. (their scheduled time) were digging in on the Brown Line. Behind them again came their 2nd and 3rd battalions whose first task was to capture Flers Trench and Flers support, after which they were to enter the north-western corner of the village and mop up various trenches that lay beyond. For this movement there was no barrage. There was heavy fighting in and about Flers Trench because here the men ran up against uncut wire from behind which came the rapid rattling of machine-gun fire. On the left they were held, and waited sullenly for some happening which might give them opportunity. Bombing attacks up the communication trenches made progress, but were held. A movement across a bit of dead ground made some further advance, but was unable to force an entry. A frontal rush failed before the volume of fire.

Then at last came two caterpillars that had crawled over the ridge and lumbered slowly down the slope across a wilderness of shell-holes. A rain of bullets glanced harmlessly from their iron sides. They lurched up against the rusty masses of wire, their blunt snouts rising high and then crashing down from the height, smashed and flattened the obstacle and rolled on toward the enemy line. The Germans, helpless before these new dragons of war, ceased firing in terror. Some put their hands up; some ran. And then behind the iron monsters came the page 167eager riflemen. The trench was taken and the 1st Battalion went through to the final objectives in and around Grove Alley. Some little of the ground won had to be abandoned, as progress on the flanks of the New Zealand Division had not been so rapid, and some of our men had to be sent to support the English, while many were employed to establish the defensive flanks that our deeper penetration made necessary.

The newly won ground was a scene of strenuous activity. To the rear of the Switch the field-guns were being rushed forward and manoeuvred into new firing positions; lines of mules were coming up with shells; carrying parties were going forward with rations, and ammunition and wire. Men everywhere were digging for their lives the new trenches, shelter from the storm of fire that would beat upon them when the German field-guns had been moved back, and from which they could beat back counter attacks. The Maoris were pushing a great new communication sap from the Switch to Flers Trench. This was the famous Turk Lane.

Behind the line the whole sky was hung with captive balloons, and although the fury of the artillery fire had died down, the guns were firing constantly and steadily upon the German positions in rear. Aeroplanes wheeled and circled over the battlefield. As the morning wore on the Germans got more and more of their field-guns back into new positions. The balloons which had been chased down earlier in the morning went up again. Their standing barrage of heavy shells went down along the crest of page 168the ridge a little to the rear of the Switch. Their field batteries ranged on the new trenches, on the lines of carriers plodding over the rough ground, on any little concentration of men that was anywhere observable.

A doctor established his aid post on the lip of a big shell-hole. Soon the walking wounded were streaming back, making little of their wounds and very exultant. It was the same feeling that had run through the old Main Body on the night of that 25 April which seemed now to be of another age. The stretcher-bearers came in with the badly wounded. The doctor and his assistants work at top speed. A dab of iodine on a torn scalp, a pad of lint, a bandage tightly twisted round, and the casualty ticketed up, goes cheerfully off on the road to Base Hospital and Blighty, and a jolly good time. Next comes a poor chap with a smashed hip and a broken leg. He is faint from shock and loss of blood, and only just sufficiently conscious to keep silent and force a smile. His trousers are ripped up, the wounds covered, a rough splint tied from armpit to ankle to steady the limb as the lurching stretcher is carried over the torn ground. He has a haversack placed under his head and a waterproof sheet wrapped round him. The stretcher is lifted into the shade until the Red Cross bearers come up. Next comes a sergeant with a splinter of steel in his head. The tiny cut is hardly worth bandaging, but he is quite bewildered and repeats in a slow solemn chant and over and over again, "I—shot—three—of— the—b——s." A moment later one of his friends page 169hobbles in, clear enough in the brain but with three shrapnel pellets in his leg. He is bandaged, and then the two set out together—he of the damaged head, a strong giant, half carrying his lame comrade who, for his part, provides the intelligence necessary to steer them both down to the main dressing station and ambulance cars. A captain, a very brave man, shot through the lungs, is carried carefully in by his company bearers. He can hardly recognize the faces or voices of his friends. Nothing can be done for he is obviously dying. He is lifted into a little patch of shade and dies there on the field. A man stumbles in with an arm hanging by a shred of skin. The red-hot shell splinter had partly smashed and partly cauterized the flesh, and so the bleeding had not been excessive. A tourniquet is fixed, the useless arm cut off, the man wrapped up and put on a spare stretcher. So the procession goes on without end.

All the time shells burst in front and behind and to the sides. A party of German prisoners come back in a compact group. They are stopped and ordered to take up the waiting stretcher cases, and obey with docility and every sign of goodwill. A German balloon in front of Bapaume picks up the group round the aid post and in a moment a whirlwind of shells tears up all the ground about. Explosion after explosion, dust and acrid smoke.

When at last night settled down on the battlefield the flares rising from the enemy posts showed how a salient had been formed by the very success of the New Zealand advance. There was continual firing. Often and often the green and red rockets going up page 170from overwrought German outposts brought a crash of fire. All night our own guns fired on the enemy roads and dumps, and our machine-guns traversed his position to break up any concentrations that were being formed under cover of darkness. The working parties redoubled their efforts and pressed right up to the front line with food and ammunition, bombs, and a little wire.

Next morning 1st Wellington attacked through a heavy barrage and took the greater part of Grove Alley. During the evening the weather which had been warm and dry broke, and the battlefield was turned into a quagmire. The heavy shelling had ploughed the earth to an average depth of perhaps three feet. The surface soil was loose and with little cohesion. The water penetrated deeply. The newly established tracks were not duckboarded, and the movement of the carrying parties continually churned the earth into a thick slough of sticky, clinging mud. A night move over the wide morass was a terrible ordeal. The men going in were loaded up, not only with their arms and equipment, but with sandbags of rations, extra ammunition, spare machine-gun panniers, and all the numberless essential things that might be required.

Progress is very slow for the sap is six inches deep in mud, with bad holes every here and there. Files of men are coming out. There is a stop every fifty yards or so while lines of dirty, tired, cursing men jam past. Again there is a slow movement forward until the sap gets so bad that all climb out and move along the top, stumbling and falling over wire page 171and splintered timber and the bodies of men. A heavy burst of shelling drives them under cover again and they flounder wearily on until it ends and there is nothing but a waste slope ahead. A hundred yards farther on an old trench running transversely across is full of water and mud. It is too wide to jump, too deep to flounder through, and so they turn and go along its broken parapet until at last a length of duckboard is found and flung across as a bridge. German shells fall at random and there are casualties. The stretcher-bearers stumble off to the rear on a journey that will take all night. The files move on, floundering through the mud, falling into shell-holes, tripping over wire, often losing touch and direction.

After three or four hours, during which time they have gone perhaps a mile, they come nearer to the line of brilliant green flares that mark the far side of No Man's Land. Machine-gun bullets whizz viciously overhead. At last the parados of the support trench looms up, and there are whispered welcomes from the wearied watchers who immediately hand over and vanish back into the darkness. The relief is complete.

Under these conditions the artillery had the utmost difficulty in moving up the guns. In one case a battery going beyond Flers, harnessed twenty horses to each gun and then, by desperate toil and after a nightmare of effort, got two of the guns in position. The pack mules taking up loads of shells floundered through the swamps, making terribly slow progress—very often the loads had to be abandoned page 172to extricate the helplessly bogged animals. Even when the guns were in position no proper base could be obtained in the deep mud, and so the guns either could not be fired or, if they were, had after each discharge to be worked painfully back into position.

The only approach for wheeled transport was along the Flers-Longueval road, which had been pulverized by the barrage fire of the 15th. The constant movement had turned it into a river of mud, patched at the worst points with any firm materials that could be salvaged and flung in. Along this road the limbers crawled at night with all the essentials for the front-line troops. It was heavily shelled by guns that ranged very accurately upon it. Every now and again a projectile screamed down and landed fairly on the road. Horses and mules were killed or, worse still, fell wounded—kicking and screaming. Then they had to be shot, and, in the darkness, disentangled and dragged to one side and the limber itself tipped off the track. Throughout the delay the whole line was halted and men sat in the chilly drizzle with teeth clenched and muscles tensed, waiting for the shock of the next explosion and the whizz of the flying fragments. After what seemed an age, the line of vehicles crawled forward again, to be halted once more when a limber was smashed by a direct hit. At last the unloading point was reached and the supplies rapidly dumped. A few wounded were hastily loaded on the carts and thankfully the drivers, at a faster rate now, made haste to get clear away before daylight should leave them nakedly exposed to the German guns.

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On 18 September the 2nd Brigade moved up into the front line. The trenches were ankle deep and sometimes knee deep in clayey mud. There were no dugouts and men sat miserably on the wet fire-steps or huddled in little scrapings in the sodden walls—with sandbags wrapped round their legs and oil-sheets round their shoulders. There was scarcely any hot food, and for the most part men subsisted on cold pork and beans, bread, and cold tea. To make matters worse the German field-guns plastered the parapets with bursting shells. The air was filled with whizzing fragments. Men stood stoically with their backs to the parapet, one here and there crouching behind it and occasionally, at the risk of his life, glimpsing over to see if there was any movement of German infantry.

From miles away came a distant "pop" like the sound of a child's gun, and then the puffing roar as an 11-inch shell slowly climbed the sky. A moment's pause and the immense projectile plunged downward shrieking and screaming and whistling horribly as it rushed nearer and plumped into the mud ten yards in front of the trench with a shock that shook the walls. A muffled explosion—and then a column of mud and black smoke rose thirty feet into the air. Again and again and again at regular intervals came the distant report and the roar and rush and scream. While the great shell was still perhaps three hundred feet in the air men were able to tell whether it would land beyond or behind, to one side, or right in the trench itself. Phutt! The earth shook but the projectile buried itself ten yards page 174outside the trench. Crash! The wall caved in and a ton of earth rolled in, taking with it three men. Their mates rushed to the spot and dug and pulled desperately. The three are saved from the horror of suffocation, but one has a broken leg.

Even while he is being fixed up there is again a roar and a scream. It is coming right in! Every man is stock still! The group might have been carved in stone. Again the earth shakes! For a second, two seconds perhaps, there is no movement, for all are awaiting the shattering explosion. Then one man sighs as the pent breath whistles through his teeth. A dud!

When the New Zealanders took the portion of the Flers system assigned to them, English troops had failed against that which lay outside the New Zealand sector. A communication sap known to us in part as Drop Alley and in part as Goose Alley crossed the trenches here and had been transformed by the Germans into their main line of resistance. As it lay on a higher contour, our men had the enemy on the flank and above them rather than straight in front. Two more English attacks on this position failed. The following day they were beaten back once more, although 2nd Auckland bombing parties worked up their trench toward Goose Alley and were only stopped by our own barrage.

On the night of 20-21 September, 2nd Canterbury attacked Goose Alley. They went out in the darkness without barrage and worked up to within fifty yards of the enemy without being perceived. Then the machine-guns opened on them and page 175the enemy wire was full of his bursting bombs. Yet they fought their way in. The enemy counter attacked at once and bombed resolutely up every approach. His small egg bombs and his stick bombs also greatly outranged our heavier but more deadly Mills. The enemy won back bay after bay. In the darkness there was much confusion. Many officers were down, and the position was critical when the commander of the reserve company appeared, reorganized the defence, and put fresh courage into the hearts of the weary, hard-pressed men. They attacked again and once more the Germans were driven out. At dawn the fighting died down and the Canterbury men had a breathing space for consolidation. In the afternoon the Germans came again, bombing from bay to bay until the New Zealanders boldly leaving the trench went overland and bombed from outside the trench. The Germans fled, and a bayonet charge drove them finally from the fiercely contested spur. They left behind a total of nearly three hundred dead, and five machine-gum.

The 1st Brigade went into the line on 24 and 25 September. For ten days they had done little except working parties. Now their time had also come. The army was ready to exploit the successes of the previous day's fighting. The new positions had all been consolidated; the guns were forward; new dumps of ammunition had been piled up. Masses of cavalry were concentrated in the rear. To the excited imagination of the infantry and of the higher command alike it seemed that the hour had come for the break through. Rumour grew. The page 1761st New Zealand Infantry Brigade, the battalions that had stormed and held Chunuk, were to smash the last line of German defence and then, through the breach they made, was to pour an avalanche of cavalry. The German lines were to be rolled up, and from the Somme to the sea they would be in precipitate retreat or driven to surrender in great masses. Myths of this kind were probably necessary both for the generals commanding and for the men who were fighting and dying. Otherwise the war could hardly have gone on month after month, year after year, so bloodily and so fruitlessly.

From the Flers to the Gird system—the next German line of resistance—was a distance of between fifteen hundred and two thousand yards. On the 25th in preparation for the main assault which was to take place two days later the 1st Brigade, with Canterbury, Auckland and Otago in the line, attacked on a front of seventeen hundred yards. The day was beautifully fine and the lines of assault went forward at midday following an excellent barrage. There was practically no resistance. A few prisoners and machine-guns were taken, and assembly trenches for the main attack were speedily dug. The howitzers fired steadily on the German wire. Zero hour was at 2.15 p.m. on the 27th. At the appointed time the enemy trenches were smothered in high explosives. The steady lines of infantry moved forward across No Man's Land. The German counter barrage fell heavily. Men fell, but the attack went forward. Canterbury swept on and into the enemy trenches and rapidly captured all their objectives.

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But Auckland and Otago were faced by uncut wire. The barrage passed on and left them struggling to penetrate the rusty masses. The Germans manned their parapets, shooting and bombing. Desperate efforts were made to rush in through the few gaps that had been torn here and there, but the enemy machine-guns were trained on these and the men went down in heaps. They were forced into shell-holes, sniping where there was a chance, bombing when they were in range. Two or three Lewis-guns came into action. But it seemed that the attack had been held, when a few men with desperate courage bombed a machine-gun into silence and, rushing in through the gap, made a lodgment. The German nerve commenced to fail and the tide to turn. Some ran. An officer rallied his men, but he was shot by a lipless man lying out in a shellhole. Then they gave way all along the line. The Lewis-guns were rushed in and the fleeing enemy mown down. The position was taken, but Auckland lost six hundred out of their eight hundred men. The Otago losses were, if anything, more severe.

The 3rd Brigade relieved the 1st Brigade on the night of the 28th-29th. The German artillery fire was very heavy on all the roads and communication tracks. A runner sets out from the regimental aid post to battalion headquarters, a distance of perhaps a hundred yards, along a straight road. "Whizz-bang!" A shell crashes into the bank at his side. "Whizz-bang! Whizz-bang!" Shells bury themselves in the ground at his feet. "Whizz!" Right past and over! "Bang!" And the mud flies. page 178"Whizz! Whizz! Whizz!" One behind and one to the front and one just overhead. "Zirr-zutt!" And jagged pieces of shell case fly past. Two guns at least are firing, and the gunners have got their blood up. That solitary figure moving steadily and apparently indifferently on is to be forced under cover or to be made to run or to be blown up. He proceeds without lengthening his stride. "Bang! Whizz! Bang! Whoosh!" as a shell lands in a pool of mud beside the road. The Germans fire perhaps thirty or forty shells. Most of them burst within fifteen feet of the runner and yet, by some miracle, he is unhit, and five minutes later, emerging from the headquarters dugout, again walks the gauntlet of the enemy battery.

In the dusk of the evening a wounded German lay at the door of the aid post waiting for a bearer party. Again comes the scream and whistle and explosion! A bearer who had been seated alongside the stretcher was untouched; there was a small hole in the stone road, and as for the German "he was not." On the following evening another German lay at the entrance to a deep dugout, an orderly was seated a few steps farther down, a doctor and two other men at the foot of the shaft. Again comes the rush and scream, and then an explosion, exaggerated by the confined space; flying splinters, a rain of earth, darkness as the guttering candles are extinguished, and then a silence broken by the groaning of a wounded man. The German was dead. One man was wounded, another shell-shocked, and the page 179other two unhurt and marvelling how it was they had escaped.

On 1 October the men of the 2nd Brigade made the last New Zealand attack on the Somme. They were supported by a tremendous artillery barrage and also by thirty-six mortars which hurled liquid fire. Despite heavy machine-gun fire from the flank and a well-directed enemy barrage they went forward with decision and seized all objectives. Then the weather broke. The battlefield which had dried during the better weather was once more turned into a quagmire; the carrying parties toiled with incredible labour to get rations to the front line, and the men of the Rifle Brigade who went in to relieve the 2nd Brigade in pouring rain consolidated the last New Zealand position.

On 3 and 4 October the New Zealanders were relieved and went back. They had been fighting for twenty-three consecutive days. They had done all they had been asked to do—and more, and had been a tower of strength to those on the right hand and on the left. They had gone in many and come out few. Sixteen hundred of their comrades were left for ever on the battlefield; thousands more were wounded. There were strangely mingled feelings. Congratulations and praise were flowing in from all sides. They had done well and the name of New Zealand had been lifted high. It had been almost the last deed, the last suffering required to make New Zealand a nation. There was a quiet intense pride, a certain elation and exultation; but over it all deep sorrow for all the dear friends who were page 180gone. The battalions marched quietly and sadly away from the Somme to the trains that carried them back to the pleasant training area.

As they marched through the beautiful countryside of the Somme Valley the mood changed. The horrors of the battlefield had been left behind. There would be estaminets and mademoiselles—quite certainly hot meals and sleep. As they tramped on some commenced to sing and others picked up the refrain:

So pack up your troubles in your old kit bag And smile, boys, smile.

And then occurred a beautiful thing. The battalions did not go back to the same billets although they were in the same area; but as soon as the news flew round that the New Zealanders were out of the battle the French people walked for miles to get news of their friends. There was laughter and rejoicing, but tears also and sorrow for this one and that. "Les pauvres enfants," said madame. "La guerre est triste four les mères." And so thought broken-hearted women in New Zealand as day by day the long lists of dead and wounded showed how terrible had been the battle of the Somme.