Forgotten Voices of the Somme (35 page)

At about two o'clock, the runner came up with a jar of rum. The officer dealt off the rum to every soldier. They gave us two Mills grenades to put in our overcoat pockets, plus another fifty rounds of ammunition, strung round our shoulders. That meant we had 150 rounds of ammunition, besides our rifle and equipment, and a respirator across our chests. How we were expected to go along, I haven't the faintest idea.

At three, the officer looked at his watch, blew a whistle and we went over the top. The order was that the guns would start firing five minutes before we went over on to the barbed wire and their front-line trench, so that when we got there, everything would be clear. Their front-line trench would be decimated.

We'd gone about a hundred yards, when machine-gun fire opened up from both flanks. I was with a pal of mine, called
Ted Freeman
. Big feller, he was. There were plenty of shell-holes about, and Ted said, 'Let's jump in this hole!' To get out of the fire. We turned round in the shell-hole, with our rifles over the top, facing the Germans, and Ted said he could see a German. He put his rifle up to fire. I was right alongside of him, and I felt him give a bit of a jerk and a shudder. He'd been shot right through the heart.

I turned him over a bit, to make sure what had happened. I more or less knew – from my medical knowledge – that he was dead. I crawled up the rim of the shell-hole to look around, and I saw a couple of officers who'd just come up. They told me I was to join another party that had come up from the reserve trenches.

The casualties I saw were terrific. There was 140 in my company to start with, but at the roll-call afterwards I was the only one of B Company on parade. Several others joined us later, but there was only about half a dozen of us. All the rest was either killed, wounded, or missing.

Rifleman Robert Renwick

16th Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps

A tremendous number of men went sick through the month of November. It was very wet. It seemed to rain night and day, and the Somme front became a bog. Men and horses were sinking into it. And
trench foot
was a problem. You got your feet wet to begin with, and then the frost came, and there were a lot of casualties. I remember once when we came out of the line, we were put into tents, and I got three parcels all in a heap. One from home, one from my nan and one from my old master at the shop. They had sent cold chicken and sausages, and I shared it out with two or three of my mates and we had a terrific dinner that night. But I woke up in the early hours of the morning, and I had a terrific pain. I was reported sick and the doctor came, and I had a chill in the kidneys. Nothing to do with the food.

Lieutenant William Taylor

13th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers

As soon as you got rid of one battle, it was only a question of time before you had to go into another. The Battle of the Ancre was the last battle on the Somme, and I've discovered since that it was postponed three or four times. The weather was very bad – it was very, very wet.

Rifleman Robert Renwick

16th Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps

onditions
were deplorable. We went up the line on the third, and we hadn't a dugout of any description, and the next day a few of us went away looking for sandbags and duckboards to make a little bit of shelter for the next night. We got to this dump and we grabbed sandbags and duckboards, and we were making our way when the sergeant major in charge of the dump appeared, and he fired his revolver. But we ran and we had some shelter made for the next night.

On the Sunday morning, just before the attack, a shell came over and buried fourteen of us in a slit trench. There were six men killed on the left of me, and seven wounded on the right of me. Some of them very badly. And I came out unscathed. I pulled the live ones out and reported to the stretcherbearers, who took them down to a dressing station.

After that, we went over at midday. On the way over, it was just a case of

British troops wearing sheepskin coats.

Mules stranded in
mud
.

jumping from one shell-hole to another. Two of us were in a shell-hole, and I must have eased up, out of the water, because a sniper put a bullet through the top of my steel helmet. The helmet didn't fit too well, and there was a tiny bit of space between my head and the tip of the helmet. The other man was slightly wounded as well, but he didn't go back. We went forward after that. We came across two men of the
Scottish Rifles
, who had been in no-man'sland since the last attack, a few days before. They were badly wounded, and they were just able to crawl about and take biscuits out of dead men's haversacks and water out of their bottles. They had a fearful appearance. They were blue in the face. I hoped that our stretcher-bearers would get them out that night. I've often wondered about those fellows.

We went on, and it was dusk before we obtained our objective. We advanced beyond the German line and dug in, as well as we could. We were so exhausted. Two men were digging themselves in, one minute, and they fell down asleep, the next, flat on their faces. I wasn't quite as bad as that – but I was very tired. After we were relieved the next day, men were just lying on the floor, caked in mud, and the brigadier appeared and a few men began to get up to salute him. He said, 'Lie still, men! I'm proud of you!'

Leading Seaman Joe Murray

Hood Battalion, 63rd (Royal Naval) Divison

It was still raining, raining like hell, wet through. The whole battalion were on parade, all there, and
Major General Shute
inspected us. He starts off, the usual stunt, you know, 'Blah ... blah ... blah ...' What wonderful men we had, both on Gallipoli and in France, he'd done this, he'd done that, he was reliable. He says that the place we were going to attack now was one of the most formidable parts of the firing line of the whole of the
Western Front
. The Germans had been there umpteen months. We know it was all honeycombed with dugouts. We know this. We know that. We've had five different attempts – but we must get that ridge
at all costs
– because if we don't, the whole advance on the Somme would be in danger of being encircled like a pincer movement.

He said, 'I'm going to tell you this much. You know what you have got to do! The more prisoners you take, the less food you'll get – because we have to feed them out of your rations ...'

Lieutenant William Taylor

13th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers

We marched to a village behind the line, and we were told that we were to attack
Beaucourt
, next to Beaumont Hamel, which was going to be attacked at the same time. The attack took place on the morning of November 13. It was the practice to leave the second in command of a company out of the line on the first day, to take the place of the commanding officer of the company going up to the line on the next day. So I was left out of the first day's fighting. I might not be here had I gone in that first day, because the captain of the company was wounded, and I went up the next day and commanded the company for the rest of the battle. It was actually a very successful battle. It went on for a week, and the casualties were rather more than usual.

The conditions were frightful. There was so much water, everywhere. I remember a broken-down railway station, shelled for months, and it was one of the most unpleasant times in my experience. The terrain was simply a mass of shell-holes. Men marching along flooded roads, with broken-down trees and mud.

I missed the first day, but the battalion took their objective, and we held on to it. After that, conditions were extremely unpleasant. Trenches were all knocked to hell. There was constant shelling. I went in about seventy strong, and I brought out thirty-six a week later. We were living in funk holes, scooped out of a bank by the side of the road – there were no trenches. We were in the open for a week, day and night. There was no trench system. There was no accommodation at all. We would drape a groundsheet over the front of these funk holes. It rained and it snowed. We were extremely cold, and it was one of the most unpleasant times in my experience. The doctor had an aid post in a large shell-hole. We were expecting a counter-attack any moment, and I was very glad to get away a week later.

That was the
end of the
Battle of the Somme, and we marched north and finished up at a part of the line where they had
breastworks
, as opposed to trenches. These breastworks were built up with sandbags from the ground. Instead of going down, the trenches were built up. They were a much better target for shells than a trench. I never felt safe for a moment. They couldn't dig trenches there because of the low-lying country. You dug down a foot and you were in water. Actually, there were a few communication trenches of a sort, but you had to keep very low because if you stood up in them you were

head and shoulders above them. We went into the line at
Neuve Chapelle
, where there'd been a battle earlier on in the war, but the line had been held since then and it was now a quiet sector.

Lieutenant Norman Collins

1/6th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders

At Beaumont Hamel, no guns were fired beforehand, except for ranging purposes, and at six o'clock in the morning of November 13 the guns opened up. It was terrific. I think there might have been two thousand guns, almost wheel-to-wheel. When they opened up, the noise was so terrific that one couldn't hear separate explosions, or gunfire. It was a continuous drumming. The shells fell on the German front line, and they'd had no previous warning. The first wave of the battalion moved forward under a canopy of steel. When they arrived at the German front line, some of them were killed by their own guns. I wasn't in the first wave. After a few minutes, the guns stopped and there was dead silence. The silence was terrific. The contrast. For a space of about two or three minutes there was silence, and then they opened up again, simultaneously. During that period of silence, the gunners were changing the trajectory of their guns. The second bombardment fell on the German second and reserve lines, and our troops occupied the front line.

We were excited, but never having been over the top before, we were not particularly afraid – even though we knew the chances were that we'd be wounded or killed. The bravest man was the man who'd never been in the trenches before, because he didn't know what he was getting into. The officers carried a cane, a 45 revolver, and a few Mills bombs. The cane was no use whatever. Just a bit of show. I carried a 45 revolver but it wasn't until afterwards, when I went on a revolver course, that I was taught how to use it. It kicks so heavily, that most people couldn't hit a barn door at ten yards with it. The infantry had their Lee-Enfield rifles with bayonets fixed.

I had to go into
Y Ravine
, which was an extension of the German front line, where a couple of platoons had a job to do. We had to clean out the dugouts – to make sure that no Germans came out of the dugouts, or if they did, that they were taken prisoner. The dugouts in Y Ravine were very deep, with a lot of steps down to the bottom, and at the bottom there were wire beds, and even a row of little brass servants' bells which privates or batmen had to ring before they entered the final compartment. No shell could

penetrate them; Beaumont Hamel was like a fortress and the Germans would keep the machine guns in these dugouts during the shelling, and bring them up when the shelling stopped. That was fine during the old style of continuous bombardment, but there was no time to bring them up during the creeping barrage because the troops were only a few yards away when the barrage stopped. Anyway, this was a success, and the village of Beaumont Hamel was taken. My men performed magnificently in the attack. I saw one man kneeling, with his rifle in his hands. I went up to him – and he was stone dead. He'd just dropped to his knees like that, facing forward.