Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (27 page)

The partridges fed on and then disappeared round the end of the garden hedge and one by one the grouse rose, flew over to the rough park, and then stretching out their wings softly landed – calling as they did so ‘Go-way-back-back-back-back’. Little did they dream that they had had a very narrow escape. Had I fired, I might have got a bird and frightened the others away from the vegetables, but then, apart from breaking any vow, I might have defeated the very object I had in view in placing the bird board there – namely to add to the happiness of the birdies by feeding them, and to our, and our friends’, delight, in seeing these beautiful creatures – the handiwork of God – constantly enjoying themselves in our view.

Capt. D.P. Hirsch VC (post.), 1/4th Yorkshire Rgt (Green Howards)

The snow seems to change the whole landscape. The old landmarks stand out sharply. You recognise the well-known tree or skeleton of a tree. But otherwise everything is the same. It’s very weird and wonderful, this wide and practically unbroken expanse of snow, covering the numberless shell-holes, with hardly a sign of human life visible to the eye.

There are a lot of moles here. I saw a corporal catch one the other day. Then he dropped it and it was out of sight in the hard ground in a moment. They are wonderful wee beasties. I never dreamt they could burrow at such a rate.

The great battles of attrition at Verdun and then on the Somme had severely eroded the fighting capacity of the German forces in the west. The German army had too few men to hold a front line that bulged into enemy territory so, over the autumn and winter, a new defensive position was constructed, known as the Hindenburg Line. This line, characterised by deep belts of barbed wire and concrete bunkers, was felt by the Germans to be impregnable. Then, in late February, they suddenly withdrew to their new strategic position, relinquishing the Somme battlefield to the Allies almost overnight.

The following month a young officer, Lieutenant Fildes, returned to the front. His service on the Somme had ended in sickness and a spell of recuperation in England. Once more he was on the Somme battlefield but this time he was free to look around him and he was stunned by what he saw. The weather had improved, and the deep frost that had covered the land had finally gone.

Lt G.P.A. Fildes, 2nd Coldstream Guards

Setting forth once more, by a route that passed through the heart of the Somme country, we had been gradually confronted by a terrible panorama. From the open door of our goods van, we were able to realise more than ever before the magnitude and fury of the struggle of the previous autumn. In every direction, as far as the horizon stretched, a desert of brown shell-ploughed slopes and hollows, and scattered upon the face of this landscape, clumps of splintered poles, gaunt and blackened by fire, marked the sites of former woods and copses . . .

Such a region as this, exceeding the limit of our vision in every direction, presented a scene surpassing human imagination. It haunted one like a nightmare. Neither of my companions accompanying the draft had served in France before, but, like most people, they had read newspaper accounts of the Western Front. Now, however, they were amazed. Seated beside them in our van, even I was enthralled by the passing spectacle, but it did not prevent me from noting their murmurs of astonishment. Their feelings were hardly to be wondered at, for, though familiar with the Somme, I, too, had not realised until now the degree and extent of its awful ruin. Life – human, animal and vegetable – had been engulfed; not a leaf, hardly a blade of grass, no sound of bird, greeted us; all was done and finished with. Here indeed was the end of the world . . .

Everywhere around us a wild confusion seemed to have upheaved the land, leaving behind it an ocean of rubble heaps. French helmets battered to shapeless lumps, and Lebel rifles red with rust, lay in the stiffened mud, scattered among the countless refuse of the British and German armies. In many craters lay great pools of bright-yellow water, whose stagnant surface disclosed many a rotting corpse. Coils of wire, like bramble thickets, ran in and out of the sun-baked hummocks, fluttering bleached tatters from their barbs. Close at hand, the mangled fragments of a machine gun protruded from a reeking mound, and beside it lay a human skull, picked clean by birds. Everything was encased by a monotone of mud. Here, as we turned from side to side, odours assailed us at every breath, while a profound silence intensified the dreadful melancholy of the scene.

A/Capt. Eric Mockler-Ferryman, 29th Brigade, RFA

The whole country was a series of large crump holes touching one another. Most of the holes were full of slimy green water, and here and there we came upon human skeletons. With the exception of a few salvage parties there was not a soul to be seen. It would be impossible to live in such an uncanny place. It made me wonder if it was worth losing so many lives to gain these expanses of mud and desolation. One felt just as if one had been through a prehistoric country, and expected to see weird birds and animals, mammoths, pterodactyls and the like.

As Lieutenant Fildes reached the furthest extent of the 1916 battlefield, he climbed a low ridge. What he saw was nothing more than he had seen in England or from the train that had brought him up from the Channel ports, but in comparison with what he had just crossed, the sight of nature, or rather normality, undisturbed and seemingly peaceful, was almost unreal.

Lt G.P.A. Fildes, 2nd Coldstream Guards

North and south, the monotony of the ridge merged into an obliterating atmosphere, wherein the devastation, subdued and toned by the sunlit vapour, was not so much in evidence.

But now we had arrived upon the summit. The skyline before us lurched lower at every step; still all that we could see was a wide expanse of blue sky. Then the ground fell away, and the distant landscape confronted us. For an instant the prospect held one spellbound, so thrilling was its revelation, so placid its majesty. At first I was only conscious of the exclamations of those nearby, for even the attention of the men was centred on what lay ahead. Stretching for miles, bounded by the far horizon north and south, a glorious vision rose to greet us, a riotous pageant of shimmering colour. The low ridges opposite blazed under a mantle of sunlit grass, and scattered upon them, trees, flecked with vivid shoots, spread forth a lacework of slender boughs. Wheeling in a multitudinous swirl in the middle distance, a flock of crows flapped slowly on its way, while at the foot of our slope, a group of mottled roofs was half concealed by branches. Behind all these, displaying a widespread carpet of unblemished pasture land, glowing in the full radiance of the sun, the country undulated into the distance, luxuriant with verdure, scattered spinneys, and a patchwork of fields, and revealing at every point the freshest tints of an awakening world.

Greedily we feasted our unbelieving eyes, scanning the far perspective of the land until baffled by the distant haze. So suddenly had it appeared that it seemed at first only a mocking mirage. But no – still it lay there inviting contemplation. There lay spring in all her vastness and all her splendour.

On 9 April, the Allies launched their spring offensive close to the town of Arras. 1917 was to be the year when, on one front or another, the Allies slowly ground down the enemy’s will to fight. The battle opened just as the weather turned. Winter was back with a vengeance.

Capt. James Dunn, RAMC attd. 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

7 April

I sat on a tree stump in the peaceful park of a big white château, with the sun just looking over the tree tops, and a few small deer grazing, and some blackbirds and thrushes singing from the purple undergrowth. Nothing was there to remind me of the war except the enormous thudding of the guns 12 miles away. We had been told that we should move into our final concentration area tomorrow – Easter Sunday! Sitting there alone I felt happy, contented and confident. And the men, I thought, have seemed cheery, and almost elated, the last day or two. But they were always at their best when they knew they were ‘for it’. There was a chance of a ‘Blighty one’ for them, anyhow.

The air turned chilly, and the sun was a glint of scarlet beyond the strip of woodland. And away on the horizon that infernal banging continued . . . ‘The sausage machine’, I think we used to call it.

Sgt Rupert Whiteman, 10th Royal Fusiliers (City of London Rgt)

Breakfast was ready to be drawn from the cookers by 3.30 having been brought en masse to platoons. Here was another hopeless business trying to distribute boiled bacon to every man by the light of a miserable guttering candle, with hands stiff with cold and the wretched candle being blown out by the chill wind every few minutes.

Hot tea made everyone feel twice the man he was before, and by the time breakfast was finished, dawn was breaking – a very cheerless sort of dawn, however. What a strange feeling there seemed to be in the air that morning, a lull before a terrible storm, for it wanted just one hour before the opening barrage – the 4.50 ‘Zero’.

It was inexplicable, this nervous tension; even the horses and birds seemed to be imbued with the knowledge that hell was to be let loose before very long. There seemed to be a strange hush hanging over every living thing, man, bird and beast . . .

It was perhaps 4 o’clock [in the afternoon] and the sun sinking low when we received the order to open out into artillery formation, and to advance over the ridge. On the true summit of the slope at last! But where was that inferno of crumping shells and smoke indicating the firing line? It was certainly far from being obvious. The ridge turned out to be a plateau some 400 yards across and beyond that a gentle downward slope. The country was open in front, undulating, and covered with long grass – yes, real grass and some real live trees here and there. Very few shell-holes seemed to be visible.

Where on earth were the troops supposed to be in front of us? Not a living soul was to be seen, not a single shell burst.

Directly in front and ¾ mile away could be seen a line of strongly constructed trenches and just this side and running parallel with them, a roadway with a line of trees on each side. This trench system, we soon learnt, was the ‘Brown Line’, into which we were to stroll, reassemble, and from there start our part of the business. It did not look like a battlefield but more like a piece of peaceful countryside. Here and there a hare could be seen coursing through the grass, evidently wondering what had brought such a host of Cook’s tourists to that region.

We wondered just as much as the wretched hares. ‘What is happening?’ everyone asked his neighbour. Two miles off, over the undulating grassy country and beyond the Brown Line, could be seen a village crowning the summit of a circular hill, with its red-roofed cottages peeping out from amongst the green foliage of trees, altogether a very picturesque view. This village was Monchy – our objective.

These pleasant scenes would rapidly alter as artillery from both sides set to work. It was close to the village of Monchy-le-Preux that one of the last cavalry charges was made on 11 April. Whereas tanks could withstand machine-gun and rifle fire, horses were no match for entrenched artillery and infantry.

A/Capt. Douglas Cuddeford, 12th Highland Light Infantry

An excited shout was raised that our cavalry were coming up! Sure enough, away behind us, moving quickly in extended order down the slope of Orange Hill, were line upon line of mounted men covering the whole extent of the hillside as far as we could see. It was a thrilling moment for us infantrymen, who had never dreamt that we should live to see a real cavalry charge, which was evidently what was intended. In their advance, the lines of horsemen passed over us rapidly, although from our holes in the ground it was rather a ‘worm’s eye’ view we got of the splendid spectacle of so many mounted men in action. It may have been a fine sight, but it was a wicked waste of men and horses, for the enemy immediately opened on them a hurricane of every kind of missile he had. If the cavalry advanced over us at the trot or canter, they came back at a gallop, including numbers of dismounted men and riderless horses, and – most fatal mistake of all – they bunched behind Monchy in a big mass, into which the Boche continued to put high-explosive shrapnel, whizzbangs and a hail of bullets, until the horsemen dispersed and finally melted away back over the hillside from where they came.

They left a number of dead and wounded men among us, but the horses seemed to have suffered most, and for a while we put bullets into poor brutes that were aimlessly limping about on three legs, or else careering about madly in their agony, like one I saw that had the whole of its muzzle blown away. With the dead and wounded horses lying about in the snow, the scene resembled an old-fashioned battle picture. Why it had been thought fit to send in cavalry at that juncture, against a strongly reinforced enemy who even then were holding up our infantry advance, we never knew. Cavalry may still have their uses in some kinds of warfare, but for a large force of mounted men to attempt an attack on the enemy positions that day was sheer madness.