‘Tommy’s counter-attacking!’
‘Hold your ground!’
‘I want to check that we’re in touch!’
‘More hand-grenades to the front; hand-grenades, for Christ’s sake, hand-grenades!’
‘Watch out, Lieutenant!’
Small reverses can be a serious matter in trench-fighting. A little troop makes its way to the van, shooting and throwing. As the grenade-throwers leap backwards and forwards to get out of the way of the lethal projectiles, they encounter the men coming up behind, who have got too near. The result is confusion. Maybe some men will jump over the top, and get themselves picked off by snipers, which encourages the rest of the enemy like nobody’s business.
I managed to summon up a handful of men with whom I formed a focus of resistance behind a wide traverse. There was an open stretch of trench between the Highlanders and ourselves. At a distance of only a few yards, we exchanged shots with our invisible opponents. It took pluck to hold your head up when the bullets were pinging around, and the sand was being sprayed out of the traverse. One man beside me from the 76th, a huge Herculean dockworker from Hamburg, fired off one shot after another, with a wild look on his face, not even thinking of cover, until he collapsed in a bloody heap. With the sound of a plank crashing down, a bullet had drilled through his forehead. He crumpled into a corner of the trench, half upright, with his head pressed against the trench wall. His blood poured on to the floor of the trench, as if tipped out of a bucket. His snore-like death-rattle resounded in lengthening intervals, and finally stopped altogether. I seized his rifle, and went on firing. At last there was a pause. Two men who had been just ahead of us tried to make it back over the top. One toppled into the trench with a shot in the head, the other, shot in the belly, could only crawl into it.
We hunkered down on the floor to wait, and smoked English cigarettes. From time to time, well-aimed rifle-grenades came flying over. We were able to see them, and take evasive action. The man with the wound in the belly, a very young lad, lay in amongst us, stretched out like a cat in the warm rays of the setting sun. He slipped into death with an almost childlike smile on his face. It was a sight that didn’t oppress me, but left me with a fraternal feeling for the dying man. Even the groaning of his comrade gradually fell silent. He died in our midst, shuddering.
We made several attempts to work our way forward at the undug places, by crawling in among the bodies of the Highlanders, but were driven back each time by sniper fire and rifle-grenades. Almost every hit I saw was deadly. And so, the fore part of the trench was gradually filling up with the dead and wounded; but all the time reinforcements were arriving at the back. Before long, every traverse had a light or heavy machine-gun behind it. With the help of these, we held the British end of the trench in check. I took my turn behind one of the lead-spitters, and fired till my index finger was black with smoke. It might have been here that I hit the Scotsman who wrote me a nice letter from Glasgow afterwards, with an exact description of the location where he got his wound. Each time the cooling-water had evaporated, the canisters were passed around and topped up by a natural procedure that occasioned some crude humour. Before long the weapons were red-hot.
The sun was low over the horizon. It seemed as though the second day of battle was over. For the first time, I took a close look at my whereabouts, and sent back a report and sketch. Five hundred paces from where we were, our trench intersected the Vraucourt-Mory road, which was camouflaged by lengths of cloth. On a slope behind it, enemy troops were hurrying across the field, with shells bursting all around them.
The cloudless evening sky was crossed by a squadron of planes marked with our black, red and white. The last rays of the sun, which had already gone down, daubed them a shade of delicate pink, so they looked like flamingoes. We opened out our maps, and turned them face down, indicating to those above how far we had already pushed into the enemy line.
A cool breeze gave promise of a bitter night. Wrapped in my warm English coat, I leaned against the trench wall, chatting with little Schultz, who had accompanied me on the patrol against the Indians, and had turned up, in the timeless way of comrades, just where things were looking tough, toting four heavy machine-guns. Men of all companies sat on the fire-steps, the young, keen faces under the steel helmets, eyeing the enemy lines. I saw them looming stock-still out of the dim of the trench, as though on turrets. Their officers had fallen; it was by their own instincts that they were standing in exactly the right place now.
We were already settling in for a night of what we have we hold. I laid my pistol and a dozen British duck’s egg grenades next to me, and felt myself a match for all comers, even the most obdurate Scotsman.
Then there came the sound of more hand-grenades from the right, while on the left German flares went up. Out of the gloaming rose a faint distant cheer. It caught on.
‘We’ve got round the back of them! We’ve got round the back of them!’ In one of those moments of enthusiasm that precede great actions, all reached for their rifles, and stormed forward along the trench. A brief exchange of hand-grenades, and a bunch of Highlanders were seen running for the road. Now there was no stopping us. In spite of warning cries: ‘Watch out, the machine-gun on the left is still shooting!’ we leaped out of the trench, and in no time had reached the road, which was swarming with disorientated Highlanders. They were fleeing, but their own entanglement was in the way. Briefly they paused, then they started running parallel to it. To our tumultuous shouts, they had to run the gauntlet. And that was the moment little Schultz turned up with his machine-guns.
The road presented an apocalyptic scene. Death was reaping great swathes. The echoing cry of war, the intense fire of handguns, the dull force of bombs, all exhilarated the attackers and lamed the defenders. All that long day the battle had been smouldering away; now it caught and burned. Our superiority grew with every second, because the narrow wedge of shock troops, now fanning out, was followed by broad sections of reinforcements.
When I reached the road, I looked down on to it from a steep embankment. The Scottish position was in a deepened ditch on the other side, it was some way below where we were. In those first few seconds, though, we were distracted from it; the vision of the Highlanders charging along the wire entanglement was all we had eyes for. We threw ourselves down along the top of the embankment, and fired. It was one of those very rare moments when the opposition have been driven into an impasse, and you feel the burning desire to be everywhere at once.
Swearing and trying desperately to fix my jammed pistol, I felt someone striking me hard on the shoulder. I spun round and looked into the contorted face of little Schultz.
‘The bloody bastards are still firing!’ I followed the direction he was pointing in, and finally spotted a line of figures in the little warren of trenches barely the other side of the road from us, some loading, some with their rifles to their cheeks, feverishly busy. From the right came the first hand-grenades, one tossing the body of a Scotsman high up into the air.
Common sense advised staying where we were and disabling the enemy from there. He was an easy target. Instead, I threw away my rifle and plunged between the lines with my bare fists. Unluckily, I was still in my English coat, and my red-trimmed forage cap. There I was already, on the other side, and in enemy clothes! In the midst of the rush of victory, I felt a sharp jolt on the left side of my breast. Night descended on me! I was finished.
I supposed I’d been hit in the heart, but the prospect of death neither hurt nor frightened me. As I fell, I saw the smooth, white pebbles in the muddy road; their arrangement made sense, it was as necessary as that of the stars, and certainly great wisdom was hidden in it. That concerned me, and mattered more than the slaughter that was going on all round me. I fell to the ground, but, to my astonishment, I got to my feet again straight away. As I could see no hole in my tunic, I turned to the enemy once more. A soldier from my company ran up to me: ‘Lieutenant, sir, take your coat off!’ and he ripped the dangerous garment from my shoulders.