World War I - 9 Book Collection: Nelson's History of the War, The Battle of Jutland & The Battle of the Somme. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ entirety had been captured from Mametz to Fay, a front of fourteen miles. Some 6,000 prisoners fell to the Allies, and great quantities of guns and stores. In the powdered trenches, in the woods and fields behind, and in the labyrinth of ruined dwellings the German dead lay thick. “That is the purpose of the battle,” said a French soldier. “We do not want guns, for Krupp can make them faster than we can take them. But Krupp cannot make men.”

      To walk over the captured ground was to learn a profound respect for the beaver-like industry of the German soldier. His fatigue-work must have reached the heroic scale. The old firing trenches were so badly smashed by our guns that it was hard to follow them, but what was left was good. The soil of the place is the best conceivable for digging, for it cuts like cheese, and hardens like brick in dry weather. The map shows a ramification of little red lines, but only the actual sight of that labyrinth could give a due impression of its strength. One communication trench, for example, was a tunnel a hundred yards long, lined with timber throughout, and so deep as to be beyond the reach of the heaviest shells. The small manholes used for snipers’ posts were skilfully contrived. Tunnels led to them from the trenches, and the openings were artfully screened by casual-looking debris. But the greatest marvels were the dug-outs. One at Fricourt had nine rooms and five bolt-holes; it had iron doors, gas curtains, linoleum on the floors, wallpaper and pictures on the walls, and boasted a good bathroom, electric light and electric bells. The staff which occupied it must have lived in luxury. Many of these dug-outs had two-storeys, a thirty foot staircase, beautifully furnished, leading to the first suite, and a second stair of the same length conducting to a lower storey. In such places machine-guns could be protected during any bombardment. But the elaboration of such dwellings went far beyond military needs. When the Germans boasted that their front on the West was impregnable they sincerely believed it. They thought they had established a continuing city, from which they would emerge only at a triumphant peace. The crumbling— not of their front trenches only but of their whole first position—was such a shock as King Priam’s court must have received when the Wooden Horse disgorged the Greeks in the heart of their citadel.

      It was not won without stark fighting. The Allied soldiers were quick to kindle in the fight, and more formidable figures than those bronzed steel-hatted warriors history has never seen on a field of battle. Those who witnessed the charge of the Highlanders at Loos were not likely to forget its fierce resolution. Said a French officer who was present: “I don’t know what effect it had on the Boche, but it made my blood run cold.” Our men were fighting against the foes of humanity and they did not make war as a joke. But there was none of the savagery which comes either from a half-witted militarism or from rattled nerves. The Germans had been officially told that the English took no prisoners, and this falsehood, while it made the stouter fellows fight to the death, sent scores of poor creatures huddling in dug-outs, from which they had to be extracted like shell-fish. But, after surrender, there was no brutality—very much the reverse. As one watched the long line of wounded—the “walking cases ”—straggling back from the firing line to a dressing-station, they might have been all of one side. One picture remains in the memory. Two wounded Gordon Highlanders were hobbling along, and supported between them a wounded Badener. The last seen of the trio was that the Scots were giving him water and cigarettes, and he was cutting buttons from his tunic as souvenirs for his comforters. A letter of an officer on this point is worth quoting:

      “The more I see of war the more I am convinced of the fundamental decency of our own folk. They may have a crude taste in music and art and things of that sort; they may lack the patient industry of the Boche; but for sheer goodness of heart, for kindness to all unfortunate things, like prisoners, wounded, animals and ugly women, they fairly beat the band.”

      It is the kind of tribute which most Britons would prefer to any other.

       THE FOLLOWING DAYS.

      Sunday, the 2nd of July, was a day of level heat, in which the dust stood in steady walls on every road behind the front and in the tortured areas of the captured ground. The success of the Saturday had, as we have seen, put our right well in advance of our centre, and it was necessary to bring forward the left part of the line from Thiepval to Fricourt so as to make the breach in the German position uniform over a broad enough front. Accordingly, all that day there was a fierce struggle at Ovillers and La Boisselle. At the former village we won the entrenchments before it, and late in the evening we succeeded in entering the labyrinth of cellars, the ruins of what had been La Boisselle. As yet there was no counterattack. The surprise in the south had been too great, and the Germans had not yet brought up their reserve divisions. All that day squadrons of Allied airplanes bombed depots and lines of communications in the German hinterland. The long echelons of the Allied “sausages” glittered in the sun, but only one German kite balloon could be detected We had found a way of bombing those fragile gas-bags and turning them into wisps of flame. The Fokkers strove in vain to check our airmen, and at least two were brought crashing to the earth.

      At 2 in the afternoon of Sunday Fricourt fell, the taking of Mametz and the positions won in the Fricourt Wood to the east had made its capture certain. During the night part of the garrison slipped out, but when our men entered it, bombing from house to house, they made a great haul of prisoners and guns. “Like a Belfast riot on the top of Vesuvius,” was an Irish soldier’s description of the fight. Further south the French continued their victorious progress. They destroyed a German counterattack on the new position at Hardecourt; they took Curlu; and, south of the river, they took Frise and the wood of Mereaucourt beyond it. They did more, for at many points between the river and Assevilliers they broke into the German second position.

      On Monday, July 3rd, General von Below issued an order to his troops, which showed that, whatever the German Press might say, the German soldiers had no delusion as to the gravity of the Allied offensive.

      “The decisive issue of the war depends on the victory of the 2nd Army on the Somme. We must win this battle in spite of the enemy’s temporary superiority in artillery and infantry. The important ground lost in certain places will be recaptured by our attack after the arrival of reinforcements. The vital thing is to hold on to our present positions at all costs and to improve them. I forbid the voluntary evacuation of trenches. The will to stand firm must be impressed on every man in the army. The enemy should have to carve his way over heaps of corpses. . . . I require commanding officers to devote their utmost energies to the establishment of order behind the front.”

      Von Below had correctly estimated the position. The old ground, with all it held, must be re-won if possible; no more must be lost; fresh lines must be constructed in the rear. But the new improvised lines could be no equivalent of those mighty fastnesses which represented the work of eighteen months. Therefore those fastnesses must be regained. We shall learn how ill his enterprise prospered.

      For a correct understanding of the position on Monday, July 3rd, it is necessary to recall the exact alignment of the new British front. It fell into two sections. The first lay from Thiepval to Fricourt, and was bisected by the Albert-Bapaume road, which ran like an arrow over the watershed. Here Thiepval, Ovillers, and La Boisselle were positions in the German first line. Contalmaison, to the east of La Boisselle, was a strongly fortified village on high ground, which formed, so to speak, a pivot in the German intermediate line—the line which covered their field-guns. The second position ran through Pozieres to the two Bazentins. On the morning of July 3rd the British had not got Thiepval, nor Ovillers; they had only a portion of La Boisselle, but south of it they had broken through the first position and were well on the road to Contal-maison. All this northern section consisted of bare undulating slopes—once covered with crops, but now like some lunar desert where life was forbidden. Everywhere it was seamed with the sears of trendies and poek-marked with shell holes. The few trees lining the roads had been long razed, and the only vegetation was coarse grass, thistles, and the ubiquitous poppy and mustard.

      The southern section, from Fricourt to Montauban, was of a different character. It was patched with large СКАЧАТЬ