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By Root 1715 0

just as gruelling a time. Shortly after 6.30 a.m. Major Gault had managed to scribble a message to Brigade HQ reporting ‘very, very heavy shelling’ – but Brigade hardly needed to be told. In Brigade Headquarters dug-out, half a mile away at the western corner of Railway Wood, they were taking punishment on their own account, for the German guns were searching wide and probing deep and there was little doubt that this was the prelude to an all-out attack. It was hard to credit that the bombardment could possibly get worse but at seven o’clock the fire grew even stronger, the shells flew thicker, and every gun seemed to be trained on the sector where the Patricias and the Suffolks and the unfortunate battalions of the 83rd Brigade were clinging on at the crest of the battered salient. The Patricias’ front line was all but obliterated by high-explosive and shrapnel shells that, bursting high, rained red-hot fragments of metal that wiped out whole sections of men at a stroke, while machine-guns on the high ground, sweeping methodically from side to side, sprayed the trenches with incessant fire.

At eight o’clock Gault dispatched a second message to Brigade Headquarters:

Have been heavily shelled since 7 a.m. Sections of front trenches made untenable by enemy’s artillery, but have still about 160 rifles in front line. German infantry has not yet appeared. Should they rush our front trenches will at once counter-attack if possible… In lulls of gunfire there is heavy fire from rifles and machine guns. Please send me 2 machine guns if possible. I have only two left in the front line. None in support… Most of my wire gone.

The runner managed to dodge through the bombardment and safely reached Brigade HQ. It was the last direct news of the Patricias and already it was out of date. Even as the Brigadier was reading it the German infantry was swarming down the Westhoek Ridge to attack the British trenches. And they were whooping as they came.

Looking back on it, even the Patricias themselves found it difficult to believe that they had beaten the Germans back. The line was feeble, their front-line trench was almost non-existent, but every man, even the wounded who were still capable of raising a rifle, poured such accurate and such deadly fire into the German infantry as they advanced that the attack hesitated, faltered, and finally petered out as the survivors began to work their way cautiously back up the hill. When they saw that their infantry attack had failed the German guns opened up again more furiously than before and machine-gun crews which had managed to reach the ruined buildings in the first rush were firing in unison at almost point-blank range. The silence when the guns stopped was almost as stunning as the noise of the bombardment. Then there was a throaty rumbling from beyond the ridge that rose to a roar as the Germans poured down in a mass, running and shouting as they came. The front line was almost obliterated now and there was little point in trying to hold on. In the lull small groups of men had begun to make their way back to the support line and although the rearguard did their best to hold the enemy off, this time the attack was unstoppable. Watchers, peering anxiously from the support line a hundred yards behind, saw with astonishment a row of small white flags appear in part of the line where the fire of a few desperate survivors kept the enemy pinned down but the optimists whose first incredulous thought had been that the enemy was surrendering were soon disillusioned. The Germans were signalling their position to their own guns, warning them to lengthen range, to punish the second line as they had punished the first, and to finish the job.

Pte. J. W. Vaughan.

We were hit dead centre with heavy guns and machine-guns and then we were enfiladed from the right and enfiladed from the left along the trench both ways and it seems that they were using tear-gas too because your eyes were smarting and watering and you had quite a time fighting that off. All the officers practically were gone and of course these