1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [167]
A few minutes afterwards Germans appeared to the right of us, so we had to get out of the trench or we would have been enfiladed. We went back, or rather we struggled back on our chests to the dug-out dragging Game, but all the nine of us were in a helpless condition. There was the Colonel, Sergeant Crabb, Brown, French, Manton, Hayward, Humphreys, Lance-Corporal Game wounded, and myself – and we had not a weapon amongst us.
If Colonel Wallace could not go down fighting, he intended at least to go down with dignity. He had a box of fine Havana cigars in his pocket and he was equally determined to give no German the chance of filching them. He handed the box round and forced a smile to reassure his bedraggled men. ‘Smoke, lads? Might as well make the best of things.’ The cigars were large and opulent. It took a little while to set them well alight and the men had hardly begun to puff before the Germans were upon them.
They loomed up and circled the shell-hole shouting ‘Hände hohe’ and even if the words were incomprehensible the message was clear enough for they stood with rifles and fixed bayonets aimed at the entrance to the battered dug-out. One by one the men clambered out wreathed in clouds of cigar smoke and raised their hands. The air sang with bullets and they had hardly cleared the dug-out when French was shot through the heart and collapsed at Crask’s feet. ‘The direction of the shot,’ Crask noted sadly, ‘was from Burnt Farm.’ Burnt Farm was, or had been, behind the British line, but the line was so chaotic and the Germans were advancing so fast that it was hard to tell if it had been fired by friend or foe. Crask had his suspicions and so perhaps had the Germans, for one German soldier bent down to pick up French’s cap and placed it gently over the dead man’s face to hide the staring eyes.*
Pte. H. J. Crask, MM.
They immediately pulled the remaining lot of us down amongst them and we had to lay there roughly two hours in their front line (we were captured about 11.45 a.m.). During that time a party of King’s Own tried to retire about eighty or a hundred yards away, but they were simply mad! They were mowed down like so much corn by rifle and machine-gun fire. A few that were left put their hands up, and the Germans in our line ceased fire immediately. They were good fellows all round that captured us. They were 77th Hanoverian Regiment and they kept us from fire as much as possible by making a parapet in front of us as well as for themselves. They also gave us meat and bread and coffee, and did their best for our wounded. At 1.30 p.m. we were all put in a dug-out. Two guards stayed with us and their line then began to advance towards Ypres. We all had the same opinion – that they were simply making a walk of it to Ypres, then on to Calais, and that they’d finally reach London. The Germans hardly seemed to know as much as I did. They undoubtedly thought that we were all that was left of the Contemptible Little Army.
But it was not quite all – although, after three weeks’ fighting in the salient, such reserve battalions as there were were so pitifully low in numbers that they were battalions in name only, and a third of the men in the ranks of the 1st Yorks and Lancs – the only battalion that was anywhere near full strength – had arrived just three days earlier as a draft of inexperienced reinforcements. The 1st Welch, like the Territorials of the 12th London Rangers, were barely the strength of a single company. The 2nd East Yorks and the King’s Own could muster fewer than six hundred men between them and the 1st East Lancs were only three hundred and fifty strong. The reserves could not achieve much, but they had to try. Far out in front some ragged remnants were fighting on but they were