1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [176]
The answer was not hard to find. As Captain Berkeley sadly recorded, ‘They were lying out in No Man’s Land and most of them would never stand again.’ From their burrows, well protected by many square yards of earth-filled sandbags, the German machine-gunners had begun to fire even before the bombardment ceased, catching troops like the East Lancs as they crawled out from their trenches preparing to assault. The battle orders had made no bones about the fact that success depended on ‘a continuous forward movement of fresh troops’. Most of the ‘fresh troops’ of the second wave and support battalions were shot down as they cleared the parapet. The battle and the troops who fought it died in No Man’s Land.
Bdr. W. Kemp.
I was asked to go forward with some signalling gear, because the Major had asked Lieutenant Brian to go forward and observe the fire using his periscope. We were nailed down for a start by a 77 mm battery. So the officer spoke to them and said, ‘I can’t move from here. They’re shelling where I want to go.’ Well, we got into the line and it was terrible there. There we were with our ten rounds, and the German shells raining down in hundreds! It was all so hopeless and useless. I didn’t like my position where I was with the telephone. I don’t know why, I just had a feeling I didn’t like where I was. So I moved a little bit away from the officer, and it must have been a premonition, because next minute a shell came over, there was a terrible explosion and Lieutenant Brian was killed. We should both have gone if I hadn’t moved.
What a waste of life! He couldn’t do anything or even see anything. I was with him at the OP and all I could see was that it was all a dismal failure. Away on the right beyond Neuve Chapelle, the attempt to exploit a second breach in the line had been no more successful. By seven in the morning both attacks had come to a standstill and as more and more troops were sent forward, as the casualties mounted and the hours passed, the battle-field descended into chaos.
Capt. W. G. Bagot-Chester, MC.
It soon came through the telephone to say the first line had been taken, only to be contradicted afterwards. We waited in the redoubt from 3 a.m. to 2 p.m., when we were ordered forward. We had to advance about two thousand yards across open country to start with, but we were not fired on until we reached a long communication trench leading up to the front trench-line. Of course we advanced in artillery formation. Toward the last hundred yards or so German ‘Woolly Bears’ began to burst overhead, and ‘Jack Johnsons’* close by, but I had only one man hit at this point. We then got into a long communication trench leading up from Lansdowne Post to the Gridiron Trenches. Here we were blocked for a long time, shelling increasing every moment, wounded trying to get by us. After a time we got into the Gridiron where it was absolute hell. Hun shells, large and small, bursting everywhere, blowing in the parapet here and there, and knocking tree branches off. Here there was fearful confusion. No one knew the way to anywhere. There was such a maze of trenches, and such a crowd of people, many wounded, all wanting to go in different directions, one regiment going back, ours trying to go forward, wounded and stretcher-bearers going back, etc. I presently went on to a trench called the Pioneer Trench. There I had twenty-six casualties from shell. Havildar Manbir had his leg blown off, and was in such agony that he asked to be shot.
As one got further to the front trench, the place got more of a shambles, wounded and dead everywhere. Those who could creep or walk were trying to get back; others were simply lying and waiting. The ground in front was littered with Seaforth bodies and 41st Dogras. From the Pioneer Trench I went on to the front trench, occupied by the 41st Dogras, who, however, had very few men left so heavily had they suffered. One of their British officers had completely lost his nerve, and was rather a pitiable sight.