1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [177]
One of the dead Seaforths was Lieutenant Charles Tennant who had written his last letter to his ‘Darling Lucy’.*
Between the two assaults, in the trenches in front of Fauquissart, Arthur Wilson and Walter Malthouse had hardly enjoyed a grand-stand view of the battle for the incessant shelling had kept their heads well down. All they had heard was the noise of the guns, the spit of machine-guns not far ahead and a spate of rumours that died away as the day wore on. It was late in the afternoon when a shell exploded in the trench.
Cpl. A. Wilson.
Of course we were standing to all day, ready to go, but about three o’clock in the afternoon we were stood down and told we could rest a bit in the trench, and it was fairly clear that nothing much else was going to happen. Well of course we were exhausted, and I got down in the trench next to Walter and I dropped off right away. All of a sudden there was an almighty explosion, right in the trench, a direct hit just a little bit further along from where we were. I was right next to Walter – touching him even. I was stunned of course, but when I got my wits together I could hardly believe it. I was covered in blood – saturated – and I really thought I’d bought it. But it was Walter’s blood. I didn’t have a scratch myself. Walter had taken the full blast and somehow or other it hadn’t touched me. He was blown to bits. A terrible sight. I don’t think there was a bit of his body bigger than a leg of lamb. I gathered up what I could, put him into a sandbag and later on when it got dusk, a few of us got out of the trench and buried him a little way behind, about twenty-five yards back, because we couldn’t go far. I had my prayer book and I read the burial service – the whole thing, prayers and everything. We had several men to bury of course but we saw that they got a proper burial. We were all friends in the Territorials, joined together, been together all along. We felt pretty bad about it. The worst of it was that from the direction of the shell we felt almost sure it was one of ours. Of course the authorities wouldn’t have that! But I got a few of the men digging and it only took us half an hour to find the nose-cap. Sure enough it was marked ‘WD’ – War Department. It was from a naval shell fired by one of our long-distance guns mounted on an armoured train. So we proved the point. But it didn’t do Walter any good.*
Many hours before, the remnants of the 2nd Rifle Brigade had been pushed back to the German trench where they had first made the breakthrough and held a hundred yards of it in the face of assaults from either side. It was the only small gain of the day. But at two o’clock in the morning of 10 May the enemy attacked in force and from three sides. A little later, Colonel Stephens, arriving with troops to relieve his Battalion, found that there was no battalion left to relieve. The Germans had made good their losses and closed up their line. The battle was over.
Capt. W. G. Bagot-Chester, MC.
Everything is fairly quiet now. At night parties from regiments behind who took part in the attack come up to my trench and go out in front to search for their dead to bring them in and bury them behind. We don’t fire much by night or day. By day there is nothing to be seen to fire at, and by night it would only be a chance shot.
Gnr. C. B. Burrows.
Nothing much doing on the 10th. Our guns have narrow shaves, but do not do any more firing, and we pull them out of action about 8 p.m. in the dark. The battery move off at 11.15 p.m. and march all night to Festubert. There we heard that the