1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [240]
‘One shell,’ they said. ‘They’ve got the range to an inch. Wouldn’t let us stop here!’ Well, when they heard that, the change in my men was laughable. It was a ‘post’ when we first arrived. Now they decided it was a ‘guard’, and on a guard they should be relieved at such and such a time after so many hours. However, I compromised by putting as many as possible into the trenches at either side and keeping only the sentries and myself at the barrier. In the little I’ve seen of fighting, the dangerous post is the safest – it’s the getting to and fro where the peril is – so I slept and ate and lived as close to my post as possible.
Rain fell heavily all night, and the day following it rained shells as well! In the afternoon they got my poor old shelter. The sand and bits of bag covered me, my tea, the ‘McConachie’ ration, and my best pipe which I’d laid on the butt of my rifle while I was eating. I regret to say that it’s buried there yet! The weary vigil crept on till about half past three in the morning. Then the whole barrier seemed to lift and we were almost smothered with sand and dust and terrible fumes.
You need an unnaturally callous nature to live under shell-fire. You can stand it for a while – especially if you are engaged in work that requires any concentration of thought, but the men whose minds were on nothing else really suffered. They ducked badly at even the furthest-off shell and looked very nerve-worn and jumpy. For the next two nights, just for a change, we suffered most from rifle fire and we were warned that our company was to make a charge to stop this. Lieutenant Peate asked me to go over the parapet and locate the wire and arrange for cutting a road.
I noticed the grass was long, so that there was little risk once I got safely over the parapet. I got the men to lay sandbags to make steps, and then I just ran up them and jumped over. Well! If it had been arranged for a cinema film it couldn’t have been better timed. A shell burst just as I landed and blew me back against the parapet. I thought a giant had given me a thundering kick in the chest, and it was a while before I came round (afterwards I found I had splinters in my wrist, my head and my right boot). Lance-corporal Nelson came out and brought me in and later on when I was feeling better I went out and followed the wire right round. But we had no need to move after all, because the Germans were pushed back slightly on our left and the tables were turned a bit. We were relieved that night by the Ox and Bucks. I didn’t trouble to tell the corporal who relieved me all the trouble there had been. I just informed him, quite truthfully, that we had lost no men at the post!
But there was a far worse ordeal in store for the battalions who were moving up to relieve them. The Germans had been biding their time. Knowing very well that a garrison was at its weakest during and just after a relief, they were waiting for this precise moment to make a determined effort to recover their lost ground. They reasoned that it could hardly fail, for they had a new weapon to sweep the British out of Hooge. It was their intention to roast them alive with liquid fire.
They had had no difficulty in surmising when the relief would take place, and to judge when troops who had not had time to settle down and were unfamiliar with the ground would present far less opposition than soldiers who had been in the line and on the alert for days. Even so early in the war the Germans were far more technically advanced in the use of wireless and were easily able to overhear British plans and dispositions by tapping into their communications. They knew to the hour and the minute when the relief was due to take place, and they also knew that their adversaries of recent weeks would be replaced by inexperienced troops. Having laid their plans they settled down to wait. It was the night of 29 July and, as the relief marched up to take over the trenches, it was ominously quiet.
2nd Lt. G. V. Carey, A Coy., 8th Bn., Rifle Brigade, 41 Brig., 14 Div.