1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [244]
Again I pointed out the folly of crowding into so-called ‘shelter’. By now whole stretches of the trenches were levelled and deserted and any in our section that still had any appearance of shelter would soon have been crowded out, had I not stood at the worst end and forced back the men (and NCOs too!) of other regiments who tried to get in. We’d been reinforced (never mind by whom, I’d rather not say!) and the new regiment was all mixed up with ours. This is bad, very bad! However, by now my men were aroused and would let no one through. They could crowd in their own sections as they liked, but budge we wouldn’t!
When we were relieved I was surprised to find I could hardly walk. I’d had no sleep and now that all the excitement was over I felt done up. I was warned to attend an inquiry into charges of ‘sleeping on duty’ made against several of our men. An officer had been down the trench and found no one awake. I cannot say whether the inquiry was held or not. Most of these men were wounded or killed in the afternoon – but I should have been delighted to attend. From my diary I could prove that the men had only been allowed twenty-two hours’ sleep in eight days. The Captain had aroused me myself at 4 a.m. and without a rifle or hat – and you should never take your equipment off in the trenches! I stood sleeping on my feet, my head resting on my arms folded on the parapet. When he woke me I had absolutely no idea where I was!
Far more work would be done in such a restricted area by dividing the men into two ‘shifts’. The ‘off-shift’ should be left severely alone to make the best of what poor sleep they can get. The ‘on-shift’ would be fresh and alert for work or fighting. As it is, the wakened men are a nuisance, and a positive danger. The nervous start banging away without inquiry, the dazed wander into the way, and the rest ask absurd questions, which is natural when people are suddenly alarmed from a sound sleep. Six cool well-rested men are worth forty startled into action!
They had stayed for almost a week in the battered line round Hooge, grimly digging in and sheltering as best they could from shell-fire that hardly stopped, for the Germans were alert and determined to thwart any ideas the British might entertain of renewing the attack. But the British Command had belatedly learned the lesson that hasty improvisation would not do and that only a well-organised and well-prepared assault could succeed in pushing the enemy out of Hooge and winning back ‘the biggest hole in Belgium’, but they had no intention of entrusting it to the inexperienced volunteers of Kitchener’s Army.
This calumny was as ill judged as it was unjust. Like the Territorials before them, Kitchener’s volunteers had proved that they were no weaklings. The criticism muttered in high places did not reach the ears of the rank and file, and it would not have worried them greatly if it had. They knew they had done their best. They had received high praise and even rare expressions of admiration from the senior officers on the spot, not least from Brigadier-General Nugent. And they had stuck it out. Best of all, one of their number had won the Victoria Cross – the first in the New Army. And the New Army was not a little proud of it.*
When the Regulars of the 6th Division took over the line and managed to recover Hooge, Kitchener’s Army did not grudge them their victory.
Chapter 29
It was exactly a year since Great Britain had gone to war on 4 August 1914 and the 1st