1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [286]
We managed to continue firing by frequently swapping places. We hoped our infantry were keeping their heads well down when we were cutting their wire! With fuses correctly set and with such a flat trajectory there was not much risk of bullets going into our own trenches. At zero plus thirty minutes we ceased fire. We had fired about a hundred and fifty rounds and blown some useful gaps in the wire on both sides.
In the countdown to zero hour, while the guns were doing their best to cut the enemy wire, gas clouds slid across the front like a curtain stabbed by red bursts of shrapnel. But the wind had slowed down. In places it dropped altogether and Lieutenant White on the 2nd Division’s front was not the only gas officer who was worried. It took him a long time to get through on the telephone to Brigade Headquarters and it was almost time for the gas to be released. Everything was in readiness. The men were standing by. The iron pipes, ten feet long, had been thrown over the parapet and joined up to the flexible tubes that linked them to the cylinders. At twelve minutes to six, with two minutes to go, White succeeded at last and spoke to the Brigadier-General and informed him that he could not carry on in these conditions. The General made no bones about the situation. Addressing his junior officer with extraordinary frankness he told him bluntly that he had already been in touch with 2nd Divisional Headquarters, that he was aware that all was not well and that he had passed on the information to higher authority. But he had received a direct order to carry on. Under these circumstances he had no alternative but to pass the order on to Lieutenant White. The General’s voice was flat and unemotional, but it was clear that the decision was not his. By the time White returned from the telephone in a support trench to the emplacement in the front line it was almost six o’clock. He ordered the gas to be turned on and the cylinders were opened.
Lt. A. B. White.
At first the gas drifted slowly towards the German lines (it was plainly visible owing to the rain) but at one or two bends of the trench the gas drifted into it. In these cases I had it turned off at once. At about 6.20 a.m. the wind changed and quantities of the gas came back over our own parapet, so I ordered all gas to be turned off and only smoke candles to be used.
Punctually at 6.30 a.m. one company of the King’s advanced to the attack wearing smoke helmets. But there was a certain amount of confusion in the front trench owing to the presence of large quantities of gas. We experienced great difficulty in letting off the gas owing to faulty connections and broken copper pipes causing leaks. Nearly all my men suffered from the gas and four had to go to hospital. Three out of the five machine-guns on my front were put out of action by the gas.
Very little could be seen of the German line owing to the fog of smoke and gas. Our infantry reached the enemy wire without a shot being fired, but they were mown down there by machine-gun fire or overcome by the gas. One or two made their way back and reported that there were seven to ten rows of wire uncut, and that nobody had reached the front German trench. A report also came in that the enemy were not holding their front line, but were firing from their second line.
In the middle of the line, in front of the wire which Alex Dunbar’s gun team had been so furiously cutting, the 15th Scottish Division had better luck, for the guns pounding the Lens Road Redoubt had