1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [300]
The Battalion dressing station was almost in the front line. That was the day that our Medical Officer, Captain Maling of the RAMC, won the VC. He had a little aid post in one firebay of the trench. The back of it had been knocked right out, and there was all sorts of bits and pieces of men lying about there. He looked at me and he said, ‘If you can get out, go! Can you walk?’ I said, ‘I think so.’ Well I couldn’t walk. My knees were giving way under me, and there was this big Welsh lad who was in my company, big Ben Williams, who was wounded in the arm, and he was making his way out by Winchester Road communication trench. Albert saw him and he said, ‘Would you take Billy out with you?’ He said he would, so we went on along Winchester Trench, and it was about three feet deep in water! Everybody was trying to get through it, and we kept on feeling things underneath us, which of course were wounded men who had fallen and drowned in the mud. Ben said, ‘I don’t like to leave you, but I’m going over the top.’ Well, I couldn’t talk – my face was tied up by then, you see – my stomach was hurting me like hell, I don’t know what it was. So he said, ‘Right, come and stand over here and I’ll climb over you and pull you up.’ So he climbed up and got over the top, then pulled me over with his one arm, and helped me down.
We got to the end, where the communication trench came out on the road outside Laventie (it was an awfully long way, I remember!), and there was one of the old horse-drawn ambulances, and the chap was saying, ‘Walking cases only, walking cases only.’ So Taffy said, ‘Well he’s a walking case, he can get in.’ Of course I was half dead, and the driver didn’t want to take me. Anyhow, eventually Ben got me on. The next I knew was when I woke up lying on the floor in the convent at Estaires where the sisters were looking after our people. I had this anti-tetanus jab and this sister came along with a little funnel. My nose was completely blocked up. My mouth was closed up and I was breathing through just a little hole. She put this funnel in and began pouring tea in – kindly meant, but I couldn’t breathe and my reaction was to blow, and I blew the tea back all over her! The Mother Superior came round and had a look at me, and had me taken in to her little cubby-hole where she bathed my mouth and eventually cleaned the blood up, and then I was put on the ambulance which took me to a train, then to Rouen.
The 12th Rifle Brigade had covered themselves with glory. They were the only battalion of the 20th Division to go into the attack, and they had not let the division down. They reached and held the third line of German trenches, but they were out on a limb. The Bareilly Brigade on their right had done well too, but when they were driven back the riflemen beside them had no alternative but to retire. It was a bitter blow, and the action cost them dear. Bill Worrell was one of three hundred and twenty-nine casualties – killed or wounded or missing.
The Garhwal Brigade of the Meerut Division had fared worst of all. Their frontage, on the right of the attack, ran south from Mauquissart, and the 3rd Londons were in the support line ready to advance in the second wave when the Gurkhas and the Leicesters had captured the first enemy line. Arthur Agius’s company was in position behind the Duck’s Bill, where a small rectangle of breastworks enclosed a watery waste of craters and dug-outs. It was thrust out well into No Man’s Land towards the enemy line, connected by a long sap to the British front-line trench. Such a fine target for enemy guns was constantly shelled and since enemy machine-gunners seldom left it alone the Duck’s Bill was a hot spot. The Gurkhas were to advance on either side to capture the German front line and a Gas Brigade detachment was standing by ready to release clouds of gas and smoke that would smother the enemy before the infantry attacked.
Stand-to, for the infantry, was at 3.30 in the morning.