1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [51]
We’d left our 25-hundredweight guns behind, but we kept our pre-war numbers and 59th and 81st Batteries kept their old Garrison Artillery numbers, so when we finally did get to France in March this caused some confusion to people who didn’t know owt about the Royal Garrison Artillery. Other batteries that came out later couldn’t understand why the number of our battery was higher than theirs. We went to Fort Fareham at the beginning of January to be equipped with 6-inch 30-hundredweight Howitzers and started to work with them. It was a different cup of tea from India!
For one thing the battery was horse-drawn. Out there we had bullocks, great hefty beasts, and when we went to camp we had elephants to pull the guns out when they managed to slide into a ditch – which was often! Compared to them these horses were ruddy devils! Now when we got stuck in a ditch or the mud it was a case of ‘Take out the ‘osses and put on the drag ropes.’ It was some change, because you could say we’d lived in luxury in India. Everything was done for us – we even got shaved in bed by the Nappi. He came round every morning and we paid him about fourpence a month. We didn’t know we were born!
Of course we worked hard too. I’d started on the old 4-inch gun mounted on an elephant carriage – no buffers, so when it fired it went back about ten yards and had to be wheeled forward to its correct position. We did gun-drill, we did some rifle exercises, a little semaphore, practice in observation, a guard now and again – and that was our life.
One of the things we had to do now was practise firing by the map at targets we couldn’t see, and that was absolutely new to us. In India we went to Battery Practice Camp once a year. A nice wide area was selected where the ‘enemy’ guns could be seen from the observation of fire instruments. The enemy very kindly fired powder puffs twice so that we could correct our line. We brought our instrument on to the centre line of the enemy’s battery, and when we fired we were able to record the fall of our shots easily, because the enemy always stopped firing so that the observers on our instrument wouldn’t get mixed up with the fall of shot and the gun-fire of the very obliging Enemy!
This was a wonderful system where the gunners ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds! Even we gunners on the instrument used to laugh at it, but to no avail. Fancy intelligent officers of the Royal Artillery falling for this daft idea which could only be carried out in practice camp!
Since mid-February a series of urgent telegrams had been flying between Staff Headquarters at St Omer and Ordnance Headquarters in England, and they grew more and more fiery as the weeks passed and there was no sign of the two missing batteries. First came the assurance that they would sail on 26 February, then without fail on 1 March. On the 3rd Sir John French was cast down by the news that the batteries had not yet left England. Time was running out. If they did not arrive soon they would hardly have time to dig in the guns or to range on targets before the battle began. Their targets had already been allotted, and both of them were crucial. The particular task of 59th Battery was to smash the German strongpoints around Mauquissart on the front of the 22nd Brigade who would attack it.
Chapter 7
Mauquissart was a cluster of ruined houses on the left of the planned attack. It was clear enough to see for it was barely a quarter mile behind the German line directly in front of Aubers on the ridge a mile beyond. Between them, close to Mauquissart, another landmark rose out of the tumbled grey waste. It was the Moulin du Pietre, a large double-storeyed working mill that had served local farmers for miles around and now doubtless served the Germans as a useful place from which to make observation close to their line. Beyond Mauquissart the enemy line