1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [52]
The line that looked so clear-cut and distinct drawn as a firm black line on war maps in the newspapers was different when looked at from the air or the line itself. The two sets of trench-lines, separated by a hundred yards or so, straggled and meandered through a mish-mash of splintered trees, crumbling buildings, ruined roadways, here switching back to take advantage of higher ground, there jutting out to protect the prize of a fortified village or wood. As often as not the trenches ran in untidy loops and angles where the last loss or gain of a local attack had left them. There was nothing clear-cut about them.
Beyond the Moated Grange the German trenches ran south to cross the track the British called Signpost Lane, and then pushed out to form the salient enclosing Neuve Chapelle. Where that salient ended another began, jutting this time into the German lines. The British called it Port Arthur and it was small, but it was theirs, and this was all to the good, for it enclosed the crossroads where the Estaires road met the Rue du Bois that ran back towards Béthune and these were the vital, the indispensable routes to the trenches. Before the lines had been rudely carved across it the Rue du Bois had also led to the Bois du Biez, a large rectangular wood, half a mile in length and half a mile behind Neuve Chapelle. It was empty and untouched. In early March, as buds on the trees slowly opened, the wood beyond the Indians’ front line was gradually turning green.
This, then, was the battlefield. It was such a small stretch of land that an onlooker at a vantage point not much above ground level could have surveyed it at a glance, barely turning his head. The headache for artillery observation officers was that vantage points above ground level near their lines were few and far between. For want of anything better, haystacks were burrowed out to serve as makeshift observation posts and on the day before the battle no fewer than thirty observation officers crowded into a single ruined house at Pont Logy, training binoculars on the trenches of the salient that protected Neuve Chapelle. It was here at Pont Logy that the twenty machine-guns of the Indian Corps would be massed to cover the advance. The ammunition had been brought up and sandbagged emplacements constructed in the front line. All the previous night Arthur Agius and his men had been working. At six in the morning they returned to la Couture and Agius turned in to sleep for a few hours, stretched out on a wooden table. With so many troops crammed behind the front there was neither a bed nor floor-space to be found. But he slept the sleep of the just. In a short time they would be off and so far as his part went, he was satisfied that everything was ready.
At the eleventh hour and some eighteen hours before they were due to take part in the battle, the 59th Siege Battery finally arrived.
Bdr. W. Kemp.
We detrained at Estaires and went into action off the la Bassée Road. We pulled into the orchard of a farm and I was detailed to join the signallers – or telephonists as we really were. There was very little morse code used and visibility didn’t allow us to use flags. But we all had to set to and get our heavy guns set up double-quick and it was some job, although we were trained to do things double-quick and it seemed like practice camp all over again. It was what we had been used to and the only difference was the country we were in. The detachments put down their double-deck platforms and bulk holdfast – the guns were anchored to them by a volute spring. But the volute springs had been left behind! That was the first panic. The consequence was that when the guns