1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [58]
Lt. D. S. Lewis.
I saw most of it from the air and I was badly scared. We had about four hundred guns all firing like hell and as we were flying at about twelve hundred feet owing to clouds, we were fairly surrounded by our own shells. It was quite a relief crossing the line to exchange German bullets for British shells. No troops would have withstood that bombardment. I fairly had the wind put up me by seeing a 9.2-inch shell whizz past my tail. Two of my subalterns were killed by a shell.
Owing to the weather we couldn’t do much in the way of ranging, but we caught most of their batteries firing, which was quite useful. The first part of the show was well run. We’d been registering all the batteries on all important points and every inch of the trenches had been photographed from above, so that every subaltern knew exactly where he was attacking and what trenches there were in front and to the flanks.
L/cpl. W. L. Andrews.
At eleven o’clock the order came: ‘4th Black Watch, move to the left in single file’. Neuve Chapelle had been taken and we were ordered to move forward to the captured German trenches. We passed many many Indian dead on the way and the ground was a mass of stinking shell-pits. There was a point where we had to jump a ditch in full view of the Germans. They were a longish way off but they must have had a rifle trained on it and they were hitting men as they jumped. Captain Boase was on the other side of the ditch calling on us to hurry, because so many men hesitated to jump that we were in a bunch. There were four in front of me. The first ran as fast as he could and jumped high. Crack! A bullet got him, but it was only a slight wound and he recovered himself and carried on. A little stumpy fellow was next. Crack! He was shot dead. The next man just flopped into the ditch and scrambled out soaking. Then Nicholson jumped and got away with it. Then it was my turn. I thought to myself, ‘Now for it!’ I’d jumped for my school, so I aimed to jump high, tucked my legs under me and then thrust them forward for landing. Bullets whistled past, but I wasn’t hit. It’s curious, but that jump is almost the last thing I remember! Everything is confusion after that, except that there seemed to be more and more fire, and I remember the stench of the shell-pits stinging my nostrils.
But Neuve Chapelle had fallen. It had been captured in less than an hour, and everything had gone like clockwork.
Messages flashed from First Army Headquarters. The Cavalry was ordered to move close up, and at mid-day the 8th Sherwood Foresters received instructions to start marching without delay to Bac St Maur. From there only two hours’ march would take them into battle and they were warned to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.
Chapter 8
The Rifle Brigade had gone so far and so fast that the first men who reached the other side of Neuve Chapelle were in serious risk of running into their own bombardment. They halted reluctantly and, more reluctantly still, returned to join the main body of the Battalion halted a little way in front of the village. But three men could dodge shells where hundreds could not, and Lieutenant Stacke of the Worcesters was not prepared to wait. His Battalion, the 1st Worcesters, was waiting at the old front line, ready to move forward