1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [60]
On their right the Scottish Rifles advancing alongside had at first been more fortunate but, while the right-hand companies got forward with comparative ease, one flank was ‘in the air’, for the companies on the left had been decimated by the same machine-guns that annihilated the Middlesex.
L/cpl. E. Hall, 2nd Bn., Cameronians (Scottish Rifles).
We’d taken our positions in the trenches the night before and we put up climbing ladders for jumping over the parapet. We were on tiptoe with excitement because we were fed up with trenches and living in a sea of mud and we just wanted to get the Germans out in the open. We’d seen them off at Messines Ridge when they attacked in November, but this was our offensive, the first our army had made since the trench warfare began.
I was company stretcher-bearer and so I had to follow the company as they advanced across No Man’s Land. They got up to the German trench, but the barbed wire wasn’t cut at all and the Germans were shooting like mad while our lads were crouching down in the mud trying to breach it with wire-cutters, and those that didn’t have wire-cutters hacking at it with bayonets. Eventually they did get through and over this high parapet of sandbags – it hadn’t been touched by the shells, mark you! – and in they went with the bayonet. They chased the Germans from traverse to traverse until they were all accounted for – at least in that part of the line.
But our losses were appalling during the few minutes it took to cut the wire. They went down like ninepins! Every single Company Commander went down leading the attack, and the Major, the Adjutant and the Colonel. They’d all been years in the Army, excellent soldiers, and we could ill-afford to lose such men! All the officers went, killed or wounded. By the end of three days we had just one subaltern left.
Far away on the right, at the extreme edge of the attack, a Battalion of the Indian Corps was also struggling with barriers of bristling barbed wire – but it was not the fault of the gunners. The l/39th Garhwalis had attacked the wrong objective. Perhaps the mist was to blame. Perhaps they had been misled by the line of the road swinging off at an angle towards la Bassée. Perhaps it was because their old reclaimed trenches did not directly face the line of their attack, or because, as some said, a tree which had been picked out as a landmark was blown to pieces in the bombardment. Whatever the reason, the Company lost direction and the others were propelled by sheer momentum to follow their lead.
Like the Scottish Rifles a mile away on their left, with no bombardment to prepare the way, with no cover on their flanks, and with no friendly guns to cover them as they advanced, they had hacked and clawed and battered their way through the Germans’ wire and captured a long length of their trench-line. It was a magnificent feat of arms, but it had scuppered the whole attack. It had also dislocated the plan of Sir Douglas Haig and, when they finally realised just what had happened, it placed both Corps Commanders in a dilemma. Now, where the attack had diverged, there was a gap in the line. On either side of it the troops had surged ahead and, between them, in the trenches that faced Port Arthur, the Germans were holding on, manning their machine-guns, and giving notice of their intention to hold out to the last man.
The battle orders had been precise:
As soon as the village of Neuve Chapelle has been captured and made good, the 7th and 8th Divisions, supported by the Indian Corps on their right, will be ordered by the Corps Commander to press forward to capture the high ground.
The village was undoubtedly secured. In the centre of the assault everything had gone according to plan. The ground in front was clear to the Aubers Ridge – but on either side, at two critical points, each on a separate corps front, the attack had failed and