1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [61]
It was difficult for the two Corps Commanders to confer, for Sir Henry Rawlinson had his IV Corps headquarters at Marmuse, separated by eight kilometres of winding country road from Sir James Willcocks’ Indian Corps Headquarters at la Croix. For his own part, Rawlinson ordered a fresh attack on the trenches near the Moated Grange. It would be ushered in by a fresh bombardment and this time by guns familiar with the ground. A mile away on the right, Sir James Willcocks would also try again, and until the whole of the German front line had been captured the troops who were waiting to advance must continue to wait.
As the day wore on Colonel Stephens grew increasingly short-tempered, now gazing through binoculars at the tempting prospect ahead, now pacing up and down the length of the Battalion front where his Battalion was digging in. Wherever he turned he was met by a barrage of questions. ‘Why aren’t we getting a move on, sir?’ He fervently wished he knew the answer. The Battalion continued to dig in, as ordered.
It was less a case of digging in than of building up, for no digging was possible on the waterlogged ground and it had not even been feasible to occupy their original objective in Smith-Dorrien trench which had been the old British line before the battles of November. It was a long deep trench that ran clean across the front facing the Aubers Ridge, and the Command had believed that it would make an ideal jump-off for the second phase of the assault. But it was many months since Smith-Dorrien trench had been a trench at all. It was full of water, the Germans had long ago found it uninhabitable, and the bombardment that had been intended to pulverise its defences and cow its garrison had been so many shells wasted. There was nobody there. Fifty yards behind it, on the outskirts of Neuve Chapelle, chafing, fretting and frustrated, the Rifle Brigade was navvying, building a protective wall with bricks and rubble and broken masonry salvaged from the ruined houses and the brewery at their backs. They were working under difficulties. Earlier they had watched the Germans run away, abandoning field guns near the Bois du Biez. Now, seeing no signs of an advance, they had crept back again and were firing at point-blank range over open sights. Shells were bursting among the riflemen as they worked and a machine-gun travelling up and down the road in front of the wood raked them with vicious fire. They replied as best they could, but there were many casualties and the Battalion was dwindling away.
Later in the morning, as they worked, they were encouraged by the sound of British guns firing somewhere behind them to their left. It was the new bombardment on the trenches near the Moated Grange. When it stopped the troops advanced, running past the flung-out bodies of the Middlesex as they went. They could not help but trample on them because they lay in three distinct lines, shoulder to shoulder, just as they had advanced.
By mid morning the trenches had been taken. It was easy going. The new bombardment had been so devastatingly accurate that there was no fight left in the enemy soldiers who survived it. In the wake of the bombardment, as the first lines of Tommies came into view, they climbed out of the trenches behind the Moated Grange and surrendered in droves. The news was slow in reaching IV Corps Headquarters, but it was good when it came and, now that almost all the original objectives had been captured, it was the moment the army had been waiting for to advance on the Aubers Ridge. But the Corps Commander was hesitating. An orchard lay not two hundred yards beyond the captured line and Sir Henry Rawlinson believed that it was so fortified that, if it held out when the line moved forward, it might well be the stumbling block that would endanger the whole advance. When it began there must be no more gaps, no more hold- ups, and he could not afford to take risks. It would be better to wait and bring up reinforcements to attack the orchard in such force that resistance must crumble