1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [64]
After the charge the Colonel and I sat inside that breastwork and helped to tend the wounded as the stretcher-bearers brought them in. It was heart-rending – our first time in action. Those dear lads! I’m not ashamed to say it made the tears run down my face to see them. But they made so light of it! One boy, in great pain, was even smiling. He said to me, ‘They can’t call us Saturday night soldiers now, can they, sir?’ They were simply astonishing. No Battalion could have done better and many, I’m quite sure, wouldn’t have done nearly so well.
The Colonel and I stayed in that hell until 8 p.m. and then we went forward to a ruined house that had been captured from the Germans. There we tried to collect our companies together, and there we stayed, in reserve.
Like all adjutants of Territorial Battalions George Hawes was a Regular Army officer.* Praise from him was praise indeed. It was well deserved, for they had won a small but vital victory. It was not their fault that it came many hours too late.
A mile away on the left, misconceptions and misunderstandings had also dogged the fortunes of the IV Corps. At 2.45, confident of General Willcocks’s assurance that the ‘gap’ on the Indian Corps front was on the point of being captured and filled in, Rawlinson had, at last, felt able to send out the order for a general advance. They were complicated orders, and they were not entirely the orders that had been anticipated by the Battalion Commanders who had to carry them out on the ground. Instead of advancing straight ahead to the Aubers Ridge the leading Brigades of the 7th and 8th Division were to advance north-east, diagonally to their left. It was a sound plan. Although the enemy guns were busy, there had been few German troops behind their immediate front and those who were facing the 7th Division and had not yet been attacked had been keeping their heads well down. One Brigade of the 7th Division would remain opposite the enemy, while the others advanced across the ground behind the hostile trenches. General Capper ordered that, as soon as there were signs that the Germans in it were ‘unsettled’, the remainder of the 7th Division would swing out, capture their trenches, and join in the advance.
It was a complicated manoeuvre, for it meant that the 8th Division would advance behind the German line and across the 7th Division’s front. But it might have worked. It might have worked at three o’clock when Rawlinson had sent orders for the advance. It might even have worked in the daylight that remained after 3.30, the hour at which Rawlinson had directed the infantry to cross the old Smith-Dorrien line and move to the attack. But he had underestimated the time his orders would take to pass through Divisional and Brigade Headquarters to the Battalions waiting at the front. It was almost four o’clock before they reached them. Low clouds had been thickening all afternoon. The light was dull now, and threatening early dusk. Even so, it was not too late – but still the infantry waited. The 8th Division was to begin to move forward as soon as the 21st Brigade of the 7th Division came into line on its left. Time passed. There was no sign of movement in the 7th Division and it was hardly surprising, because the 21st Brigade had already moved forward to its position beyond the orchard, and there, a quarter of a mile away, the infantry had been marking time in accordance with their own Divisional Orders. These were that they were to advance as soon as the 8th Division moved into line beside them. It took many runners stumbling and slithering over the ditches and sodden ground, many exchanges of messages, much fuming and puzzlement, and precious time wasted before they could make sense of the situation. It was half past five before the leading Battalions of the 8th Division moved forward and into position to the