1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [79]
Dusk fell quickly on that cloudy afternoon. It was quite dark by six o’clock – long before the troops could be reorganised and sent in to make the general advance Sir Douglas Haig so fervently desired, long before the ground could be reconnoitred, and long before final instructions could reach the weary soldiers waiting in the line. By seven o’clock mist had gathered beneath the low cloud, and the darkness thickened to pitchy black. Battalions groping forward to assembly positions lost their way and became hopelessly mixed up. The attacks were postponed, and postponed again. Finally they were cancelled.
The battle was over. They had captured Neuve Chapelle and in places north of the village the old line had crept forward by, at most, a thousand yards. In the last hour of the night, when the reliefs marched up to take over the trenches, the exhausted survivors had to be pummelled and kicked to their feet before they could be roused and marched out, dazed and staggering with fatigue.
There was no dawn that morning. The darkness gradually gave way to a strange yellow fog, thick with the fumes of lyddite that stung the eyes and burned the throat. Mercifully it shrouded the ground in front, so that the parties of stretcher-bearers could move freely in the open to search for any wounded who had survived the night. They prowled like phantoms in the gloom, picking their way through the carnage and the debris – the terrible litter of rifles torn from dead hands, ripped caps, German helmets, tatters of uniform, khaki and grey, the tumbled contents of pockets and haversacks, razors, pocket mirrors, photographs, smashed pipes and scraps of food, fragments of letters, tobacco pouches, crumpled packets of cigarettes. And everywhere distorted bodies, dead faces of livid yellow pallor staring blank-eyed into the yellow fog. Here and there a feeble movement caught a stretcher-bearer’s eye and another man was rescued before the fog began to thin and the German guns thundered out in anticipation of another attack.
L/cpl E. Hall.
For two days I carried the stretcher without a rest until at last I collapsed under the strain and had to rest for a few hours. How many men I carried I do not know, and the last few hours seemed like a dream, broken with the cries of the wounded.
My clothes were saturated with the blood of the men I bandaged and carried, and when I was finally relieved, I had to get a new suit from the quartermaster’s stores.
L/cpl W. Andrews.
I was stationed with my section to guard a pump at a brewery on the edge of Neuve Chapelle, and right beside it there was a notice-board still standing with just one word on it. It said ‘DANGER’. Nicholson laughed and laughed as if it was the greatest joke of the war! He couldn’t stop laughing. I was too tired to laugh. By that time I was absolutely stupid with fatigue and cold and the strain of it all.
Not all the troops had been relieved and those who were forced to remain until nightfall in the trenches passed a long and gruelling day under bombardments that were heavier than ever. They were not aware that the offensive was at an end and the enemy, no wiser than they were themselves, and still fearful of a new attack, pounded the British lines all day long. The British guns were firing back and the troops were kept on the alert, for it was perfectly possible that each German bombardment might mean a German counter-attack.
Already Sir Douglas Haig was in conference with his staff and his Corps Commanders outlining his plans for the next stage of the offensive. Now that they had lost the advantage of surprise it would be pointless to continue