To End All Wars_ A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 - Adam Hochschild [94]
When September 25, the day for the attack, dawned, Haig ordered the gas released. The wind, however, was very slight. In some places the gas made it to the German lines, where soldiers had already donned their masks. In others, it drifted into no man's land and stayed there—which meant that British troops had to attack through it as they tried to pierce what, in some places, were seven to ten rows of German barbed wire. In a few spots, the breeze blew the gas back into the British trenches. All told, the British suffered more casualties from their own gas than the Germans. The surprise gas release was supposed to substitute for a massive artillery bombardment, which would have signaled an attack was imminent, and in any case, shells were still in short supply. But neither Haig nor French seems to have given much thought to one crucial fact: gas does not cut barbed wire.
The British forces far outnumbered the Germans, and, almost miraculously, in one spot a division did break open a three-quarter-mile gap in the German first and second trench lines. How to exploit this opportunity? Although French had plenty of infantry in reserve, he had erred badly in stationing them too far from the front, having forgotten that what appeared on a map as a quick few hours' march could take several times that long when troops had to funnel single file along narrow country roads clogged with ambulance wagons of wounded men heading in the other direction, and then through narrower, winding communication trenches and a ragged morass of shell holes, all under a torrential rain.
By the time his two reserve divisions arrived at their attacking positions after an exhausting all-night march, the gap had closed and the Germans had moved up their own reserves. British and German corpses and body parts from the first day's fighting littered the ground and the air was rank with the smell of death. It was then, on the second day of the battle, that Haig ordered the fateful advance by the two weary, inexperienced reserve divisions directly against hilltop German machine guns and uncut barbed wire. This was the sight, and the slaughter, that German officers observed with such amazement.
To Captain Graham Pole of the Northumberland Fusiliers, one of the advancing units, his commander dispatched this message: "The C.O. wishes the attack to be carried out with bayonets in the true Northumbrian fashion." How did it feel to be one of the men in this doomed attack? Private Harry Fellows, who had been ordered to carry the message to Captain Pole, remembered:
The whole slope in front of me and as far away to the left as one could see was crowded with cheering men moving forward as fast as they could. And still the enemy had not fired a shot....
The leading men would have been about 100 yards from the German wire ... when all hell was let loose. As if from some predetermined signal the enemy machine guns opened up with a murderous fire, both from the front and enfilading fire [i.e., from the sides] from some buildings which had been out of sight behind some trees. Men began to stumble and fall, then to go down like standing corn before a scythe. The cap from the head of the lad in front of me flew from his head and he fell—I stumbled over him—and even to this day I feel no shame when I say that I stayed where I was: my face buried in the grass, and never had the good earth smelled so sweet.... The firing seemed to go on for hours. I afterwards learned that it was not even ten minutes. Bullets were cracking overhead and then it ceased...
After a few more minutes I rose to my knees and should I live to be a hundred I shall never forget the sight that met my eyes. The whole slope was one mass of prone figures; some even lying on top of one another....