Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
FLEURBAIX
19th July 1916
There is a holy place by a little stream, a marsh between the-orchards near Fromelles. This is its story.
From 10th to 17th of July the Black and Purple Battalions held the line. On the night of the 12th there was an alarm — the S.O.S. (two red stars hovering in the night) —, barrages, counter-barrages. There were raids and violent shelling. There was the frightful chaos of minenwerfers (trench mortars), shaking the ground into waves, trailing lines of sparks criss-crossed on the gloom, swerving just before they fell, confounding, dreadful, abhorred far more than shells, killing by their very concussion, destroying all within many yards. The enemy knew that a division fresh to the Western Front was in the line. He was bent on breaking its spirit. How little he succeeded, those battered breastworks and the little marsh bear witness.
No man's land, on the front occupied by the 15th Brigade, was a double curve like the letter S. It was from five to seven hundred yards wide, narrowing on the left to two or three hundred, where the 8th and 14th Brigades were placed. At the wide end it was split lengthwise by a little stream, which wandered at last beneath our parapet by Pinney Avenue, where the tunnellers worked.
By the stream the ground was marshy but not impassable, for it was mid-summer. On either side, the British and the German lines fronted each other on low opposing slopes, rising in tiers — front line, supports, close reserves, reserves. Owing to the wet, low-lying nature of the ground there were no trenches, but solid breastworks of beaten sandbags reveted with iron and timber, fortified with concrete slabs or 'bursters'. These were from twenty to thirty feet thick, and seven to ten feet high. There was no parados (rear wall of a trench). A fire step was in every bay and a sandbag blockhouse used as a dugout.
Two miles behind our line was the village of Fleurbaix, occupied by civilians. Further back was the town of Sailly-sur-la-Lys. On the right, as one faced the front, was Laventie. Behind the German line was a large and lonely farm, and Fromelles, on a high ridge, where French and Indian cavalry fought in 1914. There was also that rising ground on the right named Sugarloaf. The graves of Englishmen lay everywhere; the dates on the little crosses had almost faded since 'December, 1914', 'February', 'May', 'October, 1915'. Most of the graves were nameless.
For several days trench stores, materials for the attack, picks, shovels, light bridges for the creek and scaling ladders were carried through the saps.
Through Brompton, Exeter, V.C., Pinneys and Mine Avenues they were carried by day — and held high. One could look into the white German communication saps meandering over the hillside. The Germans could look into ours.
The attack was to be made on the 17th. The objective was the German second line. The strategic reason was provided by the presence of a number of Prussian Guards divisions about to entrain from Lille to the Somme, and by the imminence of the important battle of Pozières. The British Army was numerically much weaker than the German, and subterfuges and diversions were necessary.
All this was known to pseudo-refugees, to spies, in the villages behind. Enemy airmen observed the white and coloured cloths spread in order and in designs in fields, like washing left to dry, according to the custom of the blanchisseuses (washer-women) of Flanders. Fields were ploughed lengthwise, crosswise and diagonally. White horses were depastured in particular fields. Even the genuine inhabitants knew far more about the attack than we. The Germans were in possession of a copy of operation orders before our battalion commanders had received them. And in those days information was not freely communicated to junior officers and the rank and file, as was afterwards the custom.
On the 17th July, within five minutes of zero time, the attack was countermanded.
On the 18th, the 59th and 60th took over the sector. The 57th were withdrawn to sleep for the night. We lay in a mill on the outskirts of Sailly, on the Sailly road. Sleep was sweet — for thousands it was their second last. Nevertheless, we neither knew nor cared what the morrow might bring. One accepts the immediate present, in the army. We woke with the birds, reminded of friendly magpies in the morning back in Australia. Here were only twitterings under the eaves, but at least it was a cheerful sound, pleasant on a lazy summer morning when the ripening corn was splashed with poppies, and the clover was pink, and the cornflowers blue under the hedges.
In Sailly, in the morning, we listened to the chatter in the estaminets (cafes). At the mill, old women and very small girls were selling gingerbread and sweets with cognac in them, sitting on stools, gossiping among themselves.
At midday we were told.
Usual preliminaries were gone through. Operation orders (including some indifferent prophesying) were explained, or as much of them as was thought fit. Rations and ammunition were issued.
At a quarter to two we moved off. Shelling commenced. These were the days of long and casual bombardments. Labourers were hoeing in the mangold fields. Stooping men and women watched us pass, without ceasing their work. It may have been courage, or stolidity, or the numbness of the peasant bound to the soil, or else necessity, that held the sad tenacious people here in such an hour of portent. Their old faces were inscrutable. They tilled the fields on the edge of the flames, under the arching trajectory of shells.
Bees hummed in the clear and drowsy sunshine. There was little smoke about the cottages, where the creepers were green. The road curved between grass which was like two green waves poised on either side.
We battalions came to the four crossroads where there were trenches in the corn, by a crucifix of wood in a damaged brick shrine. There was much gunfire. We waited.
Late in the afternoon we were ordered forward. From his crucifix the Man of Sorrows watched our going. One wondered if His mild look was bent especially on those marked for death that day. We left the road at an old orchard, and entered a sap (connecting trench). We passed V.C. House and wound down V.C. Avenue. Shells fell rapidly.
A bald man with a red moustache lay on a board, very still, his face to the wall. The sap was littered with rubbish, splintered wood and iron poking from the heaps of burnt earth. Here and there the sap was completely blown in. Then there were more dead. Further on, it was no sap, but a line of rubble heaps. We came to the Three-Hundred-Yard line. Then, issuing from a sally port, we dashed through the shrapnel barrage in artillery formation, and reached the front line. Again we waited.
A sad-faced man, sitting beside a body, said, 'Sniper — my brother — keep under the parapet.' Here the line was enfiladed (shot at) from the left flank where it curved.
The 59th and 60th were in the line. They knew their orders by heart. They were to wave their bayonets and cheer, then remain quiet. Three times this would be done. It was a bluff. They would not go over.
When this had been done once, the order to attack ran from mouth to mouth. 'Over the bags in five minutes — over the bags in five minutes'; so it passed along. Then, 'Over you go.'
The 60th climbed on the parapet, heavily laden, dragging with them scaling ladders, light bridges, picks, shovels, and bags of bombs. There was wire to go through, and sinking ground; a creek to cross, more marsh and wire; then the German line.
Scores of stammering German machine-guns spluttered violently, drowning the noise of the cannonade. The air was thick with bullets, swishing in a flat lattice of death. There were gaps in the lines of men — wide ones, small ones. The survivors spread across the front, keeping the line straight. There was no hesitation, no recoil, no dropping of the unwounded into shellholes. The bullets skimmed low, from knee to groin, riddling the tumbling bodies before they touched the ground. Still the line kept on.
Hundreds were mown down in the flicker of an eyelid, like great rows of teeth knocked from a comb, but still the line went on, thinning and stretching. Wounded wriggled into shell holes or were hit again. Men were cut in two by streams of bullets. And still the line went on.
The 59th were watching from the breastwork.
Here one man alone, there two or three, walked unhurrying, with the mien of kings, rifles at the high port and tipped with that foot of steel which carries the spirit of an army — heads high, that few, to meet the death they scorned. No fury of battle but a determined calm bore them forward. Theirs was an unquestioning self-sacrifice that held back nothing. They died, all but one or two who walked through the fire by a miracle. A few had fallen behind in the marsh, exhausted by the weight they carried. Some had fallen in the creek, and under their heavy equipment could not mount the slippery banks. There were also some slightly wounded.
Fifty-six remained of a full thousand. It was over in five minutes.
And then the 59th rose, vengeful, with a shout — a thousand as one man. The chattering, metallic staccato of the tempest of hell burst in nickelled gusts. Sheaves and streams of bullets swept like whirling knives. There were many corpses hung inert on our wire, but the 59th surged forward, now in silence, more steadily, more precise than on parade. A few yards and there were but two hundred marching on. The rest lay in heaps and bloody swathes. They began firing at the German line as they advanced. Lewis gunners dropped into shell holes and fired burst after burst, dashing from cover to cover.
A hundred men broke into a wild but futile charge, determined to strike, if possible, one blow, but enemies pressed their red-hot thumbpieces with blistered fingers, spraying death from the tortured muzzles. That hundred lay flat in the attitudes of sleep.
It grew quiet again. A few wounded crawled in the grass, sniped at by riflemen. Then there was silence. Eighty came back that night.
Two companies from the 58th rose from the breastwork — the remainder were elsewhere carrying ammunition — and advanced by rushes, with covering fire. In banks of battle reek the sun went down, as red as blood.
As darkness drew on, the 57th went forward, but most were recalled almost before they left, for there was nothing to be gained by further loss of life. A few reached the creek.
It was the Charge of the Light Brigade once more, but more terrible, more hopeless — magnificent, but not war — a valley of death filled by somebody's blunder, or the horrid necessities of war.
The handful in our trenches stood to arms all night, because the line was now dangerously weak, for there were no supports and no reserves, and many enemy élite forces were in front.
The bays and traverses were jammed with dead and wounded lying head to foot for two miles, in a treble row, on the fire steps, beneath them, and behind the blockhouses. Wounded came crawling in, rolling over the parapet and sprawling to the bottom. A white-faced boy, naked to the waist, was being led along the trench, a hole in his side. He cracked some joke, then, 'I think I'll spell a minute; it's all going dark.' He sat down. An hour later someone shook him, but he was stiff and cold.
A barrage chopped and pounded on the crammed line. The blockhouses were packed with dying men. Men shot through the stomach screamed for water. In mercy it was denied them. Some pleaded to be shot. High explosive crumped in the line; shrapnel crashed in the air.
Out in front wounded were firing in a careless passion of rage, blazing at the inexorable parapet. This was stopped by a flurry of enemy fire. The interminable hours wore on. It was a night of horror and doubt. Parties went forth to rescue the wounded and to find whether any Australians were in the German trenches. Many more were hit. Wounded were calling for their mates. There was a pause in the shelling. One in delirium was singing a marching song far out in front —
'My mother told me That she would buy me A rubber dollie,
On the left bombing was occurring. We heard the fragments wailing like Banshees in the air, and listened, thinking it was the cry of the wounded. A machine-gun rattled somewhere, and suddenly stopped —
'But when I told her I loved a soldier, —'
There was another burst of fire and the singing ceased.
Someone cried continually, 'Bill, Bill,' all that night, but Bill did not answer. Between the salvos of shells we heard him again and again till dawn. Then that voice also was stilled.
A few of the 57th and 58th were engaged in rushing ammunition to the front line. All the rest were bringing in wounded. By dawn, in spite of strenuous labours, only half the wounded and a few of the dead had been brought in. For five nights this work was unremitting. Parties went out under fire in broad daylight. Some of the wounded were never found. A few crawled in three weeks later, with shattered limbs and maggoty wounds. They had hidden from our parties, fearful lest they might be Huns, swooning often, uncertain which was our trench and which the German, drinking putrid shellhole water, foraging by night for food among the dead, lying low by day.
All night the 8th and 14th Brigades were fighting for their lives, almost surrounded, up to their breasts in the water with which the enemy had flooded their trench. In the morning they extricated themselves with immense difficulty and heavy loss, and withdrew through saps rushed forward from our line by the Fifth Pioneers. The next night some, after wandering lost in enemy country, returned by immense good luck and after astounding adventures.
For three days hundreds of wounded lay uncomplaining in their torment, in our line. The survivors were few by comparison with the dead. It was an hour's hard work for four men to carry one to safety. All joined in the task. The very safety of the line was imperilled by the number of men engaged in this merciful duty. We carried till the mind refused its task and limbs sagged, and always there were hundreds for whom each minute decreased the chances of life. Release came to very many of the stricken. We left the hopeless cases undisturbed for the sake of those whom the surgeons could save.
For days an officer, blind and demented, wandered near the German lines, never fired on, but used as a decoy to attract his friends to their death. These were shot while attempting to reach him. He wandered up and down the line till he died, avoiding friend and foe alike.
This charge received a recognition from the enemy which reasons of state denied from our own side. A noble act here lights up the murky record of the German army. Two gallant enemies carried a wounded Australian to our parapet, stood at the salute, then turned and walked away. They unfortunately neglected to secure a safe conduct, and were shot, to the sincere regret of every Australian there, by someone in the next bay, who, owing to the shape of the line and the direction they had come, was in ignorance of their errand.
The remnants of the 57th and 58th held the front line system for a further fifty days, making fifty-nine in all, without relief.
And the sandbags were splashed with red, and red were the firesteps, the duckboards, the bays. And the stench of stagnant pools of the blood of heroes is in our nostrils even now.
CHAPTER 2
MUD
October to December 1916
We came to Montauban. There was accommodation for about a hundred men in tents, but there was running water on the earthern floors. Seven hundred men shovelled the mud away and slept in the open. That night winter set in with bitterly cold rains.
Two months before, Montauban had been a battlefield. Where there had been a village, the searcher might find a few bricks, but these soon sank in the morass. The ground, apparently solid, was crumbly beneath the surface, as always where the iron storms have played. It was, therefore, easily churned to mud by the feet of men and mules and by wheels. The very metal of the roads was pressed below that deep engulfing tide. Owing to this, and to the congestion of the traffic, two-muled limbers (detachable front sections of gun carriages) were seven hours on the road from Mametz, three miles behind. Down Sausage Gully, up the farther side and over the hill by Bazentin we slipped and slid. We entered a waterlogged sap where one or two duckboards (planks laid over mud) were uselessly floating. Then there were no more duckboards but mire, to the thighs at best, to the middle at worst. There men were caught as in a vice. There were wires in which one's equipment caught fast. They wound about the sights of one's rifle, pulling its strap from one's shoulder, so that it fell in the ooze which covered the gripping clay, as one battled with one's legs. There were occasional bodies underneath, possibly of some lonely nightfarer who had been wounded and had struggled till he sank or, unconscious, was suffocated without a struggle, the manner of his end a secret of the bog. The effort of lifting one's rear leg clear, then pushing it forward, drove the other into deeper, more tenacious clay.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "To the Last Ridge"
by .
Copyright © 1998 William Downing.
Excerpted by permission of Grub Street.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
![There's A Devil In The Drum [Illustrated Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/9781786255839_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "There's A Devil In The Drum [Illustrated Edition]")
