A Greater Danger To Our Friends Than The Enemy!

Altogether, during the period I acted as gun-layer on the Western Front, I fired some 20,000 shells into the enemy lines.

I am not so naive as to imagine that all this weight of high explosive could have burst on the front line trenches without killing or maiming quite a number of youngsters of my own age and the sombre thought often weighs on my conscience, even today.

Yet, during the whole period, I was only involved in one personal incident (concerning which I prefer not to speak), in which I knew I had actually inflicted bodily harm, perhaps killed, a human being, and he was a man old enough to be my father.

He emerged from a shell-hole, probably with the intention of surrendering, but how was I to know that?

SOUVENIRS

Of course, I did not escape scot-free myself, I still carry the scar of a bullet wound in my left arm, the marks of half a dozen shell splinters in my right leg, a slight dose of phosgene gas at Passchendaele[1] left me subject to severe gastric attacks and I am permanently deaf in my left ear owing to the concussion of incessant gun-fire.

Curiously enough, it was the ear farthest away from the gun that felt the violence of the impact; almost as if one received a terrific blow on that side of the head every time the piece fired.

On first going into action we had been issued with rubber ear-plugs, but these were quickly lost or discarded. In turning out to support an infantry SOS call, one had other things than ear-plugs to think about.

Everything considered, however, I think I was extremely lucky and I often used to recall with a wry smile the words of the old sweat with one arm who greeted me at the Blackburn Artillery barracks:

“Ay, son thee take a good look at that. Afore tha’s finished, tha’ll think aw’m dommed lucky.”

He could have been so right.

ESCAPES

Actually, I consider that there were three different occasions when I ought to have been killed but just wasn’t through some inscrutable quirk of providence.

Once when my gun sustained a direct hit and the blast blew me clean out of the gun-pit; once when I was sitting target for a line of advancing German shock troops and once when a 15 in. shell buried itself in the ground under my feet and failed to explode.

Yes, I think I have been “dommed lucky” myself. I have had a shell-splinter deflected by a bunch of keys in my pocket; I have had my box respirator carried away by another and the front of my tunic slashed open by yet a third; I have had the heel of my boot cut away with a fragment of shell case and my tin hat dented by a huge piece of falling debris and here I am to tell the tale nigh fifty years later.

“Dommed lucky.” I’ll say I was.

INCESSANT

Many of the 20,000 rounds I lobbed across No-Man’s Land were expended while we were on the Nieuport front. What with the incessant shell-storms, when we blazed away as fast as we could load, fire, and eject the empty cartridge cases, and the nightly SOS rockets, blazing eerily, red over green over yellow, all along the tortured front line, our lives seemed spent in one constant reverberation of ear-splitting sound; no wonder I have had a permanent singing in my ears ever since.

To add to our tribulations, about this time we began to receive a lot of defective American ammunition, chiefly shrapnel.

In point of fact, shrapnel was very little use in the eternal mud of Flanders, or anywhere else for that matter.

Trench warfare required high explosive and plenty of it and spraying the enemy lines with shrapnel bullets was about as effective as flinging a handful of peas.

Actually, I believe it was Lord Kitchener who insisted on the artillery carrying 50 per cent of shrapnel. He was still living in the days of the Boer War.

The only time such shells became effective was when the Bosche delivered a mass attack in close formation and that was only in the very early stages of the war.

UNPOPULAR

But defective shrapnel ammunition could be the very devil. Each shell contained 190 lead pellets as big as marbles, detonated by a time fuse at the base, the idea being to set it so that it burst just over the heads of attacking troops.

But these infernal Yankee efforts, as often as not, burst as soon as they left the gun muzzle and sprayed the ground in front with a barrage of lead. And as at Nieuport there was another RFA battery immediately in front of us, we soon became exceedingly unpopular.

In fact, the battery commander insisted, with some feeling, that his men were in greater danger from us than from the enemy, a fact we could well appreciate.

And when one of his gunners, hit in the knee by a stray shrapnel bullet, insisted on the stretcher-bearers carrying him to our position, so that he could shake hands with the man who had given him such a comfortable “blighty”, it was obvious something would have to be done about it.

PAINFUL DUTY

We had just been issued with some patent night-lights which worked from a dry battery in the gun pit and which had to be connected every night with a long length of wire.

This was continually being cut by splinters and it was my painful duty, as gun-layer, to crawl out and repair it, often when the battery was blazing away upon some SOS line.

I have spent more than one blasphemous half-hour groping in the dark after loose ends of wire, with one ear cocked for the curious whine of a premature, which would have meant for me a sudden and sticky end, for our aiming posts to which the lights were fixed were immediately in front of the gun muzzles.

HEROES WHO BLAZED THE TRAIL FOR ‘THE FEW’

It seems likely that the arrival of British troops on the Nieuport front and particularly the 66th Division’s take-over from the French and Belgian forces on this sector was regarded by the Bosche as the preliminary to an attack across the flooded Yser river.

No doubt his suspicions were intensified by certain mysterious manoœuvres on the part of the 4th East Lancashires, who were brigaded with the division.

For some obscure reason they were placed under the orders of the Royal Engineers, ostensibly to construct a pontoon bridge over the Yser Canal. They also spent one memorable night under heavy fire, crossing its inky waters in a number of curious coracles known as Berthon Boats.

These monstrosities, as soon as they had been loaded with equipment, invariably capsized, precipitating their cursing occupants into the icy depths.

It was all very frustrating and only made sense to the brass-hats at GHQ, for the projected attack was never launched.

AERIAL DOG FIGHTS

But in consequence there was a sudden outbreak of activity behind the German lines, both on the ground and in the air, where both aides fought desperately to obtain the mastery.

Almost every morning, as we stood-to, we could see, outlined against the roseate flush of dawn, a dozen fighter planes engaged in a bitter dog-fight.

How we admired the courage of our gallant airmen in their rickety little machines, some little larger than kites.

These feeble bi-planes and tri-planes from both sides of the line – SPAD, Nieuport, Albatros, Sopwith and Fokker Fighters represented the eyes of the opposed forces and it was essential to the other side that they should be destroyed.

Sometimes whole squadrons would become locked in combat: on one occasion the famous German “ace” Richthoven swept across our front with his notorious “flying circus,” all painted a sinister red, inviting our own airmen to a “free-for-all”, of which they were quick to avail themselves.

The result was a sight for the gods; I have never seen such aerobatics either before or since.

Backward and forward loops, the “falling leaf”, the spin, the upward and downward dives; nothing carne amiss; all seemed to be inspired with a sheer contempt for death, and all the while their frenzied activities were punctuated by the staccato rattle of machine-guns.

I have seen as many as four hurtling down in flames together; I have seen one plane deliberately ram another, so that the two fell to earth together with wings inter-locked, and I have seen men, their clothes ignited by burning petrol, leap from the wrecked machines and crash to the ground like blazing torches.

Make no mistake about it, those early Royal Flying Corps men were worthy of the high tradition that led to our victory in the Battle of Britain of the Second World War. In such bitter fighting as this they set the pattern for a succeeding generation.

[1] The Battle of Passchendaele was one of the major battles of the First World War, taking place between July and November 1917. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele

Blasphemous Hours

We were due for relief a few days later and the incoming battery staff were by no means pleased to see the pockmarks or so many shell holes round the position. In fact, I believe they shifted soon after.

One of the trees behind the cookhouse had been cut in half by a 5·9 dud, and we spent some blasphemous hours after dark trying to pull the remains down with drag-ropes.

Here is a final snapshot, relating to a spy scare. These were endemic on this front and a farmer had only to plough with a white horse one day and a black one the next, to be suspected of conveying information to the enemy.

In our case the major spotted a mysterious light shining (contrary to regulations) directly towards the German trenches from somewhere in the back area.

Clearly a signal to the enemy! One of our gunnery lieutenants fixed its position by means of a No.4 director and with the coming of daylight tracked the culprit down.

It was the brigade major at H.Q. who had omitted to draw the orderly-room blind.

BRIEF LEAVE, THEN BACK TO THE LICE AND HORROR

It was a relief to get out of the line and be back at rest for a few precious days and we made the most of it.

I took the opportunity to pay a hasty visit to the ancient town of Béthune, with its winding streets and curious Flemish-style houses, with their carved door-posts and ornate half-timbered upper storeys.

I also explored the lovely old church of St. Vaast[1] and gazed admiringly at the curious belfry in the market-square, with its square tower and wooden campanile, although both were looking somewhat dilapidated, as the town was within range of the enemy’s long-distance guns.

Here I had quite a shopping spree, purchasing innumerable souvenirs, crucifixes made of brass cartridge cases, lucky charms and the like, all of which fell into the German hands at St. Quentin within a twelve-month.

I also indulged in the inevitable orgy of eggs and chips, washed down with black coffee, with a chaser of Grenadine to wash away its vile taste, for it was composed of roasted acorns and sawdust.

LOUSY

Then back to the battery, thumbing a lift on a passing Army Service lorry and so to my snug little bivouac in the straw of an adjoining barn, infested with the lice of a thousand previous tenants.

Oh, those lice, it was simply impossible to get rid of them. According to an army legend, whenever we marched to a delousing station for a bath and a change of underclothing, the sagacious insects waited for us outside and rejoined the column when we emerged.

At one stage of the war we were issued with a nauseous compound which was reputed to be certain death to all creeping things, but it stank so ill that its use made one almost unable to live with oneself.

Actually, I think the lice rather liked it but I may be prejudiced.

INTENSE ACTIVITY

At the beginning of July the battery started its cross-country trek through the back areas to the Nieuport[2] sector, where a certain liveliness had been reported during the past few weeks.

Apparently we were relieving a Belgian Corps in anticipation of a Bosche attack, for there were rumours of Bosche concentrations across the Yser, which at this point formed a sort of liquid No-Man’s-Land.

We arrived at the outskirts of Furnes[3] in glorious summer weather and found everywhere signs of intense activity.

Guns of all calibres were discreetly hidden under camouflage in all sorts of unlikely places; they poked their grim muzzles from the shelter of every copse or sand dune, and there were ammunition dumps everywhere.

That same evening the right section moved into action, taking over from a Belgian detachment.

We found their pieces were so small that we were unable to get our guns inside the pits and so had to erect a temporary sandbag emplacement to protect us from splinters.

An English-speaking corporal warned us that it was not wise to fire more than a few ranging shots. Otherwise, he said ingenuously, the Bosche would be sure to retaliate. HOW RIGHT HE WAS!

Here we first heard rumours of a new phase of counter-battery work known as the shell-storm, although which side was the first to perpetrate the enormity I never learned.

It seemed to be confined to the Nieuport sector, and constituted the Bosche’s evening “hate”.

This is how it worked. Several times during each night every enemy gun on the front, whatever its calibre, would concentrate on a selected British battery and for a few hectic minutes would pour on the doomed position a veritable tornado of rapid fire.

DESOLATION

The effect had to be seen to be believed. In the twinkling of an eye the entire line of emplacements, with its guns, dug-outs, ammunition dumps and personnel, would be simply blotted out of existence.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the storm of high explosives, mixed with shrapnel, gas and incendiary shells, would cease.

Ensuing daylight would reveal a pitiful chaos of dismantled guns and exploded ammunition, with here and there a few grim shreds of mortality.

In due course, our own batteries would select a similar target behind the German lines, no doubt with the same result. “A” Battery took part in many of these episodes but was fortunate in escaping retaliation.

Others were not so lucky and I remember gazing horror-stricken at the remnants of one position out on the dunes that had simply been blasted out of the ground.

SOMETHING BREWING

In the meantime our first position was coming in for a lot of enemy attention and we were beginning to have casualties.

There was evidently something brewing and the infantry on either side seemed very nervous. It was a common thing to see SOS rockets going up all at once, both British and German from right along the line, until there was quite a fireworks display.

On the 17^th of July we stood by for two hours in expectation of a raid and then worked out a scheme of harassing fire to prevent the Hun massing for an attack.

We kept this up all night and apparently smashed up the raid, for a few days later we pulled out after nightfall in pitch darkness and through a barrage of splinters along the bank of the Yser canal.

CHOKING FUMES

We were heading for a new position on the extreme left flank among the sand dunes on the coast, and here we again found ourselves in trouble. The road by Maison Carré was being heavily shelled and we trotted past at half-minute intervals.

On our left flank, about a hundred yards away a huge ammunition dump had suffered a direct hit and was going up in smoke, the exploding shells whirring over our heads like monstrous fire-crackers. The air reeked with the fumes of burnt cordite and as we stumbled through the acrid fog we were almost choked.

To add to the confusion, a shell burst in front of the leading team, wounding two drivers and a soon after another detonated under the muzzle of my own gun, damaging the recoil slides, but this we did not find out until later, when we were firing our first ranging shot and the piece jammed at full recoil, necessitating a long and hazardous journey to the Ordnance repair depot.

However, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We reached our new position without further incident, ran our guns into the pits and collapsed thankfully for a few hours sleep before stand-to at daybreak.

DEATH STALKS ON A LOVELY SUMMER’S DAY

Our new battery position was on a deceptively peaceful little oasis of greenery skirting the coastal sand-dunes a little north of Ooste Dunkerque.

Beyond a few small shell-holes which pitted the sward in our immediate vicinity there was little sign of enemy activity, and in the glorious summer weather we began to look forward to another artillery idyll such as we had enjoyed at La Bassée.

We ought to have known better. A glance at the belt of sand between ourselves and the grey, foam-capped waters of the Channel might have given us sufficient warning, for it was stained and scorched by the incessant bursting of H.E., gas and incendiary shells. And one could not pick up a handful of its gritty particles without finding a shell splinter amongst the pebbles.

Still, it was pleasant to look seaward, where one could often make out a long, black line of a convoy escorted by a couple of fussy destroyers, for all the world like a flock of sheep being chivvied by a pair of sheep dogs.

Somehow they seemed an impalpable link with the white cliffs of Dover, just over the edge of the horizon.

NIGHT AND DAY

Our first intimation that all was not as it might be came when we were visited by the colonel, who brought urgent orders that we were to reinforce and strengthen the position with the utmost speed, working night and day.

From what we could make out, there was no proper trench system in front of us; only a few scattered redoubts and machine-gun posts on the edge of the River Yser.

In fact, we were so close to the line that we could hear an occasional spent bullet whimpering past our ears.

Then, to add to our tribulations, we were spotted by a raiding Fokker fighter and thereafter sprayed with 5·9s and whizzbangs at unexpected intervals both night and day.

Those whizzbangs were the very devil, for they swooped upon one without the slightest warning, like a cloud of demented hornets, deluging the entire area with a rain of red-hot splinters.

I remember an occasion when one burst between two gunners of “B” sub. just as they were bringing a dixie of bully-beef stew from the cook-house. As they had flung themselves upon their faces they were unhurt, but the dixie was riddled with holes and there was no stew for the detachment that day.

UNDERGROUND COOKS

The cook-house was located on the battery’s left flank, in a tiny copse we soon designated Whizzbang Wood, for the enemy gunners seemed to have a particular spite against it.

Here the cooks lived a haunted and troglodyte existence, burrowing ever deeper and deeper after each successive bombardment.

They could rarely be persuaded to emerge into the light of day (small blame to them for that) and by some sort of miracle managed to cook for the whole battery in a sort of burrow not much larger than a fox earth, some ten feet underground.

July 24th proved to be one of our worst days. Until then our casualties had been relatively light and infrequent but on this lovely summer day, while the entire battery was at work strengthening gun-pit walls and roofs, the Bosche suddenly began to sweep the whole position with whizzbangs, which had a calibre of 3·2 inches, about the same as our own 18 pounders.

One of these burst in the middle of a group of telephonists, who were erecting a control post.

“It mauled them all horribly (records the battery diary) and hardly one had less than half a dozen wounds. Holden and Bonnell killed and Berry died of wounds later. Isherwood (died), Bowler (died), Sgt. Gabbutt and Gnr. Mabbut severely wounded (the latter died). Bdr. Tennant and Gnrs. Corr and Taylor less severely wounded. Brown killed and Bdr. Morgan wounded on returning from taking the casualties to ADS[4]. A most unlucky day and it has tried the battery a good deal …”

GUN ACCOMPANIMENT

This stark and sombre incident brings yet another grim picture to my mind’s eye. This was the subsequent sad procession to the tiny military cemetery near Coxyde[5] …

It is sunset and the gathering shadows are accentuated by a boding glare in the western sky, heralding a coming storm.

A silent group of khaki-clad figures in steel helmets, with box respirators at the alert position, stand with bowed heads before a row of blanket-swathed bodies by the side of a shallow trench, one half of which has already been filled.

On the farther side of the trench stands a Church of England padre, prayer-book in hand, his words of valediction charged with emotion.

Sometimes the responses are drowned by the incessant thunder of the guns and an occasional heavy shell rumbles overhead, to burst with a thunderous roar somewhere in the back areas. Already the eastern horizon is being criss-crossed by the gleaming arcs of the Verey lights and the staccato challenge of opposing machine-guns reverberates across No-Man’s-Land.

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the souls of our dear brethren here departed … earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”

A PART OF HISTORY

The last solemn words are uttered, the silent figures laid reverently side by aide in the trench are sprinkled with a few handfuls of Flanders soil and all is over.

The comrades, with whom only a few hours before we had exchanged jests and good-humoured badinage, have been committed to their last resting-place and have become part of history, part of the eternal tragedy of youth’s idealism sacrificed at the altar of racial and political hatred.

COXYDE MILITARY CEMETARY

[1] The 1547 church was destroyed in WW I and rebuilt 1924-7 in neo-Byzantine style (cf. Westminster Cathedral) http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89glise_Saint-Vaast_de_B%C3%A9thune

[2] Nieuport (Nieuwpoort) is in Belgian Flanders, where the river Yser flows into the North Sea

[3] Furnes (Veurne) is a small town 5 miles from Nieuport. It was the headquarters of King Albert and his staff.

[4] Advanced Dressing Station

[5] Coxyde (Koksijde) http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery=8600&mode=1

Last Scramble

Spoil Bank, and here we pause a moment to regain our breath and prepare for the last mad scramble for the subterranean safety of the half -finished sap.

We listened grimly as a spray of machine-gun bullets comes whining through the blackness and patters against the sand-bagged revetment. Then, as the burst ceases I lick my lips.

“Come on, lads,” and away we go, bent two-double and feeling that every German spotter in the entire sector has his eye on us. We tumble head-over-heels into the sap just as a 4·5 inch section salvo explodes overhead with a terrific “crump”, showering us with fragments of broken brick and debris. WE HAD MADE IT.

The sap is a sort of miniature tunnel some 3 feet wide by 4 feet high, its sides and roof shored up with props and short lengths of planking.

The leading man crawls forward to the working face and begins to scratch at the sandy soil with his entrenching tool. The soil is shovelled into an empty sandbag which, when full, is passed between his legs to the next in line and so in relays to the entrance, where it is used to augment the parapet of the ruined trench.

Occasionally the man in front is relieved and the human chain shuffles forward a few feet, while the relieved toiler squeezes his way backwards to the tail of the procession.

At 4 a.m. a halt is called. We must get back to Orchard Road before daybreak, when the infantry stand-to. So there is a second hasty evacuation, this time accelerated by a staccato burst from a sniper’s post in the enemy front line.

When we emerge, still unscathed, into the comparative safety of Orchard Road, I find a neat round hole drilled through my entrenching tool, just a souvenir from the Bosche.

The subsequent history of this forward observation post was one of disaster. While ranging on the German front line, with a safety margin of barely fifty yards, the F.O.O. almost succeeded in annihilating himself and his own battery. A little later an observer must have spotted the sunlight glinting on the lens of his periscope, for Jerry began to beat a devil’s tattoo about their ears with trench-mortar bombs, wrecking their observation post and sending them scurrying to safety, fortunately with no casualties.

SPORADIC SHELLING – AND WE TRACK DOWN A ‘SPY’

Early in the morning of May 1st the Bosche started shelling our advanced section and kept it up steadily until the afternoon, the detachments being ordered to withdraw to the canal bank. The enemy fire appeared to be directed by a plane which passed repeatedly overhead.

Soon fires were blazing merrily in both gun-pits, number 5 having most of its ammunition exploded. The gun was badly damaged and presented a sorry sight, with the whole badly charred and the handspike burnt off.

This episode proved to be the first of many. Obviously our sand-bagging and realigning activities had not gone unobserved.

For some time, however, Jerry contented himself with a few bracketing shots on both the main battery position and the section for registration purposes.

Then, on June 20^th he again shelled the section, dropping an assortment of about 100 5·9s and 4·2s.

Our heavies retaliated and seemed to be successful in stopping them temporarily, but they always seemed to start again as soon as the gunners ventured back.

Finally the spotting plane was driven off by two of our Sopwith fighters and after that all was peace, at least for the rest of the day.

BOSCHE RAID

On the following morning it was the battery’s turn, although the Bosche appeared to be firing without observation, for all he succeeded in doing was to demolish a couple of trees just behind the position.

Two days later both battery and section were shelled, observation being apparently from a balloon, but again there were no casualties and little damage.

All this artillery activity coincided with a certain liveliness in the trenches and on June 25^th, after a tremendous barrage of “minnies” in the Givenchy sector, the Bosche raided and occupied Red Dragon crater. There was sporadic shelling of the battery and gunner Hanmer was wounded.

By way of finale, on the 28^th Bosche started shelling the battery in real earnest, thereby postponing a visit of inspection by the C.R.A., who, seeing that the battery was apparently going up in smoke, wisely decided that there were other positions healthier and less preoccupied in the area.

According to the battery diary, “the detachments cleared to the right, where they spent an enjoyable day, chiefly in slumber.”

TREETOP EYRIE

I have in my possession, however, a worn and tattered field service notebook which gives the lie to this assertion, as least so far as I was concerned.

As a matter of fact, having removed dial sight, telescope sight and rocking bar sight from my own gun and seen that No. 2 had dismantled and removed the breach-block, I spent the rest of the day perched on the branch of a tree on the right flank, from which point of vantage I had a clear view of the position and could record the effect of every round.

Each burst was duly jotted down in my notebook and also passed on to a signaller located at the foot of the tree, who in turn phoned the information through to the battery office.

Altogether I recorded 122 rounds all bursting within a plus minus bracket of 200 yards, with eleven direct hits and only a very small percentage of “duds”.

Pretty shooting, when one considers that it was probably at a range of three or four miles!

I could have stayed in my eyrie longer but at that moment a shell splinter came whining through the air and embedded itself in the branch a few inches from where I was sitting and I decided to accept the hint. After all, I was not up there under orders and I had no wish for a posthumous decoration.

MY “RUBAIYAT”

Perhaps my sentiments were best expressed in a poem I wrote during the subsequent Passchendaele offensive, which I entitled: “Rubaiyat of Corporal Miller”. Here is a brief extract:

At times I like to think it’s all a joke.

Not that its laughter makes you want to choke;

A week or two at most you keep a pal,

Then Bang … the poor devil’s gone in smoke.

You mustn’t worry when you see him fall,

Most likely it’s his fault for being tall,

Just recollect you’ve got it coming, too

And that’ll be the biggest joke of all.

He’s gone the road so many men have trod,

He’s dead, and just another useless clod,

So square your back, and when it comes your turn

Take it and say: “Well, that’s the lot, thank God.”

And some day, when the muster roll is read

If you don’t answer, being likely dead;

They’ll send your old tin hat down to the base

And maybe fill it with a thicker head.