We had observed movement for some time past on our left in the Vraucourt line. Now we saw straight in front of us the curved flight and the white bursts of German stick-bombs. This was the moment we waited for.
I gave the word to advance. We reached the enemy line without encountering much fire, and jumped in, eagerly welcomed by a storm troop of the 76th Regiment. Headway was slowly made bombing along the trench, as at Cambrai. The enemy artillery soon found out, unfortunately, that we were obstinately eating into their lines. We were pretty sharply shelled with shrapnel and light shells, but the reserves who were streaming up to the trench over the open caught the worst of it. We did our utmost to clear the trench of the enemy so that we could take cover from the artillery fire.
The Vraucourt line was still in course of digging, and many stretches of it were only marked out by the removal of the turf. When we rushed these pieces, we had all the fire in the neighbourhood concentrated on us. In the same way we had the enemy under our fire when they crossed these spots as they gave way before us, so that these short stretches of ground were soon heaped with corpses. It was a nerve-scourging spot. We dashed over the still warm muscular bodies, displaying powerful knees below their kilts, or crept on over them. They were Highlanders, and the resistance we were meeting showed that we had no cowards in front of us.
After we had gained a few hundred metres in this fashion we were brought to a halt by the bombs and rifle-grenades that fell more and more thickly. The men began to give way.
“Tommy’s counterattacking!”
“Bliew stahn!”
“I’ll just see that we’re in touch.”
“Bombs forward! Bombs forward!”
“Look out, sir!”
It is just in trench fighting, the fiercest fighting of all, that such recoils are most frequent. The bravest push to the front shooting and bomb-throwing. The rest follow on their heels automatically, in a herd. In the hand-to-hand battle the fighters jump back and forward, and in avoiding the murderous bombs of the enemy they run back on those behind them. Only those in the forefront know what the situation is, while further back a wild panic breaks out in the crowded trench. Perhaps a few even jump over the top and get shot, whereat the enemy of course are much encouraged. Indeed, if they seize their opportunity all is lost; and it is now for the officer to show that he is worth his salt, though he too may have the wind up.
I succeeded in getting together a handful of men, and with them I organized a nucleus of resistance behind a broad traverse. We exchanged missiles with an invisible opponent at a few metres’ distance. It took some courage to hold your head up when they burst and whipped up the heaped soil of the traverse. A man of the 76th, close to me, shot off cartridge after cartridge, looking perfectly wild and without a thought of cover, till he collapsed in streams of blood. A shot had smashed his forehead with a report like a breaking board. He doubled up in his corner of the trench, and there he remained in a crouching attitude, his head leaning against the side. His blood poured on to the ground as though poured out of a bucket. The snorting death-rattles sounded at longer intervals and at last ceased. I seized his rifle and went on firing. At last there was a brief pause. Two men who were in front even of us made an attempt to dash back over the top. One fell into the trench shot through the head. The other, shot through the body, could only creep after him.
We sat in the bottom of the trench and waited and smoked English cigarettes. Now and then a well-aimed rifle-grenade came arrowing over. The man shot in the belly was a young lad, and he lay between us and almost contentedly stretched himself like a cat in the warm rays of the setting sun. He slipped over to death smiling like a child.
It was a sight that had nothing sad or painful in it. I was touched by nothing but a clear feeling of affection for the dying man. The groaning, too, of his comrade gradually ceased. He died where he lay, after fits of shuddering.
We tried several times to work our way forward by crawling flattened out over the bodies of the Highlanders across the undug part, but we were driven back each time by machine-gun fire and rifle-grenades. Every casualty I saw was a fatal one. In this way the forward part of our trench was gradually filled with dead; and in turn we were constantly reinforced from the rear. Soon there was a light or a heavy machine-gun behind every traverse. I stood behind one of these lead squirts and shot till my forefinger was blackened with smoke. When the cooling-water had evaporated, the tins were handed round and to the accompaniment of not very polite jokes and by a very simple expedient filled up again:
In anxious moments we must bring
Ourselves to much that’s not the thing.
The sun was far down in the sky. It seemed that the second day of battle was over. For the first time I took a careful look round and sent back a report and sketch-map, overtaken once more by the thought: “You are not a fighter only, but a soldier!” The trench we were in cut the Vraucourt-Mory road at a distance of five hundred metres in front of us. The road was camouflaged by hangings fastened to the trees. Enemy troops were hurrying over the
