Ulundi in 1879, or Sudanese men rushing with swords toward General Kitchener’s Maxim guns along the Nile in 1898. Casualty reports from World War I were not fully reliable, especially in real time. Lists were incomplete or repetitious, and there was no standardized method among the Allies for collecting and distributing information crucial to assessing the wounding agents in war. But the available statistics, for all of their flaws, virtually roared on one point: Bayonets were unquestionably ineffective in what war had become. One military critic wrote in February 1916 that data collected from a French army corps that had been in heavy action found that bayonets caused 0.5 percent of casualties, while shells, grenades, trench explosions, shrapnel, and bullets accounted for a combined 92.5 percent (7 percent of the injuries were of undetermined cause).37 That even one-half of one percent of the casualties were caused by bayonets was a testimony less to their martial utility than to the fact that both sides insisted on fighting with them. Such data might have suggested to the war’s planners, and to the designers of infantry-school curricula, that perhaps it was time to explore an alternative set of weapons and means of fighting. And yet as fresh troops were being drilled to enter the war, prowess with the bayonet remained near the center of infantry training. Thus the British manual on the subject, a terrifying period piece:
The bayonet is essentially an offensive weapon. In a bayonet assault all ranks go forward to kill or be killed, and only those who have developed skill and strength by constant training will be able to kill. The spirit of the bayonet must be inculcated into all ranks, so that they go forward with the aggressive determination and confidence of superiority born of continued practice, without which a bayonet charge will not be effective.38
There happened to be other factors that made bayonet charges ineffective; Hiram Maxim and the European gun works that received licenses to manufacture his patterns had seen to that. But the romance with cold steel endured. Traditions—and bad ideas—die more slowly than men.
As Private Anderson waited for his turn in France, news from the front was grim. The Royal Scots’ First Battalion suffered heavy casualties soon after it landed, and two of his friends were killed. By this time, early in 1915 and after a winter of misery, British troops had shed illusions of war. The early cheer had vanished. One noncommissioned officer, A. J. Rixon of the London Irish Rifles, also left a diary of his experiences. It was a laconic account of daily life and tactical choices that filled him with anguish and disgust. “Trenches are like a maze only a trifle more dangerous,” he wrote, describing the difficulty of moving any distance on even the friendly side of the line. “An awful time. 1? miles doubled up like a pocket knife. Reached the corner but then had to go along a road about a mile under fire all the time. One man hit in the leg, almost wish it had been me, if this is a usual thing.”39 As his unit prepared for an attack, his diary entries assumed an air of helplessness and dread. “Once more I wish I was single, no game for a man with responsibilities cant do as would like.[6] Life not my own.”40 When he watched another unit return, his emotions almost overwhelmed him. “Not many came out unwounded, those who did all have souvenirs, helmets etc. Some wounds sickening but boys bearing up wonderfully no grumbling. Enemy throwing petrol bombs on wounded, and many burned to death ammunition exploding in meantime. Snipers refuse to let S.Bs[7] go near wounded between lines many shot if attempt to move. God help enemy if boys ever get at them.” Sergeant Rixon was not a young man. He was thirty years old and responsible for keeping his company’s soldiers ready and leading them in battle. But he was spent. Worn down and confused, he was near despair. “The language in this trench is awful,” he wrote. “Fed up with everything. Its not war but murder.”
The resolve he finally found within was rooted in resignation. “Must buck up,” he wrote, “as I am not dead yet.”
Still the tactics had not evolved. The London Irish Rifles went into battle with its soldiers marching in extended lines across No-Man’s-Land. Sergeant Rixon saw the madness of this even while urging his men along, enforcing the absurdity by shouting orders to keep the formation intact. He described himself as:
…personally being more or less guilty of inanely and with parrot like frequency exhorting the boys to keep their 5 paces, although after the first 300 yards I couldn’t see more than 50 yards each side of me, owing to the smoke, and vision obscured by smoke helmet. I realised after a time that my efforts were being wasted the smoke helmet smothering my voice so shut up, confining myself to watching if any of the boys went down so as to replace them by carrying men whom we had with us for that purpose. I don’t wish to give the impression by the above that I was absolutely coolness itself; I wasn’t by any means, but in a horrible state of funk, as men were falling all around me.41
As the army gained experience of the sort that was unraveling Sergeant Rixon, the replacement soldiers were drilled to fight in the same ways. Back in Scotland, Private Anderson’s battalion’s “bayonet fighting team” was preparing for a military tourney and exhibition for local dignitaries. “When the great day arrives the weather is broken, and by the time it is our turn to go on the rain is coming down in torrents and the ground is practically deserted, with the exception of the judges and a few notables, all of whom are comfortably settled in a covered stand,” he wrote. “Clad only in shorts and singlets we bravely carry through our performance.” The British army had at last realized that it needed machine guns in far greater numbers than it had them. A royal warrant in fall 1915 had ordered the creation of a Machine Gun Corps.42 And in addition to the redoubtable Vickers, the British army was also issuing Lewis guns, light machine guns of American design that had been rejected in the United States but that were being quickly produced at a gun works in Birmingham, England. The gun weighed less than thirty pounds and could be moved about the battlefield much more quickly than the heavier guns of the day. But in all of Private Anderson’s diary, there is no mention of machine-gun training for the war. He was busy mastering his rifle’s potential as a twentieth-century spear.
All the while, the battalion was shrinking. Its members were being sent to France as replacements for the ravaged battalions on the front. In April 1916, Private Anderson’s turn to ship out came, and he departed for the French countryside, where he soon encountered garish sights. Almost two full years into the war, some soldiers were not yet in dull-colored clothes. “French soldiers, in their red and blue uniforms, are also much in evidence now, and much amusement is caused by the sight of French Cavalry, complete with brass helmets and breast-plates,” he wrote. “In some cases the helmets are covered with sacking and breast-plates daubed with some dull substances, but there is no doubt that such a get-up could hardly be considered appropriate to modern war conditions.”
Private Anderson was assigned to the infamous Labyrinth, a warren of trenches below the Germans in Vimy Ridge. A French unit had held the position in the winter, before the Scots arrived, and had buried its dead soldiers in the parapets; as the soil eroded in the warm spring rains, decomposing bits of corpses slipped out, filling the trenches with nauseating smells and occupying the attention of rats. Private Anderson had his first encounter with the German machine guns, Maxim’s offspring from Spandau, when he was part of a night patrol sent into No- Man’s-Land. A stray round passed through another soldier’s knee. The young Scots huddled near the wounded man, hoping he would not cry out and reveal their location. It was no use.
The Germans heard all right, but their fusillade of bullets passed wide of us. We completed our job and, helping our wounded man along, returned cautiously in what we trusted was the right direction. No sounds could be heard from the trench before us, and we were compelled to lie flat in the mud, hoping to get some sign to let us know we were at our own lines. After a bit, getting fed-up lying in the dirt our sergeant decided to risk giving a shout. Fortunately for us it was answered by one of our own sentries, and we scrambled back to the shelter of the trench, but not before my dear old friend Miller, hit by a bullet, dropped dead over the parapet. This is a hot spot for machine-guns.
Private Anderson’s indoctrination continued its ghastly escalation. In mid-May 1916, the Germans began a heavy bombardment along the lines. Within two days shells were landing and exploding on Private Anderson’s sector through the night. His unit was put on alert ahead of an anticipated ground attack. The battalion began to lose men in the barrage, including a captain, who was carried past dead. The side of his head was gone. That evening the German artillery fell silent. The attack came.
They are moving across the open being pretty well bunched up in places, and affording an excellent target. Our front-line is unable to stop their advance however, and we in the support line get orders to open fire, and pour
