Chapter 22: The Somme

Ammunition being transported through a Somme town.

To-day nature is busy trying to hide the evidence of the hate of man, and long grass and poppies cover the blackened soil and grow in the shell-holes, until only in the memory of the men who strove nakedly in its desolation and death will the knowledge of that area as it was for those eight long months remain. If he visits it again the poppies and the grass will fade, and it will appear to him once more as the ploughed land of demons, and grinning at him in every yard will be the skulls of the countless unburied that there lie. The other birds will shun it, for there are no trees, but the lark will still sing on, as this brave-hearted bird continues to do even when the guns are booming.

Australian blood has sanctified much of that soil, and Australian bravery has monopolized some of its names. As surely as Gallipoli will Pozieres and Thiepval and Bapaume be associated with the name and achievement of Australians in the minds of readers of the history of the great war. These are places that will ever be names of honour and glory in the thought of the Australian people as will be Flers to New Zealand and Delville Wood to South Africa.

At Pozieres the First and Second Divisions demonstrated that the abandon and tenacity against odds that secured a footing on the Gallipoli Peninsula was still the special prerogative of the care-free lads from these South Sea nations. Our own artillery was unable effectively to silence the fire of the German batteries, and wave after wave melted like snow in the sun, yet the unconquerable spirit drove the remainder on until the positions were taken and held. There were wounded men who dragged themselves, not back to their own lines for attention, but forward toward the enemy so that they might be able to strike at least one blow ere they died. 

There were others that had their wounds dressed and then returned the fighting. No one left the line that day could help it, or his name would have been remembered as an outstanding exception among many who, wounded again and again, and from loss of blood, still fought on. This engagement carved a line in my own heart, for therein died three comrades who enlisted with me, and our souls were grappled together by many common dangers shared and mutual sacrifices cheerfully made. There is no life in the world that tries out friendship like a soldier's in active service, and when it has endured that, it is stronger than the love of twin for twin, like the love of David and Jonathan, of Damon and Pythias, a love that passeth knowledge.

The Germans had one ally on the Somme that wrought us more havoc than all his armament. How we cursed--that mud ! We cursed it sleeping, we cursed it waking, we cursed it riding, we cursed it walking. We ate it and cursed ; we drank it and cursed ; we swallowed it and spat it ; we snuffed it and wept it ; it filled our nails and our ears; it caked and lined our clothing; we wallowed in it, we waded through it, we swam in it, and splashed it about-it stuck our helmets to our hair, it plastered our wounds, and there were men drowned in it. 

Oh, mud, thou daughter of the devil, thou offspring of evil, back to your infernal regions, and invade the lowest circle of the inferno that you may make a fit abiding-place for the slacker and pacifist ! ' I take back all I said about the sand of Egypt. It was a mere irritant compared with this mud. I am sorry for the times I have been out of temper with the mud back in Australia, when it clung to my boots in tons, when I have been bogged in a sulky in the black soil country. Australia, you have no mud, just a little surface stickiness that I will never growl at again as long as I live :

It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine

It isn't the snipers who seek
To nip our young hopes in the bud;
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns-
It's the MUD, MUD, MUD. 

Robert W. Service

Official reports of the. later battles in 1918 tell us that the shell-fire on the Somme was a mere popgun show to these battles, but it is difficult for the imagination to grasp this fact, as it did not seem then that the air had any room for more shells. In fact, I have seen shells meet in the air, both exploding together. It seemed to us at times as if there was not a foot of air that did not have a shell in it. In one battle there were four thousand guns firing over a five hundred yards front, the heavies being seventeen and a half miles behind the lines, and the field guns massed wheel to wheel a hundred and fifty to the five hundred yards, and row after row like infantry drawn up for review.

Shells not merely whistled and screamed overhead, they leaped from the ground beneath one's feet with a flame that burned, a roar that deafened, and a displacement of air that swept one away. At artillery practice in peace times there is great excitement if one lone man happens to be in front of the gun, but on the Somme we walked about among them, over them, and round them; and we were never warned even when they fired only a couple of yards away. 

One day a red-hot shell from a gun about fifty yards away landed at my feet, but, fortunately, did not explode. For four months our artillery expended an average of half a million shells a day. The increase in artillery last year may be judged from the fact that in the last six months of 1917 one million tons of shells were used by the British on the western front. 

By day the drum-fire of the guns beat on one's ears like a devil's tattoo until one felt that in another week reason would be unseated. But at night was added the horror of flame that drove away the darkness with a ruddy glare. It seemed as if thousands of Bessemer furnaces were refining metal for the paving of hell. Into this caldron of man's making that outdid the fury of the elements young lads from farms and shops walked uprightly. 

Like ants impotent in their strife they swarmed, and to a watcher from another world they must have appeared like insects in the crater of Vesuvius in eruption. Yet the mind of man, so much greater than his body, had organised and planned this monstrous scene, and from his method it deviated not a hair's breadth.

We were encouraged and supported by the knowledge that the German was having a far worse time than we were, that the hell of flame and fire and smoke was for our protection and his annihilation. His shells came over blindly in most cases, and though we were so thick that they could not but get some of us, yet we knew that our shells were being directed by thousands of aeroplanes on top of the earth beneath which he huddled, with the sweat of fear pouring from him. 

There were many indications of the terror our shell-fire wrought and days when the prisoners could be counted in thousands, on one occasion sixteen men bringing back as many as four hundred. These men were imbeciles, crazed by the sound of the shells, and obsessed by one idea, the necessity of getting away. When we took their trenches we found that in most cases they were completely obliterated, and in some cases the entrances to the deep dug-outs were blown in, smothering the men sheltering in them.

The wastage of man-power on the Somme was not a little due to the nervous strain. I think everybody's nerves were more or less on edge, and now and again a hurricane of fire would sweep the trenches because some man's nerve got past breaking-point. lie would see an imaginary enemy bearing down upon his sentry-post and fire wildly, giving alarm to the whole line. A German sentry would reply to him, more of our men would fire back, more Germans join in, star-shells make the night as bright as day ; then Fritz would ' get the wind up' thoroughly and call for artillery support- -our guns would blaze into reply, and there would be many casualties just because one man lost his nerve and ' saw things.'

Nerves are queer things, for frequently the man of a nervous, highly strung temperament is the coolest in action. Some men, too, get shell-shock a hundred yards from a bursting shell, while others are knocked down and buried and never even tremble. Men have the power of speech taken from them for months and as suddenly have it restored. I know of one case in which a boy did not speak a word for twelve months, and when viewing the play 'Under Fire' in Sydney suddenly found his speech return at the sound of a shot. 

Another man had just been pronounced by the medical officer as cured when the back-fire of a motor-car heard in the streets of Melbourne brought back all the symptoms of shell-shock again. Where there is so much shell-fire the ,observation of the German sentries is very poor and surprise raids are easily carried out. Fritz is very reluctant to put his head up and periscopes are always being smashed.

There was only one place in the Somme where drinking-water could be obtained, and this was in the ruins of the town of Flers. The Germans had been driven out of this place too quickly to give them time to poison the water, but they made it very difficult for us to get at it by shelling continually. They had the exact range, and it was only in the hour before dawn that one could get near the wells without meeting with certain death. 

It was amusing to see the scamper of the water-carriers out of the ruins as the first shell announced that the relief of Fritz's batteries completed and the ' hate' had recommenced. They were severely handicapped running with a fifty-six pound can of water, but it was a point of honour not to leave this behind. Of course there was plenty of other water filling every hole around, but this was not only thick with mud but had the germs of gas-gangrene, and one knows not how many other diseases besides.

When the line had advanced a few miles 'going in' was as tiring a day's journey as though one had walked twenty miles. I will never forget having to chase after my brigade to Becordel-Becourt. I left Albert just at dark and had to trust to my instinct for direction in finding the place, for no one could tell me the way, and the old road on the map was non-existent. It was only about three miles, but seemed like thirty as I wound in and out of the traffic that jammed the new road, defying the passage of even a dog. 

When I arrived at the place where the town of Becordel had once been I found there were about five hundred thousand troops camped about the area, and in the dark to find the where about of my own unit of five thousand was about as hopeless a task as I have ever attempted. I inquired of more than a score, but no one had seen anything of the Australians. I wandered about for hours and was hungry and thirsty and half dead when I stumbled on a Y.M.C.A. hut. 

They could not guide me in the right way, but they gave me a cup of hot tea, and no nectar of the gods could be as welcome. The Y.M.C.A. is welcome to all the boosting I can give, for they were my salvation that night, and at other times were a comfort and resting-place. When I found our camp at two o'clock in the morning I found the men in a worse plight than I was, for their transport had not arrived, and none had had anything to eat or drink.

In this huge camp which was within range of the German guns there were tens of thousands of camp-fires blazing in the open in utter contempt of Fritz and his works. We took the road again that same morning for our position in reserve at Montauban. I said we took the road -well, we were on it sometimes, whenever we could shove the horses towards the centre to enable its to squeeze past--otherwise we had to plough along above our knees in the soft mud. 

Even on the road the slush was up to our ankles, but it was metalled underneath. We discovered our transport in the jam of the traffic - they had taken twenty-four hours to go the four miles, but our tongues blistered with the names we called them, and we threatened them with eternal damnation if they were not at the next camp with a hot meal when we arrived.

Where Montauban had once been we went into camp. We had no tents, but made ourselves comfortable in shell-holes, with a bitter cold rain falling, by stretching tarpaulins over them. The engineers were putting up Nissen huts at the rate of twenty a day, but as soon as the last bolt was screwed home, forty shelterless men crowded each one to capacity. It was some days before our turn came, and we waited lying half covered with mud and slush. When we did get a hut allotted to us it was as if we had been transferred to a palace. 

These huts look like half of a round galvanised iron tank, and were floored and lined, They were carried in numbered sections and could be put together in a few minutes. They were very comfortable. You could stand up in the centre, and there was plenty of room to sleep along the sides. I believe the inventor, Mr. Nissen, is an American, and here's my hand to him as an ally who maybe saved me from rheumatism, and I am sure thousands of boys from the other side of the world bless his name continually.

The whole brigade was practically bogged when we came to move forward. The weight of our equipment sank us into the soft mud, and the only way we got on to the road again was by hanging to the stirrups of the horses as they ploughed a way through. We also passed ropes back for the men to grasp and harnessed them to mules, and thus dragged them to firm ground. The road did not carry us far, and we soon had to struggle across the open toward the support trenches. This was not as bad as round the camp, not being churned up by the tramping about of men and horses. 

We could not use the communication-trenches as they were rivers of liquid mud, but had to wait till dark and go over the top in relieving the front line. On this occasion we took over from the Grenadier Guards, which number.,; among its officers many of the English nobility. We 'bushies' and ' outbackers' from the Land of the Kangaroo stepped down into the mud holes just vacated by an earl, several lords, and as noble and proud a regiment as ever won glory on a battle-field. 

The Prince of Wales was a staff-captain in the army of the Somme, doing his bit in the mud and misery like the rest of us. There is no ' sacred privilege that doth hedge about a king' in the British Empire, and King George is respected among us for his manliness, and we cheered him sincerely when he twice visited us in the trenches, for we do now believe to-day in the divine right of kings, neither do we believe in the divine right of majorities.

In another chapter that tells of my wounding I have pictured our days and weeks as lived in these trenches, so I will bring this chapter to a close by summarizing some of the things that the great push on the Somme accomplished.

(1) It relieved the pressure on Verdun.

(2) It accounted for several hundred thousand German casualties.

(3) It demonstrated our ability to break through.

(4) It led to the perfecting of barrage-fire, whereby casualties were reduced in our infantry to an astonishing degree.

(5) It gave confidence to our troops by enabling them to get -to hand-grips with the German, and discover that he was individually no fighter.

(6) It weakened the morale of the German army enormously, and it convinced the German soldier that his cause was lost.

(7) It gave to us possession of the high ground.

(8) It definitely established our supremacy of the air, and was the turning-point of the whole war.