Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated), page 914
And on this good hearing the year ‘15 ended for the 2nd Battalion of the Irish Guards; the War, owing to the lack of men and material which should have been trained and prepared beforehand, having just two years, ten months, and eleven days more to run.
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Salient and the Somme
THE MILD and rainy weather loosed floods on all the low-lying fields round Laventie. The 2nd Guards Brigade relieved the 3rd in the Laventie sector, and the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards marched seven miles in wind and wet from La Gorgue, of the battered little church, to its old ground and old routine — first at the north end of Laventie where it took over Dead End, Picantin, and Laventie East posts, from the 4th Grenadiers; and, on the evening of the 3rd January, into the well-kept trenches beyond Red House. They relieved the 1st Coldstream here, and their leading company, in column of route behind Red House, lost six men on the road from a savage, well-timed burst of H.E. One man had an extraordinary double escape. A fragment of shell first hit his ammunition which exploded, leaving him, for some absurd reason, unhurt. Even as he was trying to find out what had happened, a big shell dove directly under his feet, and, as he said, if it had burst “they wouldn’t have found the nails to my boots.” But it plumped harmlessly in the muddy ground. The same kind Providence looked after the orderly-room kitten. Her faithful orderly was carrying the little lady up to war on rats, when two blind shells pitched, one on each side of him.
An unexpected diversion turned up in the front line in the shape of a cinema operator who unlimbered his camera on the parapet behind the sand-bags and took pictures of our guns shelling enemy wire a hundred yards ahead. Then he demanded “scenes in the trenches,” which were supplied him, with all the Irish sense of drama, but, as local opinion thought, a little too much “arranged.” Notably one picture of a soldier tending a grave. An officer correspondent writes grimly, “We have quite enough work digging graves to mind about tending them.” The film duly appeared in the halls and revues, sometimes before the eyes of those who would never again behold in life one particular face there.
It turned out a quiet tour of duty; the two lines were so close together that much shelling was inexpedient, and snipers gave no trouble. So all hands were free to attend their own comforts, notably the care and discharge of drains. The R.E. who, contrary to popular belief, sometimes have bowels, had added wooden floors to many of the little huts behind the redoubts. Company Headquarters were luxurious, with real windows, and even window-curtains; the slimy trenches were neatly boarded over and posted, and men went about their business almost dry-shod. It was, as we know, the custom of those parts that, before entering the line, troops should dump their ankle-boots at a farm-house just behind Red House, and go on in the long trench boots. For no earthly reason that the Irish could arrive at, the Hun took it into his methodical head one night to shell their huge boot dump where, as a matter of course, some regimental shoemakers were catching up with repairs. The shoemakers bolted like ferreted rabbits, and all the world, except those whose boots were buried, laughed at them. So long as a man comes through it alive, his agonies and contortions in the act of dodging death are fair game.
On the nights of the 4th and 5th January they began to engineer the detail of a local raid which marked progress in the art. Patrols went out from each company in the front line to hunt for weak places. The patrol from the right company worked to within fifteen yards of the enemy, got into boggy ground, noisy with loose wire, listened an hour to the Germans working and talking, and came back. The right centre company patrol slopped up a ditch for a full furlong, then ran into a cross-ditch fifteen feet wide, with a trip-wire (the enemy disliked being taken unawares), and also returned like the dove of old. Similarly the left-centre patrol, which found more ditch and trip-wires leading them to a singularly stout section of trench where two Germans looked over the edge of the parapet, and the general landscape was hostile. The left company had the luck. It was an officer’s patrol commanded again by 2nd Lieutenant Brew. Their crawl led them along a guiding line of willows, and to within six feet of a salient guarded by a three-foot wire belt. But a few yards farther down, they came across a gap our guns had made — not clean-cut, but easy enough, in their opinion, to “negotiate.” As far as men on their bellies could make out, the line seemed held by sentries at wide intervals who, after the manner of single sentries, fired often at nothing and sent up lights for the pleasure of seeing their support-line answer them. (“As we was everlastingly telling the new hands, the fewer there are of ye annywhere, the less noise should ye be after making annyhow. But ‘tis always the small, lonely, miserable little man by himself that gives forth noises like large platoons.”) Then they were relieved by the 1st Coldstream, and their Acting C.O. (Captain Eric Greer) was instructed to produce a scheme for a really good raid from the left of their line on the weak place discovered. The Coldstream would attend to it during their tour, if the Irish furnished the information. Greer worked it out lovingly to the last detail. Three riflemen and three bombers were to lead off on the right, and as many on the left followed by a “killing and demolition. party,” armed with bludgeons, of an officer and eight other ranks. A support party of one N.C.O. and five other ranks, with rifles and bayonets, and a connecting party of two signallers with telephones and four stretcher-bearers brought up the rear of what the ribald afterwards called “our mournful procession.” It was further laid down that a wire-cutting party (and the men hated wire-cutting) would “improve the gap in the enemy’s wire” for the space of one hour. The raiders were to work quietly along the line of the providential willows till they found the gap; then would split into two gangs left and right, and attend to the personnel in the trench “as quickly and silently as possible, never using bombs when they can bayonet a man.” The rest were to enter afterwards, and destroy and remove all they could find. “If possible and convenient, they will take a prisoner who will be immediately passed back to our trench by the supporting-party. Faces to be blacked for the sake of ‘frightfulness,’ mutual recognition, and invisibility,” and electric torches carried. The officer in charge was to be a German linguist, for the reason that a prisoner, hot and shaken at the moment of capture, and before being “passed back” was likely to exude more information than when cold and safe in our own lines.
There was nothing special on at the Front just then; and the 2nd Battalion and the Coldstream discussed and improved that raid at every point they could think of. One authority wanted a double raid, from left and right fronts simultaneously, but they explained that this particular affair would need “so much quietness” in combined stalking that it would be “inconvenient to run it on a time schedule.” Then our guns were given word to cut wire in quite other directions from the chosen spot which was no more to be disturbed till the proper time than a pet cover. That was on the 7th January. On the night of the 8th the Twentieth Division on their left announced that they were “going to let off gas” at 2 A.M., and follow up with a raid. The Battalion had to stand to arms, stifling in its respirators, during its progress; and by the glare of the enemy’s lights could see our gas drifting low in great grey clouds towards the opposite lines. They observed, too, a number of small explosions in the German side when the gas reached there, which seemed to dissipate it locally. The enemy guns were badly served, opening half an hour late and pitching shell in their own wire and trenches, but they hardly annoyed the Battalion at all. The affair was over in a couple of hours. (“There is nothing, mark you, a man hates like a division on his flank stirring up trouble. Ye know the poor devils have no choice of it, but it looks always as if they was doing it to spite their neighbours, and not Jerry at all.”)
But the pleasure of the Twentieth Division was not allowed to interfere with the business of their own private raid. Before the gas was “let off” 2nd Lieutenant Brew again chaperoned two scouts of the Coldstream to show them the gap in the wire in case they cared to try it on their tour. It was found easily and reported to be passable in single file.
But, as they said wrathfully afterwards, who could have guessed that, on the night of the 10th, after the Coldstream’s wire-cutting party had worked for two hours, and their raiders had filed through the gap, and met more wire on the parapet which took more time to cut — when they at last dropped into the trench and searched it for three long hours they — found no sign of a German? The Coldstream’s sole trophies were some bombs, a box of loaded M.G. belts, and one rocket!
When they relieved the Coldstream on the 11th January, they naturally tried their own hand on the problem. By this time they had discovered themselves to be a “happy” battalion which they remained throughout. None can say precisely how any body of men arrives at this state. Discipline, effort, doctrine, and unlimited care and expense on the part of the officers do not necessarily secure it; for there have been battalions in our armies whose internal arrangements were scandalously primitive, whose justice was neolithic, and yet whose felicity was beyond question. It may be that the personal attributes of two or three leading spirits in the beginning set a note to which the other young men, of generous minds, respond: half a dozen superior N.C.O.’s can, sometimes, raise and humanise the soul of a whole battalion; but, at bottom, the thing is a mystery to be accepted with thankfulness. The 2nd Battalion of the Irish Guards was young throughout, the maker of its own history, and the inheritor of the Guards’ tradition; but its common background was ever Warley where they had all first met and been moulded — officers and men together. So happiness came to them and stayed, and with it, unity, and, to use the modern slang, “efficiency” in little things as well as big — confidence and joyous mutual trust that carries unspoken through the worst of breakdowns.
The blank raid still worried them, and there may have been, too, some bets on the matter between themselves and the Coldstream. At any rate 2nd Lieutenant Brew reappears — his C.O. and the deeply interested battalion in confederacy behind him.
On the night of the 11th of January, Brew took out a small patrol and entered the German trench that they were beginning to know so well. He re-cut the wire, made a new gap for future uses, explored, built two barricades in the trench itself; got bogged up among loose wire, behind which he guessed (but the time was not ripe to wake up that hornet’s nest) the German second line lay, and — came back before dawn with a periscope as proof that the trench was occupied by daylight. “The enterprise suffered from the men’s lack of experience in patrolling by night,” a defect that the C.O. took care to remedy.
As a serious interlude, for milk was a consideration, “the cow at Red House calved successfully. Signallers, orderlies, and others were present at the accouchement.” Doubtless, too, the orderly-room kitten kept an interested eye on the event.
In the afternoon the Brigadier came round, and the C.O. and the 2nd Lieutenant discussed a plan of the latter to cross the German line and lie up for the day in some disused trench or shell-hole. It was dismissed as “practical but too risky.” Moreover, at that moment there was a big “draw” on hand, with the idea of getting the enemy out of their second line and shelling as they came up. The Battalion’s private explorations must stand over till it was finished. Three infantry brigades took part in this game, beginning at dusk the Guards on the left, the 114th Brigade in the centre, and the left battalion of the Nineteenth Division on the right. The 114th Brigade, which was part of the Thirty-eighth Division, had just relieved the 1st Guards Brigade. Every one stood to arms with unlimited small-arm ammunition handy, and as daylight faded over the enemy’s parapets the 114th sent up a red rocket followed by one green to mark Zero. There was another half minute to go in which a motor machine-gun got overtilted and started to gibber. Then the riot began. Both battalions of the 2nd Guards Brigade, the left-half battalion of the 114th Brigade, and the left of the Nineteenth Division opened rapid fire with rifles, machine-, and Lewis-guns. At the same time, our artillery on the right began a heavy front and enfilade bombardment of the German line while our howitzers barraged the back of it. The infantry, along the Winchester Road, held their fire, but simulated, with dummies which were worked by ropes, a line of men in act to leave the trenches. Last, the artillery on our left joined in, while the dummies were handled so as to resemble a second line attacking.
To lend verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, the guns on the right lifted and began shelling back-lines and communication-trenches, as though to catch reinforcements, while the dummies jigged and shouldered afresh on their energetic ropes. The enemy took the thing in quite the right spirit. He replied with rifle-fire; he sent up multitudes of red lights, which always soothed him when upset; and his artillery plastered the ground behind our centre with big shells that could be heard crumping somewhere in the interior of France till our own guns, after a ten minutes’ pause, came down once more. Over and above the annoyance to him of having to rush up supports into the front line, it was reasonable to suppose that our deluges of small-arm stuff must have done him some damage. “The men were all prepared and determined to enjoy themselves, the machine-gunners were out to show what a lot of noise they could really make, and the fire must have been infinitely uncomfortable for German quartermaster-sergeants, cookers, and others, wandering about behind the line with rations — if they walk about as much as we do. One of the companies alone loosed off 7000 rounds, including Lewis-guns, during the flurry.”
They were back at La Gorgue again on the 13th January, in divisional rest; the 3rd Guards Brigade relieving them. While there the C.O. launched a scheme for each subaltern to pick and train six men on his own, so as to form the very hard core of any patrols or bombing-parties he might have to lead hereafter. They were specially trained for spotting things and judging distance at night; and the tales that were told about them and their adventures and their confidences would fill several unprintable books. (There was an officer who did not so much boast as mount, with a certain air, a glass eye. One night, during patrol, he was wounded in the shoulder, and brought in by his pet patrol-leader, a private of unquestioned courage, with, by the way, a pretty taste for feigning abject fear when he wished to test new men with whom he was working in No Man’s Land. He rendered first aid to his officer whose wound was not severe, and then invited him to “take a shquint” at the result. The officer had to explain that he was blind on that side. Whereupon, the private, till the doctor turned up, drew loud and lively pictures of the horror of his wife at home, should it ever come to her knowledge that her man habitually crawled about France in the dark with an officer “blinded on the half of him.”)
They rested for nearly a fortnight at La Gorgue, attended a lecture — ”if not instructive, at least highly entertaining” — by Max Abbat, the well-known French boxer, on “Sport and what England had done for France,” and had a regimental dinner, when ten of the officers of the First Battalion came over from Merville with their brigadier and the Staff Captain, and Lieutenant Charles Moore who had saved the Battalion Christmas dinners, looked after them all to the very end which, men say, became nebulous. Some one had been teaching the Battalion to bomb in style, for their team of thirty returned from Brigade Bombing School easy winners, by one hundred points in the final competition. (“Except that the front line is mostly quieter and always more safe, there is no differ betwixt the front line and Bombing School.”)
They went back into line and support-billets on the 26th relieving the 3rd Guards Brigade; and the Battalion itself taking over from the 1st Grenadiers on the Red House sector, Laventie. Apparently, the front line had been fairly peaceful in their absence, but they noted that the Grenadier Headquarters seemed “highly pleased to go,” for the enemy had got in seven direct hits that very day on Red House itself. One shell had dropped in “the best upstairs bedroom, and two through the roof.” They took this as a prelude to a Kaiser’s birthday battle, as there had been reports of loyal and patriotic activities all down that part of the line, and rumours of increased railway movement behind it. A generous amount of tapped German wireless lent colour to the belief. Naturally, Battalion Headquarters at Red House felt all the weight of the war on their unscreened heads, and all hands there, from the adjutant and medical officer to the orderlies and police strengthened the defences with sand-bags. A battalion cannot be comfortable if its headquarters’ best bedrooms are turned out into the landscape. No attacks, however, took place, and night patrols reported nothing unusual for the 26th and 27th January.
A new devilry (January, 28) now to be tried were metal tubes filled with ammonal, which were placed under enemy wire and fired by electricity. They called them “Bangalore torpedoes” and they were guaranteed to cut all wire above them. At the same time, dummies, which had become a fashionable amusement along the line, would be hoisted by ropes out of our trenches to the intent that the enemy might be led to man his parapets that our guns might sweep them. It kept the men busy and amused, and they were more excited when our snipers reported that they could make out a good deal of movement in the line in front of Red House, where Huns in small yellow caps seemed to be “rolling something along the trench.” Snipers were forbidden to pot-shot until they could see a man’s head and shoulders clearly, as experience had proved that at so long a range — the lines here were full two hundred yards apart “shooting on the chance of hitting. half a head merely made the enemy shy and retiring.” One gets the impression that, in spite of the “deadening influence of routine” (some of the officers actually complained of it in their letters home!) the enemy’s “shyness,” at that moment, might have been due to an impression that he was facing a collection of inventive young fiends to whom all irregular things were possible.
They went into brigade reserve at Laventie on the 30th of the month, with genuine regrets, for the trenches that they had known so long. “We shall never be as comfortable anywhere else,” one boy wrote; and the C.O. who had spent so much labour and thought there lifts up a swan-song which shows what ideal trenches should be. “Handed over in November in a bad state, they are now as nearly perfect as a line in winter can be. The parapets are perfect, the fire-steps all wooden and in good repair. The dug-outs, or rather the little huts which answer to that name in this swampy country, their frameworks put up by the engineers and sandbagged up by the infantry, are dry and comfortable. The traffic-trench, two boards wide in most places, is dry everywhere. Wherever trench-boards ran on sandbags or mud they have been painted and put on piles. The wire in front of the line is good.”
