A Marine at Gallipoli on the Western Front Page 23
Our turn on outpost at night and we moved up about 5.00pm. Just as we reached the support line we got shelled pretty badly. Jerry opened up with a few 8-inch, 5.9s and we had several casualties. We took what cover we could until he had piped down and then made our way out to the shell holes. I was in charge of one shell hole, with six of my section, and some attempt had been made to consolidate it. We carried on the good work with our entrenching tools and made it deeper and also made a fire-step in it. It kept us warm and it was absolutely necessary to work to keep ourselves alive. I had never experienced anything so bitterly cold. The next hole to us on the right, about fifty yards away, was manned by the Ansons and one of their men froze to death during the night.
My recollections of getting through the day that followed are very hazy. Most of my men were in a sort of coma and it was only by continually keeping on the move that I kept alive. I dug away with my entrenching tool until my hands were raw and my back almost breaking but I kept my blood circulating. We could get nothing hot to drink and had nothing to eat but biscuits and frozen bully beef. I kept having a look out to the front during the day and to the left front some distance away could see the remains of a village which I made out to be Grandcourt. Just to our front was a dip and the Germans were down there. Nothing much to fear from them except at night when they might make a sudden raid on one of our outposts. Nothing to see to have a shot at, but in any case it was a question whether the rifles would work. The bolts were frozen in.
Relieved at 6.00pm. Thank God. Another twelve hours of that would have killed some of us off. Only moved back to the support trench where things were very little better, except that one could move about a bit more freely and make a fire to brew some tea.
We were practically all on watch at night as Jerry was supposed to be on the prowl. He was expected to be moving back from there any time but was putting up a feint of aggression in the form of sudden raids. Spasms of shelling all night and everybody was about frozen stiff. I was sent back to the tunnel at 1.00pm on the 23rd with a party of eight men. ‘Get a rest, a feed and get back to the line by 8.00pm with picks and shovels for dugout work.’ Six hour shifts. What a life! Horses were dropping dead in hundreds but the RN Division carried on.
Back to the tunnel after my six hours. I had no need to dig but I did it to keep myself awake and alive. I turned in when I got back, in the filth and muck and lice of the stinking tunnel, and had a sleep, the first sleep since leaving Englebelmer on the 18th; it was now the 23rd. There was a spasm on 190 Brigade’s front during the night: a strong party of Germans made their way down the frozen river and cleared one of the Hood outposts. After a pretty severe hand-to-hand scrap the Germans were driven back, having sustained several casualties. They left a few dead to be buried, but a few of the Hoods too, the officer, Sub-Lieutenant McCormick, and seven men killed and a score wounded. Little things like that never found their way into the papers at home, but it was an everyday happening on the front and part of our routine.
Jerry shelled the valley and the road to the tunnel during the night and most of the next day (24th) but it would have taken a pretty hefty shell to reach us in the tunnel.
Our battalion had arranged a raid for the night, one officer, Lieutenant Spinney, and two bombers from C Company. They went over without any fuss and took possession of a German outpost, killing the garrison and smashing up the place pretty badly with bombs. The same officer, with Lieutenant Wren and four men, went over again the next night but failed to pull things off quite so easily. Spinney was wounded and died shortly after they got him back to our lines. It wasn’t wise to tempt fate too often. She is a fickle jade, one day all for you, and throwing an invulnerable curtain around you so that you can face the horrors of the war with impunity, but the next day she is for somebody else and you get what you have been asking for.
Saw a splendid fight in the air during the afternoon. Three Taubes ventured over our lines and managed to get through the curtain of anti-aircraft shells that was thrown at them. Two of our fighting planes dropped down out of the blue and one Taube came crashing down to earth. That evened up the party and we watched some very pretty stunt-flying for five minutes before Jerry turned tail and made for home, one of them obviously in trouble, for he made for the ground as fast as he could with safety.
News around on the morning of the 25th that 1 RM would relieve us at 1.00pm. The relief came off to time and we made our weary way back to Englebelmer. Shoved into tumbledown billets, which we set about making as habitable and comfy as possible. It was a queer thing this taking over of billets: whenever we left any we had a proper cleaning-up time; in our battalion platoon NCOs were responsible for their billets being spotless, with no litter, empty tins or chunks of bully lying about. Floors had to be swept, usually with old sandbags, then the company OC came along and they had to satisfy him. But when we took any over, even from our 1st Battalion – which, by the way, was always second to ours, except in number – we always had the same process to go through. We would find everything in a state of filth.
Twenty-five degrees of frost failed to curb the frantic efforts of the lice. The extreme cold was killing off horses and men but had no effect whatever on lice, except to make them dig in more. Kelly Clayton and George Hedley were in one continual squirm.
The postbag kept us all more or less busy until time to turn in: parcels and letters galore.
Morning came and with it a keener frost than ever. Some bright engineers had rigged up hot shower baths in the village and we marched down by platoons for the unexpected luxury. What a disillusion. Our platoon of course, being No. 1 A Company was first, and we found the floor of the baths a sheet of ice on which we had to stand shivering in our nakedness until the hot water gradually thawed its way through the blocks of ice in the few watering can knobs above us. We must have been hard as nails to stand that lot. I really think that the worse conditions seem to get the more we thrived.
The Marine Band from Deal played in the YMCA hut at night and cheered us up a bit. It’s wonderful what a bit of decent music can do to a chap.
I got a shock on the following morning, the 27th. Company Sergeant Major Dick Howarth asked me if I would like a square number. ‘What is it, Dick?’ I asked him. ‘Anything to do with the line?’ I was a bit dubious. ‘No, it’s alright,’ he laughed, ‘it’s a good number, and I’ve to pick a good corporal and nine men to be attached to the REs at Aveluy.’ I accepted. REs usually knew how to do themselves well and it meant a few trips to Albert, only twenty minutes’ walk from Aveluy.
Set off about 3.00pm with my nine good men and true and reported to the REs’ sergeant major. It was a mining company and about every other man from the major downwards had a decoration of some sort or other: VCs, DSOs, DCMs and MMs were as common with them as hard tack was with us. ‘How did you get all those?’ I asked one sergeant. ‘Rations,’ he said with a grin, ‘one comes up every week whether we want it or not.’
We were stowed away in a palatial dugout with spring mattresses on the bunks. Found various other fatigue parties there from the Howes and Ansons, about sixty of us all told. Rations were fine and work not very strenuous. We went up to Thiepval a few times; the REs were constructing new, up-to-date dugouts in the remains of the village and our job was digging and carrying out the earth and rock while the REs got busy with tape measures and two-foot rules, and a few instructions.
Not one trip up to the first trench system did we do, our nearest being a general reserve trench where we constructed a new dugout. I think it only fair to say that, during the time I was attached to that company of engineers, none of them received any additional medals.
Why we should have been constructing brand new dugouts with steel girders and walls lined with one-inch planks I am at a loss to understand. The Bosch was expected to flit from these quarters at any time, and signs were fairly obvious that our people were making preparations to help him away with a push.
Our 189 Brigade attacked on 3 Februar
y, just a trench-to-trench attack timed to take about ten minutes but which actually took fifty hours of terrible fighting in which the brigade lost twenty-four officers and 647 ORs, a big proportion of them killed. They succeeded, however, and took two lines of trenches commanding Grandcourt. Captures amounted to two officers and 225 men, about forty of whom were wounded, and a few machine guns.
The success of the attack was soon apparent, for on the night of the 5th, when our Brigade had taken over from 189, a patrol of the Howes pushed into Grandcourt and came back with rifles left by the Bosch. Upon receiving this information, Colonel Hutchinson took our battalion forward and took possession of the whole place without a casualty.
Thus started the first move in the great German retreat. Well done the Navy!
Chapter Twenty-Five
The RN Division persuade Jerry to Retreat
Life was very uneventful for me, not much work being done by the REs and no excitement except a few bombs at night from Jerry’s planes. Some of his bombs made holes big enough to drop a house in, but none reached us in the dugout, and very little damage was done by them with the exception of a few horses killed.
I made several trips to Albert, a decent-sized town, but it had very little of interest in it, with the exception of an Expeditionary Forces Institute (EFI) canteen, and a battered cathedral. A very remarkable thing about the cathedral was the figure of the Virgin Mary hanging in a horizontal position from the top of the main and only remaining spire. The whole place was a wreck and it seemed wonderful that the figure should be hanging on as it were by the toenails. I believe the French engineers had been up and secured the figure and the French people said the war would end when the Virgin fell. It’s surprising some of our credulous men hadn’t tried a Mills bomb on her before then. (The Virgin, with the remains of the Cathedral at Albert, was battered flat by the Germans in March 1918, just before they re-took the place.)
The 2nd Royal Marines should have been relieved by 1 RM on 8 February, but for some reason or other they couldn’t bring off the relief till the 9th. I went over to Englebelmer to see the boys on the Saturday morning and got to know all the latest news and rumours. The chief buzz was to the effect that the RND was to be relieved and sent home to Blighty. The relief came off alright; 1 RM was only up the line a day before turning over to the Army and going back to Englebelmer.
My company had a decent few casualties during their last spell up the line. German planes came over Aveluy again at dusk on Saturday and dropped more than twenty huge bombs in the valley where our dugout was situated. Very little damage was done, however, beyond a few more horses killed and maimed. I fail to see what attracted the silly blighter over that valley.
Heard news that 190 Brigade, who took over from our brigade on the left, had been making things hum. The HAC went forward another 600 yards and took Baillescourt farm with eighty-one prisoners. They lost their commanding officer, Colonel Boyle, who had been in command since the battalion landed in France.
On 14 February 2 RM was once more wending the weary way up the line again, battle orders with two days’ extra emergency rations. More business, and I was missing it nicely, although I was sorry in a way not to be with them: it looked like being a decent-sized scrap. Two or three fresh divisions were sending troops up the line and Albert was full of 2nd and 8th Division troops and one had to nearly fight to get anything from the canteen there. Our artillery was busy and was pumping hundreds of tons of high explosive into the Bosch every day. His guns weren’t altogether idle and there were times when it was hardly safe to go far from cover.
The attack came off at 5.45am on the 17th, the RN Division on the left of the Ancre, led by our brigade, (1 RM and two companies of our battalion) and 2nd and 18th Divisions on the right of the river. From what news we could get, the attack was a howling success, although both marine battalions suffered badly. The Bosch barrage had caught them in the open before the attack started and they had to stick it in the shell holes until the time came to get a move on. It’s bad enough in a trench when Jerry puts a barrage down, but a hundred times worse when one is lying out in the open with hardly a scrap of cover. The marine casualties were over 400 killed and wounded, nearly 40 per cent. The loss for the whole brigade was about 700, but what’s 700 casualties when the objective is gained?
I had a casualty in my party on the Saturday night. One of my men, Thompson, who had been with the battalion nearly as long as me, had a walk to Albert after tea and, whether he got drunk or not I can’t say, he managed to fall over the low parapet of the railway bridge, and his cold body was found on the lines twenty-five feet below in the morning. Nearly every bone in his body was broken and his neck too, so that he didn’t suffer a deal.
The thaw had set in with a vengeance and the ground, which for months had been frozen solid was now a stinking, slimy quagmire, in which one floundered up to the waist.
Orders were issued on the 19th to the effect that all details of 188 Brigade were to re-join their respective battalions on the 20th. Paraded at 8.00am and found I was in charge of fifty-seven men with three NCOs from the Ansons and Howes. One leading seaman of the Ansons went sick straightaway when he heard that our destination was the front line. He got away with it, although there was nothing more wrong with him than a bad attack of funk. For myself, I felt fit for anything and took charge in quite a happy frame of mind. The rest with the REs had done me no end of good and I felt fairly eager to get back to my own chums and a bit more real soldiering.
I was given the position of our Brigade HQ where I had to report and got all my party there by about 1.00pm. There we got rigged out in battle order and were given a good hot feed of bully stew and tea. We set off at 7.00pm from there with a guide who would take us to the Advanced HQ. ‘Do you know your way there, Corporal?’ asked the officer to our guide. ‘Yes, Sir,’ the guide replied. ‘I’ve only just come from there.’ Yes, he had! My God, what a guide. He had us wandering about for two hours in that godforsaken stretch of mud and shell holes with the rain beating right through us, flashing his electric torch all over the place and remarking every few minutes ‘Yes, this is the right way’. The chap was dizzy; there was no doubt about that and he was wandering about aimlessly, lost. The remarks he kept getting from the men in the rear did nothing to help steady him and I kept cursing him. ‘Where the hell are you going?’ I asked him after about an hour and a half. ‘I don’t know, I’m B--- if I do,’ he said. Soon after a voice called out ‘What party are you?’ ‘RND details, are you the Advance Battalion Headquarters?’ I asked. ‘What the devil are you doing here? You left this place two hours ago.’ That guide got chewed up a treat and he deserved it. We had wandered in a complete circle, and off we had to go again. We were in a murderous mood.
We met a party of officers and men looking for us with flash lamps about half a mile from the place we were trying to find. An officer was waiting there to guide us up the line and I could see as soon as he opened his mouth that he didn’t like his job and was all for speed. ‘Tell your men to keep closed up, Corporal, and whatever they do they must hurry,’ he said. He told me our way was through the Valley of Death or Death Valley and every so often the Bosch opened up with all sizes of guns and nothing could live in the place once he started.
He was a most cheerful officer and went on to say that the whole place was full of dead men and nobody dared out to bury them. A pity he wasn’t one of them. ‘Quick march,’ he shouted as though he were on parade at Crystal Palace and off he toddled, his long legs making light work of the knee-deep mud. After five minutes, ‘Ease off in front, we’re not bloody racehorses’ and off I had to dash to the rear to buck the stragglers up. There was no easing up in front though, and I had to fairly skim along the top of the mud to catch up that brilliant officer. ‘We shall have to go steady, Sir,’ I told him, but he wouldn’t have it. ‘If they can’t keep up they will get left behind,’ he said, ‘I’m not hanging about in this place.’ He said he was expecting the Germans to
open up any minute, and off he went again.
I was on a continual run backwards and forwards along the line, trying to keep the men together. Some of the poor devils were about all in and, after an hour, some of them sat down in the mud and refused to budge. I left one of the leading seamen with them and told him to bring them along as best he could. I never saw that officer again and about a dozen of the leading men had gone with him. Where to go I hadn’t the faintest notion, but one thing I was determined on and that was to get out of that stinking ‘Valley of Death’ and the sight of two GS wagons with horses and drivers smashed to bits lying in the stinking mud just by the side of the so-called track speeded my resolution up.
It bucked the men up too. ‘Get out of this bloody place, Corporal,’ someone yelled and I made off for the high ground on my left. I struck a trench on top just as Jerry opened up with a battery of 5.9s and we could hear them as they exploded with a sickening squelch in the valley below. The trench was full of water. In places we were wading up to the armpits in the foul stuff.
I had no idea how far the line was ahead, but after struggling on for about 500 yards up the trench, I came across two chaps trying to patch up a telephone wire that the Bosch had smashed, and got to know from them that there was a battalion HQ about half a mile ahead under a bank.
We got there, more dead than alive, and I found the imperturbable Lieutenant Abrahams, our acting adjutant, in a shell hole with a roof on. I reported to him and gave him my opinion of the officer who was supposed to guide us up here. ‘All right, Corporal Askin,’ he said, ‘I know the swine and I’ll send a report back to Brigade Headquarters about him.’ And I guessed he would too.
One o’clock in the morning, nearly dead with fatigue and with soul cases nearly dragged out of us with the mud. And I reckon I had dragged my way through three times as much mud as the other men. I had been on the double continually, first finding the way and then dashing back to the rear of the line to herd the stragglers together, then on again to the front. I just felt like something that had been left on a plate in the rain all night for the cat. I hadn’t finished though, not by any means.