The difficulties before the British attack were so great that more than one distinguished French officer doubted its possibility. One British General, in conversation with a French colleague, undertook, if the thing did not succeed, to eat his hat. When about noon on the 14th the French General heard what had happened, he is reported to have observed: “C’est bien! le General X ne mange pas son chapeau!” It was a pleasant reflection for the British troops that they had surprised their Allies; France had so often during the campaign exceeded the wildest expectations of her friends.
The day of the attack was of fortunate omen, for the 14th of July was the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, the fete-day of France. In Paris there was such a parade as that city had not seen in its long history—a procession of Allied troops, Belgians, Russians, British infantry, and last of all, the blue-coated heroes of France’s incomparable line. It was a shining proof to the world of the unity of the Alliance. And on the same day, while the Paris crowd was cheering the Scottish pipers as they swung down the boulevards, the British troops in Picardy were breaking through the German line, crying Vive la France! in all varieties of accent. It was France’s Day in the eyes of every soldier, the sacred day of that people whom in farm and village and trench they had come to reverence and love.
The front chosen for attack was from a point south-east of Pozières to Longueval and Delville Wood, a space of some four miles. Incidentally, it was necessary for our right flank to clear out the Wood of Tr6nes. Each village in the second line had its adjacent or enfolding wood—Bazentin-le-Petit, Bazentin-le-Grand, and at Longueval the big wood of Delville. In the centre, a mile and more beyond the German position, the wood of Foureaux, which we called High Wood, hung like a dark cloud on the sky line.
It was only the day before that we had consolidated our new line, and the work required to prepare for the attack was colossal. The Germans did not believe in an immediate assault, and when the bombardment began they thought it was no more than one of the spasmodic “preparations” with which we had already cloaked our purpose. In the small hours of the morning our guns opened and continued in a crescendo till 3.20 a.m., when the final hurricane fell. An observer has described the spectacle:—
“It was a thick night, the sky veiled in clouds, mottled and hurrying clouds, through which only one planet shone serene and steadily high up in the eastern sky. But the wonderful and appalling thing was the belt of flame which fringed a great arc of the horizon before us. It was not, of course, a steady flame, but it was one which never went out, rising and falling, flashing and flickering, half dimmed with its own smoke, against which the stabs and jets of fire from the bursting shells flared out intensely white or dully orange. Out of it all, now here, now there, rose like fountains the great balls of star shells and signal lights—theirs or ours—white and crimson and green. The noise of the shells was terrific, and when the guns near us spoke, not only the air but the earth beneath us shook. All the while, too, overhead, amid all the clamour and shock, in the darkness and no less as night paled to day, the larks sang. Only now and again would the song be audible, but whenever there was an interval between the roaring of the nearer guns, above all the distant tumult, it came down clear and very beautiful by contrast, Nor was the lark the only bird that was awake, for close by us, somewhere in the dark, a quail kept, constantly urging us—or the guns—to be Quick-be-quick.”
THE CAPTURE OF THE GERMAN SECOND POSITION.
Just before 3.30 a.m., when the cloudy dawn had fully come, the infantry attacked. In some places they had had to cover a long distance before reaching their striking-point. So complete was the surprise that, in the dark the battalions which had the furthest road to go came within 200 yards of the enemy’s wire with scarcely a casualty. When the German barrage came it fell behind them. There were three sections of the main attack—the division which had taken Mametz, against Bazentin-le-Petit; a famous regular division, which had fought in the Peninsula, against Bazentin-le-Grand; and a Scottish new division, against Longueval village and Delville Wood. In the last division was a brigade of South African troops who had been in the Damaraland Campaign.
The attack failed nowhere. In some parts it was slower than others—where the enemy’s defence had been less comprehensively destroyed, but by the afternoon all our tasks had been accomplished. To take one instance. Two of the attacking brigades were each composed of two battalions of the New Army and two of the old Regulars. The general commanding put the four new battalions into the first line. The experiment proved the worth of the new troops, for a little after midday their work was done, their part of the German second line was taken, and 662 unwounded men, 36 officers (including a battalion commander), 4 howitzers, 4 field-guns, and 14 machine-guns were in their hands. By the evening we had the whole second line from Bazentin-le-Petit to Longueval, and in the twenty-four hours’ battle we took over 2,000 prisoners, many of them of the 3rd Division of the German Guards. The audacious enterprise had been crowned with an unparalleled success.
The Wood of Tr6nes on our right flank was cleared, and in that place occurred one of the most romantic incidents of the action. On Thursday night an attack had been delivered there, and 100 men of the Royal West Kents became separated from their battalion. They had machine-guns with them and sufficient ammunition, so they were able to fortify one or two posts which they maintained all night against tremendous odds. Next morning the British sweep retrieved them, and the position they had maintained gave our troops invaluable aid in the clearing of the wood. All through this Battle of the Somme there were similar incidents; an advance would go too far and the point would be cut off, but that point would succeed in maintaining itself till a fresh advance reclaimed it. A better proof of discipline and resolution could not be desired.
On Saturday, July 15th, we were busy consolidating the ground won, and at some points pushing further. Our aircraft, in spite of the haze, were never idle, and in twenty-four hours they destroyed four Fokkers, three biplanes, and a double-engined plane, without the loss of a single machine. On the left we fought our way to the skirts of Pozières. We took the whole of Bazentin-le-Petit Wood and beat off two counter-attacks. In the centre, north of Bazentin-le-Grand, we pushed as far as High Wood, and broke into the German third line. It was late in the afternoon when the advance was made, the first in eighteen months which had seen the use of cavalry. In the Champagne battle of September 25th the French had used some squadrons of General Baratier’s Colonial Horse in the ground between the first and second German lines to sweep up prisoners and capture guns. This tactical expedient was now followed by the British, with the difference that in Champagne the fortified second line had not been taken, while in Picardy we were through all the main fortifications and operating against an improvised position. The cavalry used were a troop of the Dragoon Guards and a troop of Deccan Horse. They made their way up the shallow valley beyond Bazentin-le-Grand, finding cover in the slope of the ground and the growing corn. The final advance was made partly on foot and partly on horseback, and the enemy in the corn were ridden down, captured, or slain with lance and sabre. The cavalry then set to work to entrench themselves, to protect the flank of the advancing infantry in High Wood. It was a clean and workmanlike job, and the news of it exhilarated the whole line. That cavalry should be used at all seemed to forecast the end of the long trench fighting and the beginning of a campaign in the open.
On the right, around Longueval and in Delville Wood, there was the fiercest struggle of all. By the Saturday evening the whole wood had been taken, but the enemy was still in possession of certain orchards on the high ground to the north of the village, on the road to Flers. The position was well suited for counter-attacks, and was much at the mercy of the enemy’s guns. For four days the South African Brigade and the Scots wrestled in the wood, desperate hand-to-hand fighting such as the American armies knew in the last Wilderness campaign. Their assault had been splendid, but their defence was a far greater exploit. They hung on with little food and water, exposed to an incessant bombardment, and, when their ranks were terribly depleted, they flung back an attack by three Brandenburg regiments. In this far-flung battle all parts of the Empire won fame, and not least was the glory of the South African contingent.
In this stage of the action we tried conclusions with two of the