We were occasionally attacked by German patrols, frequently shot at by snipers, harassed by machine-gun, artillery, and mortar fire, and on one occasion low-flying German aeroplanes strafed us. Our casualty rate wasn’t high, but it was steady. During one of these “quiet tours” the battalion usually lost three or four men killed and many more wounded.
It was for my actions on a patrol during one such “period of inactivity” that I was awarded the Military Cross. Although I will never willingly part with my “MC,” I am the first to admit that for everyone who was awarded such a gallantry decoration, there were many more who could have just as readily qualified for one.
On my fifth tour in the trenches, Captain Adamson sent a runner for me asking that I forego conducting a foot inspection of the soldiers in my platoon and come see him.
“Rory,” he said in a grave voice. “It’s our turn to visit the enemy on his side of the wire. We’ve been tasked to provide a patrol by Brigade headquarters. I think you should be the man to lead it. How do you feel about that?” I was surprised; I’d never been asked to agree or disagree with an order before. I was also acutely aware that I was the only junior officer in Number Two Company who hadn’t yet led a fighting patrol into no man’s land. I did my utmost to appear indifferent. “No, that should be no problem, sir. When’s the patrol scheduled to take place?”
“Tonight. I want you to get back to battalion HQ now. They’re waiting to brief you now.”
The battalion headquarters’s dugout was centrally located in low ground about a hundred yards to the rear of our company’s reserve trenches. Although we called it the battalion “rear area,” it was scarcely out of grenade-throwing distance of the most forward sub-units. I sloshed my way through the communication trenches and was briefed on the particulars of this specific operation in a dingy candle-lit hole with a corrugated tin ceiling.
Since arriving in the battalion I’d been “over the top” a half-dozen times with wiring parties. These were nasty night-time jobs that entailed stringing barbed wire and marking routes through our wire so that our own patrols could get in and out. When we were ordered to put out wiring parties, we watched carefully for signs of the enemy doing the same thing. Our reasoning was that the Germans were unlikely to fire on us if they had one of their own patrols out in front of them as well. We timed our work on our wire obstacles to coincide with that of the enemy. It was a kind of truce tacitly arranged between the two sides and in its own perverse way it worked well.
At the back of the battalion headquarters’s dugout, Colonel Buller was trying to get some sleep on a cot made of sticks and telephone wire. His second-in-command, Major Hamilton Gault, briefed me on the general plan. Gault was an imposing-looking man with penetrating eyes and a substantial but carefully trimmed moustache. For me, he was still much larger than life, as he was the wealthy businessman who had provided the money to raise the regiment and then refused to accept being named its colonel. Until that day, I’d never had a real conversation with him. Gault smiled when I entered and in a low voice beckoned me over to the map board. He wasted no words.
“Rory, as part of the overall plan to maintain an aggressive posture in this area we’ve been tasked by Brigade to conduct a raid with a view to bringing back a prisoner and inflicting casualties on the enemy. The enemy to our front is believed to be a Württemberg Reserve Division, but aerial reconnaissance indicates major supply and troop activity in the enemy’s rear.” He looked at me inquisitively to see if I was taking all this in. I nodded and he went on.
“Division is anxious to confirm as to whether or not the Württemberg troops have been replaced. If they have, it’s probably an indication of unusual activity and could possibly indicate a major offensive in our area. On the other hand, if the Württemberg Division is still hanging on here, it probably means Fritz is keeping them in the line so he can concentrate all his resources to resist the French push to the south of us at Artois. Rory, you are to take a patrol out tonight and bring back a prisoner. We need this information. If we’re going to be attacked, Division will allocate us more artillery ammunition, and likely more machine-guns. That would make all the difference for our survival. If we are not going to be attacked, I for one want to be the first to know it.”
He shifted uncomfortably and tapped a pencil against the board that served as his table. “Anyway I’ll leave the details to you.” Gault raised his bushy eyebrows and looked at me knowingly. “Oh. Apart from the prisoner, the staff really does want you to inflict maximum damage on the Hun as well.” His voice trailed off as he said this. “I’ll also leave that aspect to your good judgment.” He took a deep breath through his nose and rubbed the back of his neck. “Any questions?”
Once again I nodded. “No, sir. If I could go back and look at the ground and select a route, then I’ll come back this afternoon. I’ll probably have a lot to ask you once I’ve thought about how I’m going to do this.”
Gault rose. “Very wise, Rory. That’s exactly what I’d do if I were you.” He looked at me in an avuncular sort of way. “You’ll be fine once you get going. These things aren’t as daunting as they seem.”
I should have resented this kind of talk because with five tours up the line, I was beginning to fancy myself as something of a veteran, but I knew Gault wasn’t being patronizing. He’d led numerous patrols himself and patrolling wasn’t something normally required of majors.
“Agar tells me you’re doing a fine job and you’ve settled in like an old hand. Keep it up. You’ll be fine,” he said as I turned away and gathered myself to leave.
I was pleased to hear this and thanked him as I crawled out the muddy doorway of the bunker. My father had written to me a week before this incident and told me he’d received a letter from Gault assuring him that I was in good health and getting on well. Neither of us ever mentioned the connection.
I spent the afternoon squinting through a telescopic periscope and prepared my plan. My sergeant, a sandy-haired Scot named Ferguson, selected the men for the patrol for me. He was extremely disappointed I didn’t include him in the upcoming operation.
“I want to try something different on this patrol,” I told him. “It should be kept smaller than what we’ve been used to. It seems to me having too many men out there increases our risk of drawing fire.”
Sergeant Ferguson looked down and stirred at the mud between his feet. He didn’t ask how it was going to be different and I didn’t tell him. Apart from the size of the patrol, I hadn’t thought through the details. Even at that stage of the war, we seriously mistrusted much of what came down from the staff. I’m sure in this respect the Patricia’s were no different than anyone else. Staff bumbling in the Great War has become a cliché, but in late 1915, as throughout the war, we did our best to accommodate the staff’s wishes. But for our own survival, we always interpreted their demands. The pattern had by then become all too apparent; utterly ridiculous orders regularly came down from otherwise sensible men who were out of touch with the reality of life in the forward trenches. I suspected the situation I faced with my patrol was no different. I was going to do my best to get a prisoner, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to draw attention to my patrol and draw fire by inflicting meaningless casualties on the enemy for the sake of appearing to be aggressive.
The problem confronting me was the same one that confronted every infantry officer in that war. The Germans had been industriously adding to their barbed wire obstacles in front of their positions. I spent several hours squinting through a periscope but I could see no way to get through their wire. If the staff wanted me to get a prisoner, and at the same time they wanted me to do damage to the enemy, I had to get through the wire. Scores of thousands of men on both sides had already died vainly trying to solve precisely that problem. In their directions