TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

The original text has a dot under the superscripts, for example under the 'th' in 36^th, which has been removed in the etext.

The format of time in the original text (with a hyphen) has been retained. For example, 11-45 a.m.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

More detail can be found at the [end of the book.]

THE HISTORY
OF THE
36^TH (ULSTER) DIVISION

O socii, neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum,

O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem.

Virgil: Æneid.

And he hadde been somtyme in chyvachie,

In Flaundrés, in Artoys and Pycardie,

And born hym weel.

Chaucer: Canterbury Tales.

Dawbeney—

Wise princes, Oxford,

Fight not alone with forces. Providence

Directs and tutors strength; else elephants

And barbèd horses might as well prevail

As the most subtle stratagems of war.

Ford: Perkin Warbeck.

The Memorial to the 36th (Ulster) Division at Thiepval

THE HISTORY

OF THE

36^TH (ULSTER) DIVISION

By

CYRIL FALLS

Late Lieutenant, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
and Captain, G.S., 36th Division

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

FIELD MARSHAL THE LORD PLUMER

G.C.B., G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O.

M'CAW, STEVENSON & ORR, LIMITED
The Linenhall Press, Belfast
and 329 High Holborn, London, W.C.

1922

This History is dedicated to the men of the
ULSTER DIVISION,
returned from the War, and to those who have not
come back; of whom I name two friends:
HARRY GALLAGHER, D.S.O.,
Captain, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers,
killed at the Battle of Messines, 1917;
and
GEORGE BRUCE, D.S.O., M.C.,
Brigade Major, 109th Brigade,
killed near Dadizeele, 1918;
Patterns to men-in-arms.

[INTRODUCTION]

The history of the 36th (Ulster) Division is the record of a great effort and a great achievement. The effort which resulted in its inception was the outcome of the determination, on the part of a people brought up in great traditions and inspired with a fervent spirit of loyalty, that they should be worthily represented in the fierce and prolonged struggle which from the outset was clearly foreshadowed. The achievement was the response made to the call by their representatives, the gallant deeds accomplished, the courage and determination displayed, and the sacrifices made.

The narrative gives a very clear picture of what the campaign in France and Flanders involved for the troops engaged in it. There is no reference to any great strategical movements or brilliant tactical operations, because there were none such to describe. It brings out, however, quite plainly that the victory was gained in the only way in which it could have been gained, by sheer hard fighting, carried out continuously, now on a small, now on a large, scale, but always by troops who never admitted defeat.

This was the character of the struggle into which the Ulster Division was plunged from its entrance into the campaign until its close, and the book describes very fully the part it played in it. Each chapter is a little history of itself, which frequently has sufficient subject-matter for a volume, and which always contains a record of events or incidents of absorbing interest. It is not a narrative of a series of unbroken successes, and there is no pretence that all the efforts made by the Division were successful. Readers of the History will find stories of failures, but they were glorious failures, the account of which no-one need feel ashamed to describe or peruse.

A tribute, no more than is due, is paid to Major-General Sir Oliver Nugent, K.C.B., D.S.O., the General who was in command of the Division for the greater part of the campaign, and who led it throughout with a confidence in it only equalled by its confidence in him. All who served under him will always hold him in affectionate remembrance, and all Ulstermen should realize that they owe him a debt of gratitude.

I hope this History will be read, not only by those who served in the Division and their relatives and friends, but by all Irishmen.

Young men approaching manhood and young women approaching womanhood should read it, and ponder over the example their predecessors have set them. For all who read will realize that in the great struggle which convulsed Europe for more than four years the men of Ulster did not fail.

PLUMER, F.M.

Malta,

25th November, 1922.

[PREFACE]

The history of the 36th (Ulster) Division is published under the patronage of the Right Hon. the Lord Carson of Duncairn, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, and Major-General Sir O. S. W. Nugent, K.C.B., D.S.O.

Its publication once decided upon, the first step taken was the formation of an influential Committee; the second, that of a Guarantee Fund to cover the whole cost of its production, which was, within a few weeks, largely over-subscribed.

The materials upon which the History is chiefly based are the official War Diaries in the possession of the Historical Section (Military Branch) of the Committee of Imperial Defence. To the officials at 2, Cavendish Square I am indebted for courtesy and assistance in matters of difficulty. I have made use also of a very large number of contributions sent to me by those who served with the Division, from Sir James Craig and Sir Oliver Nugent to several private soldiers. So long is the list that I cannot acknowledge my debt to these contributors by name, but I desire to thank one and all for material without which the record would have been bald and dry, material which has, I hope, enabled me to give some tinge of humanity to the History. In several cases these personal contributions have been of greater value still than this. They have—and this is true especially of the Retreat of March, 1918—furnished me with a record of incidents upon which official Diaries throw no light. Two such incidents, in particular, the defence of a company of the 12th Royal Irish Rifles at Le Pontchu Quarry, near St. Quentin, on March the 21st, and the last stand of the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles at Cugny, three days later, have hitherto gone unrecorded, because the survivors of these heroic episodes fell into the hands of the enemy.

I have also to thank Sir Oliver Nugent, Colonel-Commandant W. M. Withycombe, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O.; Brigadier-General C. J. Griffith, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O.; Brigadier-General A. St. Q. Ricardo, C.M.G., C.B.E., D.S.O.; Major H. F. Grant Suttie, D.S.O., M.C., and Major J. C. Boyle for their trouble in reading the History in MS. and for their many helpful suggestions. The Honours List, a very big undertaking, is based almost entirely on the compilation of Mr. Andrew Jardin, M.S.M., formerly Chief Clerk in the Administrative Branch of Divisional Headquarters. In this and other matters connected with the History I have had much assistance from my wife.

The most important acknowledgment, on behalf of the Committee and all interested in the publication of the work as well as on my own, is due to Captain Kenneth M. Moore, M.C., who acted as Honorary Secretary. The whole of the business side of the undertaking has been conducted by him. Into it he has thrown all his organizing ability and his enthusiasm. No appeal has been made to him in vain.

I have only to add that it has been my endeavour to make this History not a mere record of battles, but, so far as space has permitted, a picture of life as it was lived in the days of war. Lacking the second, the first is like dry bones without flesh to cover them. If I have succeeded in combining the two, I have right to hope that I have made a contribution, however small, to history in a general sense, as apart from military history.

It is to-day a favourite pretension that the war was as uninteresting as it was terrible: a vast error, based upon a temporary reaction, when not upon a pose. I made recently the discovery that between 1906 and 1921 there were published over one hundred books on the Napoleonic Wars. The number would have been far greater but for the fall in the publication of all books between 1914 and 1919. So, a hundred years hence, men will be delving into our records of the late war. Soldiers will be studying the lessons of its battles. But a yet greater number of seekers will be demanding with curiosity how men lived in such circumstances, how they reacted to the strain of war, what compensations they found. It behoves those who were eye-witnesses to depict it in all its aspects, not to shrink from discovering its horror, indeed, but also not to pretend that it had not a better side. The picture now so often painted, representing the war as a single scene in a torture chamber, whence men emerged physical or mental wrecks, may be good anti-militarist propaganda, but it is false, because incomplete. From those experiences many men have emerged happy and strong. Many knew how to snatch some happiness even from their midst. A far greater number can see, in retrospect, that they played a part in one of the most dramatic, as well as one of the most terrible, tragedies in history. That stands for something of good, amid all its evil, in any man's life. The comradeship of war's days is a memory not less happy.

It is not alone because the story of the Ulster Division is a record of courage and fortitude, in which men who are my friends had part, but because it represents in a microcosm man in one of the greatest and most curious catastrophes the world has known, that I have had, however unworthy of the task, a pleasure so intense in writing this book.

C. F.

[CONTENTS]

[MAPS]

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

THE HISTORY OF
THE 36^TH (ULSTER) DIVISION

[CHAPTER I]
The Raising and Training of the Division:
September 1914 to September 1915

It is no rightful part of the historian of a Division in the Great War to embark upon preliminary sketches of the state of Europe or of the movements in international politics that preceded the catastrophe. If once he begin to seek for causes he must seek far. Three pistol shots fired in the narrow streets of Serajevo may be likened to an accidental spark that explodes a great charge. But the charge was long laid. War had been determined upon in Berlin. Without that accidental spark, there can be no doubt that it would shortly have been deliberately exploded by a detonator from that quarter. If the divisional historian cannot trace the laying of the charge, which had been accumulating, it may be a hundred, and certainly fifty, years, let him not begin by dealing with what were merely the final accretions. Let him begin with the beginning of the war. War was declared between this country and Germany on the 4th of August, 1914.

There are, however, certain local circumstances anterior to that declaration, which have an intimate connection with the particular Division that is the subject of this History, and so could not be omitted without robbing the latter of much of its significance. The Ulster Division was not created in a day. The roots from which it sprang went back into the troubled period before the war. Its life was a continuance of the life of an earlier legion, a legion of civilians banded together to protect themselves from the consequences of legislation which they believed would affect adversely their rights and privileges as citizens of the United Kingdom—the Ulster Volunteer Force.

The Ulster Volunteer Force, or U.V.F., as it soon came to be known the world around, was the creation of Sir Edward Carson.[1] He believed that if the Imperial Parliament were to persist in its declared intention of forcing the Protestant population of Ulster into an Irish Parliament, without its consent, the inevitable consequence would be civil war in Ireland. Unorganized resistance would be ineffective, and would beyond doubt lead to disorder and unnecessary bloodshed. That the attempt would be made appeared certain. The fate of the Government was bound up with its Home Rule Bill. A failure to carry it through would have involved instant defeat in the House of Commons, wherein the Irish Nationalist Party held the balance of power. All the signs pointed to a clash. It appeared to Sir Edward Carson that the surest defence of the political ideals of his followers lay in convincing the people of Great Britain that Protestant Ulster would fight for the preservation of liberties and traditions which it held dear, which, in its eyes, were now menaced. It was in this faith that he gave his approval to the formation of the U.V.F.

It was on the advice of Lord Roberts, a warm advocate of Ulster's cause, that Sir Edward Carson invited General Sir George Richardson to take command of the U.V.F. Under his leadership the force was organized on a territorial basis. At the outbreak of war it contained over 80,000 men between the ages of seventeen and sixty-five, and a number of women, enrolled not only as nurses but for many of those supplementary services which were not allotted to women in the European war until a comparatively late period. The people of Ulster entered into their adventure in the same spirit that they entered into that of the war when it came, a spirit of single-minded faith in their leaders and in themselves. Admirably did Mr. Kipling sum up their attitude in the lines:

Believe we dare not boast,

Believe we do not fear.

Probably their worst danger was over before the declaration of war. The incident at the Curragh, as well as conferences at the War Office, at Aldershot, and elsewhere, of which the general public never knew, had made it clear that the Army could not be used to enforce the legislation projected at the cost of civil war. General John Gough, V.C., then Sir Douglas Haig's Chief of Staff, visited Ulster in July, and stated that the idea of coercion was abandoned. He is known to have formed the opinion that the Ulster Volunteers could, with experienced leaders, be made a very formidable fighting force. He, as well as the Government, knew that those leaders would not have been lacking.

Lord Kitchener, once at the War Office, was not long in arriving at the same opinion as General Gough. He was appointed Secretary of State for War on Wednesday the 5th of August. On Friday the 7th he sent for Colonel T. E. Hickman,[2] a Member of the House of Commons, President of the British League for the Defence of Ulster, who had acted as Inspector-General of the U.V.F., and said to him: "I want the Ulster Volunteers."

Colonel Hickman replied: "You must see Carson and Craig."

Lord Kitchener saw them. Sir Edward Carson's position was not easy. He was most eager to help by every means in his power. But he had a heavy responsibility towards the people of Ulster. If the fighting men of the Province were to go to the war, and in their absence a Home Rule Act, such as they had banded themselves together to resist, were to be forced upon those they had left behind, they would have had cause to reproach him. The Prime Minister was asked for an assurance with regard to the Home Rule Bill. No definite assurance could be obtained from him. A political truce had come into operation at the beginning of hostilities, but it was ill-defined, and the Prime Minister evidently did not see his way clearly out of the difficulties of his situation.[3] Sir Edward raised some minor points, asking that the word "Ulster" might succeed the number of the Division which it was proposed to raise. To this Lord Kitchener at first demurred, but the appelation was subsequently granted.[4]

A short delay ensued. The news from France was bad. A meeting of the Ulster Unionist Members of Parliament, attended by Lord Roberts, was held at Sir Edward Carson's house in Eaton Place. The result of the meeting was that, then and there, Colonel Hickman took a letter to Lord Kitchener, offering the aid of Sir Edward and the Council in raising as large a force as possible from the Ulster Volunteers, without any conditions whatsoever. Later that day there was another meeting between the Secretary for War and the Ulster representatives at the War Office. At first Lord Kitchener was modest in his demands, thinking that a Brigade from the U.V.F. would be ample, at least as a start. Captain Craig[5] assured him they could recruit a Division. Lord Kitchener at once appointed Colonel Hickman and Captain Craig as Chief Recruiting Officers for the Ulster area.

Captain Craig, on leaving the War Office, jumped into a taxicab in Whitehall and went straight to a firm of outfitters with which he had had dealings in equipment for the U.V.F., and gave an order for 10,000 complete outfits. Returning to the House he was somewhat exercised in his mind as to where the money was to come from to pay for all this. He spoke to Mr. Oliver Locker-Lampson,[6] one of Ulster's staunchest friends, who pulled out a cheque-book, and said:

"Don't say another word! There's a thousand pounds: to go on with, and nine more will follow in a day or two. This is out of a special fund just available for your purpose."

In the first days of September Colonel Hickman and Captain Craig crossed to Ireland to begin their work. On the 3rd of the month Sir Edward Carson made a great appeal, at a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast, to the men of the U.V.F., urging them to come forward for the defence of the Empire, the honour of Ulster and of Ireland.

In Ireland much had happened meanwhile. A large number of Ulstermen, the eager spirits who would not wait, had already enlisted. Of these the greater number had gone to the 10th Division, then being formed. Others had crossed the Channel and joined Manchester and Glasgow battalions. At Omagh Captain A. St. Q. Ricardo, D.S.O.,[7] Reserve of Officers, had been put in charge of the Depot, and in mid-August had, anticipating the formation of an Ulster Division, begun to recruit men from the Tyrone Volunteers for a battalion of Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. In a very short time he had two companies, which were, as they had as yet no official status, attached to the 5th and 6th Battalions of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. In these battalions some of the officers subsequently elected to remain, and went with the 10th Division to the Dardanelles. When the Ulster Division was formed these two companies became the nucleus of the senior battalion of the 109th Infantry Brigade, the 9th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.[8] This was an exceptional incident, since Captain Ricardo, before taking up his duties at the Omagh Depot, had been Adjutant of the Tyrone Regiment, U.V.F. Throughout Ulster, however, a preliminary recruiting campaign had been carried out, promises to enlist on the official formation of an Ulster Division being obtained from members of the U.V.F.

The short delay may have lost a few men to the Ulster Division, but it had created an atmosphere of expectation and excitement. When the recruiting officers arrived the men came forward with a rush, above all in Belfast. A building near the Old Town Hall had been taken over. As each man came out of the former after attestation, he entered the latter, was passed from department to department, emerging from another door a recruit in uniform, leaving his civilian clothing to be packed up and sent home. In this respect the Ulster Division was peculiarly fortunate. The men who enlisted in it had not to endure those weeks of drilling in wet weather in their civilian clothes, with inadequate boots, which were productive of moral as well as physical discomfort. For this advantage they were indebted to the foresight and powers of organization of Captain Craig and his assistants, the generosity of their friends, and the aid of the big business men of Belfast; the work being carried out without any cost to the State. Captain Craig made further visits to the War Office, on one of which he pointed out to Lord Kitchener that the camp accommodation in Ulster was insufficient. Lord Kitchener replied that such details must be arranged by others. Knowing him well from South African days, when he had learned to regard him with the highest admiration, Captain Craig answered that it was all very well to talk in that autocratic manner, but that at present he himself had not the weight behind him to carry the matter through. The response was characteristic. Lord Kitchener summoned in succession the Adjutant-General, the Director of Personal Services, the Quartermaster-General, and the Director of Fortifications, and said to them:

"Take Craig away and see that he gets what he requires."

Captain Craig was then able to return to Ireland, and set about the building of hutted camps at Clandeboye, Ballykinlar, and Newtownards in the east, and Finner on the Donegal coast.

The organization of the Division proceeded swiftly. A large house, 29, Wellington Place, Belfast, was taken over and equipped as Headquarters. Three Infantry Brigades were formed: the 107th from the City of Belfast itself; the 108th from the counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Cavan, and Monaghan; the 109th from Tyrone, Londonderry, Donegal, and Fermanagh, with one Belfast Battalion. The Pioneer Battalion was also recruited in County Down, mainly from the Lurgan area. The Royal Engineers, of which two Field Companies only were raised at first, the 121st and 122nd, as well as the Divisional Signal Company, came mainly from Belfast, above all from the great shipyards. Royal Army Medical Corps personnel was recruited and sent to Clandeboye, where, on the appointment of an A.D.M.S., Colonel F. J. Greig, it was formed into three Field Ambulances, the 108th, 109th, and 110th, and moved to Newry. So successful was recruiting for the R.A.M.C. that Colonel Greig was instructed by the War Office to raise a Casualty Clearing Station, the 40th, which served both in France and at Salonika. The Royal Army Service Corps personnel was fine both in physique and intelligence. The horses were good, as was natural, seeing how large was the proportion of horses bought for the Army in Ireland, and among the officers were some excellent horsemen and horsemasters. Indeed the horsemastership in the Division was throughout the campaign of a very high order, the Infantry contriving to keep their mules sleek and fat and the Artillery their gun-horses fit and well-groomed amid conditions which none can realize who did not witness them. A Cavalry Squadron and a Cyclist Company were also formed, the former being unique in that it was a service Squadron of the Inniskilling Dragoons.

One question which received much attention and gave rise to much discussion was that of a Divisional Artillery. It was reluctantly decided not to raise one in Ulster, though this meant losing many an Ulsterman to other Divisions. The U.V.F. had no artillery and consequently no partially trained force upon which to draw. It was thought that the raising and training of artillery in Ulster would take so long that it might delay the departure to the front of the Division for several months. In those days, it will be remembered, the one feverish anxiety of the men of the New Armies was lest the war should be over ere they were able to play their part in it! In the event, as will later be explained, the Division went to France in advance of the Artillery that had been raised for it, with a Territorial Artillery attached.

The 36th Divisional Artillery was raised, six months after the rest of the Division, in the suburbs of London, though from quarters stranger to one another than towns fifty miles apart in Ireland. The 153rd and 154th Brigades R.F.A. were formed by the British Empire League, of which one of the moving spirits was General Sir Bindon Blood. They were recruited chiefly from Croydon, Norbury, and Sydenham. The 172nd and 173rd Brigades, on the other hand, came from North-east London. They were formed on the initiative of the Mayors of East and West Ham and recruited from those districts.

The first date recorded in the Artillery annals is that of May the 5th, 1915, when sixty recruits of the 153rd Brigade assembled at 60, Victoria Street, the headquarters of the British Empire League, and marched to Norbury, where they were billeted in private houses. Londoners from South and North did not meet until July, when the four Brigades and the 36th Divisional Ammunition Column were moved to Lewes. It was within a few days of the arrival of the rest of the Division, already at a high standard of efficiency, in England, that serious training of the Divisional Artillery really began.

To the great regret of all Ulster, it was ruled that Sir George Richardson, owing to the seniority of his rank, could not take command of the Division. He remained in Belfast, working for the good of the cause, and none can speak more highly of his efforts and his loyalty than Sir James Craig and General Hickman, the chief organizers of those early days. "Trusted by every class," writes an officer who had long worked on his staff, "he was able to induce employers to permit those of their workmen to enlist who were not indispensable, and to perform the much more difficult task of making the skilled craftsmen of the shipyards realize that their duty to their country called them to remain at work, helping the Navy and Merchant Service to hold command of the sea, on which our success depended equally with our victory on land." How they and others, notably the makers of linen for aircraft, who were, for the most part, women, played their part, cannot be discussed here, though it is a record worthy the pen of a eulogist. What is less generally known to the people of Great Britain is that in Ulster not a strike occurred throughout the course of the war.

Major-General C. H. Powell, C.B.,[9] an officer with a distinguished record in the Indian Army, was appointed to the command of the Division. Colonel Hickman, after remaining in Belfast till the three Brigades had been formed, went to Finner to take command of the 109th.

The following is the formation of the Division as finally constituted:—

Commander:

Major-General C. H. Powell, C.B.

Assistant Adjutant and Quarter-Master General:

Lieut.-Colonel James Craig.

General Staff Officer, 2nd Grade:[10]

Captain W. B. Spender.[11]

Royal Artillery.[12]

(Brigadier-General H. J. Brock.)

153rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.
154th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.
172nd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.
173rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.
Divisional Ammunition Column, Royal
Field Artillery.

Royal Engineers.

121st Field Company, Royal Engineers.
122nd Field Company, Royal Engineers.
150th Field Company, Royal Engineers.

107th Infantry Brigade.

(Brigadier-General G. H. H. Couchman, C.B.)

8th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (East Belfast Volunteers).
9th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (West Belfast Volunteers).
10th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (South Belfast Volunteers).
15th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (North Belfast Volunteers).

108th Infantry Brigade.

(Brigadier-General G. Hacket Pain, C.B.)[13]

11th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (South Antrim Volunteers).
12th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (Central Antrim Volunteers).
13th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (1st Co. Down Volunteers).
9th Battn. Royal Irish Fusiliers (Armagh, Monaghan, and
Cavan Volunteers).

109th Infantry Brigade.

(Brigadier-General T. E. Hickman, C.B., D.S.O.)

9th Battn. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (Tyrone Volunteers).
10th Battn. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (Derry Volunteers).
11th Battn. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (Donegal and Fermanagh Volunteers).
14th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (Young Citizen Volunteers of Belfast).

Pioneer Battalion.

16th Battn. Royal Irish Rifles (2nd Co. Down Volunteers).

Divisional Troops.

Service Squadron, Royal Inniskilling Dragoons.
36th Divisional Signal Company, Royal Engineers.
Divisional Cyclist Company.
Royal Army Medical Corps.
108th Field Ambulance.
109th Field Ambulance.
110th Field Ambulance.
76th Sanitary Section, R.A.M.C.
Divisional Train, R.A.S.C.
48th Mobile Veterinary Section.

The present is perhaps the most suitable moment for mention of the reserve battalions, of which six were formed in 1915: the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th Royal Irish Rifles, 12th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and 10th Royal Irish Fusiliers. The 36th was the sole Irish Division to have its own reserve formations. In addition to the provision of drafts, these battalions had important tasks in the disturbed period following the rebellion of Easter Week, 1916. A detachment from the 18th Royal Irish Rifles, which battalion was commanded by Colonel R. G. Sharman Crawford, C.B.E., took part in the capture of "Liberty Hall."

Training was in full swing by the end of September, 1914, the 107th Brigade being at Ballykinlar, the 108th at Clandeboye and Newtownards, and the 109th at Finner; where the accommodation consisted at this early date almost entirely of tents. By good chance the weather of the first three weeks of October was fine and mild, but thereafter, and before the hutting was completed, a very wet and severe winter set in. The U.V.F. training was a great advantage. It was easy to handle bodies of men, the most ignorant of whom could at least number, form fours, march in step, and keep alignment from the first. And the old organization held till it could be replaced by the new. As one Commanding Officer writes: "The U.V.F. officers and N.C.O.'s kept the men in order till we straightened out into the regular army formation." The enthusiasm of the men of those days of 1914 is something that no officer who served with them can ever forget; something perhaps, also, that none but those officers who began their training in the first six months of the war ever witnessed. There is a slow-burning flame in the Ulster blood that keeps her sons, once raised to the passion of great endeavour, at a high and steady pitch of resolution. They took their work with extraordinary seriousness. They were all anxiety to learn. They made their platoon commanders, beginners for the most part like themselves, struggle to keep ahead of them in the art that both were acquiring. How many of the junior officers must remember those "conferences" of sergeants and section leaders after parade hours and the circle of keen heads bent inward toward them; how many the "parades" on the mess table, matches for sections, inked on one side so that after many manœuvres the front rank might remain the front!

The Infantry of the 36th Division was formed on perhaps the most strictly territorial basis of any Division of the New Armies; the general rule being that battalions were drawn from the larger regimental areas of the U.V.F., companies from the smaller, and platoons from battalion areas. This had the great advantage that it engendered a natural companionship and spirit of pride in the units. The company, the platoon, was a close community, an enlarged family. In after days, in the trenches and in billets behind the lines, the talk, not only of men from Belfast and the larger towns, but of those from the country villages, would be of streets and, in the latter case, of farms and lanes of which those present had known every detail from childhood. The old clan-names of the Northumbrian and Scottish Borders were clustered thick together. A platoon would have five Armstrongs or Wilsons or Elliots, a company half a dozen Irvines or Johnstons, a battalion half a score of Morrows or Hannas. To be set against that great accretion of moral force which springs from such a survival of the clan was the minor disadvantage that the non-commissioned officers for the most part, and certainly all the juniors amongst them, were the brothers and cousins and close companions of the men they commanded. It was not that their orders were disobeyed; it was rather that there was at first a diffidence about the orders, which sometimes appeared to be rather in the nature of persuasive requests. In a few units the non-commissioned officers were changed about, so that they came in contact with men with whom they were less familiar. But the problem was never a serious one, and it finally disappeared. The only other disciplinary problem was that of week-end leave. The great bulk of the men of the 107th and 108th Brigades and most of the Divisional Troops were training near their homes. They could not understand why they should be kept in camp doing nothing on Sundays when they might have been visiting them. Though leave was given generously enough, this remained a sore point till the Division moved to England. Apart from "absence without leave" there was no crime to speak of. Such occasional blackguards as were found in the ranks were swiftly disposed of, a sentence of "discharged as incorrigible and worthless," which was, as a fact, quite illegal in time of war, being their fate.

The Divisional Commander was a firm believer in marching, not only as a preparation for that feature of military life, but as a creator of toughness and endurance to meet the varied strain of war. By the early months of 1915 one brigade route march of from twenty to twenty-five miles, and shorter battalion marches each week, had become the general rule. Equipment being slow in making its appearance, General Powell had rucksacks, of the Alpine pattern, made in Belfast, to be carried, fully loaded, on the march instead of the pack, and bolts from the shipyards to take the place of small-arm ammunition in the pouches. There was, as might be expected, some grumbling at what appeared to be a needless imposition, but the troops benefited by the experience, and Sir Archibald Murray, when they marched past him the following summer, remarked how easily they carried their packs. Numerous recruiting marches were also carried out, which provided further training in marching and march-discipline, and at the same time exhibited detachments of the units from the countryside to the remotest villages in their area. Everywhere they were received with the greatest pride and enthusiasm.

For the rest, the training was that of all the New Armies. The Infantry had "D.P." rifles, the R.E. for a long time no material save what was bought for them. Little musketry could be carried out, such as there was being done with a handful of short service rifles allotted to each battalion, and in some cases with rifles borrowed from the U.V.F.—upon which inspecting Generals turned a blind eye. By Infantry and Sappers alike trenches were dug, as an officer of the latter acidly remarks, about eighteen inches wide and with perpendicular sides. But that, of course, was a universal experience. Much discussion took place upon the relative merits of trenches sited upon the forward and reverse slopes of undulating ground. Not till 1918, and then to an extent but small, was any choice to be left by the enemy in the siting of positions. The R.A.M.C. was the first to be equipped. The people of Ulster showed its affection for its Division by the presentation of very fine motor ambulances, each of which bore inscribed upon the body the name of the town or association from which it came. In some of these cars the gangway was sufficiently wide to take two additional stretchers, which proved an inestimable boon in the Battle of the Somme.

Major-General Sir C. H. Powell, K.C.B.

The winter, it has already been remarked, was a very wet one. The health of the troops was generally good, a few cases of that dreadful disease cerebro-spinal meningitis causing the medical staff its greatest anxiety. In order, however, to spare the men as far as possible from strain and discomfort, and to allow those that remained to be accommodated in the huts as they were completed, some units were moved out of the camps; the 9th Irish Fusiliers[14] of the 108th Brigade, and the 11th Inniskillings[14] of the 109th, for example, moving to barracks, the first to Holywood and Belfast, the second to the town that gives the regiment its name, Enniskillen. In January the 109th Brigade, less the 10th Inniskillings, moved to Randalstown. The 10th Inniskillings remained on the West coast till the first days of May, suffering the wildest weather in their exposed camp, but probably no worse than was suffered by the rest of the Brigade in the first days at Randalstown, which became such a quagmire that men who slipped from the "duck-boards" between the huts sometimes sank to their knees in the mud. As weather improved and the hutments were completed, the full Brigades reassembled in their camps, the 10th Inniskillings marching across Ireland, from west coast to east, to rejoin. With the spring there began a new era of intensive training.

Meanwhile had been fought the Marne, the Aisne, the two Battles of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle. The life in France was impossible to imagine for those who had not seen it. Not all the marching and countermarching, the attacks, the trench-digging, the bivouacks, and cooking of meals in the open could print for the mind's eye an adequate picture of that. But gradually, through letters, through the recitals of wounded friends, men began to form some conception of the realities of modern war, as fought against a race which, for courage, endurance, and resource, ranked with the most formidable warrior peoples of the world's history. The gas attack in the Salient was evidence, if any were still needed, of the temper of the new Germany. Men did not blanch, but it was inevitable that, to the more seriously minded among them at least, another and a grimmer picture than that which had been present with them at the beginning should form itself. They had answered many calls, chief among them love of country in various aspects. Mingled with this had been, however, the spirit of adventure. The old rowel that had driven Ulstermen over the seas, making them colonists and administrators, was sharpened again by the war. It pricked on these young men, the flower of their country. Now, perhaps, the spirit of happy adventure faded a little, but it was replaced by that of hard resolution and duty. The training had had its physical results. The troops were strong and supple in their strength. But it had had a moral result also. The Division was no longer a mass of men, even of drilled and disciplined men. It had become, in the mysterious fashion that such things happen, welded into a whole, a spiritual unit. Little by little the group-spirit had grown, till before the troops quitted Ireland a sensitive observer might fancy he could detect it whenever he came in contact with them.

One factor in this group-spirit and in the whole life of the Division, which is here approached with diffidence, but which could not be omitted from a faithful record, was the element of religion. It is sometimes forgotten that the Covenant of the seventeenth century was taken almost as widely in Ulster as in Scotland. Undoubtedly something of the old covenanting spirit, the old sense of the alliance of "Bible and Sword," was reborn in these men. It was the easier recreated because of the strength of religious feeling which had existed in times of peace in Protestant Ulster, one of the few parts of the country wherein the reformed churches had not, by their own admission, lost ground in the last thirty years. Religious feeling inspired the men of Ulster in those days of training, and remained with them in the days of war. The General commanding the 4th Division, to which the 36th was attached for instruction after its arrival in France, spoke of his astonishment at finding so many Ulstermen reading their Bibles. The writer of this book can bear witness from personal observation that it was not uncommon to find a man sitting on the fire-step of a front-line trench, reading one of the small copies of the New Testament which were issued to the troops by the people at home. The explanation was that, on the one hand, religion was near and real to them; on the other, that they were simple men. They saw no reason to hide or disguise that which was a part of their daily lives.

The people of Ulster were given an opportunity to see their Division as a whole. On May the 8th it was inspected by Major-General Sir Hugh McCalmont at Malone, afterwards marching through Belfast, the salute being taken by the General at the City Hall. It was a fine day; the City was dressed in bunting, and the main streets rocked with a mass of enthusiastic spectators, who had crowded in by special train from all about the Province. The troops were to remain two months longer in Ireland, always on the tiptoe of expectation of a move, but that was the real farewell of Ulster to the Division she had given to the nation.

Early in July the Division moved to Seaford, on the Sussex coast, leaving the 9th Inniskillings to recruit at Ballycastle from the shameful disease of German measles! But a small proportion of those 15,000 men had ever previously crossed the Irish Sea. The English were new to them, as they were to the English. The impressions made on either side were favourable. The men were treated with the greatest kindliness, and, for their part, their behaviour was excellent; reassuring, indeed, to some of those residents who had been perturbed at the idea of this incursion of "wild Irishmen." Not a few of the people of Seaford, on seeing the announcement of this History in the press, wrote to the author and spoke of their pleasant memories of the Ulstermen's sojourn in the district. Seaford made a fine training area. It was a healthy place, and the splendid downs behind the town were ideal for tactical exercises. Soon they were scored with white chalk trenches. On one occasion, when the whole Division, with the exception of the Artillery—Infantry, Cavalry, Cyclists, Engineers, R.A.S.C., and R.A.M.C.—had been engaged in night manœuvres, it was discovered when dawn broke that a deep trench had been cut across a very valuable gallop belonging to an Alfriston training stable. An apologetic letter was sent to the owner, who wrote back expressing his pleasure that his ground had been put to a purpose so useful, offered half his jumps to the mounted units and young officers for practice, and scarcely hinted that he hoped the occurrence would not be repeated.

In the last week of July, when the troops were carrying out their usual routine of training, a message was received that Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Murray, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, would hold an immediate inspection. The result was of great importance. Sir Archibald Murray informed Lord Kitchener on his return that the Ulster Division was worthy of a higher place than it occupied on the latter's private list of troops for the front. It was not Lord Kitchener's fashion to ponder such questions.

"I'll go and see them to-morrow!" was his reply.

At half-past four on the 26th of July came a telephone message that the Division was to parade for Lord Kitchener at 11 a.m. the following day.

July the 27th was a bright, sunny day. Lord Kitchener came, dashed at the waiting horses with such speed that before anyone could speak he was on the back of one with a doubtful reputation, by no means intended for his riding, and rode off. Colonel FitzGerald, his Military Secretary, said he had never seen him better pleased, and was quite unable to persuade him to leave the field for another engagement. To General Powell he remarked that he was relieved to find he had under his hand a Division ready for the front at a moment's notice.

One incident of this inspection, related by the A.D.M.S. of the Division, must be recorded, as it throws an interesting light on Lord Kitchener's quickness of eye for and memory of details. The personnel of the Field Ambulances was of fine physique, the mounted men including many farmers' sons. As the Field Ambulances passed the saluting point, Lord Kitchener turned to the A.D.M.S. with the remark: "Those men are too fine for the R.A.M.C. You will have to give me two hundred for the Artillery." The A.D.M.S. replied that he hoped they would not be taken, as they had undergone a very thorough training; to which Lord Kitchener, raising his voice, simply repeated: "You will have to give me some of those men for the Artillery."

A few days later an officer from the Adjutant-General's department came down. He said that, at the moment, men were in fact not particularly wanted for the Artillery, but that as "K." had ordered it, they must be taken. The upshot was that, from a large number who volunteered and some reinforcements from Newry, one hundred and fifty were transferred to the Artillery, with the promise that they should be used to reinforce that of their own Division—a promise that, it is to be feared, was not in the majority of their cases fulfilled. The sequel came two months later, when Lord Kitchener was present at the King's Review. On reaching the 108th Field Ambulance, the A.D.M.S. rode out to take up his position behind Lord Kitchener, who turned to him and asked: "How many men did you send to the Artillery?" "A hundred and fifty, sir." Lord Kitchener, somewhat gruffly: "I thought I told you to send two hundred." The A.D.M.S. thought it best to leave it at that.

Returning from the Seaford review, Sir Archibald Murray pointed out to the Secretary for War that the 36th Division was not quite so ready for France as he had supposed, since, though it had had practice on the ranges at Seaford, as well as in Ireland, it had not completed its official musketry and machine-gun courses, and was not equipped for the front. Nor was the training of the Divisional Artillery, which Lord Kitchener had not seen, nearly sufficiently advanced. Lord Kitchener gave orders that musketry and equipment should at once be completed, and that a fully trained Divisional Artillery should be attached to the Division. Shortly afterwards he said to Sir Edward Carson, referring no doubt to the New Armies only: "Your Division of Ulstermen is the finest I have yet seen."

Owing to lack of accommodation it was a few weeks before the Division moved to an area where its musketry could be carried out. By the 2nd of September it was assembled at Bordon and Bramshott. Here the final equipment arrived, and there was feverish activity in fitting it. Here also the musketry course was fired, for the most part with American ammunition, which gave unsatisfactory results.[15] And here the rest of the Division came to closer quarters with its own Artillery, which had arrived at Bordon from Lewes on August the 31st. To be frank, there was some dismay when it was discovered how elementary was its training. A year was the estimate by some regular officers of the time needed to make it fit for service. The critics had yet to learn what could be accomplished by intensive training, directed from above with skill and energy, backed by hard work, loyalty, and the swift intelligence of the Cockney from below.

The senior officers were now sent to France for instructional purposes, being attached to the 5th and 18th Divisions. On their return, news met General Powell that during his absence Major-General O. S. W. Nugent, D.S.O.,[16] who had commanded a Brigade in France with distinction, had been appointed to succeed him. The grounds of the decision were unexceptionable: that Divisions should be taken to France by general officers with experience of the conditions of warfare in that country. There was, however, throughout the Division, much sympathy with General Powell, who had been allowed to make his tour in the line in ignorance of the fact, which the staff officers with whom he came in contact knew, that his successor had been appointed. He received the honour of the K.C.B. in recognition of his high services in the training of the Division. Sir Herbert Powell finally went to Vladivostok in charge of the British Red Cross. The new commander was to remain with the Division for over two and a half years. To-day his name is universally associated with it.

On September the 30th, the 36th (Ulster) Division, with the 1st/1st London Territorial Artillery, was reviewed by His Majesty King George the Fifth. It was desired not to prolong unduly the march past, as His Majesty always insisted on waiting till the last man had gone by, and General Nugent decided that the Artillery should advance in column of batteries, and the Infantry in column of half-companies with reduced intervals. It was a high test, triumphantly accomplished. Lord Kitchener informed General Sir A. Hunter, G.O.C. Aldershot Command, that the inspection was the quickest the King had made since the beginning of the war: a triumph of staff work and of drill. None of those who saw them is likely to forget the physique or the bearing of that splendid body of men. It is hard to think without emotion of what the Division was that day and the fate that awaited it.

Lord Kitchener was there again, smiling and obviously well-pleased. His Majesty warmly congratulated General Nugent, and, turning to Sir George Richardson, who was present, told him what a fine Division had been given by his Ulster Volunteers. As the King's motor-car overtook some of the troops marching back to camp the men burst out into wild cheering, so that the car swept along a loud-roaring line—an unrehearsed and spontaneous exhibition of loyalty.

At the time of His Majesty's inspection the Advance Parties were already in France. In the first days of October the Division crossed the Channel, the mounted portion and transport to Havre, the dismounted to Boulogne.

The year of preparation for battle was over.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Now Lord Carson of Duncairn.

[2] Now Brigadier-General T. E. Hickman, C.B., D.S.O., M.P.

[3] Sir Edward Carson's apprehensions were found to have been justified when, on September the 15th, Mr. Asquith's Government passed the Home Rule Act, the whole of the Unionist Party leaving the Chamber as a protest against what it regarded as a breach of the Truce.

[4] As, of course, were the titles "Scottish," "Irish," "Welsh," "Northern," "Southern," etc., to other Divisions.

[5] Now the Right Honble. Sir James Craig, Bt., Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

[6] Now Commander Locker-Lampson, C.M.G., D.S.O.

[7] Now Brigadier-General Ricardo, C.M.G., C.B.E., D.S.O.

[8] Captain Ricardo was asked officially to ascertain the views of the Nationalist Party, in his district, which had a military organization of its own. They replied that they would help on the following conditions: (a) they would guard the shores of Ulster only, and would not leave it; (b) they must be allowed to keep their arms at the end of the war.

[9] Now Sir Herbert Powell, K.C.B.

[10] A G.S.O., 1st Grade, was not appointed to Divisions in training at home.

[11] Now Lieut.-Colonel Spender, C.B.E., D.S.O., M.C.

[12] Formed May 1915.

[13] Now Sir G. Hacket Pain, K.B.E., C.B., M.P.

[14] In future, battalions of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, Royal Irish Rifles, and Royal Irish Fusiliers will be alluded to as "Inniskillings," "Rifles," and "Irish Fusiliers," respectively.

[15] The writer saw one man, at whose shoulder he had stood on a U.V.F. range while he put five huge bullets from an Italian Veterli into the bull's-eye, miss the target twice at 600 yards.

[16] Now Sir Oliver Nugent, K.C.B., D.S.O.

[CHAPTER II]
The Division in France: October 1915 to June 1916

General Nugent and his Staff arrived at Boulogne at midnight on the 3rd of October. Between the 5th and the 9th of the month the Division concentrated in the area round Flesselles, where, some ten miles north of Amiens, Divisional Headquarters were established. Here the troops realized for the first time that France did not always mean the firing-line. The sound of guns was, strangely enough, heard less than it had been at Seaford, though the Vérey lights that could be seen by night against the sky were evidence of the proximity of the trenches. The countryside of the Somme was poor of soil, though the industry of the inhabitants extracted good crops from it, and curiously unlike that of the North of Ireland in its absence of pasture. It was, however, pleasant enough, high and rolling, the sites of the little villages in the uplands determined by the scanty water supply, but traversed by numerous streams in the valleys, full of beautiful panoramas wherever woodland interposed to break the monotony of its contours. The villages were not uncomfortable so long as troops could be widely spread. When, however, they were used as "staging areas" and billeting was at all close, their poverty was only too apparent.

Of this, some portions of the Division had early experience. On October the 9th the 107th Brigade and the 1st/1st London Brigade R.F.A. moved up for attachment to the 4th Division, and instruction in trench warfare. The 4th Division at this time held a wide and comparatively quiet front north of the River Ancre, which had been taken over from the French during the previous summer. The general method of instruction in vogue was the attachment of formations and units to those next larger; that is, a battalion to an infantry brigade, a company to a battalion, a battery to a brigade of artillery. The troops in this preliminary experience of trench warfare suffered less from the enemy than the elements. The weather was bad, roads and trenches were wet; the billeting accommodation en route was scanty, and while in rest behind the line, consisted almost entirely of war-worn tents without floor-boards. The men in those first days scarce seemed to notice these things, so intense was their eagerness and curiosity. The conventional and traditional grumble of the British private soldier, a sotto voce accompaniment to the most generous efforts and the most unselfish devotion, was forgotten here. One of the Brigadiers of the 4th Division said of them:

"The men are extraordinarily quiet, and I thought at first somewhat subdued, and put it down to the big marches they had had. But when I came to talk to them I found they were like new schoolboys, taking in everything, deadly keen, and only afraid of one thing—letting down their unit in any way. I have never seen any men with such quiet confidence in themselves, in spite of their efforts to hide it."

The attachments lasted five days, the 107th Brigade being the only one which was not divided between two divisions in the line. Its attachment being complete, the 108th was sent up, two battalions to the 4th Division and two to the 48th, further north. Then, towards the end of the month, the 109th Brigade had its turn with the same two Divisions. Meanwhile the R.E. Headquarters and the three Field Companies had moved to Arquèves, to work on the new Third Army Line, later to become important as the Amiens Defences. At this task they were soon joined by the 16th Rifles (Pioneers), while they also had as companions French Territorials. All worked hard and well, though in the light of subsequent experience their trenches were far too narrow, and their traverses too small by half. The troops not under instruction in the line were kept hard at work training, officers from the 4th Division having come to initiate them into the mysteries of bombing—mysteries to which they took in kindly fashion. One instructor declared that the national sport of the Ulsterman, the throwing of kidney-stones in street riots, was an admirable preparation for bombing. Another introduction was to gas helmets, the horrible bags of those days without even mouth-pieces. Passing through a gas-chamber in these bags was unpleasant, though accepted as a necessity, but "doubling" and marching in them, as ordered by some zealous instructors, was purgatory, and resulted in some of the men being violently sick. On October the 21st the Division, except for such infantry and artillery as were under instruction in the line, moved slightly further west, toward Abbeville, to a more comfortable and spacious area about Bernaville and Canaples, with Headquarters at Domart-en-Ponthieu.

The Higher Command had decided that the 36th Division was not to enter the line as a formation for the present. The Battle of Loos was not long past, when troops fresh from England had been pushed into the fight at its fiercest and after very long marches, with disastrous results. It was determined that in future divisions should be given a chance gradually to accustom themselves to the conditions. Another decision which had been arrived at was that New Army and Territorial Divisions should receive an admixture of thirty per cent. of regular infantry by the transfer of brigades. Orders were received for the transfer of one brigade to the 4th Division. The 107th, in the command of which General W. M. Withycombe, C.M.G., had succeeded General Couchman, was selected to go. The 12th Brigade of the 4th Division was transferred to the 36th Division in exchange.

By November the 4th the 107th Brigade, with its Light Trench Mortar Battery, which had just arrived from England, and the 110th Field Ambulance, were clear of the 36th Divisional area. On the 7th the 12th Brigade marched in to take its place. The 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers of this Brigade were transferred to the 108th Brigade in exchange for the 11th Rifles, and the 2nd Essex to the 109th in exchange for the 14th Rifles. These inter-divisional changes lasted a month only. Any advantages they may have had were found insufficient to counterbalance the dislike of the break-up of their old formations felt by battalions of both Divisions.

The Division as now constituted passed a winter very different from that of its expectations. Late in November it moved down to Abbeville, with Headquarters at Pont Remy, on the bank of the Somme just outside that city. For the time it was concerned more with sanitation than with war. Never was such cleaning of streets, such draining of middens, such wholesale carting away of manure-heaps, as when the Ulster Division marched into an area. The inhabitants wondered and gaped, and a humorist wrote home that the troops "were sweeping onward through village after village in the North of France."

Some writers—among them, it is to be regretted, a well-known dramatist and critic of Ulster birth—have spoken unfavourably of the French peasant and his attitude to the troops. There can be few men of the 36th Division who look back upon the peasant-farmer of the Somme with anything but affection and admiration. For their part, the villagers testified by their letters and expressions of regret, whenever a unit moved, how good had been the terms between troops and civilians. The Calvinistic Ulsterman was sometimes a little startled and pained at first on finding a countryside so liberally besprinkled with shrines and crucifixes, but, if he were a countryman, especially, he made the surprising discovery that these countrymen of the Somme were very like himself. They thought twice before speaking once; they had a certain dourness; they did not wear their hearts on their sleeves, though they were furnished with those organs in the proper places.

On November the 26th two of the Field Companies, the 121st and 150th, were returned by the Third Army, and began to assist and supervise the infantry at work in the villages. In view of the projected spring offensive, not actually launched till after midsummer, all these back areas were being prepared to accommodate large bodies of troops in some comfort. Bunks were put into barns, the holes which had appeared in the lath and mud walls, through shortage of male labour in the villages, were repaired, and excellent horse-lines, with standings of chalk and stone, were built. The timber was cut locally and sawn by the troops themselves, using their own saw-mill.

On November the 27th the Ulster Divisional Artillery, so called at that date to distinguish it from the London Territorial Artillery, which was known as the 36th Divisional Artillery, landed at Havre, and joined the Division in the area east of Abbeville. It had remained at Bordon since the departure of the Division. Its training was not yet complete, and it was to have a course of gunnery at Cayeux, on the coast, south of the mouth of the Somme, before entering the line. The only other important event, from the military point of view, to be recorded before February, was the formation of the 108th and 109th Machine-Gun Companies, from personnel and guns withdrawn from the battalions. To replace the guns each battalion was issued with four Lewis guns, which number was gradually increased till, a year later, it had been quadrupled.

Christmas 1915 was celebrated by the troops in their billets with sport and festivities. Many units had bought suckling pigs from the farmers, and fattened them in anticipation of the event; none had failed to provide some luxuries. The villagers took part in the merrymaking, and in most of the officers' messes the people of the house drank with their guests the toast of victory. For very many of the men in those Somme villages it was one of the happiest Christmases they had ever spent, and one on which they looked back in after years with delight. Within a few days the services of the Pioneers were lost for a long period to the Division. They were ordered to construct, under the Chief Engineer of the Third Army, a broad-gauge railway line between Candas and Acheux. For the rest, there was little change in the daily life of the Division. On New Year's Day it moved back again to the area about Domart, roughly that in which it had been previously billeted. The same work—wood-cutting, repairing and "bunking" of barns, construction of horse-lines—continued, with the exception that it was done in different villages. When the work was well in hand some training was interspersed with it. Not till January the 30th was the Division ordered to hold itself in readiness to take over a portion of the line. It had passed the worst of the winter by no means disagreeably.

The 107th Brigade had existed in a fashion less idyllic. On arrival in the 4th Division area two of its battalions, the 8th and 15th Rifles, were transferred to the 10th and 11th Brigades respectively, while in exchange it received three battalions, the 1st Rifle Brigade, 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, and 2nd Monmouths. Three days later it took over the left sector of the 4th Division front, astride the Mailly-Maillet—Serre Road, the Brigade Headquarters being in the former village. Here for upwards of two months it remained, alternating with the 10th Brigade in six-day tours in the line. In November the weather was indifferent; by December it became very bad indeed. Men sank in the mud so that they had to be dug out by their comrades with spades. The communication trenches were so deep in water that they were for the most part impassable. Movement from front to rear had to take place after dark, in the open. "Trench feet," a disease then generally known as "frost-bite," though caused by constant immersion of the feet in water far above freezing-point, became prevalent. Rubber thigh boots, most precious of boons to men in such sectors, were all too rare as yet, and had to be doled out with parsimony. Battle casualties were light in this sector, but the life in it was very far from pleasant. On New Year's Day the Brigade, now returned to its original formation, exchanged it for the right sector of the front held by 4th Division, south of the Mailly-Maillet—Serre Road. Of this sector the chief peculiarity was a tiny parallelogram of trenches jutting out from the British line on the high ground east of Beaumont Hamel, known as the Redan. It was a most unpleasant corner. In the first place, it was not more than fifty yards from the German lines, and the mine-craters which fringed its eastern edge, which were occupied at night by British posts—a doubtful policy, as it appears to-day—were in constant danger of surprise. During the 107th Brigade's tour one post was, indeed, bombed by the enemy and a man taken out of it. In the second place, the Redan was the scene of constant mining, and the bugbear of battalions in reserve, which had to send up large working-parties to carry sandbags filled with chalk for the miners. It was the one point in our trenches which received fairly constant attention from German gunners, and the average weekly casualties in this tiny lozenge were probably higher than on the whole of the rest of the 4th Division's front. One of the best pieces of work performed by the 107th Brigade during this period was the construction, by the 8th Rifles, in one night, of a trench a hundred yards in length and protected by a double "apron" of wire, which denied to the enemy ground which would have given him important observation. The digging and wiring were carried out without arousing the least suspicion among the German sentries.

The Brigade had during these three months established an excellent reputation, both for work and for demeanour under fire. General Nugent had suggested the reconstitution of the 36th Division on its old basis on the grounds that, with three Brigades of Ulstermen, it would be more homogeneous and of greater fighting value than as at present constituted. This suggestion was favourably received. The men had not been unhappy in the 4th Division, but feelings of local patriotism were still strong in them, and they were most anxious to return. It was announced that the reconstitution—the first of any division so dismembered, and the only one which occurred for some time—would take place simultaneously with the Division taking over a portion of the front.

The 1st/1st London Artillery had departed, two howitzer batteries to the East, and the remainder to the 38th Division in Flanders. The original Artillery, henceforth the 36th Divisional Artillery, was completing its training on the coast. With its exception the whole Division now marched linewards, between the 2nd and 6th of February. The 4th Division had meanwhile extended its right flank, and had the 11th Brigade on the right of the 107th, its outer flank on the River Ancre, just east of Hamel. As the new divisional boundaries were to be the Ancre and the Mailly-Maillet—Serre Road, all that was necessary to complete the relief and reconstitute the Division was for the 108th Brigade to relieve the 11th. The 36th Division then took over, at noon on February the 7th, its first line, with the 108th Brigade on the right, the 107th on the left, and the 109th in reserve. Headquarters were at the large village, or small town, of Acheux.

Of the next six weeks there is little of interest to report, save a heavy bombardment of the left flank of the 107th Brigade and of the 12th Brigade to the north of it. Shelling with 210, 105, and 77-mm. howitzers and field guns lasted for about half an hour, after which the artillery lifted range to rear lines and communication trenches. The 9th Rifles at once manned their battered trenches, some men getting out beyond the wire and opening rapid fire. There was no attack, though a party of the enemy succeeded in entering the trenches of the 12th Brigade, to be quickly ejected. It was curious that in this, its first bombardment, and a not inconsiderable one, the Division did not suffer a casualty.

A mine exploded in front of the Redan cost the lives of three men of an attached Tunnelling Company, who were buried in a blown-in passage. Otherwise, during this period the weather was probably an opponent more formidable than the Germans. The men in the trenches lived under conditions of the deepest discomfort. For weeks together the communication trenches were knee-deep in water. Previous troops had dug deep sumps in the bottoms of the trenches, covering them with boards, with the idea of draining off the water. But the water soon filled these and rose till it floated off the boards. Then would come some unfortunate fellow splashing his way along the trench, to plunge into the hole and be soused in icy water to the waist or higher. Some of the ills then endured were, it must be admitted, not unavoidable. There was a certain lack of revetting material, it is true. Few of those who were compelled to use it will forget one notorious communication trench, "Jacob's Ladder," which ran from the village of Mesnil to that of Hamel, down a forward slope completely exposed to the enemy. By night the road could be followed without worse risk than occasional bursts of machine-gun fire, so that large bodies of men had seldom to use this trench. By day, however, men clawing their way through its mud experienced the sensations of flies in treacle. When time and material had become available for the revetting of its sides, all this was changed, and "Jacob's Ladder" lost much of its evil reputation. But on the front line trenches more could have been done than was accomplished. The chief methods of drainage employed were the digging of large sumpholes in the parados of the trench to carry off the water, and the pumping of it out over the parapet with hand-pumps, whence, of course, it presently filtered back to the trench bottom. Scientific trench drainage, by means of trenches cut for the purpose, had as yet made little progress, though the undulating character of the country was suitable to it. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the Division suffered more from the wet at this time than during the following winter in Flanders, in flat country and on a water-logged soil, simply because in the latter case the R.E. and infantry had learnt by experience how to deal with it.

If the 36th Division had yet something to learn by way of prevention in these matters, it had little as regards cure. When rubber boots—"gum-boots, thigh," in the parlance of the Ordnance—became commoner, "trench feet" almost disappeared. The men laughed at the special grease with which they were provided to rub their feet, but they used it as they were ordered to do. Contrary to legend, but a small proportion was really used for the frying of food. They laughed also at the foot drill, each man rubbing the feet of his next number once a day, but to a great extent they carried it out. Excellent as these things were, the best remedy of all was found to be dry socks. Drying them in the trenches was difficult, but it was easy to send up dry ones by the ration parties at night, who took back the wet ones with them and dried them during the following day.

As this History is intended not alone for men who fought in the war, but also for their relatives and friends at home, a few remarks on the routine of holding a line of trenches, commonplace to the soldier as they may be, are perhaps permissible. Let us imagine a division with two brigades in line, and one in reserve. Each of the brigades in line would have two battalions in the trenches, relieved at regular intervals, though never on the same night, by the other two. These intervals were from four to eight days, according to the weather and state of the trenches. The distance of the rest billets from the front line, again, depended upon accommodation, the enemy's command of the country from his observation posts, and the activity of his artillery. They might be three or four miles back. At this time the battalion which held the line at Hamel, on the right bank of the Ancre, rested in Mesnil, little more than a mile from the German lines. The battalion in the trenches had probably two companies in the front line, one in support and one in reserve, and carried out inter-battalion reliefs in the course of its tour. The front and support lines were held by posts consisting of sections, about ten or twelve men in these early days, half as many later on. These posts furnished each a single sentry by day, and double sentries by night. For half an hour before and half an hour after dawn, the hour of surprise attacks, the troops would "stand to" in their trenches. In winter months this was the hour of the rum-ration—very welcome after a cold or wet night. Each company had one officer permanently on duty in the trench, night and day. In the trenches these periods were practically reversed. Night was the time when most of the work, all the wiring, all the patrolling of "No Man's Land," was carried out. Roughly speaking, the battalion in the line was responsible for the work as far back as its headquarters, with the expert assistance of a few sappers. Behind that worked the resting battalion—though parties from this had frequently to assist the battalion in line also—under the direction of the R.E., of which one Field Company was in general attached to each brigade. It was important that the infantry should know the sappers, and look upon them as assistants rather than task-masters. The Pioneer battalion had generally some special task of importance allotted to it under the direction of the C.R.E.

A Machine-Gun Company at this time formed part of each brigade. The guns were distributed in depth in the trenches, but much further forward than was the case later on, when the number of Lewis guns with the infantry had been increased. Such subtleties as machine-gun barrages, indirect fire, the linking of guns by telephone to battalion headquarters, had as yet scarce been conceived. Machine gunners and infantry had their ammunition and bombs in boxes let into the parapet, these stores increasing in size from front to rear.

The artillery, in rear, was also distributed in depth. Covering two brigades, as we have imagined, it would probably be divided into two groups, the group commander living at or near the headquarters of his infantry brigade. For this purpose the present formation, four artillery brigades, of which one was a howitzer brigade, was clumsy and extravagant. The howitzer brigade, for example, was invariably split between the groups, and its commander "functioned" as an administrator, but not as a combatant. This system was to be modified later. The guns were in pits, hidden as well as possible among trees or houses, or if in the open covered with "camouflage" to match the surrounding fields. The dug-outs of their detachments were close at hand, and, close at hand also, were pits containing from two to four hundred rounds per gun. At dusk the guns were laid on the "night-lines"; that is to say, each was set so as to fire upon a certain zone, in accordance with a previously arranged plan. A sentry in an observation post watched the line. Within a few seconds of a telephone call or an "S.O.S." rocket going up, the guns could open fire. An artillery liaison officer lived with each battalion in the trenches.

The rations arrived each day for all these people in the following manner: The Divisional Supply Column went daily to railhead with its lorries to meet the "pack train," bringing up the supplies to the "refilling point," and dividing them into four groups, one for each infantry brigade and one for all the rest of the divisional units. Here, under the supervision of the Brigade Supply Officer, the supplies were parcelled out, loaded into the horsed supply wagons, and taken to the transport lines of the units, where they came into the keeping of the Quartermaster. In a very quiet part of the front, when the railhead was far advanced, the supply wagons could draw direct from the railhead, cutting out altogether the Supply Column and its lorries. Divisions were urged to do this when possible to save petrol. Let not the innocent, however, imagine that uses were not found for the lorries thus set at liberty!

The food we need follow no further, except in the case of a battalion in the trenches. For all other units its preparation was comparatively simple. But to supply the man on the fire-step with hot food at regular intervals was a problem of some difficulty. Rations were brought up to battalion headquarters after dusk by the transport. In a well-organized battalion—and battalions varied much in this respect—the maximum was done before the food left the transport lines, the minimum when it arrived. That minimum was the heating. In some sectors of the front it used to be said that cooking was impossible. As a fact, there never was a sector wherein, with resource and ingenuity, at least the heating of food already prepared was impracticable. For extras, the stock-pot was the soldier's best friend; and unhappy was he if his battalion did not possess it. Ration biscuit, soaked in stock and put through a mincing machine, made "dough" which produced cheese biscuits, sausage rolls, jam tarts. As for the dry rations, tobacco, etc., they were put into a sandbag for each section, labelled with the number of that section. So, at least, marched affairs in a battalion of which the internal economy was at a high stage of efficiency.

The evacuation of wounded may also be briefly described. On a casualty occurring the wounded man was brought by the regimental stretcher-bearers to the Regimental Aid Post, a dug-out or shelter near a communication trench, generally in the neighbourhood of battalion headquarters. A mile or two further back was the Advanced Dressing Station, to which the Field Ambulance stretcher-bearers carried "lying-down" cases and conducted "walking" cases. If possible, wheeled stretchers or a trench tramway were here employed. At the A.D.S. food in some form was always ready; wounds were re-dressed if necessary, morphia given if required, and the soothing cigarette added. Then the cars of the Field Ambulance conveyed the casualty to the Main Dressing Station; i.e., the headquarters of the Field Ambulance. This was to all intents and purposes a temporary hospital, where the wounded man might obtain rest, and further surgical aid if required. It was the last stage in the divisional chain. From it the cars of the Motor Ambulance convoy took him to the Casualty Clearing Station, whence a hospital train bore him to the base hospital or, during an offensive, direct to the hospital ship.

The above is an attempt to sketch, without entering into its ten thousand complications, some of the main features of the life of a man in the trenches. War, at that time and in such a sector as this, had not acquired many of the horrors that were to come. Bombing by aeroplanes was in its infancy; so was the use of gas shell. Long-range shelling of villages with high-velocity guns was almost unheard of hereabouts. With regard to all shelling there would appear to have been conventions. Those who have seen German shells at Mailly-Maillet dropping at dusk, the hour when the transport started for the line, on to the Serre and Auchonvillers Roads, but never closer than one hundred yards to the first houses of the village, will agree with this opinion. The surroundings were far less grisly and depressing than they afterwards became. There was, it must be remembered, save that at Ypres and that which at the moment was being fashioned at Verdun, no devastated area wider than a narrow ribbon from the coast to Switzerland. From the Mesnil Ridge, where the observation posts of the Division were manned by the Cyclist Company, the country behind the enemy's lines showed green and smiling. Villages which the troops were not to see at close hand save as ruins, Irles, Pys, Grévillers, Bihucourt, were intact. The time could be read with the aid of a telescope by the church clock of Bapaume. On the British side, villages a couple of miles back were little disturbed. Martinsart was no farther from the enemy, and here it was possible to call on Brigade headquarters at their château as one returned from the trenches, and drink a cup of tea poured out by the daughter of the house, who rang for a British orderly to bring hot water. Mediæval idyll! With spring appearing, the trenches drying, and the grasses above them filled with field flowers; with the Valley of the Ancre taking on a new beauty as its trees were feathered green; with nature bursting into life, man's thoughts could not be ever fixed upon death. Warfare, to many of the men in the Division, must have seemed less than terrible in these days. But they were the last of the good days. The terrible was not far off.

In the first week of March the Division extended its front, the 109th Brigade taking over the sector south of the Ancre, known by the name of Thiepval Wood. At the same time the 36th Divisional Artillery, back from its final training at Cayeux, took over the defence of the long line. By the last day of the month the latter had been shortened to the two-battalion front astride the Ancre, the 31st Division having come into line on the left. The two sub-sectors were known as Thiepval Wood and Hamel respectively. The Hamel sub-sector was comfortable and quiet, troubled by nothing worse than the aggressions of a new long-range medium trench mortar, which often smashed in its communication trenches, but seldom caused many casualties. The battalion which held it was responsible for the defence of the Ancre and its swampy valley, filled with miniature lakes. This was carried out by the reserve company in the village, which found a platoon for small and isolated posts, the most advanced being at the bridge on the Thiepval-Hamel Road. The men enjoyed this duty better than any other. They were never shelled, they had no work to do, and they could employ their leisure fishing in the stream, with the chance of an occasional shot at wild duck or widgeon. Thiepval Wood, on the other hand, with an appearance of quietude that deceived visitors and newcomers, was wont to be transformed by sudden and not infrequent bombardments into a very unpleasant spot indeed. It was here that on the 10th of March the 10th Inniskillings suffered their real baptism of fire. At three in the afternoon there had been ranging shots from all calibres of artillery upon the wood, strengthening the belief of the man in the line, which was accepted with some hesitation by the Staff, that the army opposite possessed a "travelling circus" of heavy artillery, moved from point to point for the covering of raids. Precisely at midnight came a roar of explosions, a whistle and screaming of shells, a crash of falling trees. All telephone lines were cut, and S.O.S. rockets failed to ignite, but the artillery soon opened fire on its own initiative. On the right of the battalion front the trenches were pounded beyond recognition, and soon littered with dead and wounded. The garrison of the trenches manned their fire-steps and opened rapid fire on the enemy's front line. Not till 2 a.m. did the shelling die down. Then it was found that the enemy had penetrated the trenches of the troops on the right of the Division, killing a number of officers and men, and taking several prisoners. In a Special Order of the Day, congratulating the 10th Inniskillings, the Divisional Commander stated that "there seemed no reason to doubt that the German bombardment was intended to cover a raid similar to the raid which actually took place elsewhere the same night." The battalion had the further honour of mention in the despatches of Sir Douglas Haig. Its losses amounted to some thirty killed and wounded.

Major-General Sir O. S. Nugent, K.C.B., D.S.O.

From the moment when the Division first entered the line, preparations had been made for the long-planned offensive. By the month of May this work was intensified. It is difficult to give in a few lines an adequate idea of the scope of such preliminary labour. The mere plans and instructions issued by the Staffs of the Division, its formations and units, would fill the greater part of this volume. There were miles of tramway to be laid, gun-pits for the new artillery to be constructed, roads to be improved, new communication trenches cut, and innumerable dug-outs excavated. The heaviest task of all was the building of two causeways over the Ancre and its marshes; the only communications with our line on the left bank of the river being some crazy wooden foot-bridges put up by French troops. As a first step the drainage of the marshes was examined, and many obstructions in the small streams removed. The flooded area was thus decreased, but there were at first frantic protests from the Division on the right when the water rose behind its lines. This flooding was, however, but temporary. The construction of these causeways was entrusted to the 122nd Field Company R.E., which employed large infantry working parties in two shifts, from dusk to dawn. The causeways were built of sandbags filled with chalk. The river was constantly swept at night by machine-gun fire, and the casualties suffered were not inconsiderable, particularly on the northern causeway. The mainstay of the whole scheme of preparation was the Pioneer battalion, which had already made its name by the construction of the Candas-Acheux railway. It was for this battalion a proud day when railhead for supplies and personnel opened at Belle Eglise Farm on the line that was its handiwork. But the whole of the Division worked with a will also. Tasks were nearly always completed before the allotted time, for which the sole explanation lay not entirely in the good hearts of the men, but also in the splendid physique of the Division at this period.[17] The artillery dug on the Mesnil Ridge an observation trench known as "Brock's Benefit," in honour of their General, which contained a whole series of "O.P.s," and will be very well remembered by a long series of divisions subsequently inhabiting that sector.

The first raid carried out by the Division was on May the 7th, and, by an extraordinary coincidence, that night was also chosen by the enemy to raid the troops of the 32nd Division on its right, at a point about 200 yards west of that of the British raid. The German barrage opened at 11 p.m.; the British "zero" was midnight. Major Peacocke,[18] second-in-command of the 9th Inniskillings, had his party already out in the sunken Thiepval-Hamel Road when the German bombardment began. He spoke on a telephone which he had taken out with him to his commanding officer, Colonel Ricardo, and it was decided to carry through the raid. The British guns, trained on the barrage lines selected for the raid, held their fire, and a most uncomfortable hour had to be endured in Thiepval Wood. At midnight the British barrage opened and the raiders charged in. The enemy was on the alert, and a fierce struggle followed. The raid was successful in inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. No prisoners were taken, as the Germans in the deep dug-outs showed fight, firing up the steps. The raiders thereupon bombed the dug-outs till all sounds of life below had ceased. The casualties were trifling, but there were a good many more in the sunken road, where the raiding party had to lie two hours before it could return to its trenches, so heavy was the German barrage.

Meanwhile, the enemy's intentions with regard to the troops on the right of the 36th Division being only too clear, six platoons of the 10th Inniskillings, two from dug-outs on the reverse slope of Thiepval Wood, and a company from Authuille, moved up to their support. The former body arrived in the front line of the 1st Dorsets in time to assist them in repelling the enemy, who left a dead officer and a wounded prisoner in the hands of the English battalion. The company from Authuille and two guns of the 109th Machine-Gun Company also pushed up through a very heavy barrage to the front line. The Dorsets had suffered very considerable casualties, and the troops of the Ulster Division assisted to man their line till morning. The appreciation of the 32nd Division was warmly expressed by the G.O.C.

In May took place the first reorganization of the Divisional Artillery, the object of which was to divide the howitzers among the Brigades, to overcome the disadvantages of which there has been mention. Three of the Brigades, the 153rd, the 172nd, and the 173rd, were made up of three four-gun 18-pounder batteries and one four-gun 4.5 howitzer battery. The fourth, the 154th Brigade, which had been the Howitzer Brigade, thus lost all its howitzer batteries, and was made up by three 18-pounder batteries, one from each of the other Brigades, in exchange for the howitzers. Brigade Ammunition Columns were abolished and the Divisional Ammunition Column largely increased.

At the end of May Brigadier-General Hickman, commanding the 109th Brigade, returned to England, being succeeded by Brigadier-General R. Shuter, D.S.O. General Hickman, whose part in the formation of the Division has been recorded, was the last of the Infantry Brigadiers who had accompanied the Division to France. General Hacket Pain, commanding the 108th Brigade, had been succeeded by Brigadier-General C. R. J. Griffith, C.M.G., D.S.O., on December the 4th.

With the month of June began those more detailed preparations for the offensive which must be reserved for the chapter that deals with it. By this time all ranks had become aware of what was brewing. A keen sense of expectation was in the air. The Division had become a living soul ere ever it crossed the Channel. The months of trench warfare had strengthened it to an inestimable extent. The men were keyed up to a very high pitch of daring and determination. The infantry had the utmost confidence in itself, and in the artillery which was to support it. Officers and men of these two arms had known each other but a short time, but already a personal liaison, unusually close, to grow even closer during the comparatively quiet months in Flanders, had been established between them. The Division was to do great deeds in after days, and upon other fields of battle, but never was there quite the same generous and noble enthusiasm with which it entered upon this, its first offensive. That which it was about to accomplish will live in memory as long as there is a British Empire to honour the exploits of British arms.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] The writer can recall working parties when the allotted task was completed a full hour before the allotted time, owing to the fact that the big countrymen of his company were able to carry two sandbags full of chalk, one in either hand, at once.

[18] Afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel Peacocke, D.S.O., who was foully murdered at his home near Cork, on June the 1st, 1921.

[CHAPTER III]
The Battle of the Somme: July 1st, 1916

On the first day of June, 1916, the front of the 36th Division was held by the 107th Brigade, the 108th being in support in the neighbourhood of Martinsart, and the 109th training. To permit the two latter Brigades to train together, the 147th Brigade of the 49th Division was ordered to relieve the 108th and take over its working parties. The 108th Brigade then moved back to Varennes, and the neighbouring villages of Harponville and Léalvillers. Training was carried out over an elaborate system of dummy trenches marked out with plough and spade, near Clairfaye Farm, to represent those of the German system to be attacked. It was largely due to this preparation that the men knew their task so well, and were able to push on to their objectives when their leaders had fallen. On the 5th a raid was carried out by a party of the 12th Rifles, sent up from the training area, on the German sap that ran parallel with the main railway line north of the Ancre.[19] The wire was cut by an ammonal torpedo. This was a zinc tube, three inches in diameter, filled with ammonal. Each tube was about six feet in length, but tubes could be connected up with bayonet joints, and any length of torpedo thus made. It was generally fired by a sapper accompanying the raiding party. The Germans had run back or taken to their dug-outs under the fire of our artillery, and few were seen. The dug-outs were bombed, and an officer shot. Two tunnels leading toward the British lines were discovered, one containing fourteen high-tension copper wires, which seemed to point to mining with a mechanical digger. The heads of these saps were blown in by the engineers who accompanied the raiding party. Five nights later the Germans retaliated upon the little salient in the British line opposite, known as the William Redan, then held by the 15th Rifles. After our trenches had been pounded by a bombardment of half an hour, the raiders advanced. They suffered loss from our barrage, and not more than half a dozen ever actually entered our trench. Half a minute's bitter hand-to-hand fighting, and they were out of it again, bearing with them the leader of the raid, who had been shot by a British officer. Our trenches were considerably damaged, but casualties were not heavy.

The weather now took a turn for the worse, there being a sort of cloud-burst on the 12th. Cross-country tracks were impassable for infantry, and the carriage of ammunition to the new gun positions was a very heavy task. The rain came at an unfortunate moment. Battalions of the 109th Brigade were moving up to Aveluy Wood, south of Mesnil, to complete the work of preparation. The 16th Rifles (Pioneers) were there already. These troops had to endure the gravest discomfort from the weather. Little canvas shelters were all their protection, and for days together their clothes were not dry. Yet their work was magnificent. When, almost at the last moment, a Regiment of French Field Artillery joined the Division to assist in the attack, the 11th Inniskillings were ordered to help them in the construction of gun-pits and shelters, with little enough time to do it. The men threw themselves into the task with splendid enthusiasm. It seemed that they worked the harder because their work was for strangers, who would be left half-protected if they failed them. There was a fine flavour of international courtesy in the manner of their toil, for they gave of their free will energy that not the most skilful of taskmasters could have wrung from them. General Nugent sent to Colonel Brush, then in command of the Battalion, a letter of warm congratulation upon their efforts.

In the battle that was about to begin, General Sir H. Rawlinson's Fourth Army was taking the offensive along its whole front, with the Sixth French Army of General Fayolle on its right. The Battle of the Somme, the first in which our New Armies of volunteers were engaged in great numbers, concerned the 36th Division but at its opening. Its general aspects were, however, of the highest importance to all the Allied troops. It differed broadly from such an action as that of Loos. There an immediate strategic result was sought from a small offensive. Here, while a break through was sought on the first day, and would doubtless have been possible had the whole German trench system been captured all along the front, thereafter the aims became quite other. On the vast plateau of Picardy, an advance of ten miles or thereabouts had small strategic importance. The nearest first-class railway junction, Cambrai, was thirty miles away. The new phase was the "limited offensive." The plan was to push forward infantry behind artillery fire of overwhelming weight upon a broad front, step by step, smashing down resistance. The plan was made possible for us by the huge development of our munition factories. It was the war of attrition. It was a mighty assault battle, wherein England and France hurled man and gun and material upon German man and gun and material. It had manifold and obvious blemishes. Its cost was prodigious, particularly in its early stages, before certain needful lessons had been learnt. It stereotyped attack and robbed commanders of initiative, and was in this respect the text-book of all the lessons Ludendorff impressed upon his troops in the first three months of 1918. But—and of this there can be no shadow of doubt to-day—it laid the foundations of final victory.[20] The German troops were never quite the same after it, while our young levies, dreadful as were their sacrifices, were to arrive at a far higher standard of military value.

The 36th Division was the left Division of the X. Corps, having on its right the 32nd Division and on its left the 29th Division, not long arrived from the East, which was in the VIII. Corps. The 49th Division was in X. Corps Reserve. The 36th Division was to attack astride the Ancre. On the left, or southern bank, its objective was the fifth line of German trenches, known as the "D" line.[21] The right flank boundary ran from the north-east corner of Thiepval Wood to D 8. On the right bank the objective was a triangle of trenches enclosed between the left boundary line and the Ancre, beyond Beaucourt Station. The left boundary ran from the point of the salient in our lines, known as the Mary Redan, to two houses half-way between Beaucourt and its railway station, thence along the river to the railway bridge. The ground rose sharply on either side from the deep-cut bed of the Ancre, but while on the northern bank it was cut by a gorge running down from the village of Beaumont-Hamel, at right angles to the river, and parallel with the German trenches, on the south it swelled up in a great convex curve, rising two hundred and fifty feet in a thousand yards. The crest was crowned by a parallelogram of trenches, extending from the German "B" line to the "C" line, that will live long in history as the Schwaben Redoubt. The trenches were defended by masses of wire. An artillery officer, who made a careful reconnaissance with a good glass from "Brock's Benefit," on the Mesnil Ridge, counted sixteen rows guarding the front line just south of the river, and an average of five rows along the second line. The dug-outs, most of them at least thirty feet deep in the chalk, were to all intents and purposes shell-proof, and were numerous enough to house the whole trench garrison. The enormous activity behind our lines had taught the Germans long before that an attack was brewing. They trusted to their fortifications and awaited it with confidence.

For the purposes of attack, the front was divided into four sections. The right and right centre sections were allotted to the 109th and 108th Brigades respectively. The left centre section, bounded by a line drawn from the north corner of Thiepval Wood just north of B 19, C 11, and D 11, and the Ancre, was, owing to the great frontage of the 36th Division, not to be attacked directly. The left section, on the right bank of the Ancre, was allotted to the 108th Brigade. This Brigade had attached to it one battalion of the 107th. It was to employ three battalions in the right centre section, and two in the left section. The 107th Brigade (less one battalion) was in Divisional Reserve.

The task of the 109th Brigade in the right section was to attack the "A" and "B" lines within its section,[22] and to advance to a line drawn from C 8 through B 16 to the Grandcourt-Thiepval Road at C 9; there to halt and consolidate. For this purpose General Shuter was attacking with two battalions, the 9th Inniskillings on the right, the 10th on the left, in first line; and the two remaining, 11th Inniskillings on right and 14th Rifles on left, in second. The two first were to take and consolidate the final objective, the rear battalions to hold the "A" and "B" lines and to send up liaison patrols to get touch with the leading battalions. The most important task of the 11th Inniskillings was the fortification of the Crucifix on the Thiepval-Grandcourt Road.

The task of the 108th Brigade in the right centre section was to clear the "A" and "B" lines within the section, and advance to the "C" line, halting and consolidating on the salient C 9, C 10, C 11, the north-east corner of the Schwaben Redoubt. A special detachment, with one Stokes mortar, one Lewis and one Vickers gun, was to act as left flank guard, to clear the communication trench from B 19 to C 12, holding the latter as a defensive post, and sending a detachment down to C 13, to ensure observation and fire on the Grandcourt-St. Pierre Divion Road. In addition, two officers' patrols, each a platoon in strength, with a Lewis gun, were to reconnoitre and clear the left of the "A" and "B" lines up to St. Pierre Divion. General Griffith was attacking here with the 11th Rifles on the right, the 13th on the left, and the 15th Rifles of the 107th Brigade, attached, in support.

North of the Ancre, in the left section, the task allotted to the two remaining battalions of the 108th Brigade was to assault the German salient on the left of its objective and clear the trenches down to the railway, to establish strong points at B 26, B 24, and B 21, and to occupy Beaucourt Station and the trenches immediately behind it. It was afterwards to occupy the mill on the river bank and the two houses beyond the station. Here the 9th Irish Fusiliers were attacking on the right, and the 12th Rifles on the left. Of the latter battalion one platoon was detailed to attack the railway sap, of which mention has already been made, and one to patrol the marsh.

The assault on the "D" line, the final objective, was to be carried out by the 107th Brigade with its three remaining battalions. The Brigade was to advance through Thiepval Wood, following the 109th Brigade, pass through the leading Brigades on the "C" line and attack the "D" line from D 8 to D 9; then to extend its left to D 11. General Withycombe disposed the 10th and 9th Rifles in first line, the former with its right on D 8, the latter with its left on D 9. After the capture of this objective, the 9th Rifles were to extend to D 10 and the 10th to D 9. The 8th Rifles, moving up in rear, were to occupy and hold from D 10 to D 11.

The assaulting battalions were to advance, each in eight successive waves, at fifty yards' interval, but the 107th Brigade, passing through to the attack on the final objective, was to advance in artillery formation till compelled to extend.

The artillery consisted of the 36th Divisional Artillery, one Brigade of the 49th Division, a Regiment of French Artillery, and, under the orders of the X. Corps, a greater concentration of heavy artillery than had been made in the course of the war till now, except perhaps in the latter stages of Verdun. The preliminary bombardment was to last five days, from the 24th to the 28th of June. Owing to wet weather the attack was postponed two days, and there were two extra days of bombardment. The results, as witnessed from our observation posts, were magnificent. All wire that could be seen was effectively cut. As one watched the big shells bursting, sending up huge columns of earth, day after day, it appeared as though no life could continue in that tortured and blasted area. The barrage for the attack was not the true "creeping barrage" which was to become universal later on, and was, indeed, employed that day by the French. After a final intensive bombardment of sixty-five minutes, it fired upon each German line in succession, lifting from the "A" to the "A.I." at Zero, from the "A.I." at Zero plus three minutes, from the "B" at Zero plus eighteen minutes, to a line 400 yards east of this objective. Then at Zero plus twenty-eight minutes it moved on to the "C" line, and at Zero plus one hour eighteen minutes off the "C" line to the "D." There was then a long halt to permit of the passing through of the 107th Brigade. At Zero plus two hours thirty-eight minutes the barrage moved up to a line three hundred yards east of the "D" line. At each lift, sections of 18-pounders and 4.5 howitzers "walked up" the communication trenches to the next barrage line. Stokes mortars were to take part in a final hurricane bombardment prior to Zero, while medium[23] and heavy mortars were also employed, the former on special points, the latter moving with the artillery barrage to the extremity of their range. The French artillery joined in the preliminary wire-cutting, using high explosive instead of shrapnel according to its custom, but its main task was the drenching of the Ancre valley with gas shell.

Two machine-guns were to accompany each battalion in the attack, the remaining eight of each Machine-Gun Company being in Brigade Reserve. Guns were allotted to all the principal strong points that were to be consolidated. Eighteen Stokes mortars were to go forward, the personnel of the remaining eighteen acting as carriers. Two sections of the 150th Field Company were allotted to the 109th Brigade, and one section of the 122nd Field Company to the 108th Brigade on each bank of the Ancre. The remainder of the Field Companies were in Divisional Reserve.

The medical arrangements were of peculiar difficulty, particularly on the southern part of the front. The two Main Dressing Stations, for stretcher cases and "walking wounded" respectively, were at Forceville, manned by the 108th Field Ambulance, and Clairfaye Farm, further west, manned by the 110th Field Ambulance. The Advanced Dressing Station was situated close to the Albert-Arras Road in Aveluy Wood. Evacuation of wounded from the Regimental Aid Posts in Thiepval Wood and Authuille had to take place over Authuille Bridge, or by the trench tramway which crossed the Ancre to the north of it. The motors of the Field Ambulance were parked on the Martinsart-Albert Road, south of the former village. For "walking wounded" there was a collecting station west of Martinsart, whence horsed wagons carried them by a cross-country track through Hédauville to Clairfaye. From Hamel evacuation was simpler, though even here it had to follow a specially dug trench from the village to a point where the Hamel-Albert Road was screened from observation.

On the 22nd and 23rd the infantry took up the positions it was to occupy during the bombardment; the 9th Inniskillings in the right section of Thiepval Wood, the 11th Rifles in the left, and the 9th Irish Fusiliers in the Hamel trenches. These troops had a purgatory to endure. For the most part in the narrow slit assembly trenches, with the rain pouring steadily down upon them, they were under furious German bombardments that wreathed the wood in smoke and flame, and made the crashing of great trees the accompaniment to the roar of bursting shells. On the night of the 26th gas was liberated by us from cylinders in the wood after a great bombardment. It was the first time the Division had had to do with the abominable stuff, which brought no good fortune. Many cylinders were burst by the heavy German barrage, and serious casualties suffered by the men of the Special Brigade responsible for opening the cocks, and by the infantry assisting them.

Two hours later a raid was carried out in this sector by a party sent up by the 13th Rifles. The men, now at a pitch of excitement and enthusiasm that rendered them resistless opponents in hand-to-hand fighting, swarmed into the battered German trenches, shooting right and left, and bombing dug-outs. They returned with one German officer and twelve other ranks as prisoners, the first captured by the 36th Division. Their own casualties were six killed and nine wounded, suffered for the most part in the Sunken Road, where, like the 9th Inniskillings, they had to lie for some time ere it was possible to return to their trenches. Captain Johnston, the leader of the raid, brought in all his casualties, as well as his prisoners. He was to fall five days later in the greater venture. The prisoners denied knowledge of our gas, nor did their respirators smell of it. It was occasionally the experience of the Division that the British gas services rated too highly the effects of their devices.

On the 27th, "X" day, it rained in sheets, and "Y" day was little better. It was accordingly decided by the Higher Command to postpone the attack for two days. This necessitated a postponement of the assembly also. Instead, inter-brigade reliefs were carried out in the trenches to give some rest to the troops that had endured the early hammering. Their rest, unfortunately, was in huts in Martinsart Wood, huts that trembled and creaked to the terrific roar of siege howitzers firing night and day beside them. Yet it was better than that other wood across the river, which was the following day, now "Y.1" day, visited by the heaviest bombardment yet seen. The trenches were in a terrible state, and the men of the medium trench mortar batteries, engaged in cutting the German wire, suffered more even than the infantry, and earned the admiration of the latter by their devotion to their task.

In all the circumstances it must be said that the total casualties for the month of June, approximately seven hundred and fifty, were not heavy. They included the results of a veritable calamity that befell the 13th Rifles. On the evening of the 28th, "Y" day, the battalion was relieving the 11th Rifles in Thiepval Wood, and marching out of Martinsart by platoons at two hundred yards' interval. As number 11 Platoon and battalion headquarters were about to march out together a shell fell right in the midst of the party. Fourteen were killed on the spot, and ten more died later. Almost all the rest were wounded, including the second-in-command, Major R. P. Maxwell, and the adjutant, Captain Wright. The confusion in the pitch darkness, with scarce a man on his feet, was appalling. Fortunately a platoon of the 11th Rifles, just relieved from the trenches, appeared on the scene, and the street was speedily cleared. But the Germans could have had far bigger hauls than this at "Lancashire Dump" on the Albert-Hamel Road in Aveluy Wood any night they had chosen to shell it.

This was the rendezvous of a mass of transport immediately after dusk, bringing up munitions and rations for the offensive. Large stores of the latter were placed in specially constructed dug-outs on the river bank. The work of the Divisional Train was here most admirably organized by its commander, Colonel Bernard. So close were the big convoys to the German trenches that extraordinary precautions to avoid noise had to be taken. Wheels were bound with straw and old motor tyres, steel chains replaced by leather straps, boots, like those used in rolling a cricket ground, placed over the horses' hoofs. And it was an amusing sight to see an A.S.C. driver frantically clinging to the nose of some sociable horse that desired to greet new acquaintances with a friendly neigh.

The reward of waiting came in a fine day on "Y.2" day, the 30th. Divisional Headquarters moved up to their report centre on the Englebelmer-Martinsart Road. At night the approach march took place, and assaulting battalions returned to their positions in the trenches. The assembly positions of the 107th Brigade (less 15th Rifles) were in slit trenches in Aveluy Wood. The battalions marched up by cross-country tracks, marked, one by red lanterns, the other by green. The night was fine, and the artillery on either side rather less active, though lachrymatory shell was falling in the wood. In a curious complete lull that fell before dawn, men heard with astonishment a nightingale burst into song, pouring out her bubbling notes one upon the other, as though this had been still the pleasant copse, deserted by man, but a kingdom of the birds, of two years gone.

The two days' postponement had had upon the men an effect contrary to that which might have been attended. The extra strain of waiting was more than counterbalanced by the coincidence of the date. For it was upon July the 1st, the anniversary of the Boyne, that the sons of the victors in that battle, after eight generations, fought this greater fight. To them it had a very special significance. A stirring in their blood bore witness to the silent call of their ancestors. There seemed to them a predestination in the affair. They spoke of it as they waited, during the final intensive bombardment, while the German counter-barrage rained upon their trenches.

Day had dawned clear and sunny. Zero was at 7-30 a.m., when it had been light for four hours. Far better had it been had the conventional dawn attack been carried out. However, the first movements were concealed by the intensity of our fire, and by smoke barrages put down by 4-inch Stokes mortars in the valley of the Ancre and in front of Thiepval village. The troops formed up in "No Man's Land," facing their objectives, following for the most part, on the left bank of the Ancre, the line of the sunken Thiepval-Hamel Road. At 7-15 a.m. the leading companies issued from the gaps cut in our wire, extended to two paces' interval, and moved forward to within one hundred and fifty yards of the German trench. The hubbub of the British bombardment was terrific; over their heads the Stokes mortars, firing at highest rate, were slinging a hundred shells into the air at once.

Zero! The hurricane Stokes bombardment ceased. The artillery lifted off the first line. The whistles of the officers sounded, and the men sprang up and advanced at steady marching pace on the German trenches. Those who saw those leading battalions move to the assault, above all their commanding officers, forbidden to accompany them, who waved to them from the parapet, received one of the most powerful and enduring impressions of their lives. Colonel Macrory of the 10th Inniskillings speaks of "lines of men moving forward, with rifles sloped and the sun glistening upon their fixed bayonets, keeping their alignment and distance as well as if on a ceremonial parade, unfaltering, unwavering." General Ricardo, then commanding the 9th Inniskillings, wrote a few days later: "I stood on the parapet between the two centre exits to wish them luck.... They got going without delay; no fuss, no shouting, no running, everything solid and thorough—just like the men themselves. Here and there a boy would wave his hand to me as I shouted good luck to them through my megaphone. And all had a cheery face. Most were carrying loads. Fancy advancing against heavy fire with a big roll of barbed wire on your shoulder!" So they bore upon the German lines, while behind them, from Thiepval Wood, rocked by exploding shells, sheeted in the smoke and flame of bursting shrapnel, fresh troops issued and followed upon their advance in little columns.

It is the custom, kept throughout this History, to describe the course of battles from the right hand to the left. If here it is departed from, it is only because the action on the north side of the Ancre was separate from the other and of lesser importance. Its description, alas! will occupy small space enough. There was here in "No Man's Land" a deep ravine, which the map contours show without giving an idea of its abruptness. The first wave of the 9th Irish Fusiliers reached this with little trouble, but those which followed met with very heavy machine-gun fire, and suffered terrible loss. Advancing at Zero with splendid dash, the survivors of a battalion which Colonel Blacker's training had made one of the best in the Division, swept through the enemy's front line trenches. One small body of the right centre company in particular carried all before it, and was last seen advancing upon Beaucourt Station. On the left the 12th Rifles had worse fortune. The wire round the German salient over the hill-brow, less easy to observe, was less completely destroyed than on the rest of the front. Many gaps were cut, but machine-guns were trained upon them. Beaten back at the first rush, and having lost the barrage, the remnants of the battalion were twice re-formed by devoted officers under that withering hail, and twice again led forward. It was of no avail. On their left the leading troops of the next Division crossed the front line trenches, but were assailed from the rear by machine-gunners emerging from dug-outs. At eight o'clock the 36th Division was informed that the enemy had retaken his front line. The attack north of the Ancre was a failure, though gallantry every whit as great as that of the battalions on the left bank was behind it.

Elsewhere, for all its losses, the attack was a complete success. Every objective was reached. Had it been possible to attain the same results all along the front, the day would have ended with the greatest British victory of the war.

The leading waves, still moving as on parade, reached the German front line trench and moved straight across it. They did not suffer heavily. Hardly were they across, however, when the German barrage fell upon "No Man's Land," upon the rear companies of the first line battalions, and upon those of the second line. And immediately the barrage left it, flanking machine-gun fire burst out from the dominating position of Thiepval cemetery. The 11th Inniskillings and 14th Rifles, as they emerged from the wood, were literally mown down, and "No Man's Land" became a ghastly spectacle of dead and wounded. On the left of the line the 13th Rifles, under long-range fire from the Beaucourt Redoubt across the river, suffered at this stage most heavily of all. They had lost the bulk of their officers ere ever they reached the German trenches. The Division on the right was never able to clear Thiepval village, and it was that fact which was responsible for the gravest losses of the 36th.

Under this deadly punishment the men never hesitated. They went straight forward across the first two lines, sending back the few prisoners they took. The "B" line was to be reached at 7-48. Despite the gaps in their ranks the first wave swept upon it at precisely that moment. There was not much fighting here, but a large number of prisoners was taken, the German infantry surrendering as our men came upon them. The 15th Rifles, the supporting battalion of the 108th Brigade's attack, had, however, to deal with some Germans who came up out of unnoticed dug-outs after the leading battalions had crossed the "A" lines, the bombing squads told off to clear the trenches having been destroyed by machine-gun fire. On pressed the leading waves. Never losing the barrage, they took the "C" line, including the north-east corner of the Schwaben Redoubt, at 8-48. Even in the trenches they suffered loss from the flanking machine-guns, while movement from front to rear was now all but impossible. The supporting battalions, or their survivors, were also upon their objectives. Every man had done what he was set to do, or dropped in his path. And, to the eternal credit of our artillery, no man appears to have needed his wire-cutters.

Let us turn to the 107th Brigade, which had meanwhile advanced to the "A" line. It had moved from Aveluy Wood and across the Ancre to the western skirts of Thiepval Wood, almost at the bottom of the valley, assembling at 6-30 about the track known as Speyside. It had an hour to wait, shell after shell passing just over the heads of the troops and bursting in the marshes beyond them. At Zero, led by the 10th Rifles, it moved back east for a short distance, to reach the rides which were its paths to the front line. Here the men could see the troops of the Division on the right issuing from their trenches, and each platoon, as it extended in "No Man's Land," disappearing before the blast of machine-gun fire that met it. The ride used by the 10th Rifles on the right had been denuded of its foliage by the bombardments of several days, and was in view. The battalion came under machine-gun fire from front, right, and right rear simultaneously. The commanding officer, Colonel Bernard, was killed, and casualties were high. The final passage had to be carried out by rushes to the front line. The leading men could even see the German machine-guns firing at them, so that it is easy to imagine what sort of target they offered to those guns. Lewis guns were brought forward to engage them, but their teams were destroyed. The other battalions suffered considerably less, being screened in their rides, and further from the Thiepval guns. Before ten o'clock, runners, with the skill and devotion of their kind, had come back to report that the "C" line had been reached. Eight minutes past, it may be remembered, was the hour for the assault upon the "D" line.

To General Nugent it had appeared long before probable that his troops, if they went forward further as a wedge into the enemy's defensive system, with not a yard gained on either flank, would go only to their own destruction. At 8-32 his G.S.O.1., Colonel Place, had asked the X. Corps whether the 107th Brigade might be stopped from advancing upon the last line. The reply was that a new attack was being made on Thiepval, and also by the VIII. Corps north of the Ancre, and that the 107th Brigade must do its part by continuing its advance. But three-quarters of an hour later, at 9-16 a.m., instructions from the Corps to withhold the 107th Brigade till the situation upon the flanks had been cleared up were received. General Withycombe was ordered to stop his troops, and employed every means in his power to do so. But all the telephone lines taken forward had been cut by German fire, while for a runner to reach the line now held by the troops was a very long affair. Fortunate was he if he crossed that zone of death without scathe. The message arrived too late; the troops were committed to the attack. With them went forward some men of the other Brigades.

Of that last wild and desperate venture across a thousand yards of open country, few returned to tell the tale. Those that did tell of an entry into that last entrenchment, of desperate hand-to-hand fighting, and then, when the odds were too great, for the trench was full of German reserves, of a stubborn retirement to the next line. And now the German bombers surged up the trenches from St. Pierre Divion, to be beaten off again and again by the 8th and 15th Rifles, and the handful of the 13th remaining on that flank. Pressure on the other side did not come so soon: in fact, Lieutenant Sanderson, of the 9th Rifles, reconnoitred the trench "Mouquet Switch," on the front of the 32nd Division, and found it unoccupied. But Thiepval's machine-guns were still firing, and "No Man's Land" was a land of death. Two companies of the Pioneers were sent up to dig a communication trench across, which would have permitted the sending up of bombs and water. But at two o'clock Colonel Leader, their commanding officer, reported that the machine-gun fire rendered the task impossible. Supplies had run out, and the little parties that strove to bear them across were annihilated by fire. After noon attacks came upon the right flank also, the 11th Inniskillings at the Crucifix, and the 9th in the Schwaben Redoubt, being hard beset. The French artillery was ordered to put down a flank barrage on the right, and carried out its task admirably.

The 146th Brigade of the 49th Division had crossed the Ancre during the morning. At three p.m. it received orders to attack Thiepval village under a barrage, after an intense bombardment. The attack failed completely under terrific machine-gun fire. It was, in fact, stopped after the leading battalion, the 1/6th West Yorks, had seen the platoons which strove to deploy wither away. It was about this time that the Germans launched a counter-attack in the open on the left flank. Two companies emerged from the trees of the river valley and advanced on C 11. Caught on the hill by our artillery and the Lewis guns of the 8th Rifles, they were destroyed. There was a grave misunderstanding about the employment of the 146th Brigade. At four o'clock the 36th Division was informed that it was at its disposal. General Withycombe, the senior Brigadier in Thiepval Wood, was ordered to send two of its battalions to the Schwaben Redoubt, to rally the troops beginning to be forced back. But two battalions of the Brigade were already committed to the attack on Thiepval, while the two others had moved up behind them into the trenches of the 32nd Division. Not till 7-18 did six companies move up towards the "C" line, and now it was too late. On this flank it was already lost, and the Yorkshiremen were beaten off by German machine-gun fire.

Meanwhile the situation had grown desperate. Major Peacocke, second-in-command of the 9th Inniskillings, had managed to cross "No Man's Land" at noon into the front line about A 12, and after beating off attacks by Germans bombing their way up from Thiepval, collected a little bodyguard and worked forward to the Crucifix. He speedily discovered that the holding of the ground here, now slipping from our hands, was an impossibility unless Thiepval were taken. The men were still determined, but at their last gasp from fatigue. There was scarcely any ammunition or water for the Vickers guns, and it was all but impossible to send it up. A similar report was brought to General Griffith by Major Blair Oliphant, second-in-command of the 11th Rifles, who carried out an admirable reconnaissance. A final counter-attack, launched in the dusk by fresh troops that had come into Grandcourt by train during the evening, drove our men in from the "B" line. By ten o'clock it did not appear that we had any troops in the German lines. That which had been won at a sacrifice so vast, had been lost for lack of support.

Fresh troops for a further attack on Thiepval were put at the disposal of the 36th Division in the middle of the night. General Withycombe, at 11-30 p.m., received the 4th York and Lancs, of the 148th Brigade, with the intimation that the 4th and 5th K.O.Y.L.I.'s of the same Brigade would follow, to retake the Schwaben Redoubt, with the assistance of the remnants of the 107th and 109th Brigades. At one o'clock the latter battalions had not arrived. General Withycombe made the following appreciation of the position:

It was doubtful if it would be possible to organize an attack before daylight. This was a vital consideration, since an advance by daylight would be swept by fire from Thiepval, which was not being attacked that night, and the inevitable result would be a repetition of the previous day's experiences.

If the troops did succeed in moving off before dawn, it would be almost impossible for them to keep direction in the darkness, on ground they did not know.

Lastly, General Withycombe submitted that, if the Schwaben Redoubt were taken, it could not be held while Thiepval was still in German occupation.

General Nugent was fully in accord with these views. He submitted the matter to the Corps Commander, who replied that in such a case the man on the spot must decide. The proposed operation was therefore cancelled, and General Withycombe sent the 4th and 5th K.O.Y.L.I.'s to Aveluy Wood, retaining under his hand the 4th York and Lancs, in case of emergency.

At seven a.m. next morning, as sun dispersed the first summer ground-mist, observers on the Mesnil Ridge saw that there were yet British troops in small numbers in the first two lines of German trenches. General Nugent ordered General Withycombe to support and reinforce these troops, and to send forward supplies of bombs, ammunition, and water. General Withycombe collected a force of four hundred men of the four battalions of his own Brigade, together with two guns of the 107th Machine-Gun Company. Under the command of Major Woods, of the 9th Rifles, this devoted band moved across "No Man's Land" at two o'clock in artillery formation. It lost a third of its numbers from the enemy's fire, but it reached its objectives. Two small parties of the 16th Rifles (Pioneers), with bombs and ammunition, crossed later in the afternoon, going through the German barrage in most gallant fashion. On the left flank Major Woods found Corporal Sanders, of the 7th West Yorks, with a party of forty men, whom he described as "played out, but full of fight." He had been beating off German bombing attacks all night, had rescued several wounded Ulstermen, and taken a number of prisoners. This stout-hearted N.C.O. was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross.

That night the 36th Division was relieved by the 49th. The 148th Brigade relieved the 107th in the two lines of trenches now held, between A 12 and A 19. The relief was not complete till after ten o'clock the following morning, when a weary, tattered, pitiful remnant marched into Martinsart and flung themselves down to sleep. They had brought back to Thiepval Wood fourteen prisoners. The total number captured by the 36th Division in the offensive was five hundred and forty-three. Its casualties in the two days amounted to five thousand five hundred officers and other ranks killed, wounded, and missing. The whole Province was thrown into mourning for its sons. Among the dead were Colonel H. C. Bernard, of the 10th Rifles; Major G. H. Gaffiken, of the 9th, who had led his company to the final objective; Lieutenant G. St. G. S. Cather, Adjutant of the 9th Irish Fusiliers, awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his services in bringing in wounded under machine-gun fire, in the course of which he lost his life; Captain E. N. F. Bell, 9th Inniskillings, attached 109th Trench Mortar Battery, who likewise had bestowed on him that last honour. Captain Charles Craig, M.P. for South Antrim, was wounded and taken prisoner. Some battalions had almost disappeared. The 9th Irish Fusiliers, for example, had at the end of the first day none of the officers and only eighty other ranks left unwounded of the force that took part in the attack. The figures of the 8th Rifles, as of a battalion below rather than above the average in casualties, may be given in full. Officers: fifteen wounded, five missing. Other ranks: twenty-four killed, two hundred and sixteen wounded, one hundred and eighty-six missing. And of the "missing," it must be recorded that three-fourths at least were in reality dead, somewhere out in front of the line finally handed over.

Of the deeds of heroism that day accomplished, it is not possible to enumerate one-hundredth. Notable among them were the achievements of junior officers and N.C.O.'s when their seniors had fallen. Lieutenant H. Gallagher, 11th Inniskillings, was the sole officer of his battalion to cross the German front line. With his orderly's rifle he killed six Germans holding up the advance, and then, at the Crucifix, organized the resistance, being one of the last to quit the German trenches at night. Lieutenant Sir Harry Macnaghten, 12th Rifles, twice reformed the tatters of his company in "No Man's Land," and led them against gaps in the German wire, to fall himself on the second occasion. Corporal John Conn, 9th Inniskillings, came upon two of our machine-guns out of action. He repaired one under fire and annihilated a German flanking party. He carried both guns himself most of the way back, but had to abandon one at last owing to utter exhaustion. These are but examples, picked at random. Another very remarkable Victoria Cross was that won by Private Quigg, 12th Rifles, Sir Harry Macnaghten's servant. He had, on July the 1st, advanced thrice to the attack. Next morning he heard a rumour that his officer was out wounded in "No Man's Land." Seven times he went out to look for him, and seven times he brought in a wounded man, the last dragged on a waterproof sheet from within a few yards of the German wire.

All arms had supported the infantry finely in their great, heroic achievement. The work of the artillery could not have been bettered. It carried out its long and gruelling task to perfection. Even in front of the "D" line the wire was well cut. One forward battery of the 172nd Brigade in Hamel, in full view of the enemy, enfiladed his lines across the Ancre, doing great execution and being handled with extreme gallantry. The Engineers suffered very heavy casualties in their devotion to duty, working in the marsh at keeping repaired the vital pipe-lines, regardless of the shells that all day fell about them. The stretcher-bearers of the R.A.M.C. were tireless. Often, owing to break-down on the trench tramway due to shell-fire, they had to carry wounded right down from Thiepval Wood and across the Ancre at Authuille. Many dropped from sheer exhaustion, and many refused to rest when reliefs arrived. The Army Service Corps drivers of the ambulances kept their cars continuously on the roads for thirty-six hours. There was throughout no hitch in the medical arrangements, though at one period of the day the overcrowding of the Main Dressing Station at Forceville, due to the strain upon the Motor Ambulance Convoy which evacuated the wounded to the Casualty Clearing Stations, gave rise to much anxiety.

A volume might be written—the extent of many a volume probably has—upon the causes of the failure, for such the whole northern section of the attack undoubtedly was. This is not the place for a detailed discussion of them. It may at least be said that, while the work of the artillery could not have been excelled, the whole scheme of its employment had not reached anything approaching the science of the following year. Artillerymen of the higher ranks were to some extent carried away by the weight of metal for the first time at their disposal, and carried away other arms by their new enthusiasm. The heavy gunners believed and proclaimed that no life could endure their fire, and that the battle would resolve itself into an advance by the infantry to take over shattered and undefended trenches. They had not realized that the machine-guns would be comparatively safe under their bombardment, and that it would take but a few seconds to bring them into action when the barrage was past. It is probable that at a later stage of the war a fortress such as Thiepval would not have been attacked directly by infantry till it had been first encircled and isolated by its advance, being kept the while under such artillery fire as would have forced the machine-gunners to lie low, and then rushed from all sides by bombing parties. It may be said that our organization at the beginning of the Somme Offensive was in a transitional stage. We had realized that defence with the machine-gun had beaten attack, and had begun the process of increasing the quantity and improving the quality of mechanical accessories. It was still, however, to cost thousands of lives before the factories could produce sufficient of the latter, or the higher commands reach the ratio between infantry force and mechanical aids necessary to the prosecution of a given operation. But no explanations that can be found stand without ample tribute to the fighting qualities of the German soldier. The dash and bravery of the counter-attacks of the bombers moving up from the valley merit high praise. The highest, however, must be reserved for the machine-gunners, who had sat for days in their dug-outs without fresh food, the very earth shaking to the thunders of our artillery, and then came up and brought their guns into action at the right moment.

On July the 5th the Division moved back to Rubempré and the neighbouring villages, and five days later to the Bernaville area. The Artillery remained in line under the orders of the 49th Division, while the Pioneers, 121st and 122nd Field Companies, were left several days at work, the former having, amongst other unpleasant tasks, to make a communication trench across "No Man's Land" to the new-won ground.[24] The 150th Field Company had a yet harder time. It was sent to the 12th Division, further south, in the neighbourhood of Ovillers, where a slight advance had been made. Its work here was the consolidation of strong points, "before they were taken," as its commander, Major Boyle, remarks.

[View Larger Image Here.]

Map I.

The Battle of Albert, 1916.

Orders came at Bernaville for a move to Flanders. The Engineers, relieved of their task, marched north. The rest of the Division, less the Artillery, was moved by train from Auxi-le-Château, Frévent, and Conteville, to Berguette, Thiennes, and Steenbecque, between Aire and Hazebrouck, on its way to the training area west of St. Omer. The infantry battalions were but shadows of their former selves. Well might commanding officers feel appalled at the magnitude of the task before them in building up anew, without the best of their officers and N.C.O.'s. The men were very silent in these first few days after the battle. Not one of the survivors but had lost companions who had been two years at his side; many, friends of a lifetime. But if ever gift be God-given, it is the healing effect of time. And in days of war a week even is a long period. These men, moreover, felt that in all that had happened there was no reproach for them. They, at least, had accomplished their task in the face of incredible difficulties. On the 12th of July, General Nugent and his Staff saw the battalions of the 107th Brigade marching from the station of Thiennes into Blaringhem. Sun was shining on the old Flemish village. Officers and men wore marigolds in caps to honour the day; the bands played "King William's March." The least practised eye could tell that to these men confidence was returning; that the worst of the horror they had endured had been shaken from their shoulders. They marched like victors, as was their right.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] See [Map I].

[20] For a brilliant appreciation of the Somme Battle and its lessons, General Mangin's book, Comment finit la Guerre, should be read.

[21] The boundaries of the 36th Division, with all names that occur in the description of the battle, will be found in [Map I].

[22] The "A" line consisted of a double line of trenches, a front line, and immediate support. The second was alluded to as the "A.I." line.

[23] Z/49 Trench Mortar Battery was attached to the 36th Division for this operation.

[24] It was not held for long, nor was the Schwaben Redoubt to come again into British hands for several months.

[CHAPTER IV]
From the Somme to Messines: July 1916 to June 1917

On July the 13th the Division moved into the well-known training area west of St. Omer, with headquarters at Tilques. Those of the 107th Brigade were at Bayenghem, of the 108th at Eperlecques, and of the 109th at Boisdinghem. Here training and reorganization began, and here reinforcements arrived in considerable numbers.[25] Five days later the Artillery, which had remained in line covering the 49th Division, rejoined, having moved north by march route. R.A. Headquarters were established at the château at Recques. The troops were much refreshed by this return to civilization, and units had leisure to absorb their drafts. Unfortunately it did not last very long. On July the 20th Headquarters moved to Esquelbecq, to a famous and beautiful moated château, that bore at the door rings to which Marlborough's troopers had tied their reins, and had been occupied by General Grant after Waterloo. Meanwhile the 108th Brigade moved forward, by 'bus and lorry, to Kortepyp Camp, south of the village of Neuve Eglise, and Red Lodge, on the southern slopes of Hill 63, and west of the famous Bois de Ploegsteert, that will go down to Britons for all time as "Plug Street Wood." On the 23rd Headquarters moved to the château on Mont Noir, a couple of miles north of Bailleul, and that night the 108th Brigade re-entered the line in relief of two battalions of the 20th Division. By the end of July the 109th Brigade had come in on the right, in relief of troops of the 41st Division, and the 107th had relieved the 108th Brigade. The front line now held ran from a ruin on the Neuve Eglise-Warneton Road, known as Anton's Farm, on the right, to another known as Boyle's Farm on the Wulverghem-Messines Road, on the left. The frontage was some three thousand yards in a straight line, but there were over two and a half miles of front-line trench. On September the 1st the headquarters of the Division moved from Mont Noir to the village of St. Jans Cappel, near Bailleul.

The Division was to remain for upwards of a year in this part of the line, but it seldom held precisely the same section of front for more than a few weeks at a time. The various moves cannot be treated in detail. There were changes in August, all three Brigades entering the line, and early in September a "side-step" to the north, the right boundary now being the River Douve, and the left "Piccadilly Trench," south of the Kemmel-Wytschaete Road. The 108th Brigade was now on the right, the 107th in the centre, and the 109th on the left. The characteristics of the various parts of all this front were similar, the conditions of the soil the same throughout, so that a general description will hold good for all the period passed by the Division in the neighbourhood.

The trenches and dug-outs, to begin with, were not such at all in the sense in which the troops had been wont to use the names on the Ancre. The fighting trenches consisted, everywhere save on the highest ground, of parapets built of sandbags filled with clay. In places there was a parados similarly constructed, but over long stretches the men in the front line simply stood behind the wall, with no protection against the back-burst of shells. Water in this country appeared everywhere just below the surface, and it was useless to dig trenches in the real sense for any purpose other than drainage. Even the communication trenches were sunk not deeper than a foot, and piled high on either side with earth, which made them satisfactory enough as cover from view, but very vulnerable to shell-fire. These communication trenches were longer than those to which the troops had been accustomed, the approaches to the front line being much more exposed than among the folds of the Somme country. As for dug-outs, there were none. Little wooden-framed shelves in the parapet, a few "baby elephants"—arched steel shelters, which, if covered thickly enough with sandbags, afforded protection against the shells of field guns—served for the troops in line, while further back, for battalion headquarters and forts, there were ruined farms, which often had good cellars, and in the frame-work of which concrete structures could be hidden. It was hard for troops used to the Somme chalk to accustom their minds to the spongy nature of this soil. In the dry weeks of August, for example, the R.E. built one very fine dug-out, twenty feet deep, and were proud of their handiwork. In September there was in it a foot of water, in October two; November found the water level with the top of the stairs, and a sarcastic notice, "The R.E. Swimming Bath," at the entrance.

When it rained, which was not seldom, all the low-lying ground flooded. The valley of the Douve, above all, from Wulverghem to the front line, became a muddy swamp, in which the water lay in sheets. At such times, and indeed during a great part of the winter, many trenches simply could not be occupied. No adequate idea of the impression conveyed upon the mind of a man coming up north from the clean, white trenches of the Somme can be obtained of all this area unless it is conceived as dirty, mournful, and disconsolate; haunted by the evil stench of blue clay, and brooded over by an atmosphere of decay.

Since the days of the first Battle of Ypres and of the rival turning movements which had ended in the present deadlock, the Germans had had the best of the ground in the Messines sector. Behind the salient of their front trenches it rose sharply, with a dip half-way up, formed by the shallow valley of the Steenebeek, to a dominating ridge, crowned south and north by the fortress-villages of Messines and Wytschaete. The road joining these was the limit of our observation, except for telescopes on Kemmel Hill. To the south we had a fair observation point in Hill 63, but the one great boon granted to us was Kemmel. Had it been a thousand yards nearer the front line, it would have done much to counteract the advantage of the Messines-Wytschaete Ridge. It is scarcely necessary to add that the enemy had, in his long possession of the ridge, fortified it with all his wonted industry and art. It was protected by four general lines of well wired trenches west of the road, and peppered over with little forts, wired all round, the garrisons of which were provided with concrete structures, miniature houses rather than dug-outs, proof against anything up to an eight-inch shell.

General Plumer's Second Army was at this time playing the rôle of Cinderella among the British forces. Its front was lightly held, even at Ypres, which had grown strangely quiet of late. Certain preparations had been made for an offensive in the summer, but had been largely abandoned for lack of labour. The Army Commander, however, insisted on pushing on his mining, in which he had great faith, a faith amply to be justified the following year. Throughout the winter and spring the Division furnished large parties for work under the various Tunnelling Companies in the shafts that were being driven under "No Man's Land," and beneath the strongest portions of the enemy's front line. The German miners were skilful enough, and on other parts of the front often gave rather more than they got, but here, from first to last, they were out-manœuvred and out-fought in an underground war. A striking instance of this was at La Petite Douve Farm, on the Ploegsteert-Messines Road, where the British tunnellers succeeded in pumping a fair proportion of the muddy Douve into the Germans' shaft, whence they could be heard, night after night, frantically ejecting it with a motor-pump. One "camouflet," as a defensive explosion was called, did indeed blow in our gallery here and undo months of work, but the enemy probably did not know what he had achieved, and the temporary check availed him nothing in the end. No Ulsterman who served in Flanders in that winter and the following spring will forget the skill, patience, and absolute contempt for danger displayed by those tunnellers. The 171st Tunnelling Company, with which the Division was most closely associated, will be remembered with particular affection and admiration.

The Second Army has been called the Cinderella of our forces. Not only was it holding a long line lightly, and with few reserves, but the main flow of ammunition and material passed it by and went down to the Somme, where the British were creeping forward in desperate fighting to Bapaume. There were weeks in August and September when the allowance of shells dropped to two and even one round per 18-pounder a day, with heavier calibres proportionately rationed.[26] The Germans were in this respect similarly situated. Their ammunition also was wanted on the Somme to put down those eternal barrages with which they opposed our assaults. When the Division first arrived in Flanders the artillery shell-fire was very light indeed. That of the trench mortars did a good deal to replace it. The Germans had concentrated on these weapons as their chief means of offence, and, possessing the advantage of the ground, they used them cleverly and with great effect. With that curious regularity that appeared to form part of the German mentality their bombardments generally took place almost precisely at 3-30 p.m. They were particularly severe in the neighbourhood of the Spanbroek salient.[27] "In this sector," writes a machine-gun officer, "I have seen five or six large 'minnies' in the air at one time—really fearsome things. You could see the fuses of the bombs alight in the air and follow their flight most of the way, only to lose it when straight overhead; and then there was nothing to do but wonder where it would fall!" These long aerial torpedoes exploded with shattering effect and made huge craters. It is useless to disguise the fact that, during the first few weeks of the Division's acquaintance with these trenches, the enemy had an ascendancy in trench-mortar warfare. That ascendancy had to be fought down. In the first place the German mortars, or rather their emplacements, were carefully marked down from observations taken in the line, and by the study of aeroplane photographs. Maps were then issued by the staff, upon which each active emplacement was shown by name. The names began with the letter of the map square; all in the "S" squares with S, and in the "U" squares with U. The names chosen were generally feminine—doubtless without ironic intention. A certain number of the emplacements were allotted to each howitzer battery of the Divisional Artillery, and also to such 6-inch howitzer batteries of the Corps Heavy Artillery as were available. When the mortar opened fire, all that was necessary was for the words "Susie active," or "Ursula active," to be wired back to the batteries. Susie, or Ursula, as the case might be, was instantly engaged, while any machine-guns that could be brought to bear upon her neighbourhood also took a hand in the game. By this means it was generally found possible to silence any individual mortar in about a quarter of an hour at most, and to prevent it from getting the exact range, and then knocking in a whole section of trench at leisure.

On the British side, also, big trench-mortar bombardments, aided by the Divisional Artillery, were periodically arranged. In these affairs the leading rôle was played by that terrific weapon, the heavy trench mortar, firing a projectile of 180 lbs., and highly dramatic it not infrequently was. One of these monsters dwelt at R.E. Farm, on the Wulverghem-Wytschaete Road, and it was from this locality that the principal "hates" were discharged. For perhaps ten minutes the fire would continue, the "flying pig," as it was called, sending over its giant shells, the medium mortars firing their 60-lb. "plum puddings," and perhaps two batteries of light Stokes mortars discharging twenty or twenty-five rounds a minute from every gun. Meanwhile the 18-pounders and howitzers behind joined in, while machine-guns fired upon communication trenches. The German retaliation was frequently heavy, and the teams of the mortars, heavy, medium, and light, showed grim determination in carrying out their tasks under punishment. General Brock, the C.R.A., did not believe in sending to the mortar batteries weaklings who were not wanted with the guns, and these trench mortars acquired a peculiar type of artillery officer,[28] resolute, hard-bitten, perhaps often careless and unconventional, but capable in great moments of the most splendid courage, lightly worn and taken for granted between comrade and comrade.

Few who have known anything of it can recall the "flying pig" without a smile. There was a pleasing uncertainty about this weapon. When the first round was fired from R.E. Farm, the charge did not ignite properly, and the big shell went forth, flaming gun-cotton marking its path, to land three hundred yards away just behind the British front line, making a huge crater and demolishing the local company headquarters! Thereafter the propellent was improved, but it was thought wiser temporarily to evacuate the front line over which the mortar was firing. It was typical of the infantryman's good humour that the incident was greeted everywhere with laughter and treasured as an excellent jest. War, indeed, has a curious effect upon the sense of humour, and far grimmer pleasantries than this were the subjects of mirth. When a IX. Corps intelligence summary remarked that a German cemetery behind the ridge "appeared to be filling nicely," it was hailed as the joke of the season.

It was the aim of the Army Commander to harass by all means in his power the troops that faced him, to prevent divisions that were sent down to the Somme from going as fresh troops, and to prevent those others that had been withdrawn from the hell-broth from recovering too quickly and easily from its effects. The intense bombardments with trench artillery were but one weapon in this campaign. Another, as autumn drew on and supplies of ammunition came more freely to hand, was the shelling of approaches and, above all, the railway terminus in Messines, by night. But the principal weapon in this minor offensive was the raiding party. So long as men who took part in the war are alive, the subject of raids is like to crop up whenever two or three are met together. But the conclusion of such discussions is invariably the same. Raids were frequently useful, and sometimes imperatively necessary; but the British raided too often. Raids to obtain identification of troops opposite, and even to keep the enemy "on the stretch," were justifiable; those with the object of raising the moral of our troops were not, because they did not succeed in their object. "No doubt," writes one of the Brigadiers of the 36th Division who was responsible for many raids, "no doubt a successful raid had a good effect in a unit, but not always among the raiding party. The meticulous preparation made the 'waiting-for-the-dentist' period hard and trying. And the raiders were always picked men, who in a battle were of inestimable value. Many units had to deplore the loss of the very cream of their officers, N.C.O.'s, and men in raids. And the cold-blooded courage demanded of all concerned took heavy toll of the nervous energy of even the biggest thruster." The Higher Command, also, often called for raids immediately troops had taken over a line, before they had learnt their way about in "No Man's Land" by dint of patrolling, and before they had recovered from the effects of an attack delivered on some other part of the front.

The record of the 36th Division with regard to raids was from first to last a very high one. The failures were few in comparison with the successes. It was also the case that, while the troops of the Division carried out a great number of successful raids, the number of occasions on which they themselves failed to repulse German raids or lost prisoners to the raiders can be numbered on the fingers of both hands. In the eleven months between the opening of the Somme Offensive and the Battle of Messines, the Division carried out over a dozen raids; but the first hand-to-hand encounter with the enemy took place, not in his trenches, but in "No Man's Land." It is a curious little episode, and deserves to be treated at some length.

It may be mentioned that only a short time before the Somme Battle was the efficacy of the German apparatus for overhearing telephone conversation realized by the British. Till then it had been our easy custom to talk of such important matters as reliefs over the telephone from the front line. It was established that these casual conversations could be picked up by the enemy's instruments, especially in chalky ground. They were accordingly banned, and, after the British manner, from the extreme of imprudence we rushed to a comical extreme of caution. It was currently believed that all conversations within three miles of the line could be heard by the Germans, and brigadiers sometimes found themselves precluded from using the telephone. It was still possible to send telegraphic messages, using the "fullerphone," an invention which greatly diminished the risk of tapping. And an instrument of torture, known as the "B.A.B. Code Book," became part of the equipment of every officer. How many company commanders have sat in their dug-outs translating a series of numerals into amazing gibberish, to discover that they had wasted half an hour by using last month's correction!

On the occasion in question, an officer of the 9th Irish Fusiliers, Lieutenant Godson, conceived the idea of using the listening set of the enemy as a bait to take some of his men. On the afternoon of the 14th of August, he announced in the clearest possible tones, on a telephone at company headquarters in the front line, that an officer and three men would leave the trench at midnight, and move out on the right of the Le Rossignol-Messines Road to reconnoitre the clump of willows in "No Man's Land." At 9-30 p.m. he moved out to this spot with a party of two officers and sixteen other ranks. By 10 he had his force in prearranged formation near the willows, and waited for what might happen. But he must be allowed to tell in his own words, as they were written next morning, the story of his sensations and of his achievement.

"At 11 p.m. I see, I see—what do I see? A little black mark in the grass forty yards in front that was not there when I looked before. O yes, it was. I look about. The moon is very full out now on our right front. What a nice night, and so quiet! Not a sound from the German lines. I look to the front again. I am getting fed with this. I am wet from head to foot crawling through the wet grass.... This is not a job for one man to be at day after day. Everyone ought to take his turn at this. The discomfort is beastly. It is all right till I move, then I have to warm a new place on the dank grass. Hullo! by Jove, I've forgotten that black spot, the only thing in sight I had made a mental note to look at again.... It's growing bigger. What the devil is it? There's another behind, and another. They're coming! I have heard of hearts leaping into the mouth. It meant nothing to me, but by Jove that's what mine did. It nearly made me dizzy just for two seconds. I collect myself. Twenty-five yards off and coming, oh, so slowly and cautiously, moving down a little ditch in the open that I had not noticed.... I sign to the sick scout to stop his noise and lie close to the ground. I level my revolver. They're coming. And one of the other men is sure to make a noise or cough.... I see the first distinctly now, ten yards off,—nine, eight, seven, six, five. He sees something, he whips round, all turn behind him; as far as I can see, three, four, five, six, seven—how many? Bang, bang, bang, ring out the rifles! I let off five with my revolver, and they have disappeared as if by magic. 'Come on, boys!' I'm up and out. I see a figure on his back. I leap at his throat. 'Kamerad, Kamerad!' he shouts, and waves his hands. Clements whips by me and Ervin and Breen."

The net result of the ambuscade was two Germans killed and four prisoners. That the false message had been overheard could never be exactly proved, but the probabilities seemed to be in that direction.

To summarize the raids carried out or attempted during autumn and winter, there were two on the night of September the 15th, two on September the 30th, three on October the 12th, two on the 31st, and one, the most important, on November the 16th. Of these ten, six were successful in varying degree. The two first were carried out by the 9th Rifles, just east of the Wulverghem-Wytschaete Road, and by the 11th Inniskillings some five hundred yards north of it. The former, by reason of its neatness and the fact that the raiders suffered no loss, must be accounted the best of the series. It was sent to obtain an identification, and it obtained one, a single prisoner. In addition, the officer who led it shot two Germans as he entered the trench, and a third was shot by the flank guard on the left. But the great achievement of the raid was the work of Rifleman Kidd, the champion long-distance bomber of the battalion, a man worth a platoon in such an affair. By his long-range bombing he kept off, single-handed, the German bombers moving up to the rescue, killing three. The British casualties were three men so lightly wounded that they remained at duty. The other raid was notable for very pretty work by the Artillery. At this point, opposite Kruisstraat Cabaret, the British lines jutted out into a work known as the "Bull Ring," which commanded some relatively high ground, about seventy yards from the enemy's trench. The raid was just north of this work, on an enemy trench almost on the same longitudinal line, yet a machine-gun was able to fire from the "Bull Ring" two thousand rounds on the enemy's trenches, while the "box" barrage of the Artillery was put round the raiding party, and no shell came near it. Over thirty Germans were estimated to have been killed, but, unfortunately, the Inniskillings, besides ten wounded, had three wounded and missing. One prisoner was taken as an identification.

The raids on the 30th were part of a series on the whole IX. Corps front. On the right the 11th Rifles did not start, owing to an accidental bomb explosion; in the centre the 10th Rifles were held up by the depth of the wire; on the left the 10th Inniskillings entered the enemy's trenches—after the fuse of their ammonal torpedo had failed to ignite, and the sapper in charge had affixed and lit a new one under the very noses of the German sentries—killed a number of the enemy, blew up dug-outs, took a machine-gun, rifles, and equipment. In the raids of the 12th of October the 108th Brigade had again no fortune at the strongly wired Petite Douve Farm, but the 107th and 109th Brigades each took prisoners. Of the latter raid, carried out by the 9th Inniskillings, it is related that, just before it took place, the two officers who planned it were out in "No Man's Land" having a look round, and lost their way, the trenches being here only fifty yards apart. Having seen some wire they could not agree whether it was "ours or theirs," and tossed a coin in a shell-hole to decide which view should prevail. The winner approached the wire, put up his head, and was fired at at four yards' range—and missed! He bobbed down. Again he took a look, and again there was a miss by the sentry. Finally he heard footsteps approach on the trench-boards, and a voice demand: "Jasus, what are ye shootin' at?" That was a welcome and homely sound. Sotto voce explanations followed, and he and his companion came in. The raids of October the 31st were held up by showers of bombs from the stout-hearted Swabian peasants of the 26th (Wuertemberg) Division. But the Wuertembergers were wanted on the Somme. On November the 16th the 11th Inniskillings, raiding the Spanbroek salient on a front of two hundred yards, came upon their less formidable successors, a Saxon Division, before they were accustomed to the new trenches, and dealt with them in terrible fashion. Twenty-three dead were counted in the trenches, and more than twice as many must have fallen. The terror-stricken Saxons deserted their front line on a wide front, and the Inniskillings had their pleasure with it for half an hour, looting everything which they could carry over, blowing up all the dug-outs, to the accompaniment of tunes played in "No Man's Land" on mouth organs. Three prisoners were taken. Our losses were slight. One of the few successful raids carried out against the Division in all its career took place on February the 14th, when the enemy obliterated the trenches on the Wulverghem-Messines Road and apparently captured two prisoners.

It will be remembered that the Divisional Artillery, which had come to France consisting of three 18-pounder and one 4.5 howitzer Brigades, had been reorganized in May, the howitzer batteries being divided among the other three Brigades. A second reorganization took place in September, to a basis of six-gun instead of four-gun batteries, though the howitzer batteries did not receive their extra section of two guns till the New Year. The 154th Brigade was broken up, and in February 1917 the 172nd Brigade became the 113th Army Brigade, and left the Division. The details can best be shown by a tabular statement which appears in the "Order of Battle." Henceforth the Artillery consisted of two Brigades only, the 153rd and the 173rd. A large number of Army Brigades were created by the reorganization, and were used to increase the artillery at the disposal of divisions for offensives or in dangerous sectors. The change had some tactical advantages, but the lot of the new Army Brigades, "nobody's children" as it were, and constantly moved from one lively front to another, could not be described as happy.

The late Lt. G. St. G. S. CATHER, 9^th Royal Irish Fusiliers.
The late Pte. W. F. M^cFADZEAN, 14^th Royal Irish Rifles.
The late Capt. E. N. F. BELL, 9^th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
Pte. R. QUIGG, 12^th Royal Irish Rifles.
The Late 2/Lt. J. S. EMERSON, 9^th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.