shells. The result was that our men instead of forming up in the front trench were compelled to form up in the open ground behind, for the front trench had disappeared. In addition to this there was an intense shrapnel barrage, which must have been directed by observers, for it followed our troops as they moved forward.
At Beaumont Hamel we had constructed a mine, the largest known in the campaign. At 7.30 acres of land leaped into the air, and our men advanced under the shadow of a pall of dust which turned the morning into twilight. “The exploding chamber,” said a sergeant, describing it afterwards, “was as big as a picture palace, and the gallery was an awful length. It took us seven months to build, and we were working under some of the crack Lancashire miners. Every time a fresh fatigue party came up they’d say to the miners, ‘Ain’t your ctceteraed grotto ever going up?’ But, my lord! it went up all right on July 1st. It was the sight of your life. Half the village got a rise. The air was full of stuff—waggons, wheels, horses, tins, boxes and Germans, It was seven months well spent getting that mine ready. I believe some of the pieces are coming down still.”
As we began to cross no-man’s-land, the Germans seemed to man their ruined parapets, and fired rapidly with automatic rifles and machine-guns. They had special light mousqueton battalions, armed only with machine-guns, who showed marvellous intrepidity, some even pushing their guns forward into no-man’s-land to enfilade our advance. The British moved forward in line after line, dressed as if on parade; not a man wavered or broke rank; but minute by minute the ordered lines melted away under the deluge of high-explosive, shrapnel, rifle and machine-gun fire. There was no question about the German weight of artillery. From dawn till long after noon they maintained this steady drenching fire. Gallant individuals or isolated detachments managed here and there to break into the enemy position, and some even penetrated well behind it, but these were episodes, and the ground they won could not be held. By the evening, from Gommecourt to Thiepval, the attack had been everywhere checked, and our troops— what was left of them—were back again in their old line. They had struck the core of the main German defence.
In this stubborn action against impossible odds the gallantry was so universal and absolute that it is idle to select special cases. In each mile there were men who performed the incredible. Nearly every English, Scots and Irish regiment was represented, as well as Midland and London Territorials, a gallant little company of Rhodesians, and a Newfoundland battalion drawn from the hard-bitten fishermen of that iron coast, who lost terribly on the slopes of Beaumont Hamel. Repeatedly the German position was pierced. At Serre fragments of two battalions pushed as far as Pendant Copse, 2,000 yards from the British lines. North of Thiepval troops broke through the enemy trenches, passed the crest of the ridge and reached the point called The Crucifix, in rear of the first German position. Not the least gallant of these exploits was that of the Ulster Division at the death-trap where the slopes south of Beaumont Hamel sink to the Ancre. It was the anniversary day of the Battle of the Boyne, and that charge when the men shouted “Remember the Boyne ” will be for ever a glorious page in the annals of Ireland. The Royal Irish Fusiliers were first out of the trenches. The Royal Irish Rifles followed them over the German parapets, bayoneting the machine-gunners, and the Innis-killings cleared the trenches to which they had given Irish names. Enfiladed on three sides they went on through successive German lines, and only a remnant came back to tell the tale. That remnant brought many prisoners, one man herding fifteen of the enemy through their own barrage. In the words of the General who commanded it:—“ The division carried out every portion of its allotted task in spite of the heaviest losses. It captured nearly 600 prisoners and carried its advance triumphantly to the limits of the objective laid down.” Nothing finer was done in the war. The splendid troops, drawn from those volunteers who had banded themselves together for another cause, now shed their blood like water for the liberty of the world.
That grim struggle from Thiepval northward was responsible for by far the greater number of the Allied losses of the day. But, though costly, it was not fruitless, for it occupied the bulk of the German defence. It was the price which had to be paid for the advance of the rest of the front. For, while in the north the living wave broke vainly and gained little, in the south “by creeks and inlets making” the tide was flowing strongly shoreward.
THE SOUTHERN SECTION.
The map will show that Fricourt forms a bold salient; and it was the Allied purpose not to assault this salient but to cut it off. An advance on Ovillers and La Boisselle and up the long shallow depression towards Contal-maison, which our men called Sausage Valley, would, if united with the carrying of Mametz, pinch it so tightly that it must fall. Ovillers and La Boisselle were strongly fortified villages, and on this first day, while we won the outskirts and carried the entrenchments before them, we did not control the ruins which our guns had pounded out of the shape of habitable dwellings. Just west of Fricourt a division was engaged which had suffered grave misfortunes at Loos. That day it got its own back, for it made no mistake, but poured resolutely into the angle east of Sausage Valley.
Before evening Mametz fell. Its church stood up, a broken tooth of masonry among the shattered houses, with an amphitheatre of splintered woods behind and around it. South of it ran a high road, and south of the road lay a little hill, with the German trench lines on the southern side. The division which took the place was one of the most famous in the British Army. It had fought at First Ypres, at Festubert and at Loos. Since the autumn of 1914 it had been changed in its composition, but there were in it battalions which had been for twenty months in the field. The whole division, old and new alike, went forward to their task as if it were their first day of war. On the slopes of the little hill three battalions advanced in line—one from a southern English county, one from a northern city, one of Highland regulars. They carried everything before them, and to one who followed their track the regularity of their advance was astonishing, for the dead lay aligned as if on some parade.
Montauban fell early in the day. The British lines lay in the hollow north of the Albert-Peronne road, where stands the hamlet of Carnoy. On the crest of the ridge beyond lay Montauban, now, like most Santerre villages, a few broken walls set among splintered trees. The brickfields on the right were expected to be the scene of a fierce struggle, but, to our amazement, they had been so shattered by our guns that they were taken easily. The Montauban attack was the most perfect of the episodes of the day. The artillery had done its work, and the 6th Bavarian Regiment opposed to us lost 3,000 out of a total strength of 3,500. The division which formed the British right wing advanced in parade order to a speedy success. Here is an extract from a soldier’s narrative:
As we were going into Montauban we saw a German machine-gunner up a tree. He’d got the neatest little platform you ever saw, painted so that it was almost invisible. We shot him down, but he didn’t fall clear, and the last we saw of him he was hanging by his boots from the branches. . . . The spirit of our boys was splendid. They simply loved the show. One of them got blown up by a shell. He seemed pretty dazed, but he picked himself up and came along. All he said was, “Oh, there must be a war on after all, I suppose.”
At that point was seen a sight hitherto unwitnessed in the campaign—the advance in line of the troops of Britain and France. On the British right lay a French Army, whose left wing was the famous “iron” Corps—the Corps which had held the Grand Couronne of Nancy in the feverish days of the Marne battle, and which by its counter-attack at Douaumont on that snowy 26th of February had turned the tide at Verdun. It was the “Division de Fer” itself which moved in line with the British—horizon-blue beside khaki, and behind both the comforting bark of the incomparable “75’s.”
From the point of junction for eight miles southward the French advanced with lightning speed and complete success. The enemy was taken unawares. Officers were captured shaving in the dug-outs, whole battalions were rounded up, and all was done with the minimum of loss. One French regiment had two casualties; 800 was the total of one division. Long ere the evening the French were on the edge of Harde-court and Curlu, and the villages of Dompierre, Becquincourt, Bussu and
