Part 6

They got back again to their trenches without any casualties to speak of, and I was much gratified by a message I received shortly afterwards from my right (I think Cuthbert or the gunners) thanking me warmly for my most valuable counter-attack, which had considerably relieved the pressure in their front!

On our immediate right the Norfolks were occupied for several hours in trying to cut down a very big tree, which was about the most conspicuous feature in the whole of our position, and formed an excellent object on which the enemy could range. It was all very well; but as soon as they had cut it half through, so as to fall to the south, the south wind, which was blowing pretty strongly, not only kept it upright but threatened to throw it over to the north. This would have been a real disaster, as it would have blocked completely the sunken road along which the ammunition carts, to say nothing of artillery and other waggons, would have had to come. So it had to be guyed up with ropes, with much difficulty; and even when teams hung on and hauled on the ropes, they could make little impression--the wind was so strong. Eventually they did manage to get it down, but even so it formed a fairly conspicuous mark. (It was so big that it was marked on the map.)

Inchy was now the centre of an appalling bombardment. A crowd of Germans had got into it, it appeared, and the village was being heavily shelled by both sides--British and German. Several houses and haystacks caught fire, and the poor devils inside must have had a terrible time. The 3rd Division was holding its own, but was being heavily attacked by the enemy's infantry. However, we eventually got the better of it, and the 9th and 10th Brigades drove the Germans away from their trenches and pursued them some distance, much assisted by the fire of the Dorsets and the advance of one or two of their companies.

Things went on hammer-and-tongs for another hour or two; more and more wounded began coming in from the 13th Brigade, including a lot of K.O.S.B.'s. We turned Beilby, our veterinary officer, on to "first aid" for many of them and sent them on; but some of the shrapnel wounds were appalling. One man I remember lying across a pony; I literally took him for a Frenchman, for his trousers were drenched red with blood, and not a patch of khaki showing. Another man had the whole of the back of his thigh torn away; yet, after being bandaged, he hobbled gaily off, smoking a pipe. What struck me as curious was the large number of men hit in the face or below the knee,--there seemed few body wounds in comparison; but that may of course have been because those badly hit in the body were killed or unmovable. But one would see men apparently at their last gasp, with gruesome wounds on them and no more stretchers available, and yet five minutes afterwards they had disappeared.

Time was getting on, and the thunder and rain of German shells seemed unceasing; they appeared to come now not only from all along the front and the right front, but from our right as well, and our guns were replying less and less. Reports began to come in from the right of batteries wiped out (the 28th R.F.A. Brigade lost nearly all their guns here, for nearly all the detachments and horses were killed), and of a crushing attack on the 19th Brigade and penetration of our line thereabouts. And soon afterwards the movement itself became visible, for the 14th Brigade, and then the 13th, began to give way, and one could see the trenches being evacuated on the right. The Norfolks stuck well to it on the right, and covered the retirement that was beginning; but they were taken out of my hands by Sir C. F., and told off to act as rear-guard for the brigades on their right.

The 15th Brigade had really been very lucky, and had neither been shelled nor attacked very heavily, and consequently we were pretty fresh and undamaged. I forget if we got any definite message to retire, and if so, when, but it was fairly obvious that we couldn't stay where we were much longer. The Dorsets were quite happy in Troisvilles and thereabouts, but the 9th Brigade on their left had had a very bad time, and were already beginning to withdraw, though in good order.

This being so, I sent orders to the battery of the 15th R.F.A. Brigade in my front to retire before they got cut off; and they executed it grandly, bringing up the horses at a gallop, swinging round, hooking in, and starting off at a canter as if at an Aldershot field-day, though they were under heavy shell and rifle fire all the time.

Only two horses and about two men were hit altogether, and though all these were apparently killed, the men got up after a little and were brought safely off with the Bedfords.

The K.O.S.B.'s were now falling back on us from the right, and they were strung out along the Norfolks' late position, and almost at right angles to our line, for the Germans were pressing us there, and heavy rifle fire was breaking out there and nearly in our right rear. Then I ordered the Cheshires and after them the Bedfords to retire, which they did quite calmly and in good order; and lastly came the Dorsets, very well handled by Bols and forming a rear-guard to the rest of the troops hereabouts. His machine-guns under Lieut. Wodehouse had been doing excellent work, and the shooting of both Bedfords and Dorsets had had a great effect in keeping off the German attack hereabouts.

By this time units had become a bit mixed, and lines of troops belonging to different battalions and even different brigades were retiring slowly over the open ground and under a heavy fire of shrapnel--which by the same token seemed to do extraordinarily little damage. It was difficult to give a definite point for all these troops to move on, for we had been warned against retiring through villages, as they were naturally made a cockshy of by the enemy's guns. Reumont was being already heavily bombarded, and though we had instructions to fall back south-westwards along the road to Estrees, this road passed through Reumont. I did not know how to get comfortably on to it without going through some village, so gave a general direction off the road, between it and Bertry, and struck across country, together with a number of troops on foot in various formations, all moving quite steadily and remarkably slowly.

As the shrapnel were bursting in large numbers overhead, I got the men well extended, as best I could, but some of course were hit. Just as we left the road a man in charge of an ambulance-waggon full of wounded ran up and asked what he was to do, as some infernal civilian had unhitched and gone off with the horses whilst he was attending to the wounded. Stephenson, commanding K.O.S.B.'s, was lying wounded in the waggon, but this I did not hear till afterwards. Some of the K.O.S.B.'s thereupon very gallantly harnessed themselves to the waggon and towed it along the road.

It was hard work making our way mounted across country, because of the numerous wire fences we came across, not to mention ditches and hedges. We worked rather towards Bertry, avoiding woods and boggy bits, but the line wasn't easy to keep. The Germans had an unpleasant habit of plugging bursts of four to a dozen shrapnel at one range, then another lot fifty yards on, and so on, so it was no good hurrying on, as you only came in for the next lot. Then they very nearly got us just when we had got to a hopeless-looking place--the railway, with thick fence and ditch on each side of the track and a barbed-wire fence as well, with signal wires knee high just where you expected to be able to jump down on to the track. Luckily Catley, my groom, had some wire nippers; but just as he was cutting at the wire, and we of the Brigade Staff were all standing round close by, trying to get over or through, whack came four shrapnel, one close after the other, bursting just short of us and above us--a very good shot if intentional, but I don't think they could possibly have seen us. Horses of course flew all over the place; Cadell and his horse came down, and I thought he was hit, but he only lost his cap, and his horse only got a nasty flesh wound from a bit of shrapnel in his hindquarters. Again, why none of these shrapnel hit us was most extraordinary: there we were, seven or eight of us mounted and close together, and the shells bursting beautifully with terrific and damnable cracks--yet not one of the Brigade Staff touched. Beilby's horse, by the way, also got a bullet in the quarter.

These same shrapnel hit two or three infantry standing round us, and the next thing we saw was Dillon (of the Divisional Staff) dismounted and staggering along supporting two wounded privates and hoisting them over the obstacles on to the rail track, one man hanging heavily from his neck on either side. He was streaming with sweat, and said afterwards it was the hardest job he'd ever had. Others of course helped him and his men, and we wandered along over the grass, and skirting the little woods and coppices till we got to the main road again.

As we proceeded along the road we did our best to get the troops collected into their units, getting single men together into bunches and the bunches into groups and platoons, and so on. But many of them were wounded and dog-tired, and it was hard work. Ballard and his Norfolks joined us in bits, and we heard that they had had a hard time falling back through Reumont and done very well as rear-guard. There were stories at first of their having suffered terribly and lost a lot of men; but it was not in the least true,--they had had comparatively few casualties.

The country gradually grew more and more open till by dusk--somewhere about 7 o'clock--we were traversing a huge rolling plain with open fields and only occasional farmhouses visible. The troops on the road were terribly mixed, infantry and artillery and waggons and transport all jumbled up together, and belonging not only to different brigades but even to different divisions, the main ones being of course the 5th and 3rd Divisions.

Darkness came on, and the night grew cooler and cooler, yet still we pushed on. As it got blacker, terrible blocks occurred and perpetual unintentional halts. In one place, somewhere near the Serains-Premont road I think, we were halted for about three-quarters of an hour by a jam of waggons just ahead. I gave the Norfolks leave to worm their way through the press, but it was no use, for before they had got through the waggons moved on again and only divided the men more and more, so that they lost their formation again and were worse off than before.

Companies or bits of companies of my battalions were pretty close together, and at one time the Brigade was pretty well cohesive, but as the night wore on they got separated again and mixed up with the transport till it was quite impossible to sort them out. It was a regular nightmare, and all one could look forward to was the halt at Estrees.

The German guns had long ceased to fire, even before the sun went down, and there didn't seem to be any pursuit at all, as far as we could gather. Our men moved quite steadily and without the vestige of a sign of panic: in fact, they were much annoyed at having to fall back. But I expect the German infantry was even more tired than ours, for they had marched all through the previous night and certainly had frightfully heavy casualties during the day. Anyway they did not worry us, and we pursued our way in peace. But men and horses were desperately sleepy, and at these perpetual halts used to go to sleep and block up the road again when we moved on.

Luckily the road was as straight as a die, and one could not possibly lose it; but it was difficult to know where we were, and occasional twinkling lights in houses and cottages on the road only made our whereabouts still more deceptive.

At last we entered something that looked in the pitch darkness more like a town. It was Estrees right enough, but there were no signs of a halt, though it was 1 A.M. or so. We could not find any staff officers here, even at the solitary local inn, to give us any information, and the only rumour was that we were to march on as far as we could go. We had had no direct orders, and we did not know where the Divisional staff were, but as by this time we had pushed on and were, as far as we knew, ahead of most of the Brigade, Weatherby and I moved aside into a field full of corn stooks, unsaddled our horses, gave them a feed, and went fast asleep in the wet corn. We had meant to sleep only for half an hour, but were so dead tired that it must have been more like an hour and a half. And even then we were only awakened by a battalion (I think it was the Northumberland Fusiliers) irrupting into our field and pulling the stooks down for their own benefit. So we guiltily saddled up again, thinking that the whole Brigade must have passed us in the dark. But, as a matter of fact, it had not.

Aug. 27th.

Daylight came at last through the damp grey mists, and we found ourselves still in open country, with the road thickly covered as before with troops of all arms and, in places by the roadside, the remains of bivouac fires and empty boxes and bully-beef tins, and hunks of raw meat; for the A.S.C. finding that it was impossible to supply the troops regularly, had wisely dumped down their stores at intervals alongside the road and let the men help themselves.

This was all very well for the men in front, but by the time we in rear had got to the stores there was nothing left, and we had to go hungry.

Somewhere about 4 A.M. I came on Sir C. F. standing at the cross-roads near Nauroy. I naturally asked him where we were to retire on; but he had not recently received any definite orders himself; so after talking it over we came to the conclusion that our best line would be on St Quentin, and we directed the men, as they came up--5th Division straight on, 4th Division to the right to Bellicourt, and 3rd to the left to Lehaucourt, for thus we should get the Divisions more or less in their right positions. Of course a vast quantity of troops had already preceded us, probably towards St Quentin, but that could not be helped.

It was a long way yet to St Quentin, about eight miles, and on the road and off it were men, waggons, and stragglers in every direction. The jumble of the night had disintegrated most of the formed bodies, and the whole thing had the appearance of a vast debacle. Men moving on singly but slowly, little bunches of three and four men together, sometimes of the same regiment, but oftener of odd ones; men lying exhausted or asleep by the roadside, or with their packs off and sitting on the grass, nibbling at a biscuit or looking hopelessly before them. It was a depressing sight, and I wondered how on earth the formations would ever come together again. Officers of course were doing their best to get their own men together, but the results were small. Whenever we passed men of the 15th Brigade we collected them as far as possible into bodies; but it was very difficult to know what units men belonged to without asking them, for very many of them had long ago, on arrival at Havre and elsewhere, given their cap-badges and shoulder-names as souvenirs to women and children, and they were most difficult to identify.

A mile or two before getting into St Quentin I passed Laurence Drummond, commanding the 19th Brigade, hobbling along on foot, and offered him of course my second horse. He had got damaged somehow--by a fall, I think--and said he had his horse all right, but it hurt him less to walk than to ride.

As we approached the town the entrance had got rather blocked with troops. This was rather a good thing, as it enabled the stragglers behind to close up and find other portions of their own regiments; and, extraordinary as it seemed, whole companies had now got together and in some cases had even coagulated into battalions. I found most of the Norfolks collected together in a field by the side of the road, and a stray Bedford company or two looking quite fresh and happy.

As it was necessary to get further orders, I left Weatherby to do some more collecting and pushed on by myself into the town, where I found Rolt and some of his Staff; but he knew nothing. There was a hopeless block at this moment, so I slipped off my horse for ten minutes and had a bit of chocolate and biscuit, which were quite refreshing. Rolt was somewhat depressed, for his Brigade had lost heavily, but they too were gradually coming together. At last, in the middle of the town, I managed to collect some instructions, and was told that the 5th Division was to form up in a field near the railway station the other side of the town. There were also Staff officers at different points, calling out "5th Division this way, 3rd that," and so on; and as the men, now more or less in columns of fours, passed them, they perked up and swung along quite happily.