B00D2VJZ4G EBOK (18 page)

Just on the side of the set, away from the dug-out, the tunnel had been shelled, and it opened into the yawning shell hole. Deep in this a young, handsome Tyneside Scottish soldier lay dead. His feet pointed upwards, his body lay on his back with his face upturned. He was not more than five yards from me.

The night air became chill and the rain drizzled.

I asked Hewitt to string up some sacking. I wanted it for two reasons – to reduce the draught and to help me forget the dead soldier lying there. Presently the others curled themselves up, and their snores soon assured me that-they were asleep. I remained listening-in for a possible emergency call.

10.30 p.m. An eerie silence on the ether, pierced only by atmospherics crackling in my ears. As the time went on the strange quietude became ghastly, and; all the time, the Tyneside soldier lay there, just the other side of the sack, his eyes probably still gazing blindly to the darkened skies.

A wind sprang up, blowing the sacking in towards me, as though some enfeebled soul pressed against it. Sometimes the wind lifted a corner of the sack, and I peered through into the darkened shell hole.

The rain became sleet, and it turned to snow. I knew because the snow soon attained sufficient weight to bear down lumps of earth, and fugitive flakes drifted into the tunnel.

12 o’clock. Hewitt’s turn! Was it worth his listening-in? Perhaps I would get instructions to close down any minute…pity to wake him! I decided to continue the watch myself. (I should have stated before that Hewitt suffered from cramp in his right elbow and our officer had no confidence in his operating, hence the long watch that fell to me.)

1 o’clock. I was really cold now. Snow and mad rolled into the tunnel from the shell hole, and the sacking became insecure. And then D.S. told me to close down.

I tried to sleep, but my weird imprisonment in the tunnel had disturbed me. I could not sleep…perhaps the Tyneside soldier prevented it.

I suppose I dozed, for I awoke to find faint gleams of daylight peeping down the stairway. The others were soundly asleep. I got up and went outside.

A snow-covered wilderness!

All was still. Not a gun shot, not a voice, not a living person in sight.

The sun was about to rise, and I watched fascinated.

As the yellow sun became flushed so the disappearing snow revealed the toll – the countless black lumps lying everywhere in the mud. The snow soon thawed on the Tyneside soldier, and he seemed as tragically beautiful as he had appeared the previous day.

The silence continued. The silence of a winter morning in the fields of Gloucestershire. Where the war of yesterday?

The sun soon sipped up all traces of the snow, and all was naked again – shambles, mud, desolation!

Silence, profound, unreal.

Then suddenly as though from nowhere a faint, lazy, approaching whistle – bang! A big German shell burst at my back.

The spell was ended, the silent drama wrecked, for, taking up the challenge, our artillery renewed its articulation. I was once more back in the Great War.

I saw terrible sights subsequently, endured cruel hardships. I saw the bones of snipers hanging freakishly from ruined trees, headless bodies, bodyless heads, a pair of soldiers, one British, one German, who had each bayoneted the other, standing, dead, and other gruesome things.

But the experience that stands out most vividly in my memory is that of the night when I sat in a tunnel near a Tyneside Scottish corpse, and the miraculous dawn of the following day.

B. Neyland served from September 1916 to December 1919: Sapper, Royal Engineers (Signals), Wireless Section. In France, January to June 1917, all this time in the Arras district. As wireless operator, took part in several attacks, wounded by shell splinter and home to Blighty, June 1917. On recovery sent to Ireland to help in the erection and maintenance of an almost unused wireless (military) service
.

Working Party
– Early in the spring of 1917 the 11th Northumberland Fusiliers, to which I belonged, were taking their share in the final preparations for the assault on the Messines Ridge. Our divisional front was in the Salient, and nightly working parties up to the Bund at Zillebeke, Jackson’s Dump, or Sanctuary Wood were both hazardous and fatiguing. Casualties were heavy, for the enemy knew that a storm was brewing, and his dominating positions on the low heights around the shattered remains of Ypres made it easy for him to turn the Salient into a shambles. The trenches on Hill 60 were not many yards apart, but conditions were so hellish that both sides had reduced their garrisons to a string of strong posts and held only the support lines in force.

There was, under the hill on the British side, a wonderful system of saps and dug-outs, a veritable underground settlement. The concreted and sand-bagged posts above were joined by wooden stairways to the narrow bunk-lined sleeping quarters of the forward troops. Further down, passages lined with wooden planks led to larger barracks, and here were the headquarters offices and dressing station, so far below the level of the ground that the heaviest shell bursting above caused but a distant tremor through the galleries. The whole place was illuminated by electric light and the chug-chug of the pumps keeping the water out of the galleries continued day and night.

The company had come down from the front line into deep support as it was called. We occupied one of these billets, a cavern divided into two stories by a wooden shelf some four feet from the ground and large enough to house a whole platoon. We slept, when we had the chance, in two layers, and there was a passage leading along one side right through the chamber. On the morning of June 5th I was awakened from a deep sleep – I had been out carrying bombs until the early hours of the morning – and ordered to join the party detailed to assist the Australian Tunnelling Company, who were working day and night in six-hour shifts.

The sergeant in charge of the party conducted us down a labyrinth of passages more marvellous at every step, until we came to an opening to the outer world. Just where it was I could not make out: it did not seem to be under direct observation. A high and considerable breastwork of sandbags zigzagged away to the right (this had been the method of disposing of the earth brought out of the workings), and the ground beyond, which rose quickly to a low ridge not far away, was absolutely desolate. We moved around a corner in the breastwork and formed a continuous chain to transport the bags back into the galleries where they were wanted for tamping – that is, for building a barrier against the backward force of the explosion.

I was the last man in the chain and consequently the farthest from safety, a position for which I had in no way manoeuvred, and I stood in the corner of a traverse where the breastwork turned sharply to the left and gradually petered out in the waste. We worked with a will, for our task was light and the fresh air – a welcome change from the stuffy atmosphere of the saps. An observation balloon on the far horizon attracted our attention, but whether friend or foe we could not decide. Shortly after, a battery began to fire and the shells burst on the ridge about a hundred yards away; another salvo passed over and crashed on the hill behind. ‘No need to worry’; we thought. ‘They were not intended for us.’ We had progressed so well that the N.C.O. thought it would be a good idea to lengthen the chain. Three of us moved round the corner and the work continued. Suddenly the gun fired again and something in the scream of the first shell foretold that it was for us. I ducked as it burst opposite the corner of the breastwork. We ran like rabbits for the sap. I was turning the last bend when a man a few yards in front crashed to the ground. He was a youngster just out from England who had taken up the position I had recently vacated. Aided by the man in front I attempted to lift him, but we were now alone, some 50 yards from the entrance, and an approaching salvo urged us forward again. I reached the sap opening, panting and frightened, and hung on to the timber baulk at the side to regain my breath. It was safe there, and we waited while the sergeant went to Headquarters for instructions.

At that moment Corporal B. of our company arrived on the scene, and, on learning what had happened, demanded why we had left the casualty out there. We were certain he was dead, but the corporal would not be satisfied. ‘Come on, one of you men.’ he said. ‘We must fetch him in.’ No one moved. We had all been thoroughly shaken. I felt ashamed. Why wouldn’t someone go? A last appeal and Corporal B. started alone. Something for the moment overcame my terror and impelled me to follow him. We raced along the breastwork. All was still. We bent to raise the prostrate figure at the corner, but the hand of Death had made the task too much for our strength, weakened by the stress and excitement. Shelling recommenced and the bags above began to scatter around us.
‘Run!’
screamed the corporal, and with my remaining energies I ran as I had never run before, as a regular tornado of shells smashed down the breastwork behind us. The stretcher bearers who fetched him in later, when all was again quiet, reported that he had pieces of shrapnel through the brain and the heart and therefore must have died instantly. How he had managed to run a dozen yards and turn the corner I could never understand.

The Attack
– The afternoon of June 6th found us back at the Bund dug-outs preparing for the advance. It had been rumoured for some days that the long-expected offensive was imminent, but the actual orders came suddenly, as they usually did to the men in the ranks. The battalion was to attack on the morrow. ‘B’ Company was to be in close support, and this was generally thought preferable to ‘going over the top’; though memories of a similar position before the Butte de Warlencourt on the Somme, when the supporting company was severely punished, did not reassure me.

The sun shone brightly and the Bund dug-outs had thrown off the lethargic appearance usual at that time of the day. We were not under observation, and could go about our preparations unmolested. All was quiet. In the little stream that trickled down the embankment from the lake we were able to wash ourselves-perhaps for the last time. Some whose steel helmets lacked the regulation canvas cover were daubing them with mud; officers were trying on their rankers’ tunics, which would make them less conspicuous to the enemy; while stretcher bearers, runners, and others were sewing distinctive badges to their sleeves.

On the embankment above a notice board, relic of a more leisurely type of warfare, forbade us to catch fish with Mills’ bombs – a sport in which we were very unlikely to indulge just then. Below lay the flats dividing us from Ypres, which filled the middle distance and stood out clearly, a tooth edge of jagged ruins, in the afternoon sun. Tea was served and those fortunates detailed to go back to the transport field as reinforcements were preparing to leave. Those last bright hours passed slowly. When at last night began to fall tractors hauling heavy guns crawled out from Ypres and took up positions on the flats in front. At certain points guns were placed wheel to wheel and no attempt was made to hide them. Gun after gun left the town, and now with the thickening dusk there followed streams of men: small groups at first, followed later by long files reaching out like tentacles into the Salient. Lastly, throwing caution to the winds, the field guns galloped up the roads, followed closely by their ammunition trains. Surely never through all its vicissitudes had the Salient witnessed such a furious activity.

At midnight the company moved off and followed the duckboard track towards Hill 60 once again. Lying by the route at the corner of the Bund, I saw two shapes, roughly covered by a piece of old sacking. The blackness of their exposed features told me that they had long lain thus: in the bustle of preparing for a push the small services due to the dead were often overlooked. I felt sad; there was no peace here even in death. Suddenly the raucous blast of a Strombus horn came from near at hand, and the terrifying cry of
‘Gas!’
passed down the file.

The enemy were ‘strafing’ with gas shells, which whined over and struck the ground with their peculiar undecided thud, while a sickly smell came to my nostrils. The fear of gas was the greatest fear of all, and we sighed with relief when we had passed through the danger zone, and could take off our box respirators. The remainder of the journey to the jumping-off trench was accomplished without mishap.

The trench was newly dug somewhere’ on the hill and nowhere more than 41/2 feet deep. We looked like getting a thrashing when the show commenced. The attack was to be preceded by the explosion of the mine. There in the bowels of the earth after many months of preparation, tunnelling, and counter-tunnelling by the enemy, an unprecedented amount of explosive had been buried and the effects of the detonation of such an immense charge were uncertain. We might all be involved. In any case our trenches might close in, and, to evade that possibility, we were ordered to lay out on top for the event.

The night was clear; the guns were silent. Ever and anon an enemy Verey light went up from his line and spread a lurid glare over the scene. Those hours of waiting were hardly bearable. At last the first streaks of dawn showed in the sky, and whispered orders sent us to our positions a few yards in front of the trench. The last few minutes dragged with relentless slowness; each second seemed an hour, each minute an eternity.

The greyness of a new day now suffused the sky. I felt a tremor of fear run through my body; the silence of the grave seemed to enfold the whole world. With a sharp report an enemy rocket began to mount towards the heavens. A voice behind cried
‘Now!’
It was the hour, and that last enemy light never burst upon the day. The ground began to rock and I felt my body carried up and down as by the waves of the sea. In front the earth opened and a large black mass was carried to the sky on pillars of fire, and there seemed to remain suspended for some seconds while the awful red glare lit up the surrounding desolation. No sound came. I had been expecting a noise from the mine so tremendous as to be unbearable. For a brief space all was silent, as though we had been too close to hear and the sound had leapt over us like some immense wave. A line of men rose from the ground a few yards in front and advanced towards the upheaval, their helmets silhouetted and bayonets glinting in the redness of that unearthly dawn. I saw no more.