MORE STORIES FROM THE BATTLEFIELDS GALLANT REARGUARDS WEARY MEN’S HEROISM

From Philip Gibbs. War Correspondents’ Headquarters, France, Wednesday.

One of the most astonishing things in this war is the way in which the vitality of youth recovers from the overwhelming fatigues of battle, and from its breaking strain upon every quivering nerve of our human body. I have described the weariness of our soldiers after a week or more of fighting over the Somme battlegrounds, yet nothing I have said can give more than a faint idea of the exhaustion of many of these poor lads of ours after those bad days when the enemy was all about them and trying to break between them, and they knew that they must hold them or we should lose all that we have and are. Highlanders of the Fiftyfirst Division, whom the King saw on the roads, are as tough as any men in our armies, yet some of their officers told me that on the last lap of their rearguard actions they were tired almost to death, and when called on to make one last effort, after six days and nights of fighting and marching, many of them staggered up like men who had been chloroformed, with dazed eyes and grey, drawn faces, speechless, deaf to the words spoken to them, blind to the menace about them, seemingly at the last gasp of strength. So it was with the West Riding troops round about Bucquoy, where they had dug a line of defence after beating off attacks at Puisieux early in the battle. They were assaulted five times, all day and night, by the First Guards Reserve and the Third Prussian Guards, who had direct orders to take Bucquoy, and they beat off these waves with frightful losses to the enemy and the loss of many of their own good men. On March 27 the enemy got into Rossignol Wood, from which a year ago I saw them retreat, and the Yorkshiremen were called on to turn them out, which they did. Next day they were attacked all along the line and repulsed the Prussian Guards everywhere, and for the two following days were fighting patrols incessantly. The Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment fought most gallantly, and in one week these men and their comrades took prisoners from seven German divisions, showing the weight of numbers against them. A battalion of Yorkshire Light Infantry had hard luck in a moment of crisis, for the enemy swept over a bit of trench, one of the old German trenches, derelict for 12 months till then, and when they turned to take these men in the rear, another wave followed on and caught these Yorkshires in the back. One platoon was isolated and fought most gallantly, refusing to surrender. “All my men are very cheery, but very tired,” was the report of their general at the most critical time. “Being attacked,” he says, “was the only thing that kept them awake.” Towards the end of this fighting they had a drunken craving for sleep; slept standing with their heads falling against a parapet; slept sitting hunched in ditches; slept like dead men when they lay on the open ground. But they waked again when the enemy attacked once more, and fought him and killed him, and dozed off again.

FOOTSORE AND TIRED.

In body and brain these men of ours were tired to the point of death. They were footsore, and their limbs were stiff, and they felt like old, old men. Yet after a few days’ rest they were young and fresh again. Yesterday I went among those Highlanders who fought so long and so hard, and, upon my faith, it was almost impossible to believe that they were the same men. Their pipers were marching up and down the roads, playing “Highland Laddie” and other old tunes of Scotland; Gordons and Seaforths and Argylls stood about in the evening sunshine like men on a village green taking their ease in times of peace. Their kilts were dirty and stained, but they had washed off the dirt of battle, and shaved, and cleaned their steel hats, and the tiredness had gone out of their eyes, and their youth had come back to them. A colonel of the Seaforths came round the corner with his bonnet cocked to a jaunty angle. He had been through hell fire, but there was no smoulder of it in his smiling eyes as I saluted him. Early in the German attack on March 21 the enemy worked round behind his battalion headquarters in the fog, having pierced down a gully from the front line after a frightful bombardment, which destroyed our defensive works there. With the colonel was a padre and a doctor in his dug-out, and when machine-gun bullets came like the crack of whips outside, he said to them: “You had better get back, the enemy is pretty close.” They obeyed his order, and went out, but were captured at once by German troops swarming down. Away in the front line was a gunner officer in an observation post with a telephone. He spoke over the wire. “There are Boches in the reserve line,” he said. Then, after a short silence, “There are Boches in my trench.” Then some other words came down the telephone: “They are bombing my post.” Those were the last words he spoke. In another post with a telephone a Scottish officer kept up messages for half an hour, though, the enemy had streamed behind him. At two o’clock that day the enemy got into Doignies, retaken for a time, by tanks and English troops. But the enemy’s progress made things hard for the Highlanders, who were in danger of being outflanked, and orders were given for a withdrawal. Next day the enemy followed them up and attacked in three waves near Hermies, and were flung back with exceedingly heavy losses. Groups of Argylls were posted in the sunken roads by Demicourt, and their machine-guns swept down platoons and companies of Germans who came within their field of fire. The Guards came over, not in steel helmets, but in “pickelhaube” for pride and glory. Others who came against the Scots were the famous “Cockchafers” or “Maikaefer,” whose regiment was cut up by a Welsh battalion at Pilkem Ridge.

GERMANS AND HIGHLANDERS.

But it was necessary to withdraw again, as the enemy was advancing on the left by Morchies and Vaux-vraucourt and Beaumetz. There was a number of heavy guns in Beaumetz, and the Highlanders were determined to save them at all risks. That night steam tractors went up into the village, with Germans close all round, and hitched their caterpillars to the guns and brought them out under the noses of the enemy and saved every one. Pioneers of Highland regiments, with field companies of Engineers and odd units, made a perimeter defence of Beugny with a body of Gordons commanded by an officer who has appeared in many of my little pictures of this war since the battle of Loos and the days at Martinpuich, when he served with other Gordons of the gay, gallant crowd. Wounded in the battle of Flanders, he had only come back to France a little while, and now outside Beugny was wounded again in the leg. His men carried him out on a stretcher, and on the way back he was wounded again in the leg. The enemy was still advancing like a tide. While the English troops held the lines outside Bapaume, the “Jocks” passed through these ruins, refreshing themselves in an abandoned canteen, where there were fresh eggs and biscuits, and so came to Loupart Wood, which overlooks a great stretch of that desolate world of the Somme battlefields, where thousands of little white crosses tell of the strife that passed over this mangled earth. Over old places where they had fought two years before these Highlanders marched, leaning against each other, some holding hands like children, falling into deep sleep whenever they halted for a brief spell, with the enemy trying to encircle them, and with heroic rearguard actions being fought all round them. A queer friendly message came to them almost at the journey’s end. It was from the enemy, sent over in a small balloon. “Good old Fifty-first Division. Sticking it yet. Cheery oh!” That balloon and message now belong to a sergeant, who would not part with them for any gold. Some of the most resolute rearguard fighting was done by battalions of Manchester and other Lancashire troops round about Bihucourt, Bucquoy, and Avette – that village was recaptured to-day by a brilliant little attack when the enemy was pouring down over the Arras-bapaume road. After beating off the enemy and restoring the line through Ervillers, Behagnies, and Sapignies, these men were ordered to hold another line further back, and in a most orderly way, as though on field manoeuvres, made that movement in three stages in face of the enemy. To cover their withdrawal they made three counterattacks with their rearguards, and Lancashire Fusiliers swept into Behagnies at the bayonet’s point. The Manchesters broke the German line near Ablainzeville and brought out a number of German officers and men as prisoners, with several machine-guns. It was Manchesters also who attacked Bihucourt with tanks on March 25, and cleared it of the enemy until fresh hordes bore down. From the first these Lancashire men fought with a grim fierce spirit to hold back the enemy tide. A crowd of men of Yorkshire took their band with them; that music, playing gay tunes with the beat of drums, was like wine to the weary men and cheered all the troops in their neighbourhood.