A brief respite
As soldiers from both sides retrieved their dead and wounded, the shooting ceased … but soon resumed in earnest.
Aspontaneous ceasefire after the October 12 battle was a surprise gift. The Germans raised Red Cross flags and hastened to collect their dead and wounded, clearly reluctant to open fire on New Zealanders tending to their own casualties not far away.
One artiller yman discovered when he went for ward to help bring back the wounded that New Zealand shells had not reached their targets. He and his comrades “eventually came to the top of a small rise and then down to our front line and sheltered behind a large concrete pillbox which was being used as a casualty station. The chaps there were astounded to see us. They said that we had just walked down that hill in full view of Fritz and he had not fired a shot at us.”
The battle had been a slaughter; one historian called it a tragedy. But the reality was that the Germans had done their duty – and the ordinary German soldier also admired a brave enemy. Their sense of honour after wards extended to significant personal risk-taking. Hugh McDonald was astonished to see a German soldier bring a wounded man into the New Zealand lines.
German prisoners were sometimes used as stretcher-bearers after surrender, but this was apparently different. Evans thought the tacit truce helped the New Zealand situation considerably: “If it hadn’t been for this, our casualties would have been considerably heavier.”
Even so, the task of retrieving the wounded was extremely difficult, and the spontaneous act of humanity did not last long. The action of their private soldiers was not something senior German command could endorse. Shells and bullets shortly began flying. Neil McCorkindale was hit by splinters that broke his collarbone. “Got tied up & started to walk out,” he wrote later. “Mud knee deep, off the duckboards, rained in torrents …”
What Harry Bourke called “a mob of Fritz’s aeroplanes” began prowling the skies, overlooking every movement. Some of the wounded had to be carried back later, “all the while under fire from artiller y, snipers and machine gunners”. There was “great difficulty in getting them away thro mud, six men to a stretcher”, a process that Ernest Langford recalled as “a hellish experience”. Some of the wounded died of exposure before they could be picked up, and others were killed when German fire swept the rear ward positions. Vincent Jer vis of 1 Battalion was dismayed. “The wounded have had a rotten spin so far, many have died from exposure and a lot more shelled when down at the dressing station & killed.”
Everybody was on edge. “I think
Their sense of honour extended to significant personal risk-taking. A German soldier brought a wounded man into the New Zealand lines.
the mud has got on my nerves,” JP Houper declared on October 14, after discovering that their “possie” was a “small pillbox with about a foot of water on the floor”. German aircraft were very active. Langford, exhausted, was in bed when he saw “Fritz out today with Gothas [bombers]. Does much bombing.”
By October 20, more than 2500 wounded had been brought through the medical posts. The New Zealand mood was not helped by the sight of the casualties. Jesse Stayte was left gloomy by “bitterly cold” and wet weather. “My feet are continually half frozen and we cannot get anything hot to eat as our food comes up to us during the night and it is icy cold when it gets here. We dare not light a fire.”
Major General Andrew Russell pushed fresh men from 4 Brigade into the line and for the exhausted men in the field it did not come a moment too soon: “We got out as fast as possible,” Jer vis recalled. “Got a hot drink half way out & a feed in Fritz’s old support line where we stayed the night. Got a blanket and clean underclothes.” When Stayte’s unit was finally relieved, he and his comrades walked out to hear the “welcome sound of church bells instead of the awful roar and carnage of the guns”.