Blood and Iron by Hugh Montagu Butterworth

Author:Hugh Montagu Butterworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783032204
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

These men of RIR 248 were under attack from 9/RB’s left column – caught in a pincer between Douglas Carmichael’s platoon of C Company, sprinting across no-man’s-land, intent on making the German trench between Points 04 and 24 their own, and the platoon cutting east from Railway Wood to seize and dig into the newly upturned earth forming the raised lip of the freshly blown mine crater at Point 04. Before the Germans could regain their equilibrium a platoon of Hugh’s D Company, in the British front line in Railway Wood, got to work immediately with pick and shovel to dig a communication trench to connect it with the crater, whilst further out Carmichael and his men were in and amongst the Germans even as the debris from the mine explosion was showering down around them. Beating off what unsteady challenges there were in the immediate aftermath of the eruption, Carmichael and his men kept fighting and moving towards what looked like the front-line fire trench ahead but already the plan had gone awry. Such had been the ferocity of the blast from the mine that it had thrown the debris up and out, completely obliterating a portion of the German front line along the Ypern Weg between Point 04 and Point 24. Charged with adrenalin, Carmichael’s men overran their original objective and jumped into a German communication trench (CT) marked on British maps as ‘10’ then began to fan out, fighting their way down other communication trenches – CT 8 and CT 9 – in an attempt to bomb their way east, build up the battered trench, seal the northern flank against German bombing parties and, hopefully, link up with B Company who were supposed to take control of Point 24 in the right angle of the German front line.

But as successful as they had been up to that point, the very fact that they had made such rapid progress at all simply added to their difficulties of orientation. Trying to negotiate an unfamiliar trench system – consisting of deep fire and communication trenches with many bends and angles, and all in poor visibility, made the task of maintaining direction even more difficult. It is hardly surprising then that it was later reported that some of Carmichael’s men had gone beyond their objective, driving through crumbling German resistance in the first 15 minutes of the attack, taking prisoners as they went, with a few even penetrating as far as the railway.

For their part, the infantry of RIR 248 desperately tried to reorganise and put up a fight as their divisional artillery, which had already caused casualties in A and B Companies in no-man’s-land during the assembly, increased their fire, joined now by batteries of heavier guns as far north as Pilckem and as far south as Hill 60, which enfiladed the British trenches and plastered no-man’s-land up to their own parapets. The Germans, however, were not about to let the British rush their positions without a struggle.

A relentless, tough

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