Trench Pictures From France by Major Willie Redmond

Author:Major Willie Redmond [Redmond, Major Willie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, Europe, Great Britain, General, Germany, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781782892540
Google: JntvCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2014-08-15T05:02:44+00:00

VI — HOW THE COLONEL CAME BACK

(October 6, 1916)

THE field kitchens had gone up the long dark road in the direction where the division had been engaged in action. It was a very successful action, and all the news which trickled back was very cheering.

True, there had been many, many losses, both in officers and men, but even these, saddening as they were, were almost forgotten for the time in the exultation felt at what had been achieved.

The division had gone through most gloriously. The position to be assaulted had already, in the course of the long drawn-out battle, been assaulted six times, but without success.

For two years the Germans had been entrenched there, and they had, as well they know how, made the position very strong. Barbed-wire entanglements of the most intricate kind; machine-gun emplacements where the guns, by cunningly contrived lifts, could disappear during bombardment and reappear at once afterwards. Everything that could be contrived to ward off attacks had been contrived, and quite openly the enemy boasted that the place was impregnable.

Now, however, the joyful news came that in the seventh attack the “old Irish Division“ had won through.

The following day the victorious battalions worked hard “consolidating“ the ground won and digging themselves in to resist counter-attacks. When night came they would be relieved by fresh troops; and so when night did come, and it came loweringly, with angry, black clouds sweeping across the moon, the field kitchens were sent up the long dark road down which the men would march from the battlefield.

Midway along the road some of the battalions would bivouac for the night at each side. So the transport officers hurried off the field kitchens to meet them and to prepare hot soup, tea, and everything possible for the weary soldiers who for two days and two nights had been fighting and advancing with only such food as they might carry in their haversacks.

This long, dark road was intermittently shelled; but had it been shelled on every yard of it the transport men would willingly have gone up it to meet their battle-worn comrades.

The great majority of the wounded had been picked up and dealt with; but after an action, wounded men are encountered singly and in little groups—men who have been sheltering in shell-holes and unable for the time to reach assistance or make their plight known.

From these returning sufferers much information is gleaned by the men of the transport as they pass along. Comrades are inquired for and officers asked after. Sometimes the answer is “Dead,” sometimes “Wounded,” and sometimes it is hard to get definite news.

On the night to which the writer refers the transport men of a certain battalion asked many questions of the men they met coming down from the front. Nearly all the questions included inquiries as to the colonel. “How is the old C.O.? Is he all right?“ Particularly anxiously did the colonel’s groom ask this question,

At last there is the steady noise of marching feet. The battalion has arrived, and all is stir about the kitchens.

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