With The British Army on the Somme: Memoirs from the Trenches by Sir William Beach Thomas

Author:Sir William Beach Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781473850514
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2014-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

THE SIX WOODS

ON 3rd JULY I crept with many fears into the edge of Fricourt Wood, past the dressing station and into the trees. It had not greatly suffered. The place was “pinched out” and for some reason no superlative shelling of the place had been decreed by either side. Twenty thousand shells and more may have burst there, perhaps a hundred thousand; but into Delville on the last day of a six weeks’ bombardment we emptied at least a hundred and twenty thousand; and they were concentrated only on one section. The bombardment was the heaviest till then attempted. Fricourt was, in the soldier’s phrase, a health resort, a phrase meaning that life there was endurable. Ypres during the Somme battle was a “health resort.” You were not quite sure to be shelled in the open, the approaches were open the greater part of the day, and only now and then was any section of trench knocked into hummocks. In that sense Fricourt was a health resort for a few days after the battle. Bernafay Wood, to the east of Montauban, was another health resort, just for a while. Only alleys, no fire trenches ran through it. We captured it in twenty minutes with not as many as fifty casualties. But Bernafay, taken much at the same time as Fricourt, became a day later a roostingplace for innumerable shells; and many men died there. At least as often as not it is more costly to hold than to take.

But we had not yet tasted the full terror of the woods; nor had the Germans yet learned the full art of their defence. They had abandoned Fricourt and Bernafay at too great a speed; and had left no feeding pipe for the reinforcement of the garrison. Their revenge at Bernafay was to sentinel our approaches with a quite ceaseless chassé of heavy shells. Almost every day for a while I went within sight and hearing of this wood; and not once was there intermission of the bark of 5.9 shells and the black columns rising with damnable iteration from the hither edge of the wood. And then as ever afterwards throughout the battle they fired rather more at night than by day. Woods are the delight of attacking and despair of the defending artillery. Every contact shell that hits a tree is likely to explode. It follows that a shell becomes dangerous several hundred yards before it reaches its target.

Before the 15th September, when the last of the woods on our front was captured, and London troops put the final flourish on our knowledge in High Wood, we were to know all there was to be known about wood fighting.

When we forced a way into High Wood and pressed over the ridge down the slope facing the enemy our own gunners were helpless. The enemy facing us rested in a pool of serenity where no shells broke - for this reason. Any contact shell directed on their lines was

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