it had begun. One moment we were writhing in terror at the bottom of our trench, and the next the explosions and concussions stopped. It was like turning off an electric light. For almost a minute Sergeant Ferguson and I lay dazed and mistrustful, trying to get our senses back, waiting and watching to see if this was really the end of the barrage or simply a feint to lure us from our trenches so we could be cut down by a sudden secondary salvo.
After what seemed like an eternity’s silence, Ferguson and I crawled out. I sniffed the air. There was no indication of gas. The trench line that had been the Loop was a mess. In some places, walls that had been a full seven feet deep were reduced to four-foot ditches. Across no man’s land I could hear indistinct shouting and whistles blowing. The barrage started once again well to our rear.
I peeped over what had been our parapet and saw a long line of grey-clad figures scrambling through gaps in the German wire. I shouted to Ferguson, “They’re coming! Get them up and out at your end of the trench, I’ll do this half.” Ferguson nodded agreement and we were both off. I was screaming, “Get out, get out! They’re coming. For God’s sake get up, they’ll be on top of us in a few seconds!”
I was terrified, but it was a different kind of fear from the one that gripped me lying on the bottom of a trench when there was nothing to do but hope you didn’t take a direct hit. I was shrieking at the top of my lungs and running along the platoon line. Men groggily climbed from their dugouts. The roof from one of the platoon dugouts had been collapsed by a direct hit. Ominously from this hole there was no movement whatsoever. Men hauled weapons and ammunition cases up from hollowed sections of the trench wall. We frequently practised this drill during quiet spells in the line and that monotonous repetition was now paying off. Much to my relief, behind me came the rapid mechanical staccato chatter of the Vickers gun as it came into action.
In front of me, Lance Corporal Mullin’s gruff voice was calling out, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph! Hargreaves, you get that fucking Lewis gun up here! Move man, move!”
The sound of rifle fire crackled along our line as men found themselves a bit of cover on what was left of our trench parapet. With the Germans a hundred yards away I shouted the order: “Vickers and Lewis guns go on! Riflemen, prepare grenades! Use grenades only when they reach the wire.”
The order was passed up and down the line. While the two Lewis guns in my platoon and the Vickers heavy machine-gun continued to do their grisly work, men feverishly primed and prepared Mills bombs. When the assault closed to within thirty yards I shouted, “Grenades!” Three seconds later, a dozen Mills bombs sailed through the air and exploded on the far side of the wire. I could hear the shrieks of Germans shot and blasted in our wire and I could see men’s contorted faces as they went down in front of us.
Perhaps I had missed it earlier, but just as the Jerries were on the wire I heard for the very first time the whooshing and crackling sound of a flamethrower. It was the first I’d ever seen or heard of these weapons and it belched a dripping, greasy, terrifying blast of liquid fire out to a distance of forty yards. This new flame device scorched across a part of Number Two Section’s trench before its operator was riddled by a long stream of bullets from one of our Lewis guns. The German soldier fell and his weapon shot a huge oily black tongue of smoke and liquid fire along the front of our wire, horribly burning several of his own men. My throat was dry and my heart furiously pumped blood through every fibre of my body.
Impossibly, the Germans in succeeding ranks continued to charge toward us. My men threw a second volley of Mills bombs into the screaming desperate men clawing at our wire. The blast from our grenades was so close it seared our faces and black dirt showered on top of us. In a last desperate effort to kill us, Germans who had gone to ground threw their potato masher hand grenades at us, but in most cases they hit the wire and bounced back at them. I remember seeing Mullin picking one potato masher grenade up and throwing it back when it landed near us. No sooner had one German soldier been shot down before us than another grey figure in a spiked pickelhaube helmet loomed behind him.
By that time, I no longer tried to control the fight. It didn’t matter anyway, no one was listening, each of us was consumed in our own private struggle for survival. I seized a rifle from one of the grenadiers. I don’t know how long I fired and reloaded and fired again into those grey shapes. Some time after, it seemed that what was left of the German line in front of us began to melt into the ground. One second they were within a few feet of us and the next, scattered grey figures were fleeing across no man’s land. Our machine-guns continued to fire upon them.
For an instant, I was filled with a strange sense of admiration for these men who seconds before had tried so spiritedly to kill us. I remember it vividly, I was seized by the noble sentiment that it was a shame to kill such men and in my innocence I shouted, “Cease fire! Stop!” Again the order was passed down the line and our trench went quiet.
It was then that Sergeant Ferguson gently grabbed me by the elbow and spoke quietly in his Highland burr. “No sir. The ones we don’t get now – they’ll be back to finish us in an hour.” My scruples melted. My decision was instant. “Vickers and Lewis guns go on, rapid fire!”
I’ve often considered that moment. God forbid, that I should ever have to relive that time, but I’d make the same choice again. The second push that day was upon us in a matter of hours.
When the shooting stopped, I expected a kind of tranquillity to come over the line, but as things died down across no man’s land, our trenches were a flurry of activity. Our field telephone had ceased working soon after the barrage started and I sent a runner to report our situation and establish contact with company headquarters. I sent two others to establish contact with the platoons on either side of us. We were taught that when the firing stops, officers should begin redistributing ammunition, repair defences, and oversee the care of the wounded. In our field service training pamphlets, this description sounded so efficient, so neat and rational. It wasn’t. I remember the lull in the fighting as an exhausting and difficult time, punctuated with decisions I was not psychologically prepared to make.
I wasn’t overcome by conscience, grief, or even revulsion with the slaughter that I had just participated in – that was all to come later – but I was assailed by conflicting emotions. The soldier in me told me to ready ourselves for the next phase of the battle. What was left of Rory Ferrall within me wanted to devote his energy to helping the wounded. As the firing died down, the cries of the wounded increased in intensity and it took an unnatural act of the will to ignore them. The soldier in me prevailed.
In accordance with my training, I knew that if we couldn’t repel the next assault, none of us, wounded or fit, would live. I posted sentries on the Lewis and Vickers guns and supervised the redistribution of ammunition. Much as I wanted to tend to the wounded, my most pressing concern was the redistribution of our remaining ammunition as quickly as possible. If we were attacked in the state we were in, we would have been easily overrun. The ammunition for both Lewis gun teams was exhausted and my right-hand section had thrown all their Mills bombs. It was clear to me that despite inflicting fantastic casualties on the enemy, our situation was a great deal worse now than it had been an hour before. There was little ammunition and no hope of immediate re-supply. The Loop was such an exposed position that no one was going to be able to get anything up to us before dark. I made a quick calculation and concluded that if the Germans attacked again before nightfall, we would be able to fire at a rapid rate for no more than four minutes. I kept that conclusion to myself. It wasn’t information anyone else could use and it would spook the platoon. When what was left of our ammunition was redistributed, I turned my attentions to the wounded.
In the few minutes available to me, I scrambled up and down our sector of the Loop and counted seven dead and eleven wounded. Half the casualties came from Three Section on the right flank. I re-shuffled men from both One and Two sections. Four Section, I left intact. Men were on their knees applying tourniquets and field dressings to our casualties.
It was then I realized I had to make another unpleasant life-or-death decision. I had six vials of morphine entrusted to my care and there were eleven men with serious wounds. Everyone in the platoon knew I had the morphine. Within an hour, once the initial localized shock wore off, every one of those eleven men would be in agony and each