Charles E W Bean, Diaries, AWM38 3DRL 606/63/1 - October - November 1916 - Part 8

75

Hand drawn sketch- see original scan.

 

68                                               

76

length of it & then were faced

by a channel of their liquid

mud. There was nothing to

do but plunge on through

it. It soon came well over

my top boots - up to my

knees. We drove it along

the trench before us in waves as we waded.

It was extraordinarily buoyant 

- like quicksilver. You could

not have sank in it, I shd

think - although there is some

yarn abt a New Zealander

having des disappeared into

the mud entirely; tt he was

seen to enter some place &

never came out. I dont

personally place much any reliance

at all on these yarns (so many

one has found to be untrue).

But this one wd be quite

 

 

68                                      

77

possible.

After about 20 or 30 yds

of wading, & 70 yds of thick

trench mud, we came to

a fork in / trench. Both

st passages were empty

& we were uncertain wh way

the front trench lay. We The

two arms were dry bits of lined with very

sticky mud. We turned down

the left hand alley & around the 

second turn came to a group of

men sitting down - 4 or 5 of them.

"Is this the front line?" I asked.

"Yes," they said.

"A mail" sd one of them.

looking up at a bunch of newspapers

I was carrying. They were some

Sydney evening papers of mine,

& a Punch & some other illustrated papers

of Bazleys - They were Sydney

& N.S.W. men, of the 1st Battalion

 

 

68                                      

 78

& they seized eagerly on the

papers & split them up & began

reading at once.

They sd they had been there

4 days. The trench was not

liquid, but t a rather open

one - irregular in shape -

not very deep, wide at the

top - The firestep acted served

for a sort of seat & was fairly

dry - & they sat on it with

their legs boots in the thick mud

of the narrow gutter wh made

the floor o / trench.

"Dont step in that

place whatever you do." they

sd pointing to a rather wider

mash of putty than the rest -

"A bloke stepped in there just

now & it ws all we cd do to

pull him out. You'd want a

 

 

68        

79

traction engine if you

got in there."

They were quite cheerful

"He doesn't shell this front

line," they sd. "He shells the

supports & the communication

trenches but we dont get it'.

There was only one platoon

o / battalion in the front line - 

- indeed the front o / whole

brigade is only held by 4

platoons. The others are

behind - right away back to

Longueval. The men in t trenches

have no blankets & no water

proof sheets, as far as I cd see,

even. They may have their

overcoats - The nights are

very cold & on somedays it

has rained all day through.

But they are cheerful to a 

surprising extent. I think it

makes a lot of difference

 

 

80

Hand drawn sketch - see original scan.

 

68                                

81

seeing those shells all going

elsewhere. "Pozieres! oh no,

This is nothing like so tough as

Pozieres," the 2nd Lieutenant in

charge told me. "I've not seen

the place yet that was. This

part round here Longueval is

pretty knocked about but its

not like Pozieres."

We looked over at the

German territory.  The long finger

of the foothill curved away in

front & to the left - & if the

Germans had a trench it must

have been just beyond the

crest of this down slope, for we

cd not see it. Their trench is

somewhere down that valley, anyway.

They hold the opposite rise

of course; but this long finger

might be unoccupied for all

that w see o /Germans. Only

 

 

68   

82                                         

this morning a bullet from

some solitary sniper was

whizzing across the meagre

parapet - one man had his

binoculars out & was discussing

with his mate the position of this

sniper when we were there.

"See that white patch down there",

he was saying - well he reckoned he

cd make him out at some angle 

from the white patch.

They see the Germans occasionally

coming up the white chalk streak along the bottom o /

valley.

to their trench just as our men

do. The Germans too have a

comm trench but it is so muddy the

(our men say) that they get out

& walk by / side of it as we

do. It is 1000 or 1100 yds away 

- too far to snipe (so they say) tt these

Germans are seen.

For the rest it is

just a look out over a muddy

 

68     

83                                       

finger of hillside - half shell

flayed but not by any means

as shell stripped as Mouquet.

There seems to be no wire in

front of trenches & yesterday

6 Germans under an "offizier

Stell vortreter" (substitute officer 

- sort of warrant officer) wandered

into our lines by mistake. One

German who came in sd that he

had followed his leading tape right

up to our lines (wh were the

Old German "Grid Line".).

Today 16 men came wandering

in in a party & were taken

prisoners. They too had mistaken

our lines for theirs.

We had only a quarter

of an hour in the front line. We

left it at 12.30 - & were well

back passing Flers at 1.15 p.m. We

 

 

68                                        

84

found a Bn of the 8th Bde in

support in dugouts on the NE side

o / sunken road wh runs

N.W out of Flers. I fo Near the

top o / ridge, further on, they

were shelling occasionally the 8th Bde H.Qrs,

or around about them. I expect

they had seen the men working there.

We went down into the N.Z.

dugout to see Gen. Tivey, good man,

& heard for the first time about

the 8th Bde's raid on "The Chicken

Run" at Armentieres.

From the hill we looked back

over the country. A German aeroplane

ws sailing very high overhead 

- watching for any signs of an

offensive, I am sure. The Germans

had opened a sudden shelling on

Gueudecourt to the right; & away

to the left we cd hear the guns at

Regina Trench going.

 

68                                       

85

I had thought we might hang on,

where we are, for the winter. But

I hd seen enough to know

how difficult it wd be, just there.

 

Drawing- see original scan.

We hold slope A of the valley leading

down from Flers, & also slope C.

But the Germans hold the ends of

each of these - just over the edge visible

in this sketch; & they hold B -

wh is really the hooked end of

the finger - ridge C. So long as 

things are disturbed, & the Germans

busying themselves chiefly in

fortifying the Bapaume hills & not

worrying about trench warfare

details, they dont seem to occupy

slope B at all. But when they

begin to settle to trench warfare, &

 

68                              

86

Thurs Nov. 2. Birdwood tells me that

he thinks the 4th Army ws "caught on

the hop" - that they pushed ahead

without thinking sufficiently of the road making,

& now they have been discovered by the

wet weather with 3 corps supplied along

one hopelessly congested & abominable

road. The roads have all given out at

once. Pools of slime cover holes into

which lorries lurch & in which pack

animals die - at least you see them

out / side o t road. The roads are empty

from 11 at night to 7 or 8 in the morning

But they say tt to mend them at

night wd need flares, & tt wd

mean shelling. They shd have

thousands of men on these roads

working in their leather jackets scraping

the mud off & putting in metal. But

the roads are so bad in spite of it all tt

any day the Artillery may say they

cant go on. Birdie has told the Army this.

Railways - Decauville especially - are

all the way just now.

Frid. Nov. 3. Little Howell Price ws hit "thro" th

cheek & neck the other day - looking over t parapet

I'm sure. We saw him in Hosp. - unconscious.

 

68

87

to work out minutely all

our weak points & the places where

They can “stray” us best -

they would make this valley

quite untenable.

 

Sat. November 4. After two days

comparatively fine, this night

was wet. The attack on the

nearest trench to our line,

bayonet & hard trench  to come

off tomorrow. It ws uncertain

in / earlier part o / night whether

it wd be possible; I saw White

at 11.45 7 he told me it ws on.

Ordered my car to stand by

at 5:45 as the attack is at 9.

Price conscious today; Jack spoke ^ with him a bit. J. tells

me he has a slight squint wh is the only bad sign.

Sund. Nov. 5. Div nt wake call

6. Left about 6.15. Left about 20 to 7 & found the roads wonderfully

clear. Reached

Herbertsons dugout at

Montauban about 7.45 & heard tt he had

gone out abt 4.30 w t Divisional

[* Price water in ? 3. pm*]