Towards Gommecourt

Attack by Edward G. D. Liveing
One Young Man by John Ernest Hodder-Williams

Two immediate accounts of the Battle of the Somme

The attack on the fortified village of Gommecourt took place on July 1st 1916 and was an essential component of the first great allied attack of the Battle of the Somme. This is not a book of great strategy, but of the very personal experience of war as lived by ordinary men. Here two accounts have been brought together, both for the sake of value and by virtue of their comparatively short lengths, because they may have not been published independently. The first account is by the commander of No.5 Platoon of a battalion of the County of London Regiment. It takes the reader through the preparations for and the actual undertaking and aftermath of the attack in graphic detail. The work is an invaluable detailed record of a platoon action on the Somme, but also one of the most riveting pieces of Western Front infantry action first hand experience available. The second piece—written in the form of letters—reveals the march to war of an ordinary young man until he became a veteran infantryman. The action centres once again on the Somme in the Gommecourt sector.

We then began to retrace our steps along the railway out to the Hill. Each man carried two boxes of bombs. Just as we reached the communication trench, leading on to the Hill itself, the Boches sent over several of the tear-gas shells. We stumbled about half-blind, rubbing our eyes. The whole party realised that the boys holding the Hill needed the bombs, so we groped our way along as best we could, snuffling and coughing, our eyes blinking and streaming. We stood at intervals and passed the bombs from one to the other, and had nearly completed our job when the word came down that no one was to leave the Hill, as a counter-attack was taking place a few minutes before 6 o’clock. We had then been at it for nearly ten hours. By this time the bombardment from both sides was stupendous; every gun on each side seemed concentrated on this one little stretch, on this small mound.<br>
Six o’clock came and I heard a shrill whistle and knew that our boys were just going over the top. Immediately there was a deafening rattle of machine guns and rifle fire. And then a stream of wounded poured down this communication trench. The wounds were terrible, mostly bayonet. None were dressed; there had been no time, they were just as they had been received. Many a poor chap succumbed to his injuries as he staggered along our trench. To keep the gangway clear we had to lift these dead bodies out and put them on the top of the parapets. It was ghastly, but you get accustomed to ghastly things out here. You realise that fifty dead bodies are not equal to one living. And these poor fellows, who only a few minutes before had been alive and full of vigour, were now just blocking the trench. And so we simply lifted the bodies out and cast them over the top.<br>
By this time the trench was absolutely full of wounded, and our little party was told to act as stretcher-bearers, and to get the stretcher cases down. We were only too glad to do something to help. The first man that my chum and I carried died half-way down the cutting. We felt sorry for him, but could do nothing. He was dead. So we lifted his body on to the side of the track and returned for the living. This work lasted some considerable time, and when more stretcher-bearers came up, most of the cases had been carried down, so we returned to the Convent exhausted, nerve-shaken, and very glad of the opportunity of a few hours’ sleep.<br>
The sights we had seen, the nerve-racking heavy shelling had upset our chaps pretty badly. Many of them sobbed. To see and hear a man sob is terrible, almost as terrible as some of the wounds I have seen—and they have been very awful. However, as quite a number of the men had only recently come out, it was natural enough that we should be upset by this ordeal. Time and repeated experiences of this kind toughen if they do not harden a man—but for many this was the first experience.<br>
Early the next morning the whole battalion made a move nearer to the Hill. For the greater part of the day we stood to in dugouts on the side of the railway embankment, but at dusk we lined up and received instructions as to the work we had to do that night and the following day. Our officers told us that we were going to the Hill to hold off all counter-attacks, and that if any man on the way up was wounded no one was to stay with him. He must be left to wait for the stretcher-bearers. Every man would be needed for the coming struggle, and although it seemed almost too hard that one must see his chum struck down and be unable to stop and bind up his wounds, there was no doubt that the order was very necessary.<br>
We started off in single file by platoons. This time we did not go up the cutting, but made our way round by the reservoir and the dilapidated village of Zillebeke. The first man to go down was one of my own section. We remembered the order not to stop, although the temptation was very strong. So we left him, wishing him the best of luck and hoping that he would soon be in Blighty.<br>
After this the casualties came faster and faster as we entered into the shell-swept area. The machine guns were sweeping round and were making havoc in our ranks. Gradually we drew near to the little wood just beside Hill 60, and were told to occupy any dug-outs there until further orders. It was at this time that the whizz-bang shell made its debut. We had not encountered this kind of shell before; it was one that gave absolutely no warning and was used for quite small ranges.<br>
We had been in these dugouts for about half an hour when we were told to fall in and each man to carry two boxes of bombs. We then went into the communication trench of the old front line. At this stage our company commander was wounded.<br>
However, we got on to the Hill, and each man was detailed—some for firing, some for bombing, and some for construction. All the trenches were blown in entirely, and a large number of us, including my chum and myself, were detailed for this construction work. Under heavy shelling we tried to build up the blown-in portions of the trenches. This was just at a corner leading right on to the Hill and part of our old front line. We laboured here all night through. Just before dawn the shelling increased, and the bombardment grew very terrific.<br>
All possible were rushed up into the crater to take the places of the fallen. Casualties were terrible, and the wounded came past our corner in one stream; several of my own friends were amongst them, and two of them, who had come out with me, were killed just a few yards away. This terrific cannonade continued until dawn, when things quietened down a little. Every one’s nerves were on edge, and all of us were thoroughly tired out. In every part of the trench lay numbers of dead bodies; in fact, to move about, one had to climb over them. I sat down, dead beat, for some time on what I thought was a sandbag. I discovered afterwards it was a dead body.<br>
Shortly afterwards we were relieved by another regiment, and in small parties of tens made our way back into Ypres. This was done in daylight, and we were spotted and shelled by the Boches. However, we were only too glad to get away from that ghastly hell, and literally tore along the hedges down past the reservoir into Ypres. At the hospital, at the other end of the town, the remnants of the battalion were collected, and it was there that Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien spoke to us, congratulating our battalion on its stand the night before. Worn out, we lined up and marched back along the road to Vlamertinghe, fondly imagining we were going back to our well-earned rest (as a matter of fact that was the programme), but we had not been in these huts more than half an hour when down the road from St. Julien there rushed one long column of transports, riderless horses, and wounded (mostly of the French Algerian regiments). And everywhere was the cry, ‘The Boches have broken through!’