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The Silent Division: New Zealanders at the Front, 1914-1919

Chapter XVI Of Armentieres, a Quiet Sector, and How It Became Hot

page 146

Chapter XVI Of Armentieres, a Quiet Sector, and How It Became Hot

There's a township torn and shattered,
There are streets of broken brick
Where the shells have crumped and battered,
Where the mule teams rear and kick,
And the sweating driver curses
As the pellets zip and tear;
Oh confound this German shrapnel,
"Up, you blighters, c'est la guerre."

There's a winsome little maiden
Always greets me with a laugh,
And her eyes with mirth are laden,
Eyes that question, dance and chaff.
There's a crash that shakes the pave,
Splinters zutting through the air—
"Ah 1 my God; one's caught the girlie 1
Pauvre petite: mats c'est la guerre."

When the New Zealanders took over Armentières it was looked upon as being one of the quietest sectors on the whole front, a glorified rest camp. The advice which the Tommies gave, "Doan't ye fire at 'im, choom, and 'e woan't fire at ye," seems to have been the principle on which the war in these parts was conducted. The trenches were old and had been neglected and in consequence there was much work to be done digging, constructing page 147dugouts and machine-gun emplacements and draining. The sector stretched from Houplines, a suburb of the town, to Pear Tree Farm, just south of the Armentières-Lille railway, a distance of about four miles. The ground was flat, low-lying and damp, and trenches could not be dug to any great depth owing to the water which quickly rose from the sodden earth. In consequence, parapet and parados had both to be built up with sandbags, the sides had to be strengthened with A-frames, and the bottom floored with duckboards.

No Man's Land, that two or three hundred yards of sinister waste that stretched from one front line to the other, came in for the closest attention. Every night patrols crept across the parapet and explored its dangerous mysteries. They examined the enemy wire and searched for gaps; listened for working parties, and went back to turn the machineguns or artillery on them, they lay flat while bursts of fire swept bare inches above their heads and the German flares burned green and gold through the blackness of the night. From "stand to" before dawn till nightfall eager eyes searched the enemy trenches for the slightest movement.

Much objection was taken to the Germans displaying periscopes. One day "our snipers smashed five of them." On another day "they smashed three."

A certain "red house" came in for much observation. "Washing is hung out" therefrom. "A woman was observed in the red brick house." Who was she, this woman—mistress or slave, or just page 148some poor old body whom no well-meaning Germans could persuade to go back from the dangerous vicinity of her home? We met many French folk who would dare any danger rather than leave the humble little houses that were all their world. "A man was seen working in a sap. He disappeared when fired upon." A man of understanding, this one, apparently able to add two and two together. "A man was observed on the parapet wearing a blue cap with a blue band." An ornate looking person using field-glasses was seen "to drop his fieldglasses and fall back into the trench," obviously a case for the feld-lazaret if not for a burial party. As time went on the deadly New Zealand sniping caused gentlemen with blue and gold round their field-grey caps to make themselves less conspicuous. "A dummy gun and a dummy man were perceived on the opposite parapet." And so on for scores of entries in the battalion and brigade diaries. Little things all of them, but representing the concentrated attention of hundreds of men; and in the aggregate, pieced together and sorted out, not without meaning. Among the new means of frightfulness served out to the infantry was the light trench mortar—the Stokes mortar. This was simply a metal tube into which cylindrical-shaped bombs were dropped with great rapidity and discharged at ranges of between two and three hundred yards. The bombs were extremely unpopular with the Germans, who nearly always rang up for artillery retaliation whenever they were deluged with these unpleasant missiles. As the L.T.M.Bs, after committing their page 149nuisance usually picked up their unpleasant weapon and departed before the German guns had properly picked up their firing point, the front-line infantry took less pleasure in the displays than might have been expected.

The German "Minenwerfer" was a heavy trench mortar which flung projectiles of the size of a small oil drum. Their flight was clearly visible, and their panting 'song, "Where's your bivvy? Where's your bivvy? Where's your bivvy?" went to all hearts. If you kept sufficiently cool, the right technique was to observe them until you were sure that they were tumbling right down on top of you—then without waste of time you doubled round the next traverse. The "minnie" burst with an appalling noise and dug a huge hole in the ground. Providing you were not where the hole happened you would probably be all right apart from the shock to the nerves—which usually was considerable. The Germans had great faith in the disintegrating, nervous effect of horribly loud noises—and in this they were unquestionably right.

The enemy had guns and were prepared to use them and these small bickerings with trench mortars usually ended in an artillery "strafe." A German battery would open up on the position from which the Stokes gun had been shooting. The New Zealand gunners waiting eagerly for the chance of a shoot, and revelling in what seemed after the pitiful dole available at Anzac, to be an unlimited supply of ammunition, accepted the challenge and fired back shot after shot. For fifteen minutes or so the page 150vicinity of the German battery would be covered with smoke and dust and then almost at once and without warning the fury would die down. Our guns continually searched the German positions, their billets, their cross-roads, their dumps, their communication saps, their artillery and machine-gun positions, their supports and front lines. For five minutes some "tender" spot would be turned into an inferno and then with suddenness they would switch off on to some other objective. By the end of June the New Zealand batteries were firing anything up to three thousand shells per day.

But the offensive was not with artillery only. On 16-17 June a 2nd Otago company raided the "Breakwater" north-east of Houplines. Eight days later men of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade rushed the enemy line at Pont Ballot and did much damage returning with prisoners and plunder. First Wellington were equally successful a week later at Pigot's Farm. But the 2nd Battalion were foiled next night at the Frélinghien Brasserie, although they coolly and skilfully beat off an enemy attempt to follow them back.

On the 3rd the Germans attempted to obtain their revenge, and came over against the l'Epinette, then held by the 1st Auckland. At 10.30 p.m. hell suddenly burst loose. Every kind of missile rained down upon the front and support lines. The parapet was blown in, dugouts smashed, men killed, wounded, and buried alive. For an hour the uproar continued, the detonations filling the night with a roar of sound, and sheets of vivid flame. The air was page 151heavy with smoke and fumes and the sickly sweet smell of phosphorus. When their barrage lifted the Germans came in to find their way barred by five men in a listening post. These men fought heroically and hurled eighty bombs at the attackers. Finally when one was dead, and another, very severely wounded, had crawled back, the others, all wounded, were rushed by overwhelming numbers and led off to the German lines. They had broken the attack. Again the enemy barrage fell with fury on the torn line, and an hour later they attacked again with sustained obstinacy.

But the Aucklanders lined their broken parapet and each man shot or bombed straight ahead at the shadowy figures moving in the wire. At last the Germans fell back, leaving one dazed man wandering in our line. They had lost heavily. A few days later, after a bombardment that blew the front line to pieces, they rushed the Mushroom. Their first attack was beaten off by a sergeant and a few survivors of the garrison, but after a further bombardment they bombed their way in, drove the survivors back, and secured three prisoners, but at a great loss to themselves. The men who fought them here were 1st Canterbury.

On the night of 13-14 July 2nd Otago attempted to raid at Pont Ballot. They assembled in No Man's Land before the barrage opened, faces blackened, lightly armed with rifle and bayonet, or knobkerry and bomb, and with all their identification marks removed. But the very instant that our barrage fire opened, No Man's Land was swept by a tremendous page 152concentration of shrapnel and machine-gun fire. The Otago's endeavoured to press on, and indeed reached the enemy wire, but by this time the majority were down and there was nothing for the survivors to do but to fall back with their wounded. The front line was now under a terrible fire. The air was full of German flares bursting over No Man's Land, and yet men went back time and time again until all the wounded were in. Of the raiding company a handful only were unhit.

Next night 1st Auckland went over to find only dead and debris, but the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade at the same time did much damage and brought back ample identifications. A German attempt on the same night captured three men in a listening post, but was then beaten back without having entered the front trenches. On 12 August, 2nd Auckland raided the Breakwater and captured a machine-gun and two prisoners. In all, over this period eleven raids were made by our men upon the Germans while they carried out four upon us.

After the barren life of Anzac and the isolation of the desert Armentières was a good place. It was a quaint old world town built almost entirely of red brick. The churches, the religious foundations, and the schools were the most prominent buildings. Except for certain parts, it was a city of silence. Street after street was empty and silent. The glass in the windows had in many cases been smashed by the detonations of the bursting shells. Every here and there a house had a shell-hole in roof or wall. Some, the shells had burst open, and the pitiful relics of page 153the once happy homes were lying in confusion amidst the tangle of rubbish on the floor. The grass was growing between the stones in the pavé roads.

The majority of the population had fled long before the arrival of the New Zealanders, and those who remained, mainly women and children, were the most courageous among the poor folk who clung at great risk to their humble homes. There were perhaps some three thousand of them altogether—scattered thinly from the Barrier at Nouvel Houplines, to Barbed Wire Square, and the Place Victor Hugo; in greater number about Half-past Eleven Square (so named because the town clock had stopped at that hour), and more still around l'Ecole Professionnelle and the Blue Blind Factory at the back of the town.

During the night a battalion moving back from a trench spell after days of watching, damp dugouts, heavy shelling, wiring, patrolling, and the full experience of trench warfare in a hot sector, would take up billets in, say, the Blue Blind Factory. In the morning the men were roused by a troop of mademoiselles and gamins who entered the dormitories chattering, singing and joking to sell the morning paper, eggs and chocolate. Mademoiselle was an adept with her tongue and jokes flew thick and fast.

After breakfast the men would fall in and be marched by platoons back over the Pont de Nieppe to the brewery baths—the most famous in France. Filing past long partitions of sacking, men shed first their hats and valuables, then their coats and page 154trousers, and finally shirts and underwear, then, clothed in identity disks, they jumped into the great round vats five feet deep with steam-heated water, and there splashed and scrambled and scrubbed a dozen and twenty at a time. Emerging like giants refreshed, they clothed themselves in clean underclothing, received back trousers and coats minus sundry boarders that had succumbed to the "pressing" attentions of certain mademoiselles armed with hot irons, whose presence behind screens of sacking was betokened by frequent outbursts of song dealing with the unfortunate history of mademoiselle française whose soldat anglais had parti to the death-dealing qualities of the soixante-quinze, the famous French field-piece.

That afternoon, clean and well swanked-up, the soldier would be buying picture post-cards of the town to send back to New Zealand or cracking jokes with plump and jolly Marie in the coffee and pastry shop near Half-past Eleven Square. Then, too, until "eight o'clock fineesh" there were the estaminets of innumerable madames and mademoiselles, Simone, Louise, Darkie, Ginger, and many another less known to fame where there was much real good fun and sociability. In the estaminets and chip shops there were great revellings and many tall stories were told in a dialect which consisted of distorted French mixed with English of an elementary and often sulphurous sort, accompanied with much gesture and more laughter.

Chips, eggs, coffee and beer were all good in their way; but brave, cheerful, generous, good-natured page 155mademoiselle was much better than them all. A very wonderful creature she was—jamais fâchée, jamais vexée; very willing to promenade avec monsieur après la guerre or to go back with him to New Zealand "after de nex warr per-r-r-aps." Mademoiselle from Armentières, you were a good friend to the New Zealanders. You and they went through some hard times together. You said that the soldats de la Nouvelle-Zélande étaient beaucoup bien aimés. They thank you and do not forget.

At three o'clock in the morning a man might be on a wiring party in No Man's Land, standing stock still, in the light of a flare, pretending to be a broken tree, or lying flat on his tummy to escape bursts from Parapet Joe, whose favourite tune was reported to be, "Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight?" Coming down the sap in the grey dawn his platoon might be caught at a nasty corner by a sudden salvo of whizz-bangs. One of his mates goes down with a smashed shoulder. The wounded man's face is grey and twisted and there is bloody foam on his lips but he manages a faint smile. A field dressing is ripped open and stuffed in the ghastly wound, another goes over it, and then in a couple of minutes he is on a stretcher and ten minutes later is being handed over to the field ambulance bearers. A quiet hand-shake: "Good luck, old chap!"

Our man reaches billets, has a wash and a shave, breakfast and a sleep and after a lunch of bread, butter, jam and cheese, wanders into the town and spends half an hour picking out picture postcards of Ar-page 156mentières for the folk at home. With a friend he wanders along to the Place Victor Hugo and with a couple of hundred others, has a leisurely swim. Greatly refreshed, the two proceed along to the Y.M.C.A., write letters for an hour, browse over the illustrated papers and then finish up the afternoon by having a meal of eggs and chips and coffee in a quiet little estaminet. In the evening they go to the divisional picture show at the Ecole Professionnelle and laugh at the doings of Charlie Chaplin and so to bed.

Days like this make old timers seriously query whether after all war is always war.

Yet tragedy always lurked beneath the gay surface. A famous egg and chip shop was crowded with good-natured "patrons." The warm afternoon sun came flooding through the small leaded panes of the old-fashioned windows. There was cheerful clatter of plates and rattling of forks. From behind the scenes came the cheerful sound of frizzling and frying. A dark-haired, browneyed girl, "très chic," bright and merry and amazingly efficient, moved about alertly, the centre of a barrage of questions and orders and invitations:

"Deux oeufs, monsieur? Et trois pour vous? Votre omelette est servi, Monsieur Jeem! Billee you no bon, ask me promenade avec vous, Charlie say you marrit in Nouvelle-Zélande! Iei vs oeufs monsieur! Deux francs four tout! Yez, boy! me promenade wiz you after de war! Encore du café! Jeem, vous êtes gourmand—you eat too page 157mooch! You get fat! Allemand shoot you facilement."

Outside a whining scream, a bang, and a limber mule goes down kicking. The girl is at the door:

"Oh, la la! La pauvre bête! C'est triste!"

Again the whining scream, nearer this time. Splinters fly from the door, and the girl is down, unconscious and moaning, with three shrapnel pellets through her dainty body. There was gloom throughout a brigade as the news got round.

Ten o'clock at night, and all quiet save for the rumbling of the limbers bumping over the pave. All lights out and the streets silent and deserted save for a few gas guards outside the billets! Faint flashes in the distance blinked across the dark sky, and the far off reports of great guns and then the shells came rushing down upon the town. For a few moments all was uproar. A house caught fire and a column of flame shot up into the air. There were cries for stretcher-bearers. A few men from the field ambulance rush out. They find some wounded and hurry them in and then out again into the storm. Again come the cries and a frantic girl calls out from a tall house. They rush in to find a woman bleeding from terrible wounds.

As they bend over her there is a demoniacal shriek and a dreadful missile crashes on to the road outside. There is a vivid leap of flame, a tremendous explosion. Glass falls tinkling from fifty windows. The plaster ceiling falls in a rain of dust The walls rock and shake. For a moment all nerves are on edge and then one man with a page 158look and a word quietens the incipient panic. Again comes the shaking of the earth and the crash of sound, but the bearers are moving now. Back they come again and pick up a little boy who becomes conscious as they carry him in and rather thinks that he has been killed and that the angels are bearing him up to heaven's gates. On the next journey they enter over a heap of debris. The poor little home is smashed beyond repair and amid the litter lies the body of a woman who would in a few days have been a mother. Again the burst of hellish noise and a cry! The men race to the spot. A little girl of six, golden-haired, is lying on the cobble stones, her blue eyes still opened in a kind of puzzled wonder. There is no wound as far as can be seen. Very gently she is lifted and carried into the dressing station and placed on the table. But just as the doctors move to her the flickering eyelids close for the last time.

All through June a mighty prelude was played on the whole line from Nieuport to Verdun. The artillery fire grew more intense and the raids more frequent. There was tense feeling in the air—the expectation of battle. In the darkness of the night men looked southward to see if the sky were yet red with leaping flame; in the quietness of the long night watches they listened for the rumble of massed guns beating on the German lines. On 1 July the British went forward to commence the battle of the Somme. For six weeks the battle waxed and waned and then, towards the middle of August, the 51st Division marched into Armentières with German page 159pickelhaubes on their heads and the souvenirs of famous Prussian regiments in their haversacks. There was a wild time in the old town, New Zealanders and Jocks meeting and greeting and parting the same night—and Fritz, to make it wilder, opened out with his 5.9s.

The battalions fell in and marched away. "Goodbye, madame! Good-bye, mademoiselle! Goodbye, piccanins! Nous allons kill beaucoup Bosches; come back promenade with you!"

"Au revoir, messieurs! Dieu vous aide!"