SOMME "BLOOD BATH."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11948, 6 March 1917, Page 7

SOMME "BLOOD BATH."

GERMANS' SHAKEN MORALSREVELATIONS OF SOLDIERS' LETTERS. (By PHILIP GIBBS, in the "Daily Chronicle.") Before tho ending of the first phase of tho battles of tho Somir.e —the second phase begins, I imagine, with our grsat advance on September 15 from the Pozieres-Tx^ngueval-Guille-mont line—the German troops have invented a terrible name to describe this great ordeal; it was " The Blood' Bath of the Somme."

The name and the news could not be hidden from the people °t Germany who had already been chilled with horror by the losses at Verdun, nor from the soldiers of reserve regiments quartered in French and Belgian towns like Valenciennes, St Quentin, Cambrai, Lille, Bruges, and as far back as Brussels, waiting to go to tho front, nor from tho civil population of those towns held for two years by their enemy—these blonde young men who lived' in their houses, marched down their streets, and made love .to their women. The news was brought down, from the Somme front by Bod Cross trams, arriving in endless succession, and packed with maimed and mangled men. German military policemen formed cordons round the railway stations, and pushed back civilians who came to starewith sombre eyes at these blanketed bundles of living flesh, but when the ambulances rumbled through the streets towards the hospitals —long processions of them, with the soles of men's boots turned up over the stretchers on which they lay quiet and stiff-—the tale was told though no word was spokenBAD NEWS BADLY TAKEN.

The tale of defeat, of great losses, of grave and increasing anxiety, was told clearly enough—as 1 havo read ;u raptured letters—by the facea of Garman officers who went about in these towns behind the lines with gloomy looks, and whose tempers, never of the sweetest, became irritable and unhear able so that the soldiers hated them for all this cursing and bullying. A certain battalion commander has a nervous breakdown because he ha» to meet his colonel in the morning^ "Ho is dying with fear and anxiety,'' writes one of his comrades. Other men, not battlaion commanders, art» even more afraid of their superior officers, upon whom this bad news from the Somme has an evil effect.

The bad news was spread by divisions taken out of the line, and sent back to> rest. The men reported that their battalions had been cut to pieces. Some* of their regiments had lost three-quar-ters of their strength. They described the frightful effect of tho British artillery—the smashed trenches, the cb.eH craters., the great horror. It is not good for the moral of mpn who are just going up there to take their turn.

The man who was afraid of his colonel " sits all day long writing home with tho picture of his wife smd children before his eyes." He is afraid of other things.

BAVARIANS BEAR THE BRUNT. Prussians, accused them (unjustly) of shirking the Somme battlefields, and leaving the Bavarians to go to tho blood bath.

" All the Bavarian troops axe being sent to the Somme (this much is certain, you can see no Prussians there), and this in spite of the losses the Ist Bavarian Corps Buffered recently at Verlun! And how we did suffer! . . .

It appears that we are in for another turn, at- least the sth Bavarian Division. Everybody has been, talking about it for a long time. To the devil with it! Every Bavarian Regiment is being sent into it. and it's a swindle." 1 It was in no cheerful mood that men went away to the Somme battlefields. Those battalions of grey-clad men entrained without any of tho old enthusiasm with which they had gone to earlier battles. Their gloom was noticed by the officers. "' Sing, you sheep's heads, sing!" they shouted.

They were compelled to sing, by order.

"In the afternoon." wrote a man of the 18th Reserve Division, "we ha<l to go out again; wo wore to learn to sing. The greater part did not join: in, and the song wont feebly. Then wo had to march round in a, circle and sing, and that went no better. "After that we had an hour off, and' on the way back to billets we were to, sing ' Deutschland über Alios,' but this broke down completely. One never hears songs of the Fatherland any* more."

They were silent, grave-eyed men vrho marched through the streets of French and Belgian towns to be entrained for the Soinme front, for they had forebodings of the fate before them. Yet none of their forebodings were equal in intensity of fear to the frightful reality into which they were flung." The journey to the Somme front on tho German side was a way of terror, ugliness and death. Not all the imagination of morbid minds searching obscenely for foulness and blood in tho great deep pits of human agony could surpass these scenes along the way to tho German lines round Grarcele'tte, and Flers, Gueudecourt, Morval and Lesbcoufs-

Many times, long before a German battalion had arrived nefar the trenches, it was but a collection of nerve-broken men bemoaning losses already suffered far behind the lines and filled with hideous apprehension. For British long-range guns were hurling high explosives into distant villages, barraging cross-roads, reaching out to railheads and ammunition dumps, while British airmen were on bombing flights over railway stations and restbillets and high roads down which tho German troops came marching at Oamhrai, Bapaume, in the valley between Irles and Warlencourt, at Lig-ny-Thilloy, Busigny, and many other places on the lines of route. BOMBED BY OUR AIRMEN. German soldiers arriving at Oambrai by train found themselves tinder tho fire of a single aeroplane which flew very low and dropped' bombs. They exploded with heavy crashes, and one bomb hit the first carriage behind the engine, killing- and wounding several men

A second bomb hit tho station buddings, and there was a great clatter of broken glass, the rending of wood, and the fall of bricks. All lights went out, and the German soldiers groped about in the darkness amidst the splinters of glass and the fallen bricks, searching for tho wounded by the sound of their groans. It- was but one scene along tho «ray to that blood bath through which they had to wade to the trenches of tho Somnie. Flights of British aeroplanes circled over the villages on. the way. At Grevilliers, in August, eleven 112-16 bombs> fell in the market square so that the centre of the village collapsed in a state of ruin, burying, soldiers billeted there. Every day the British airmen paid these \tsiits, meeting the Germans far up the roads on their way to tfie Somnie, and swooping over them like a flying death. Even qu the march in oj>en country the German Boldiers tramping silently along—not tinging, in spite of orders —were bombed and shot ait by those British aviators, who flew down very

lew, pouring out streams of machinegun bullets. The Germans lost their nerve at st'Ch times, and scattered into the ditches, falling over each other, struck and cursed by their " unteroffiziereny" and leaving their dead and wounded in. the roadway. OHAOS ON THE "ROADS.

As the roads went nearer to the battlefields they were choked with the traffic of war, with artillery and transport waggons and horse ambulances, and always thousands of «rey men n-archmg up to the lines, or, back from tnem, exhausted and broken after many days in the fires of fiell up there.

Officers sat on their horses by the roadside, directing all tho traffic with the usual swearing and cursing, and rode alongside tho transport waggons and the troops, urging them forward at a quicker pace, because of stern orders received irom headquarters demanding quicker xuocement. Tho reserves, it seemed, were desperately wanted up in the lines. The English were attacking again. God alono knew what was happening. Regiments had lost their way. Wounded wcro pouring back. Officers had gone mad. . . . Into the midst of all this turmoil shells fell—shells from long-range guns. Transport waggons were blown to bits. Tho bodi&s and fragments of artillery horses lay all over the roads. Men lay dead or bleeding under the debris of gunwheels and broken bricks. Above all the noTse of this confusion and death in the night tho hard, stern voices of German officers rang out, and German discipline prevailed, and men marched on to greater perils. IN THE SHELL ZONE. They were in tho shell Hone now, and sometimes a regiment on the march was tracked all along the way by British gunfire directed from aeroplanes and captive balloons. It was the fate of a captured officer I met who had detrained at Bapaume for the trenches at Coutalniaison. At Bapaume his battalion was hit by fragments' of 12in/h shells.

Nearer to the lino they camo tinder the fire of 8-inch and 6-inch shells. Four-point-sevens found them somewhere by Bazentin. At Contalmaison they marched into a barrage, and here the officer was taken prisoner. Of his battalion there were few men left.

It was so with tho 3rd Jaeger Battalion, ordered up hurriedly to make a .counter-attack near Flers. They suffered so heavily on the v/ay to the trenches that no attack could lye made. The stretcher-bearers had all the work to do.

Tho way up to tho trenches became more tragic as every kilometre was passed, until the stench of corruption" was wafted on the wind, so that men were sickened aud tried not to breathe, and marched hurriedly to get on the lee-sido of its foulness. They walked now through places which had once been villages, but were sinister ruins where death lay in wait for German soldiers.

"It seems queer.to me," wrote one of them, " that whole villages close to the front looked as flattened as a child's toy run over by a steam roller. Not one stono remains on another. The streets aro one lino of shell-holes. Add to that the thunder of the guns, and you will see with what feelings we come into the line—into trenches •whore for months shells of all calibre havo rained. . , . Flers is a scrap-

heap." Again and again men lost their way up to the lines. Tho reliefs could only be made at night, lest they should bo discovered by British airmen and British gunners, and even if these Gorman soldiers had. trench-maps the guidance was but little good when many trenches had been smashed in, and only shell-craters could be found.

" In the front lino of Flers," wrote one of theso Germans, " tho men were only occupying shell-holes. Behind there was tho intense smell of putrefaction which filled trench—almost unl>earably. The copses lie either quite insufficiently covered with earth on the edge of tho trench or quite close under the bottom of the trench, bo that .the earth lets tho stench through. Jn some places bodies lie quite uncovered ia a trench recesss, and no one seems to trouble about them. One sees horrible [xictures —here an arm, here a foot, lere a head, sticking out of the earth. And those are all German soldiersheroes ! "IMPOSSIBLE TO HOLD OUT." " Not far from us at the entrance to a dug-out nine men were buried, of whom three were dead. All along tho trench men kept on getting buried. Wliat had been, a perfect trench a few hours before was m parts completely blown in. . . . The men are getting weaker. It is impossible to hold out any longer. Losses can no longer b© reckoned accurately. Without a "doubt many of our people are killed.'' That is only one out of thousands of such gruesome pictures, rue as the death they described, which have gone home to German homes during t.io Battles of tho Sommo. These German soldiers are grand letter-writers, and men sitting in wet ditches, in ''foxholes/' as they call their dug-outs, "up to my waist in mud," as one of them described, scribbling pitiful things which they hoped might reach their people at home, as a voice from the dead. For they had had little hope of escape- from tho blood kith. " When you get this I shall be a corpse," wrote one of them, and one linos tho same foreboding in many of these documents. WRITTEN BY ONE NOW DEAD.

Even the lucky ones- who could get some cover from tho incessant bombardment by English guns began to lose their nerves after a day or two. They were always in fear of British infantry sweeping upon them suddenly behind tho "Trommelfeueiy' rushing tho»" dug-outs with bombs and bayonets. Sentries became "jumpy'-' and signalJed attacks when there were no attacks The gas alarm was sounded constantly by tho cl ang of a bell in the trench, and men put on their heavy gas-masks and sat in them until they were nearly stifled.

Here is a little picture of life in a German dug-out near tho British lines, written by a man now dead. "The telephone bell rings. 'Are you there? Yes, here's Nau's battalion.' ' Good. That is all.'. Then that ceases, and now the wire is in again perhaps for tho twenty-fifth or thirtieth time. Thus the night is interrupted, and now they come, alarm messages, one after the other, each more gratifying than the other, of enormous losses through the bomh? and shells of tho enemy, of huge masses of troops advancing upon us, of all possible possibilities, such as a train broken crown, and tortured bv the terrors of the day can invent. Out nerves rjmver Wo clench our teeth. None ot us can forget the horrors of the night." Hoavy rain fell, and the dug-outs became wet and filthy. "Our sleeping-places were full of water. We had to try and bail cut tho trenches with cooking dishes. ' lay down in the water with G . Wo were to have worked on dug-outs, bur; not a soul could do any more- Only a few sections got coffee. Mine got nothing at all. I was frozen in every limb, poured the water out of my boots, and lay down again." GENERAL STAFF ALARMED. The German generals and their staffs could not be quite indifferent 10 all this welter ot human suffering among their troops, in spite of the cold scientific spirit with which they regard the problem of war. The agony of the individual soldier would not trouble them. There is no war with )ntagony. But the psychology of masses of men had to bp considered, because it affects the efficiency of tho machine. The German General Staff on the Western front wore becoming seriously ©lamed-by the diluting moral strain

of their infantry under the increasing strain of the British attacks, and adopted stern measures to cure it. But, thev could not hope to euro the heaps of •German dead who were _ lying on the battlefields, nor the maimed men who were being carried to tho dressing stations, nor to bring back" the prisoners taken in droves by the French and British troops.

Before the attack on the Flers line, the capture of Thiepval, and the German debacle at Beaumont-Hanicl, the enemy's command' was already filbd with' a grave anxiety at the enormous losses of its fighting strength, and was compelled to adopt new expedients for increasing the number of its divisions It was forced to withdraw troops badly needed on other fronts, and the successive shocks- of the British offensive reached as far 'as Germany itself, ?q that tho whole of the recruiting systtvui had to he revised to fill ur> the gaps, torn out of-the German ranks.