Offensive actions in World War One

The following are first hand quotes and diary extracts of offensive actions in the First World War. They are taken from Paul Allens book 'Neath a foreign sky.'

Extract:The last campaign of the Great War

Faced with an almost solid wall of fire, the Leeds Rifles plan of attack had quickly changed from that of a massed Battalion advance into a series of 'rushes', that had gradually seen the battalion make progress up the hill, albeit with heavy casualties. Wyrall reports of the action;

... 'Soon there was hesitation amongst the enemy troops and the West Yorkshires, rushing with the bayonet, completed the discomfiture of the Germans for, though they gallantly tried to stay the advance of the British troops, they could not do so; eventually they turned and fled, and the whole line of attacking troops pressed on and drove the enemy from the crest of the hill. Thus the Montaine de Bligny fell to the victorious 8TH West Yorkshires of the 62ND Division. It was a grand fight. Nothing could have been finer than the way in which all ranks went forward and, after the first check, resolutely set to work to sweep the enemy from the side of the hill'[1]

Extract:The Wonderwork

The official version of the attack on the Wonderwork says very little of the struggle for what had supposedly been a difficult nut to crack which that day that had caused the 9TH West Yorkshire to lose over three hundred men that day. Gallipoli veteran Sergeant Edward Miles of the 8TH Duke of Wellington's, had given a far more graphic account of the action in a letter written to his wife after the battle;

'September 17TH phew! Those three days seemed like an hour's nightmare. We went up on the night of the 14TH with three days rations in our haversacks, and on our way up we passed field guns wheel to wheel from Crucifix Corner to Railway Alley [a trench leading up to the front line]. There must have been a thousand guns there, and I think it was that that gave us victory. We lost about two hundred [out of 500] killed and wounded and unfortunately my chum was amongst the wounded, being hit in the elbow soon after we went over. There was a tremendous amount of old iron thrown about but I was lucky enough to be missed. The chief praise is due, I think, to one of our companies and a company from the West Yorks who as we went forward, came behind and dug a communication trench from 'Jerry's' front line to our own. How those poor devils worked while we held on was marvellous. The Brigadier General, as we came out of the line, shook hands with each of us [those that were left]. Of course it was a feather in his cap, but we didn't get anything. Still, who cares, we get a shilling a day' [8]

[8] Sergeant Miles's letter is now in the possession of the Imperial War Museum and is extracted from the I.P.M.'s Book of the Somme; Malcolm Brown; Pan Books; 1997.

Extract:Open warfare

The day after the death of Private Lightfoot the 4TH Battalion had still been at Rouvroy, the unit's war diarist [and newly appointed Commanding Officer], Major George Gooderham Blackstock, had reported for the 10TH of August;

'Battalion resting and clearing battlefield and burying the dead under direction of Captain Hamilton, Chaplain, who performed excellent work on both August 8TH and 9TH. The commanding officer evacuated, Major G.G. Blackstock assumes command of the battalion... Heavy shelling, many aerial combats and numerous planes destroyed... The Hun is being driven back and is destroying his dumps by fire... This open warfare in this ideal country presents a magnificent, ever changing panorama. 1 casualty today. Weather ideal' [1]

Extract: Hung up on the wire

Accompanied by a creeping barrage First Royal Marines had begun their assault at 4-25am on Saturday the 28TH of April. Beginning from just north of the village the four companies had soon made their way to the enemy's barbed wire, which they had found to be uncut by the artillery bombardment. Here many of the men had settled into shell holes in front of the German line where they had been eventually cut to ribbons by the enemy's fire from a nearby strongpoint. To help alleviate the desperate straits that the Marines had been in at 6-30am the men of 1ST Honourable Artillery Company had been ordered forward to try to suppress this strongpoint with mortar fire. An officer from the unit had later written;

'At any rate we went along to this blockade where the railway was and the attack started and nothing happened. We could see these fellows, fifty yards on our left the nearest of them were. They were getting hung up on the wire and it was absolutely hopeless. They were a battalion of Marines, but they, poor chaps, could not get through the wire'

Extract: Hand to hand fighting The artillery of Fourth Army had begun to bombard Le Sars in the after noon of Friday 6th of October and had saturated the village continuously until the afternoon of the following day. Zero Hour for the attack had been scheduled for 1-45pm on the seventh, at which time precisely two Brigades of infantry of the 23RD Division [the 68TH and 69TH] had begun their advance into No Mans Land, their objective being the capture of the southern end of the village. Amongst the attacking units had been the 9TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, their regimental history says of their subsequent attack;

'The 9th Green Howards had an officer and several men killed by shells just as they reached the crossroads near La Sars. Pushing rapidly on, however, the enemy machine guns were bombed and the Germans were bayoneted as they emerged from their dugouts. There was here fierce hand to hand fighting, quarter was neither asked nor given, and the garrison of a strongpoint at the crossroads, refusing to surrender, were all killed. The machine guns too which from the village had enfiladed and held up the 68TH Brigade on the edge of a sunken road were bombed and captured by the 9TH Green Howards, and the greater part of the village of Le Sars was now in British hands, when the battalion pressed on to the east and cleared the trenches to the north eats of the Bapaume road. By that evening the whole of Le Sars had been captured, all gains were consolidated, strong posts were established and touch gained with the troops on the right and left [2]

Extract: No prisoners taken

At 2am the darkness of Sunday the 20TH of October had been torn apart with the flash and thunder of the opening British artillery bombardment.

'When the barrage fell, it was evident from the volume of fire which met the attacking troops, that stiff opposition was to be expected. Two hundred yards east of the river [Selle] there was a road running from south east to north west, and here the enemy had several machine guns well dug in. But nothing could stay the advance, the machine guns were rushed and the enemy's resistance beaten down. Just beyond the road a belt of barbed wire checked the advance, until Sergeant A.L. Biggs, under heavy fire, rushed forward, uprooted the stakes and the attackers swept on to the line of the railway where much stiff fighting had took place. The records here state that 'no prisoners were taken'!

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