World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The Warwickshire lads told queer tales of the battle, and they bear out
what I have heard from their officers elsewhere. There were numbers of
German soldiers who lay about in shell-holes after our barrage had
passed over their lines and their blockhouses, and sniped our officers
and men as they swarmed forward, though they knew that by not
surrendering they were bound to die. It was the last supreme courage of
the human beast at bay. There was one of these who lay under the
wreckage of an aeroplane, and from that cover he shot some of our men at
close range; but because there were many bullets flying about, and
shells bursting, and all the excitement of a battle-ground, he was not
discovered for some time. It was a sergeant of the Warwicks who saw him
first, and just in time. The German had his rifle raised at ten yards
range, but the sergeant whipped round and shot him before he could turn.
Some of these men were discovered after the general fighting was over,
and a nasty shock was given to a young A.D.C. who went with his
Divisional General to see the captured ground next day. The General, who
is a quick walker, went ahead over the shell-craters, and the A.D.C.
suddenly saw two Germans wearing their steel helmets rise before the
General from one of the deep holes.
"Now there's trouble," thought the young officer, feeling for his
revolver. But when he came up he heard the General telling two wounded
Germans that the English had won a very great victory, and that if they
were good boys he would send up stretcher-bearers to carry them down.
All over the battlefield there were queer little human episodes thrust
for a minute or two into the great grim drama of this advance by British
and Overseas troops up the heights of the Passchendaele Ridge, where
thousands of German soldiers who had been waiting to attack them were
caught by the rolling storm of shells which smashed the earth about them
and mingled them with its clods. One tragic glimpse like this was on the
Australian way up to the Broodseinde cross-roads, the key of the whole
position, after a body of those Australians had marched many miles
through the night over appalling ground under scattered shell-fire, and
were only in their place of attack half an hour before it started. The
story of that night march is in itself a little epic, but that is not
the episode I mean. The Australians drew close to one of the
blockhouses, and the sound of their cheering must have been heard by the
Germans inside those concrete walls. The barrage had just passed and its
line of fire, volcanic in its look and fury, went travelling ahead.
Suddenly, out of the blockhouses, a dozen men or so came running, and
the Australians shortened their bayonets. From the centre of the group a
voice shouted out in English, "I am a Middlesex man, don't shoot. I am
an Englishman." The man who called had his hands up, in sign of
surrender, like the German soldiers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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