THE GRAND SLAM
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WEEKS OF CONTINUOUS FIGHTING
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OLDHAM LADS FACE HAIL OF BULLETS
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A GLIMPSE OF UNSURPASSED HEROISM

The days in Pas Wood stand for happy memories. Men worked hard and played hard, and the sun shone all the time. The battalion was inside tents inside the wood. The trees were in full leaf and bordering the wood were waving corn fields. True the big guns could be heard, but they were too far away to disturb anybody. If men were not on working parties up the line they were training in the morning and the afternoon was devoted to football and cricket or lounging under the trees listening to the band. At night the estaminets in Pas did a brisk trade in champagne and vin blanc. During this period a battalion of Americans were attached to the 10th for instructional purposes and experienced Tommy Atkins and the newly arrived Americans did much fraternising and exchanging of conviviality. Altogether life here was flowing smoothly and cheerfully until the early days of June when somebody whispered, "We're going in the line in a day or two," and on the 5th of June the advance parties went up to "take over." About five pm on the 7th of June tents were struck and men sat against trees in battle order, waiting for the "fall in." Before six they were swinging past the corn fields towards the sinking sun and the distant line. The familiar motor lorries drew up by the roadside and with a lot of swearing and grunting men piled themselves one on top of another and bumped their way towards La Signy, and darkness saw the old story being enacted. "Hundred yards intervals between platoons and no talking," and when rounding the corner by Colin Camp the shrapnel was humming and men grew tense and attentive. There are some who will remember the dreary toil up Railway Avenue. "Pass the word up we are losing touch in rear." "Blast it all, who's leading, does he think we're a lot of bally marathon runners? Where did that go, Bill?" "He knows the 10th are relieving," and so on up to the main trench and until the New Zealanders had handed over and left, and posts had been manned and sentries put up.

By midnight everything looked as if the battalion had occupied the trenches for months. There's the usual view in front. La Signy Farm, ten bricks hanging together by a miracle, and bordered by leafless trees, is discernable a few hundred yards away and between us and them is long grass which moans through the long sentry hours and almost hides the jagged irregular belts of wire. There's a parth that leads up to the farm and half way up it we have a listening post which must be relieved every hour, and that listening post is a good deal nearer the Germans' than our trenches, so that men who are on it mutter as they climb out of the main trench, "Nothing but a damned sacrifice post, no sense in it, " but they go, and strain eyes and ears and watch and watch as they never thought they could, for somewhere prowling about No Man's Land might be bands of "Jerries" looking for just such a post. It was an ordinary quiet first night, with the ordinary scream of the lighter shells tearing over to the support lines and the more elevated heavies "chuff, chuffing" into the back areas. As sudden as the crack of a pistol all was changed. The front line was a tornado or bursting shells and No Man's Land was a blaze of coloured lights. Men were clinging grimly to the sides of the trench and shrapnel was crashing into the parapet, the trench, and behind it. The Germans were hammering the front line, and it meant they were coming or they were afraid we were. What a baprism for a first night! "Keep a sharp look-out, for heaven's sake; the square-headed devils must be coming. Pop your head over (to the sentry) and see if you can spot anything." A hurried look and a more hurried duck and, crash, half the parapet has gone, and voices groan out of the dirt "Oh God, I'm hit," and comrades are on their knees by the huddled forms tearing at field dressings, and the brown earth is soaking a dull red. "Look out, here comes another," and an officer, a sergeant and two men dive into a trench shelter three seconds before the shell which crashed into them, and four lifeless bodies lay amongst the shattered timber and iron of the shelter, and the 10th have lost a good officer and a sergeant who had fought with them since the far-away days of Gallipoli. Gradually the shells grew less frequent until they lifted from the front line onto the support and reserve lines, and men could count the cost. "C" company had 17 casualties from that bout of shelling, and not a few of them fatal.

After a few days in the trenches the fine weather broke and rain began to come, with the consequence that the trenches soon became a quagmire, and men were miserable. Week after week dragged by with the division still in the line until August came with no sign of relief. Lasigny Farm had by this time fallen to us, and was occupied by a platoon. That platoon had anything but a cheerful time. The Allied attack was developing every day and our artillery were punishing the Boche day and night. A place called Watling Street in front of La Signy was giving our fellows some trouble and it was decided the 10th should take it. Prior to the infantry attack British artillery poured gas and all calibe of shells on it night and day for over a week and the platoon at La Signy Farm were so close they had to evacuate their position several times a day. Eventually Watling-street was taken with very few casualties, and a day or two afterwards the battalions moved out of the line to the village of Bertrancourt, several miles back. By this time the men were ready for a rest. They had been in the line continually since June 7th. and the division had almost created a record for length of service in the line. Naturally men expected a week or ten days rest at least, but after the third day at Bertrancourt, they were ordered up, the Germans having gone back on the La Signy Sector. This was the beginning of of the final effort demanded of them. No fighting troops were spared. The great Allied advance had begun and was being pushed relentlessly and remorselessly.It was marching and fighting with little rest and only the sky for a roof. It was where the Division had its chance for open fighting, a style of warfare it had been particularly trained for. The 10th Manchesters, from the time they marched up from Bertrancourt, that August evening to the 11th November, they were almost always in the vanguard of the attack. Everything was moving after the Germans, artillery. transport, infantry, tanks, dumps, the British Army was on the move, and men brightened up because they saw it was the grand slam, the end of what had seemed endless. The Germans were given no rest. One battalion or another was "over the top," and pushing them back, there could be no cessation, it was neck or nothing. They sailed through the Boche trenches near Miramont, sweeping all before them and pushed on to the village where the leading man met a string of Germans and he himself was armed only with an s.o.s. signal stuck on the top of a rifle. This, however, served to cow the Germans who who put up their hands and allowed Oldham boys to search their pockets - for souvenirs. From Miramont advance after advance was made until on Oldham Wakes Friday night of last year the battalion lay south of the Bapaume road on the eve of one of the most glorious battles in their history. In the early hours of the afternoon men sprawled about shallow trenches and lit fires, and talked of what friends in Oldham would be doing and where they might have been going for their Wakes holidays had things been different. Then the rations came up, and with them the mail, and two minutes after receiving a letter "Old Bill" rose from the ground in a wrath and hurled lurid epithets at the army, the navy, the British Government, and all things English. Somebody asked him to explain his outburst, and with a look of utter disdain on his face he passed a letter round to the platoon. It stated his wife had got fed up, left home, and joined the W.A.A.Cs. Everybody was in the act of "pulling Bill's leg" when a runner yelled "Platoon sergeants for the company commander," and the sergeant went, and the eyes of all followed him with suspicious looks, for it most certainly meant what they described as "another tipple." This was four in the afternoon and half an hour afterwards the sergeant returned with the news that at seven that evening "A" and "D" Companies of the 1/10th Battalion Manchester Regiment would have the honour of snatching the village of Reincourt from the greedy hands of the Boche. From then, until nearly six, men were bustling about trying to find bombs and spare ammunition and to stuff rations where there was no place for them, and "Old Bill" said it was rotten hard luck anyway having to go over the top and probably get killed and him only three days off his leave, "but blast 'em we can do it anyway," he concluded and began whistling "Madamoiselle from Armentiers, never been kissed for 40 years," until the sergeant's voice yelling "fall in 16 platoon," brought them all from the trench and started them on their hour's tramp to the front line. The battalion had to march over a well shelled area so that there were big intervals between the platoons, and during the time they were going towards the line no less than six gigantic mines exploded on roads and in trenches, sending a column of dust and stones into the air each time. Eventually they toiled across the Bapaume road, where machine gun bullets were dancing on the flints, and entered the front line trench in time to watch the artillery barrage come down on the village in time for the infantry attack. It was a perfect summer's evening and men could see exactly what was demanded of them. There was the village a thousand yards to their front, and "A" Company were to work round the left of it and "D" Company round the right and after its capture they were to form a line 500 yards the other side of it on the rising ground. High explosives and shrapnel were rained on the village and it looked as if nothing could live on it. "Three minutes to go," came from the sergeant, followed it seemed the next minute, "Come on boys, steady there, steady, not too fast in front, keep in line." Any man who has dived into ice cold water will have some idea of the reception those men got. No sooner had they leapt into the open than they were greeted with a deadly hail of machine gun bullets, followed by ground and overhead shrapnel. It was simply and absolutely staggering and men bent their heads to it as they would in a heavy hail-storm, but the line kept steady. They dropped like burst bubbles in a shooting gallery. The miracle was that any man remained standing. The writer took a platoon of 23 over, and in less than five minutes there were himself and some eight or nine men left. Both his Lewis gun teams had lost their No. 1s and 2s on the gun, and one of the guns was being fired with a bullet hole in the barrel. "Old Bill" and half a dozen more were crawling back on hands and knees with machine gun bullets in their bodies somewhere, and those untouched were leaping from shell stack to shell stack always towards the fateful village. Two other battalions had previously tried to take that village, and left many dead and wounded in No Man's Land. Men of the 10th in their advance were stumbling over bodies and wounded men, parched with thirst and pain who had been lying out for 24 hours, plucked at them as they advanced and begged to be helped, and all the men could do was to push them gently back and pass on, for a stern military law says troops must ever go forward to their objective. Men who pass through such ordeals should be very strong afterwards, for they have seen souls and hearts laid nakedly bare, have glimpsed hell, and had one foot over the border of beyond. When darkness fell the remnants of a company lay in shell holes south of the village, and from there were rallied and organised at midnight, and passed on by the village, where a big ammunition dump was burning, on to the objective, successful, but badly shaken. "A" Company on the left, under the brilliant leadership of Captain J.A.C. Taylor, D.S.O., M.C., were splendidly successful, and before morning both companies were linked up and in touch with their respective flanking troops. Lieut. Shaw was in command of "D" Company and was an absolute hero throughout the battle. The men respected him and trusted him, and it was owing to his coolness and bravery and his hard work that the company won through.

The dawn broke on hungry, tired, battle-strained men with a look of something indefinable in their eyes, which just gleamed for a second when a Major-General's message was read to them saying they had upheld all that was now associated with the 10th Manchesters on the battlefield, that they were men of whom any commander might be proud. There were German field guns, and lots of machine guns scattered about and many dead Boches, but there were also too many huddled khaki figures dotting the field who read letters from wives and mothers round the previous night's camp fire, and the saddest of all tasks was to take the rifle and bayonet from the clenched stiff hands of the man whose face was towards the enemy, and who was possibly a father of children in England and to straighten the nineteen-year-old boy who had crawled to the shelter of a shell stack, and died probably with "mother" on his lips, and to place them reverently in newly hollowed shell holes, and scratch their names on a rough cross made from a German shell box.

 

The Battle of Romani
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German Prisoners' Sullen Glare
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Third Christmas of the War
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The order to go to France

Part 7

Approach to the Trenches
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Impressions of Ruined Peronne
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In the Line at Epehy

Part 8

Horrors of Ypres in 1917
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From the sands to La Bassee
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Gas Attack Almost Wipes Out a Company
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A Stand of Almost Unsurpassed Bravery

Part 9

Greatest Battle of All Times
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Holding Up German Offensive
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Bravery V. Unprecedented Violence
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A Slice of Hell

Part 10

The Grand Slam
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Weeks of Continuous Fighting
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Oldham Lads Face Hail of Bullets
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A Glimpse of Unsurpassed Heroism