A Day at the Somme—"15 September 1916" by Wilfrid Ewart

Excerpted from Way of Revelation: A Novel of Five Years; Lt Ewart was a member of the 2nd Scots Guards during the attack described here.

1.  THEY perished.

When the roll came to be called at a little village in the valley of the Ancre, barely one-fourth of those who had marched into action ninety-six hours before answered to it.

Colonel Steele fell gloriously. From a shell-hole in the midst of the battlefield, though mortally wounded, he directed the sway- ing fortunes of his battalion while consciousness remained, thus at the last earning the admiration of the officers and men who had hated him. His second-in-command, Major Brough, had fallen an unexpected victim to illness and, without taking part in the action, went home. The young adjutant, Langley, coming up with all speed from reserve was fatally struck down. Alston, grievously wounded, lay a prisoner in German hands. The two other company-commanders, Vivian and Darell, supported by the remnants of their men, were last seen fighting at the bayonet's point, a grey sea of Germans in full counter-attack closing round. The subalterns and ensigns fared no better on that great and terrible day. But Cornwallis went happily, oh! how happily home to England with a bullet in arm and thigh.

Of the rank and file, the non-commissioned officers and private soldiers, the majority of those not accounted for were found to have attained their ultimate rest.

Out of the fight which for twenty-four hours swayed up and down the green-brown, shell-scarred slopes of Ginchy, Morval and Lesboeufs until at length the victory was won out of the fightcame Captain Sinclair, smiling, dirty, tired, limping . . . and alone.

The 2nd Scots Guards (SG) Were on the Far Left

2.  Night brooded over the battlefield. It was the hour for the burial of the dead. 

To Lieutenant Sir Adrian Knoyle who, as it happened, had been detailed to remain among the officers in reserve befell this duty. A cold rain drove in gusts. A wet wind blew. Gloom and darkness lay over all. Gloom and darkness reigned in his heart. Bitterness strangled it.

They lay around scores of them, a hundred, three four hun- dred. Impenetrable blackness hid them. But when the star-lights went up they could be seen as men sleeping vague forms outlined upon the ridge of a trench, upon the lip of a shell-hole.

All shapes, all attitudes, all positions. Some on the back, hands to thigh, heels together, gazing upwards; some on the side and some curled up as though enjoying pleasant dreams; some flat on face, arms and legs outspread ; some with head resting on arm or pack and one knee raised. Some whole ; some twisted, bent up, in halves or shreds; some with nails dug deep into mud and weird contorted faces; some rigid, some stiffening by degrees, and some quite limp and loose. Some in couples clasped like children who crouch together from sudden fear ; some lying across one another carelessly. Some drunk with rum in death. . . . Germans, too, Germans very much like the rest. And once, once only, a grey and a khaki figure locked on each other's bayonets.

He touched them at times stumbled over them. Picking his way among the shell-holes, he felt the soft, unnatural flesh, the hair, rough, draggled and wet, without life, coagulated; the body stiff, unyielding, unresponsive and empty.

Mingled with the soil, torn from their bodies their letters, their pipes, their photographs of women, their tobacco-pouches, their lockets of women's hair, all the poor paltry things they valued once tied up with the pay-book, hung around the neck, tied to the string of the metal disc.

The rain drove in gusts. How the wind keened! There was an occasional rifle-shot. Figures moved in the gloom.

"Who are you?"

"Kamerad ! Burial-party !"

They, too, creeped like jackals among the slain!

Earth upon earth. Dust back to dust. Into the shell-hole, fling them. Cover them up!

Darkness and gloom. Gloom and darkness in the heart. Bitter- ness strangling it.

Clink of the spades.

"Come on! Heave in this one! Heavy, ain't he? . . . Cover him up!"

Reinforcements Moving Up 15 September 1916

3. Over that dread scene, over that waste of shell-holes, of greenish water, of scarred and upchurned earth, broken trenches and mangled wire, all night long, it seemed to Adrian Knoyle, a vague familiar figure stood. Through the paling gloom and the swish of the rain, through the shrill of the wind and its driving gusts, through the livelong night, he saw it standing there a sombre stooping form with hands folded and head bent as one pondering.

And when the star-lights went up, they revealed the white and mirrored room. And the woman of the dazzling tiara and the reddish-golden hair smiled. And the violins shivered out Humoreske while dancers spun and whirled.