Attacked by Flamethrowers

German Flamethrower Team

I don't know of a better, or more terrifying, description of what it was like to be attacked by flamethrowers than that contained in Generals Die in Bed. The novel, written by Canadian veteran Charles Yale Harrison, was published in 1930. Critics at the time considered it one of the finest of the war's semi-autobiographical antiwar treatments.

They are coming! We look behind us. They have laid down a barrage to cut us off. We are doomed. Anderson jumps from his gun and lies groveling in the bottom of the shallow trench. I tell Renaud to keep firing his rifle from the corner of the bay. Broadbent takes the gun and I stand by feeding him with what ammunition we have left. They are close to us now.

They are hurling hand grenades. Broadbent sweeps his gun but still they come. The field in front is smothered with grey smoke. I hear a long-drawn-out hiss. Ssss-s-sss!

I look to my right from where the sound comes. A stream of flame is shooting into the trench. Flamenwerfer! Flame-throwers! In the front rank of the attackers a man is carrying a square tank strapped to his back. A jet of flame comes from a nozzle which he holds in his hand. There is an odor of chemicals. Broadbent shrieks in my ear: "Get that bastard with the flame." I take my rifle and start to fire. Broadbent sweeps the gun in the direction of the flame-thrower also. Anderson looks nervously to the rear. "Grenades," I shout to him. He starts to hurl bombs into the ranks of the storm troops.

Odor of burning flesh. It does not smell unpleasant. I hear a shriek to my right but I cannot turn to see who it is. We continue to fire towards the flame-thrower. Broadbent puts a fresh pan on the gun. He pulls the trigger. The gun spurts flame. He sprays the flame-thrower. A bullet strikes the tank on his back. There is a hissing explosion. The man disappears in a cloud of flame and smoke.

To my right the shrieking becomes louder. It is Renaud. He has been hit by the flame-thrower. Flame sputters on his clothing. Out of one of his eyes tongues of blue flame flicker. His shrieks are unbearable. He throws himself into the bottom of the trench and rolls around trying to extinguish the fire. As I look at him his clothing bursts into a sheet of flame. Out of the hissing ball of fire we still hear him screaming. Broadbent looks at me and then draws his revolver and fires three shots into the flaming head of the recruit. The advance is held up for a while. The attackers are lying down taking advantage of whatever cover they can find. They are firing at us with machine guns.

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Memorable Dialog from WWI Movies — A Roads Classic

From All Quiet on the Western Front

Tjaden: Well, how do they start a war?

Soldier #1: Well, one country offends another.

Tjaden: How could one country offend another? You mean there's a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?

Soldier #1: Well, stupid. One people offends another.

Tjaden: Oh, that's it. I shouldn't be here at all. I don't feel offended.

From La Grande Illusion

Capt. von Rauffenstein: A 'Maréchal' and 'Rosenthal,' officers?

Capt. de Boeldieu: They're fine soldiers..

Capt. von Rauffenstein: Charming legacy of the French Revolution

Capt. de Boeldieu: Neither you nor I can stop the march of time.

Capt. von Rauffenstein: Boldieu, I don't know who will win this war, but whatever the outcome, it will mean the end of the Rauffensteins and the Boeldieus.

Capt. de Boeldieu: We're no longer needed.

Capt. von Rauffenstein: Isn't that a pity?

Capt. de Boeldieu: Perhaps.

From Sergeant York

Alvin York: Well I'm as much agin' killin' as ever, sir. But it was this way, Colonel. When I started out, I felt just like you said, but when I hear them machine guns a-goin', and all them fellas are droppin' around me... I figured them guns was killin' hundreds, maybe thousands, and there weren't nothin' anybody could do, but to stop them guns. And that's what I done.

From Doctor Zhivago

Yevgraf Zhivago: In bourgeois terms it was a war between the Allies and Germany. In Bolshevik terms it was a war between the Allied and German upper classes—and which of them won was a matter of indifference. . . They [the warring powers] were shouting for victory all over Europe—praying for victory to the same God. My task—the Party's task—was to organize defeat. From defeat would spring the Revolution...and the Revolution would be victory for us.

From The Blue Max

Von Klugermann: Well, aren't you coming [to the enemy pilot's funeral]? It's an order.

Stachel: Why?

Von Klugermann: Because our commanding officer has made it one. He believes in chivalry, Stachel..

Stachel: Chivalry? To kill a man, then make a ritual out of saluting him—that's hypocrisy. They kill me, I don't want anyone to salute

Von Klugermann: They probably won't..

From Lawrence of Arabia

Prince Feisal: The English have a great hunger for desolate places. I fear they hunger for Arabia..

Lawrence: Then you must deny it to them.

Prince Feisal: You are an Englishman. Are you not loyal to England?.

Lawrence: To England and to other things. 

Prince Feisal: To England and Arabia both? And is that possible? I think you are another of these desert-loving English.

Today I found in Mametz Wood a certain cure for lust of blood—The Brutality of War Well Documented

 

Mametz Wood Today, Welsh Dragon Memorial in Foreground
Click on Image to Enlarge

Background

The 38th (Welsh) Division was recruited from battalions of the Welsh Regiment, South Wales Borderers, and Royal Welsh Fusiliers in 1914. Lloyd George had a heavy hand in the raising of the formation, one of his sons being an officer in the division. It crossed to France in late 1915 and came down to fight on the Somme in July 1916. The first attack on Mametz Wood was on 7 July, when the division lost heavily in "Death Valley" during the advance on the "Hammer Head." The next attack went in on the 10th, and by 14 July the wood was cleared—but at the cost of over 4,000 casualties in the 38th (Welsh) Division: 565 were killed, 585 reported as missing, and 2,893 wounded.

A famous memorial was placed in Mametz Church in the 1920s, but this Red Dragon monument was relocated to a site overlooking the woods in the late 1980s per the wishes of a number of Mametz Wood veterans. It one of the "places of pilgrimage" on the old Somme battlefield.

The action at Mametz was a grim one, but not singularly so by the standards of the Great War.  It is, however, especially well remembered because the Welsh division contained a remarkable number of soldiers with literary (and artistic) gifts.  Its ranks contained numerous diarists, letter writers, memoirists, and poets, who were deeply affected by their experience. Furthermore, other formations fighting in same zone at the same time contained some of the best-known writers of the war.  

A collection of  the reflections these soldiers, who were either members of the 38th Division or who served in proximity to Mametz Wood  make up the substance of this article. I've tried to find some similar selections from the German defenders but have drawn a blank, even from Jack Shelton's valuable The German Army on the Somme.   

Most interesting to me about this selection is their uniformity. Collectively, they make one of the most powerful statement about the brutality of war, I've come across. I think the quote in the title from Robert Graves's 1917 poem "Dead Boche" nicely introduces these memories of the fighting at Mametz Wood.

Soldier-Poet-Artist David Jones's Vision of Mametz Wood

The Battle Proper

When questioned about how he felt in the middle of the terrible bombardment the young lieutenant, who is only 21 years of age, said: It has a most peculiar effect on you. You can’t describe adequately your feelings at hearing the continued deafening roar of the guns and the continuous rain of shells. . . Two days before the British took Mametz Wood the Boches peppered Mametz with ‘weeping’ shells [tear gas], and we had to put our goggles on. These shells give off a rather sweet smell, but they make tears come to the eyes, and eventually, if you don’t use your goggles, you get so bad that you cannot see.

News Article, Lieutenant W.R.M Gwynne, wounded at Mametz on 11 July

Friday evening, July 7, 1916 It continued to rain and in the dull atmosphere, Mametz Wood, which had already cost dearly, took on a more sinister appearance. It is known as the largest and thickest wood in the Somme area, and it has withstood repeated attacks. During the day its huge dark mass appeared impenetrable, while by night it lit up with shrapnel and heavy artillery and it seemed impossible that anyone could live there. 

Early Monday morning, July 10, 1916 Shortly after midnight the troops for the front line of the attack began to pass down to White Trench. Then the barrage dropped on Mametz Wood. The 16th Royal Welsh Fusiliers were in position in the sunken road about 3 am and whiled away the trying hour before the attack with banter and snatches of song. Someone had struck up Aberystwyth as the moment of going over drew near. When the singing finished Colonel Carden called for silence. He said: “Boys, make your peace with God. We are going to take that position and some of us won’t come back, but we are going to take it”.

News Article, Unidentified soldier of the 38th Division

From Epic Poem, In Parenthesis, Pvt. David Jones, wounded at Mametz

Hand-to-hand fighting and bombing took place throughout the wood. The wood was extraordinarily thick. The Germans had tied the branches of the trees together and it was extremely difficult to force a path through. Machine-guns were also hidden in the woodland on either side of the front of the wood. 

News Article, Unidentified officer of the Welsh Regiment

Equipment, ammunition, rolls of barbed wire, tins of food, gas-helmets and rifles were lying about everywhere. There were more corpses than men, but there were worst sights than corpses. Limbs and mutilated trunks, here and there a detached head, forming splashes of red against the green leaves, and, as in advertisement of the horror of our way of life and death, and of our crucifixion of youth, one tree held in its branches a leg, with its torn flesh hanging down over a spray of leaf. . . Even now, after all these years, this round ring of man-made hell bursts into my vision. Blue sky above, a band of green trees, and a ploughed graveyard in which living men moved worm-like in and out of sight; three men digging a trench, thigh-deep in the red soil, digging their own graves. A bursting shell turned their shelter into a tomb; two signallers crouched in a large shell hole, waiting for an order to move, but showing in their patient and tired inactivity the look of dead men ready to rise at the trump of a Last Judgement. 

Up to Mametz and Beyond, Captain Llewelyn Wyn Griffiths (Griffiths fought at Mametz and his brother was killed in the same battle.)

2015 Archeological Finds at Mametz Wood

After Action

The next two days we spent in bivouacs outside Mametz Wood.  We were in fighting kit and felt cold at night, so I went into the wood to find German overcoats to use as blankets.  It was full of dead Prussian Guards Reserves, big men, and dead Royal Welch and South Wales Borderers of the New Army battalions, little men.  Not a single tree in the wood remained unbroken.  I collected my overcoats, and came away as quickly as I could, climbing through the wreckage of green branches.  Going and coming, I passed by the bloated and stinking corpse of a German with his back propped against a tree.  He had a green face, spectacles, close-shaven hair; black blood was dripping from the nose and beard.  I came across two other unforgettable corpses: a man of the South Wales Borderers and one of the Lehr Regiment had succeeded in bayoneting each other simultaneously.  A survivor of the fighting told me later that he had seen a young soldier of the Fourteenth Royal Welch bayoneting a German in parade-ground style, automatically exclaiming" "In, out, on guard!"

Memoir, Goodbye to All That by Captain Robert Graves, Royal Welch Fusiliers, (Wounded shortly after this visit to Mametz)

Today, a Shell from the Battle Still Trapped 

The long-stretched agony of the week had scoured something out of every man in the column. [The soldiers' eyes are] dull and slow-moving, coated with a film that turned their opacity into a revelation of all the anguish that lay behind them. .  . Equipment, ammunition, rolls of barbed wire, tins of food, gas-helmets and rifles were lying about every where. There were more corpses than men, but there were worse sights than corpses. Limbs and mutilated trunks, here and there a detached head, forming splashes of red against the green leaves, and, as in advertisement of the horror of our way of life and death, and of our crucifixion of youth, one tree held in its branches a leg, with its torn flesh hanging down over a spray of leaf.

Up to Mametz and Beyond, Captain Llewelyn Wyn Griffiths 

As we went up the lane towards Mametz I felt that I was leaving all my previous war experience behind me. For the first time I was among the débris of an attack. After going a very short distance we made the first of many halts, and I saw, arranged by the roadside, about fifty of the British dead. 

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer,  Capt. Siegfried Sassoon, 38th Division 

1917 Poem, Captain Robert Graves, Royal Welch Fusiliers

Other Sources: Archaeological Excavation Report, Mametz Wood, Somme. 2015; BBC; Cambrian Daily Leader; The First World War Education Project The National Library of Wales; Paul Reed's Somme Battlefield Website