Brewster 'A Glimpse of War through a Private's Eyes', a retrospective account of experiences in World War I, 1915-1917 / John James Brewster - Page 167
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[Page 167]
reply but when a bomb landed right in amongst us and knocked out ten out of the thirty, the remaining twenty dashed over the top running straight at the intercepting Huns & managed – goodness knows how – to get in here!! Although even then smiling at their muddied & wet condition – they were still panting & showed the effects of their hard run back, for life.
Now those are the facts! You answer the question! & tell us what you would have done, that drain may be a deep trench to the right or to the left but opposite our front it is only a drain.
Every one had to admit that under these circumstances they would not have considered the drain the objective laid down in the instructions & the men could do nothing else but go on ahead till "the second trench was taken".
Why! said the returned men, Do you think we would rush ahead a "bally" mile (it was afterwards found this 3rd trench was fully 1000 yards away from the 2nd) if the drain had proved to be a trench, on such a night as this? Especially when we knew the taken trenches were not to be permanently held?
This trouble was caused undoubtedly by bad work in making the reconnaissance but no doubt this drain would have looked like a trench from a distance or even from a photograph from an aeroplane & really may have been a proper trench two or three hundred yards either to the right or left.
Later on, on the Somme front, the 56th Battalion captured a Hun trench which actually showed these same identical features, so that this position was, then, made manifestly clear.
In this unfortunate attack, – unfortunate for the casualties between 8000 & 9000 in one nights work, – were, and are still the heaviest that have yet been caused to any Australian Division up to April 1917, yet – the 14th Brigade was the only one to reach the objective (of course they really went 1000 yds too far), the 8th Brigade on the left did not advance beyond the first Hun trench & even then withdrew too quickly, while the