Hill 60 - a Retrospective Part III

Wednesday 28th April 1915: Yesterday we continued to pass on the story of a Londoner serving with 1st Battalion who was wounded in the fighting at Hill 60. His account had reached the point at which the mine below Hill 60 was blown. He continues: After an interval, during which the Germans continued their fire, the British guns broke out again. Then, a young chap with a wrist watch said to me, "It's almost eight". It was eight before I understood what he meant. It was eight before the order came to charge, with the great guns throwing volleys of the big stuff beyond it and above us".

"And we scrambled out of the trenches and doubled, like fellows in a sprint, for the smoky blackness of that hill. We were nearly a thousand strong, and we dashed up the hillside until we reached the crest".

"When we got there we knew what we had to do. It wasn't shooting Germans. It wasn't bayoneting. What Germans there were we had to drag out of the ground".

"What we had to do was to fill sandbags, build up new trenches, and make some sort of fortification against the trouble which we knew was bound to some".

"And the boys did it, and they whistled and sang while they did the sandbagging business and every now and again someone who was singing went down through the spit of a German bullet that came from their other lines".

"Within about a quarter of an hour we had dug ourselves in and firmly established ourselves at the foot of the hill. There was little rest. In about an hour and a quarter afterwards - about ten o'clock - the Germans came along suddenly with their great counter-attack".

"We were not surprised. We knew it was going to happen. On both sides the batteries were blazing away and for half an hour the cannonade had developed all along the opposing fronts".

"In the flare and flash of the runs, while we sang and banked up those sandbags on the top of the hill which had been so cheaply won, we saw masses of their troops, looking grey and ghostly in the light, massed together and suddenly advance from their lines of support".

"Over 3,000 of them came at us. They came up their side of the hill like ghostly creatures. Many of them held their rifles at the shoulder, and as they came along we had our revenge for those eight cold, hungry days in which we had waited for them and suffered from them in the trenches before Hill 60".

"We kept up our rifle fire and a man fell here and a man fell there. The rest of them laughed and came on".

"But we had, of course, anticipated the counter-attack, and in the hour's lull that followed the capture of the crest of the hill we had brought up a score of machine guns".

"And the guns kept quiet. They did as they were told. They waited while our desultory rifle fire allowed their grey-coated battalions to come on and on. And they came on and on, plunging in the wet grass, but confident, until suddenly they stopped".

"Behind the ragged infantry fire of ours, the most ineffectual infantry fire that ever tried to stop an obstinate enemy in God's world, were our machine guns. The machine guns came up altogether".

"They made no noise about it, and came along quietly, and took their appointed places, while we piled up the sandbags and sang songs to each other and asked them to shoot at impossible targets".

"As they [the Germans] came on, more confident at every step, as the broken run grew steadier and their front lines formed themselves to charge, so our battery - masked batteries - spoke out. We went into them line after line".

"It was like a great harvesting and nothing was spared. I have seen plenty of slaughter since Mons, but nothing like this".

"They simply fell in heaps; hundreds and hundreds were mown down while their officers shouted the orders to "open out" and as we drove them back on their support trenches our artillery caught them midway. They went down like ninepins or rabbits, or anything else that you can think of".

"But these are figures of speech. Our officer told us they must have lost at least a third of their attacking force in this single attempt to retake Hill 60. After this attack they were very quiet".

"They lay like mice along their side of the hill - like great grey mice - most of them quiet, silent and dead"