(1) Captain H. Dundas, Scots Guards, letter to parents (May, 1916)

We have raids almost nightly - 50 men and a couple of officers. The raiders are generally over for about half an hour, and at a given signal are supposed to leap out of the trench and return with as much plunder, human and otherwise as they can get.

 

(2) Siegfried Sassoon recorded details in his diary of a patrol that he took part in on 25th May, 1916.

The party is twenty-two men, five N.C.O. and one officer, Stansfield. Twenty-seven men with faces blackened and shiny - with hatchets in their belts, bombs in pockets, knobkerries - waiting in a dug-out in the reserve trench. Then up to the front line. At the starting-point, Stansfield, Sergeant Lyle and Corporal O'Brien, loom over the parapet from above, having successfully laid the line of lime across the craters to the German wire. In a few minutes the men have gone over - and disappear into the rain and darkness - the last four men carry ten-foot light ladders.

It is 12 midnight. I am sitting on the parapet listening for something to happen - five, ten, nearly fifteen minutes - not a sound - nor a shot fired. A minute or two later a rifle-shot rings out and almost simultaneously several bombs are thrown. There are blinding flashes and explosions, rifle-shots, the scurry of feet, curses and groans, and stumbling figures scramble awkwardly over the parapet - some wounded. Black faces and whites of eyes and lips showing in the dusk. I count sixteen in.

 

(3) Brigadier-General Frank Maxwell, letter to wife (August, 1915)

On a patrol last night an officer, who got into the German trenches yesterday morning with four men, and after killing four Germans (as a reprisal for raiding his company the night before) was dangerous wounded outside the enemy wire on his return, and had to be left (by his own order). The C.O. sent orders to a young officer "to go out immediately", meaning to add "after dark" but being in a hurry, he forgot these important words. No one, of course, dreams of going into 'No Man's Land' by day; but this young officer never hesitated to ask if there were not some mistake, just went off by himself at 3.30 p.m. He was, of course, seen almost at once and heavy machine-gun fire was opened on him; but this didn't stop him, and he crawled and ran all the 200 yards across the open to the wire. He had a good look round for the officer he was out to find, failed to see him, and came back under fire all the way. I have put him up for a D.S.O., and I trust he will get it.

 

(4) Corporal Gregory, was a member of a patrol that raided a German trench in October, 1915.

Reaching a trench which we took to be a dead-end, we discovered our mistake when about twenty Germans suddenly appeared in our rear and one German opened fire on us. We shipped our machine-gun round and covered them. They immediately offered to surrender - shouting almost in unison: "No shoot, we got children at home, war fini."

 

(5) In Another World, Anthony Eden described his first night-patrol into No Man's Land.

We worked our way across no-man's-land without incident, and Pratt and Liddell began to cut the enemy wire. This was tough and rather thicker than we had reckoned. Even so we made good progress and there were only a few more strands left to cut, so we were right under the German trench, when suddenly, jabber, jabber, and without warning two German heads appeared above the parapet and began pointing into the long grass. We lay flat and still for our lives, expecting every second a blast of machine-gun fire or a bomb in our midst. But nothing happened.

We lay without moving for what must have been nearly an hour. There were no abnormal noises from the German line nor was the sentry on patrol. Less than four minutes of wire-cutting would complete our task and I had to decide what to do next. I touched Pratt and Liddell to go on.

The job was just about done when all hell seemed to break loose right in our faces. The German trench leapt into life, rifles and machine-guns blazed. Incredibly none of the bombardment touched us, presumably because we were much closer to the German trench, within their wire and only a foot or two from the parapet, than the enemy imagined possible. As a result the firing was all aimed above and beyond us, into no-man's-land or at our own front line.

 

(6) Henri Gaudier, letter to Edward Marsh (1st October, 1914)

I have been at the Front for the last fortnight and have seen both latent and active fighting. By latent I mean staying days in trenches under heavy artillery fire, keeping ready for any eventuality such as a raid or an unforeseen forward movement from the enemy - by active, a nice little night attack that we made last Saturday night upon an entrenched position. We crept through a wood as dark as pitch, fixed bayonets and pushed some 500 yards amid fields until we came to a wood. There we opened fire and in a bound we were along the bank of the road where the Prussians stood. We shot at each other some quarter of an hour at a distance of 12-15 yards and the work was deadly. I brought down two great giants who stood against a burning heap of straw - my corporal accounted for four more, and so on all along the line. They had so much luck, unhappily, for out of 12 of my squad that went we found ourselves five after the engagement.

 

(7) Henri Gaudier, letter to his father (10th November, 1914)

My lieutenant sent me out to repair some barbed wire between our trenches and the enemy's. I went through the mist with two chaps. I was lying on my back under the obstacle when pop, out came the moon, then the Boches saw me and well! pan pan pan! Then they broke the entanglement over my head, which fell on me and trapped me. I took my butcher's knife and hacked at it a dozen times. My companions had got back to the trench and said I was dead, so the lieutenant, in order to avenge me, ordered a volley of fire, the Boches did the same and the artillery joined in, with me bang in the middle. I got back to the trench, crawling on my stomach, with my roll of barbed wire and my rifle.

 

(8) Guy Chapman sent out a raiding patrol on the Western Front in June, 1916.

Our raiding party crept out from the company line and waited for the artillery to finish the breaking of the wire. A wind had risen during the afternoon and was now blowing across the front. The trench mortar fired; but the registration had been carried out when there was no wind. The breeze caught the bomb, carried it down the line. It exploded a few yards from the attacking group.

Gwinnell staggered up, with three wounds in the leg, Perkins hit in both arms; but Batty lay still. A splinter had gone straight through his brain. Eight other men were hit, and there was no more to be done with the raid. Gwinnell, bleeding from his wounds, shepherd the man back and brought in Batty's body.

The catastrophe wrenched many of us as no previous death had been able to do. Those we had seen before had possessed an inevitable quality, had been taken as an unavoidable manifestation of war. But this death, at the hands of our own people, through a vagary of the wind, appeared some sinister and malignant stroke, an outrage involving not only the torn body of the dead boy but the whole battalion.

 

(9) Captain Geoffrey Donaldson, letter to his mother (23rd June, 1916)

The night before last I took out a patrol of four men about half way across No Man's Land. There is comparatively little risk attached to this work but it is of course a considerable strain on the nerves. Last night, I went out with Wakefield and a wiring party, that is to say with about six men improving our wire entanglements. I consider on the the whole this is a nerve-racking a job as any, more so than patrol work. You must not think I shall go out like this every night. I have been out the last two nights as much to set an example and get the thing going as anything.

 

(10) Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That (1929)

My first night Captain Thomas asked whether I would like to go out on patrol. It was the regimental custom to test new officers in this way, and none dared excuse himself. My orders for this patrol were to see whether a certain German sap-head was occupied by night or not.

Sergeant Townsend and I went out from Red Lamp Comer at about ten o clock; both carrying revolvers. We had pulled socks with the toes cut off, over our bare knees, to prevent them showing up in the dark and to make crawling easier. We went ten yards at a time, slowly, not on all fours, but wriggling flat along the ground. After each movement we lay and watched for about ten minutes. We crawled through our own wire entanglements and along a dry ditch; ripping our clothes on more barbed-wire, glaring into the darkness until it began turning round and round. Once I snatched my fingers in horror from where I had planted them on the slimy body of an old corpse. We nudged each other with rapidly beating hearts at the slightest noise or suspicion: crawling, watching, crawling, shamming dead under the blinding light of enemy flares, and again crawling watching, crawling.

We found the gap in the German wire and at last came within five yards of the sap-head. We waited quite twenty minutes, listening for any signs of its occupation. Then I nudged Sergeant Townsend and, revolver in hand, we wriggled quickly forward and slid into it. It was about three feet deep and unoccupied. On the floor were a few empty cartridges, and a wicker basket containing something large and smooth and round, twice the size of a football. Very, very carefully I groped and felt all around it in the dark. I was afraid that it might be some sort of infernal machine. Eventually I dared lift it out and carry it back, suspecting that it might be one of the German gas-cylinders we had heard so much about.

After this I went on patrol fairly often, finding that the only thing respected in young officers was personal courage. Besides, I had cannily worked it out like this. My best way of lasting through to the end of the war would be to get wounded. The best time to get wounded would be at night and in the open, with rifle fire more or less unaimed and my whole body exposed. Best, also, to get wounded when there was no rush on the dressing-station services, and while the back areas were not being heavily shelled. Best to get wounded, therefore, on a night patrol in a quiet sector. One could usually manage to crawl into a shell hole until help arrived.

 

(11) Major Oliver Lyttelton, letter home (6th April, 1915)

I was in charge of an officers' patrol the night before last. We had to crawl out in a mangle field which is planted along the top of Givenchy Hill and our object was to reconnoitre the German trenches which lie over the brow and which cannot be seen from anywhere in our lines. It is a most exciting business being out among the dead men with a revolver. The mangles, which of course have never been gathered, are very pulpy and feel to the touch like a man's head. But we can steer one's way by a sense other than sight. The great thing, and the most difficult thing, is patience. If you go slow enough and keep on your belly you cannot be heard or seen. Instinctively, though, you want to get on and get back quick, and it is hard to restrain the impulse. The Germans sent up several lights but they stood no chance of spotting us among the roots. We steered by a dead man (not by but for, I should say) on the brow and then waited under the parapet of the old German communication trench till one of their flares showed us what we wanted to see. Even then it is difficult to spot exactly how their trenches run. We were about ten yards from the German wire and about twenty-five from their fire trenches, that was the most important thing and showed that their line was a salient and came right up under the brow of the hill. The G.O. and the brigadier were very pleased with the information. I only saw the former - of course if you dig a trench or pull down a house or reconnoitre you always get thanked by the Brigade though they are none of them operations of a really dangerous kind.

 

(12) John Raws, letter to his sister (8th August 1916)

Just before daybreak, an engineer officer out there, who was hopelessly rattled ordered us to go. All the time the enemy flares were making the whole area as light as day. We got away as best we could. I was again in the rear going back, and again we were cut off and lost. I was buried twice and thrown down several times - buried with dead and dying. The ground was covered with bodies in all stages of decay and mutilation, and I would, after struggling free from the earth, pick up a body by me to try to lift him out with me, and find him a decayed corpse I pulled a head off - was covered with blood. The horror was indescribable. In the dim misty light of dawn I collected about 50 men and sent them off, mad with terror on the right track for home. Then two brave fellows stayed behind and helped me with the only unburied wounded man we could find.