100 Years Ago

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-02-19/register/german-attack-imminent-0ms6r99rn

FEBRUARY 19, 1918

German attack “imminent”

War correspondents’ headquarters. The German offensive is now undoubtedly very near. Evidence accumulates daily, especially convincing being the statements of prisoners taken recently. The German army firmly believes the event to be immediately impending.
An immense amount of training for the attack has been going on. Of that we have been assured by our airmen. To escape observation, much of the training is being done in remoter areas. Troops must be brought up at the last moment and largely during the night before. So they are being trained to make long marches of perhaps 20 miles to the hypothetical scene of action.
So far as our front is concerned, especial attention is being given to sectors between Arras and St Quentin. The training is largely in the nature of open fighting, for the Germans seem to count on breaking our lines and getting the warfare into the open country behind, in which they are going to be aided by the use of gas, tanks and trench mortars. There will probably be no obliterating bombardment such as has preceded most of our great attacks, but in the days before the assaultcounter-battery shooting, both with gas and high-explosive shells, and long spells of destructive fire on trenches, communications, billets, and so forth. Immediately before the attack there will be only a short burst of fire, behind which men are to come over in one grand rush, while immense numbers of mobile guns and trench mortars will push up behind the supporting troops.

Having just returned to the front, I would like to mention that people, especially women, at home seem to be writing to their men out here absurdly exaggerated stories of the hardships of queueing, and of the inadequate supplies of butter and margarine. Of course, it is nice to make interesting letters, and women are not exempt from the human love of exaggeration. But it is very unkind to the men. I am sure that if the women were really suffering they would conceal it from their men. It is only because it is the first inconvenience from the war that people at home make too much of it. But it is neither kind nor wise, for telling men depressing things cannot make them better soldiers, and the men out here are entitled to all the cheery news they can get.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-02-20/register/homage-to-fallen-south-africans-fmg5hs355

february 20, 1918

Homage to fallen South Africans

Last Sunday afternoon a memorial service was held at Delville Wood to the South Africans who fell there in the dreadful fighting of 1916. No battlefield on all the Western front has been more bitterly contested than “Devil’s Wood”, where fighting, practically uninterrupted and intense, went on for six weeks, from mid-July till August 26. It was in the first week of that struggle that the South Africans, in company with the Highlanders, won their imperishable fame, from the first gallant attack on July 14 and the grim hanging on against overwhelming odds for the four days following, with the almost incredible story of the repulsing of counter attacks by troops five and six times their number from the 18th to the 20th. Since then the name of the South Africans has been as inseparably associated with Delville Wood, as is that of the Australians with Pozieres, or of the Canadians with Courcelette and Vimy.

A tall wooden cross now stands on the southern side of the wood towards Longueval, bearing the simple inscription: In Memory of the Officers and Men of the First South African Brigade, who fell in Action in July, 1916, in the Battle of the Somme. Before this cross the drumhead service was held on a spot where the trees stand but a couple of feet or so above the ground, all having been shorn off by shell fire. Between them the earth has been so ploughed into billow and ridge that it was not easy to find level ground enough for a pyramid of drums to serve as lectern. Around, in a square, where details of all four battalions of the brigade were brought for the purpose, stood men of the South African Scottish, from the Transvaal, Natal, and the Cape. The service was short and simple, beginning with a beautiful lament composed for the occasion by Pipe-Major Grieve of the South African Scottish, and followed by prayers and hymns, the firing of volleys and the Last Post.
It was a day of freezing cold and bright sunshine. Overhead aeroplanes passed and repassed, and the service was punctuated by the thud and rumble of the guns. The scene, with the ragged remnants of the accursed wood and the tumbled area of hummocks which once was the village of Longueval falling away into the great yellow-grey expanse of the Somme battlefields, was singularly impressive.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/amazing-british-airmen-z7lg7wc5q

February 21, 1918

Amazing British airmen

The hard, cold weather seems to have broken. It is still cold enough, with a severe frost last night, but instead of a keen, sunlit day, today has been grey, with a light drizzle. The change has, temporarily, put an end to the clear visibility which has made the last few days perhaps the most active in the air that this front has seen. Probably never before have our airmen had so successful a time in observation and photography.
In the air fighting the outstanding feature is the gallantry and audacity of our pilots. It is impossible not to glory in the way our flying men take on all manner of odds. There is the case of one we may call Captain X. He fell in with an enemy patrol, and, immediately fired into one machine, which turned on its back and spun down out of control. Then he turned his attention to another, fired 200 rounds into it, so it went into a spin and crashed. Next day, being out with two other machines, he fell in with a party of four of the enemy, and promptly shot down one. The others fled, so he destroyed a German balloon. On the next day, he again went out and found and shot down an enemy. So in three days he had four enemy aeroplanes and one balloon to his credit.

Another, even more astonishing, performance was achieved by Captain Y. He got five enemy machines in one day. Three were shot down out of one patrol. So unerring was his shooting that the first he attacked simply went all to pieces in the air, and dropped in fragments. The second folded up like a dead rose, and all its four wings dropped off like faded petals. The third went roaring down to earth in flames. Later in the day he also drove down two others, one not crashing, but only out of control, and the second also not visibly crashing, but seen by other pilots to break into flames when close to the ground. On the next day, he met a single enemy and chased it down from 13,000 feet to less than 1,000, when it turned over and crashed. On the next day he met two enemy triplanes, so he attacked at once. One bolted as he went for it, so he turned to the other, and after a short fight the enemy machine suddenly side-slipped, then dived, and spun slowly down to the ground. In all, therefore, Captain Y got six, and probably seven, enemies in three days. Our flying men are an amazing lot.