Auchonvillers Military Cemetery and the neighbouring farm and yard are in the area of the Collecting Post. Other locations are as on the maps. It is a relatively short drive through to Mailly Maillet, Forceville and Louvencourt where Main Dressing Stations (MDS) and Casualty Clearing Stations (CCS) were located. It is in the cemeteries near these where many of the dead of a battle were buried — often even those killed outright on the field of battle — so that often provides an answer to the problem that perplexes some when they find that few of a given regiment who were killed in a particular location are actually buried there.
The work of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and indeed of the stretcher bearers provided from within the resources of individual battalions is rarely examined. The British and German armies had the best record of medical care amongst the major combatants, with a ratio of three wounded to one killed, whereas the French and Italian armies survival rate was rather worse. As the war progressed, and by the outbreak of the Somme Battle, improvements had been implemented, which aimed to ensure that men could be rapidly evacuated as methodically as possible to benefit from the developments in operative and post-operative treatment.
See Maps 2, 7, 10
These improvements were varied; they included increasing the number of Regimental Stretcher Bearers from sixteen to thirty two. These men had traditionally come from the band (as indeed they do today) but they were supplemented with others, and were trained in the rudiments of First Aid, but whose horrendous chief task it was to manhandle wounded men across a shell-scarred landscape, through crowded and often partially destroyed trenches, the whole often in poor weather conditions with the ground a mushy, slimy and unstable mess. Relay bearer posts were established every thousand yards, and communication trenches were built which were reserved for the removal of the wounded. Regimental Aid Posts and Advanced Dressing Stations were made more effective by being given bigger and better protected dugouts or shelters. Once some form of solid service was available, hand trollies, light railways — almost anything — was put to use. The next stage to the Casualty Clearing Stations was done as much as practicable by buses, but especially favoured was broad gauge railways, and this dictated to a considerable extent the location of these CCSs.
The job of the CCS was to retain all serious cases unfit to travel or requiring operation before being evacuated — and this was made practicable by the presence of several consultant surgeons. They were to retain all slight cases likely to be fit for duty in a short period; and in all other cases were to evacuate the wounded to Base Hospitals further down the line. These Base Hospitals were situated well out of the fighting area, at points usually with good access to the sea for further evacuation to Blighty (hence the desire for a Blighty wound, which would ensure a considerable time, at the worst, back in Britain). The more famous Base Hospital areas were at Etaples, between Boulogne and Le Touquet, and at Rouen. Some of the biggest cemeteries are now to be found adjacent to the locations of these CCSs and Base Hospitals
Casualty collecting post at Auchonvillers. Diagram indicates the stages in evacuating wounded from the fighting.
Another statistic of interest lies in the cause of the wounds inflicted. The great majority of these were caused by shell or trench mortar, which accounted for 58.51%; rifle and machine gun bullets 38.98%, bombs or grenades 2.19% and bayonet 0.32%. These figures do underline the eminent WWI historian John Terraine’s argument that the Great War was an artillery war.
Colonel David Rorie wrote an account of the activities of the RAMC in his fascinating book, A Medico’s Luck, and gives a clear view of how the medical services of the 51st Highland Division operated during the November battle for Beaumont Hamel. It also enables us to view the ground over which they worked during those frantic days.
Colonel David Rone
It was not only the teeth arms that learned lessons — often very expensive ones — from the fighting on the Somme as the battle went on week after week. The medical service did as well, and one of the more important innovations was the creation of the job of a Forward Evacuation Officer whose job it was to get the men out of the fighting area, that is from the Regimental Aid Posts to the Main Dressing Station and the Walking Wounded Collecting Station, a procedure that was followed right up to the end of the war.
By mid October it was clear that some sort of action would in all probability be taken against Beaumont Hamel and the area around the River Ancre. When the 51st Division moved into the area it was clear that much better arrangements would be required, and the RAMC at least were pleased that the attack was subject to frequent delays. The medics faced the typical problem that improvements should be made but, “with necessarily limited RE help”. This was a problem which was all too familiar to the infantry, which spent much time and labour digging fortifications and the like under RE supervision, more often than not when they were supposed to be in the relatively comfortable existence of the support or transport lines.
The tasks that had to be done included the creation or improvement of Relay Bearer Posts at Tenderloin near White City, in Second Avenue Trench (this one was new) and also at Uxbridge Road, to pit prop and false-roof a Collecting Station at Auchonvillers, in an outbuilding in a farmyard and to fit stretcher racks in the cellars of a brasserie (a French pub) at Mailly Maillet, which would act as the Advanced Dressing Station. The weather at that time was particularly poor — one of the reasons for the constant postponement of the attack — and the poor Forward Evacuation Officer was exhausted not only by the dangers of the forward trenches, but by the miles of trekking through knee-deep mud.
Medical supplies were used extremely rapidly during an action, and it was essential to stockpile plenty of supplies, such as dry blankets (a nigh-on impossible task), stretchers, splints, dressings, rations and other medical stores and of course good quality water. The closer to the battle that this material could be provided the better: for example, warmth was an essential element in safeguarding men from the effects of shock. As stores were demanded from the RAPs, the Senior Officer at the Collecting Post had to make demands from the MDS, which in turn got more from the CCS. These fresh stores were generally brought up by ambulances on their return journey from carrying wounded, but because of the chronic traffic congestion that was an invariable consequence of a battle, these could be slow in coming forward: hence the need to start off with big stockpiles.
Water was always a problem, and there was always a shortage of petrol cans; despite attempts to differentiate those used for petrol from those used for water by a colour coding system, it frequently happened that the two purposes got mixed up. I can well remember talking to a veteran some time ago who was wounded at Passchendaele. He particularly remembered two things from the experience: the foul taste of petrol in the water that he was given at the RAP when he eventually found it; and the excruciating agony of the trip in the ambulance — his shattered elbow felt every jolt and judder as the vehicle went over the shell-ravaged surface. The shortage of cans was frequently made worse by the forward medical post forgetting to send the empty cans back to the next post. Another problem that faced the medics was that if the battle moved forward, the RAPs would move with it, and for this it was essential to conserve water as much as possible, as in all likelihood it would be even more difficult to obtain in the new location.
One final boost for morale was provided by placing soup kitchens as far forward to the communication trenches as possible, and voluntary groupings — in this case the Scottish Churches — provided canteens even so far forward as the Collecting Post.
The attack was launched on a foggy morning on 13th November, at 5.30 am. It is a source of some surprise to me that so much of Auchonvillers still seemed to be standing at this date — the place was barely half a mile behind the British lines, and one would have thought would have been pulverised to pulp; on this day it suffered ‘hates’ at 11 am and 2.45 pm, which meant that the wounded lying in the farmyard had to be brought into the cramped conditions of the Collecting Post proper.
As the afternoon progressed German prisoners were brought through Auchonvillers, and a hundred were retained at the Collecting Post to clear their own people from the battlefield. These would go off in groups, up to fifteen, under the supervision of one man. The Field Ambulance got off lightly during the battle: Captain H Begg was killed near White City, “one of the most efficient and gallant RAMC officers in the Division.” He is buried at Louvencourt. Others killed included two of the German PoW stretcher bearers. It was a tremendous achievement to get motorised ambulances right up to Tenderloin on the day after the attack: the ride must have been atrocious, but it was vital to ease the pressure on the severely exhausted stretcher bearers.
The Aid Post near White City: possibly at Tenderloin.
At daybreak on the 15th November it was possible to begin a systematic search of the battlefield to look for the wounded. An MO set off from Y Ravine twoards White City, whilst another group, accompanied by armed soldiers, in case of enemy hiding in undiscovered shelters, worked in the opposite direction towards him. “It was drizzling wet and vilely cold, the trenches in places thigh deep in clay and an awful mess of smashed barbed wire, mud, disintegrated German dead and debris of all sorts. In one trench our occupation for half an hour was hauling each other out of the tenacious and blood-stained mud; and during our mutual salvage operations we had evidently made ourselves too visible, as the enemy started shelling.”
As they left a dugout after checking it, they would leave a notice indicating to the following stretcher-bearers how many wounded might be found below. They entered a complex system: “On descending about forty steps one was in a large floored and timbered chamber some fifty feet long; and at the other end a second set of steps led to a similar chamber, one side of each being lined with a double layer of bunks filled with dead and wounded Germans.” These were casualties from early on the 13th November. “The place was, of course, in utter darkness; and when we flashed our lights on and the wounded saw our escort with rifles ready, there was an outbreak of ‘Kamerad!’ while a big bevy of rats squeaked and scuttled away from their feast on the dead bodies on the floor. The stench was indescribably abominable: for many of the casualties were gas-gangrenous. Any food or drink they possessed was used up, and our water bottles were soon emptied amongst them. After we had gone over the upper chamber and separated the living from the dead, we went to the lower one where the gas curtain was let down and fastened. Tearing it aside and going through it with a light, I got a momentary jump when caught a glimpse in the upper bunk of a man, naked to the waist, and with his right hand raised above his head. But the poor beggar was far past mischief— stark and stiff with a smashed pelvis. Some twenty other dead Germans lay about at the disposal of the rat hordes. The romance of war had worn somewhat thin here.”
Colonel Rorie records one other significant memory of the Beaumont Hamel campaign. A track had been reduced to, “a footpath knee deep in mud. Going up it one morning soon after daybreak, I saw a headless corpse lying on a stretcher at the path side. From the neck a trickle of blood ran to the feet of a man outside a dugout who was calmly frying some ham in his canteen lid over an improvised oil-can stove. His mate — fag in mouth — was watching him. What was beside them had ceased to be worth comment. They were surfeited with evil sights. And they were hungry.”
A scene from the site of Fourth Avenue and the Trench Railway that would have been used to help evacuate the wounded, looking across to Fifth Avenue (which ran by the embankment in the middle distance. At the top centre is the site of the Sucrerie (now a farm) at the end of the Sunken Road from Auchonvillers.
On the 23rd November the unit was relieved, and were able to move away from the discomfort of the dugouts, usually “one long chamber with over a hundred and twenty occupants who between them produced an almost palpable atmosphere”.