Machine Gunner, 1914–18: Personal Experiences of the Machine Gun Corps

By C. E. Crutchley

In 1914 there were only two machine guns supporting a British infantry battalion of 800 men, and in the light of the effectiveness of German and French machine guns the Machine Gun Corps was formed in October 1915. This remarkable book, compiled and edited by C E Crutchley, is a collection of the personal accounts of officers and men who served in the front lines with their machine guns in one of the most ghastly wars, spread over three continents. The strength of the book lies in the fact that these are the actual words of the soldiers themselves, complete with characteristic modes of expression and oddities of emphasis and spelling. All theatres of war are covered from the defence of the Suez Canal, Gallipoli and Mesopotamia in the east to France and Flanders, the German offensive of March 1918 and the final act on the Western Front that brought the war to an end. October 2006 is the 90th anniversary of the formation of the Machine Gun Corps.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473816091

Book preview

Preface

BY COLONEL SIR GEORGE WADE, M.C., J.P.,

Chairman, M.G.C. Old Comrades Association

Those who served in the First World War have many reminiscences. These are always full of interest, and the recollections of Machine Gunners are particularly so because of their unique function in active operations.

They wore always at the centre of things. Wherever trouble most threatened, or an attack was planned, there they had to be, right amongst it all.

They had tremendous fire power, and the moment they started they were the targets of every enemy weapon within range. No wonder the Machine Gun Corps was nick-named the Suicide Club!

As they were so mobile and so much in demand they saw more of what was happening than any other Arm.

Machine-gunners had to be highly skilled, not only mechanically but tactically, and their devastating fire power gave them a deep sense of responsibility which never left them to the bitter end.

In a few years there will be no survivors of World War One to tell the story. Soon all their experiences which have not been recorded will be lost for ever.

All lovers of history should be grateful to the veteran machine gunner who has, while there is still time, painstakingly collected the memoirs of his comrades.

To old soldiers the following pages will awaken vivid pictures already etched deeply in their memories.

Comradeship such as could exist only between serving soldiers, and the bravery, the kindness, the sacrifice, the suffering, the agony will all come back. Even the smell of cordite and blood will return, together with the stale atmosphere of charcoal and earth which pervaded every dug-out.

Those who were not bora when these stirring events took place will read between the lines of the grim determination which actuated the men of the Machine Gun Corps through long years of bitter warfare in conditions of extreme hardship, icy cold or insufferable heat, against enemies of many nationalities.

In those days every man was firmly convinced that we were fighting for Freedom, as indeed we were, but nowadays old soldiers wonder if those who enjoy freedom now appreciate what sacrifices were made to keep it, and what vigilance is still called for to preserve it.

Introduction

In World War One the machine-gun was the most deadly of weapons. When war broke out (August 4th, 1914) every British infantry unit had its own machine-gun section of two Maxim guns served by one officer and twelve other ranks. The section was divided into two gun teams. The men chosen to serve in the machine-gun section were mostly marksmen with the rifle.

Although the machine-gun officer had a certain amount of freedom relating to the training of his men, the Battalion machine-gunner enjoyed certain privileges. The Command Officer of a Unit usually had the first and last word in the placing of the guns in actual battle.

In the first year of the war the fire power of the Maxim gun (500 rounds per minute) gave vital support to attacking infantry and also in defensive actions. Even so, two Maxim guns supporting a battalion of eight hundred men, often on a wide frontage of varied depth, could not possibly be everywhere at once. The British High Command soon became aware of these limitations and it was decided to form a Corps of Machine Gunners.

THE MACHINE GUN CORPS

The Corps was created by Royal Warrant on October 14th, 1915, His Majesty King George V being Colonel-in-Chief. Its Infantry, Cavalry, Motor, and Heavy branches grew into formidable self-contained units in every theatre of war. A total of 170,500 officers and men served in the Corps, which suffered 62,049 casualties.

Very soon after the formation of the M.G.C. the Maxim gun was replaced by the Vickcrs machine-gun.

The Corps was continually recruiting from picked men. Both as an armed body, and as an association of men, it was therefore unique.

The story of the Machine Gun Corps is a record of front line soldiers, of those who accompanied the first wave of every assault and who remained to cover every retirement. Throughout the war years not a single day passed but saw the members of the Machine Gun Corps in the front line.

Where other Corps and Regiments have long records from which to cite their achievements, the Machine Gun Corps is possessed of but three swift years of history. These years are an epic of patience, cheerfulness, endurance, loyalty, sacrifice, courage and comradeship. Every month, indeed every day, the Machine Gun Corps had its Waterloo, its Balaclava, its Rorke’s Drift. It was a Battalion with backs to the wall facing fearful odds; a company filling a breach; even a single gun team of six men, sometimes a single gunner alone among his dead, holding a vital flank.

There was a lad at High Wood with one arm hanging by a bloody thread who carried ammunition to a heavily besieged post.

There was a Company leader, whose command had been reduced by half, who at ‘Third Ypres’ turned defeat into a notable victory, who before relief buried all his dead, and who became Bishop wearing the Distinguished Service Order.

There was a driver at the Hindenburg Line who, the target for every hostile gun, shot through the stomach and belching blood, toppled his machine-gun limber with its precious load of ammunition into our beleaguered line and perished among his mules.

There was a gun team at Meteran at the top of a tottering windmill, who fought until the shell storm overwhelmed the shattered skeleton of masonry, and buried the gunners in its ruins … There was a groom on the Lys who rode the two miles’ length of gun positions through the enemy’s gun-fire, so that from the air a spotting pilot might mark his map.

There was a private on the Menin Road who, when officers and N.C.Os had become casualties, took command of his Company, added a Bar to his D.C.M. and gained his direct Regular Commission in the Field.

There was a signaller who, on many-times-mended lines, tapped out a message until overwhelmed by attack.

There was the M.G.C. Artificer whose fingers repaired intricate machinery, while a field dressing supported a shattered arm.

There was the lad at Arras who crept forward in the darkness, captured an enemy stronghold single-handed and turned the German machine-gun against the enemy’s line, raking the parapets when our attack developed at dawn.

There are, too, the records of the missing, whose last history is unknown beyond the tale of the steady staccato of their guns when everyone else had retired.

Thousands of such actions add lustre to the history of the Machine Gun Corps.

Transcending all else was the comradeship of trench and billet, of camp fire and of tent.

Machine gunners knew the quality of comradeship: men in sodden Flanders beneath the scourge of Trommel Feuer; troopers who rode shoulder to shoulder at dawn before Damascus; Australians and New Zealanders on the beaches of Gallipoli; South Africans in the carnage of Delville Wood. Canadians foresting the ridge of Vimy … Men from the blue haze of an English countryside; the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh, from heathered hills and smoke-laden cities, wrestling with death on the Somme and the Hindenburg Line …

Bare-legged boys from shingled coves wading the mud morasses of Passchendaele; those whose cries echoed among the Dorian crags of Salonica and from the rocky peaks of the Khyber; men who found the enemy among the snow-capped heights of the Piave; and those who faced sand storms, thirst, and privation in the deserts of Egypt and Mesopotamia …

Men from the traffickings of an Empire’s metropolis; those whose mother tongue was in every English dialect and whose calling was the field, the mine, the loom, the bench, the press and the counting house … Old soldiers who remembered Darghai and Magersfontein, and were familiar with the ‘bat’, the ‘bhisti’ and the ‘blockhouse’, and men who as youths knew only Haig’s Final Drive.

Those who gripped hands at zero hour, and those who fell in mud and dust and rose no more.

Yes, men of the Machine Gun Corps knew the quality of comradeship.

*     *     *

Before formation of the Machine Gun Corps in October 1915, machine gunners of the Regular and Territorial Army carved an indelible niche in the history of their respective Regiments. It would be true to say that these men paved the way for the formation of the Machine Gun Corps. As a tribute to them the opening stories in this book spotlight the vital contribution battalion machine-gunners made to Britain’s fight for survival.

We shall ever tell the story

How their glory brightly shone,

Who throughout a hell of carnage

Set their teeth and carried on.

1

A 1913 Terrier Machine-Gunner Remembers

The sight of a carriage-mounted Nordenfeldt machine-gun at the Regent Street Polytechnic must have subconsciously influenced a young man who enlisted on December 5th. 1913, in the Poly. company of the 12th Battalion—the London Regiment, known as ‘The Rangers’. That gun was one of two which went to South Africa at the turn of the century under the command of Lt. Colonel Alt.

As an eager recruit I pried into every activity of my new unit, and, though a mere rifleman, I became aware of a small sub-unit of the battalion attached to my company and designated the MACHINE GUN SECTION.

Its mysteries were not divulged to me at that stage. The recruit drills, company drills, route marches on Saturday afternoons and the Easter camp at Purfleet for musketry, passed all too quickly, leading to the event of the year: the annual camp. This was to be held at Lulworth Cove.

The parade of ‘E’ and ‘F’ companies, soon to become ‘A’ Company under the four company reorganisation, showed the Machine Gun Section, under the command of Lt. Worthington with Sergeant Norton and 13 other ranks. I had by now somehow learnt that it had two Maxim guns as its armament.

Though we marched proudly to Waterloo Station on Sunday, August 2nd, 1914, we never reached the camp. The train halted at Eastleigh and, after a suitable pause to dispel the rumour that the Germans had landed at Barking Creek, the engine was put on the other end and we were hauled back to London.

War with Germany was anticipated, and embodiment on a war basis followed within 48 hours.

On August 4th war was declared.

The details of infantry battalion training in those days have often been told, the machine-gunners part less often.

Some time in the autumn of that year I was designated as reserve for the machine-gun section and soon became aware of their intensive training. After battalion parades, many hours were devoted to learning how to rectify gun stoppages, how to fill ammunition belts, how to strip and re-assemble the guns, and their parts. We also did overtime, endeavouring to dip seconds off the average time for the various gun-drill movements. Mom code and semaphore signalling were also included in the curriculum. The guns, ammunition and equipment were carried in a box-like wagon drawn by two horses.

A Christmas Day to remember

After nearly five months of intensive training in England, we were declared fit for service overseas. Arriving in France on Christmas Day, 1914, we marched up the hill from Boulogne to the camp, where a site was allotted to the Battalion next door to No. 9 Hospital which dealt with cases of venereal disease. The miseries of those patients made a profound impression on many of us. The other memory of that port was daily fatigues on the docks in connection with shipping.

We learnt of the misdeeds of the units who had preceded us. Men under sentence in the charge of the Military Police did not wear caps, and I nearly got a beating for taking mine off during a break period.

Next came our first acquaintance with the French railways— the wagons for eight horses or 40 men in which we travelled to St. Omer, in northern France. Thence we marched to Blendecqes, where almost a month was spent in hardening up, living under rough conditions, and feeding in the way to be expected in the trenches. The then Prince of Wales passai by the place one day, but not much notice was taken of this event.

Trench digging had now become a major pre-occupation of the British Expeditionary Force.

First spell of front line duty

About the end of January, 1915, we moved on and up to Ypres. We had become one of two extra battalions in a brigade of the 28th Division, whose other units included the 1st Monmouths (T) and four regular battalions lately brought back from overseas duty. I may say here and now that I never saw a senior officer of the division from that time until May, when the battalion was withdrawn, and I have never ascertained the name of the commander.

Our first position was in trenches known as R, S and T astride the Ypres/St. Eloi roads, about three miles outside the ancient city, where the inhabitants still lived in their houses and shops. The position occupied was at canal level and the whole line was water-logged, dominated by the enemy who held trenches on higher ground. Fixed machine-gun positions were impossible and the gunners meekly accepted their role as carriers of rations and trench stores, leaving their guns in reserve.

Later in April the battalion moved to a new sector at the eastern apex of the salient near Zonnebeke and here the M. G. section was brought up to a supporting position in dug-outs on the embankment of the Ypres/Zonnebeke railway. Little of note occurred here and in due course the Rangers were moved to Velozenhoek/Frezenberg for an all too brief rest.

The second battle of Ypres

On April 24th, 1915, the Germans attacked the Canadians at St. Julian and used poison gas for the first time in the war. We were hustled from our rear billets to the scene of the battle and almost immediately ordered to take part in a counter-attack.

At this juncture our machine-gun section was in a position to observe from the flank of the battalion. What a sight to see across this open level piece of ground—the whole battalion spread out in extended order formation, as taught in the drill books, and advancing under a steady rain of shrapnel. Casualties were not heavy, but the commanding officer was one to go down wounded. A stop-gap line was established at the point of the deepest penetration of the Germans and we dug in for dear life. The machine-gun section took up positions, but worthwhile targets were few.

Having recovered from the initial shock of a gas attack, the Canadians and Allied troops gave little ground.

It was not many days later that the High Command resolved to shorten the line and withdraw from the indented salient. Again we marched to the new line and dug in.

Some 30 hours elapsed before the Germans decided to move into the salient we had evacuated. This they did in a somewhat brazen manner, and their movements on open ground were in full view of the Maxim guns. At one time a field gun was spotted being man-handled into position. We were able to get in enough fire to put it out of action and it was not heard of again. We stayed in our new positions until May 6th, when we were relieved and went back to the support line. Our rest spell was once again of very short duration.

On the morning of May 8th (a fateful day for British and Anzac troops) we were aroused with the news that the Germans had broken our line somewhat to the right of our former trenches, and a counter-attack was to be made from the flank to seal the breach. The machine-gun section had by this time been reduced to a one gun team, and we went in with the rest of the 12th London Battalion, suffering heavy casualties from German artillery fire which plastered the whole of the front and support lines,

Arriving at the old front line it was quickly seen that the Germans were pouring in through the gap. Our one gun went into action, inflicting heavy losses on them by enfilade fire. The range was about 2–300 yards; the machine–gun commander was one Lt. Dunlop (later Brigadier-General Sir John Dunlop). His leadership and courage was an inspiration to us. The enemy was held, but all the section and the gun became casualties. I got a Blighty-one.

On my way back to casualty clearing station, I encountered a battalion of the Warwickshire Regiment going up in support. Their efforts were successful, but I was told later on that day that the battalion came out of action fifteen men strong under a corporal.

2

The Defence of the Suez Canal

Soon after the outbreak of war in 1914, British regular army units based in Egypt were sent to France and their places taken by territorial battalions and Anzac units.

The defence of Egypt and the Suez Canal, so vital to the Allies, became the responsibility of Britain’s part-time soldiers. It was a tremendous responsibility, but how well they faced up to it is described by a Lanas, man who served as a machine-gunner with the 1/10th Manchester Regiment, 42nd Division (East Lancs Territorials).

We left Southampton on the morning of September 15th, 1914, on board the mail ship Avon, and as we moved out the lads sang: ‘Homeland, homeland, when shall we see you again?’

The majority on that ship never did.

The day before embarkation everyone in the battalion had been vaccinated, and the password was ‘Mind my arm mate’ as the old boat tipped us around, especially when we reached the Bay of Biscay. It was then that sea-sickness superseded sore arm worries, but by the time we docked at the Egyptian port of Alexandria everyone was in high spirits and fascinated by the discovery of another sort of world. Not many of us had been any further from home than Blackpool, and a few weeks ago most of the battalion had been working in mill or office at Oldham and other Lancashire towns, little dreaming that very soon they would be pitched into a war, and sailing to places seen only as red patches on the map of the world.

It seemed, as I helped unload our machine-guns and equipment from the troopship, that I was experiencing a fantastic kind of dream.

From Alexandria we moved to Cairo racecourse, where we camped. During off-duty periods we enjoyed ourselves until the arrival of Anzac troops. Then up went the prices in Cairo shops and cafes, which put a damper on our trips into that city. You see, the Aussies were paid six shillings and ninepence per day, compared to the British Tommies’ pay of one shilling per day, reduced to sixpence per day for many of us who made an allotment to parents. What a cheap army we were!

In late October our machine-gun sections moved to the banks of the Suez Canal, where we dug trenches and machine-gun emplacements at various points. We slept rough and did lonely night sentry duties. This experience certainly toughened us up, and after a few weeks we no longer looked like part-time soldiers.

A few days before Christmas 1914, we accompanied the 1/10th Manchester Regiment back to Cairo, where we had Christmas dinner. Six men to a turkey, and all the trimmings. My machine-gun section filled a dixie full of beer. The cost, per head, a mere 9d. Not a bad old war I thought, for some of us. I little visualised what the future held in store.

A few days after Christmas we travelled to a place called Tell-el-Kebir, where we did a short spell of duty. I remember seeing the graves of 400 British soldiers who died during the Egyptian campaign of 1882—a grim reminder of past wars. From Tell-el-Kebir we were hurried back again to the Suez Canal area and took over from an Indian unit at a place that had no name, merely a map reference of 50 point 8. The desert stretched out as far as the eye could see.

The Turks Attack

We were up and down the banks of the Suez Canal like yoyo’s, until January 26th, when our machine-gun section settled in an isolated spot a few miles north of El-Kantara, a scruffy little village about twenty miles from Port Said.

In the early hours of January 28th, 1915, we got an inkling of what was to come. I was on gun sentry duty at the time and thought I saw strange figures moving about outside the barbed wire perimeter. Must be my imagination, I thought and after a moment or so continued my patrol. Then I heard a distinct sound of metal scraping against metal, like someone trying to cut the wire entanglements, and that decided me. I aroused the guard sergeant with the words: ‘Come on, the bloody Turks are here!’ ‘All right’ he said calmly and, after a leisurely stretch, ordered, ‘wake up the lads and no talking.’

We manned our two Maxim guns, and sent a chap out to the wire perimeter to investigate. Immediately a great commotion took place on the other side of the wire in front of us. Someone shouted, ‘No fire! No fire! Friends.’ It was a party of Indian Lancers, some of whom were wounded and half dead from thirst. We got them inside and emptied our water bottles and attended to their injuries. The Lancers had been in a brush with Turkish advance patrols in the Sinai Desert.

Later that day a British Royal Flying Corps pilot reported having seen a Turkish force of several thousands with field guns, moving across the Sinai desert. Other enemy columns had also been located approaching the Canal defences over a wide area. Incidentally, the Suez Canal is 99 miles in length, and has a minimum width of 135 feet. Quite a stretch to keep an eye on.

Early on the morning of January 29th a Turkish force attempted to rush Indian outposts at El-Kantara but was repulsed. The Fourteenth Sikh Battalion lost one officer and 30 men in this sharp engagement.

In the late evening of February 1st an estimated two divisions of Turkish infantry supported by field guns, prepared to attack defences at Kantara, and also at Ismailia, an important point in the Canal defences situated on Lake Timseh, about half way between Port Said and Port Suez.

In the early hours of February 2nd, 1915, the attack began, the main thrust being made about four miles off the Ismailia ferry, but a violent sand storm held up operations.

During the hours of darkness on February 2nd, Turkish army engineers managed to get about 30 galvanised-iron pontoon boats right down to the edge of the Canal without detection; but the moment they began to push their boats into the water, Maxim guns attached to a mountain battery opened up and the guns from British warships on the Canal joined in the fray. The Turks brought several batteries of field guns into action from the rising ground west of Kataib-el-Kheil, and two battalions of Anatolians made a gallant effort to hold a bridgehead at Ismailia, but British artillery, Maxim gun and rifle fire routed them; by the middle of the afternoon of February 3rd, the Turks were in full retreat leaving many dead: a large proportion of whom had been killed by shrapnel.

As the fighting died down around the Ismailia ferry, it also fizzled out at El-Kantara where our Maxim guns had been in hot engagements, but we escaped serious casualties.

Next morning, February 4th, we took out a gun to support a Gurkha patrol searching for snipers hidden in the bushy hollows on the East bank. Subsequent operations were merely rounding up prisoners and bringing in to Kantara military equipment left behind by Turks fleeing as fast as they could into the wastes of the Sinai Desert.

British losses in the first battle of the Suez Canal amounted to 111 killed and wounded. Turkish losses were put at 2,000. The Turks had fought bravely but they had no chance at all.

To reach the Suez Canal they had crossed 120 miles of the Sinai Desert, through sand and terrible heat where water was non-existent. No mean achievement, as a British force was to discover when, later on in the war, they crossed that very same stretch of desert. But that is another story.

After the end of the first Suez battle. The 42ml East Lanes. Territorial Division, was given a rest (in relays) until early April 1915, when we went to Port Said to prepare for that ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign.

3

Gallipoli

Three plans had been put forward during the winter months of 1914 with a view to ending the stalemate on the Western Front.

Winston Churchill (1st Lord of the Admiralty) presented a plan to attack the Dardanelles by land and sea.

Lord Fisher (First Sea Lord) wanted to open up the Baltic.

Lloyd George (Chancellor of the Exchequer) was in favour of a Salonica landing.

At first Lord Kitchener (Secretary of War) was opposed to any plan that would take troops from the Western Front, but eventually Churchill got his way and on February 19th, 1915, at 9.51 a.m., British and French fleets bombarded the outer forts of the Dardanelles.

Then for a whole week very stormy weather caused a suspension of the bombardments, but on February 25th the bombardment was resumed and minesweeper cleared the entrance to the straits. On February 26th marines and bluejackets were landed to blow up the guns in the abandoned forts on both sides of the sound. The landing-parties met with little resistance. It was later established that at this date Achi-Baba, the key hill on Gallipoli, could have been occupied and held with a very few troops indeed, but naval experts still believed that the assembled armada of Allied waiships, which included Britain’s super dreadnought, the Queen Elizabeth, could accomplish the forcing of the Dardanelles on its own. But we had, as is were, sent a postcard to the Turks of our intentions, and the Turks brought up large numbers of Howitzer guns, on both shores. Minesweepers, mostly operating during the hours of darkness, were picked out by glaring searchlights and raked by the fire of the Turkish field guns.

On March 18th, the Allied fleet made its greatest attack on the strait It was a disastrous affair.