With the guns through Longueval

Still with the New Zealand Field Artillery on 15 September 1916 - on the day of New Zealand's first big push on the Somme:

Of those still living who went with the guns through Longueval that day, and down the tortured road that led on to Flers, assuredly none will forget it while memory lives. From the battery positions they were just leaving, a rough track led up the slopes and joined the main road that led into Longueval. There was but little shelling there, and only an occasional big shell fell into the village itself, but from High Wood, right along the crest to Delville Wood and beyond, the German gunners had laid down a deep, heavy barrage from seemingly every known calibre of gun. And through it ran the road to the forward positions. It might have been thought an impassable barrier; but the infantry had gone through it, and were fighting away in advance of it; and the guns went through. Battery after battery wound through the tumbled ruins of the village, and down past the ragged remnants of Delville Wood, a ghastly place where the big high explosive shells were sending up great gouts of black earth and pieces of wood, and Heaven only knew what else.

 -- New Zealand Artillery in the Field, 1914-18

"A giant machine controlled by a single mind"

Though it is now a week since 100-year commemorations of New Zealanders' entry into the Battle of the Somme, I found these excerpts from the official history of the New Zealand Field Artillery compelling - not least for the matter of fact way it speaks about New Zealand soldiers using chemical weapons for the first time. These weapons are now banned by international law, not that that has stopped a few countries from using them.

A renewed push by Allied forces on German positions on 15 September was preceded by three heavy days of artillery bombardment, which the author likens to "a giant machine controlled by a single mind".

The bombardment opened on the morning of Tuesday, September 12th, all along the line from Thiepval to Ginchy, and continued steadily for three days. The 18-prs. were employed chiefly in cutting wire, searching communication trenches etc., while the 4.5in. howitzer batteries which were not engaged on counter-battery work directed their fire on enemy trenches, observation posts, and machine-gun emplacements. ... The whole enemy system of trenches for a great depth was battered with high explosive and sprayed with shrapnel, and any belts of wire entanglements that could be observed at all were methodically wiped out; roads and communications were shelled by day, and even more vigorously by night, when they carried most traffic, and groups of heavy guns concentrated their efforts on the destruction of enemy batteries; in short, the whole area behind the enemy lines was kept under a continuous and destructive fire, blocking the movement of troops and stopping the supply of water, rations, or ammunition. Gas shells, fired by the 4.5in howitzers, were here used for the first time by the New Zealand batteries. .... 

The morning of Friday, September 15th, dawned fine, but cool and: misty—a typical autumn morning. For three days now the bombardment had gone on with unwavering persistence, neither diminishing nor increasing in volume, suggesting nothing so much as a giant machine controlled by a single mind; but at six o'clock, twenty minutes before zero hour, it seemed to increase in intensity and violence. One thought that nothing could exist under this annihilating storm of shells; but when at 6.20 a.m. the infantry left their trenches and moved forward behind the barrage, the enemy was manning his machine guns, and his artillery put down a heavy and accurate barrage. That day the new armoured cars or tanks, as they became universally known, were used for the first time, lanes being left in the barrage for their advance. Despite the fact that some of them broke down before they reached their front line, and that, of the twenty odd which managed to cross the German line, about a third were almost immediately crippled through some cause or other, they did very good work in fighting machine gun nests and strong points, and in flattening out belts of German wire. As yet, however, they were only in the experimental stage; and, undoubtedly, their greatest success that day lay in their moral effect, as they lumbered up to the German trenches, looming huge and uncertain in the half light.

Before the Somme - "a pleasant interlude"

On 14 August, Sydney Williams was transferred to the Divisional Ammunition Column (DAC), attached to 'Z' Trench Mortar Battery (one of three TM batteries). On the 18th, they marched out of Armentieres heading towards the Somme, where the Allied offensive had already begun on 1 July, with the loss of 19,000 British soldiers in one day - "arguably the worst day in British military history". (NZ History - Battle of the Somme).

According to the official history of the New Zealand Field Artillery, before heading to the front line, the New Zealanders enjoyed good weather in a week's training in a "quiet and sheltered corner of the Somme Valley". Then, from the 29 August, they set out on a trek to the battlefield, which the history describes in idyllic tones:

For the artilleryman, who travels in greater ease than the heavily-burdened infantryman, a trek through new country in fine weather provides a pleasant interlude from the vicissitudes of life in the lines. Reveille sounds with the dawn, or earlier, and by the time breakfast is ready the horses have been watered and fed, and harnessed ready for an immediate start. Brigades move together, with a good interval between batteries, and every unit must be on the road at the appointed time. The early morning air is cool and invigorating; the horses are fresh, and swing steadily along with taut traces to the tune of jingling accoutrements and the rumble of the heavy vehicles of the long column half veiled in the morning mist. Every turn of the road brings something new to wonder at or to admire; and the driver sitting easily in his saddle exchanges sage observations with the gunner marching in rear of his gun. The ten-minute halts mark the passing of the hours; and then, if the journey be not a short one, comes the mid-day halt to water and feed the horses, and munch what the orders term "the unconsumed portion of the day's ration." A column on the march is always preceded by a billeting officer, who, riding hot-foot in advance, has the available billeting accommodation ready to apportion to units by the time they arrive at the night's resting-place. Trekking in heavy weather is disagreeable for the men and severe on the horses, which very frequently have to stand in the mud in some exposed horse lines after a hard journey on heavy roads.

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Yes, at times perhaps one could say, 'Oh what a lovely war!"