The New York Times/1916/11/22/Bluejackets Won Beaucourt Village
BLUEJACKETS WON BEAUCOURT VILLAGE
British Naval Troops Surrounded Redoubt and Ordered Germans Up “on Deck.”
STORMED RUINS AT NIGHT
Units Keep Watches by Bells in the Towers Where They Take Their Rest.
WITH THE BRITISH ARMIES IN FRANCE, Nov. 21, (via London, Nov. 22.)—British naval troops are fighting for the first time on the western front. A naval division took part in the breaching of the original German main line north of the Ancre Nov. 13 and the capturing of Beaucourt the following morning after twenty-four hours of continuous fighting.
“The advance of a portion of the naval troops was temporarily held up by a strong German redoubt joining the first and second rows of trenches and containing many concreted machine guns, the fire from which prevented the battalions on the left immediately south of the quarries of Beaumont-Hamel from securing the entire entry position.
But the bluejackets nearer the bank of the Ancre pushed through to the outskirts of Beaucourt within an hour, where they remained all day under a heavy machine gun and snipers’ fire. At nightfall the position of the division was somewhat confused, but a battalion officer with a contingent, although wounded fourteen hours before, determined to storm the village at dawn with what composite naval troops could be assembled in the darkness and among the craters and temporary shelters of the ground newly won.
This officer has had an adventurous career, being a successful gun runner in Mexico and having also fought on Gallipoli with great distinction, gaining the Distinguished Service Order. He managed to concentrate a striking force during the night with which he dashed into Beaucourt at dawn, bombing and bayonetting the Germans. For ten minutes the Germans fought and then surrendered en masse to the officer, who had received three additional wounds during the capture of the village.
The redoubt which held up the left of the naval troops resisted throughout the day of the 13th, and until dawn of the 14th, although it was unable to drive back the bluejackets holding the line around it. Then many of the men advancing in No Man’s Land at dawn halted 200 yards distant.
The machine gunners in the redoubt saw some of a tank’s crew emerging through the hatchways with a gun, which they were mounting in a crater beside the tank. The Germans hoisted a dirty handkerchief on a long pole as a signal of surrender.
The naval troops surrounded the redoubt and ordered the occupants of the dugouts to “come on deck and step lively.” Over 400 men came tumbling up the ladder stairways from a network of underground positions. The bluejackets took a total of nearly 2,000 prisoners in two days fighting north of the Ancre.
The Germans were the first to utilize naval troops on the western front, putting a division south of the Ancre in a vain endeavor to retake the Schwaben redoubt in October.
The British naval units bear the names of famous sailors and wear khaki with naval caps and badges. They have Quartermasters instead of Sergeants, and otherwise follow naval routine, keeping watches by bells in villages where they are billetted and referring to technical operations in the field in the language of the sea.
Copyright, 1916, by The Associated Press.