EIGHT DAYS OF STRUGGLE AND ANXIETY.
In Chapter IV. I gave you a brief account of the little city of Ypres,
now about to become the storm-centre of a cyclone of blood and death
such as the world has never seen before. I have told you of its
commercial greatness, and of the glorious old buildings with which the
rich burghers of former days adorned their city. Not only were they
clever manufacturers and keen traders, but gallant soldiers as well. One
of the proudest stories in their history tells how the red-coated
burghers of Ypres in July 1302 joined themselves to the men of Bruges
and Courtrai,[62] and marched against Count Robert of Artois, who was
then overrunning Flanders with 8,000 knights of gentle blood, 10,000
archers, and 30,000 foot-soldiers. Courtrai was threatened, and the
burghers of Ypres, with their fellows from other Flemish towns, arrayed
themselves in front of the city and behind a tangle of dykes and canals.
The chivalry of France made a furious charge, and horses and riders
plunged into the trap which had been laid for them. The slaughter was
terrible. Seven hundred pairs of gilded spurs hung in the abbey church
of Courtrai as the spoils of battle, and the men of Ypres shared with
their comrades of West Flanders the renown of victory.
Until a short time ago Ypres boasted a relic of warfare against the
British. It possessed a flag captured from us in battle. At
Ramillies[63] one of the regiments of the Irish Brigade[64] which fought
for France managed to seize a British standard, which was proudly
preserved in one of the city's convents at the outbreak of the war.
You already know something of the situation and surroundings of Ypres.
It stands twenty-three miles from the dunes at Nieuport, on a canal
which joins the Yser to the south of the large village of Dixmude. To
the south and east of Ypres is a crescent of gentle heights, but for the
rest the country is a dead flat land, and the spires of Ypres are a
landmark for many a mile of Flemish meadow and marsh. Cobbled roads,
skirted by lines of poplars, radiate from the town in all directions.
Towards the east run two main highways--the more northerly leading to
Roulers, the more southerly to Menin, and thence to Lille.
In Chapter VI. you read of the desperate stand made by the 7th Division
between these two highroads, and in Chapter VIII. learned that on 19th
October Sir John French had sent the First Corps to its aid. At this
time Sir John hoped that an advance might be made to the north-east, and
that Bruges and perhaps Ghent might be captured. He thought that Sir
Douglas Haig would probably not be opposed by much more than the 3rd
Reserve Corps, which he knew had suffered considerably in the earlier
fighting, and perhaps by one or two Landwehr divisions. By the 21st he
knew better. That day Sir Douglas Haig with the First Corps advanced
along the road to Bruges, but could not proceed because the French
Territorials on his left had been forced to retire behind the Yser
Canal. At the same time the 7th Division between the two highroads and
Allenby's cavalry beyond the Ypres-Comines canal were being heavily
attacked. Sir John's programme was therefore entirely out of the
question. The Allies found themselves outnumbered by three or four to
one, and Sir John himself, on the evening of the 21st, declared that the
utmost that could be done, owing to the unexpected reinforcements of the
enemy, was to hold the positions round Ypres until General Joffre could
send a relief of French troops, which could not arrive before 24th
October.
[Illustration: Diagram of the Ypres Salient.
The two shadings indicate two stages in the German advance.]
Sir Douglas Haig had therefore to halt and hold a line from Bixschoote,
close to the Ypres Canal, to Zonnebeke,[65] on the Ypres-Roulers road.
The remainder of the line round to Hollebeke was also held by his
infantry, and south of Hollebeke Allenby's cavalry linked them up with
the Third Corps, which was lying along the line of the Lys towards
Armentières. Such was the position of our troops on 21st October. We
were holding, you will observe, a bulge round Ypres. Any troops so
placed are very insecure. They occupy a kind of wedge thrust into the
territory held by the enemy, and this wedge can be attacked on each of
its faces and at the jutting angle at one and the same time. If the line
is broken anywhere the bulge must give way, and the troops holding it
must retire and straighten out their line or suffer destruction.
You may, perhaps, ask why the Germans chose to make a great attack on
Ypres. It is not a great railway centre such as Hazebrouck or Béthune;
only a single line of railway runs westwards from the city. Nor was it a
depôt filled with stores and valuable to the Allies as a base. The
reason why the Germans threw their strength against Ypres is that it
was the heart of the dangerous bulge or salient which I have just
described. If the salient could have been broken through--and the task
did not seem to be very difficult--the whole Allied line of defence
might have been pushed back beyond Ypres and Armentières, in which case
the Allies would not be able to turn the north flank of the Germans.
A frightful series of struggles soon began to rage. Day after day the
gray-coated legions of the Kaiser in ever-increasing numbers swooped
down on all parts of the salient, and only by almost superhuman
endurance were the thin lines of the defence held against them. The line
was nearly broken at Zonnebeke; it was actually pierced for a time in
the centre at Becelaere, while on the extreme right a most determined
assault was made against the cavalry at Kleine Zillebeke. The few
reserves available were hurried to the danger points, and then began
days of the heaviest possible fighting and of the utmost anxiety. One
hundred thousand British, strung out along a line of twenty miles, had
to hold back half a million Germans! Nor was this all: the half-million
was growing in numbers every day.
[Illustration: British Troops advancing for an Attack.
_Photo, Sport and General._]
On Thursday, the 22nd, the defence was just maintained; but late in the
evening the line was broken between Langemarck and Bixschoote, where
part of the Camerons was cut off and shut up in a wayside inn. There was
also a gap between Becelaere and Gheluvelt. The Germans thrust their way
in between the Scots Fusiliers and the Yorkshires, and the latter had to
fight furiously and continuously on two fronts for the better part of
three days in order to keep the enemy from enlarging the gap and getting
through. So bitter and ruthless was the fighting that it seemed
impossible that the defence could be maintained at this point. When the
Bedfords restored the position on the 23rd the Yorkshires were still
fighting; they had not budged. On the 30th they and the Scots Fusiliers,
who had now been merged into one battalion, again saved the line, and
earned the following praise from their general:--
"You have taken part in probably the fiercest combat that the
world has ever seen. I have often watched you in the trenches
with special interest, and on one occasion, at the crossroads at
Gheluvelt--a very precarious position--I asked who was holding
that particular line of trenches, which seemed a weak spot. When
I was told the 2nd Yorkshires, I knew it would be all right. I
knew it was a regiment I could hang my hat on at any time of
the day and night. There is not a single regiment in the whole
of the division for which I have more respect. I do not say it
to butter you up; I say it because I mean it."
From Gheluvelt onwards towards Hollebeke there was a long line of
trenches which was held by dismounted cavalry. It was one of the weakest
parts of the line, and the Germans pressed it hard, but not hard enough.
Farther south the Third Corps was also having a bad time. At Le Gheir,
two miles south of Messines, some trenches had been lost; but they were
recovered by a gallant counter-attack, in which the Essex Regiment and
the Lancashire Fusiliers greatly distinguished themselves.
On 23rd October, a day of great trial, an attempt was made to win back
the trenches which had been lost by the Camerons on the
Langemarck-Bixschoote road. The Queen's West Surrey Regiment, the
Northamptons, the 1st Loyal North Lancashires, and the King's Royal
Rifles were entrusted with the task. Under Major-General Bulfin they
advanced in short rushes, with great determination, against a range of
buildings strongly held by the Germans. After severe fighting and a
dashing bayonet attack the place was captured, the lost trenches were
recovered, and the imprisoned Camerons were released. Some 600 prisoners
were taken, and the old front was restored. The Loyal North Lancashires
and the "Cobblers"--that is, the Northamptons--showed to great advantage
in the final bayonet charge.
A special order which was issued three days later reads as follows:--
"The Brigadier-General congratulates the 1st Loyal North Lancashire
Regiment, Northamptonshire Regiment, and the 2nd King's Royal Rifle
Corps; but desires especially to commend the fine soldierlike spirit of
the 1st Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, which, advancing steadily under
heavy shell and rifle fire, aided by its machine guns, was enabled to
form up within a short distance of the enemy's trenches. Fixing
bayonets, the battalion then charged, carried the trenches, and occupied
them, and to them must be allotted the majority of the prisoners
captured. The Brigadier-General congratulates himself on having in his
brigade a battalion which, after marching the whole of the previous
night without rest or food was able to maintain its splendid record in
the past by the determination and self-sacrifice displayed in this
action."
On the same day the enemy pushed a corps of their new levies against the
British line near Langemarck. Most of these newcomers had scarcely been
under training for more than two months, yet they hurled themselves on
our trenches with extraordinary courage and doggedness. They were mown
down by our fire, but they came on again and again till the front was
strewn with dead. It is said that three-quarters of the whole corps
were put out of action on that day, and that some 1,500 German corpses
lay round Langemarck that evening. Shortly afterwards French
reinforcements arrived, and brought a welcome relief to the hard-pressed
troops holding the salient.
[Illustration: Hands up! Capture of Germans near Langemarck by the
Cameron Highlanders.
On October 23, 1914, about a hundred Germans had been compelled to take
cover behind a mill and a small house. The house was rushed by a small
force of the Camerons, who compelled the Germans to hold up their hands
until a sufficiently strong guard arrived to take them to the rear.
_From the picture by F. Matania. By permission of The Sphere._]
It was on the 23rd October that Drummer William Kenny won the Victoria
Cross for various deeds of gallantry, which will be related later on.
On the 24th, when the Germans were across the Yser, and the Belgians
were preparing to open the sluices,[66] the enemy struck hard against
the Allied line all the way from Dixmude to La Bassée. At 6 a.m. part of
the 7th Infantry Division, which was holding a position near Gheluvelt,
was very violently attacked. Mr. C. Underwood, an interpreter with this
division, gives us a vivid picture of the terrible straits in which his
brigade found itself, and of the arrival of reinforcements in the very
nick of time.
"We got a message from headquarters," he writes in _Blackwood's
Magazine_, "saying that we must hold out at all costs, as
reinforcements were coming up as quickly as possible to our
support. A corporal in charge of prisoners said that the
Wiltshire Regiment had suffered terribly, as also the Scots
Fusiliers, both having been badly peppered with 'Jack Johnsons,'
which had buried many of them alive in their trenches.
"At 7 a.m. next morning (the 24th) Captain Drysdale came up to
me and asked me to hurry up two battalions which were expected
every minute from the First Army Corps. The position was most
critical, _as we had not one man left to support the firing
line_, which was being very hardly pressed, and might give way
at any moment. At last, then, the long-expected supports were
arriving. Our men had behaved like heroes all. This was the
seventh day since we engaged the Germans, one division extending
over an unheard-of front of eight miles, and holding up what I
understood from one of our prisoners yesterday to be a force of
three army corps--that is, 15,000 to 20,000 British against
150,000 Germans! The ordeal of the last three days had been
terrible. These brave fellows actually had no sleep for seven
days, and had never left the trenches, fighting night and day,
sticking to them until they were literally blown out of them or
buried alive. They were now becoming pieces of wood, sleeping
standing up, and firing almost mechanically, with the slightest
support from our guns, which were now outclassed....
"Having got on to the road, I found the Northumberland
Hussars,[67] who had evidently been brought up with the idea of
their taking possession of the trenches if the supports were not
up in time. In ten minutes I sighted the head of a battalion
swinging up the road, and ran down as directed to hurry them up.
Found them to be the Highland Light Infantry and King's Own
Scottish Borderers. I told the commanding officer the position,
and he doubled them round the wood to the trenches which our
fellows were holding with their last gasp."
On this day, 24th October, the point of the salient gave way. The
gallant Wiltshires were driven in, and the Germans pushed into a wood
west of Becelaere, where there was much desperate fighting for days to
come. The Warwicks were ordered to make a counter-attack, in the course
of which they lost 105 officers and men, including their colonel. He had
been wounded in the foot three days before, but he nevertheless led his
men in the charge with fiery courage. His horse was shot under him, but
he found another, which was also shot, and this time Colonel Loring rose
no more. In those dread days of struggle no regiment played a more
heroic part than the Warwicks; they emerged from the ordeal a mere ghost
of their former strength.
It was noticeable at this time that the Germans, though they repeatedly
pierced our line, did not follow up the advantage which they had gained.
Perhaps this was due to the rawness of the troops; perhaps to the fact
that they were weary with much fighting; but more probably to bad
leadership, for even the famous Prussian Guard, in later assaults, more
than once came to a standstill after it had broken the British line.
Whatever the reason may have been, the Allies had cause to be thankful
that the enemy failed to "make good."
On the evening of the 25th the 20th Brigade of the 7th Division, which
was then holding a position to the south of Gheluvelt, was forced to
retire. The Germans broke through our lines, and the 2nd Scots Guards,
after repelling the enemy, were pushed back with terrible losses.
Thanks, however, to a splendid charge by the 7th Cavalry Brigade, the
situation was saved. In these operations Lord Innes Ker, who led the
advance guard, won great distinction. Meanwhile the Third Corps, resting
on Armentières had been very hard pressed, and had been forced to fall
back to a position of less risk.
A French line division and some Territorials were brought up on the
night of the 24th-25th, and were concentrated about Zillebeke. Meanwhile
the 2nd Division made good progress to the north-east, and captured
some guns and prisoners. On the 27th Sir John French went to the
headquarters of the 1st Division to inquire into the condition of the
7th Division, which had been marching and fighting for a whole month,
and was becoming very weak. He broke up Sir Henry Rawlinson's command,
and the much-tried 7th Division was absorbed into the First Corps.
[Illustration: The Front at Ypres on October 27, 1914.]
On the 28th there was a lull before the coming storm. The enemy was
preparing for a mighty onslaught upon our whole line. About 5.30 the
next morning a wireless message was intercepted, telling us what the
Germans proposed to do. The Emperor had given orders that the line in
front of Ypres must be broken at all costs, and three German corps were
being massed for the purpose. The critical moment was at hand.
Early on the morning of Thursday, the 29th, a mass assault was delivered
against the crossroads one mile east of Gheluvelt. All morning the tide
of battle ebbed and flowed. The 1st Division was driven from its
trenches, and for a time the German thrust seemed to have succeeded. Mr.
Underwood thus relates an incident which took place when the outlook was
black indeed:--
"As I was watching the woods on our left front towards the
Gheluvelt-Menin road, I saw the Yorks retiring and the Gordons
advancing. I pointed this out to the general, who immediately
sent to find out by whose orders they were retiring. Presently,
to our consternation, the Gordons came back farther down the
road towards Gheluvelt; before we could do anything, the Yorks
came streaming over the open ploughed land. The general galloped
down the road to stop the Gordons, and I tried to stop the
Yorks, who persisted that the order had been given to them to
retire. We concluded that the order must have been given by a
German officer, and formed them up along the road under a
terrible shrapnel fire. They were being bowled over like
ninepins, as the Germans must have seen them crossing the open.
We tumbled them into the ditch alongside the road, and it was a
pitiable sight to see the poor fellows who were still in the
open and badly hit trying to crawl along towards our
headquarters to take shelter from the hail of shrapnel
bullets.... They were by now all lying out under the wall of the
farm, and the place looked like a shambles. It was a splendid
sight to see Lieutenant Jardine of the R.A.M.C. running out
under a hail of bullets and bringing in one wounded man after
another on his back.... Presently the shell fire died down a
bit, and the men in the ditches alongside the road, having had
time to recover, advanced once more to regain the ground which
they had lost.... One poor chap of the Warwicks whom I spoke to,
and had been very badly mauled, said, 'Well, sir, England can't
say we did not stick it to the last.'"
In the counter-attack to which the Gordons were now advancing nearly the
whole of the First Corps was engaged. Some very gallant charges were
made, in one of which Lieutenant J.A.O. Brooke of the 2nd Gordons won
the Victoria Cross and lost his life as you will read later on. About 2
p.m. the enemy began to give way, and by dark most of the line north of
the Menin road had been recovered. The same day the Third Corps was
heavily assailed at Le Gheir, in what our soldiers call "Plugstreet"
Woods,[68] and there was desperate fighting beneath its ragged larches.
Here, again, trenches were lost and won. The Middlesex were driven out;
but the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders nobly came to the rescue, and
against great odds recaptured the trenches and slew almost every German
in them.
The attempt to break through to the south of Ypres was repeated with
even greater vigour on the 30th. In the gray dawn a heavy bombardment
was begun on the trenches held by our cavalry at Zandvoorde, a village
about a mile and a half south of Gheluvelt. So fierce was the fire that
no living thing could remain in the trenches. One troop was buried
alive, and soon the whole division was obliged to withdraw to a ridge
about a mile west of the village. This meant that the troops on the
right were uncovered, and were obliged to fall back to preserve the
line. While this movement was going on, the situation was about as
serious as it could well be. The enemy had been reinforced, and had now
gained possession of Zandvoorde. The Scots Greys and the Hussars were
hurried up, and the ridge was held until evening, when the 4th (Guards)
Brigade arrived and took over the line. They held it in trenches with
water above their knees for twenty-three days.
The salient was sharper than ever now, and therefore even more dangerous
than before. The weakest place lay between Gheluvelt and the corner of
the canal near Hollebeke. Had the Germans reached the canal they would
have cut off the British holding the salient to the north, and nothing
could have saved Ypres. The Emperor was on the field and he had told his
men that if Ypres were captured the war would be over, and the victory
of Germany would be complete. So desperate was the situation that Sir
Douglas Haig determined to hold the line from Gheluvelt to the corner of
the canal at all costs. He moved up reserves to the rear of the line,
and made other preparations to resist the great assault of the morrow.
Farther south there was great peril too. The cavalry had been driven out
of Hollebeke, and had fallen back on the Ypres-Armentières road, where
there was heavy fighting. The line of the Third Corps had been broken,
but the rent had been repaired by the gallantry of the Somerset Light
Infantry. Reserves were called up, and were stationed at Neuve Eglise,
about three miles south-west of Messines. With these reserves came the
first infantry Territorial regiment to take the field--the London
Scottish.
North of Zandevoorde there was also great danger of disaster. A
battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers found the troops on their right
pushed back by sheer weight of numbers, and they themselves exposed to a
most galling fire from machine guns on their flank. Their losses were
terrible, but still they held on, and when the fight was over the
battalion had almost ceased to exist. The Royal Scots Fusiliers suffered
in like manner; but they and the remnant of the Yorkshires, bunched
together into one battalion, held their trenches until dark. The Allied
line was pushed back to the verge of Gheluvelt, and when night fell it
seemed as though the Kaiser had spoken the truth when he declared,
"Ypres will be mine by 1st November."
* * * * *
During the fighting around Ypres the Royal Flying Corps did splendid
service. A _Daily News_ correspondent tells of one young flying man who
seemed to make a perfect hobby of his work. The following account of his
doings will give you an excellent idea of how airmen direct the fire of
guns. "From dawn to sunset," says the correspondent, "this young officer
is up and about, doing the most wonderful things with the utmost
coolness. The other morning, up ahead of the lark, he volplaned[69] from
a great height right in the midst of the German lines, as though he
meant to make a brief morning call for breakfast. The Germans were too
astonished for the moment to do anything but gasp and gape at him,
though he was easily within range. He impudently stopped his engine,
dropped half a dozen 'puffs' (as our Tommies call the aeroplane bombs)
into a cavalry cluster, waved his hand, and off and above he went again.
"Hundreds of rifle shots whirred around him as he fled; two of them
struck him; and three minutes later he was down in the British lines
once more, with blood trickling through the rents in his tunic. He was
patched up and bandaged, had a good, hearty lunch, and before teatime he
was up again in one of his mad frolics in the air. 'Surely you've had
enough for one day,' said General ----; 'have a rest at least until
to-morrow. We don't want to lose these matinée performances of yours;
they're too fine for anything.' But the young aviator jammed his
armoured helmet on his head, and said he couldn't resist making a
flight, because it was great fun, and kept him fit. So off he went
again.
"That afternoon he excelled himself. There was a well-screened German
battery which was doing nasty work from behind a slight rise at the back
of the enemy's trenches. This was the airman's quarry. Up and up he went
in quick, climbing spirals, and when he was at a height of 2,000 feet he
poised for a spell to spot the lurking-place of the battery. When he had
discovered it he, flew above it, and signalled to our gunners to drop
their shells immediately below him. They fired; the shells fell some
distance to the right. He next signalled to the range-finders to swing
their guns more to the left. Again they fired, but the shells went too
far. A third time he signalled, and the first of our shells that fell in
the new direction wrecked the limber of the foremost German gun,
smashing up horses and men alike. Good! Instantly the airman indicated
that the range had been found, and then shell after shell burst over and
among the battery which had been flogging us so mercilessly earlier in
the day. In five minutes all that was left of it broke away from the
cunning screen which masked it, and fled across country. The general,
who had been watching the affair through his field glasses, cried,
'Splendid! Magnificent! The best show I've ever witnessed. That man must
have a heart of steel in a body of iron.' When the daring aviator
descended the general warmly congratulated him, and shook him by the
hand. 'You're almost too good to last,' he said. The airman only
laughed."
[Illustration: An Admiral of the Air.
_Photo, Cribb._
Wing-Commander C. R. Samson, R.N. See page 74.]
* * * * *
In the account of the fighting round Ypres nothing has been said of our
artillery. Sir John French thus writes concerning it: "I cannot speak
too highly of the valuable services rendered by the Royal Artillery
throughout the battle." He also tells us that, though the enemy brought
up guns of great range and power, our artillery overmastered them.
Splendid work was done by a number of young artillery officers, who in
the most gallant manner pressed forward in the vicinity of the firing
line in order to direct their guns at the right targets, and at the
right moment. Here is a story which illustrates the skill and courage of
these young officers.
"In many instances," says a _Times_ correspondent, "artillery subalterns
have taken up dangerous positions well in advance of the front line of
infantry, and, telephone in hand, have given the range to the gunners
with perfect calmness. I was told of an incident which is typical of the
splendid devotion of these men. A young lieutenant had posted himself in
a tower a few hundred yards from the German trenches. He had telephoned
his orders regularly for half an hour. Then he said, without any trace
of excitement, to the operator on the other side, 'I hear the Germans
coming up the stairs. I have my revolver. Don't believe anything more
you hear.' With these words he dropped the receiver, and he has not been
heard of since."
[Footnote 62: _Koor-tray'_, 27 miles by rail south-west of Ghent, on the
Lys; famous for its linen and lace manufactures. The "Battle of the
Spurs" (1302) was fought outside its walls.]
[Footnote 63: _Rā-mē-yee´_, 29 miles south-east of Brussels; scene of
one of Marlborough's victories (1706).]
[Footnote 64: Formed of Irishmen in the service of France. They fought
gallantly against Marlborough; at Malplaquet the 18th (Royal Irish)
Regiment and the Irish Brigade fought with each other, and the Royal
Irish were the victors.]
[Footnote 65: You will find these and other villages mentioned in this
chapter on the map on p. 103.]
[Footnote 66: See p. 95.]
[Footnote 67: The Northumberland Hussar Yeomanry rejoice in the proud
distinction of being the first of all Territorial regiments to go to the
front in this war. They left England about September 15, 1914.]
[Footnote 68: Ploegsteert, about three miles north of Armentières.]
[Footnote 69: Shut off his engine and glided down in zigzags.]