Broken car springs on February 1st took me to Poperinghe, where a
Belgian carriage-maker made a villainous repair for a considerable
charge.
Motor car repairs were fearfully and wonderfully executed at the
front in the earlier stages of the war. The G.H.Q. shops were not
bad, and once in a while I found clever, conscientious young chaps
in charge of a road-side repair shop attached to a division, an
ammunition supply column, or some such unit, who had managed to
organise a very creditable "first-aid and emergency hospital" for the
ills a car was heir to.
All too often some A.S.C. officer in charge, however, knew as little
of the mechanism of an automobile and how to put it in order as one
could well imagine. I remember one youth, possessed of a wonderful
opinion of his own efficiency, whose mechanical experience had been
gained in a railway workshop. He ordered repairs to be done in
weird fashion at times. As soon as he had delivered his dictum and
departed, his chief non-commissioned officer would put the men right,
generally by a complete reversal of the youngster's orders, and all
would go happily until he might again put in an appearance, when
the work would suffer proportionately to the time he spent in its
vicinity.
Stories of the excellence of the performance of individual cars were
often marvellous. One big limousine, which had been "out since the
first of the show," was ever the boast of the Major to whom it was
assigned and of his faithful chauffeur. At tea one day it transpired
that the car, which the Major was always ready to declare had run
_sans repaire et sans reproche_ during the whole campaign, was
in the repair park for its "initial derangement." Calling at the
repair lorry early next morning, I was astounded to hear the A.S.C.
sergeant-major in charge say to the major's chauffeur: "So you have
done in the old girl again, have you? Let's see, that's the third
time this month, ain't it? Why the Major hasn't sent the bally old
wreck in months ago to get her put in decent shape, I don't know.
Not a bit of use tinkering at her all the time. She's given us more
bother than any car in the division."
How we did chip the Major! Motorists' yarns bear some odd
relationship to fishermen's stories, so I have heard.
Taken generally, the British cars at the Front ran most creditably.
The conditions could not have been more trying, and the Daimlers and
Rolls-Royces lived up to their reputations in fine style. Cars of
half a score of makes were attached to the 1st Cavalry Division while
I was with it, and I studied their performances with close attention.
For reliability and lack of trouble a large Daimler easily bore away
the honours.
Cold forges and a disinclination on the part of the smith to light
them on an afternoon necessitated my spending a night in Poperinghe.
The town was crowded with Belgian inhabitants and refugees, and
with French troops of the 16th Corps, which was at that time being
relieved from the trench work by British soldiers, and was mobilising
in Poperinghe to be sent south and east, detachment after detachment,
to its own dear France.
A winter in Flanders, particularly in Flemish trenches, is not a
happy experience. The French were therefore openly delighted at the
prospect of departure to more pleasant and congenial climes.
I should have had to sleep in my car but for the kindly offices of a
French Staff officer, who procured for me a clean, soft bed in the
Hotel La Bourse.
An evening among French soldiers, though they might be tired,
trench-stained and campaign worn, was sure to be a pleasurable
one. Songs from _chansons d'amour_ to grand opera, from poor Harry
Fragson's "Marguerita," to swinging marching airs of older wars, were
sung with a vim.
The French troopers possessed a suspicion of the grand air when
drinking a toast, carolling a love-ditty, or roaring out a rousing
chorus. One or two veterans I met in Poperinghe might have stepped
from a volume of Dumas. An elder one was a bachelor of arts and
science, a man of studious and thoughtful mien. His comrade was a
true Gascon, and a third of the group was blessed with powers of
mimicry that made us laugh long and loud before the night was over.
Every man of them was proud and fond of his British allies.
French soldiers did not pay the same attention to cleanliness of
uniform and kit that was given to such details by the British Tommy.
An English battalion, relieved from muddy trenches, at once smartened
its external appearance to a degree that had to be seen to be
believed. Tommy worked wonders in a day.
The long-tailed blue coats of the French infantry were difficult to
clean, once they became mud-caked.
The amount of equipment, and its variety, that the average French
foot-soldier strapped upon his back, was wonderful. I saw one
black-bearded "poilu," with a typical load, start off with his
company for a long, long march, with literally as much as he could
pack about him, fastened securely by ingenious means. Over either
shoulder was a strap supporting two good-sized canvas haversacks, one
on each hip, both bulging with food. To his belt were attached two
ample cartridge-pouches, one in front and one behind. A water-bottle
dangled against a haversack. His principal pack, hung at the
shoulder, was, he told me, full of spare clothing. A blanket, rolled
in a sheepskin jacket, surmounted this and towered above his cap. A
cooking-pot adorned the back of his pack, while to one side of it
was strapped a tin cup of ample dimensions, and to the other a loaf
of bread, already become soggy in the steady drizzle. A bundle of
firewood at his side, and a roll of clothing, holding an extra shirt
or two, at the other, flanked him.
My examination of his equipment concluded, he said he must be off,
and picked up his rifle with a cheery smile. A comrade rushed up and
handed him a sort of leather portmanteau. He grabbed it without a
word, threw the strap over his head, settled his various pieces of
baggage into place with a strenuous shake, and stamped away sturdily,
with a firm step and head held high.
He left me wondering that this sort of soldier should make marching
records of which any army in the world might be proud, yet such was
undeniably the case.
In billets, the British cavalry were having a thorough course of
instruction in the work of the foot soldier. Dismounted attack,
trench digging, musketry instruction, bomb-throwing classes, and all
manner of miscellaneous tutelage progressed steadily.
I had a look at Ypres one morning. It was again peopled with a
sufficient number of civilians to give me a sense of forgetfulness as
to its proximity to the German gun positions.
Of all the attributes of the Belgian people, their persistence in
making back to their homes in a shelled area, as soon as the shells
ceased falling, was the most prominent.
Many of the peasants pursued their daily round of labour under
shell-fire. Many others left the bombarded fields or villages, albeit
reluctantly, only to return as soon as the shell splinters had ceased
to spatter about.
What feeling actuated them was a psychological study. They were
phlegmatic as a people. I have seen Russian soldiers perform feats
that were described by different observers of the same episode as
bravery or stupidity, according to the reading of the onlooker. Was
the Belgian who drifted back to his own or some other man's home in
shell-ruined Ypres brave or thick-headed? I left one opinion for
another, only to abandon it in turn. A study of various types in
Flanders helped me but little.
Hard-worked toilers, whose lives have been one continual round of
labour, are, more often than not, fatalists. Such lives produce
men and women who accept conditions blindly and uncomplainingly. A
peculiar love of the soil which they have tilled, and from which they
have sprung, seemed to take the place in many Flemish peasants of the
more definite and definable Anglo-Saxon or Gallic spirit of intense
patriotism. Many poor folk seemed possessed of a blind instinct
that "home" was safest, and once "home" was lost, nothing worthy
of preservation remained. Their attitude toward death bordered on
indifference.
Motor-buses were bringing the 28th Division to the Ypres Salient as I
passed on my homeward journey.
Rumours of an attack on the German line flew from lip to lip. That
night I read from an eminent French military authority that "to
attack, unless with a definite object in view, with a very reasonable
chance of success, and with the surety that you can hold what you
gain if the attack succeeds, is a crime."
In the second week in February, at a dinner in St. Omer, a member of
the French Mission at British Headquarters told me that eighty-seven
French general officers had been "relieved of their command" since
the commencement of the war. These generals were "sent down" for
incompetency, evidenced in various ways, to command the troops under
them. The extremely small number of British generals who had been
"replaced" stood out in very sharp contrast to this total, with which
fact should be remembered the complete difference as to policy with
reference to such replacements between the French and British War
Office methods.
Early in February, the 1st Cavalry Division staff was blessed with
the arrival of Major Desmond Fitzgerald (11th Hussars), who took
Major Hambro's place as G.S.O. 2.
The total tally of British casualties was announced during the first
week in the month as 104,000, having exceeded, in less than six
months of warfare, the numerical strength of the original British
Expeditionary Force.
A day "in front," with the engineers, mapping out new trenches and
reserve positions, showed to how great an extent modern gun-fire had
changed military theory.
Before the War, a trench line was sought in a position that commanded
a good "field of fire," _i.e._, that had in front of it as much open
ground as possible.
This war had taught that the most important item in the selection of
a trench position was the extent to which the line could be hidden
from the enemy gunners. The space commanded by the occupants of the
trench and the nature of the terrain were secondary to the cardinal
point of keeping the trenches well out of sight of enemy observers.
Thus engineers might, years ago, select a hilltop as a trench
position, the line commanding the receding slope to the valley
below. After the experience of the greatest of all wars, they would
preferably place it fifty yards behind the summit. More than fifty
yards of "field of fire" was desirable, but not absolutely necessary.
A fifty-yard space could be so covered with wire entanglements as
sufficiently to delay an attacking enemy. Deep, narrow trenches with
traverses to restrict the area of damage from shells bursting in
the actual trench, and to protect from enfilade fire, were demanded
by the newer conditions, but great care had to be taken that they
should not be constructed in ground of so soft a nature that howitzer
fire could too easily cave in the trench sides.
We found it possible to select a trench line that could be well
concealed, which, if taken by the enemy, would be under perfect
observation from our own gunners and by them easily rendered
untenable for the Huns.
That the British were clever in this work of placing trenches
in invisible positions was proven by the following report of an
interview in Courtrai with a wounded German officer, whose regiment
had been badly handled when attacking an English position in the
Ypres Salient:--
"Our artillery cannonaded incessantly the enemy trench which our
company was to storm--we could see it in the distance. Towards
evening we were ordered to advance. We marched forward without
taking cover, confident enough, because not a shot came from the
British trench. We thought it had been abandoned after the terrible
bombardment to which it had been subjected all day long. To make
things quite safe, when we were 200 metres from the trench our
mitrailleuses were brought into action and we gave the silent enemy
another good peppering. Still there is no reply. The place must
certainly be empty. Shouting 'Hurrah,' we rush forward to seize it,
but we have not gone more than 100 metres before our whole front rank
is stricken down by a volley from a point much nearer than the trench
we had been shelling, and in addition to this terrible infantry fire
the British quick-firing guns are brought into play, and simply
mow our men down. Six times we reform to continue our assault; six
times we are knocked to pieces before we can get going. At last such
officers as are left realise that there is nothing to be done, and we
retreat to our original position.
"This is how the English work it. The entrenchment, visible from
afar, which we had bombarded, was not the spot where their troops
were to be found. They were stationed in small subsidiary trenches
in front of the principal trench, with which they were connected by
means of narrow passages. The little advance trenches were concealed
to perfection, and the troops sheltered beneath sheets of metal
on which our German bullets ricocheted. So we had been shelling an
unoccupied trench and had done no damage to the place where the enemy
actually was hidden. Hence it is not surprising that our 'assault'
should have proved to be--for us--a veritable massacre."
Careful study of German methods of counter-attack were productive of
many an idea.
The Hun counter-attacks were delivered immediately after the loss of
a position--as successful counter-attacks must be.
A trench which was thought a good defensive one by its occupants was
sometimes attacked by the Germans, taken, and immediately transformed
into a good defensive trench from the other point of view. The way in
which the German first line of attack was followed by a second line,
bearing shovels, barbed wire, bombs, and grenades, and the manner
in which this second line was put to work, showed that the brain
conducting operations was close at hand, if not actually on the spot.
The planning and carrying out of some of these small attacks were
worthy of great praise. Our troops soon caught the idea and put it
into practice with increasingly beneficial results.
On Sunday, February 21st, the 2nd Cavalry Division were in the
trenches in the Ypres Salient. The Huns exploded a mine in front
of Zillebeke and took sixty yards of trenches that were occupied
by the 16th Lancers. A counter-attack, delayed a bit, was launched
unsuccessfully, and cost the cavalry four officers killed, one
died of wounds, one missing (thought sure to be killed), and four
wounded--ten officers in all, and about fifty per cent. of the men
engaged.
The Canadian Division arrived in France in mid-February--a splendid
lot of men.
Trench-mortars and bombs of various sorts put in an appearance
and classes were held daily to accustom the men to the new types
of trench weapons. A 3·7 affair of gas-pipe, throwing a 4½-pound
projectile, was the most prevalent mortar. Prematures and accidents
of all kinds accompanied its introduction, and more than one good man
was killed before the troops learned the intricacies of the bombs.
General Foch was at Cassel with his Headquarters. Dinner in Cassel
was always productive of a talk on instructive and entertaining
subjects. The average French Staff officer was wonderfully "keen on
his job."
The French system of espionage was by no means to be despised. The
reports from their "agents" were astonishingly accurate.
That Staff work should be the subject of many an after-dinner chat
was but natural. The French view of the difference between French and
British Staff work, compiled from many a conversation with officers
of all ranks, I understood to be generally as follows:--
British Staff work could not fairly be compared to French Staff work,
because of the lack of opportunity accorded the British Army, before
the War, to handle large bodies of troops. Furthermore, the English
Army contained many officers who entered the Army as something in
the nature of a pastime rather than a serious profession. Some of
these officers even went through the Staff School, though lacking
that devoted concentration on their profession as a life-work, which
characterised their French prototypes. Very few officers entered the
French Army and qualified for staff positions who did not look upon
a military career in a very serious light. French Staff officers
gained their steps by force of sheer merit and close application to
their work.
Nothing else counted, they said. Not a big staff, but one that was
efficient beyond all question, was the French aim.
The British soldier, I found, was in most instances frankly conceded
to be the best war material in the field--friend or foe. That the
British leaders often bungled was openly alleged, but by no means
always proven in argument, at least, to my satisfaction.
A failure to arrange support, a badly planned attack, bad Staff work
here and there, were quoted in more than one instance.
"It is the soldier who suffers," said one of the most brilliant
Frenchmen with whom I met. "He suffers in silence. Perhaps he what
you call 'grouses,' but he stands it. The French soldier would _not_
do so in anything like the same spirit. The waste of men and the bad
handling of them that once or twice I have seen on the British front,
would ruin a French commander for ever."
Universally the French officers praised General Sir Douglas Haig. He
had completely won their admiration at Ypres.
"But the best of the British Staff work," said another French
officer, "is that it is improving. The English are not afraid to
admit they don't know, and are quick to absorb new ideas. Give them
time."
I have quoted the more trenchant criticisms that came to my ears,
for they fell from the lips of the keenest and most brilliant French
Staff officers, invariably those who held the British Tommy in the
highest possible esteem.
These officers were from the class of man one would choose to put
in charge of a dry dock, a line of railway, a huge business or a
gigantic manufactory. They impressed me as good "business men." More
than a few British Staff officers I met, particularly in the Cavalry
arm of the Service, were equally clever, and every whit as keen on
their work, but no one who wished to be impartial could fail to
note the inclusion now and then, on the Staff, of men to whom one
would never dream of entrusting the management of a large commercial
organisation or the conduct of an important factory plant.
The 3rd and 2nd Cavalry Divisions having each done ten days of
trench occupation in the Ypres Salient, on February 23rd, the 1st
Cavalry Division moved to Ypres to take its ten days of duty in the
firing line.
The run to Ypres, _viâ_ Steenvoorde and Poperinghe, was a trying one.
The road surface was inconceivably damaged and very slippery. All
manner of French and British transport and general traffic filled the
highway.
[Illustration: The Rue de Menin in March, 1915, looking west over the
Menin Bridge across the canal moat]
[Illustration: Officers under the stone lion on the Menin Bridge at
Ypres]
In the western edge of Ypres, in front of the first cluster
of houses--buildings shell-marked and war-scarred from long
bombardment--three grimy mites were playing in the dirt at the
street-side. Further on, a trio of little girls in soiled black
frocklets were enjoying a game of tag. Across the street they darted,
under the wheels of cars and lorries, missing the hoofs of the
passing horses by inches. One bright-eyed little girl, out of breath
from dodging a fast-drawn artillery limber, took momentary refuge
in a ragged gap in a shell-shattered dwelling. As we approached the
Grand Place more children were to be seen, then a number of adult
townsfolk. Round the gaping ruins of the once beautiful Cloth Hall,
in the main square, the number of people in evidence might well
have led one to believe that the bombardment of Ypres was past and
done with. Ruins, the work of shells and conflagrations, were on all
sides, but no one noticed them. French and English soldiers and their
officers, with a liberal smattering of civilian Belgians, filled
the pavements. Down the Rue de Menin, at the approach of the Menin
Bridge, we found the headquarters of General Hubert Gough, of the 2nd
Cavalry Division, located in a brewery standing in the shadow of the
high moat wall. The trenches lay, roughly, three miles beyond the
city walls to the eastward. The junction of the British left with the
French right was south of the Menin Road, in front of Zillebeke. The
trenches we were to occupy ran east and west and faced south.
Detachments of sturdy French infantry marched past, their uniforms
faded to a pale blue. With swinging step, each individual marched to
his own time. I admired their fit and willing appearance. They were
campaign-worn as to kit and clothing, but campaign-hardened, rather
than worn, as to themselves.
A constant stream of people came and went. How long would the
civilian population of Ypres remain to pay its toll of dead whenever
the Germans decided further to shell the town?
Three women passed, two of them bearing month-old babies in their
arms. Noting my interested glance they smiled and waved as they
trudged on. What a place for a baby!
An old bent crone, crowned with a richly beaded bonnet of ancient
type, in odd incongruity to the ragged condition and mean original
state of the remainder of her apparel, hobbled along, pausing now and
again to pick up and store safely in her apron small pieces of coal
that had been dropped from a passing wagon.
More French soldiers passed. Then a couple of British officers rode
by in the picturesque uniform of some Scotch regiment of the line.
A transport wagon rumbled by, and behind it came a young girl, with
a bucket of water on her head, smilingly exchanging banter with a
soldier of the British military police, at the corner of the street.
It was a quiet Spring afternoon, a bit overcast. Hardly to be called
lowering, and yet of a stillness that seemed ominous. A day to fit
all the mixture of folk going stolidly, carelessly, gaily, or how
they would, about their daily tasks.
No one seemed to realise that they were in Ypres--the Ypres which
had so often been shattered by shell that the poor old town could
hardly be surprised by any sort of new shell-caprice. No one saw the
rent walls and gaping holes in every other building. I wondered if
they could hear the guns! I could do so. They were hard at it every
moment, all the time, from two to three miles distant. It was the old
story of familiarity breeding contempt; or perhaps they were true
philosophers, these Ypres folk.
General de Lisle ran to Potijze, to the headquarters of General
Lefebvre, who commanded the French 18th Division. It seemed ages
since I had been in Potijze. Our headquarters were not far beyond it
in November, 1914, during the great first battle of Ypres.
On the way from Ypres along the Zonnebeke road we passed bunches of
odd little French horse transport wagons. The road was very bad. We
progressed in crawfish fashion, most of the way. The _pavé_ was torn
terribly by shell-fire, and there was sufficient mud and slime on it
to make it extremely slippery. French soldiers were billeted in the
dwellings along the road. At the edge of Potijze a dozen young boys
and girls stood outside a house.
Returning to General Gough's headquarters we "took them over," as
that night we were to relieve the 2nd Cavalry Division troopers in
the trench line.
General de Lisle and Colonel Home ran up the Menin Road a kilometre
or so, and, leaving the car, walked across the fields past the ruins
that will always bear the name of "Cavan's House."
The General told me to put the car in the shelter of a house on the
south side of the road, as shell-fire and the Menin Road were never
strangers for long. I settled down to wait until the General had
concluded his rounds of the prospective positions.
The Ypres-Menin Road will be remembered oh! so long, and oh! so well.
It saw rough times.
Field guns near by started to work, and now and then German shells
dropped in a field beyond.
The house behind which I was sheltered, in case of a stray shell,
was a one-storey affair of modest mien.
Those of its windows which were not shattered were shuttered. Half
of the roof had been shorn of its tiles. A shell had wrecked the
interior of one end of the building. A glance out of a rear door-way
showed a whole collection of shell-holes in the yard a few feet
distant.
A door that still remained in position bore four lines of legend:
"Vin a vingt
Sous la Bouteille.
Confiture, allumettes.
Bougies, chocolate."
Glancing through one of the remaining panes of a window by the
door, I saw a glass jar containing a couple of sticks of chocolate,
beside it three jars of jelly, a box of French matches, a blue paper
packet of half a dozen candles, a score of small oranges in one
box, and in another, alongside it, seven or eight very dry-looking
kippers. Peering through the partly-obscured glass one could see a
stolid-looking, red-faced, albino-haired woman.
"Business as usual," with a vengeance! Such an odd curiosity shop
as this was not to be passed without examination, so I entered and
talked to the woman.
Her whole stock-in-trade was what I had seen through the window. She
was cheerful enough, though she huddled for warmth over a fire by
which sat a despondent-looking brother. She chatted laconically about
the situation, and told me she had been there continuously throughout
the fighting. The shell that hit the building was a shrapnel and came
a month before. Shells still came near, now and again, but that fact
seemed to be accepted by her as inevitable and not to be worried
about. These people had no means of existence except the sale of
their pitiable bits of provisions. They were in daily danger of their
lives. Yet they stayed on--odd folk. Typical Belgians.
The gun-fire dropped, then began again spasmodically. I could hear
the snipers at work. In the gathering twilight the rattle of rifle
fire and the storm of the rapid-fire guns sounded clearly on the
left. A fusillade on the right reminded me that the Ypres position
was a salient. Directly in front, down that Menin Road, which had
seen the taking of so many tens of thousands of lives during the
past months, a roll of rifle fire made waves of sound.
Night fell, cold and damp. The making of a light was not permitted;
so I waited in the dark, watching the night lights rise and fall over
the trenches, until the General and Colonel Home returned, when we
ran back to Ypres for dinner.
My first four days in Ypres were uneventful. On the fifth, I went up
into the trenches, and saw more of actual trench conditions than I
had seen for some time.
Our daily round led me out on the Menin Road, well towards Hooge,
or to Potijze on the Zonnebeke Road, several times each day. Shells
went over us now and again. Rarely did a day pass when the Huns did
not bombard the railway station in Ypres. As we were quartered in the
eastern edge of the town the shells aimed at the station bothered us
but little. Sometimes a Black Maria lit on the moat wall, where we
walked at times, but we timed our exercise so that our promenade and
the arrival of the big shells never coincided. Once or twice bits of
shell fell over the Headquarters buildings, or rattled down on our
paved courtyard, but rarely.
Every morning saw Ypres wrapped in a snow mantle, which was turned
before noontide, to a coverlet of black mud. No fires were allowed,
except small wood blazes in the open, as smoke from a chimney would
have invited a shell.
One day I was searching for a shop where bolts could, once upon a
time, be purchased. As I was going down the Rue de Lille, half a
dozen shells fell near. One demolished a house but fifty yards ahead.
I took shelter in a doorway, and as I did so a Belgian of woebegone
appearance, his most characteristic feature a pair of sad, drooping,
yellow moustachios, ambled past me down the roadway, pushing a
wheelbarrow. On it were three tiny tots, all under four years old.
They cuddled together for warmth. One, round-eyed, at the crash of
the howitzer shells, was hard at work with a nursing bottle. I warned
the Belgian of impending danger, but he stolidly trudged on. Luckily,
no more shells came for a time.
The Menin Road proper was never healthy. I spent as little time on
it as consistent with the proper performance of my work. I never sat
for an hour in its vicinity, waiting for the General, that some shell
did not fall near it.
One afternoon shrapnel fell for an hour near a fork on the Menin
Road, which all sensible men gave a wide berth to when convenient.
Fifteen minutes after the bombardment died down, a procession filed
by the fork, headed for a graveyard in the direction of Hooge. A
white-robed boy, with red-tasselled black cap, led the way, bearing a
cross. Behind him came a robed priest, then an ancient, dilapidated,
one-horse hearse containing a rude, black coffin. A score of
mourners, one or two of them men, the rest women and children,
dressed in their poor best, brought up the rear.
I wondered that they ventured down that shell-swept highway. Yet many
such pathetic little processions passed along that road in those days.
I saw one _cortège_ wait for a cessation of the shelling, then
proceed slowly over the ground that had but a few minutes before been
peppered with bits of shell. It was an odd sight. A tiny lad trotted
in front under a large wooden cross painted purple. A quartette of
little boys behind him bore a rude unpainted sort of stretcher,
apparently improvised from the nearest bits of shattered timber to
hand. The coffin, resting upon this frame, was covered with a dingy
white sheet. A mother, bowed and feeble, followed the coffin. A few
youths and a handful of little girls formed the straggling _cortège_,
tramping over the snow-covered cobbles, their eyes downcast and red.
Death was no stranger in Ypres in those days, but still the Belgians
stayed on.
The wall of a ruined building, across the road from the Cloth Hall,
fell one morning with a loud crash. A column of dust arose. That many
were not injured was surprising. One woman was killed and a couple of
passing French soldiers hurt, but post-card vendors were exhibiting
their wares under an adjacent wall, equally dangerous, an hour later.
General de Lisle went personally over the whole of the line held by
his Division. The 1st Cavalry Brigade was in the front trenches for
the first five days, the 2nd Brigade in reserve. Then the 2nd Brigade
took over the trenches and the 1st Brigade came back, for the second
five days, to the dug-outs.
At points in the line the trenches were knee-deep and sometimes even
waist-deep with cold mud and water. The amount of manual labour
required to get them into better shape was enormous. New trenches had
to be dug, the old parapets strengthened, the trenches drained, and
all the while certain mining work must be pushed on at a rapid rate.
In some parts of the line the parapets of sandbags had become so thin
that a Mauser bullet could plough through them easily. The German
snipers were at one place only thirty yards distant.
The drainage of the worst bits of trench, and the laying of a sort of
corduroy road from point to point, soon made the trenches much more
habitable.
De Lisle was most thorough. Only a couple of casualties occurred
when the 1st Brigade "took over," in spite of the constant sniping.
Careful preparations of foot baths and relays of dry socks saved the
Division from the epidemic of "foot-casualties," from which some
other divisions had suffered heavily. A dozen casualties per day
were inevitable from shells and snipers. Those who had to "go up"
with food and ammunition had to cross a dangerous zone, a certain
toll being taken day and night, in some localities.
Inspecting the trench-line, when the Division had occupied it but the
night before, was a precarious business. De Lisle and General Briggs
were going over the ground when a German sniper but fifteen to twenty
yards distant opened fire. Lieutenant Bell-Irving, General Briggs'
A.D.C., received a nasty wound in the hip. He fell in the deep mud.
Colonel "Tommy" Pitman, of the 11th Hussars, jumped out into the
centre of the trench, and strove to lift Bell-Irving clear, and get
him behind the protection of a transept. The bullets flew about the
Colonel, two cutting clean through his clothing, one on either side
of his body, but he escaped unhurt, and pulled Bell-Irving into
safety.
[Illustration: The Grande Place at Ypres and the Cloth Hall, March,
1915]
[Illustration: The choir of the ruined Ypres Cathedral]
But the trouble was by no means over. A sharp fire was kept up by
the Hun snipers, which prevented the removal of Bell-Irving to
the dressing station. Captain Moriarty of the R.A.M.C. came up at
considerable risk, and advised that the wounded officer be brought
back at the earliest possible moment.
There were no means of doing this save to construct a traverse of
sandbags, behind which Bell-Irving could be carried. The work must be
done under the heavy sniping fire. The troopers of the 11th Hussars
at once set about the work with a will, and soon accomplished it, but
not before a private had been killed and a sergeant wounded by the
German marksmen.
That night a bombing party "cleared out" the district near that
transept, and made the snipers' point of vantage untenable.
Each night a splendid pyrotechnic display showed the curved outlines
of the Salient. The German trench lights were far superior to ours.
Each night, too, Ypres was full of French or British lines of
soldiers marching on in the dark to relieve some of their fellows in
the trenches outside the town.
The ruins of the Cloth Hall, and of the St. Martin Cathedral by it,
formed interesting studies for my camera. The fine mural paintings
on the walls of the roofless Grand Gallery in the Cloth Hall were
crumbling to bits. My photographs were the last records made of
them, for they fell piece by piece not long afterward.
I watched operations at a French Divisional Headquarters one evening.
It was not more than a mile back of the line. Wagons were loading,
preparatory to being taken trenchwards at dusk. Timber, thousands on
thousands of empty bags, rolls of barbed wire, odd shaped completed
wire entanglements, metal shields varying from curved sheet-steel
bastions a dozen feet in length to small V-shaped iron castings,
all manner of wooden troughs, boxes, stands, supports, periscopes,
braziers, rolls of fine wire, boxes of trench bombs and grenades,
shovels, picks, and many peculiar tools were among the collection of
material that was to find its way to the firing line. I learnt much
of the business side of trench warfare that night.
The supply of ammunition and food and its distribution are most
methodically managed by the French.
Taking up giant powder for mining operation was an item of the day's
work. A story was told by one of our sappers, of a couple of Irish
troopers who had started across the fields in front of Zillebeke as
night was falling, with a good sized load of powder in a box. Shortly
after they left Cavan's House shells fell in profusion over the route
that they had chosen. Another group started trenchward, carrying
various types of grenades. Howitzer shells were falling, front and
rear, and shrapnel bursting a few hundred yards away.
A flash and a crash came from in front.
"Them fellers with the joynt powder was like to be in that shindy,"
said a member of the second party. "Close to 'em, it was, sure."
A moment later they came upon a strange sight. There in the field,
just visible in the gathering darkness, sat the box. Behind it
reclined the two troopers, snuggling close for cover.
"What are you doin' in this 'ere peaceful spot, Dan?" questioned one
of the second party as they reached the box.
"Takin' cover the whiles we do a bit of a rest-like," was the reply.
"The divils sent wan so clost, it shure jarred the wind out av us, it
did."
And they snuggled closer to the giant powder as he spoke.
Hour by hour I watched the "75's." Their marksmanship was wonderful.
The rapidity with which the guns were served was an eye-opener. The
French gunners burst shrapnel practically over the heads of our men
in the front trenches, to cover the area twenty-five yards beyond
them. One trooper swore a French shell, aimed to worry sapping
operations by the Huns a short distance in front of our trenches,
came so close that it knocked the top sandbag off our parapet.
Certain it was that the word was frequently passed to "lie low while
the '75's' fire just above us."
My day to go up to the trenches came at last. My guide was Captain
Bretherton, the Staff Captain of the 1st Cavalry Brigade.
[Illustration: Scenes of battle of olden time in colours on the
shattered walls of Ypres Cloth Hall]
[Illustration: A communication trench leading to the front-line
position in the Sanctuary Wood]
Leaving my car at the "Halte," a point where the railway crosses the
Menin Road, and the Zillebeke Road branches off to the south, we
were soon slipping, sliding and ploughing along through the muddy
fields. We followed no particular pathway, avoiding where possible
fields where enemy shells were falling. The rotting mangel-wurzels
dotted the ground all about us. Shell-holes in thousands, positions
where French or British batteries had made a stand, trenches in
lines and circles, and barbed wire entanglements, caught my attention
at every step. Sprinkled everywhere were all manner of pieces of
projectile--from complete 6-inch German shells, unexploded, to blue
shrapnel cartridges, bright-nosed timing fuses, and jagged bits of
all shapes and sizes.
Cavan's House was but a wall, a pile of shapeless bricks and mortar
beside it. Cavan's Dug-out, a series of holes in the road bank,
roofed with sandbags, held a signal party. Every day a storm of shell
visited the spot, and Hun snipers made one wary thereabouts.
We walked on, up the roadway, our objective the Sanctuary Wood. The
bullets sang over us, and shells burst in front with a continuous
din. A path led through the scrub. Entering the wood, we passed
innumerable little individual funk holes. The trees were in splinters
and tatters. Here I saw an abandoned shirt, there a khaki cap. My
foot hit against a regulation mess tin, and as it turned I saw a
rifle-hole drilled in its bottom. Now we were ankle, now knee, deep
in sticky mud. Bullets became more plentiful overhead.
A turn down a muddy path led us through a last piece of woods,
across sloughs of slime, over a creek, up a slight slope, and there
we were at General Briggs's Brigade Headquarters. These were a line
of dug-outs in the hillside, a corduroy road winding from entrance
to entrance. A deep approach trench, looking like a drain, led one
hundred and fifty yards further to the front trenches.
Shells fell all the afternoon on our right and behind us, and the
song of the Mauser bullets never ceased. At dusk, I was "safe" back
in Ypres.
On my way back through the woods, shell-smashed, that covered the
gentle hills through which the front line trenches ran, I saw a
burial party.
I stopped a moment, and watched the laying to rest of all that was
mortal of three troopers who had paid the great price.
Their comrades placed them reverently in the shallow graves in the
soft earth of the hillside, marking each grave with a white wooden
cross bearing each hero's name, his rank, and regiment.
Oh, those rows of rude wooden crosses! What thoughts their memory
brings to mind! Gone now, many of them, ploughed under by long
months of shell-fire, or trampled under foot by the ebb and flow of
battle, as the lines have swept back and forth with the tide of war.
Gone, perhaps, from the scarred and mangled hill-sides of Flanders;
but never to go altogether from the hearts of those who knew them,
and who realised their worth.