On March 1st Captain "Babe" Nicholson, of the 15th Hussars, who had
joined General de Lisle's staff in place of Captain Cecil Howard,
16th Lancers, promoted to General Allenby's staff at Cavalry Corps
Headquarters, had to make a careful map of our trench position.
Captain Bennie Wheeler, 15th Hussars, in temporary charge of
Divisional Signals, also had duties that took him to the trench line.
As neither Captain Nicholson nor Captain Wheeler had made the
two-mile tramp across the fields and through the woods, I was
instructed to act as guide. To skirt one edge of a field was safety
of a comparative sort. To walk along its opposite edge meant dodging
snipers' bullets in plenty. To turn from the road to a path through
the scrub kept one out of sight of the Huns, while to proceed a dozen
yards beyond the turning would expose one to a fair chance of being
shot, at good range, by crack German marksmen.
Leaving our car at the Halte on the Menin Road, we essayed the route
past Cavan's House that I had travelled a couple of days before with
Bretherton.
Bang! bang! bang! bang! went a quartette of shrapnel just ahead.
"I don't think much of your route," said Nicholson.
"I'll change it with alacrity," said I. "Which way shall we go?"
"I know an old route that we followed in the days of the fighting
last autumn," Wheeler volunteered. "If we push down the Menin Road to
a point near Hooge, and then turn off, we can't get _far_ wrong."
"Lot of French were hit in Hooge yesterday," I reminded him. "The
Huns shell it two or three times every day, so best not go too close
to it."
We tramped down to the foot of the hill that led up to the ruins of
what was once Hooge, then passed through a demolished farm. For a
hundred yards, at every step, we sank knee-deep in the foul, slimy
mud.
Then we wound over trenches which were nearly inundated, and through
barbed wire entanglements that seemed to become more impassable
as they lost their original form, until at last, covered in
perspiration, we reached a dense wood.
A tiny creek ran deep through a sharp cutting, in the sheer banks
of which the French gunners had burrowed like rabbits. Battery on
battery of "75's" were hidden in the forest. Each gun was surrounded
by a little hut of mud and leaves, an aperture left for each slim,
blue-grey muzzle. We passed the first of these batteries without
seeing it. Close behind us it opened fire, causing me to jump as
if I had been shot. Before we left the wood, three other batteries
went into action about us. The din was terrific, but the sound of
the shells racing overhead was most fascinating. Each gun crew had
cleared a neat line of fire in the tree-tops in front of its position.
Over further fields and through another wood we came upon a most
picturesque cantonment. A French Infantry Brigade in reserve had
built hundreds of mud huts and dug-outs with charming ingenuity.
Dozens of veteran architects, past masters of rude shelter
construction, vied with each other in improving on previous designs.
As I took a snapshot in the dull light under the trees, the French
soldiers crowded forward in twos and threes, and smilingly invited me
to photograph their _maisons de luxe_.
Cavan's House, our landmark, we left well on our right, edging from
it the more as we saw it a very storm centre of fours and eights of
shrapnel that morning.
Snipers' bullets sang merrily above as we reached the reserve line
and Brigade Headquarters. My work as guide finished, I started back
with General de Lisle, who, having come up early in the morning, had
left his horse in the wood which sheltered the French reserves.
Mounting, the General pointed out a new route for my return, shorter
than the one by which I had come.
"Keep that rise of ground between you and the line of high ground
beyond," said de Lisle. "If you don't, the Germans will see you and
pot at you."
Crossing my first field, I seemed to be well in the line of
spent bullets, as several kicked up the dirt in the front of me
sufficiently close to make me imagine myself the target. I lost
little time for the first few hundred yards.
A maze of reserve trenches and wire pulled me up short. The only path
through was a quagmire. Safe beyond at last, I started collecting
German timing fuses, which lay thick on the surface of the muddy
field.
Not far on my left was a ruined farm. The sun came out amid the
swiftly-moving clouds. "A splendid example of what shells can do to a
group of buildings," I thought. "I must get a picture of the piles of
_débris_."
I circled the smashed houses, took my picture, replaced my camera in
its case, and turned to look sunward, as the clouds had cast a dull
shadow all about me. An open bit of blue was racing toward the spot
where the sun was hidden. Should I wait for it and essay a further
snapshot?
As my eyes sought the sun, a bright flash in front of me, in my very
line of sight, almost blinded me. A deafening explosion and the whirr
of scores of shrapnel bullets was followed by another flash. Crash!
The second shell seemed nearer than the first.
The pluck! pluck! pluck! flop! of bits of projectile striking in
the soft mud all about me came from every side. Little spurts of mud
and water were thrown up close around me. I imagined I could feel
the breath of passing shrapnel bullets. A bit of stick hit me in the
face, and a gob of black mud landed squarely over my mouth.
So many mud-spurts threw up in front of me, on my right, and on my
left, it seemed to me impossible I had escaped being hit.
I must have been in the very vortex of the shell's storm-centre.
Turning, thanking God I had so miraculously escaped when death had
seemed so near, I dashed off as fast as I could run, heading blindly
for the general direction of the Menin Road.
Fear lent wings to my feet as I realised I had, in my interest in
my photography, advanced into plain sight of the line of heights of
which General de Lisle had warned me.
I had not run a dozen steps when I thought of my heavy load, in
pockets and hands, of shell heads. I tossed them away as I leaped on,
tempted for a moment to hurl my camera after them.
Bang! Crash! Behind me came a second pair of shells, whose coming I
had dreaded every second. To my delight, but one or two bullets came
my way.
"I am gaining," I thought.
Bang! bang! another two burst overhead, throwing their deadly
contents beyond me in the direction in which I was running.
I ducked to the right and ran diagonally to the Hun line of fire.
Panting, I struck a deep bog. In I went before I realised it lay in
my path. In a twinkling I was in a pretty mess. My feet sank deep in
the slime and ooze. It took great effort to raise them. Well over my
knees in mud, I felt trapped, but struggled on.
At last I trod on firmer bottom, and soon was racing away at much
better speed.
Crash! Bang! I could see over my shoulder that the last two arrivals
had burst over the muck through which I had just floundered, throwing
spurts of liquid mud high in the air.
The Hun gunners were gradually increasing their range, though I was
well out of sight of them.
My breath came in great sobs, but I dared not slacken.
Bang! Bang! Two fell behind me again, but not so near. That
encouraged my flagging footsteps, and I jog-trotted on, until at
last the Menin Road was before me. Reaching it, I laid down, utterly
exhausted. The shells continued to burst nearer and nearer the road,
and came in fours after the first half-dozen couples, twenty-four
shrapnel having been fired in all.
Two British gunners, attached to a siege battery near by, hurried
past me as I lay recuperating.
"Bad place to be, this," said one of them. "They shell this bit
of road every day about this time. Those two holes were made
yesterday"--pointing to two cavities not ten feet from me.
So I pulled myself to my feet and pushed on for "home," arriving
safely enough, though completely tired out and literally plastered
with mud.
As I was resting at Headquarters, one of the Staff told me I had
"missed some fun" while "out front." Six Black Marias had landed
on the earthen wall of the moat, not many yards from our brewery
quarters, "shaking things up a bit," but fortunately hitting no one.
Examining my camera, I discovered, to my great chagrin, that the
shutter had been inadvertently set at "time" when I took the snapshot
of the ruined farm, away from which I retired in such a hurry. So
I missed getting the picture which cost me such a strenuous race
against the shells. As a solace, my photographs of the French
reserves in the wood, and of our Brigade Headquarters, came out quite
satisfactorily.
Shells fell not far from our Divisional Headquarters next day. More
than once the signals-men brought in pieces of shrapnel, quite hot,
that fell in the courtyard, which from that time began to lose its
popularity as a lounging-place for waiting orderlies.
A run to Hooge, and a wait there in a dug-out while the Huns threw
a dozen shells about it, was made memorable to me by Nicholson's
reconstruction of a bit of the fighting over that ground in November,
1914.
Nicholson had been with the 1st Infantry Division--a Division that
had Haig for a leader. At the beginning of the War it had come out
14,000 odd strong. In six months its total list of casualties had
reached 34,000.
In the first battle of Ypres its battalions had suffered cruelly. The
1st Coldstreams had been annihilated. The Queen's (West Surreys) came
out of the line with but fifteen men and no officers, the Black Watch
with but sixty men and one officer, and the Loyal North Lancashires
with but 150 men and two officers. When the Division came back to
billets, it was commanded by a brigadier-general. Every colonel
in the division had been killed or wounded, and the brigades were
commanded by officers of all ranks. A captain was in command of one
brigade.
It was in front of Hooge, between that town and Gheluvelt, that most
of the heaviest losses of the 1st Division were suffered.
Nicholson had seen some of it. One night the Prussian Guard broke
through the line on the Menin Road. Nicholson's squadron of the 15th
Hussars, acting as Divisional Cavalry, were sent to stop the gap.
Forty troopers and forty cyclists, eighty rifles all told, went up.
They had no trenches, as the Prussians held our original position.
So they lay in a sunken road near the Herenthage Château. The Germans
occupied a wood sixty yards away, though neither force knew of the
whereabouts of the other until dawn.
Nicholson sought out General Fitzclarence, commanding the 1st
Brigade, in the dark. Most of Fitzclarence's Brigade had been
killed. Efforts to clear up the situation had borne little result.
Every messenger he had sent out for information had been killed.
Fitzclarence said five brigades were to be sent to him, with which
he was to counter-attack. The five brigades came, and were found
to total 1,000 men all told. Yet with the remnants of his force
Fitzclarence counter-attacked at dawn. Though he himself was killed,
his wonderful men won through. The position was recaptured, and Ypres
saved.
A glorious page in the annals of the British Army, though it cost
England men who were indeed hard to replace.
Our 1st Cavalry Division had come into the line that night, and
supplied the reinforcements without which the exhausted troops could
not have held on much longer.
Consequently the ground over which those heroic battles had been
fought was of fascinating interest to those of us who had seen the
most strenuous struggle of the War.
"As to the losses of the enemy," Nicholson told me, "I once scouted
the wood in front of us. It was a terrible sight. In many places
among the trees I could not set my foot without stepping on a dead
German."
But the work of Haig and his super-men had been crowned with success.
We had held the Ypres Salient, and were still holding it--a glorious
record.
On the morning of March 3rd Nicholson found it necessary to go once
more over the line of our front trenches to verify his map. I was to
go with him.
Rain fell all morning, and we splashed over the cross-country route
to Brigade Headquarters and the reserve line without incident, bar
snipers and itinerant shells, most of which sang over our heads on
their way toward Ypres.
One portion of the approach trench leading to the firing-line was
so narrow that "Jeff" Hornby, of the 9th Lancers, A.D.C. to General
Mullens, waded through it at my heels, "to see the President (my
sobriquet) get stuck fast"
In spite of the rain, I procured a sufficient number of photographs
to show trench life as no written description could picture it.
The top of the hill was cut and seamed with trenches at all angles,
some narrow, some wide. The trench walls had been in a few places
reinforced with tree trunks, though, for the most part, from two to
half a dozen rows of sandbags served as protection. The line was
rarely straight for more than a few yards.
The troopers in the front trenches were either standing about, near
machine-gun or rifle, engaged in cleaning kit or accoutrement, or
sleeping in one of the tiny shelters that lined the trench sides at
the rear.
The fact that there was no uniformity to the trenches as to height,
width, or direction made caution necessary as we wound along them.
Expediency was the law that governed their original construction, and
experience the guide as to their alteration and development.
[Illustration: Officers of Lancers in their dug-outs in the
front-line trenches]
[Illustration: A dug-out in front of Zillebeke]
Loop-holes covered with bits of sacking were marked by pieces of
paper pinned above, warning occupants not to tarry in the line of
German fire.
By periscope we could see the Hun trenches, not many yards distant,
and dozens of dead Germans lying between the two lines. The smoke
from the enemy's cooking fires rose slowly in the damp atmosphere.
At corners, cautions to "keep down" were posted. Snipers' bullets,
heralded by a sharp bark and twanging musically, kept me down without
much warning.
A German sniper's position was pointed out to me, and I had some good
rifle practice endeavouring to dislodge him, but with questionable
success. The Hun riflemen had learned to lie very low in front of our
troopers.
We passed one of the 4th Dragoon Guards' marksmen, his eye along the
barrel of his rifle as it lay in a loop-hole. As we came up he fired.
"Got him?" asked Nicholson.
"No," laconically answered the sharpshooter. "Got one this morning,
though, sir. And I hope we are not shifted out of this for a day or
so, as there are a couple more of the beggars I'll get if I'm given a
bit of time."
Seeing a trooper of the 9th Lancers whom I had known since the Great
Retreat, I asked him how much longer his squadron was booked to be in
the front trench.
"Only twenty-four hours or so," was the reply. "But we could stick
this sort of thing for a week and not kick. They're behavin'
themselves much better as they go on," and he grinned as he nodded
his head at the German trench. "They're learnin'."
Now and then an enemy marksman sent a bullet through a loophole in
front of us or behind us as we proceeded down the line, until we
learned to pass these danger spots without loitering.
Once we found it necessary to double back along a shallow trench a
few yards behind the main parapet. The ditch we traversed was deep
with cold water, which ran over the tops of my high boots.
The damage to the trees was so extensive that shells might be said to
have literally cleared away the forest in some localities.
In spite of water in the trenches, the men were cheerily comfortable,
many of them gathering around glowing brasiers or cuddling close to
the wall of a cosy dug-out.
An enforced detour nearly landed us in an impasse. We had taken the
wrong turning. The trench parapet became lower, the trench narrower,
and the cold water deeper. Pressed for time, we pushed on. At last
Nicholson, who was leading, saw an angle of front line trench ahead,
and ran for it. I followed. Bullets sang overhead as the Huns got a
glimpse of us, but we ducked low and splashed through for dear life
in record time.
Nicholson became so interested in a view through a periscope that
I took a picture of him while thus engaged. A genial acquaintance
in the line offered to get a similar photograph of me. So I took
the periscope, waving it slightly back and forth, and carefully
inspecting the German trench forty yards distant. I detected a
movement on the enemy side of the line. Steadying my periscope, I
focussed my attention on the moving object.
As I did so, "Ping! smash!" came a bullet right through the top of my
periscope.
"A clean bull," said Nicholson, beside me. "Are you hit?"
I had been about to call his attention, when the sniper scored, with
the result that a shower of broken glass fell into my open mouth.
I was in great fear of swallowing some of it. Nicholson, seeing me
dance about and spying a fleck of blood on my lip, thought I had been
hit in the mouth by a glancing bullet.
He proffered help, I prancing about, gesticulating that I was all
right, spitting out glass, but afraid to speak until I had cleared
the last piece of broken mirror. The Captain entirely misunderstood
my dumb show, and we caused some merriment among the troopers near by
until I managed to eject the final bit and could explain that I was
not in the least hurt.
When I learned that one officer had suffered a badly cut eyeball,
threatening the loss of his sight, and another had been seriously
wounded in the jaw and neck by just such an incident as the one I had
experienced, I was thankful to have escaped injury.
The "trench stoop" was astonishingly fatiguing. Covered from head
to foot with yellow sticky mud, and very tired, we started to walk
to the Menin Road. The snipers were more alert than usual, and more
than one close call kept me from thinking of my weariness. Before we
reached our car the German batteries shelled madly at the very point
we were to pass, but considerately stopped firing by the time we
approached the spot where the shells were falling.
One morning "Mouse" Tomkinson and Hardress Lloyd had walked down
to Zillebeke, where folk rarely went in the daytime, to inspect
some of the graves in the Zillebeke churchyard. Hardress Lloyd's
brother-in-law, Colonel Wilson, of the Blues, was buried there.
I promised Captain Lloyd that if I could get off to do so, I would go
down to Zillebeke and take a photograph of Colonel Wilson's grave.
Hearing of my projected trip, Lord Loch, who was at that time
G.S.O. 1, on the staff of General Bulfin, commanding 28th Division,
asked "Babe" Nicholson to obtain for him, if possible, a picture of
the grave of Lieutenant Gordon-Lennox, which is also in Zillebeke.
Hardress Lloyd and Tomkinson told us they had been seen in the
churchyard by the German artillery observers, who had commenced
shelling. I was warned, therefore, that any photography I wished to
do in that locality must needs be done quickly.
On March 4th Nicholson and I set out to obtain the desired
pictures. I stopped on the way, at a cemetery on the Menin Road,
and took a photograph of the graves of three officers of the 10th
Hussars--Captain Annesley, Lieutenant Drake, and Captain Peto--who
had fallen in the first battle of Ypres.
Zillebeke was lonely. On one edge of it a couple of signal corps
men were laying a wire. Otherwise the town, which was in ruins, was
deserted.
We kept under cover of the houses as much as possible. I obtained a
good snapshot of the damaged church, and then took some pictures in
the graveyard, which was torn with great shell-holes.
"Remember what Hardress said about the Huns being able to see us
here," I said to Nicholson. "Let's get out of it."
We started. No sooner were we under cover of the first cluster of
smashed houses than four shrapnel shells burst right over the _pavé_
roadway, not fifty yards ahead of us.
[Illustration: The Zillebeke Church, March, 1915]
[Illustration: German prisoners in Ypres, captured after the
explosion of a British mine near Hooge]
I dodged into a house, the walls of which, minus roof, were still
standing at drunken angles. Doorless and windowless, the house seemed
to offer little protection.
"I don't like going up that road over the hill," said I. "We will be
in sight of the Huns for some distance. I wonder if this house boasts
a cellar?"
Examination showed a cellar existed, but it was nearly full of water.
"I guess the cellar steps provide the best roosting-place," was my
conclusion. "Me for the lowest one for a bit. Won't you share it with
me?"
"I don't like it," replied Nicholson. "We will be much better out of
it. Let's go."
We argued the various possibilities, but Nicholson was so strongly in
favour of departure that I acquiesced, and we started away.
We had gone about one hundred feet when a series of crashes close
behind us quickened my pace. Nicholson turned and looked. I called to
him, and he again came on.
As he came up he said: "Did you see where that lot landed?" "No," I
answered. "Too close to suit me, but just where I didn't notice."
"It interested me," said he, as we pushed on, "because all four of
those shells exploded in that rickety old house in which you were so
keen on taking cover. But little would be left of us by now had we
stayed, for the poor building collapsed like a house of cards."
The Germans shelled the road vigorously as we kept on, but luckily
the shrapnel fell behind us, and we were soon back in Ypres.
That day saw the German gunners increase their shelling all along the
Ypres front. The trenches occupied by our division were vigorously
bombarded, and several casualties reported. Ypres itself came in for
a heavy share of the Hun "hate." The windows rattled and our house
shivered as the howitzer shells smashed into all quarters of the town.
De Lisle visited the trench line, and both there and on his way back
across the fields the shells fell very close to him. As he entered
the headquarters house on his return, he said: "From what I can see,
most of the big ones are falling at least four or five hundred yards
from us thus far, but they may shell us out of this at any time."
The General suggested I should take a stroll with him along the
moat wall and watch the trend of the bombardment. As we walked along
the ramparts, the projectiles screamed overhead in dozens, seemingly
coming continually closer. The rumph! r-r-r-rumph! as they exploded
shook the high wall and made the whole city rock with the concussion.
The Rue de Lille was rendered impassable that day.
General Plumer called, and after his departure I again started for a
stroll on the ramparts. The shells searching for our batteries just
across the moat were a fascinating sight. As I ran up the steep path,
however, a crash came just ahead, and bits of metal showered about,
striking sharply against the trees beside the path. My curiosity
evaporated instantly, and I came down faster than I had gone up.
As dusk came, I took Major Fitzgerald to Hooge, from whence he went
through a wood to the trenches to make the final arrangements for the
explosion of a mine--the construction of which had been worked upon
feverishly for some days--that all might be completed and the mine
fired on that night, our last one in the trenches. The French, who
were to relieve us, had also constructed a mine on our left, and the
two were to be discharged at an interval of five minutes.
First the French mine was to be fired at 7·45 p.m., and 7·50 to the
tick of the watch was to be the time for the explosion of our mine,
less than a hundred yards away from the French one.
I was seldom in Hooge when it was not shelled, and that evening was
no exception. The French had built safe dug-outs under the buildings
still left standing. The château was completely ruined, as were most
of the houses in the village.
As I was being entertained by a French officer, who produced a glass
of splendid red wine, some thirty shells burst over us, most of them
of the 210-millimetre type. One of them knocked off a corner of the
building behind which I had sheltered my car.
Never was a locality more offensive to one's olfactory nerves than
Hooge. It fairly reeked with all manner of various noxious smells.
The English language contains words of too mild a character to allow
a description of that feature of Hooge.
The front line was less than a kilometre distant. Rifle fire swelled
and died away in long, rattling breaths. I became so accustomed to
the punctuation of my conversation with shell-smashes and periods
of heightened din from small arms and machine-guns that, when all
would die down suddenly for an instant, the stillness felt ominously
oppressive. The next spasm of sound came as a relief to the uncanny
moments of twilight silence.
A French engineer officer joined us. He told us General Lefebvre, the
French General in command of that section of the Salient, had issued
most elaborate written instructions for the joint explosion of the
two mines. The French mine, he said, had been ready for two or three
days, its charge lying at the end of a tunnel but two metres from the
German trench.
The hour for the discharge of the French mine came, but no sound or
shock of explosion came with it. The hands of the Allied watches,
carefully synchronised, crept round to 7·50, then to 7·55.
Just before eight o'clock a huge bang was heard by the British sapper
who was waiting in his tunnel, ready to fire his mine.
"At last," he murmured. "Now I must count off the five minutes to the
second."
A squadron of the Queen's Bays was ready to rush into the enemy's
trench. Ten of them, the forward storming party, were waiting in a
saphead.
One, two, three, four, and at last, _five_.
Boom!
The whole earth seemed thrown skyward. The shock was terrific. Nearly
one thousand pounds of blasting powder had tossed fifty yards of
German trench, not two hundred feet in front of our line, high in air.
The great smash came as a complete surprise to the Huns, but, alas!
an equal surprise to French and British.
The explosion which the British sapper, in his tunnel dug-out, had
mistaken for the discharge of the French mine, had been a huge German
_minenwerfer_, or trench-bomb, thrown by a trench-howitzer.
The French mine, inexplicably delayed, had not been fired.
For a moment confusion reigned. Three men of the half-score Queen's
Bays in the storming party were hurt. One suffered a broken arm, and
the others, hurled aside by the unexpected explosion of our own mine,
were badly bruised and strained.
In an instant, however, every man in the line realised what had
occurred, and the Bays went forward with a yell, occupying about
fifty yards of German first-line trench and the gaping crater left by
the mine.
Fortifying the captured position and installing therein a couple of
machine-guns, they met the enemy's counter-attacks staunchly.
For three hours and a half they kept the ground won, but at last were
bombed out. The Huns threw hundreds of grenades among them, while our
poor supply of trench-bombs ran out in but a few minutes.
I chatted with the remnants of the storming party when they came
back. Many gruesome tales they told. One German soldier was blown
high in the air, over a fringe of trees, and found some distance back
of our front line, quite 150 yards from his own trench.
A trooper noticed a movement near a pile of timber, earth, and
sandbags. Peering through the dim light, he saw a hand waving about
aimlessly. Grasping it, he pulled with a will. A comrade assisted,
and soon they unearthed a buried German.
The prisoner was a funny little fellow--a stocky Wurtemburger in
green corduroys and a knitted helmet. When rescued, he lapsed into
unconsciousness for an hour. He had been through the first battle of
Ypres, he said later, in which he was the only one of his regiment
to escape death or a wound. Blown high in air, very, very high, it
seemed to him, he felt a great mass of _débris_ fall upon him.
He told us, in a spirit of resignation to his fate, that to have
lived through the October and November fighting on the Menin Road,
and be thrown skyward by a mine, then buried, and still live,
entitled him, he thought, to spend the rest of the War, without
disgrace, in an enemy prison.
The French exploded their mine at one o'clock in the morning, and by
daybreak the 1st Cavalry Division had "turned over" to them, and was
on its way back from Ypres to billets in a more quiet locality.
Motor 'buses moved the men back, as they had brought the dismounted
troopers up. The long lines of London 'buses, with khaki-painted
windows, rendering their interior lighting barely visible, looked odd
in the black Ypres streets. No outside lights were permitted.
To hear one bell, see the dark shape of the clumsy vehicle slow down,
then hear the two bells that signalled departure, next the grinding
crunch of gears, and finally, to see the ghostly 'bus slide forward
in the night, brought strange parodies of London memories.
General de Lisle had planned to leave Ypres at twelve noon on March
5th. We left half an hour earlier, by chance. Next day we learned
that ten minutes after our departure a Black Maria struck the very
building we had occupied during our ten days' stay in Ypres, blowing
the back of it through its front, and generally demolishing the
premises.
One day, subsequently, I visited the house to learn if so strange
a coincidence of timely evacuation was true, and found that the
story was correct in every detail. The interior of the place was one
mass of smashed walls and partitions, the _débris_ bulging from the
doors and windows of the front of the building, which still remained
practically intact.
The handling of the Division during its occupation of the Ypres
trenches reflected great credit on General de Lisle.
We left our trenches in much better shape than that in which we had
found them. Some casualties were inevitable, but the total number of
men killed was only eleven during the ten days, a low percentage when
the strength of the Division, not far short of 2,500 rifles in the
line, was considered.
At daybreak on the morning of March 10th the British attack was
launched which was to become known to history as the battle of Neuve
Chapelle.
For several days the weather had been cold, raw and damp. On some
days it rained and blustered, while at night snow fell, and the wind
howled unceasingly. The morning of the 9th dawned clear and cold, the
stormy weather having been driven away by a hard frost. The Tommies
in the trench line were treated to every vagary of the treacherous
climate of Flanders in March.
My car indulged in periodical attacks of the dumps and finally
became a nuisance. Accordingly I ran to Sailly, where the Canadian
Divisional Headquarters were located, and sought the Divisional
Repair Park, which proved to be at Merville. On the 8th I left the
car in the hands of the Canadian boys for a few days' repair. On the
Canadian front I learned from an acquaintance of a projected attack
of considerable magnitude, spurring me on toward getting my car in
runnable shape at the earliest possible moment.
On March 9th, in Merville, I saw Sir Douglas Haig's Special Order to
the First Army, issued that day, which read as follows:--
"We are about to engage the enemy under very favourable
conditions. Until now in the present campaign, the British Army
has, by its pluck and determination, gained victories against
an enemy greatly superior both in men and guns. Reinforcements
have made us stronger than the enemy in our front. Our guns are
now both more numerous than the enemy's are and also larger than
any hitherto used by any army in the field. Our Flying Corps has
driven the Germans from the air.
"On the Eastern Front, and to the South of us, our Allies have
made marked progress and caused enormous losses to the Germans,
who are, moreover, harassed by internal troubles and shortage
of supplies, so that there is little prospect at present of big
reinforcements being sent against us here.
"In front of us we have only one German Corps, spread out on a
front as large as that occupied by the whole of our Army (the
First).
"We are now about to attack with about forty-eight battalions
a locality in that front which is held by some three German
battalions. It seems probable, also, that for the first day
of the operations the Germans will not have more than four
battalions available as reinforcements for the counter-attack.
Quickness of movement is therefore of first importance to enable
us to forestall the enemy and thereby gain success without severe
loss.
"At no time in this war has there been a more favourable moment
for us, and I feel confident of success. The extent of that
success must depend on the rapidity and determination with which
we advance.
"Although fighting in France, let us remember that we are
fighting to preserve the British Empire and to protect our homes
against the organised savagery of the Germany Army. To ensure
success, each one of us must play his part, and fight like men
for the honour of Old England."
In the evening when I returned to 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters
I found the servants packing. My servant said on my arrival, "Your
kit is ready, sir. We are to shift out of this at six o'clock in the
morning. A big push is on."
The Cavalry was to "stand by," in case the infantry attack succeeded
and a hole was made in the German line.
The guns began before daylight, and hundreds of them, with an
amplitude of ammunition, made a pandemonium.
I begged a ride in a G.H.Q. car and found myself during the forenoon
near the headquarters of General Davies of the 8th Division.
Not many days before, General de Lisle had called at Estaires, and
we had been hospitably given lunch by General Davies, when we had
learned something of the general topography of the line on the 8th
Division front. The ground in that sector was so water-logged and
soft that it did not admit of the construction of a trench line such
as we had held in the Ypres Salient. Each small point of vantage to
the east of Laventie--a house here, or a rise of ground there--had
been made into miniature forts by the British or the Germans. A
trench line proper existed, but consisted, from the nature of the
terrain, of trench-works and parapets of sandbags, all above ground.
These were less impregnable than a trench line in solid ground, and
could much more easily be demolished by shell-fire.
The road from Estaires to La Bassée, on the morning of March 10th,
was full of advancing troops and returning wounded. General Davies'
headquarters were said to be at Rouge Croix, not far west of the town
of Neuve Chapelle.
I did not go as far as the cross roads at Rouge Croix, as that point
was under heavy German shell-fire.
Little could I see except the enemy's shells, and still less could I
learn. That the 8th Division had taken the front line German trenches
was common rumour.
Finally a wounded subaltern, a mere boy, came back, hysterically
cheerful in spite of a nasty wound in his arm. He belonged to the
25th Brigade--Lincolns, Dorsets, Rifle Brigade and Wiltshires.
"We took Neuve Chapelle," he said. "Many casualties? Yes, plenty. You
see, we had orders to take the bally town at all costs, and we did
it!"
He was sure his fellows had the ridge that commanded Aubers, and had
heard that our men on the right had reached a point a couple of miles
beyond La Bassée. Cheerful lad, that. Neither the Auber Ridge nor
La Bassée was to be ours, but it was not for lack of his sort. He
and his kind, with the men behind them that fought that day at Neuve
Chapelle, could have taken Aubers and Lille beyond it had someone not
blundered that 10th of March.
Weeks passed before the occurrences of that fateful day were
made clear to me. Every sort of rumour was afloat. On the 10th
and the 11th I was between Merville (where General Haig had his
headquarters), Estaires and Laventie, but no one seemed to know in
those days as to just why things had gone so badly when the promise
of success had been so great.
Later I knew.
General Haig had been quite reasonably correct in his estimate of the
enemy's strength. Our chance to break through the German line was the
finest opportunity of the whole war.
That, with such odds in our favour, with a preponderance of guns and
shells as well, we should have so signally failed, and lost over
18,000 men into the bargain, required some explanation.
The tragedy of Neuve Chapelle was a failure to take advantage of an
initial success. The 25th Brigade, with the 23rd Brigade on its left,
nobly did the work assigned to it. It took Neuve Chapelle itself, and
reached the position it had hoped to reach. The 24th Brigade was to
come up, through the 23rd and 25th Brigades, and as it advanced, the
20th Brigade, on its left, was to move forward. Still to the left of
the 20th Brigade the 21st Brigade was in readiness, and on its left
the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, which had been put into the trenches
previously occupied by the 20th Brigade, to free that command for the
attack.
Thus, once the preliminary ground-clearing was done by the 23rd and
25th Brigades on the right, and the town of Neuve Chapelle was taken,
the 24th Brigade was to come on and form the right of a line composed
of itself, the 20th and 21st Brigades, which were to pivot on the
Northamptonshire Yeomanry and sweep over the Auber Ridge.
On the left of the Yeomanry waited the 22nd Brigade, ready to jump
forward the moment this swinging movement had developed.
The initial success won, the whole line waited, eyes on the right,
for the signal to go on. Before nine o'clock in the morning all was
ready, and the road cleared.
All day the watchers waited in vain.
It was after four o'clock in the afternoon before the word came.
It was then too late.
The great opportunity had been lost, and lost for ever.
The Germans had rallied, filled farms with machine-guns, and mowed
down the gallant 23rd and 25th Brigades men who had so dearly won
such splendidly advanced positions.
The 24th Brigade had come on part way, then concentrated, and was
sadly cut up. That the line on the right had "dug-in," instead of
moving forward, had resulted in a defeat when a great victory was
within grasp.
And who was to blame?
A Brigade commander and the General in command of the artillery of
a certain division were promptly "Stellenbosched." A divisional
commander was reported sent home; his case reopened when he declared
the fault was not his, as could be proven by certain hitherto
unproduced papers from corps headquarters. A further inquiry resulted
in his being reinstated. His corps commander went to England.
"Sent home," said many. Shortly afterwards, back he came, to the
discomfiture of the prophets, and took up his old command.
Who was to blame?
It is too early to tell. Let the writers of the future dig the story
out of the tangled orders of the day, as between corps and division,
division and brigade.
No battle of such magnitude could be won without fine Staff work, and
the work of more than one staff on that 10th of March left much to be
desired.
One thing cannot be gainsaid. The men in the ranks fought like
heroes. Nothing that men could do was left undone by them.
One officer who saw as much of Neuve Chapelle, and knew as much
of the tragedy as any one man said to me: "The word 'concentrate'
caused all the trouble. The troops that might so easily have come on
had orders to concentrate along a certain road. That was the root
of the mix-up. They concentrated, dug-in, and waited for orders, in
accordance with their instructions. Those instructions did not come
until half past four in the afternoon. The whole day had been wasted.
The time had flown, and the great opportunity with it."
The cavalry would have had a fine part to play had all gone well.
The 2nd Cavalry Division was drawn up back of Estaires, the 3rd
Cavalry Division in the Forest of Nieppe, and the 1st Cavalry
Division was ready at its billets. A hole in the German line meant a
strong push through by the three cavalry divisions.
On the right of the 7th and 8th Divisions the Indian Corps had hard
fighting, the day of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. The Gurkhas, one
of their officers told me, took a wood, lost it, took it a second
time, lost it again, and a third time took it, only to be driven out
at last owing to the fact that no support was available.
On a visit to Bethune one day I heard dozens of stories of the fierce
fighting on March 10th, on the 2nd Division front, where one Brigade
lost twenty-five officers and seven hundred men in an abortive attack.
But the interest centred around the 8th Division fighting, that
began so well, then hung fire until the Germans recovered from the
demoralization of the smashing blow.
How utter was that demoralization we learned later from "agents"
near Lille and Tournai. The Germans were actually "on the run" that
morning, and pressing forward would have indubitably borne results
that would have loomed large in the trend of events.
On March 15th, the 1st Cavalry Division was called out at dawn, and
placed in support of the 27th Division at St. Eloi. Just before six
o'clock on the evening of the 14th, the Huns had fired a mine at
St. Eloi, and then poured a rain of high explosive shells over our
trenches for half an hour. The howitzer shells exploded so rapidly,
that one continuous roar ensued, the separate detonations being with
difficulty distinguished.
The moment the German guns stopped their fusilade, the German
infantry rushed forward, the attack developing all along the 5th
Corps front. St. Eloi itself, the southern re-entrant of the Ypres
Salient, was soon in enemy hands.
By two o'clock on the morning of the 15th, a British counter-attack
was launched. By daybreak each force held some part of St. Eloi, and
the fighting grew fierce and fiercer. By night all the town was in
British hands save one point, a mound which had been transformed into
a kind of fort by the enemy.
During that fighting, the 4th Battalion Rifle Brigade was sent up
to take a section of trench out of which one of the other 27th
Division Battalions had been shelled. Once before, within the hour,
another battalion had essayed to recapture the lost position, and had
"retired" in considerable confusion.
The Rifle Brigade set its teeth and started for the hottest part of
the fray.
"You must cross that road," its commander was told, "though Heaven
only knows how anyone can get across it alive."
Sixteen Hun machine-guns were playing on the open space over which
the battalion must pass.
Over it they went. In less than sixty seconds eleven officers and two
hundred and fifty men were down, but the rest pushed on.
They reached the trench, some of them, cleared out the Huns with the
cold steel, and consolidated the position--a splendid performance.
The 5th Corps made good the ground the Germans had won without
calling on the 1st Cavalry Division troops for assistance, and thus
ended the last chance of our Division for active fighting during the
month of March.
Inspections in the Flemish mud, bright sunshine and spring zephyrs
one day, and snow the next, and more than once snow and sunshine
alternating throughout the span of a day, marked the passing of the
month.
Paris, Calais, St. Omer, Estaires, Lillers, Merville and Hazebrouck
were visited by enemy airmen as the days went by, and bombs dropped,
but without much damage to lives or property.
"The Huns don't care whether or not they hit anything," said one sage
"sub." "They only want to show Sir Douglas Haig they have a copy of
that March 10th Order of his wherein he said 'Our Flying Corps has
driven the Germans from the air.'"
On March 25th I spent the morning in Bailleul at 2nd Corps and 3rd
Corps Headquarters.
The Staffordshire Brigade of the North Midland Territorial Division
marched past to the music of their fine brass band, drawn up in the
square--the first band I had seen or heard since leaving England
seven months before. Crowds of soldiers and officers flocked to hear
it and see the sturdy Terriers march by with swinging step. They
created a splendid impression.
The next day my work was to take General Lowe and General Lumley
over the path of the early fighting in Flanders--from Meteren through
Bailleul to Armentières, thence to the line on the Ploegsteert Hill
and through the Ploegsteert Wood.
We stopped in the town of Ploegsteert, where, in the churchyard,
General Lumley's son, a gallant young officer in the 11th Hussars,
was buried.
The boy had been killed on October 17th, when our Division was trying
to force a way across the River Lys. At Le Touquet Lieutenant Lumley
was reconnoitring a position preparatory to an advance when a German
sniper's bullet struck him.
As the General visited his son's grave I learned from townsfolk how
things had fared with them.
Months before the 1st Cavalry Division had been the first British
contingent to enter Ploegsteert. The people told me of the severe
shelling the town had suffered, though the shattered church and a
black hole where the principal _estaminet_ once stood were surrounded
by many other evidences of the damage of the Hun gun-fire.
"We have been here through it all," said an old lady whose French had
a heavy Flemish accent. "We go into the cellars when the bombardment
begins, and when it ends we come out and go about our work. What else
could we do?"
Some townsfolk had been hit, but none killed, they said. The merry
baker, whose brown bread had been so greatly enjoyed by our mess, had
been hit by shrapnel bullet a few weeks before and killed. His wife
was running the bakery still, though in but a small way, she said,
sadly.
The Bois de Ploegsteert and the line in its vicinity was much the
same as when our Division had left it months before. The wood was
perhaps a little more smashed, the château a bit more flattened.
Our batteries fired regularly as we walked about, their shells
whirring over our heads without eliciting a single reply shot from
the Huns.
Down the corduroy roads through the Ploegsteert Wood and to its
trench-line, where the men were far from uncomfortable, the path
seemed sufficiently familiar to have been there for years instead of
months.
Next day, the 27th, my work took me still further afield. General de
Lisle, with General Briggs and General Mullens and one or two members
of their staffs, were to walk over the reserve line of trenches from
in front of Kemmel to Dickebusch. One of General Smith-Dorrien's
Staff officers was to accompany them.
Dismounting from the cars at the Station Inn, on the Neuve
Eglise-Kemmel Road, the party headed for the reserve trenches. I was
instructed to convoy the other cars in the party to a spot on the
Ypres side of Dickebusch.
"Don't stop at the cross-roads," said Captain Walker of the 2nd Army
Staff. "The Germans shell the cross-roads two or three times every
day. It's best to run up the Vlamertinghe Road a couple of hundred
yards and wait there. You are not so likely to be hit."
Past Dranoutre and Locre, and thence through La Clytte and Dickebusch
my route led. Familiar ground of months past, every inch of it. Here
and there fields had been ploughed well by shell-fire, and many once
familiar buildings along the way had been shattered or destroyed. It
was uncanny to find that more than one spot which I had in former
days selected as a daily stand for the car had become a great gaping
hole dug by a huge howitzer shell.
Huts beside the road teemed with Tommies.
As I entered La Clytte I well remembered my last day there, in
November, 1914. Major Steele, of the R.A.M.C., and Captain Baron Le
Jeune, a French liaison officer, both of them popular members of the
1st Cavalry Division Headquarters Staff, had been killed in La Clytte
by the same shell. Another shell had that day gone close over General
de Lisle and me as we were leaving the town.
Picking my way past a clumsy farm wagon, I thought of those days of
"close calls." I was thankful no shells had fallen near me _that_
morning.
As I drew past the cross-road in La Clytte, however, a scream sounded
over my head, and a shell burst in the field not one hundred feet
beyond me.
I was off like a flash, abandoning all thought of saving my car from
the rough bumping over the broken _pavé_. It seemed weird, that lone
shell, so close to me in La Clytte. No more came, or at least, if
they did so, I did not hear them, and I soon passed Dickebusch.
A two hours' wait in snow and sun and snow again saw the arrival of
General de Lisle, and we were promptly off for "home."
Such days were fair samples of my work until March winds had ceased
to blow, and April, with its promise of an early spring, had come.