THE GRENADIER GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-1918
THE GRENADIER GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-1918
BY
Lieut.-Colonel
The Right Hon. SIR FREDERICK PONSONBY
(LATE GRENADIER GUARDS)
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
Lieut.-General THE EARL OF CAVAN
MAPS BY MR. EMERY WALKER
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1920
Dedicated
(BY PERMISSION)
TO
HIS MAJESTY THE KING
COLONEL-IN-CHIEF OF THE GRENADIER GUARDS
INTRODUCTION
I regard it as a high privilege to be associated with this book, which
has been written by an old officer of the Regiment. I can fully
appreciate the magnitude of the task which confronted him when he
undertook to examine innumerable documents relating to hundreds of
thousands of men and covering a period of several years, and select
therefrom all that particularly concerned the Regiment.
I often think that an officer who finds himself in command of a
battalion of Grenadiers on active service must be nicely poised between
the weight of responsibility and the upholding power of tradition. At
first the former seems to be overwhelming, but in time the feeling of
confidence and trust in all ranks of the Regiment is so great that the
idea of failure can be eliminated.
I think this history will make my meaning clear. As Time marches on with
its many inventions, it does not become easier to uphold the traditions
so nobly set by our forbears. Gas and high explosives take heavier toll
of brave men than the weapons of old, and yet it is still the solid
determination of the man that wins the fight, whether offensive or
defensive. Although the tale of our great Dead is a long one, and
thousands have been maimed in the struggle, the Regiment has borne its
part in a manner worthy of it, and in accordance with the parting words
of trust of our Sovereign and Colonel-in-Chief.
CAVAN,
_Lieut.-General_.
PREFACE
This account of the part taken by the Grenadier Guards in the European
War is, substantially, the work of the officers of the Regiment
themselves. Letters and diaries full of interesting detail have been
sent to me, and a vast amount of information collected by Colonel Sir H.
Streatfeild at the Regimental Orderly Room has been placed at my
disposal.
The military historian who writes of past centuries has in some ways an
easier task than one who attempts to put contemporary events into their
historical perspective. In the first place, with every desire to be
accurate, the latter finds that the accounts of eye-witnesses differ so
much that he is forced to form his own conclusions, and to adopt what,
according to his judgment, is the most probable version. In the second
place, after reading a private letter giving a graphic account of a
particular part of a battle, he may easily derive a totally false
impression of the whole. Moreover, he writes in the constant presence of
the criticism of eye-witnesses.
A special difficulty also arises from the unequal quality of the
material placed at his disposal. There is sometimes a wealth of
information on unimportant incidents and no material for the history of
important or dramatic events, in which the principal actors were almost
invariably killed. Even the Battalion diaries, which were kept with
meticulous accuracy during the early days of the war, contain less and
less material as the fighting became more and more serious.
With a war of such astounding magnitude, when millions of men are
fighting on a front of hundreds of miles, any attempt to give an
intelligible picture of what is going on in a modern battle becomes
practically impossible. Even if such a course were desirable in a
regimental history, the material supplied, which consists for the most
part of letters and diaries of regimental officers, would be totally
inadequate, since regimental officers know little of what is going on
except in their immediate neighbourhood. A tactical study was out of the
question, since a battalion plays such a small part in modern battles,
and to describe the movements of corps and armies appeared to be beyond
the scope of a regimental history.
I therefore decided to depart from tradition, and to write a narrative
giving, as far as I was able, details about companies, and even
platoons. It seemed to me that this was what the officers themselves
would prefer.
The absence of information concerning the German Army necessarily takes
some of the life and colour out of such a record as this. In all
military histories the account of the enemy's movements adds enormously
to the interest of the narrative; but at present, beyond a few accounts
from neutral journalists inspired by the Germans, there is no authentic
information as to the movements of the German Army, and the motives
which actuated the German General Staff can only be inferred.
Time will of course rectify this, and after the war detailed accounts of
the German Army will be available, though it will inevitably be some
years before anything worth reading about the enemy can be published. It
has therefore been suggested that it might be best to defer the
publication of this history for some years. But it is doubtful whether
with the lapse of time any valuable additions could be made to a
regimental history, though for a national history some knowledge of the
enemy's plans will be essential.
The long periods of monotonous trench life, in which practically the
same incidents recur daily, have been particularly difficult to deal
with; and, although the greatest care has been taken to chronicle every
event of importance, I am conscious that many acts of bravery and
devotion to duty which have been omitted in the letters and diaries must
go unrecorded.
The terrible list of casualties has made it impossible to do more than
simply record the deaths of the officers of the Regiment who fell during
the war. Had more space been available, fuller accounts of the
circumstances under which they met their deaths and some personal
appreciation of each officer would have been possible, but in a history
which has necessarily to be restricted to three volumes, all this was
out of the question.
The Regiment is indebted to Colonel Sir H. Streatfeild, not only for the
scrupulous care with which he gathered together information from every
possible source, but also for his foresight in realising in the early
stages of the war the importance of all documents connected with the
movements of the different battalions.
The maps are the work of Mr. Emery Walker, who has succeeded in
producing not only artistic pictures in the style that was prevalent
among cartographers of the seventeenth century, but also perfectly clear
and accurate maps. To Sergeant West I am indebted for the military
detail.
To many officers I am indebted for suggestions, especially to
Lieut.-General the Earl of Cavan and Major-General Jeffreys, who found
time, during their few days' leave, to make many interesting additions
to this history; and to Major H. L. Aubrey-Fletcher, whose knowledge and
experience both as a staff and regimental officer have been invaluable.
In conclusion, I wish to take this opportunity of thanking Captain G. R.
Westmacott, Lieutenant M. H. Macmillan, Lieutenant B. Samuelson,
Lieutenant L. R. Abel-Smith, and Lieutenant A. C. Knollys for the
excellent work they did in preparing accurate diaries for each
battalion, with extracts from the officers' letters. Without their aid I
should never have had the time or the energy to complete this book.
F. E. G. PONSONBY.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE SITUATION BEFORE THE WAR 1
CHAPTER II
ARRIVAL OF THE 2ND BATTALION IN FRANCE 9
CHAPTER III
THE RETREAT FROM MONS (2ND BATTALION) 23
CHAPTER IV
THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE (2ND BATTALION) 42
CHAPTER V
THE PASSAGE OF THE AISNE (2ND BATTALION) 54
CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES (1ST BATTALION) 83
CHAPTER VII
THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES (2ND BATTALION) 143
CHAPTER VIII
NOVEMBER 1914 TO MARCH 1915 (1ST BATTALION) 187
CHAPTER IX
NOVEMBER 1914 TO MARCH 1915 (2ND BATTALION) 201
CHAPTER X
THE BATTLE OF NEUVE CHAPELLE (1ST BATTALION) 224
CHAPTER XI
THE BATTLE OF FESTUBERT (1ST AND 2ND BATTALIONS) 247
CHAPTER XII
MAY TO SEPTEMBER 1915 (1ST BATTALION) 264
CHAPTER XIII
MAY TO SEPTEMBER 1915 (2ND BATTALION) 272
CHAPTER XIV
FORMATION OF THE GUARDS DIVISION 283
CHAPTER XV
THE BATTLE OF LOOS (1ST, 2ND, 3RD, AND 4TH BATTALIONS) 290
CHAPTER XVI
OCTOBER TO DECEMBER 1915 (1ST, 2ND, 3RD, AND 4TH BATTALIONS) 322
CHAPTER XVII
JANUARY 1 TO SEPTEMBER 1, 1916 (1ST AND 2ND BATTS.) 352
ILLUSTRATIONS
The King, Colonel-in-Chief _Frontispiece_
Lieutenant-Colonel W. R. A. Smith, C.M.G., Commanding 2nd Battalion 144
Lieutenant-Colonel L. R. Fisher-Rowe, Commanding 1st Battalion 198
Officers of the Second Battalion Grenadier Guards 276
Colonel Sir Henry Streatfeild, K.C.V.O., Commanding the Regiment 288
MAPS
Route of the Second Battalion, 1914, and the Mons Area, 1914 16
Route taken by the Second Battalion Grenadier Guards during the Retreat
from Mons, and subsequent advance to the Marne and the Aisne, 1914 24
Sketch plan of Landrecies, August 25, 1914 28
Engagement at Villers-Cotterêts, September 1, 1914 34
Battle of the Marne--Position of the British Army on September 8, 1914
46
The Passage of the Aisne, September 14, 1914 58
Ypres and the neighbouring country where the First Battle of Ypres was
fought, October and November 1914 84
Route taken by the First Battalion Grenadier Guards through Belgium in
October 1914 90
The Grenadier Guards at Ypres 142
Battle of Neuve Chapelle, March 11, 1915 226
Neuve Chapelle, March 12, 1915 235
Neuve Chapelle, March 13, 1915 241
Festubert--Position on the evening of May 17, 1915 248
Battle of Loos, September 26, 1915 298
CHAPTER I
THE SITUATION BEFORE THE WAR
When the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated at
Sarajevo in Serbia on June 28, 1914, it never for a moment occurred to
any one in this country that the crime could in any way affect the
destinies of the First or Grenadier Regiment of Footguards. No one
dreamed that, before another year had passed, not only would the three
Battalions be fighting in a European war, but there would even be a 4th
Battalion at the front, in addition to a 5th Reserve Battalion of almost
unwieldy proportions.
Even when Austria began to show her teeth, it still seemed an "incident"
quite beyond our horizon. If Austria and Serbia did come to blows, Great
Britain was not even indirectly involved, and the British Army,
therefore, remained unmoved. The Balkan peoples were constantly in a
state of warlike commotion, but their troubles hardly affected the great
British Empire. The war clouds, that from time to time darkened the
European sky, had hitherto always been dispersed. More than once of late
years the German Emperor had rattled his sword in the scabbard, and
talked or telegraphed to the very limits of indiscretion, but nothing
had ever come of it, nor did it seem at all probable that the
assassination of an Austrian Archduke could be made the pretext for a
European conflagration.
There were, however, certain elements of danger in the European
situation at this particular juncture. The creation of the Triple
Alliance--Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy--had made necessary some
counter-move by the other European Powers. And the _entente_ between
England and France, initiated by King Edward, and originally intended
merely for the settlement of outstanding differences between the two
countries, became eventually the basis of a second grouping of nations.
This _entente_ was followed by one between England and Russia; and
although in neither was there anything in the nature of a defensive
alliance, it was well known that there was in existence--though the
exact terms of it had never been made public--a far stronger agreement
between France and Russia.
Meanwhile it was generally known that, all the time these several
_ententes_ were being formed, Germany had been steadily preparing for
war. For forty years, with characteristic thoroughness of method, the
Germans had been diligently organising their forces to this end. Not
only had the Army been perfected into a first-class fighting machine,
but the civil population had all been assigned the parts they were to
play in the coming campaign. Trade problems had been handled, not so
much with a view to commercial prosperity pure and simple, as to ensure
to Germany a sufficient supply of the commodities which would be needed
in a great war. Gigantic preparations had been made for a limitless
output of shells and ammunition, and plans carefully elaborated for the
conversion of factories of all kinds into workshops for war material.
The whole State Railway system was controlled in such a way that, on the
declaration of war, troops could be instantly concentrated at any
selected spot with the utmost speed.
While many civilians saw and deprecated the arrogance and madness of
such a policy, the military element, supported by the Emperor, was
anxiously pressing for an opportunity of proving to the world the
efficiency of the organisation it had created. It was only to be
expected that the generals, who knew how vastly superior the German Army
was to any other continental army, should hanker for an opportunity of
showing off their perfect war-machine.
The attitude of the bankers and merchants towards the war was not clear.
Originally, without doubt, they had favoured the insinuating methods of
peaceful penetration, which had been so successful in the past, and by
which they intended to dominate Europe, but just before the war they
appear to have been allured by the prospect of large indemnities from
France and Russia and to have withdrawn their opposition. They were
persuaded by the military party that by war, and by war alone, could the
domination of the world by Germany be achieved, and that now was the
time to realise their dream. Young officers of both services made no
secret of their wish for war, and constantly drank "to the Day" when
they met at mess. The more intelligent portion of the German population
quieted what conscience they had with the comfortable reflection that
all military and naval preparations were merely ordinary precautions for
defence. Indeed this theory, cunningly instilled into the German people
by the military party, was so generally accepted that even after the war
was declared the majority was under the delusion that it was fighting
only for the defence of the Fatherland.
Although the attitude of Germany towards England did not play any
prominent part in the events which led up to the war, there undoubtedly
existed in Germany a deep hatred of this country. Commercial rivalry and
the desire of the Germans to found a Colonial Empire on the same lines
as ours would hardly account for this feeling, which permeated every
class, and it is to the _Flotte Verein_ or Navy League that we must look
if we wish to find the reason. Originally instituted to instil into the
youth of Germany a desire for sea power, this organisation, by means of
propaganda, speeches, and pamphlets, succeeded in convincing the rising
generation that we were their natural enemies. The arguments were
invariably pointed by reference to the British Fleet, which, it was
said, could dominate Germany's world policy, and so young Germans grew
up with a feeling of terror for the British Fleet and hatred for the
British nation.
In spite of everything, England slumbered on, hypnotised by politicians
who had convinced themselves by a process of mental gymnastics that war
was an impossibility. The contingency of a British Army being sent to
France was never even discussed by the House of Commons, and the logical
outcome of our European policy appears never to have occurred to either
House of Parliament.
While Germany was studiously preparing for war, we were engaged in
academic discussions on disarmament, and although members of the
Imperial Defence Committee and a limited number of Cabinet Ministers may
have known of the possibility of our having to send an expeditionary
force to France, the man in the street, and even the majority of members
of Parliament, were completely in the dark as to the true significance
of the position of affairs in Europe.
The whole situation was singularly favourable to the Germans. Never
before had they been so strong, and probably never again would they have
such a powerful Fleet and Army. For some years it had been growing clear
to them that if ever they were to strike, they must strike soon. The
Socialists were becoming stronger every day, and there were constant
grumblings, which ever-increasing prosperity failed to stifle, at the
enormous expenditure on armaments. The nation might weaken as the years
went on, and there was every probability that the Government would find
it impossible to maintain indefinitely a huge Army and a huge Fleet. If
they failed to take advantage of this opportunity they might never again
be in a position to dominate Europe.
Though Austria had long been tied to the wheels of the German chariot,
there was always the danger of the Hungarians and Bohemians refusing to
support Germany, should the quarrel be purely German. It was therefore
necessary to make the _casus belli_ essentially Austrian. What better
opportunity could ever offer itself than the assassination of the heir
to the Austrian throne? Moreover, the new heir, perhaps soon to be the
new Emperor, might not be willing to endorse all his predecessor's
pledges, and Austria might conceivably drift apart from her ally.
Clearly, therefore, if Germany, with Austria's help, was to strike a
blow at Russia and France, she must do so forthwith.
The war party held that together Germany and Austria were more than a
match for France and Russia. Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance,
and would either come in on their side or remain neutral. Great Britain,
it imagined, would be unable to take any part owing to her internal
troubles. It appears to have taken it for granted that the Dominions and
Colonies would in any case seize the occasion for declaring their
independence, and that there would certainly be a second mutiny in
India. There was therefore no need to consider the British Empire in
calculating the chances of success. A parade march to Paris would settle
France in a short time, and then the whole forces of the two Empires
would be turned on Russia. A glorious and victorious peace would be
signed before the end of the year.
With such calculations as these, it is hardly to be wondered at that the
rulers of Germany decided on war at once. To their dismay, however,
Serbia submitted to the terms dictated by Austria, and it seemed at one
moment that the whole incident would be closed. Acting on Russia's
advice, Serbia agreed to all the points in the Austrian memorandum but
two. These practically threatened her independence, but there was
nothing that could not be satisfactorily settled by an impartial
tribunal. But, as despatches and telegrams were exchanged between the
European Powers, it gradually became clear that the original dispute
between Austria and Serbia had now nothing to do with the matter. Sir
Edward Grey made a final attempt to avert war by proposing a conference,
but this proposal came to naught, and the determination on the part of
Germany to force a war appeared to be stronger than ever. However
sincere the Emperor's wish for peace may have been, he was powerless in
the hands of a military autocracy which he himself had created. Ever
since he had ascended the throne, he had set the military over the
civilian element, and now, finding himself powerless to resist the
demands of the war party, he determined to place himself at their head.
On July 31 Germany despatched an ultimatum to Russia demanding immediate
demobilisation. This was tantamount to a declaration of war, but war was
not actually declared till the next day. The declaration of war with
France followed as a natural sequence.
Such was the situation at the beginning of August. With disinterested
detachment the British Empire watched the preliminary negotiations, and
even when war was declared between the two groups of Powers, public
opinion was divided as to which course we should adopt. When, however,
Germany violated the neutrality of Belgium, all doubt was removed, and
we declared war on August 4. The whole Empire was stirred to the depths,
and in London huge crowds paraded the streets and assembled outside
Buckingham Palace to cheer the King and the Queen. The wildest rumours
were circulated and believed. Fantastic tales were told to every one in
confidence by well-informed men in the street, and eagerly swallowed by
excited dupes.
Then the curtain was pulled down, and the British public was allowed to
know nothing. What troops were going, where they were going, when they
were going, all became matters of conjecture.
Meanwhile, silently and surely, the British Expeditionary Force found
its way over to France.