THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES,
AUGUST, 1917.
A Battalion landmark.--Poperinghe and Ypres.--At Goldfish Château.
--The attack near St. Julien on August 22.--Its results.--A
mud-locked battle.--The back-area.--Mustard gas.--Pill-box
warfare.
In the war-history of all Battalions there is a season when it is
possible to say that they have reached their fulness of development,
but have not yet lost all original identity. August, 1917, was such a
season in my history. Of officers and men who had served with the
Battalion in its infancy many were yet remaining. Time and experience
of war had moulded these, with the admixture of subsequent drafts,
into a Battalion sure of itself and well-developed. But when it
quitted the battleground of Ypres most of its old identity had
vanished. From that time onward the 2/4th Oxfords were a changed unit,
whose roots were set no longer in England but in France, for in France
had come to it the officers and men of whom it was afterwards
constituted.
On the eve of this great change importing battle a short review is not
amiss of the Battalion's constitution. A Company still had for its
Commander Brown, among whose officers were Coombes, Callender, and
Webb. As Company Sergeant Major, Cairns was a tower of strength. John
Stockton led B Company, and under him was Moberly. C Company possessed
two Captains, Brucker and Harris, and had as platoon commanders,
Hawkes, Matthews, and Jones. D Company was still commanded by the
author. An acquisition to my company had recently arrived in Scott,
the bearer of two wounds received in service with the Oxford
Territorials. Scott was the best officer I ever had. Guest, another
new officer, before he went into the line showed that he was made of
the right stuff; he was commander of No. 16 Platoon. Dawson-Smith,
Copinger, Gascoyne, and Hill were other new arrivals in my company.
The N.C.O.'s on whom I most relied were Sergeants Palmer,
Leatherbarrow, and Sloper, but the real backbone of the Company were
the gallant and determined section leaders whom I had chosen for
promotion from the ranks. Of my runners and signallers I was
especially proud, and at Company Headquarters there was, of course,
the redoubtable Sergeant-Major Brooks, who besides being a great
fighter possessed also high organising powers. My total strength on
reaching Poperinghe was over 200, which shows that at this time the
Battalion was well found in men. It was known nevertheless that some
reduction from this maximum fighting force was to take place. One
hundred men of the Battalion, including 'specialists' like Lewis
gunners, signallers and runners, were henceforward 'left out of the
line' whenever the Battalion went forward to take part in an attack.
They were so left in order that, if the casualties were very high,
some nucleus of veteran soldiers would still remain around whom the
new Battalion could be built. A like rule applied to officers. A month
ago the Colonel had decided which of these should not take part in the
first Ypres attack. Brown and myself stayed out of the line, and in
our stead Callender and Scott respectively commanded A and D
Companies.
[Illustration: POPERINGHE FROM THE WEST]
Our stay near Poperinghe was short. Attention was devoted to the final
organisation of platoons and sections and to the problem of what kit
to carry in the attack and how best to carry it. Varied experiments
were made to see whether a pack or haversack was better and which way
uppermost a shovel should be slung. Supply of ammunition for the Lewis
guns raised many questions for debate. When all the sections--the
Lewis-gunners, bombers, rifle-grenadiers, and riflemen--were finally
complete, a new drain was made on our numbers by the demand for
seventeen men per Company, who from their duties became known as
'Loaders and Leaders.' Their function was to lead forward during
battle mules loaded with rations, water, and ammunition. So little
advancing was there that the mules, so far as this Battalion was
concerned, were never used, and the loaders and leaders, thanks to
their function proving illusory, escaped all share in the fighting.
If Poperinghe and Ypres had quite borne out their reputations I should
not here remark on either of them. The former was a most crowded and
degenerate-looking town, by a few towers rendered impressive from a
distance, but in reality of mean structure. Besides its club--at which
I recollect that Heidsieck 1906 was then only ten francs the
bottle--and its estaminets, the town held few attractions. Damage by
long-range German guns around the station had been considerable, but
to the town itself, except its windows, not very much had up till now
occurred. The surrounding country was neither flat nor uninteresting.
The Mont des Cats and Kemmel bounded the horizon on the south-east,
while to the west and north gently undulating hills, covered with
fields of hops, distinguished this area from the sodden plains
commonly credited to Flanders. Ypres, though destroyed past any hopes
of restoration, in 1917 still wore the semblance of a town. From
previous descriptions of the 'Salient' I had almost expected that a
few handfuls of ashes would be of Ypres the only vestige left. The
portions least destroyed in Ypres compared perhaps equally with the
worst in Arras, but of the two the Flemish city had been the less well
built. The remains of the great Cloth Hall, cathedral, and other
buildings revealed that what had once been, supposedly, of stone was
in reality white brick.
On August 18, starting at 4 a.m., the Battalion marched to Goldfish
Château, close to Ypres, and the Transport to a disused brickfield
west of Vlamertinghe. We lived in bivouacs and tents and were much
vexed by German aeroplanes, and to a less degree by German shells. On
August 20, while companies were making ready for the line, an air
fight happened just above our camp. Its sequel was alarming. A German
aeroplane fell worsted in the fight, and dived to ground, a roaring
mass of fire, not forty yards from our nearest tents. By a freak of
chance the machine fell in a hole made by a German shell. The usual
rush was made towards the scene--by those, that is, not already
sufficiently close for their curiosity. A crowd, which to some extent
disorganised our preparations for the line, collected round the spot
and watched the R.F.C. extract the pilot and parts of the machine,
which was deeply embedded in the hole. For hours the wreckage remained
the centre of attraction to many visitors. The General hailed the
burnt relics, not inappropriately, as a lucky omen.
During the night of August 20/21 the Battalion relieved a portion of
the front eastward of Wieltje. Three companies were placed in trenches
bearing the name of 'Capricorn,' but B was further back. During the
night a serious misfortune befell the latter. Three 5.9s fell actually
in the trench and caused thirty-five casualties, including all the
sergeants of the company. On the eve of an attack such an occurrence
was calculated to affect the morale of any troops. That the company
afterwards did well was specially creditable in view of this
demoralising prelude.
On the following night Companies assembled for the attack. Neither the
starting place nor the objectives for this are easily described by
reference to surrounding villages. The nearest was St. Julien. The
operation orders for the attack of August 22 assigned as objective
to the Oxfords a road running across the Hanebeck and referred to as
the Winnipeg-Kansas Cross Road. The 48th Division on the left and the
15th on the right were to co-operate with the 184th Brigade in the
attack.
Shortly before 5 the bombardment started. In the advance behind the
creeping barrage put down by our guns, of which an enormous
concentration was present on the front, C, D and A Companies (from
right to left) provided the first waves, while B Company followed to
support the flanks. The Berks came afterwards as 'moppers up.'
Half-an-hour after the advance started D, B and A Companies were
digging-in 150 yards west of the Winnipeg-Kansas Cross Road. The
losses of these companies in going over had not been heavy, but, as so
often happens, casualties occurred directly the objective had been
duly reached. In the case of C Company, on the right, but little
progress had been made. Pond Farm, a concrete stronghold, to capture
which a few nights previously an unsuccessful sally had been made, had
proved too serious an obstacle. Not till the following night was it
reduced, and during the whole of August 22 it remained a troublesome
feature in the situation. Before the line reached could be consolidated
or they could act to defeat the enemy's tactics, our men found
themselves the victims of sniping and machine-gun fire from Schuler
Farm, which was not taken and to which parties of reinforcements to
the enemy now came. More dangerous still was an old gun-pit which lay
behind the left flank. The capture of this had been assigned to the
48th Division, but as a measure of abundant caution Colonel Wetherall
had detailed a special Berks platoon to tackle it. This platoon,
assisted by some Oxfords on the scene, captured the gun-pit and nearly
seventy prisoners, but failed to garrison it. A party of the enemy
found their way back and were soon firing into our men from behind.
[Illustration: The ATTACK of AUG 22 BY 15TH 61ST & 48TH DIVISIONS
Approx: Position of 2/4th. OXF. at 7 pm.]
During the early stages of consolidation, when personal example and
direction were required, John Stockton, Scott, and Gascoyne were all
killed by snipers or machine-gun fire. Scott had been hit already in
the advance and behaved finely in refusing aid until he had despatched
a message to Headquarters. While he was doing so three or four bullets
struck him simultaneously and he died.
Throughout the 22nd no actual counter-attack nor organised bombardment
by the enemy took place, but much sniping and machine-gun fire
continued, making it almost impossible to move about. Our loss in
Lewis-gunners was particularly heavy. Callender, the acting company
commander of A Company, had been killed before the attack commenced,
and Sergeant-Major Cairns was now the mainstay of that company, whose
men were thoroughly mixed up with B. Upon the left the 48th Division
had failed to reach Winnipeg, with the result that this flank of A and
B Companies was quite in the air. On the Battalion's right the failure
of C Company, in which Brucker had been wounded, to pass Pond Farm
left the flank of D Company exposed and unsupported. But the position
won was kept. Ground to which the advance had been carried with cost
would not be lightly given up. Moberly, Company Sergeant-Major
Cairns, and Guest--the latter by volunteering in daylight to run the
gauntlet of the German snipers back to Headquarters--greatly
distinguished themselves in the task of maintaining this exposed
position during the night of August 22 and throughout August 23. Some
of our men had to remain in shell-holes unsupported and shot at from
several directions for over fifty hours. During the night of August
23/24 the Battalion was relieved, when those whom death in battle had
not claimed nor wounds despatched to hospital marched back through
Ypres to the old camp at Goldfish Château.
The attack, in which the Bucks had successfully co-operated on the
right of our advance, earned credit for the Brigade and the Battalion.
It had been, from a fighting standpoint, a military success. But from
the strategical aspect the operations showed by their conclusion that
the error had been made of nibbling with weak forces at objectives
which could only have been captured and secured by strong. Moreover,
the result suggested that the objectives had been made on this occasion
for the attack rather than the attack for the objectives. The 184th
Brigade had played the part assigned to it completely and with credit,
but what had been gained by it with heavy loss was in fact given up by
its successors almost at once. Withdrawal from the Kansas trenches
became an obvious corollary to the German omission to counter-attack
against them. Ground not in dispute 'twas not worth casualties to
hold. On the Battalion's front Pond Farm, a small concrete
stronghold, remained the sole fruit of the attack of August 22. It was
after the 61st Division had been withdrawn, wasted in stationary war,
that what success could be associated with this third battle of Ypres
commenced. Judged by its efforts, the 61st was ill paid in results.
On August 25 the Battalion, and with it the rest of the Brigade, moved
back from Goldfish Château to Query Camp, near Brandhoek. The weather,
which had been fairly fine for several weeks, now again broke in
thunderstorms and rain. Trees were blown down along the main road to
Ypres. The clouds hung low or raced before the wind, so that no
aeroplane nor kite-balloon could mount the sky. This meteorological
revulsion stood the Germans in great stead. Mud and delay, fatal to
us, were to them tactical assets of the highest value. As can easily
be appreciated, to postpone a complicated attack is a proceeding only
less lengthy and difficult than its preparation, nor can attacks even
be cancelled except at quite considerable notice. Thus it befell that
some of our attacks, before they had commenced, were ruined by deluges
of rain when it was too late to change the plans. On August 27 a
further attack upon Gallipoli, Schuler Farm and Winnipeg was made by
the 183rd Brigade in co-operation with the 15th and 48th Divisions.
The mud and enemy machine-gun fire alike proved terrible. The contact
aeroplane soon crashed, the advance failed to reach the 'pill-boxes'
from which the Germans held out, and before night a return had to be
made to the original line.
On August 30 the Brigade went forward once again to Goldfish Château.
The camp had not been improved by our predecessors, who had attempted
to dig in. Holes filled with water were the result, and nearly all the
tents and shelters had to be moved. Since the stagnation of the battle
German shelling in the back area had much increased. The field where
the camp lay was bounded on three sides by railways or roads. Some of
our 12-inch howitzers were close in front. Despite our best attempts
to sever association with such targets we had a share in the shells
intended for them. One night especially the long howl of German shells
ended in their arrival very near our tents. The latter had been placed
at one side of the field in order to escape, as we expected, the
shells more likely to be aimed by German gunners at the main road and
railway as targets. We changed our 'pitch,' but the next morning came
a pursuing shell on an old line of fire, which made it clear that the
best place was the deliberate middle of the field.
The passage overhead of German aeroplanes made nights uneasy. Darkness
was lit by those huge flashes in the sky, which denoted explosions of
our dumps of shells. The ground shook many times an hour with great
concussions. Sometimes the crash of bombs and patter of machine-guns
firing at our transport lasted till pale dawn appeared or its approach
was heralded by the bombardment of our guns, whose voice pronounced
the prologue of attack.
On both sides the concentration of artillery was very great. Though
the bad weather had shackled our advance from the start, our staff yet
hoped to gain the ridge of Passchendaele before winter set in. The
Germans, too, held that the stake was high. Our guns, which were
advanced as far as Wieltje and St. Jean and stood exposed in the open,
became the object of persistent German shelling. Sound-ranging and
aerial photography had reached a high development, and few of our
batteries went undiscovered. For the Artillery life became as hard as
for the Infantry. Gunner casualties were very numerous. Our batteries
for hours on end were drenched in mustard-gas. Into Ypres as well
large quantities of 'Yellow Cross' shells, cleverly mixed up with
high-explosive, were fired with nocturnal frequency. The long range of
the enemy's field-guns made the effect of these subtle gas-shells,
whose flight and explosion were almost noiseless amid the din of our
own artillery, especially widespread. The enemy's activity against our
back area was at its height at the end of August, 1917. Casualty
Clearing Stations were both bombed and shelled. Near Poperinghe nurses
were killed. No service forward of Corps Headquarters but had its
casualties. Our lorry-drivers' work was fraught with danger. The
Germans were waging a war to the knife and employing every means to
serve their obstinate resistance.
[Illustration: VLAMERTINGE--THE ROAD TO YPRES]
The 'defence in depth,' practised to some extent at Arras, had become
the enemy's reply to our destruction by artillery of the trench
systems on which, earlier in the war, he had relied with confidence.
Destruction of prepared positions had reached so absolute a stage
that the old arguments of wire and machine-guns brought up from deep
dug-outs to fire over parapets, were no longer present. The ground to
a distance of several thousand yards behind the enemy's front line
could be, and had been, churned and rechurned into one brown expanse.
For four miles east of Ypres there was no green space and hardly a
yard of ground without its shell-hole. Positions where the enemy held
out consisted in groups of concrete 'pill-boxes,' which had been made
from Belgian gravel and cement in partial anticipation of this result
of the artillery war. They in all cases were carefully sited and so
small (being designed to hold machine-guns and their teams) that their
destruction by our heavy shells was almost impossible. These
'pill-boxes' were also so designed as to support each other, that is
to say, if one of them were captured, the fire of others on its flanks
often compelled the captors to yield it up. Garrisons were provided
from the _élite_ of the German army. One cannot but admire the
steadfastness with which, during this phase of warfare, these solitary
strongholds held out. Indeed, the only way to cope with this defence
was to press an advance on a wide front to such a depth as to reduce
the entire area in which these pill-boxes lay into our possession. By
attacking spasmodically we played the enemy's game.
Our methods of attack which had been practised through the spring and
summer still consisted, broadly speaking, in the advance of lines of
Infantry behind a creeping barrage. These lines were too often held
up by pill-boxes, against which the creeping barrage was ineffectual,
and once delay which had not been calculated on occurred, the creeping
barrage was proved doubly useless, for it had outdistanced the speed
of the advance. The change in tactics necessary to reduce these
concrete strongholds was soon appreciated, but troops who had been
trained in the older methods were slow, in action, to adopt the new
ones requisite. Partly from such a reason the 61st Division scored
little success against the pill-box defence, but lack of tangible
results was not joined with lack of honest attempts. The mud, the
nibbling tactics passed down from above, inadequate co-operation by
the divisions fighting side by side with us, and the failure of our
artillery to hit the pill-boxes which we had hoped could be put out of
action by our heavy shells, further combined to paralyse efforts
which, had they been directed to more easy tasks, would now, as often,
have earned for the Division the highest military success.