afternoon, having marched that day from Estaires, a distance of some
twelve miles. They were in billets, resting after their hard day's
work, when the message arrived, about one o'clock in the morning, to
the effect that they were required. Within an hour from the receipt of
the message both battalions were on the road, the Lincolns being the
first to arrive on the scene of action. The country was totally unknown
to the newcomers, but a cavalry sergeant was met who volunteered to
lead them to the position occupied by the enemy. Under his guidance
they entered the cutting through which the light railway, which runs
along the edge of the road from Kemmel to Wytschate, passes just before
it reaches the town. Here they became aware of a number of men moving
in their direction, who called out in excellent English and Hindustani
that they were British cavalry and Indians. Before the actual identity
of these men could, in the gloom of the night, be ascertained for
certain, the newcomers opened fire, both from the end of the cutting
and from the sides; and the Lincolns, who were closely packed in the
narrow defile, fell in numbers before they could be extricated. After
getting clear, they met the Northumberland Fusiliers advancing from the
direction of Kemmel, and together the two battalions formed up, and
with great gallantry once more attacked the entrance to the town. The
inequality in numbers, however, was too great. The Germans were
literally swarming in the town, and it was clear that General Shaw's
two battalions had been set to an impossible task. They retired to the
outskirts of the town, where they held on till daylight, lying in the
open fields. When dawn broke the London Scottish could be seen on their
right, but no troops on their left. The unpleasantness of the situation
was not in any way relieved by a heavy fire which our own artillery now
opened upon the two battalions, under the mistaken impression that they
were Germans. Many men were killed and wounded by this fire. In
conformity with the general plan of retiring to the Wulverghem road,
the Lincolns and Northumberland Fusiliers were now withdrawn, and
Wytschate went the way of Messines. The Lincolns lost 400 men and all
but 4 officers during this short night attack. Col. W. E. Smith was
specially commended for the great personal courage which he showed
during the attack, and for the skill with which he ultimately withdrew
his regiment. Lieut. Blackwood was awarded the D.S.O. for very
gallantly continuing to lead the attack after every officer senior to
himself had fallen. The losses of the Northumberland Fusiliers were not
quite so heavy, but were still very severe, especially in officers.
The dismounted cavalry line now retired to the Wulverghem to Kemmel
road, where they entrenched themselves, but their numbers were quite
inadequate for the frontage to be held. Pending the arrival of the
French, Sir Horace was ordered by the C. in C. to send up to their
assistance every available man from the 2nd A.C., which was recouping
at Pradelles. The Dorsets and Worcesters were accordingly sent to Neuve
Eglise, and the remaining seven and a half battalions--all
skeletons--were sent up to east of Bailleul under General Morland. Such
was the position on November 1st.
On this day the anxiously awaited 16th French Army began to arrive, the
troops being railed up at the rate of eighty train loads a day, and at
11 a.m. on the 2nd, both Messines and Wytschate were retaken by the
French with some assistance from our cavalry. Some of the 12th Lancers,
led by 2nd Lieut. Williams, of the Scots Greys, made a very brilliant
bayonet charge during the recapture of the latter town. The
above-mentioned officer was officially reported to have himself killed
eleven Germans on this occasion, and was awarded the D.S.O.
The French now officially took over from us the line from Messines on
the south to the canal on the north. It is interesting to note that,
between October 27th and November 11th, some 200,000 French infantry,
twenty regiments of cavalry and sixty pieces of heavy artillery reached
Ypres, Poperinghe, and Bailleul. It is difficult to conceive of any
more eloquent tribute to the astonishing performance of the thin little
khaki ribbon, which had for a fortnight wound round Ypres, than the
fact that this great force was found none too strong to hold one fourth
of the front over which our handful of men had so far successfully
resisted all the attempts of the enemy to break through. In calling
attention to these figures, it is not intended in any sense to draw
invidious comparisons between the relative merits of the French and
British soldier, or even to suggest that the British troops
accomplished a task of which the French would have been incapable. It
is generally admitted by all our commanders at the front that the
Frenchman as a fighter is unsurpassed, though his methods of fighting
are not the same as ours; and, allowing for the fact that, in cases
where the entire manhood of a nation fights, the average of individual
excellence must obviously be lower than when only a select body of
volunteers is engaged, for explanatory purposes with regard to the
disposition of troops, one may safely reckon a French and British
regiment as being of equal fighting value.
All that is aimed at, then, is to try and bring to the mind of the
reader, by a comparison of figures, some grasp of the immensity of the
performance of our troops east and south of Ypres, during the desperate
efforts of the enemy to break through in the last fortnight of October
and the first fortnight of November. It is worthy of note, too, that in
spite of the huge reinforcements brought up, no material advance was
made on the position taken over from us on November 1st. It is true
that on the day following, the newly-arrived French troops re-took
Wytschate and Messines, from which we had been driven, but they were
unable to hold those places, and the line along which they had found us
facing the enemy was never perceptibly advanced. The new line at the
beginning of November, held jointly by the French troops and British
cavalry, ran--roughly speaking--from Klein Zillebeke to Ploegsteert,
with a concave face which skirted Hollebeke, Wytschate, and Messines.
Our 1st Cavalry Division, supported by some units from the 2nd A.C.,
was withdrawn to Wulverghem, and the 2nd Cavalry Division went into
reserve at Bailleul. Neuve Eglise became our advanced base for that
part of the line, and was very quickly packed with British troops.
We have now taken a permanent farewell, as far as these pages are
concerned, of all occurrences south of the canal at Hollebeke. We have
seen the 2nd A.C. relieved by the Indians, and the Cavalry Corps
relieved by the French, and, with this change of guardianship, we have
seen two of the most important points in the line of defence pass out
of the keeping of the original Expeditionary Force.
Of that force the 1st A.C. alone (with the 7th Division, which it had
absorbed) still remained unrelieved east and south-east of Ypres. The
force, however, which now stood between the enemy and the possession of
Ypres, had by this time lost many of its distinctive characteristics.
The actual battalion units had become in most cases reduced to a mere
shadow of their original strength. The 7th Division had become part of
the 1st A.C., and several battalions of the 2nd A.C. were acting in
concert with this already mixed corps. Many of the brigades had been
broken up from their original constituents, and the fragments
consolidated into new and temporary brigades. Sir Horace was for the
moment an A.C. commander without an A.C., the remnants of his six
heroic brigades being scattered here and there along the whole front.
The first, and perhaps the most interesting, because the most
strenuous, epoch in the war--as far as it concerned the British
Force--was nearly closed; but not quite. Before that can be written of
it, some great deeds had yet to be done, and were done. The Germans
were still making continuous and determined efforts to break through to
Ypres by way of Klein Zillebeke, and to that particular zone of the
fighting our attention can henceforth be confined.
KLEIN ZILLEBEKE
When we last took leave of the Klein Zillebeke section of the
fighting line, on the night of October 30th, the cavalry position from
Klein Zillebeke to the canal had just been taken over by Lord Cavan
with the 2nd Grenadiers and Irish Guards, the former being on the
canal. On the left of the Irish Guards were the 2nd Gordon Highlanders,
with the Oxford Light Infantry in reserve, and beyond them the Sussex
and Northamptons, with their left joining up with the 22nd Brigade. On
the left of the 22nd Brigade was the 21st Brigade, with the 2nd R.
Scots Fusiliers on its extreme flank just south of the Menin road at
Gheluvelt. The 20th Brigade was in reserve.
During the morning the 3rd Cavalry Division was kept at Verbranden
Molen ready for emergencies, but about 1 p.m. orders were received for
it to go to the support of the 3rd C.B. at St. Eloi. Contradictory
orders were, however, afterwards received, and in the end the brigade
joined up with the 4th Hussars, and together they held the two bridges
over the canal at the bend just north of Hollebeke till nightfall. In
this action Sergt. Seddons, of the 4th Hussars, showed great gallantry
during the defence of the eastern bridge and was deservedly awarded the
D.C.M. In the meanwhile the 6th C.B. was sent along the Menin road so
as to be ready to co-operate with the 7th Division or the 1st A.C. in
case of need. That need--as will presently be seen--very quickly arose.
The original plan for this day had been to attack and retake the
Zandvoorde ridge, together with the trenches which had been lost the
day before, but the enemy's extreme activity rendered this
impracticable, and we were in the end forced to act purely on the
defensive.
We are now, be it remembered, dealing with the morning of October 31st,
the day on which the cavalry were driven out of Wytschate and Messines
and the 1st and 7th Divisions out of Gheluvelt. The terrific
bombardment of that morning has already been described. It was chiefly
concentrated on the Menin road, but the whole line from Gheluvelt to
the canal was involved.
The 2nd Brigade, which was between the two Guards' battalions and the
7th Division, had a curious experience during the morning. It survived
the bombardment, and when this slackened to allow the German infantry
to advance, it was still in its trenches and prepared to remain there.
About eight o'clock, however, General Bulfin summoned the four C.O.'s
of the brigade, and ordered a general retirement of the brigade to the
cross-roads at Zillebeke, about a mile in rear. This was duly carried
out, and without much loss on the part of the Sussex and Northamptons,
who were able to retire through the Zwartelen woods without coming
under observation. The 2nd Gordon Highlanders, however (attached
temporarily to the 2nd Brigade), were less fortunate. Their trenches
were in the open, running north-eastward from Klein Zillebeke farm
along the edge of the country lane known as the Brown Road, and, in
retiring, they had to cross a considerable tract of exposed ground,
during which they suffered very severely from machine-gun fire, Captain
McLean's company being practically wiped out.
It was afterwards freely rumoured that this order to retire had been
delivered to General Bulfin, as a Divisional Order, by a German dressed
in the uniform of a British Staff officer. Some colour is given to this
rumour by the extreme improbability of such an order having been
officially given after Sir Douglas Haig's ultimatum of the day before,
that the line which this apocryphal order caused to be abandoned was to
be held at all costs. In any event, it is a matter of history that
those concerned did not accept the retired position as a permanency,
and a counter-attack was quickly organized. The 6th C.B., which had
been waiting in reserve on the Menin road, was brought up as far as the
Basseville brook, where they deployed to the south, and, partly mounted
and partly dismounted, charged through the Zwartelen woods.
Simultaneously the Gordon Highlanders, now reduced to 300, and under
the command of Major Craufurd (Col. Uniacke having been knocked out by
a shell earlier in the day), charged on the right of the cavalry, with
the Oxford Light Infantry extending the line again on their right.
Before this united movement the Bavarian troops in the woods turned and
ran, but, true to their principles, continued to cover their retreat
with a heavy machine-gun fire. Two of these machine-guns were
successfully located, and the 6th C.B. menhandled a gun into the firing
line and knocked them both out in fine style. This broke the back of
the resistance. The Bavarians started surrendering, and the Gordon
Highlanders took a number of prisoners up to the time when Lieut.
Grahame was shot dead by an officer who had surrendered to him; after
that they took fewer.
The enemy losses were very heavy. Eight hundred and seventy prisoners
were taken during the day, and the number of killed and wounded in the
woods ran into several hundreds.
This charge--successful though it had been in clearing the Zwartelen
woods of the enemy--had not yet reinstated the 2nd Brigade in the line
which they had occupied in the morning, before the much-discussed order
to retire had arisen. General Bulfin therefore decided to try during
the night to regain the morning position. Accordingly at midnight,
under the full moon, and at the same time that the desperate battle was
raging round Messines and Wytschate eight miles to the south-west, the
2nd Brigade made their second counter-attack. This, as far as it went,
was a complete success. The trenches were carried and occupied, and the
Germans driven out. Unfortunately, however, the 22nd Brigade, on the
left, found themselves unable to get up into line, and, owing to their
left being unprotected, the 2nd Brigade battalions had one after the
other--in succession from the left--to fall back again.
These two attacks, _i.e._, the afternoon charge through the woods
and the midnight assault on the trenches, had now reduced the Gordons
to 3 officers and 110 men, and these were for the time being
amalgamated with the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, who were on their
right. The Irish Guards remained in their original position, on the
right of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, but the 2nd Grenadiers were
relieved by French Territorials and went back into reserve.
The nett result of this terrible day's fighting was that our line was
pushed back everywhere, except at Klein Zillebeke and Zonnebeke, the
two points which marked the northern and southern limits of the Ypres
salient. The effect of the recapture of the Gheluvelt position by the
2nd Worcesters and 1st Scots Guards was neutralized by the cave in the
line south of that place, which rendered Gheluvelt untenable. It had
therefore to be abandoned. The loss of that place, however, was of no
material importance, as its abandonment had long been recognized as a
necessary step in the gradual straightening out of the Ypres salient.
The only serious effect of the new line was that Klein Zillebeke, which
for long had been the re-entering angle, so to speak, of the position,
now, by the retirements to right and left of it, was pushed forward
into a species of salient, and its vulnerability was thereby
appreciably increased. This increased vulnerability at once transformed
Klein Zillebeke into the centre of interest as far as this zone was
concerned, this little village being--for reasons already given--a spot
which at any and all costs had to be kept from the enemy. To Klein
Zillebeke and neighbourhood, then, we may not unreasonably look for
early developments.
One of the many unhappy incidents of this day's costly fighting was the
landing of a shell in the Divisional Head Quarters at Hooge, by which
General Lomax received wounds from which he subsequently died, General
Munro was rendered unconscious, and Col. Kerr and five staff officers
were killed.
THE RELIEF OF THE SEVENTH DIVISION
All through the 31st and morning following, the Irish Guards on the
right of the Gordon Highlanders were subjected to a relentless
shelling, and their casualties were considerable. On the morning of
November 1st both their machine-guns were knocked out, and at 3 p.m.
news came that they were retiring. Lord Cavan sent word for them to
hold on some 200 yards to the rear, and also for the French
Territorials between them and the canal at Hollebeke to hold on to
their position at all costs. This the French managed to do, with very
great credit to themselves, at the same time throwing back their left
so as to keep in touch with the new position.
The Germans at once occupied the Irish Guards' trenches, but luckily
did not realize the position sufficiently to pursue their advantage
further, otherwise the consequences might have been serious. As it was,
sufficient time was given for the 2nd Grenadiers and 7th C.B. to come
up in support, and with this stiffening the new line was held for the
rest of the day. But there was a cave at Klein Zillebeke.
The Irish Guards had 400 casualties during this and the previous day's
fighting, including 11 officers: Major Stepney, the Hon. A. Mulholland
and Lieuts. Coke and Mathieson being killed, and Col. Lord Ardee
(attached from the Grenadiers), the Hon. T. Vesey, the Hon. A.
Alexander, Lieuts. Fergusson, Gore-Langton, Lord Kingston, and Lord
Francis Scott (attached from Grenadiers), wounded. The last named
officer and Captain Orr-Ewing (attached from Scots Guards) were each
awarded the D.S.O. "for gallant and persistent attempts to rally the
battalion."
On the morning of November 2nd there was a renewal of the regulation
attack along the Menin road. This time the attack took the form of a
high-explosive bombardment of the barricade across the road at
Veldhoek. This was soon demolished and an infantry attack on the 1st
Brigade ensued, as a result of which that skeleton brigade yielded 300
yards of ground, but held on to the trenches in rear till nightfall.
Further south, about 11.30 on the same morning, a tremendous attack was
delivered against the 2nd Brigade, in the course of which Gen. Bulfin
was wounded and part of the line driven in. An urgent appeal for
support was sent to Lord Cavan, upon whom it now devolved to take over
command of Gen. Bulfin's four battalions, in addition to his own two.
He made his way with all speed to the scene of action, with a view to
discovering the extent of the mischief. This proved to be (so far) that
the Northamptons had been driven in, and that the enemy--following
up--had broken through in numbers into the Hooge woods. Beyond the
Northamptons, that is to say, on the left of his new command, the R.
Sussex were still standing firm. This regiment, however, was greatly
reduced in numbers, its casualties during the last four days having
averaged over a hundred per day. On the 30th Col. Crispin had been
killed; on the following day his successor, Major Green, had been
killed, and the regiment was at the moment under the command of Captain
Villiers. Lord Cavan found it in an extremely precarious situation,
owing to its weak numerical condition, and the envelopment of its right
flank, consequent upon the Northamptons' retirement. He thereupon
hurried up the 2nd Grenadiers from reserve as far as the Brown Road,
where he ordered them to leave their packs and go straight through the
wood towards the south-east with the bayonet.
These Ypres woods have all the appearance of an English copse wood,
that is to say, they are formed of some six years' growth of hazel and
ash, with standard oaks dotted about here and there. Incidentally they
were at this time full of pheasants, destined to be shot in normal
times by the Lords of the Chateaux of Hooge, Gheluvelt and Heronhage.
Precisely in the manner of a line of beaters driving game, the
Grenadiers now pushed through the thick undergrowth, and while the
pheasants rose before the advancing line, so did the Germans run. By
4.30 the wood was cleared and the morning line restored. The
Northamptons thereupon re-occupied their trenches, but they were not
destined to be left there in peace. About six in the evening the
Germans again attacked the same part of the line, this time advancing
with discordant yells, thinking, no doubt, to repeat their performance
of the morning. If so, the event must have come to them as something of
a surprise, for the Northamptons--profiting possibly by their previous
experience--coolly waited till the attacking party was within fifty
yards of the trenches, and then mowed them down. Not a German reached
the trenches, and over 200 dead were left on the ground.
At night the R. Sussex were brought back into reserve and the remnant
of the Gordons went back to the 20th Brigade, which brigade was at the
time in the grounds of the Hooge Chateau. In addition to their previous
losses, the Gordons had during the day lost their C.O., Major Craufurd,
who was wounded in the early morning. The position of Lord Cavan's
command was then, as follows: the Northamptons on the left, in touch
with the R. Welsh Fusiliers in the 7th Division; then the Oxfordshire
Light Infantry and the 2nd Grenadiers, who had become very much mixed
up, and on the right the Irish Guards. Beyond were the French
Territorials.
With the fall of night on the 2nd of November the acuteness of the five
days' crisis may be said to have passed. The all-highest War Lord had
come and gone; the supreme effort of the enemy to break through to
Ypres had been made, and had failed; the British force had come out of
the ordeal reduced to a shadow, and battered out of recognition, but
unconquered. The Kaiser's forces had fallen back sullen and--for the
time being--disheartened, realizing at last the hopelessness of the
task they had been set to accomplish. Their losses had been prodigious,
and though their repeated attacks had--at great sacrifice--forced back
the face of the Ypres salient some two miles, the only military effect
resulting therefrom was that the British force was at last in
occupation of the true line of defence dictated by military prudence
and the natural features of the country. From this line, that is to
say, the ridge some 150 feet in height which runs from the corner of
the canal at Hollebeke to Zonnebeke, they were never afterwards
dislodged.
The 3rd, 4th and 5th were in the main uneventful. November 5th was
chiefly memorable in this year, not for anti-Popish demonstrations, but
as the day on which the 7th Division--after three weeks' incessant
fighting--was temporarily relieved. During the three weeks in question
it had lost 356 officers out of a full complement of 400, and 9,664
rank and file out of a total of 12,000. Battalions had been reduced to
the dimensions of platoons, and had, in some cases, lost every
combatant officer.
The 7th Division's performance, during its three weeks east of Ypres,
will go down to history as one of the most remarkable achievements in
the records of war. Many other units had, by the second half of
November, lost as heavily in officers and men as had the twelve
battalions of the 7th Division--in one or two cases even more heavily;
but the losses of these had been distributed over three months; those
of the 7th Division were concentrated into three weeks. They had
been suddenly pitchforked into a position of the most supreme
responsibility. They found themselves more by chance than by design
standing in the road along which the War Lord had elected to make his
most determined efforts to reach Calais. These efforts came as a
succession of hammer-blows, which gave the defending force neither
rest nor respite, and to cope with which their numbers were
ludicrously insufficient. Their failure, however, would have spelt
disaster to the cause of the Allies, and--realizing this--they
actually achieved the impossible. There is something particularly
stirring in the thought of this small force beaten back step by step,
as fresh and fresh troops were hurled upon it day after day, and yet
never turning its back to the foe, never beaten, never despondent, and
never for a moment failing in the trust which had been imposed upon
it. The most remarkable feature about the 7th Division was that it had
no weak spot in its composition. Each one of its twelve battalions
lived up in every particular to the high standard of duty and
efficiency which the Division set itself from the beginning. The
troops were mostly veterans from abroad, who had been summoned back
from foreign service too late to take part in the earlier stages of
the war, and they may therefore in a sense be considered as picked
troops.[12]
[12]
The 7th Division (Gen. Capper).
20th Brigade (Gen. Ruggles-Brise), 1st Grenadiers.
2nd Scots Guards, 2nd Battalion the Border Regiment.
2nd Gordon Highlanders (old 92nd).
21st Brigade (Gen. Watt), 2nd Yorkshire Regiment.
2nd Bedfordshire Regiment, 2nd R. Scots Fusiliers.
2nd Wiltshire Regiment.
22nd Brigade (Gen. Lawford), 2nd R. Warwickshire Regiment.
2nd Queen's (R. West Surrey Regiment), 1st R. Welsh
Fusiliers.
1st S. Staffordshire Regiment.
The 7th and 15th Brigades from the 2nd A.C., who relieved the 7th
Division, were themselves sadly thinned in numbers. The 7th Brigade,
which took the place of the 20th Brigade, had, in fact, lost
seventy-four per cent. of its numbers during the fighting round La
Bassee, and was in almost as bad a plight as the 20th Brigade, which it
relieved. The 15th Brigade, which replaced the 22nd, was rather
stronger, having received drafts from home.
The 20th Brigade went back to Locre, and the 22nd to Bailleul. The
21st--which perhaps had suffered rather the least of the
three--remained for the time being in the trenches.