marching in two columns from different points and meeting about ten
miles off. Also, the collecting of my outposts and moving to a left
flank was complicated. But it went off all right, and we marched
gaily along in the cool night and effected the junction at Villeneuve.
Thence on through a big wood with a network of rides, where the two
officers who were acting as guides in front went hopelessly astray and
took the wrong turning. The leading battalion was, however, very
shortly extricated and put on the right road, and after passing
Tournans we halted, after a sixteen-mile march, at a magnificent
château near Gagny (Château de la Monture) at 7.30 A.M.
Here we made ourselves extremely comfortable in the best bedrooms of
M. Boquet, of the Assurance Maritime, Havre, and sent him a letter
expressing our best thanks. Up to 6 P.M. we slept peacefully, with no
orders to disturb us, but then they arrived and gave us great joy, for
we were to march at 5 A.M., not southwards, but northwards again.
_Sept. 6th._
What had happened, or why we were suddenly to turn against the enemy
after ten days of retreat, we could not conceive; but the fact was
there, and the difference in the spirits of the men was enormous.
They marched twice as well, whistling and singing, back through
Tournans and on to Villeneuve. Here we had orders to halt and feed,
but the halt did not last long, for a summons to the 5th Division
Headquarters (in a hot and stuffy little pothouse) arrived at 1 P.M.,
and by 2 we were marching on through the Forêt de Crécy to Mortcerf.
It was frightfully hot and dusty, and the track through the forest was
not easy to find. Although I had issued stringent orders about the
rear of one unit always dropping a guide for the next unit (if not in
sight) at any cross-roads we came to, something went astray this time,
and half the Brigade turned up at one end of the village of Mortcerf,
whilst the other half came in at the other. We were on advanced guard
at the time, and so increasing the frontage like this did no harm; but
it caused rather a complication in the billets we proceeded to allot.
A delightful little village it was, and the Maire, in whose house we
put up, was extremely kind; but by the time I had covered the front
with outposts and ridden back, very hot and tired, General Smith
Dorrien turned up, and announced that we were to push on in an hour.
He was, by the way, very complimentary about the way in which the 15th
Brigade had behaved all through, and cast dewdrops upon us with both
hands. It was very pleasant, but I was rather taken aback, for I
genuinely did not think that we had done anything particularly
glorious in the retreat. However, it appeared that the authorities
considered that the Brigade was extremely well disciplined and well in
hand--for which the praise was due to the C.O.'s and not to me--and
were accordingly well pleased.
So we made a hurried little meal at the Maire's house, and Madame
threw us delicious pears from a first-floor window as we rode away.
We had not far to go in the dusk, only two or three miles on to the
turning which led to La Celle. The Dorsets were pushed on into and
beyond La Celle, in rather complicated country--for there was a deep
valley and a twisting road beyond; but the few Uhlans in the village
bolted as they entered it, and no further disturbances occurred in our
front. On our right, however, there was heavy firing, for the 3rd
Division had come across a good many of the enemy at Faremoutiers,
and at 9.30, and again at 11.30, general actions seemed to be
developing. But they died away, and we slept more or less peacefully
on a stubble field with a few sheaves of straw to keep us warm.
Perpetual messengers, however, kept on arriving with orders and
queries all night long, and our sleep was a broken one.
_Sept. 7th._
We awoke with the sun, feeling--I speak for myself--rather touzled and
chippy, and waited a long time for the orders to proceed. The cooks'
waggon turned up with the Quartermaster-Sergeant and breakfast--and
still we didn't move. Eventually we fell in and moved off at noon--a
hot day again--very hot, in fact, as we strung along on a narrow road
in the deep and wooded valley. Very pretty country it was; but what
impressed itself still more on me was the gift of some most
super-excellent "William" pears by a farmer's wife in a tiny village
nestling in the depths--real joy on that thirsty day.
There were still some Uhlans left in the woods, and I turned a couple
of Norfolk companies off the road to drive them out. Some of our
artillery had also heard of them, and a Horse battery dropped a few
shells into the wood to expedite matters; but I regret to say the only
bag, as far as we could tell, was one of our own men killed and
another wounded by them.
At Mouroux we halted for a time, and then pushed on, rather late, to
Boissy le Châtel--the delay being caused by the motor-bikist carrying
orders to us missing, by some mischance, our Headquarters
altogether--though we were within a few hundred yards of Divisional
Headquarters, and had reported our whereabouts--and going on several
miles to look for us.
We were now again the advanced guard of the Division, and had to find
outposts for it a mile beyond. It is always rather a grind having to
ride round the outposts after a long day, but one can't sleep in peace
till one is satisfied that one's front is properly protected, so it
has to be done; and as the Brigade Staff is limited, the Staff Captain
allotting the billets, and the Brigade Major seeing that all the
troops arrive safely, one generally has to do these little excursions
by oneself. On the road I came across Hubert Gough, commanding the
3rd Cavalry Brigade, in a motor, cheery as ever, with his cavalry
somewhere on our right flank keeping touch with us. We put up in a
little deserted château in Boissy le Châtel, but it was overcrowded
with trees and bushes and very stuffy.
_Sept. 8th._
Next morning we had, before starting, the unpleasant duty to perform
of detailing a firing-party to execute a deserter. I forget what
regiment he belonged to (not in our brigade), but he had had rotten
luck from his point of view. He had cleared out and managed to get
hold of some civilian clothes, and, having lost himself, had asked the
way of a gamekeeper he met. The gamekeeper happened to be an
Englishman, and what was more, an old soldier, and he promptly gave
him up to the authorities as a deserter.
We left at 7.25 A.M. as the last brigade in the Division. I might
mention here that, for billeting, the ground for the Division was
divided into "Brigade Areas," each area to hold not only an Infantry
Brigade but one or two Artillery Brigades, a Field Ambulance, and
generally a company of R.E., and occasionally some other odds and
ends, such as Divisional Ammunition Column, Train, Irish Horse,
Cyclists, &c., and for all these we had to find billets. The troops
billeted in these areas varied in composition nearly every day. It was
very hard work for the Staff Captain (Moulton-Barrett), whose proper
job would normally have been limited to the 15th Brigade; but he and
Saint André, who both worked like niggers, somehow always managed to
do it satisfactorily. It would have turned my hair grey, I know, to
stuff away a conflicting crowd of troops of different arms into an
area which was always too small for them. But M.-B. would sit calmly
on his horse amid the clamour of inexperienced subalterns and grasping
N.C.O.'s, and allot the farms and streets in such a way that they
always managed to get in somehow--though occasionally I expect the
conditions were not those of perfect comfort. We were lucky in the
weather, however, and many times troops bivouacked in the open in
comparative ease when a rainy night would have caused them extreme
discomfort.
It was not always easy to find billets even for our own Brigade
Staff, for though we were a small unit, comparatively, we had a good
number of horses and half a dozen vehicles; and besides this, we had
to have a decent room or place for the Signal section, and rig up a
wire for them to work in connection with the Divisional Headquarters
or other troops. In this Cadell was excellent, and we rarely had
a breakdown. Sometimes, of course, we were too far off to get
a wire fixed in time, and then we had recourse to our Signal
"push-bikists"--no motor cyclists being on our establishment. The
Signal companies, by the way, had only been completely organized a
month or two before the war, and what we should have done without them
passes my imagination, for they were quite invaluable, and most
excellently organized and trained.
And sometimes when, after all this work, we had settled down into
billets for the night, an order would come to move on at once. Fresh
orders had then hurriedly to be written, and despatched by the orderly
of each unit (who was attached to our headquarters) to his respective
unit, giving the time at which the head of the unit was to pass a
given point on the road so as to dovetail into its place in the
column in the dark, and all with reference to what we were going to
do, whether the artillery or part of it was to be in front or in rear,
what rations were to be carried, arrangements for supply, position of
the transport in the column, compositions of the advanced or
rear-guard, &c., &c. It sounds very complicated, and still more so
when you have to fit in not only your own brigade but all the
miscellaneous troops of your "Brigade Area." But Weatherby had reduced
this to a fine art, and, after all, we had had heaps of practice at
it; so orders were short and to the point, and issued in really an
extraordinarily short time.
To return. Our march that day was through pretty country, with
fighting always going on just ahead of us or on both flanks, but we
were never actually engaged. At Doue we halted for an hour or so, and
then received orders to push out a battalion to hold the high ground
in front. But when we had got there we only found a panorama
stretching out all round, dotted with troops, and our guns firing from
all sorts of unseen hiding-places, with the enemy well on the run in
front of us. Soon the order came for us to push on, and we moved
forward through Mauroy, down a steep hill into St Cyr and St Ouen,
pretty little villages in a cleft in the ground, across the Petit
Morin river and up a beastly steep hill on the other side.
Then came a "pow-wow" in a stiff shower of rain, and on again slowly
over the plateau, in a curious position, for there was a big fight
going on amid some burning villages in the plain far on our left--I
don't know what Division--probably the 4th--and a smaller fight
parallel to us on the right, not two miles off; and we were marching
calmly along the road in column.
Then a longer halt, whilst we got closer touch with the 14th Brigade
on our right. It was a tangled fight there; for when we pushed forward
some cyclists in that direction they were unintentionally fired on by
the East Surrey; and the latter, who had rounded up and taken about
100 of the enemy prisoners, mostly cavalry, were just resting whilst
they counted them, when some of our own guns lobbed some shells right
into the crowd, and five German officers and about fifty of the
prisoners escaped in the confusion.
A little farther on, near Charnesseuil, we got orders to billet for
the night there, and the Brigade Headquarters moved on to Montapeine
cross-roads. Here there was a good deal of confusion, stray units of
several divisions trying to find their friends, and the cross-roads
blocked by a small body of sixty-three German prisoners. We got the
place cleared at last, and the Staff occupied an untidy, dirty,
unfurnished house and grounds at the corner. It had been used by the
enemy the night before, and they had luckily brought great masses of
straw into the house.
I stowed away the prisoners in the stables--great big, docile,
sheepish-looking men of the Garde-Schützen-Bataillon (2nd and 4th
companies) and machine-gun battery attached. I talked to several of
them, and they said that the battalion had lost very heavily and there
were hardly any officers left. One of the latter, Fritz Wrede by name,
I found wounded and lying on the straw in a dark room in the basement.
Other wounded were being brought in here, and all complained of
feeling very cold, although the evening was quite warm. I made some
men heap straw on them, which was an improvement--but I believe that
wounded always do feel cold.
Wrede had a bullet through the shoulder, but was not bad, so I got him
to sign a paper to say he would not try to escape--otherwise he might
have made trouble. Our men, as usual, were more than kind to the
prisoners, and insisted on giving them their own bread and jam--though
the Germans had already been given a lot of biscuit. I remember being
struck with the extreme mild-seemingness of all the prisoners, and
wondering how such men could have been capable of such frightful
brutalities as they had been in Belgium--they looked and behaved as if
they wouldn't have hurt a fly.
_Sept. 9th._
Next morning we moved off at 7.30 and went _viâ_ Saacy across the
Marne to Merz, and thence up an extremely steep and bad road through
the woods. It was a very hot day, and as there was no prospect of
getting the transport up I left it behind at Merz, meaning to send it
round another way when the road was clear. Firing was going on to the
left front, and we halted for a council of war with the Divisional
Staff, which was immediately in front of us.
The 14th Brigade was apparently hung up somewhere to our left front
and couldn't get on, so we were sent on to help them take the high
ground towards the Montreuil road. They were, we were told, already in
possession of Hill 189; but when we emerged from the woods there was a
Prussian battery on the hill. There did not seem to be any men with
it, as far as we could see, and it was not firing. But we made a good
target, and not more than a battalion had got clear when the
"deserted" battery opened fire and lobbed a shell or two into the
Bedfords and Cheshires.
They only lost a man or two killed and wounded; but a Howitzer battery
with us, which was already on the lookout, came into action at once
and speedily silenced the German guns for the time being.
Bols, who was leading, reported that the hill was attackable--it was
really only a rise in the ground,--and after a reconnaissance I gladly
issued orders. So the Norfolks and Dorsets proceeded to attack in
proper form, whilst I sent the Bedfords round to the right towards
Bézu to try and take the rise in flank. The 14th Brigade were
meanwhile somewhere on the left, and we got touch with them after a
time; but they could not get forward, as a number of big guns from
much further off kept up a heavy fire, and there was a body of
infantry hidden somewhere as well, to judge from the number of bullets
that came over and into us.
That was rather a trying afternoon. Dorsets and Norfolks were held up
about half a mile from Hill 189, and I went forward to Bézu with the
Bedfords to try to get them on to the flank. Thorpe and his company
got forward into a wood, but lost a number of men in getting there;
and the lie of the ground did not seem to justify my sending many more
to help him, as the space up to the wood was swept by a heavy fire.
Just about this time poor Roe of the Dorsets, who had taken some of
his company into this wood, was shot through the head--as was also
George, one of his subalterns.
Meanwhile those horrible big guns from somewhere near Sablonnières
were giving us a lot of trouble, and knocked out also several of the
Cheshires, who had been sent by the Divisional Commander towards the
left to support the 14th Brigade. The latter--(I went to see Rolt, the
Brigadier, but there was little we could combine)--seemed at one
moment to be a little unhappy, as they were enfiladed from Chanoust on
their left; but the Dorsets had worked carefully forward on their
tummies, and with the Norfolks held a low ridge well to the front,
whence, though they could not get forward themselves, they could do
the enemy a good deal of damage. So the 14th Brigade stuck it out, and
we kept up the game till dusk, when we dug ourselves in a little
further back and posted outposts.
I might add that when Weatherby and I went forward to see Bols and
Ballard, Weatherby had bad luck, for his horse was shot in the body
whilst he was leading him, and died that night.
Meanwhile the 9th Brigade of the 3rd Division was on our right, under
Shaw, and although his Lincolns, or some of them, had got into the
wood, and we tried a combined movement, they also got hung up there
and we could not get on.
The Germans certainly fought this rear-guard action remarkably well.
We did not know at the time that it was a rear-guard action, for we
thought a whole corps might be occupying a strong position here and
intending to fight next day. But no more fighting took place that
night, and by next morning they had cleared out.
The Germans had evidently only just left Bézu, for on my going to see
M'Cracken (commanding 7th Brigade) there, I found him in a house with
the remains of an unfinished (German) meal, including many half-empty
bottles, on the table. Then we managed to get some supper in another
house, and were nearly turned out of it by a subaltern of General
Hamilton's staff, who, seeing a light in the window, thought he would
save himself the trouble of hunting for another house for his General,
and announced that it was required for the 3rd Divisional Staff. I was
inclined to demur at first and sit tight; but the ever-useful Saint
André, to save trouble, hurried out and secured another house for us;
as a matter of fact it was better and bigger than the first one, and
would have suited the Divisional Staff much better.
After issuing orders for to-morrow's attack or march we flung
ourselves down dead tired, and were awakened ten minutes afterwards by
a summons from General Hamilton to come and see him at once, as he
was going to hold a pow-wow on the situation. I found him in a tiny,
poky little attic, and there we waited for three-quarters of an hour
whilst Rolt was being sent for. Two hours did this pow-wow last, and
we had to write and issue fresh orders in consequence. Just as they
had been sent out and we had flung ourselves down again for a little
sleep, an entirely new set of orders arrived from the 5th Division,
and for the third time we had to think out and write and distribute a
fresh set of orders. By that time it was 12.30 A.M., and we were to
move at 3.45 A.M., which meant getting up at 2.30. Two hours broken
sleep that night was all we got--and lucky to get it.
_Sept. 10th._
Off at 3.45 A.M., we moved out in careful fashion towards Haloup, in
the direction of Montreuil. But our scouts reported all clear, and in
very truth the Germans had left. What was more, they had left that
field battery on Hill 189 behind them, surrounded by about twenty or
more corpses and a quantity of ammunition.
It was a damp day, and progress was slow, as it was not at all certain
where the enemy was. At Denizy, a small village on the way, we were
told that a German general, with his staff, had received a severe
shock there the day before by an unexpected British shell dropping on
his headquarters whilst he was at luncheon. He had jumped up with a
yell and bolted up the hill, but was driven down again by another
shell which landed close by. He was reported to have died almost at
once, but whether from fright or not was not quite clear.
When near Germigny we espied a German column in the distance, and
shelled it heavily with the 61st howitzer battery attached to us
(Major Wilson), causing it to bolt in all directions. The 3rd Cavalry
Brigade now turned up in our front (Hubert Gough's), and with the 5th
(Chetwode's) hustled the enemy along. We were advanced guard again,
and it was difficult to get on, for the Divisional Commander kept
sending messages from behind asking me why the deuce I wasn't going
faster, whilst Gough was sending me protests from the front that I was
treading on his heels, and not giving him time to clear up the
situation!
We halted for some time the other side of Germigny, and then pushed on
to Gandelu, a large village in a cleft of the hills, from the heights
in front of which the German artillery might have made it extremely
unpleasant for us. But none were there, nor were there any at Chézy,
which would have made a perfect defensive position for them, with a
glacis-like slope in all directions.
On the other side of Gandelu, in the wood, we came across the first
signs of the German bolt. A broken motor-car was lying in the stream,
and dead horses and men were lying about, whilst every now and then we
passed two or three of our troopers with a dozen German prisoners in
tow.
As we moved up the steep hill towards Chézy, we came across packs,
rifles, and kit of all sorts flung away, broken-down waggons, more
dead Germans, and, at last, on a whole convoy of smashed waggons,
their contents mostly littered over the fields and road, and groups of
our horsemen beaming with joy. The 3rd Cavalry Brigade had rounded up
this convoy with their Horse Artillery, scuppered or bolted most of
the escort, and captured the rest. Besides this, they had attacked a
whole cavalry division and scattered it to the winds. Their first lot
of prisoners numbered 348, and their second 172.
We halted near the convoy for our usual ten minutes, and examined it
with much satisfaction. There were all sorts of things in the
waggons--food and corn, to which I allowed our men to help themselves,
for our horses were short of oats and our men of rations, and some of
the tinned meats, "gulasch" and "blutwurst," were quite excellent and
savoury, much more so than our everlasting bully beef. Other waggons
were full of all sorts of loot--cases of liqueur and wine, musical
instruments, household goods, clothing, bedding, &c., trinkets,
clocks, ribbons, and an infinite variety of knick-knacks, many of
which one would hardly have thought worth taking. But the German is a
robber at heart, and takes everything he can lay his hands on. There
was also a first-rate motor-car, damaged, by the side of the road, and
in it were a General's orders and decorations, and 100 rifle
cartridges (Mauser) with soft-nosed bullets. To make certain of this I
kept one of the cartridges and gave it to Sir C. Fergusson. I think
these were about the only things (besides food) which we took from
the whole convoy, though many of the other things would have been well
worth taking. The men were very good, and did not attempt even to
leave the ranks till allowed by me to take the corn and food.
A short way on was the dirty village of Chézy, and here we found a
heap of cavalry and many of the 3rd Division. So we branched off to
the left in a frightfully heavy ten minutes' shower, and marched away
to St Quentin--marked as a village, but really only a farmhouse in a
big wood. As we approached the wood Headlam's guns began to shell it
in order to clear it of possible hostile troops, and continued until I
sent back to say that the shells were preventing us from going on;
then he eased off.
We halted near St Quentin for half an hour, and then came a message to
say we were to billet there. It was impossible to billet a whole
brigade in one farmhouse, and that none too large. So we told off
different fields for the battalions to bivouac in, and occupied the
farm ourselves, first sending out cyclists to clear the wood, as there
were rumoured to be parties of Uhlans in it.
It was a grubby farm with not much water, but we made the best of it,
and settled down for the night. A starved-looking priest was also
sleeping there, and he told me his story.
He and a fellow-priest, an Aumônier from Paris, had been on their way
to join the French unit to which they had been allotted for ambulance
purposes, when they fell into German hands and were treated as
prisoners. The priest was robbed by a sergeant of 1200 francs, his
sole possessions, and both he and the Aumônier were beaten black and
blue, forced to march carrying German knapsacks, and kept practically
without food or drink. After three days the Aumônier succumbed to ill
usage and died, and the priest only managed to escape because his
captors were themselves on the run.
The priest also told us that there were some British prisoners in the
column, and that the Germans behaved perfectly brutally to them,
kicking them, starving them, and forcing them to carry German
knapsacks.
_Sept. 11th._