THE ROUT OF THE PRUSSIAN GUARD AT YPRES
[The official writers have told us of the almost superhuman efforts
made by the Germans to break through to Calais so that they might,
from that place, either raid or bombard England. For a whole month
a little British army round Ypres held its ground against the
repeated onslaughts of overwhelming German hosts. These actions
were divided into two phases, the first lasting from October 20th
to November 2nd, and the second from November 3rd to 17th. German
infantry of the Line having failed to win success, the vaunted
Prussian Guard was hurried up, and, encouraged by the presence of
the braggart Most High War Lord himself, hurled itself in frenzy
against the British troops, only to be thrown back and broken. This
crushing of the crack corps of Prussia was a bitter blow to the
Kaiser and the German people, who believed it to be invincible. In
these unexampled contests the Glorious Seventh Infantry Division
bore the brunt of battle, and the tale of the first phase is told
by Private H. J. Polley, 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment.
Lieutenant-General Sir H. S. Rawlinson, commanding the Division,
said in an order: “You have been called to take a conspicuous part
in one of the severest struggles of the war.... The Seventh
Division has gained for itself a reputation for stubborn valour and
endurance in defence.” When the Glorious Seventh was withdrawn from
the firing line only forty-four officers were left out of 400 who
had sailed from England, and only 2,336 out of 12,000 men.]
All the world knows now how furiously the Germans tried to hack their
way through to Calais, so that they could have their fling at the hated
English. It is known too that they were held and hurled back.
I am going to tell you something of the way in which this was done, for
I belong to the Bedfordshire Regiment, the old 16th Foot, and the
Bedfords were part of the Glorious Seventh Division, and did their share
in keeping back the German forces, which included the Prussian Guards,
the Kaiser’s pet men. They had been rushed up to this position because
it was thought that no troops could stand against them.
These idols of the German nation are picked men and brave fellows, and
at that time had an absolute belief in their own invincibility; but
events proved that they were no match for the British Guards and the
rest of the British troops who fought them at Ypres, and practically
wiped them out. I saw these Prussian Guards from Berlin mown down by our
artillery, machine-gun and rifle fire, and I saw them lying dead in
solid masses--walls of corpses.
The Kaiser had planned to enter Ypres as a conqueror, at the head of his
Guards; but he hurried off a beaten man, leaving his slaughtered Guards
in heaps.
Originally in the 1st Battalion of the Bedfords, I later went into the
2nd, and I was serving with the 2nd in South Africa when the European
War broke out. It is an interesting fact that nearly all the battalions
which formed the Seventh Division came from foreign service--India,
Egypt, Africa and elsewhere--which meant that many of the men of the
Seventh had seen active service and were veteran fighters. They had not
learned their warfare at peace manœuvres in Germany. Our Division
consisted of the 1st Grenadier Guards, the 2nd Scots Guards, the 2nd
Border, 2nd Gordon Highlanders, 2nd Bedfordshire, 2nd Yorkshire, 2nd
Royal Scots Fusiliers, 2nd Wiltshire, 2nd Royal West Surrey, 2nd Royal
Warwickshire, 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 1st South Staffordshire, and
the Northumberland Hussars; and we had a pom-pom detachment and horse,
field and garrison artillery. We were under Major-General Sir T. Capper,
D.S.O.
We had been sent to help the Naval Division at Antwerp, and early in
October we landed at Zeebrugge--the only division to land at that port.
But we were not there long, for we soon learned that we were too late,
and that Antwerp had fallen. We were sorry, but there was no time for
moping, and we were quickly on the move to the quaint old city of
Bruges, where we were billeted for a night. Sir Harry Rawlinson had
moved his headquarters from Bruges to Ostend, so next day we marched
towards Ostend and took up outpost. Then we had a forced march back to
Bruges, and from Bruges we started marching, but we did not know where
we were going till we got to the city of Ypres.
So far we had not had any fighting. We had been marching and marching,
first to one place, then to another, constantly expecting to come into
action, and very nearly doing so, for the Germans were swarming all over
the countryside. We had to be content with being on outpost and guarding
bridges, and so on--hard and necessary work, we knew; but we wanted
something more thrilling, something bigger--and we eventually got it.
There was practically only the Seventh Division available for anything
that turned up. The Northumberland Hussars were able to give a very good
account of themselves, and were, I believe, the first Yeomanry corps to
go into action. The few Uhlans I saw while I was at the front had been
taken prisoners by these Hussars, who brought them in, lances and all.
But there is very little to say about cavalry work; it was mostly a
matter for the infantry, and, of course, the artillery--the wonderful
British gunners who have punished the Germans so severely whenever they
have met them.
While we were around Ypres, waiting for the Germans to come and break
through, we heard a good deal, indirectly, of what was going to happen
to us and to England. The Germans had all sorts of monster guns, and
with these they were going to bombard England across the narrow Channel
when they got to the French coast, and they were going to work all sorts
of miracles with their airships and aeroplanes.
We soon heard, too, that the Kaiser himself was in the field; but the
only effect of that information was to make us more keen to show what we
could do. Truth to tell, we were far from being impressed by the
presence of either the Kaiser or his vaunted Guards. We were in the best
of spirits, and had a sublime belief in Sir John French and all his
staff and our own officers.
It was on October 31st--which has been called _the_ decisive day of the
fight for Ypres, and which was certainly a most terrible day in every
way--that the Seventh Division was ordered to attack the German
position. The weather was very fine, clear and sunny, and our spirits
were in keeping with it. We were thankful to be on the move, because we
had had nearly three weeks in the trenches, and had been billeted in all
sorts of queer places--above and below ground--under an everlasting
shell fire, which became unendurable and was thoroughly
nerve-destroying.
We knew what a desperate business the advance would be, because the
Germans greatly outnumbered us, and they had planted vast numbers of
guns. They had immense bodies of men in trenches, and in a large number
of the houses and buildings which commanded the ground over which we had
to advance they had placed machine-guns, with their villainous muzzles
directed on us from bedroom windows and holes which had been knocked in
walls.
From start to finish the advance was a terrible business--far more
terrible than any words of mine can make you realise. The whole Division
was on the move, stretching along a big tract of country; but of course
no man could see much of what was happening, except in his own immediate
locality. Neither had he much chance of thinking about anything or
anybody except himself, and then only in a numbed sort of way, because
of the appalling din of the artillery on both sides, the crash of the
guns and the explosions of the shells, with the ceaseless rattle of the
rifles and the machine-guns.
At the beginning, the regiments kept fairly well together, but very soon
we were all mixed up, and you could not tell what regiment a man
belonged to, unless he wore a kilt; then you knew that, at any rate, he
wasn’t a Bedford. Some of us had our packs and full equipment. Others
were without packs, having been compelled to throw them away. But there
was not a man who had let his rifle go: that is the last thing of all to
be parted from; it is the soldier’s very life. And every man had a big
supply of ammunition, with plenty in reserve. The general himself took
part in the advance, and what he did was done by every other officer
present. There was no difference between officer and man, and a thing
to be specially noticed is the fact that the officers got hold of rifles
and blazed away as hard as any man.
Never, during the whole of the war, had there been a more awful fire
than that which we gave the Germans. Whenever we got the chance, we gave
them what they call the “Englishman’s mad minute”--that is, the dreadful
fifteen rounds a minute rapid fire. We drove it into them and mowed them
down. Many a soldier, when his own rifle was too hot to hold, threw it
down and snatched the rifle of a dead or wounded comrade who had no
further use for it, and with this fresh, cool weapon he continued the
deadly work by which success could alone be won. I do not know what the
German losses were, but I do know that I saw bodies lying around in
solid masses, while we passed our own dead and wounded everywhere as we
advanced. Where they fell they had to stay; it was impossible to do
anything for them while the fighting continued.
The whole of the advance consisted of a series of what might be called
ups and downs--a little rush, then a “bob down.” At most, no one rush
carried us more than fifty yards; then we dropped out of sight as best
we could, to get a breather and prepare for another dash. It was pretty
open country hereabouts, so that we were fully exposed to the German
artillery and rifle fire, in addition to the hail from the machine-guns
in the neighbouring buildings. Here and there we found little woods and
clumps of trees and bits of rising ground and ditches and hedges--and
you may take it from me that shelter of any sort was very welcome and
freely used.
A remarkable feature of this striving to hide from the enemy’s fire was
that it was almost impossible to escape from the shells and bullets for
any appreciable time, for the simple reason that the Germans altered
their range in the most wonderful manner. So surely as we got the
shelter of a little wood or ditch, they seemed to have the distance
almost instantly, and the range was so accurate that many a copse and
ditch became a little graveyard in the course of that advance.
At one point as we went along I noticed a small ditch against a hedge.
It was a dirty, uninviting ditch, deep in water; but it seemed to offer
promising shelter, and so some officers and men made a rush for it,
meaning to take cover. They had no sooner scrambled into the ditch and
were thinking themselves comparatively safe than the Germans got the
range of them with machine-guns, and nearly the whole lot were
annihilated. In this case, as in others, the enemy had been marvellously
quick with their weapons, and had swept the ditch with bullets. I don’t
know what happened to the fine fellows who had fallen. We had to leave
them and continue the advance.
The forenoon passed, noon came, and the afternoon was with us; still the
fighting went on, the guns on both sides crashing without cessation, and
the machine-guns and the rifles rattling on without a break. The air was
filled with screaming, bursting shells and whistling bullets, and the
ground was ploughed and torn everywhere. It was horrible beyond
expression, yet it fired the blood in us, so that the only thing that
mattered was to put the finish to the work, get up to the Germans, and
rout them out of their positions.
At last, after endless spells of lying down and jumping up, we got near
enough to make it possible to charge, and the order went round to get
ready. We now saw what big, fine fellows we had to tackle. Clearly now
we could distinguish the Prussian Guards, and a thing that particularly
struck me just then was that their bayonets looked very cruel. The
Guards wore cloth-covered brass helmets, and through the cloth we could
see the gleam of the brass in the sunshine.
The nearer we got, the more clearly we saw what splendid chaps they
were, and what a desperate business it would be when we actually reached
the long, snaky blades of steel--much longer than our own bayonets--with
longer rifles, too, so that the Germans had the pull of us in every way.
But all that counted as nothing, and there was not a man amongst us who
was not hungering to be in amongst them.
The order to fix bayonets came quietly, and it was carried out without
any fuss whatever, just as a part of the day’s work. We were lying down
when the order came, and as we lay we got round at our bayonets, drew
them and fixed them, and I could hear the rattle of the fixing all along
the line, just as I had heard it many times on parade or at
manœuvres--the same sound, but with what a different purpose!
A few of the fellows did not fix their bayonets as we lay, but they
managed to do it as we ran, when we had jumped up and started to rush
along to put the finish to the fight. There was no bugle sound, we just
got the word to charge, an order which was given to the whole of the
Seventh Division.
When this last part of the advance arrived we started halloaing and
shouting, and the Division simply hurled itself against the Prussian
Guard. By the time we were up with the enemy we were mad. I can’t tell
you much of what actually happened--and I don’t think any man who took
part in it could do so--but I do know that we rushed helter-skelter, and
that when we got up to the famous Guards there were only two of my own
section holding together--Lance-Corporal Perry and myself, and even we
were parted immediately afterwards.
The next thing I clearly knew was that we were actually on the
Prussians, and that there was some very fierce work going on. There was
some terrific and deadly scrimmaging, and whatever the Prussian Guard
did in the way of handling the steel, the Seventh Division did better.
It was every man for himself. I had rushed up with the rest, and the
first thing I clearly knew was that a tremendous Prussian was making at
me with his villainous bayonet. I made a lunge at him as hard and swift
as I could, and he did the same to me. I thought I had him, but I just
missed, and as I did so, I saw his own long, ugly blade driven out at
the end of his rifle. Before I could do anything to parry the thrust,
the tip of the bayonet had ripped across my right thigh, and I honestly
thought that it was all up with me.
Then, when I reckoned that my account was paid, when I supposed that the
huge Prussian had it all his own way, one of our chaps--I don’t know
who, I don’t suppose I ever shall; but I bless him--rushed up, drove his
bayonet into the Prussian and settled him. I am sure that if this had
not been done I should have been killed by the Prussian; as it was, I
was able to get away without much inconvenience at the end of the
bayonet fight.
This struggle lasted about half-an-hour, and fierce, hard work it was
all the time. In the end we drove the Guards away and sent them
flying--all except those who had fallen; the trench was full of the
latter, and we took no prisoners. Then we were forced to retire
ourselves, for the ample reason that we were not strong enough to hold
the position that we had taken at such a heavy cost. The enemy did not
know it then, though perhaps they found out later, that we had nicely
deceived them in making them believe that we had reinforcements. But we
had nothing of the sort; yet we had stormed and taken the position and
driven its defenders away.
We were far too weak to hold the position, and so we retired over the
ground that we had won, getting back a great deal faster than we had
advanced. We had spent the best part of the day in advancing and
reaching the enemy’s position; and it seemed as if we must have covered
a great tract of country, but as a matter of fact we had advanced less
than a mile. It had taken us many hours to cover that short distance;
but along the whole of the long line of the advance the ground was
littered with the fallen--the officers and men who had gone down under
such a storm of shells and bullets as had not been known since the war
began.
Retiring, we took up a position behind a wood, and were thinking that we
should get a bit of a rest, when a German aeroplane came flying over us,
gave our hiding-place away, and brought upon us a fire that drove us out
and sent us back to three lines of trenches which we had been
occupying.
[Illustration:
[_To face p. 286._
“I MADE A LUNGE AT HIM, BUT JUST MISSED, AND I SAW HIS OWN LONG, UGLY
BLADE DRIVEN OUT” (p. 285).]
By this time our ambulances were hard at work; but ambulance or no
ambulance, the pitiless shelling went on, and I saw many instances of
German brutality in this respect. The ambulance vehicles were crowded,
and I saw one which had two wounded men standing on the back, because
there was not room enough for them inside. Shells were bursting all
around, and a piece struck one of the poor chaps and took part of his
foot clean away. He instantly fell on to the road, and there he had to
be left. I hope he got picked up by another ambulance, though I doubt
it, for the shell-firing just then was heavy, and deliberately aimed at
helpless ambulances by people who preach what they call culture!
We made the best of things during the evening and the night in the
trenches. The next day things were reversed, for the Germans came on
against us; but we kept up a furious fight, and simply mowed them down
as they threw themselves upon us. We used to say, “Here comes another
bunch of ’em!” and then we gave them the “mad minute.” We had suffered
heavily on the 31st, and we were to pay a big bill again on this 1st of
November, amongst our casualties being two of our senior officers.
The battalion was in the peculiar position of having no colonel at the
head of it, our commanding officer being Major J. M. Traill. I should
like to say now, by way of showing how heavily the Bedfords suffered,
that in one of Sir John French’s despatches, published early in the
year, seven officers were mentioned, and in the cases of six of them it
had to be added that they had been killed in action. Major Traill and
Major R. P. Stares were killed not far from me on the day I am telling
of--and within two hours of each other.
We were lying in trenches, and the majors were in front of us, walking
about, and particularly warning us to be careful and not expose
ourselves. Their first thought seemed to be for us, and their last for
themselves.
Just at that time there was some uncommonly deadly sniping going on, and
any figure that was seen even for a fraction of time was a certain
target. The sniper himself was a specially chosen German, and he had as
a companion and look-out a smart chap with field-glasses, to sweep the
countryside and report to the sniper anything promising that he saw in
the way of a target. Working in pairs like this, the snipers were able
to pick off the two majors as they walked up and down directing and
encouraging us. They were shot, and, as far as we could tell, killed
instantly. We felt their loss very greatly.
Major Stares had very much endeared himself to his men, and he was a
great favourite in South Africa before the war began. We were all eager
to get to the front, of course, and were constantly talking about what
we should do, and wondering what would happen when we met the Germans.
The major was never tired of explaining what we ought to do in tight and
dangerous corners, and asking us what _we_ should do. I have known him
stop us in the street to ask us these questions, so keen and anxious was
he for our welfare.
The second day of the fighting passed and the third came. Still we held
on, but it became clear that we were too hopelessly outnumbered to hope
for complete success at the time, and so we were forced to leave the
trenches. Withdrawing again, we took up positions in farmhouses and
woods and any other places that gave shelter. All the time there was a
killing fire upon us, and it happened that entire bodies of men would be
wiped out in a few moments. A party of the Warwicks got into a wood near
us, and they had no sooner taken shelter than the German gunners got the
range of them, shelled them, and killed nearly all of them.
There was not a regiment of the Glorious Seventh that had not suffered
terribly in the advance during the three days’ fateful fighting. The
Bedfords had lost, all told, about 600, and it was a mere skeleton of
the battalion that formed up when the roll was called. But there was one
pleasant surprise for me, and that was meeting again with Lance-Corporal
Perry. We had lost sight of each other in the hand-to-hand fighting with
the Prussian Guard, and met again when we were reorganised at an old
château; and very thankful we were to compare notes, especially as each
of us thought that the other was a dead man. There were a good many
cases of soldiers turning up who were supposed to be either killed or
wounded, or, what is worse, missing. In the inevitable disorder and
confusion of such a battle they had got separated from their own
regiments and had joined others; but they turned up in due course in
their right places.
I had become a member of the grenade company of the battalion, which was
something like going back to the early days of the Army, when the
grenadier companies of the regiments flung their little bombs at the
enemy. So did we, and grim work it was, hurling home-made bombs, which
had the power of doing a great amount of mischief.
I was with the grenade company, behind a brick wall close to the
trenches, and was sitting with several others round a fire which we had
made in a biscuit-tin. We were quite a merry party, and had the dixie
going to make some tea. There was another dixie on, with two or three
nice chickens that our fellows had got hold of--perhaps they had seen
them wandering about homeless and adopted them.
Anyway, they found a good home in the stew-pot, and we were looking
forward to a most cosy meal. As a sort of change from shelling by
batteries in the ordinary way, we were being shelled from an armoured
train, but were taking little notice of it, being busy with the tea and
chickens.
The Germans were close enough to fling hand-bombs at us. They gave us
lots of these little attentions, so that when I suddenly found myself
blinded, and felt a sharp pain in my left hand, I thought they had made
a lucky shot, or that something had exploded in the fire in the
biscuit-tin.
For some time I did not know what had happened; then I was able to see,
and on looking at my hand, I found it to be in a sorry mess, half the
thumb and half a finger having been carried away.
I stayed and had some tea from the dixie, and my chums badly wanted me
to wait for my share of the chickens; but I had no appetite for fowls
just then. I made the best of things till darkness came, and under cover
of it a couple of stretcher-bearers took me to the nearest
dressing-station.
I suffered intensely, and lockjaw set in, but the splendid medical staff
and the nursing saved me, and I was put into a horse ambulance and
packed off home. And here I am.