Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original maps.
See 64638-h.htm or 64638-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64638/pg64638-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64638/64638-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/irishguardsofgre01rudy
Transcriber’s note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes
have been placed at the end of the book.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the
book.
THE IRISH GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR
* * * * * *
BOOKS BY RUDYARD KIPLING
ACTIONS AND REACTIONS
BRUSHWOOD BOY, THE
CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
COLLECTED VERSE
DAY’S WORK, THE
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS
DIVERSITY OF CREATURES, A
EYES OF ASIA, THE
FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN, THE
FIVE NATIONS, THE
FRANCE AT WAR
FRINGES OF THE FLEET
FROM SEA TO SEA
HISTORY OF ENGLAND, A
IRISH GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR, THE
JUNGLE BOOK, THE
JUNGLE BOOK, SECOND
JUST SO SONG BOOK
JUST SO STORIES
KIM
KIPLING ANTHOLOGY, PROSE AND VERSE
KIPLING STORIES AND POEMS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW
KIPLING BIRTHDAY BOOK, THE
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
LIFE’S HANDICAP: BEING STORIES OF MINE OWN PEOPLE
LIGHT THAT FAILED, THE
MANY INVENTIONS
NAULAHKA, THE (With Wolcott Balestier)
PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
PUCK OF POOK’S HILL
REWARDS AND FAIRIES
RUDYARD KIPLING’S VERSE: Inclusive Edition, 1885-1918
SEA WARFARE
SEVEN SEAS, THE
SOLDIER STORIES
SOLDIERS THREE, THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS, AND IN BLACK AND WHITE
SONG OF THE ENGLISH, A
SONGS FROM BOOKS
STALKY & CO.
THEY
TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES
UNDER THE DEODARS, THE PHANTOM ’RICKSHAW, AND WEE WILLIE WINKIE
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
YEARS BETWEEN, THE
* * * * * *
[Illustration:
_ITINERARY
of the
FIRST BATTALION IRISH GUARDS_
_AUGUST 1914-DECEMBER 1918._
_Emery Walker Ltd. del. et sc._]
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EMERY WALKER LTD., LONDON
THE IRISH GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR
Edited and Compiled from
Their Diaries and Papers
by
RUDYARD KIPLING
[Illustration: (decorative diamond icon)]
VOLUME I
The First Battalion
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1923
[Illustration: (personal colophon of Rudyard Kipling)]
Copyright, 1923, by
Rudyard Kipling
All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian
Printed in the United States
at
The Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.
First Edition
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
1914
MONS TO LA BASSÉE 1
1915
LA BASSÉE TO LAVENTIE 53
1916
THE SALIENT TO THE SOMME 130
1917
THE SOMME TO GOUZEAUCOURT 194
1918
ARRAS TO THE ARMISTICE 252
LIST OF MAPS
Itinerary of the First Battalion Irish Guards _Frontispiece_
The Retreat from Mons, 1914. Northern Section _Facing page_ 6
The Retreat from Mons, 1914. Southern Section ” 14
The Ypres Salient. First Battalion Actions ” 32
Actions and Billets. First Battalion ” 58
The Somme. First Battalion _Between pages_ 164, 165
The Final Advance, August-November 1918 _Facing page_ 288
INTRODUCTION
These volumes try to give soberly and with what truth is possible,
the experiences of both battalions of the Irish Guards from 1914 to
1918. The point of view is the battalions’, and the facts mainly
follow the Regimental Diaries, supplemented by the few private
letters and documents which such a war made possible, and by some
tales that have gathered round men and their actions.
As evidence is released, historians may be able to reconstruct what
happened in or behind the battle-line; what motives and necessities
swayed the actors; and who stood up or failed under his burden.
But a battalion’s field is bounded by its own vision. Even within
these limits, there is large room for error. Witnesses to phases of
fights die and are dispersed; the ground over which they fought is
battered out of recognition in a few hours; survivors confuse dates,
places, and personalities, and in the trenches, the monotony of the
waiting days and the repetition-work of repairs breed mistakes and
false judgments. Men grow doubtful or oversure, and, in all good
faith, give directly opposed versions. The clear sight of a comrade
so mangled that he seems to have been long dead is burnt in on one
brain to the exclusion of all else that happened that day. The shock
of an exploded dump, shaking down a firmament upon the landscape,
dislocates memory throughout half a battalion; and so on in all
matters, till the end of laborious enquiry is too often the opening
of fresh confusion. When to this are added the personal prejudices
and misunderstandings of men under heavy strain, carrying clouded
memories of orders half given or half heard, amid scenes that pass
like nightmares, the only wonder to the compiler of these records
has been that any sure fact whatever should be retrieved out of the
whirlpool of war.
It seemed to him best, then, to abandon all idea of such broad
and balanced narratives as will be put forward by experts, and to
limit himself to matters which directly touched the men’s lives and
fortunes. Nor has he been too careful to correct the inferences of
the time by the knowledge of later events. From first to last, the
Irish Guards, like the rest of our armies, knew little of what was
going on round them. Probably they knew less at the close of the war
than at the beginning when our forces were so small that each man
felt himself somebody indeed, and so stood to be hunted through the
heat from Mons to Meaux, turned again to suffer beneath the Soupir
ridges, and endured the first hideous winter of the Salient where,
wet, almost weaponless, but unbroken, he helped in the long miracle
of holding the line.
But the men of ’14 and ’15, and what meagre records of their day were
safe to keep, have long been lost; while the crowded years between
remove their battles across dead Belgian towns and villages as far
from us as the fights in Homer.
Doubtless, all will be reconstructed to the satisfaction of future
years when, if there be memory beyond the grave, the ghosts may
laugh at the neatly groomed histories. Meantime, we can take it for
granted that the old Regular Army of England passed away in the mud
of Flanders in less than a year. In training, morale, endurance,
courage, and devotion the earth did not hold its like, but it
possessed neither the numbers, guns, nor equipment necessary for
the type of war that overtook it. The fact of its unpreparedness
has been extolled as proof of the purity of its country’s ideals,
which must be great consolation to all concerned. But, how slowly
that equipment was furnished, how inadequate were our first attempts
at bombs, trench-mortars, duck-boards, wiring, and the rest, may
be divined through the loyal and guarded allusions in the Diaries.
Nor do private communications give much hint of it, for one of the
marvels of that marvellous time was the silence of those concerned on
everything that might too much distress their friends at home. The
censorship had imposed this as a matter of precaution, but only the
spirit of the officers could have backed the law so completely; and,
as better days came, their early makeshifts and contrivances passed
out of remembrance with their early dead. But the sufferings of our
Armies were constant. They included wet and cold in due season,
dirt always, occasional vermin, exposure, extreme fatigue, and the
hourly incidence of death in every shape along the front line, and
later in the furthest back-areas where the enemy aeroplanes harried
their camps. And when our Regular troops had been expended, these
experiences were imposed upon officers and men compelled to cover,
within a few months, the long years of training that should go to
the making of a soldier--men unbroken even to the disturbing impact
of crowds and like experiences, which the conscript accepts from his
youth. Their short home-leaves gave them sudden changes to the tense
home atmosphere where, under cover of a whirl of “entertainment” they
and their kin wearied themselves to forget and escape a little from
that life, on the brink of the next world, whose guns they could hear
summoning in the silences between their talk. Yet, some were glad to
return--else why should youngsters of three years’ experience have
found themselves upon a frosty night, on an iron-bound French road,
shouting aloud for joy as they heard the stammer of a machine-gun
over the rise, and turned up the well-known trench that led to their
own dug-out and their brethren from whom they had been separated
by the vast interval of ninety-six hours? Many have confessed to
the same delight in their work, as there were others to whom almost
every hour was frankly detestable except for the companionship that
revealed them one to another till the chances of war separated the
companions. And there were, too, many, almost children, of whom no
record remains. They came out from Warley with the constantly renewed
drafts, lived the span of a Second Lieutenant’s life and were spent.
Their intimates might preserve, perhaps, memories of a promise
cut short, recollections of a phrase that stuck, a chance-seen act
of bravery or of kindness. The Diaries give their names and fates
with the conventional expressions of regret. In most instances, the
compiler has let the mere fact suffice; since, to his mind, it did
not seem fit to heap words on the doom.
For the same reason, he has not dealt with each instance of valour,
leaving it to stand in the official language in which it was
acknowledged. The rewards represent but a very small proportion of
the skill, daring, and heroism actually noted; for no volume could
hold the full tale of all that was done, either in the way of duty,
under constraint of necessity and desire to keep alive, or through
joy and pleasure in achieving great deeds.
Here the Irish rank and file by temperament excelled. They had
all their race’s delight in the drama of things; and, whatever
the pinch--whether ambushed warfare or hand-to-hand shock,
or an insolently perfect parade after long divorce from the
decencies--could be depended upon to advance the regimental honour.
Their discipline, of course, was that of the Guards, which, based
upon tradition, proven experience, and knowledge of the human heart,
adjusts itself to the spirit of each of its battalions. Though the
material of that body might be expended twice in a twelvemonth, the
leaven that remained worked on the new supplies at once and from the
first. In the dingy out-of-date barracks at Warley the Regimental
Reserves gathered and grew into a full-fledged Second Battalion
with reserves of its own, and to these the wounded officers and
men sent home to be repatched, explained the arts and needs of a
war which, apparently always at a stand, changed character every
month. After the utter inadequacy of its opening there was a period
of hand-made bombs and of loaded sticks for close work; of nippers
for the abundant wire left uncut by our few guns; of remedies for
trench-feet; or medicaments against lockjaw from the grossly manured
Belgian dirt, and of fancy timberings to hold up sliding trenches.
In due course, when a few set battles, which sometimes gained several
hundred yards, had wasted their many thousand lives, infallible forms
of attack and defence developed themselves, were tried and generally
found wanting, while scientific raids, the evolution of specialists,
and the mass of regulated detail that more and more surrounded the
life of the trenches, occupied their leisure between actions. Our
battalions played themselves into the game at the awful price that
must be paid for improvisation, however cheery; enduring with a
philosophy that may have saved the war, the deviations and delays
made necessary by the demands of the various political and other
organisations at home.
In the same spirit they accepted the inevitable breakdowns in the
business of war-by-experiment; for it is safe to say that there
was hardly an operation in which platoons, companies, regiments,
brigades, or divisions were not left with one or both flanks in the
air. Among themselves, officers and men discussing such matters make
it quite clear how and why such and such units broke, were misled,
or delayed on their way into the line. But when a civilian presumes
to assist, all ranks unite against his uninformed criticisms.
He is warned that, once over the top, no plans hold, for the
machine-gun and the lie of the ground dictate the situation to the
platoon-commander on whom all things depend and who sees, perhaps,
fifty yards about him. There are limits, too, of shock and exhaustion
beyond which humanity cannot be pressed without paying toll later.
For which cause it may happen that a Division that has borne long
agony unflinching, and sincerely believes itself capable of yet more,
will, for no reason then apparent (at almost the mere rumour of
noises in the night) collapse ignominiously on the same ground where,
a month later, with two thirds of its strength casualties, it cuts
coolly and cleanly to its goal. And its fellows, who have borne the
same yoke, allow for this.
The compiler of these records, therefore, has made little attempt
to put forward any theory of what might or should have happened if
things had gone according to plan; and has been scrupulous to avoid
debatable issues of bad staff-work or faulty generalship. They were
not lacking in the war, but the broad sense of justice in all who
suffered from them, recognising that all were equally amateurs, saved
the depression of repeated failures from turning into demoralisation.
Here, again, the Irish were reported by those who knew them best, to
have been lenient in their judgments, though their private speech
was as unrestrained as that of any other body of bewildered and
overmastered men. “Wearing down” the enemy through a period of four
years and three months, during most of which time that enemy dealt
losses at least equal to those he received, tested human virtue upon
a scale that the world had never dreamed of. The Irish Guards stood
to the test without flaw.
They were in no sense any man’s command. They needed minute
comprehension, quick sympathy, and inflexible justice, which they
repaid by individual devotion and a collective good-will that showed
best when things were at their utter worst. Their moods naturally
varied with the weather and the burden of fatigues (actions merely
kill, while fatigue breaks men’s hearts), but their morale was
constant because their unofficial life, on which morale hinges, made
for contentment. The discipline of the Guards, demanding the utmost
that can be exacted of the man, requires of the officer unresting
care of his men under all conditions. This care can be a source of
sorrow and friction in rigid or over-conscientious hands, till,
with the best will in the world, a battalion may be reduced to the
mental state of nurse-harried children. Or, conversely, an adored
company commander, bold as a lion, may, for lack of it, turn his
puzzled company into a bear-garden. But there is an elasticity in
Celtic psychology that does not often let things reach breaking-point
either way; and their sense of humour and social duty--it is a race
more careful to regard each other’s feelings than each other’s
lives--held them as easily as they were strictly associated. A jest;
the grave hearing out of absurd complaints that might turn to tragedy
were the hearing not accorded; a prompt soothing down of gloomy,
injured pride; a piece of flagrant buffoonery sanctioned, even
shared, but never taken advantage of, went far in dark days to build
up that understanding and understood inner life of the two battalions
to which, now, men look back lovingly across their civilian years.
It called for a devotion from all, little this side of idolatry; and
was shown equally by officers, N.C.O.’s, and men, stretcher-bearers,
cooks, orderlies, and not least by the hard-bit, fantastic old
soldiers, used for odd duties, who faithfully hobbled about France
alongside the rush of wonderful young blood.
Were instances given, the impression might be false, for the tone
and temper of the time that set the pace has gone over. But while
it lasted, the men made their officers and the officers their men
by methods as old as war itself; and their Roman Catholic priests,
fearless even in a community none too regardful of Nature’s first
law, formed a subtle and supple link between both. That the priest,
ever in waiting upon Death or pain, should learn to magnify his
office was as natural as that doctors and front-line commanders
should find him somewhat under their feet when occasion called for
the secular, not the spiritual, arm. That Commanding Officers, to
keep peace and save important pillars of their little society, should
first advise and finally order the padre not to expose himself
wantonly in forward posts or attacks, was equally of a piece with
human nature; and that the priests, to the huge content of the
men, should disregard the order (“What’s a casualty compared to a
soul?”) was most natural of all. Then the question would come up for
discussion in the trenches and dug-outs, where everything that any
one had on his mind was thrashed out through the long, quiet hours,
or dropped and picked up again with the rise and fall of shell-fire.
They speculated on all things in Heaven and earth as they worked in
piled filth among the carcases of their fellows, lay out under the
stars on the eves of open battle, or vegetated through a month’s
feeding and idleness between one sacrifice and the next.
But none have kept minutes of those incredible symposia that made for
them a life apart from the mad world which was their portion; nor
can any pen recreate that world’s brilliance, squalor, unreason, and
heaped boredom. Recollection fades from men’s minds as common life
closes over them, till even now they wonder what part they can ever
have had in the shrewd, man-hunting savages who answered to their
names so few years ago.
It is for the sake of these initiated that the compiler has loaded
his records with detail and seeming triviality, since in a life where
Death ruled every hour, nothing was trivial, and bald references to
villages, billets, camps, fatigues, and sports, as well as hints of
tales that can never now fully be told, carry each their separate
significance to each survivor, intimate and incommunicable as family
jests.
As regards other readers, the compiler dares no more than hope that
some of those who have no care for old history, or that larger number
who at present are putting away from themselves odious memories, may
find a little to interest, or even comfort, in these very details and
flatnesses that make up the unlovely, yet superb, life endured for
their sakes.
RUDYARD KIPLING.
THE IRISH GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR
1914
MONS TO LA BASSÉE
At 5 P. M. on Tuesday, August 4, 1914, the 1st Battalion of the Irish
Guards received orders to mobilize for war against Germany. They were
then quartered at Wellington Barracks and, under the mobilization
scheme, formed part of the 4th (Guards) Brigade, Second Division,
First Army Corps. The Brigade consisted of:
The 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards.
“ 2nd “ Coldstream Guards.
“ 3rd “ Coldstream Guards.
“ 1st “ Irish Guards.
Mobilization was completed on August 8. Next day, being Sunday,
the Roman Catholics of the Battalion paraded under the Commanding
Officer, Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. G. H. Morris, and went to
Westminster Cathedral where Cardinal Bourne preached; and on the
morning of the 11th August Field-Marshal Lord Roberts and Lady Aileen
Roberts made a farewell speech to them in Wellington Barracks. This
was the last time that Lord Roberts saw the Battalion of which he was
the first Commander-in-Chief.
On the 12th August the Battalion entrained for Southampton in two
trains at Nine Elms Station, each detachment being played out of
barracks to the station by the band. They were short one officer, as
2nd Lieutenant St. J. R. Pigott had fallen ill, and an officer just
gazetted--2nd Lieutenant Sir Gerald Burke, Bart.--could not accompany
them as he had not yet got his uniform. They embarked at Southampton
on a hot still day in the P. & O. s.s. _Novara_. This was a long and
tiring operation, since every one was new to embarkation-duty, and,
owing to the tide, the ship’s bulwarks stood twenty-five feet above
the quay. The work was not finished till 4 P. M. when most of the men
had been under arms for twelve hours. Just before leaving, Captain
Sir Delves Broughton, Bart., was taken ill and had to be left behind.
A telegram was sent to Headquarters, asking for Captain H. Hamilton
Berners to take his place, and the _Novara_ cleared at 7 P. M. As
dusk fell, she passed H.M.S. _Formidable_ off Ryde and exchanged
signals with her. The battle-ship’s last message to the Battalion
was to hope that they would get “plenty of fighting.” Many of the
officers at that moment were sincerely afraid that they might be late
for the war!
The following is the list of officers who went out with the Battalion
that night:
Lieut.-Col. Hon. G. H. Morris Commanding Officer.
Major H. F. Crichton Senior Major.
Captain Lord Desmond FitzGerald Adjutant.
Lieut. E. J. F. Gough Transport Officer.
Lieut. E. B. Greer M. Gun Officer.
Hon. Lieut. H. Hickie Quartermaster.
Lieut. H. J. S. Shields (R.A.M.C.) Medical Officer.
Lieut. Hon. Aubrey Herbert, M.P. Interpreter.
_No. 1 Company._
Capt. Hon. A. E. Mulholland.
Capt. Lord John Hamilton.
Lieut. Hon. H. R. Alexander.
Lieut. C. A. S. Walker.
2nd Lieut. N. L. Woodroffe.
2nd Lieut. J. Livingstone-Learmonth.
_No. 2 Company._
Major H. A. Herbert Stepney.
Capt. J. N. Guthrie.
Lieut. E. J. F. Gough.
Lieut. J. S. N. FitzGerald.
Lieut. W. E. Hope.
2nd Lieut. O. Hughes-Onslow.
_No. 3 Company._
Capt. Sir Delves Broughton, Bart.
(replaced by Capt. H. Hamilton Berners).
Capt. Hon. T. E. Vesey.
Lieut. Hon. Hugh Gough.
Lieut. Lord Guernsey.
2nd Lieut. Viscount Castlerosse.
_No. 4 Company._
Capt. C. A. Tisdall.
Capt. A. A. Perceval.
Lieut. W. C. N. Reynolds.
Lieut. R. Blacker-Douglass.
Lieut. Lord Robert Innes-Ker.
2nd Lieut. J. T. P. Roberts.
_Details at the Base._
Capt. Lord Arthur Hay.
2nd Lieut. Sir Gerald Burke, Bart.
They reached Havre at 6 A. M. on August 13, a fiercely hot day, and,
tired after a sleepless night aboard ship, and a long wait, in a
hot, tin-roofed shed, for some missing men, marched three miles out
of the town to Rest Camp No. 2 “in a large field at Sanvic, a suburb
of Havre at the top of the hill.” Later, the city herself became
almost a suburb to the vast rest-camps round it. Here they received
an enthusiastic welcome from the French, and were first largely
introduced to the wines of the country, for many maidens lined the
steep road and offered bowls of drinks to the wearied.
Next day (August 14) men rested a little, looking at this strange,
bright France with strange eyes, and bathed in the sea; and Captain
H. Berners, replacing Sir Delves Broughton, joined. At eleven
o’clock they entrained at Havre Station under secret orders for the
Front. The heat broke in a terrible thunderstorm that soaked the new
uniforms. The crowded train travelled north all day, receiving great
welcomes everywhere, but no one knowing what its destination might
be. After more than seventeen hours’ slow progress by roads that were
not revealed then or later, they halted at Wassigny, at a quarter to
eleven on the night of August 15, and, unloading in hot darkness,
bivouacked at a farm near the station.
On the morning of August 16 they marched to Vadencourt, where, for
the first time, they went into billets. The village, a collection of
typical white-washed tiled houses with a lovely old church in the
centre, lay out pleasantly by the side of a poplar-planted stream.
The 2nd Coldstream Guards were also billeted here; the Headquarters
of the 4th Guards Brigade, the 2nd Grenadier Guards, and 3rd
Coldstream being at Grougis. All supplies, be it noted, came from a
village of the ominous name of Boue, which--as they were to learn
through the four winters to follow--means “mud.”
At Vadencourt they lay three days while the men were being inoculated
against enteric. A few had been so treated before leaving Wellington
Barracks, but, in view of the hurried departure, 90 per cent.
remained to be dealt with. The Diary remarks that for two days “the
Battalion was not up to much.” Major H. Crichton fell sick here.
On the 20th August the march towards Belgium of the Brigade began,
_via_ Etreux and Fesmy (where Lieutenant and Quartermaster Hickie
went sick and had to be sent back to railhead) to Maroilles, where
the Battalion billeted, August 21, and thence, _via_ Pont sur Sambre
and Hargnies, to La Longueville, August 22. Here, being then five
miles east of Malplaquet, the Battalion heard the first sound of the
guns of the war, far off; not knowing that, at the end of all, they
would hear them cease almost on that very spot.
At three o’clock in the morning of August 23 the Brigade marched
_via_ Riez de l’Erelle into Belgian territory and through Blaregnies
towards Mons where it was dimly understood that some sort of battle
was in the making. But it was _not_ understood that eighty thousand
British troops with three hundred guns disposed between Condé,
through Mons towards Binche, were meeting twice that number of
Germans on their front, plus sixty thousand Germans with two hundred
and thirty guns trying to turn their left flank, while a quarter of a
million Germans, with close on a thousand guns, were driving in the
French armies on the British right from Charleroi to Namur, across
the Meuse and the Sambre. This, in substance, was the situation at
Mons. It supplied a sufficient answer to the immortal question,
put by one of the pillars of the Battalion, a drill sergeant, who
happened to arrive from home just as that situation had explained
itself, and found his battalion steadily marching south. “Fwhat’s all
this talk about a retreat?” said he, and strictly rebuked the shouts
of laughter that followed.[1]
THE RETREAT FROM MONS
The Brigade was first ordered to take up a position at Bois Lahant,
close to the dirtier suburbs of Mons which is a fair city on a hill,
but the order was cancelled when it was discovered that the Fifth
Division was already there. Eventually, the Irish Guards were told
to move from the village of Quevy le Petit, where they had expected
to go into billets, to Harveng. Here they were ordered, with the 2nd
Grenadier Guards, to support the Fifth Division on a chalk ridge
from Harmignies to the Mons road, while the other two battalions of
the Brigade (the 2nd and 3rd Coldstream Guards) took up position
north-east of Harveng. Their knowledge of what might be in front
of them or who was in support was, naturally, small. It was a hot,
still evening, no Germans were visible, but shrapnel fell ahead of
the Battalion as it moved in artillery formation across the rolling,
cropped lands. One single far-ranging rifle bullet landed with a
_phtt_ in the chalk between two officers, one of whom turning to
the other laughed and said, “Ah! Now we can say we have been under
fire.” A few more shells arrived as the advance to the ridge went
forward, and the Brigade reached the seventh kilometre-stone on the
Harmignies-Mons road, below the ridge, about 6 P. M. on the 23rd
August. The Irish Rifles, commanded by Colonel Bird, D.S.O., were
fighting here, and Nos. 1 and 2 Companies of the Irish Guards went
up to reinforce it. This was the first time that the Battalion had
been personally shelled and five men were wounded. The guns ceased
about dusk, and there was very little fire from the German trenches,
which were rather in the nature of scratch-holes, ahead of them. That
night, too, was the first on which the troops saw a searchlight used.
They enjoyed also their first experience of digging themselves in,
the which they did so casually that veterans of after years would
hold up that “trench” as a sample of “the valour of ignorance.” At
midnight, the Irish Rifles were ordered to retire while the Irish
Guards covered their retirement; but so far they had been in direct
contact with nothing.
The Battalion heard confusedly of the fall of Namur and, it may be
presumed, of the retirement of the French armies on the right of the
British. There was little other news of any sort, and what there was,
not cheering. On front and flank of the British armies the enemy
stood in more than overwhelming strength, and it came to a question
of retiring, as speedily as might be, before the flood swallowed what
remained. So the long retreat of our little army began.
The large outlines of it are as follows: The entire British
Force, First and Second Army Corps, fell back to Bavai--the First
without serious difficulty, the Second fighting rear-guard actions
through the day. At Bavai the two Corps diverged, not to unite
again till they should reach Betz on the 1st September. The Second
Army Corps, reinforced by the Fourth Division, took the roads
through Le Quesnoy, Solesme, Le Cateau, St. Quentin, Ham, Nesle,
Noyon, and Crépy-en-Valois; the First paralleling them, roughly,
through Landrecies, Vadencourt, La Fère, Pasly by Soissons, and
Villers-Cotterêts.
[Illustration:
_The RETREAT from MONS_
1914
_Northern Section_
_Emery Walker Ltd. del. et sc._]
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EMERY WALKER LTD., LONDON
At 2 o’clock in the morning of August 24 the Battalion, “having
covered the retirement of all the other troops,” retired through
the position which the 2nd and 3rd Coldstream Guards had taken up,
to Quevy le Petit, where it was ordered, with the 2nd Grenadiers,
to entrench another position north of Quevy le Petit (from the
third kilometre-stone on the Genly-Quevy le Petit road to the tenth
kilometre-stone on the Mons-Bettignies road). This it did while the
whole of the Second Division retired through the position at 4 P.
M., the Battalion acting as rear-guard. Their notion of “digging-in”
was to cut fire-steps in the side of the handy bank of any road. At
nine o’clock that night the Battalion “came out of Belgium by the
same road that it had marched into Belgium” through Blaregnies, past
Bavai where the First and Second Army Corps diverged, and through La
Longueville to Malgarni, where they bivouacked in an orchard “having
been forty-four hours under arms.” Here the first mail from England
arrived, and was distributed by torchlight under the apple-trees in
the warm night.
On the afternoon of August 25 the Battalion reached Landrecies, an
unlovely, long-streeted town in closely cultivated country. The
German pressure was heavy behind them, and that evening the 3rd
Coldstream Guards on outpost duty to the north-west of Landrecies,
on the Mormal road, were attacked, and, as history shows, beat
off that attack in a night-fight of some splendour. The Battalion
turned out and blocked the pavé entrance to the town with improvised
barricades, which they lined, of stones, tables, chairs, carts, and
pianos; relieved the Coldstream at 1.30 A. M., August 26; and once
again covered the retirement of the Brigade out of the town towards
Etreux. The men were very tired, so weary indeed that many of them
slept by the roadside while waiting to relieve the Coldstreams at
Landrecies fight. That night was the first they heard wounded men
scream. A couple of Irish Guards officers, sleeping so deeply that
only the demolition by shell-fire of the house next door waked them,
were left behind here, but after twenty-four hours of fantastic and,
at that time, almost incredible adventures, rejoined safely next day.
It was recorded also that one of the regimental drums was seen and
heard going down Landrecies main street in the darkness, strung on
the fore-leg of a gun-horse who had stepped into it as a battery went
south. A battalion cooker, the sparks flying from it, passed like
a fire-engine hastening to a fire, and men found time to laugh and
point at the strange thing.
At Etreux, where with the rest of the Brigade the Battalion
entrenched itself after the shallow pattern of the time, it had
its first sight of a German aeroplane which flew over its trenches
and dropped a bomb that “missed a trench by twenty yards.” The
Battalion fired at it, and it “flew away like a wounded bird and
eventually came down and was captured by another division.” Both
sides were equally inexperienced in those days in the details of
air war. All that day they heard the sound of what they judged was
“a battle in the direction of Le Cateau.” This was the Second Army
Corps and a single Division of the Third Corps under Smith-Dorrien
interrupting our retirement to make a stand against four or more
German Army Corps and six hundred guns. The result of that action
caused the discerning General von Kluck to telegraph that he held
the Expeditionary Force “surrounded by a ring of steel,” and Berlin
behung itself with flags. This also the Battalion did not know.
They were more interested in the fact that they had lost touch with
the Second Division; and that their Commanding Officer had told the
officers that, so far as he could make out, they were surrounded and
had better dig in deeper and wait on. As no one knew particularly
where they might be in all France, and as the night of the 26th was
very wet, the tired men slept undisturbedly over the proposition,
to resume their retreat next day (August 27) down the valley of the
Sambre, through Vénérolles, Tupigny, Vadencourt, Noyales, to the
open glaring country round Mont d’Origny where the broad road to
St. Quentin crosses the river. It was in reserve that day, and the
next (August 28) was advance-guard to the Brigade as the retirement
continued through Châtillon, Berthenicourt, and Moy to Vendeuil
and the cross-roads west of the Vendeuil-La Fère road while the
Brigade marched on to Bertaucourt. After the Brigade had passed, the
Battalion acted as rear-guard into Bertaucourt. Here No. 2 Company,
under Major Stepney, was sent to Beautor to assist a section of the
Royal Engineers in demolishing a bridge across the river there--an
operation performed without incident--and in due course joined up
with the Battalion again. By this time, the retreat, as one who
took part in it says, had become “curiously normal”--the effect,
doubtless, of that continued over-exertion which reduces men to the
state of sleep-walkers. There was a ten minutes’ halt every hour, on
which the whole Battalion dropped where it stood and slept. At night,
some of them began to see lights, like those of comfortable billets
by the roadside which, for some curious reason or other, could never
be reached. Others found themselves asleep, on their feet, and even
when they lay down to snatch sleep, the march moved on, and wearied
them in their dreams. Owing to the heat and the dust, many suffered
from sore feet and exhaustion, and, since ambulance accommodation was
limited, they had to be left behind to follow on if, and as best,
they could. But those who fell out were few, and the Diary remarks
approvingly that “on the whole the Battalion marched very well and
march-discipline was good.” Neither brigade nor battalion commanders
knew anything of what was ahead or behind, but it seemed that, since
they could not get into Paris before the Germans and take first-class
tickets to London, they would all be cut off and destroyed; which did
not depress them unduly. At all events, the Battalion one evening
forgot its weariness long enough to take part in the chase and
capture of a stray horse of Belgian extraction, which, after its
ample lack of manners and mouth had been proved, they turned over for
instruction and reformation to the Transport.
From Bertaucourt, then, where the Battalion spent another night in
an orchard, it marched very early on the 30th August to Terny _via_
Deuillet, Servais, Basse Forêt de Coucy, Folembray, Coucy-le-Château,
then magnificent and untouched--all closer modelled country and,
if possible, hotter than the bare lands they had left. Thence from
Terny to Pasly, N.W. of Soissons. Here they lay down by moonlight in
a field, and here an officer dreamed that the alarm had been given
and that they must move on. In this nightmare he rose and woke up all
platoon-officers and the C.O.; next, laboriously and methodically,
his own company, and last of all himself, whom he found shaking and
swearing at a man equally drunk with fatigue.
On the 31st August the Battalion took position as right flank-guard
from 9 A. M. to 3 P. M. on the high ground near Le Murger Farm and
bivouacked at Soucy. So far, there had been little fighting for them
since Landrecies, though they moved with the comforting knowledge
that an unknown number of the enemy, thoroughly provided with means
of transportation, were in fixed pursuit, just on the edge of a
sky-line full of unseen guns urging the British always to move back.
VILLERS-COTTERÊTS
On the 1st September, the anniversary of Sedan, the Battalion
was afoot at 2 A. M. and with the 2nd Coldstream Guards acted as
rear-guard under the Commanding Officer, Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. G.
Morris. There had been heavy dew in the night, followed at dawn by
thin, miserable rain, when they breakfasted, among wet lucerne and
fields of stacked corn, on the edge of the deep Villers-Cotterêts
beech-forests. They fell back into them on a rumour of advancing
cavalry, who turned out to be troops of German infantry running
from stack to stack and filtering into the forest on their either
flank. Their first position was the Vivières Puiseux line, a little
south-west of Soucy village: the Battalion to the right of the
Soucy-Villers-Cotterêts road, and the Coldstream to the left on a
front of not more than a mile. Their second position, as far as
can be made out, was the Rond de la Reine, a mile farther south,
where the deep soft forest-roads from Soucy and Vivières join on
their way to Villers-Cotterêts. The enemy ran in upon them from
all sides, and the action resolved itself into blind fighting in
the gloom of the woods, with occasional glimpses of men crossing
the rides, or firing from behind tree-boles. The Germans were very
cautious at first, because our fire-discipline, as we fell back, gave
them the impression that the forest was filled with machine-guns
instead of mere trained men firing together sustainedly. The morning
wet cleared, and the day grew close and stifling. There was no
possibility of keeping touch or conveying orders. Since the German
advance-guard was, by comparison, an army, all that could be done was
to hold back as long as possible the attacks on front and flank, and
to retain some sense of direction in the bullet-torn woods, where,
when a man dropped in the bracken and bramble, he disappeared. But
throughout the fight, till the instant of his death, Lieut.-Colonel
the Hon. G. Morris, commanding the Battalion, rode from one point
to another of an action that was all front, controlling, cheering,
and chaffing his men. And so that heathen battle, in half darkness,
continued, with all units of the 4th Brigade confusedly engaged,
till in the afternoon the Battalion, covered by the 2nd Coldstream,
reformed, still in the woods, a mile north of the village of
Pisseleux. Here the roll was called, and it was found that the
following officers were missing: Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. G. Morris,
Major H. F. Crichton, Captain C. A. Tisdall, Lieutenant Lord Robert
Innes-Ker, 2nd Lieutenant Viscount Castlerosse, Lieutenant the Hon.
Aubrey Herbert, and Lieutenant Shields, R.A.M.C.
Captain Lord Desmond FitzGerald and Lieutenant Blacker-Douglass were
wounded and left with the field-ambulance. Lieut.-Colonel Morris,
Major Crichton, and Captain Tisdall had been killed. The others
had been wounded and captured by the Germans, who treated them with
reasonable humanity at Villers-Cotterêts till they were released on
September 12 by the French advance following the first Battle of the
Marne. Colonel Morris’s body was afterwards identified and buried
with that of Captain Tisdall; and one long rustic-fenced grave,
perhaps the most beautiful of all resting-places in France, on a
slope of the forest off the dim road, near the Rond de la Reine,
holds our dead in that action. It was made and has been religiously
tended since by Dr. Moufflers, the Mayor of the town, and his wife.
The death of Colonel Morris, an officer beloved and a man noticeably
brave among brave men, was a heavy loss to the Battalion he
commanded, and whose temper he knew so well. In the thick of the
fight during a lull in the firing, when some blind shell-fire opened,
he called to the men: “D’you hear that? They’re doing that to
frighten you.” To which someone replied with simple truth: “If that’s
what they’re after, they might as well stop. They succeeded with _me_
hours ago.”
As a matter of fact, the men behaved serenely, as may be proved
by this tale. They were working their way, well under rifle-fire,
across an opening in the forest, when some of them stopped to pick
blackberries that attracted their attention. To these their sergeant,
very deliberately, said: “I shouldn’t mind them berries, lads.
There’s may be worrums in ’em.” It was a speech worthy of a hero
of Dumas, whose town Villers-Cotterêts is, by right of birth. Yet
once, during their further retirement towards Pisseleux, they were
badly disconcerted. A curious private prodded a hornets’ nest on a
branch with his bayonet, and the inhabitants came out in force. Then
there was real confusion: not restored by the sight of bald-headed
reservists frantically slapping with their caps at one hornet while
others stung them on their defenceless scalps. So they passed out of
the darkness and the greenery of the forest, which, four years later,
was to hide a great French Army, and launch it forth to turn the
tide of 1918.
Their march continued until 11 P. M. that night, when the Battalion
arrived at Betz, where the First and Second Army Corps rejoined
each other once more. No supplies were received that night nor the
following day (September 2), when the Battalion reached Esbly, where
they bathed--with soap, be it noted--in the broad and quiet Marne,
and an ox was requisitioned, potatoes were dug up from a field, and
some sort of meal served out.
The Diary here notes “Thus ended the retreat from Mons.” This is not
strictly correct. In twelve days the British Army had been driven
back 140 miles as the crow flies from Mons, and farther, of course,
by road. There was yet to be a further retirement of some fifteen
miles south of Esbly ere the general advance began, but September 3
marks, as nearly as may be, slack-water ere the ebb that followed
of the triumphant German tidal wave through Belgium almost up to
the outer forts of Paris. That advance had, at the last moment,
swerved aside from Paris towards the south-east, and in doing so had
partially exposed its right flank to the Sixth French Army. General
Joffre took instant advantage of the false step to wheel his Sixth
Army to the east, so that its line ran due north and east from
Ermenonville to Lagny; at the same time throwing forward the left of
his line. The British Force lay between Lagny and Cortecan, filling
the gap between the Sixth and Fifth French Armies, and was still an
effective weapon which the enemy supposed they had broken for good.
But our harried men realized no more than that, for the moment, there
seemed to be a pause in the steady going back. The confusion, the
dust, the heat, continued while the armies manœuvred for position;
and scouts and aerial reconnaissance reported more and more German
columns of all arms pressing down from the east and north-east.
On September 3 the 4th Brigade moved from Esbly, in the great loops
of the Marne, through Meaux to the neighbourhood of Pierre Levée,
where the Battalion fed once more on requisitioned beef, potatoes,
and apples.
THE ADVANCE TO THE AISNE
Next day (September 4), while the British Army was getting into
position in the process of changing front to the right, the 4th
Brigade had to cover a retirement of the 5th Brigade between Pierre
Levée and Le Bertrand, and the Battalion dug itself in near a farm
(Grand Loge) on the Pierre Levée-Giremoutiers road in preparation for
a rear-guard attack that did not arrive. They remained in position
with what the Diary pathetically refers to as “the machine-gun,” till
they were relieved in the evening by the Worcesters, and reached
bivouac at Le Bertrand at one o’clock on the morning of the 5th
September. That day they bivouacked near Fontenay, and picked up some
much-needed mess-tins, boots, putties and the like with which to make
good more immediate waste.
On the 6th they marched through Rozoy (where they saw an old priest
standing at the door of his church, and to him the men bared their
heads mechanically, till he, openly surprised, gave them his
blessing) to Mont Plaisir to gain touch between the First and Second
Divisions of the English Army. Major Stepney, the C.O., reported to
Headquarters 1st Brigade at 9 A. M. half a mile north-east of Rozoy.
At the same moment cavalry scouts brought news of two enemy columns,
estimated at a thousand each, approaching from the direction of
Vaudoy. Nos. 3 and 4 Companies were ordered forward to prolong the
line of the First Division, while Nos. 1 and 2 Companies “with the
machine-gun” entrenched themselves on the Mont Plaisir road.
[Illustration:
_The RETREAT from MONS_
1914
_Southern Section._
_Emery Walker Ltd. del. et sc._]
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EMERY WALKER LTD., LONDON
In the afternoon Lieutenant the Hon. R. H. Alexander, reconnoitring
with a platoon in the direction of the village of Villeneuve, which
was to be occupied, reported a hostile battery at Le Plessis had
fired on the Battalion and killed 4 men and wounded 11. One of these,
Sergeant O’Loughlin, died later. This was the Battalion’s first
fighting since Villers-Cotterêts, and they went into action while
the bells of the quiet countryside rang for church. The battery was
put out of action by our guns in half an hour, Villeneuve occupied
without further opposition, and the Battalion bivouacked at Tonquin
on the night of the 6th September. The enemy had realised the threat
to their flank in General Joffre’s new dispositions, and under cover
of rear-guard and delaying actions were withdrawing north all along
their line.