to Rebais, where there was a German column, but the advance-guard of
the Brigade was held up at St. Simeon till dark and the Battalion
had to bivouac a couple of miles outside Rebais. The German force
withdrew from Rebais on the afternoon of the 7th, and on the 8th the
Brigade’s advance continued through Rebais northward in the direction
of Boitron, which lay just across the Petit Morin River. Heavy
machine-gun fire from some thick woods along the rolling ground,
across the river, checked the advance-guard (the 3rd Coldstream) and
the two companies of the Irish Guards who supported them. The woods,
the river valley, and the village of Boitron were searched by our
guns, and on the renewal of the attack the river was crossed and
Boitron occupied, the enemy being heavily shelled as he retired. Here
the Battalion re-formed and pressed forward in a heavy rainstorm,
through a flank attack of machine-guns from woods on the left. These
they charged, while a battery of our field-guns fired point-blank
into the thickets, and captured a German machine-gun company of six
guns (which seemed to them, at the time, a vast number), 3 officers,
and 90 rank and file. Here, too, in the confusion of the fighting
they came under fire of our own artillery, an experience that was
to become familiar to them, and the C.O. ordered the companies
to assemble at Ferme le Cas Rouge, a village near by where they
bivouacked for the night. They proudly shut up in the farm-yard the
first prisoners they had ever taken; told off two servants to wait
upon a wounded major; took the parole of the two other officers and
invited them to a dinner of chicken and red wine. The Battalion,
it will be observed, knew nothing then except the observances of
ordinary civilized warfare. 2nd Lieutenant A. Fitzgerald and a draft
arrived that day.
This small affair of Boitron Wood was the Irish Guards’ share of the
immense mixed Battle of the Marne, now raging along all the front.
Its result and the capture of the machine-guns cheered them a little.
The next five days--September 9 to 13--had nothing but tedious
marching and more tedious halts and checks, due to the congestion
of traffic and the chaos in the villages that had been entered,
sacked, defiled and abandoned by the enemy. The Marne was crossed
on the 9th at Charly, where--the inhabitants said that the Germans
detailed for the job had been too drunk to effect it--a bridge had
been left ready for demolition, but intact, and by this means the
First and Second Divisions crossed the river. The weather turned wet,
with heavy showers; greatcoats had been lost or thrown aside all
along the line of retreat; billets and bivouacs made filthy by the
retreating Germans; and there was general discomfort, enlivened with
continuous cannonading from the front and the appearance of German
prisoners gathered in by our cavalry ahead. And thus, from the Marne
the Battalion came by way of Trenel, Villers-sur-Marne, Cointicourt,
Oulchy-le-Château, Courcelles and St. Mard to the high banks of the
Aisne, which they crossed by the pontoon bridge at Pont d’Arcy on the
morning of September 14 and advanced to Soupir in the hollows under
the steep wooded hills.
That day, the 2nd Grenadiers formed the advance-guard of the
Brigade, followed by the 3rd Coldstream, the Irish Guards, and the
2nd Coldstream. After they had cleared Soupir village, the force
was shelled and an attack was made by the 3rd Coldstream, the Irish
Guards in support, on a steep ridge near La Cour de Soupir farm,
which stood on the crest of the bluff above the river. The heavily
wooded country was alive with musketry and machine-gun fire, and the
distances were obscured by mist and heavy rain. The 3rd Coldstream,
attacking the farm, found themselves outflanked from a ridge on their
right, which was then attempted by three companies of the Irish
Guards. They reached to within a couple of hundred yards of a wood
cut up by rides, down which, as well as from the trenches, heavy
rifle-fire was directed. Here Captain J. N. Guthrie (No. 2 Company)
was wounded and Captain H. Hamilton Berners killed, while Lieutenant
Watson, R.A.M.C., was shot and wounded at close quarters attending
a wounded man. Here, too, the Battalion had its first experience of
the German use of the white flag; for Lieutenant J. S. FitzGerald
with No. 8 Platoon and a party of Coldstream under Lieutenant
Cotterel-Dormer found some hundred and fifty Germans sitting round
haystacks and waving white flags. They went forward to take their
surrender and were met by a heavy fire at thirty yards’ range,
which forced them to fall back. Lieutenant E. B. Greer, machine-gun
officer, now brought up his two machine-guns, but was heavily fired
at from cover, had all of one gun-team killed or wounded and, for the
while, lost one gun. He reorganized the other gun-team, and called
for volunteers from the Company nearest him to recover it. After dark
Corporal Sheridan and Private Carney of No. 3 Company and Private
Harrington, a machine-gunner of No. 1 Company, went out with him and
the gun was brought in. A further advance was made in the afternoon
to the edge of the wood in order to clear out the snipers who held it
and commanded the cultivated fields outside. Towards dusk, Captain
Lord Guernsey, who was Acting Quartermaster, reported himself to the
C.O., who posted him to No. 2 Company, then engaged in clearing out
the snipers, in place of Captain Guthrie, who had been wounded. He
went forward to assist Captain Lord Arthur Hay in command, and both
were immediately shot dead.
The Battalion bivouacked in battle-outpost formation that night
on the edge of the wood, and got into touch with the 60th Rifles
on their right and the 2nd Grenadiers on their left. Here, though
they did not know it, the advance from the Marne was at an end. Our
forces had reached the valley of the Aisne, with its bluffs on either
side and deep roads half hidden by the woods that climbed them.
The plateaux of the north of the river shaped themselves for the
trench-warfare of the years to come; and the natural strength of the
positions on the high ground was increased by numberless quarries and
caves that ran along it.
THE HALT AT SOUPIR
On the 15th September patrols reported that the enemy had fallen back
a little from his position, and at daylight two companies entrenched
themselves on the edge of the wood. Judged by present standards those
trenches were little more than shallow furrows, for we did not know
that the day of open battle was ended, and it is curious to see how
slowly our people broke themselves to the monotonous business of
trench construction and maintenance. Even after they had dug the
casual ditch which they called a trench, it cost some time and a few
lives till they understood that the works could not be approached in
the open as had been war’s custom. Their first communication-trench
was but three hundred yards long, and it struck them as a gigantic
and almost impossible “fatigue.”
The enemy had not fallen back more than a thousand yards from the
Cour de Soupir farm which they were resolute to retake if possible.
They fired on our burying-parties and shelled the trenches all
through the 16th September. Patrols were sent out at dawn and
dusk--since any one visible leaving the trenches was fired upon by
snipers--found hostile infantry in full strength in front of them,
and the Battalion had to organize its first system of trench-relief;
for the Diary of the 18th September remarks that “Nos. 1 and 4
Companies relieved 2 and 3 Companies in the trenches and were again
shelled during the day.”
Sniping on Hun lines was a novel experience to the Battalion. They
judged it strange to find a man apparently dead, with a cloth over
his face, lying in a hollow under a ridge commanding their line, who
turned out to be quite alive and unwounded. His rifle was within
short reach, and he was waiting till our patrols had passed to get to
his work. But they killed him, angrily and with astonishment.
On the morning of the 18th September Lieut.-Colonel Lord Ardee,
Grenadier Guards, arrived and took over command from Major Stepney.
The following officers--the first of the long line--also arrived as
reinforcements:
Major G. Madden; Captain Norman Orr-Ewing, Scots Guards, attached;
Captain Lord Francis Scott, Grenadier Guards, attached; Captain the
Hon. J. F. Trefusis, Lieutenants George Brooke, L. S. Coke, R. H.
Ferguson, G. M. Maitland, C. R. Harding, and P. Antrobus.
The Battalion reorganized as follows after less than four weeks’
campaign:
Lieut.-Colonel Lord Ardee C.O.
Major Herbert Stepney Senior Major.
Capt. the Hon. J. Trefusis Adjutant.
Lieut. E. J. Gough Transport Officer.
Lieut. C. A. S. Walker Quartermaster (acting).
Capt. Hon. A. E. Mulholland O.C. No. 1 Company.
Capt. N. Orr-Ewing O.C. No. 2 Company.
Capt. Lord Francis Scott O.C. No. 3 Company.
Major G. Madden O.C. No. 4 Company.
The trench-war was solidifying itself; for the Diary of that same day
notes that the enemy “shelled the trenches and the two howitzer-guns
which were in position below.” Ours was an army, then, which could
count and place every gun that it owned. As many as three howitzer
batteries per division had accompanied the Expeditionary Force, and
more were being sent from home.
The night of the 19th was very wet. They were relieved by the 3rd
Coldstream, and went into billets at Soupir, “having been in the
trenches for five days.” There was an alarm in the afternoon, and
the machine-guns and 100 men of No. 1 Company were sent to help the
Coldstream in the trenches, whilst the rest of the Battalion marched
at 6 P. M. to be ready to assist the 2nd Grenadiers on the left of
Cour de Soupir farm. Only “the machine-guns,” however, came into
action, and the Battalion returned to its billets at 10 P. M.
Much the same sort of thing occurred on the 20th--a furious fusillade
from the trenches, the despatch of reinforcements up a “muddy
lane,” not yet turned into a communication-trench, to help the 3rd
Coldstream, while Nos. 2 and 4 Companies went out to reinforce the
Oxfordshire Light Infantry and to hold the road at the back of it
“in case of a retirement,” and the rest of the Battalion with the
machine-guns stayed as a reserve in Soupir market-square. But beyond
shrapnel bursting over the village and the wounding of two men by
stray machine-gun bullets, there were no special incidents. Major G.
Madden this day had to return to England, ill.
On the 21st the Battalion relieved the 2nd Grenadiers on the left
at Soupir farm at 3.30 A. M.--the safest hour, as experience was to
prove, for reliefs. Nos. 2 and 3 Companies were in trenches, and Nos.
1 and 4 about 300 yards in the rear, with the Headquarters in one of
the caves, which are a feature of the country. The word “dug-out” had
not yet been invented. The nearest approach to it is a reference in
a private letter to “a shelter-recess in the side of the trench to
protect one from shrapnel.” The Diary marks that the “usual alarms
occurred at 6.30 when the patrol went out and the enemy fired a good
deal of shrapnel without effect.” Soupir, like many French villages,
was full of carefully planted spies of singular audacity. One was
found in an officer’s room. He had appeared from a cellar, alleging
that he was an invalid, but as the Gunners’ telephone-wires near the
cellar had been cut and our movements had been reported to the enemy
with great regularity, his explanation was not accepted, nor were his
days long in that land.
Patrols, too, were elastic affairs. One of them, under Lieutenant R.
H. Ferguson, went out on the night of the 21st, came on the enemy’s
trenches half a mile out, lay down to listen to the conversation
there, were all but cut off by a wandering section of snipers, and
returned to their lines unmolested, after the lieutenant had shot the
leading pursuer with his revolver.
On the 22nd September the Battalion--both entrenched and in reserve
in the caves behind--experienced four hours’ high-explosive howitzer
fire, which “except for the effect on the nerves did very little
damage.” (They had yet to learn what continuous noise could do to
break men’s nerve.) This was followed by a heavy fusillade, varied by
star-shells, rockets, and searchlights, which lasted intermittently
throughout the night. The rocket-display was new to the men.
Searchlights, we know, they had seen before.
On the 23rd a telephone-line between Battalion Headquarters and
the advanced trenches was installed (for the first time). Nos. 2
and 3 Companies relieved Nos. 1 and 4 in the trenches, and a man
bringing back a message from No. 4 Company was killed by a sniper.
The Battalion was relieved by the 3rd Coldstream in the evening and
returned to its billets in the barns and lofts of Soupir village,
where next day (September 24) the Diary observes they spent “a quiet
morning. The men got washed and shaved, and company officers were
able to get at their companies. There are so many new officers who
do not know their men that any rest day should be made use of in
this manner.” They relieved the 3rd Coldstream again that evening,
and “digging operations to improve existing trenches and make
communication-trenches were at once begun.” (Here is the first direct
reference in the Diary to communication-trenches, as such.)
Snipers were active all through the 25th September. The trenches were
heavily shelled in the afternoon, and “one man was hit in the leg
while going to fetch water.” They returned to Soupir in the evening
and spent the 26th standing to, in anticipation of enemy attacks
which did not develop into anything more than an artillery duel, and
in digging trenches for the defence of Soupir village. This work,
however, had to be stopped owing to heavy shell-fire brought to bear
on the working-parties--presumably through information from the many
spies--and after a wearing day relieved the 3rd Coldstream in the
trenches at night. The Diary gives no hint of the tremendous strain
of those twenty-four hours’ “reliefs” from being shelled in a trench
to being shelled in a village, nor of the inadequacy of our artillery
as it strove to cope with the German guns, nor of the rasping
irritation caused by the knowledge that every disposition made was
reported almost at once to the enemy.
On September 27--a Sunday--the enemy’s bands were heard playing up
and down the trenches. Some attempt was made by a British battalion
on the right to move out a patrol covered by the fire of No. 2
Company, but the enemy shells and machine-guns smothered every
movement.
On the 28th September (their day in billets) stakes were cut out of
the woods behind Soupir, while the Pioneers collected what wire they
could lay hands on, as “the Battalion was ordered to construct wire
entanglements in front of their trenches to-night.” The entanglements
were made of two or three strands, at the most, of agricultural
wire picked up where they could find it. They heard heavy fighting
throughout the night on their right--“probably the First Division.”
Both sides by now were feeling the strain of trench-work, for which
neither had made preparations, and the result was an increasing
tension manifesting itself in wild outbursts of musketry and
artillery and camp rumour of massed attacks and breaks-through.
On the 30th September, F.-M. Lord Roberts’s birthday, a
congratulatory telegram was sent to him; and “a great quantity of
material was collected out of which huts for the men could be built.”
These were frail affairs of straw and twig, half dug in, half built
out, of the nearest banks, or placed under the lee of any available
shelter. The very fabric of them has long since been overlaid with
strata of fresh wreckage and the twig roofs and sides are rotted
black under the grass or ploughed in.
The month closes with the note that, as it was a very bright
moonlight night, the Battalion’s usual relief of the Coldstream was
“carried out up the communication-trenches.” Some men still recall
that first clumsy trench-relief.
October 1 was spent in perfecting communication-trenches and
shelters, and “the Brigadier came up in the morning and was taken
round the trenches.” Two officers were sent to Chavonne to meet the
5th Brigade--one to bring the Worcesters to the Battalion’s trenches,
the other to show the Connaught Rangers their billets in Soupir. The
3rd Coldstream marched out of Soupir and took up the line to the left
of the 2nd Grenadiers near Vailly, and next day, 2nd October, No. 1
Company of the Irish Guards dug a connecting-trench between those
two. Otherwise, for the moment, life was smooth.
It may be noted for the instruction of generations to come that
some of the Reservists grumbled at orders not to talk or smoke
in the trenches, as that drew fire; and that a newly appointed
platoon-officer, when he had admonished them officially, fell them
out and informed them unofficially that, were there any more trouble,
he would, after the C.O. had dealt with the offenders, take them on
for three rounds “boxing in public.” Peace and goodwill returned at
once.
On the 3rd October, a platoon was despatched to help the Royal
Engineers in the construction of a road across a new bridge they
had put up between Soupir and Chavonne. The Battalion relieved the
3rd Coldstream in its new position three-quarters of a mile east
of Vailly, and next day “quietly improved trenches and head-cover,”
which latter is mentioned for the first time. It was all casual
timber picked up off the country-side.
On the 5th October a patrol explored through the wood, in front of
the right trenches, but found only dead Germans to the number of
thirty and many half buried, as well as five British soldiers killed
in some lost affair of a fortnight before. Private O’Shaughnessy,
No. 1 Company, was shot dead by a sniper when on observation-post
at the end of this wood. He had only arrived that morning with a
draft of one hundred men, under Lieutenant Gore-Langton, and had
asked to be allowed to go out on this duty. In the afternoon three
shells burst on the road near Battalion Headquarters, and fatally
wounded Lieutenant G. Brooke, who was on his way to Soupir to take
over the transport from Lieutenant E. J. Gough. He was sent in to
Braisne, where he died on the 7th October. The Diary notes “he
would not have been found so soon had not the shells broken the
telephone-wire to Headquarters. A message was coming through at the
time and when communication was stopped the Signalling Sergeant
sent two men to repair the wire and they found him.” He was brought
in to the A.D.S. at Vailly-sur-Aisne by his own men, who made the
R.A.M.C. stretcher-bearers walk behind as they would allow none but
themselves to carry him. They bade him farewell before they returned
to their trenches, and went out openly weeping. When he was sent to
Braisne that evening, after being dressed, his own men again got an
ambulance across the pontoon-bridge, which had been hitherto reckoned
impassable, for his convenience. His last words to them were that
they were to “play the game” and not to revenge his death on the Hun.
On the afternoon of the 6th October, which was cold and misty, the
Germans pushed a patrol through the wood and our standing-patrol went
out and discovered one German under-officer of the 64th (Imperial
Jäger Guards) dead, and the rifle of another man.
The enemy sent out no more patrols. Men had grown to be cunning
among the timber, and noticed every tree they moved under. When the
Coldstream relieved the Battalion that night, one of our patrols
found a felled tree had been carefully placed across their homeward
path by some unknown hand--it might have been the late Jäger
under-officer--who had expected to attack the patrol while it was
climbing over the obstacle.
On the 7th the Battalion rested in Soupir all day, and on the 8th
Lieutenant G. Brooke’s body was brought in from Braisne and buried in
Soupir cemetery.
The 9th was a quiet day except for an hour’s shelling, and a good
deal of cheering from the German trenches in the evening, evidently
in honour of the fall of Antwerp. It annoyed our men for the reason
that they could not retaliate. Our guns had not a round to throw away.
THE MOVE TOWARD THE SEA
The opposing lines had been locked now for close upon a month and,
as defences elaborated themselves, all hope of breaking-through
vanished. Both sides then opened that mutually outflanking movement
towards the west which did not end till it reached the sea. Held up
along their main front, the Germans struck at the Flanders plain, the
Allies striving to meet the movement and envelop their right flank as
it extended. A British force had been sent to Antwerp; the Seventh
Division and the Third Cavalry Division had been landed at Zeebrugge
on the 7th October with the idea of helping either the Antwerp force
or co-operating with the Allied Armies as circumstances dictated.
Meantime, the main British force was being held in the trenches of
the Aisne a hundred and twenty miles away; and it seemed good to
all concerned that these two bodies of British troops should be
consolidated, both for purposes of offence, command and, by no means
least, supply, on the Flanders flank covering the Channel. There
were obvious dangers in moving so many men from high ground across a
broad river under the enemy’s eye. It could only be effected at night
with all precautions, but as the western pressure developed and was
accentuated by the fall of Antwerp, the advantage of the transfer
outweighed all risk. Our cavalry moved on the 3rd October by road
for Flanders, and a few days later the infantry began to entrain for
St. Omer. The Second Corps was the first to leave, the Third Corps
followed, and the First was the last.
Orders came to the Battalion on Sunday, October 11, to be prepared
to move at short notice, and new clothes were issued to the men, but
they did not hand over their trenches to the French till the 13th
October, when they marched to Perles in the evening and entrained on
the 14th at Fismes a little after noon, reaching Hazebrouck _via_
(the route is worth recording) Mareuil-sur-Ourcq, Ormoy, St. Denis,
outside Paris, Epluches, Creil, Amiens (10.15 P. M.), Abbeville (3.15
A. M.), Etaples, Boulogne, Calais and St. Omer, every stone of which
last six was to be as familiar to them as their own hearths for years
to come.
At 5 P. M. on the 15th the Battalion went into billets at Hazebrouck.
It was a sharp change from the soft wooded bluffs and clean chalky
hills above the Aisne, to the slow ditch-like streams and crowded
farming landscape of Flanders. At Hazebrouck they lay till the
morning of the 17th, when they marched to Boeschepe, attended church
parade on Sunday the 18th, and marched to untouched Ypres _via_ St.
Kokebeele, Reninghelst and Vlamertinghe on the 20th with the Brigade,
some divisional troops and the 41st Battery, R.F.A. The Brigade
halted at Ypres a few hours, seeing and being impressed by the beauty
of the Cloth Hall and the crowded market-place. The 2nd Coldstream
and the 2nd Battalion Grenadiers being eventually sent forward,
the remainder of the Brigade billeted in St. Jean, then described
impersonally as “a small village about one and a half kilometres east
of Ypres.” They halted at the edge of the city for dinner, and the
men got out their melodeons and danced jigs on the flawless pavé.
Much firing was heard all day, and “the 2nd Coldstream came into
action about 4 P. M. and remained in the trenches all night.”
That was the sum of information available at the moment to the
Battalion--that, and orders to “drive the enemy back wherever
met.” So they first were introduced to the stage of the bloody and
debatable land which will be known for all time as “The Salient.”
The original intention of our Army on the Flanders flank had been
offensive, but the long check on the Aisne gave the enemy time to
bring forward troops from their immense and perfectly prepared
reserves, while the fall of Antwerp--small wonder the Germans had
cheered in their trenches when the news came!--released more.
Consequently, the movement that began on the Allies’ side as an
attempt to roll up the German right flank before it could reach the
sea, ended in a desperate defence to hold back an overwhelmingly
strong enemy from sweeping forward through Belgium to Calais and the
French sea-board. Out of this defence developed that immense and
overlapping series of operations centring on Ypres, extending from
the Yser Canal in the north to La Bassée in the south, and lasting
from mid-October to the 20th November 1914, which may be ranked as
the First Battle of Ypres.
It will be remembered that the Second and Third British Army Corps
were the first to leave the Aisne trenches for the west. On the 11th
October the Second Army Corps was in position between the Aire and
Béthune and in touch with the left flank of the Tenth French Army at
La Bassée.
On the 12th of October the Third Army Corps reached St. Omer and
moved forward to Hazebrouck to get touch with the Second Army Corps
on its right, the idea being that the two corps together should wheel
on their own left and striking eastward turn the position of the
German forces that were facing the Tenth French Army. They failed
owing to the strength of the German forces on the spot, and by
October 19, after indescribably fierce fighting, the Second and Third
Army Corps had been brought to a standstill on a line, from La Bassée
through Armentières, not noticeably differing from the position which
our forces were destined to occupy for many months to come. The
attempted flank attacks had become frontal all along the line, and in
due course frontal attacks solidified into trench-warfare again.