while commanding his Company (No. 1) and was buried next day in a
cemetery a few miles along the Béthune-Richebourg road. He had been
Transport Officer since the Battalion left London in August, but
had commanded a company since the 21st November, and was an immense
loss to the Battalion to which he was devoted. Lieutenant Sir G.
Burke and 2nd Lieutenant J. M. Stewart came from England on the same
day and were posted to No. 1 Company now commanded by Lieutenant L.
Hargreaves.
The Diary ends the year with a recapitulation more impressive in its
restraint than any multitude of words:
The country round this part is very low-lying, intersected with
ditches with pollarded willows growing on their banks. No sooner
is a trench dug than it fills with water.... The soil is clay, and
so keeps the water from draining away even if that were possible.
In order to keep the men at all dry, they have to stand on planks
rested on logs in the trenches, and in the less wet places bundles
of straw and short fascines are put down. Pumping has been tried,
but not with much success. The weather continues wet, and there
does not seem to be any likelihood of a change. Consequently, we
may expect some fresh discomforts daily.
1915
LA BASSÉE TO LAVENTIE
They were not disappointed. New Year’s Day was marked by the flooding
out of a section of forward trenches, and by experiments with a
trench-mortar, from which 2nd Lieutenant Keating and some Garrison
gunners threw three bombs at an enemy digging-party a couple of
hundred yards away. This is the first reference to our use of
trench-mortars in the young campaign. The enemy retaliated next day
by bombing from their real trench-mortars, at a distance of seven
hundred yards, the small farm-house where Battalion Headquarters
lay. The bombs could be seen “coming at a very steep angle, but the
house was only once hit.” Daylight showed the work of the Irish
trench-mortar to have been so good--it had blown a gap in the German
trench--that they continued it and inflicted and observed much damage.
They were relieved on the 3rd January by the King’s Royal Rifles
and got to billets near Vieille Chapelle late that night. A London
Gazette announced that the Distinguished Conduct Medal had been
awarded No. 2535 Sergeant C. Harradine; No. 1664 Corporal C. Moran;
No. 4015 Private W. Moore (since killed in action); No. 2853
Lance-Corporal W. Delaney. Also “the new decoration called the
Military Cross” had been awarded to Lieutenant the Hon. H. W. Gough.
The Battalion, as a whole, had its reward for the past ten days
when the Brigadier expressed his approval of the work of the Guards
Brigade “and especially that of the Irish Guards.”
Cleaning and refit, classes in bomb-throwing (both by hand and from
rifles) under the Engineers and an elementary machine-gun class
under 2nd Lieutenant Straker, filled in the week; but the most
appreciated boon at Vieille Chapelle was some huge tubs in which the
men could be boiled clean. Father Gwynne held service in the roofless
shell-wrecked church, long since wiped out.
They took over trenches from the Worcesters on the 8th with a cold
knowledge of what awaited them; for the Diary notes, the day before:
“Another wet day, which will probably completely fill trenches on
the left of the new line with water.” But it did not fill them more
than two feet deep, though the whole line was afloat, and in the
communication-trenches seven men got stuck in the mud; one of them
was not extricated for six hours. The relief took six and a half
hours in pouring rain, with one man killed and two wounded. The
front line of the Guards Brigade was held by the 3rd Coldstream on
the right, the 2nd Coldstream in support; one Company of the 2nd
Grenadiers in the centre, and the rest of the Battalion in support;
the Irish Guards on the left, the Herts Territorials in support. The
Grenadiers relieved their front company every twenty-four hours,
the others every forty-eight. This meant that Battalion C.O.’s had
to spend most of their time in the front line studying what was, in
effect, the navigation of canals.
On the 9th January, for example, the water averaged three feet in
the trenches and, as that average rose, it was decided to leave
a few strong posts in comparatively dry positions and withdraw
the others along the Rue du Bois into the destroyed village of
Richebourg L’Avoué. Luckily, the enemy, not two hundred yards away,
had his own troubles to attend to and, despite his lavish flares and
musketry-fire, our men were extricated, bodily in some instances,
with but 3 killed and 2 wounded.
On the 10th January the Herts Regiment relieved them, and the whole
Battalion billeted at Richebourg St. Vaast. Casualties from small-arm
fire had been increasing owing to the sodden state of the parapets;
but the Battalion retaliated a little from one “telescopic-sighted
rifle” sent up by Lieutenant the Earl of Kingston, with which
Drill-Sergeant Bracken “certainly” accounted for 3 killed and 4
wounded of the enemy. The Diary, mercifully blind to the dreadful
years to come, thinks, “There should be many of these rifles used as
long as the army is sitting in trenches.” Many of them were so used:
this, the father of them all, now hangs in the Regimental Mess.
Then trench-feet and rheumatism developed, and in forty-eight hours
fifty men had to be sent to hospital for one form or other of these
complaints.
A draft of a hundred fresh men arrived between the 11th and 12th of
January with six officers: Captain P. S. Long-Innes, 2nd Lieutenants
F. F. Graham, J. R. Ralli, R. B. H. Kemp, D. W. Gunston (Derek) and
J. T. Robyns. Economy in officers and men was not yet possible; for
when an officer was not in the front line he had more than all he
could do to look after what comforts were obtainable for the men.
Yet concessions were made to human weakness; for when the Battalion
returned to its trenches on the 12th an order was received and, to
some extent, obeyed that “men were not to stand in the water for
_more than twelve hours at a time_.” This called for continuous
reliefs of the platoons, as it took a man most of his rest in
billets to scrape himself moderately clean. To save the labour of
portage through the mud, each man was given two days’ supplies
when he went into the trenches, plus some dry tea and a couple of
tins of maconochie to heat up over the braziers. The idea worked
satisfactorily; for the days of the merciless air-patrols had yet
to come; and the braziers flared naked to heaven while the Irish
“drummed up,” which is to say, stewed their tea or rations on them.
The hopeless work of improving positions in soil no stiffer than
porridge was resumed, and the “telescopic-sighted rifle,” in the
hands of Sergeant-Major Kirk and Drill-Sergeant Bracken, who were
later congratulated by the G.O.C. Second Division, continued its
discreet and guarded labours among the enemy. Only 1 man was killed
and 1 wounded on the 13th January, and the night of that easy day
passed off quietly, “the enemy occupying himself chiefly with singing
songs or playing on mouth-organs.” Here and elsewhere he was given
to spasms of music for no ascertainable reason, which the Irish, who
do not naturally burst into song, rather resented. Between morceaux
he sent up many coloured flares, while our working-parties silently
completed and christened by the name of “Gibraltar” a post to command
a flooded gap in the oozy line.
They were relieved on the 15th January by the Highland Light Infantry
of the 3rd Brigade (Lahore Division) which was taking over the line
held by the 4th (Guards) Brigade. The Battalion went back to Brigade
reserve billets at Locon.[5]
Their last week in the trenches had cost them 82 casualties including
sick, but it is worth noting that, at this time, Captain McCarthy,
the Medical Officer, by issuing mustard mixed with lard for the
men to rub on their feet, had in three days got the better of the
epidemic of “trench” or, as they were then called, “swollen” feet.
It was while in reserve that 2nd Lieut. Keating, Bombing Instructor
and in charge of the trench-mortars, lost his life and 13 men were
wounded owing to the premature explosion of an old-type fused bomb
with which he was instructing a class. Second Lieutenant Keating was
buried next day in the cemetery near Le Touret, where many Guardsmen
were already laid, and his epitaph may worthily stand as it was
written--“A very capable officer, always ready to undertake any task
however difficult or dangerous.”
After a few days the Battalion went into Corps Reserve and spent a
week in being “smartened up” behind the line with steady drill,
rifle exercises, route-marching and kit inspection, on rainy days,
lest life in the caked filth of the trenches should lead any one
to forget the standard of the Brigade of Guards which under no
circumstance allows any excuse.
Their work was interrupted by another “Kaiser-battle,” obediently
planned to celebrate the All Highest’s birthday. It began on the
25th January with a demonstration along the whole flat front from
Festubert to Vermelles. Béthune was also shelled from an armoured
train run out of La Bassée, and a heavy attack was launched by
Prussian infantry on a salient of our line, held by the 1st Infantry
Brigade, where it joined the French line among the tangle of railway
tracks and brick-fields near Cuinchy. Owing to the mud, the salient
was lightly manned by half a battalion of the Scots Guards and half
a battalion of the Coldstream. Their trenches were wiped out by the
artillery attack and their line fell back, perhaps half a mile, to
a partially prepared position among the brick-fields and railway
lines between the Aire-La Bassée Canal and the La Bassée-Béthune
road. Here fighting continued with reinforcements and counter-attacks
knee-deep in mud till the enemy were checked and a none too stable
defence made good between a mess of German communication-trenches and
a keep or redoubt held by the British among the huge brick-stacks
by the railway. So far as the Battalion was concerned, this phase
of the affair seems to have led to no more than two or three days’
standing-to in readiness to support with the rest of the Brigade, and
taking what odd shells fell to their share.
No institutions are more self-centred than a battalion in the face
of war. “Steady drill,” and company kit inspections were carried on
in the lulls of the waiting, and their main preoccupation was how
much water might be expected in the new trenches when their turn
came to occupy them. The Germans were devoting some of their heavy
artillery to shelling the lock of the Aire-La Bassée Canal at Pont
Fixe, between Givenchy and Cuinchy, in the hope of bursting it and
flooding the country. They spent more than a hundred eight-inch
howitzer shells on that endeavour in one day, and later--long after
the lock had been thoroughly protected with sandbags--used to give
it stated doses of shell at regular intervals. Similarly, they would
bombard one special spot on the line near Béthune because once in ’14
an armoured train of ours had fired thence at them.
The Battalion had just been reinforced by a draft of 107 men and
4 officers--Captain Eric Greer, Lieutenant Blacker-Douglass, 2nd
Lieutenant R. G. C. Yerburgh, and 2nd Lieutenant S. G. Tallents.
They were under orders to move up towards the fighting among the
brick-fields which had opened on the 25th, and had not ceased since.
Unofficial reports described the trenches they were to take over
as “not very wet but otherwise damnable,” and on the 30th January
the Battalion definitely moved from Locon, with the 2nd Coldstream,
_via_ Béthune to Cuinchy. Here the Coldstream took over from the
2nd Brigade the whole line of a thousand yards of trench occupied
by them; the Irish furnishing supports. The rest of the Brigade,
that is to say, the Herts Territorials, the Grenadiers, and the 3rd
Coldstream were at Annequin, Beuvry, and Béthune.
The companies were disposed between the La Bassée-Béthune road
and the railway, beside the Aire-La Bassée Canal. The centre of
their line consisted of a collection of huge dull plum-coloured
brick-stacks, mottled with black, which might have been originally
thirty feet high. Five of these were held by our people and the
others by the enemy--the whole connected and interlocked by saps and
communication-trenches new and old, without key or finality. Neither
side could live in comfort at such close quarters until they had
strengthened their lines either by local attacks, bombing raids or
systematised artillery work. “The whole position,” an officer remarks
professionally, “is most interesting and requires careful handling
and a considerable amount of ingenuity.”
[Illustration:
_FIRST BATTALION_
_Actions & Billets._
_Emery Walker Ltd. del. et sc._]
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EMERY WALKER LTD., LONDON
Except for railway embankments and culverts, the country about was so
flat that a bullet once started had no reason to stop. The men were
billeted in solid-built Flemish houses with bullet-proof partitions,
and therefore, unless noticeably shelled, were inclined to walk about
in front of the houses in the daylight, till they were sternly set
to work to clean their billets of months of accumulations of refuse
and to bury neglected carcases. War and all connected with it was
infinitely stale already, but houses and the ruins of them had not
yet been wholly wiped out in that sector.
They were installed by the last day of the month with no greater
inconvenience than drifts of stray bullets over the support trenches,
and unsystematic shelling of Battalion Headquarters two or three
hundred yards in the rear, and some desultory bombing in the
complicated front line.
Early in the morning of the 1st February a post held by the
Coldstream in a hollow near the embankment, just west of the Railway
Triangle--a spot unholy beyond most, even in this sector--was bombed
and rushed by the enemy through an old communication-trench. No. 4
Company Irish Guards was ordered to help the Coldstream’s attack. The
men were led by Lieutenant Blacker-Douglass who had but rejoined on
the 25th January. He was knocked over by a bomb within a few yards of
the German barricade to the trench, picked himself up and went on,
only to be shot through the head a moment later. Lieutenant Lee of
the same Company was shot through the heart; the Company Commander,
Captain Long-Innes, and 2nd Lieutenant Blom were wounded, and the
command devolved on C.Q.M.S. Carton, who, in spite of a verbal order
to retire “which he did not believe,” held on till the morning in the
trench under such cover of shell-holes and hasty barricades as could
be found or put up. The Germans were too well posted to be moved
by bomb or rifle, so, when daylight showed the situation, our big
guns were called upon to shell for ten minutes, with shrapnel, the
hollow where they lay. The spectacle was sickening, but the results
were satisfactory. Then a second attack of some fifty Coldstream and
thirty Irish Guards of No. 1 Company under Lieutenants Graham and
Innes went forward, hung for a moment on the fringe of their own
shrapnel--for barrages were new things--and swept up the trench. It
was here that Lance-Corporal O’Leary, Lieutenant Innes’s orderly,
won his V.C. He rushed up along the railway embankment above the
trenches, shot down 5 Germans behind their first barricade in
the trench, then 3 more trying to work a machine-gun at the next
barricade fifty yards farther along the trench, and took a couple
of prisoners. Eye-witnesses report that he did his work quite
leisurely and wandered out into the open, visible for any distance
around, intent upon killing another German to whom he had taken a
dislike. Meantime, Graham, badly wounded in the head, and Innes,
together with some Coldstream, had worked their way into the post and
found it deserted. Our guns and our attack had accounted for about
30 dead, but had left 32 wounded and unwounded prisoners, all of
whom, with one exception, wept aloud. The hollow was full of mixed
dead--Coldstream, Irish, and German.
The men who remained of No. 4 Company did not settle down to
the work of consolidating their position till they had found
Blacker-Douglass’s body. At least a couple of his company had been
wounded in the first attack while trying to bring it away. Lee’s body
was recovered not far off.
A quarter of an hour after the post had fallen, the Engineers were
up with unlimited sand-bags and helped the men who worked as they
ate among the piled horrors around them, while everything was made
ready for the expected German counter-attack. It did not come. Not
only had the post been abandoned, but also a couple of trenches
running out of it to the southward. These were duly barricaded in
case the enemy were minded to work back along them at dusk. But for
the rest of the day they preferred to shell; killing 2 and wounding
5 men of the two companies which were relieved by a company of the
3rd Coldstream and one of the 3rd Grenadiers. Our men returned to
billets “very tired and hungry, but very pleased with themselves.”
That day’s work had cost us 2 officers and 8 men killed; 3 officers
and 24 men wounded, and 2 men missing. In return, two machine-guns,
8 whole and 24 wounded prisoners had been taken, the post recovered
and, perhaps, sixty yards of additional trench with it. Such was the
price paid in those years for maintaining even a foothold against the
massed pressure of the enemy. It is distinctly noted in the Diary
that two complete machine-guns were added to the defence of the
post after it had been recaptured. Machine-guns were then valuable
articles of barter, for when the French who were their neighbours
wished to borrow one such article “for moral and material support,”
a Brigadier-General’s permission had to be obtained.
This experience had shown it was better for each battalion in the
line to provide its own supports, and they reorganized on the 2nd
February on this basis; the 2nd and 3rd Coldstream Guards taking over
the left half of the line up to within fifty yards of the Keep, while
for their right, to the main La Bassée road, the 2nd Grenadiers and
the Irish Guards were responsible--each with two companies in the
fire trench and two in support, and all on forty-eight hours’ relief.
The enemy continued to shell the captured position, killing 2 and
wounding 9 men that day, but no counter-attack developed and a few
days later it was decided to straighten out the front then held
by the 4th (Guards) Brigade. The fighting on the 25th had left it
running irregularly through the big brick-yard, before mentioned. Of
the dozen or more solid stacks of brick, four or five connected by
a parapet of loose bricks and known as the Keep, were in our hands.
The other eight, irregularly spaced, made a most awkward wedge into
our line. They were backed by a labyrinth of German trench-work, and,
being shell-proof, supports could be massed behind them in perfect
safety. The nearest were within bombing distance of the Keep, and, in
those days, the Germans had more and better bombs than we. On every
account, then, the wedge had to be cleared, the stacks and their
connecting trenches overrun and the line advanced a hundred and fifty
yards or so to get a better field of fire. As a preliminary, a small
but necessary piece of German trench on the flanks of the Keep was
captured by the Irish on the 5th February with a loss of but 2 killed
and none wounded.
At 2 P. M. on the 6th of February the stacks were heavily bombarded
for a quarter of an hour--a large allowance. Even “Mother,” a
neighbouring 9.2, probably of naval extraction, took part in it,
and some French artillery ringed the approaches on the German side
with screens of black melenite fumes, while No. 2 Company from
the front trenches swept the German parapet facing them with five
minutes of that old “rapid fire” which the Germans in the Salient
and elsewhere had so often mistaken for machine-gun work. Then two
assaulting parties of thirty men each from Nos. 3 and 1 Companies,
under 2nd Lieutenant T. Musgrave and J. Ralli, opened the attack on
five of the eight stacks. The other three were fairly dealt with on
the same lines by the 3rd Coldstream. As there was no wire left on
the trench before our stacks, our party got there almost at once,
but Musgrave, ahead of his men, was shot by a group of five Germans
who showed fight behind a few fatal unbroken strands in the rear.
They were all killed a moment later when the men came up. Then the
supporting parties under Lieutenant Innes were slipped, together
with the Engineers under Major Fowkes, R.E., and the combined attack
swept on through the brick-stacks, in and out of the trenches and
around and behind them, where the Germans were shot and bayoneted as
found, till--fighting, digging, cursing and sand-bagging--our men had
hacked their way some seventy yards beyond their objective and dug
in under a shelf of raw ground about three feet high, probably the
lip of an old clay-pit. Our guns had lifted and were choking off all
attempts at possible counter-attacks, but the German supports seem
to have evaporated in the direction of La Bassée. There was a ridge
in front of the captured position whence a few bullets were still
dropping, but the back of the defence had been broken and, as firing
diminished, first one and then two out of every three men were set
digging in and filling sand-bags. The fortunes of the little campaign
had gone smoothly, and when it was necessary, in the rough and tumble
of the trench-work, to bring up reinforcements or more shovels and
ammunition for the digging-parties, the indefatigable and brotherly
Herts Territorials were drawn upon. The Coldstream had carried their
share of the front and lay in line on our left, and at dusk, while
the Engineers were putting up more wire, under rifle-fire at 150
yards’ range, the position was secure.
Our casualties, thanks to the bombardment and the swiftness of the
attack, were only 1 officer and 6 men killed and 25 wounded. Father
Gwynne, the Chaplain, was severely wounded by a piece of shrapnel
while watching the attack “from an observation-post,” which, as the
Father understood it, meant as far forward as possible, in order
that he might be ready to give comfort to the dying. The Coldstream
gathered in twenty-eight prisoners, the Irish none, but among their
spoils is entered “one Iron Cross” won rather picturesquely. At the
opening of the rush the Germans made a close-range bombing-raid on
one of the corners of the Keep and at last pitched a bomb on to the
top of a sand-bag redoubt. This so annoyed one of our bomb-throwers,
a giant of the name of Hennigan, of No. 1 Company, that he picked up
a trench-mortar bomb (no trinket) which lay convenient, cut down the
fuse for short range and threw it at a spot where he had caught a
glimpse of a German officer. The bomb burst almost before it reached
the ground, and must have made a direct hit; for nothing upon the
officer was recognisable later save the Iron Cross, which in due time
went to the Regimental Orderly Room. Hennigan was awarded the D.C.M.;
for his bomb also blew in and blocked up the communication-trench
through which the bombers came--a matter which he regarded as a
side-issue compared to his “splendid bowlin’.”
The companies were relieved in the evening by a company of
Grenadiers, and as they wandered back through the new-taken trenches
in the winter dusk, lost their way among all manner of horrors.
One officer wrote: “I fell over and became involved in a kind of
wrestling-match with a shapeless Thing that turned out to be a dead
man without a head ... and so back to Beuvry, very tired and sad for
the death of Tommy” (Musgrave).
There were other casualties that moved laughter under the ribs of
death. A man reported after the action that his teeth were “all broke
on him.” His Company Officer naturally expressed sympathy but some
surprise at not seeing a bullet-hole through both cheeks. “I took
them out and put them in my pocket for the charge, Sorr, and they
all broke on me,” was the reply. “Well, go to the doctor and see if
he can get you a new set.” “I’ve been to him, Sorr, and it’s little
sympathy I got. He just gave me a pill and chased me away, Sorr.”