devious and hurried roads to meet the continual stream of prisoners
being handed down to Brigade Headquarters. One youth, who could not
have been seventeen, flung himself into the arms of an officer and
cried, “Kamerad, Herr Offizier! Ich bin sehr jung! Kamerad!” To
whom the embarrassed Islander said brutally: “Get on with you. _I_
wouldn’t touch you for the world!” And they laughed all along the
trench-face as they dodged the whizz-bangs out of Orival Wood, and
compared themselves to the “wurrums begging for mercy.”
About noon, after many adventures, the 2nd Grenadiers arrived
to carry on the advance, and Silver Street became a congested
metropolis. The 2nd Grenadiers were hung up there for a while
because, though the Third Division on the right had taken
Flesquières, the Sixty-third on the left had not got Graincourt
village, which was enfilading the landscape damnably. Orival Wood,
too, was untaken, and the 1st Grenadiers, under Lord Gort, were out
unsupported half a mile ahead on the right front somewhere near Premy
Chapel. Meantime, a battalion of the Second Division, which was to
come through the Guards Division and continue the advance, flooded up
Silver Street, zealously unreeling its telephone wires; Machine-Gun
Guards were there, looking for positions; the 2nd Grenadiers were
standing ready; the Welsh Guards were also there with intent to
support the Grenadiers; walking wounded were coming down, and severe
cases were being carried over the top by German prisoners who made
no secret of an acute desire to live and jumped in among the rest
without leave asked. The men compared the crush to a sugar-queue at
home. To cap everything, some wandering tanks which had belonged to
the Division on the right had strayed over to the left. No German
battery can resist tanks, however disabled; so they drew fire, and
when they were knocked out (our people did not know this at first,
being unused to working with them), made life insupportable with
petrol-fumes for a hundred yards round.
About half-past four in the afternoon a Guards Battalion--they
thought it was the 1st Coldstream--came up on their left, and under
cover of what looked like a smoke-barrage, cleared Orival Wood and
silenced the two guns there. The Irish, from their dress-circle in
Silver Street, blessed them long and loud, and while they applauded,
Lieut.-Colonel Lord Gort, commanding the 1st Grenadiers, came down
the trench wounded on his way to a dressing-station. He had been
badly hit once before he thought fit to leave duty, and was suffering
from loss of blood. The Irish had always a great regard for him, and
that day they owed him more than they knew at the time, for it was
the advance of the 1st Grenadiers under his leading, almost up to
Premy Chapel, which had unkeyed the German resistance in Graincourt,
and led the enemy to believe their line of retreat out of the village
was threatened. The Second Division as it came through found the
enemy shifting and followed them up towards Noyelles. So the day
closed, and, though men did not realize, marked the end of organized
trench-warfare for the Guards Division.
The Battalion, with two officers dead and five wounded out of
fifteen (killed: Lieutenant B. S. Close, and 2nd Lieutenant A. H.
O’Farrell; wounded: Captain the Hon. B. A. A. Ogilvy, Captain C. W.
W. Bence-Jones, and 2nd Lieutenants A. R. Boyle, G. F. Mathieson,
and C. S. O’Brien, M.C., died of wounds), and one hundred and eighty
casualties in the ranks, stayed on the ground for the night. It
tried to make itself as comfortable as cold and shallow trenches
allowed, but by orders of some “higher authority,” who supposed that
it had been relieved, no water or rations were sent up; and, next
morning, they had to march six thousand yards on empty stomachs to
their trench-shelters and bivouacs in front of Demicourt. As the last
company arrived a cold rain fell, but they were all in reasonably
high spirits. It had been a winning action, in spite of trench-work,
and men really felt that they had the running in their own hands at
last.
Back-area rumours and official notifications were good too. The
Nineteenth and Second Corps of the Second Army, together with the
Belgian Army, had attacked on the 28th September, from Dixmude to far
south of the Ypres-Zonnebeke road; had retaken all the heights to the
east of Ypres, and were in a fair way to clear out every German gain
there of the past four years. A German withdrawal was beginning from
Lens to Armentières, and to the south of the Third Army the Fourth
came in on the 29th (while the Battalion was “resting and shaving”
in its trench-shelters by Demicourt) on a front of twelve miles, and
from Gricourt to Vendhuille broke, and poured across the Hindenburg
Line, then to the St. Quentin Canal. At the same time, lest there
should be one furlong of the uneasy front neglected, the Fifth and
Sixth Corps of the Third Army attacked over the old Gouzeaucourt
ground between Vendhuille and Marcoing. This, too, without counting
the blows that the French and the Americans were dealing in their own
spheres on the Meuse and in the Argonne; each stroke coldly preparing
the next.
The Germans had, during September, lost a quarter of a million
of prisoners, several thousand guns, and immense quantities of
irreplaceable stores. Their main line of resistance was broken and
over-run throughout; and their troops in the field were feeling the
demoralisation of constant withdrawals, as well as shortage from
abandoned supplies. Our people had known the same depression in
the March Push, when night skies, lit with burning dumps, gave the
impression that all the world was going up in universal surrender.
TOWARDS MAUBEUGE
But work was still to do. Between Cambrai, which at the end of
October was under, though not actually in, our hands, and Maubeuge,
lay thirty-five miles of France, all open save for such hastily made
defences as the enemy had been able to throw up after the collapse
of the Hindenburg systems. There, then, the screw was turned, and
on the 8th October the Third and Fourth Armies attacked on a front
of seventeen miles from Sequehart, north of Cambrai, where the
Cambrai-Douai road crosses the Sensée, southward to our junction with
the French First Army a few miles above St. Quentin. Twenty British
divisions, two cavalry divisions, and one American division were
involved. The Battalion faced the changed military situation, by
announcing that companies were “at the disposal of their commanders
for open warfare training.” After which they were instantly sent
forward from their Demicourt trenches, to help make roads between
Havricourt and Flesquières!
On the 3rd October they had orders to move, which were at once
cancelled--sure sign that the Higher Command had something on its
mind. This was proved two days later when the same orders arrived
again, and were again washed out. Meantime, their reorganisation
after the Flesquières fight had been completed; reinforcements were
up, and the following officers had joined for duty: Lieutenants H.
E. Van der Noot and G. F. Van der Noot, and 2nd Lieutenants A. L. W.
Koch de Gooreynd, the Hon. C. A. Barnewall, G. M. Tylden-Wright, V.
J. S. French, and R. E. Taylor.
On the 4th October the Commanding Officer went on leave, and Major
A. F. L. Gordon, M.C., took command of the Battalion. Once more it
was warned that it would move next day, which warning this time
came true, and was heralded by the usual conference at Brigade
Headquarters, on the 7th October, when the plans for next day’s
battle in that sector of the line were revealed. The Second Division,
on the left, and the Third, on the right of the Guards Division, were
to attack on the whole of the front of the Sixth Corps at dawn of
the 8th October. The Guards Division was to be ready to go through
these two divisions on the afternoon of that day, or to take over
the line on the night of it, and continue the attack at dawn on the
9th. The 1st Guards Brigade would pass through the Third Division,
and the 2nd Brigade through the Second Division. As far as the 1st
Brigade’s attack was concerned, the 2nd Coldstream would take the
right, the 2nd Grenadiers the left of the line, with the 1st Irish
Guards in reserve. It was all beautifully clear. So the Battalion
left Demicourt, recrossed the Canal du Nord at Lock 7, and were
“accommodated” in dug-outs and shelters in the Hindenburg Line, near
Ribecourt.
On the 9th October the Battalion moved to Masnières, four miles or so
south of Cambrai. Here, while crossing the St. Quentin Canal, No. 3
Company had three killed and three wounded by a long-range gun which
was shelling all down the line of it. They halted in the open for
the rest of the day. A curious experience followed. The idea was to
attack in the general direction of Cattenières, across the line of
the Cambrai-Caudry railway, which, with its embankment and cuttings,
was expected to give trouble. The New Zealand Division was then on
the right of the Guards Division; but no one seemed to be sure, the
night before the battle, whether the Third Division was out on their
front or not. (“Everything, ye’ll understand, was all loosed up in
those days. Jerry did not know _his_ mind, and for that reason we
could not know ours. The bottom was out of the war, ye’ll understand,
but we did not see it.”) However, it was arranged that all troops
would be withdrawn from doubtful areas before Zero (5.10 A. M.), and
that the 2nd Coldstream and the 2nd Grenadiers would advance to the
attack under a creeping barrage with due precautions which included a
plentiful bombardment and machine-gunning of the railway embankment.
The Battalion, in reserve, as has been said, moved from Masnières
to its assembly area, among old German trenches near the village
of Seranvillers, in artillery formation at 2.40 A. M., and had its
breakfast at 5 A. M., while the other two battalions of the Brigade
advanced in waves, preceded by strong patrols and backed by the guns.
There was no shelling while they assembled, and practically none in
reply to our barrage; nor did the leading battalions meet opposition
till after they had cleared out the village of Seranvillers, and
were held up by screened machine-guns in a wood surrounding a
sugar-factory north of Cattenières. The Battalion followed on in due
course, reached the railway embankment, set up Headquarters in a
road-tunnel under it (there was no firing), and received telephonic
orders that at 5 A. M. on the 10th October they would pass through
the other two battalions and continue the advance, which, henceforth,
was to be “by bounds” and without limit or barrage. Then they lay up
in the railway embankment and dozed.
They assembled next morning (the 10th) in the dark, and, reinforced
by seven Corps Cyclists and a Battery of field-guns, went forth
into France at large, after a retiring enemy. Nothing happened
for a couple of miles, when they reached the outskirts of
Beauvais-en-Cambrensis, on the Cambrai-Le-Cateau road, where a single
sniper from one of the houses shot and killed 2nd Lieutenant V. J.
S. French, No. 4 Company. A mile farther on, up the Beauvais-Quiévy
road, they found the village of Bevillers heavily shelled by the
enemy from a distance, so skirted round it, and sent in two small
mopping-up parties. Here No. 4 Company again came up against
machine-gun and sniper fire, but no casualties followed. Their
patrols reported the next bound all clear, and they pushed on, under
heavy but harmless shelling, in the direction of Quiévy. At eight
o’clock their patrols waked up a breadth of machine-gun nests along
the whole of the front and that of the battalions to their left and
right. They went to ground accordingly, and when the enemy artillery
was added to the small-arm fire, the men dug slits for themselves
and escaped trouble. For some time past the German shell-stuff had
been growing less and less effective, both in accuracy and bursting
power, which knowledge cheered our troops. In the afternoon, as there
were signs of the resistance weakening, our patrols put forth once
more, and by five o’clock the Battalion had reached the third bound
on the full battalion front. Then, in the dusk, came word from the
New Zealand division on their right, that the division on _their_
right again, had got forward, and that the New Zealanders were
pushing on to high ground south of Quiévy. With the message came one
from No. 4 Company, reporting that their patrols were out ahead, and
in touch with the New Zealanders on their right. There is no record
that the news was received with enthusiasm, since it meant “bounding
on” in the dark to the fourth bound, which they accomplished not
before 10.30 that night, tired officers hunting up tired companies by
hand and shoving them into their positions. These were on high ground
north-east of Quiévy, with the Battalion’s right on a farm, called
Fontaine-au-Tertre, which signifies “the fountain on the little
hill,” a mile beyond the village. The 1st Scots Guards were on their
left holding the village of St. Hilaire-les-Cambrai. Then, punctual
as ever, rations came up; Battalion Headquarters established itself
in a real roofed house in the outskirts of Quiévy, and No. 1 Company
in reserve, was billeted in the village.
Next morning (11th October), when the 3rd Guards Brigade came through
them and attacked over the naked grass and stubble fields towards St.
Python and Solesmes, the Battalion was withdrawn and sent to very
good billets in Quiévy. “The men having both upstairs and cellar
room. All billets very dirty,” says the Diary, “owing to the previous
occupants (Hun) apparently having taken delight in scattering all the
civilian clothes, food, furniture, etc., all over the place.” Every
one was tired out; they had hardly slept for three nights; but all
“were in the best of spirits.” Brigade Headquarters had found what
was described as “a magnificent house” with “a most comfortable” bed
in “a large room.” Those who used it were lyric in their letters home.
The total casualties for the 10th and 11th October were amazingly
few. Second Lieutenant V. J. S. French was the only casualty among
the officers, and, of other ranks, but three were killed and nine
wounded.
The officers who took part in the operations were these:
_No. 1 Company_
Lieut. H. E. Van der Noot.
2nd Lieut. J. C. Haydon.
2nd Lieut. R. E. Taylor.
_No. 2 Company_
Lieut. E. M. Harvey, M.C.
2nd Lieut. G. T. Todd.
2nd Lieut. A. L. W. Koch de Gooreynd.
_No. 3 Company_
Lieut. F. S. L. Smith, M.C.
Lieut. G. E. F. Van der Noot.
2nd Lieut. J. J. B. Brady.
_No. 4 Company_
Capt. D. J. Hegarty.
2nd Lieut. Hon. C. A. Barnewall.
2nd Lieut. V. T. S. French (killed).
_Battalion Headquarters_
Major A. F. Gordon, M.C.
Capt. J. B. Keenan.
Capt. G. L. St. C. Bambridge, M.C.
They lay at Quiévy for the next week employed in cleaning up dirty
billets, while the 3rd and 2nd Brigades of the Division were cleaning
out the enemy rear-guards in front of them from the west bank of
the Selle River, and roads and railways were stretching out behind
our armies to bring redoubled supply of material. One of the extra
fatigues of those days was to get the civil population out of the
villages that the enemy were abandoning. This had to be done by
night, for there is small chivalry in the German composition. Quiévy
was shelled at intervals, and no parades larger than of a platoon
were, therefore, allowed. The weather, too, stopped a scheme of
field-operations in the back area between Quiévy and Bevillers, and
a washed and cleanly clothed battalion were grateful to their Saints
for both reliefs.
On the 17th October the Sixty-first Division took over the Guards
area, and that afternoon the Battalion left Quiévy by cross-country
tracks for Boussières and moved into position for what turned out to
be all but the last stroke of the long game.
The enemy on that front were by now across the steeply banked Selle
River, but the large, straggling village of Solesmes, of which St.
Python is practically a suburb, was still held by them and would have
to be cleaned out house-to-house. Moreover, it was known to be full
of French civils and getting them away in safety would not make the
situation less difficult.
ST. PYTHON
It was given out at Brigade conference on the 17th that the
Sixty-first Division would take place on the right of the Guards
Division and the Nineteenth on its left in the forthcoming attack,
and that the Sixty-first would attend to Solesmes, while the Guards
Division pushed on north-east between St. Python and Haussy on a
mile-wide front through the village of Escarmain to Capelle, a
distance of some three and a half miles. The 1st and 3rd Brigades
would lead, the 2nd in reserve, and the passage of the Selle would be
effected in the dark by such bridges as the Sappers could put up.
The Battalion moved nearer their assembly areas to St.
Hilaire-les-Cambrai, on the night of the 18th after Company
Commanders had thoroughly explained to their men what was in store;
and on the 19th those commanders, with the Intelligence Officer,
Captain Vernon, went up to high ground overlooking the battle-field.
It was a closer and more crumpled land than they had dealt with
hitherto, its steep-sided valleys cut by a multitude of little
streams running from nor’-west to south-east, with the interminable
ruled line of the Bavai road edging the great Forest of Mormal which
lay north of Landrecies. The wheel was swinging full circle, and
men who had taken part in that age-ago retreat from Mons, amused
themselves by trying to pick out familiar details in the landscape
they had been hunted across four years before. But it was misty and
the weather, faithful ally of the Germans to the last, was breaking
again. Just as the Battalion moved off from St. Hilaire to their
area on the railway line from Valenciennes to Le Cateau, rain began
and continued till six next morning, making every condition for
attack as vile as it could. They dug them shallow trenches in case of
shell-fire, and sent down parties to reconnoitre the bridges over the
Selle. Four bridges were “available,” _i.e._ existed in some shape,
on or near the Battalion front, but no one had a good word to say for
any of them.
There is a tale concerning the rivers here, which may be given
(without guarantee) substantially as told: “Rivers round Maubeuge?
’Twas _all_ rivers--the Aunelle and the Rhônelle and the Pronelle,
an’ more, too; an’ our Intelligence Officer desirin’ to know the
last word concernin’ each one of ’em before we paddled it. Michael
an’ me was for that duty. Michael was a runner, afraid o’ nothing,
but no small liar, and him as fed as myself with reportin’ on these
same dam’ rivers; and Jerry expendin’ the last of his small-arm stuff
round and round the country. I forget which river ’twas we were
scouting, but he was ahead of me, the way he always was. Presently
he comes capering back, ‘Home, please, Sergeant,’ says he. ‘That
hill’s stinking with Jerries beyond.’ ‘But the river?’ says I. ‘Ah,
come home,’ says Michael, ‘an I’ll learn ye the road to be a V.C.!’
So home we went to the Intelligence Officer, and ’twas then I should
have spoke the truth. But Michael was before me. I had no more than
_my_ mouth opened when he makes his report, which was my business,
me being sergeant (did I tell ye?), to put in. But Michael was before
me. He comes out with the width of the river, and its depth, and the
nature of its bottom and the scenery, and all and all, the way you’d
ha’ sworn he’d been a trout in it. When we was out of hearing, I told
him he was a liar in respect to his river. ‘River,’ says he, ‘are
ye after calling _that_ a river? ’Tis no bigger than a Dickiebush
ditch,’ he says. ‘And anyway,’ says he, ‘the Battalion’ll rowl across
it in the dark, the way it always does. Ye cannot get wetter than
wet, even in the Micks!’ Then his conscience smote him, an’ when his
company went down to this river in the dark, Michael comes capering
alongside whishpering between his hands: ‘Boys!’ says he, ‘can ye
swim, boys? I hope ye can _all_ swim for, Saints be my witness, I
never wint near the river. For aught I know it may be an arrum of
the sea. Ah, lads, _thry_ an’ learn to swim!’ he says. Then some
one chases him off before the officer comes along; an’ we wint over
Michael’s river the way he said we would. Ye can not get wetter than
wet--even in the Micks.”
It was a quiet night, except for occasional bursts of machine-gun
fire, but there was no shelling of the assembly area as the 2nd
Grenadiers formed up on their right, with the 2nd Coldstream in
reserve. Nos. 1 and 2 Companies (Captain A. W. L. Paget, and
Lieutenant E. M. Harvey, M.C.) moved off first, No. 3 in support
(Captain Bambridge), and No. 4 (2nd Lieutenant O. R. Baldwin) in
reserve. The barrage opened with a percentage of demoralising
flame-shells. There was very little artillery retaliation, and beyond
getting rather wetter than the rain had already made them, the
Battalion did not suffer, except from small-arm fire out of the dark.
The first objective, a section of the Solesmes-Valenciennes road,
was gained in an hour, with but eight casualties, mainly from our
own “shorts” in the barrage, and several prisoners and machine-guns
captured. The prisoners showed no wish to fight.
The companies had kept direction wonderfully well in the dark, and
reached the second and last objective under increased machine-gun
fire, but still without much artillery. The 3rd Guards Brigade on
their left had been hung up once or twice, which kept No. 2 Company,
the left leading company, and Nos. 3 and 4 (in support) busy at
odd times forming defensive flanks against sniping. By half-past
five, however, they were all in place, and set to dig in opposite
the village of Vertain. Then dull day broke and with light came
punishment. The enemy, in plain sight, opened on them with everything
that they had in the neighbourhood, from 7 A. M. to 10 P. M. of the
20th. The two front companies were cut off as long as one could see,
and a good deal of the stuff was delivered over open sights. It was
extremely difficult to get the wounded away, owing to the continuous
sniping. But, through providence, or the defect of enemy ammunition,
or the depth of the slits the men had dug, casualties were very few.
Battalion Headquarters and the ground where No. 4 Company lay up
were most thoroughly drenched, though an officer of No. 3 Company,
whose experience was large, described his men’s share as “about the
worst and most accurate shelling I have been through.” They were,
in most places, only a hundred yards away from a dug-in enemy bent
on blessing them with every round left over in the retreat. During
the night, which was calmer, our Artillery dealt with those mixed
batteries and groups so well that, although no man could show a
finger above his shelter in some of the company areas, the shelling
next day was moderate. The forward posts were still unapproachable,
but they sent out patrols from Nos. 1 and 2 Companies to “report on
the River Harpies,” the next stream to the Selle, and to keep it
under observation. This was an enterprise no commander would have
dreamed of undertaking even three months ago. The enemy sniping went
on. The 2nd Coldstream, who had been moved up to protect the right
flank of the 2nd Grenadiers (the Sixty-first Division, being delayed
some time over the clearing up and evacuation of Solesmes, was not
yet abreast of them), were withdrawn to billets at St. Hilaire in the
course of the afternoon; but word came that neither the Grenadiers
nor the Irish need look to be relieved. It rained, too, and was
freezing cold at night. Another expert in three years of miseries
writes: “One of the worst places I have ever been in. Heavy rain all
day and night.... More shelling if we were seen moving about. Heavy
rain all day.... Soaked through and shivering with cold.” The Diary
more temperately: “The men were never dry from the time they left
their billets in St. Hilaire on the evening of the 20th, and there
was no shelter whatever for any of the companies.” So they relieved
them during the night of the 21st, front Companies 1 and 2 returning
to the accommodation vacated by their supports, 3 and 4.