Division would be out of the line for the next two weeks or so,
while the Twenty-ninth Division took over their work and secured
a jumping-off place on the far side of the Steenbeek, with a new
advance, in which the Guards would take part, towards Houthulst
Forest. Meantime, sufficient to the day was the camp’s daily small
beer—rows, for instance, with company cooks about diet-sheets (this
was a matter Greer had been deep in just before his death), an
inspection which kept them standing-to for nearly a couple of hours
and was then cancelled; a farmer who, meaning to be kind, cut his
crops early so that they might have a nice stubbly parade-ground,
which no one in the least wanted; a lecture on Boesinghe by the
C.O. to Captains Ward and Redmond and Lieutenants FitzGerald and De
Moleyns, and all the N.C.O.’s who had come up with the last drafts
that were making good the Battalion losses and giving the old hands a
deal of trouble. For the enemy had developed at Boesinghe a defensive
system of shell-holes filled with a few men and a machine-gun, and
further protected by modest flanking machine-gun pill-boxes, over a
depth of fifteen hundred or two thousand yards before one got to his
main-line system of triple trenches. It was wholly damnable because,
as the Guards and the Twentieth and Twenty-ninth Divisions had found
out, artillery was not much use against holes in the ground, even
when the field-guns could be brought close enough across the morasses
to reach them. Warley knew little about the proper forms of attack on
such positions, and the new hands had to be taught it under menace of
the daring planes. The Hun never threw away an opportunity of doing
evil to his enemy, and while they lay at Bedford Camp (August 13) a
number of the A.S.C. horses died owing to steel shavings having been
cunningly mixed in their baled hay by some pro-Boche agent in the
far-off lands where it was purchased.
On the 18th August orders came to move up the line to a camp west of
Bleuet Farm, where aeroplanes were more vicious than ever. There they
had to construct the camp almost from the beginning, with tents and
shelters as they could lay hands on them, while most of the Battalion
was busy making and mending roads; and a draft of one hundred and
fifty new men, under Lieutenant Manning, came in, so that nothing
might be lacking to the activity of the days.
On the 20th August, owing to the aeroplanes, they had to spread out
and camouflage the shelters for the men, which were too bunched
together and made easy targets. Lieutenants D. FitzGerald, Dalton
and Lysaght joined that afternoon, and in the evening there was a
heavy air-raid along the east edge of the camp. Lieutenant Bellew,
who had only joined with his draft ten days before, went to see the
result, was hit and mortally wounded; and Lieutenant de Moleyns,
who accompanied him, was also hit. The trouble was a couple of
twelve-inch howitzers near our camp which were greatly annoying the
enemy, and their machines rasped up and down like angry hornets
hunting for them.
The 2nd Coldstream relieved the Battalion on the 21st August, when
they returned to Elverdinghe, and were shifted to Paddington Camp—no
improvement on its predecessor from the overhead point of view.
Here the awards for Boesinghe came in: Captain Lees, who had been
recommended for the V.C., getting the D.S.O. with Captain Alexander;
Lieutenant Sassoon the M.C.; and Sergeant Milligan, that reorganiser
of officerless companies, the D.C.M.
On the 22nd August Father Browne, who had taken Father Knapp’s place
as chaplain, held a short service over Lieutenant Bellew’s grave,
while the drums played the Last Post. His platoon, and a platoon
has every opportunity for intimate knowledge, reported him “A grand
little officer.” (“There was so many came and went, and some they
went so soon that ’tis hard to carry remembrance of them. And, d’ye
see, a dead man’s a dead man. But a platoon will remember some better
than others. He’ll have done something or said something amongst his
own men the way his name’ll last for a while in it.”)
On the 25th of the month they were told that the Guards Division
offensive was cancelled for the time being; that they would probably
be used in the line till about the 20th September, and that the final
attack on Houthulst Forest would be carried out by a couple of other
divisions. Meantime, they would be shifted from camp to camp, which
they rather detested, and lectured and drilled. As an earnest of
this blissful state they were forthwith shifted to Abingley Camp, in
the Elverdinghe area and on the edge of trouble, in cold, driving
wet, to find it very dirty and the tentage arrangements abominably
muddled. Naturally, when complaints might have been expected, the
men were wildly cheerful, and wrestled with flapping, sodden canvas
in a half gale as merrily as sailors. The house-keeper’s instinct,
before mentioned, of primitive man always comes out best at the worst
crisis, and, given but the prospect of a week’s stay in one place,
a Guards Battalion will build up a complete civilisation on bog
or bare rock. The squally weather was against aeroplane activity
till the 2nd of September, when the neighbourhood of the camp was
most thoroughly searched with bombs, but nothing actually landed
on them. Next midnight, however, they had all to flee from their
tents and take refuge in the “slits” provided in the ground. This
is ever an undignified proceeding, but the complaint against it is
not that it is bad for the men’s nerves, but their discipline. The
Irish appreciate too keenly the spectacle of a thick officer bolting,
imperfectly clad, into a thin “slit.” Hence, sometimes, unfortunate
grins on parade next morning, which count as “laughing.” Vastly
more serious than the bombing, or even their occasional sports and
cricket matches, was that their C.O. inspecting the Pipers “took
exception to the hang of their kilts.” It ended in his motoring over
to the Gordons at Houbinghem and borrowing the pipe major there to
instruct them in this vital matter, as well as in the right time for
march music. They were then sent to the master tailor to have some
pleats taken out of the offending garments and fetched up, finally,
on parade wearing their gas-helmets as sporrans! But they looked
undeniably smart and supplied endless material for inter-racial
arguments at mess.
These things and their sports and boxing competitions, where
Drill-Sergeant Murphy and Private Conroy defeated two black N.C.O.’s
of a West Indies battalion, were interludes to nights of savage
bombing; carrying and camouflage parties to the front line, where
they met a new variety of mustard gas; and the constant practice of
the new form of attack. The real thing was set down now for the 14th
September but was cancelled at the last moment, and the Battalion was
warned for an ordinary trench tour on the night of the 12th-13th.
Unluckily, just before that date Captain Sassoon and Lieutenant Kane
and twenty-seven men of a big fatigue a day or two before, were badly
burned and blistered by the new mustard gas shells. It put them down
two officers at the time when every head was needed.
They were to take over from the 3rd Coldstream on the 12th September
on what was practically the old Boesinghe sector. That battalion
which lay next the French had just been raided, and lost nine men
because their liaison officer had misunderstood the French language.
Hence an order at the eleventh hour that each battalion in the sector
should attach a competent linguist to the liaison-post where the two
armies joined. The advance across the Steenbeek, after Boesinghe,
had only gone on a few hundred yards up the Staden railway line and
was now halted three thousand yards sou’west of Houthulst Forest,
facing a close and blind land of woods, copses, farms, mills, and
tree-screened roads cut, before any sure advance could be made, less
than a quarter of a mile from the Guards divisional front by the
abominable Broembeek. This was more a sluit than a river. Its banks
were marsh for the most part; and every yard was commanded by hostile
fire of every kind. On the French right and our extreme left was a
lodgement of posts the far side of the Broembeek which the Coldstream
had been holding when they were raided. These lay within a hundred
yards of the enemy’s line of strong posts (many lectures had been
delivered lately on the difference between lines of trenches and
lines of posts), and were backed by the stream, then waist-deep and
its bed plentifully filled with barbed wire. Between Ney Copse and
Ney Wood, say five hundred yards, they could only be reached by one
stone bridge and a line of duck-boards like stepping-stones at the
west corner of Ney Copse.
The Battalion went up in the afternoon of the 12th September, none
the better for a terrific bombardment an hour or two before from a
dozen low-flying planes which sent every one to cover, inflicted
twenty casualties on them out of two hundred in the neighbourhood,
and fairly cut the local transport to bits. The relief, too—and
this was one of the few occasions when Guards’ guides lost their
way—lasted till midnight.
Six platoons had to be placed in the forward posts above mentioned,
east of the little river whose western or home bank was pure swamp
for thirty yards back. Says the Diary: “This position could be
cut off by the enemy, as the line of the stream gives a definite
barrage-line, and, if any rain sets in, the stone bridge would be the
only possible means of crossing.”
A battalion seldom thinks outside of its orders, or some one might
have remembered how a couple of battalions on the wrong side of a
stream, out Dunkirk way that very spring, had been mopped up in the
sands, because they could neither get away nor get help. Our men
settled down and were unmolested for three hours. Then a barrage
fell, first on all the forward posts, next on the far bank of the
stream, and our own front line. The instant it lifted, two companies
of Wurtembergers in body-armour rushed what the shells had left of
the forward posts. Lieutenant Manning on the right of Ney Wood was
seen for a moment surrounded and then was seen no more. All posts
east of Ney Copse were blown up or bombed out, for the protected
Wurtembergers fought well. Captain Redmond commanding No. 2 Company
was going the rounds when the barrage began. He dropped into the
shell-hole that was No. 6 post, and when that went up, collected its
survivors and those from the next hole, and made such a defence in
the south edge of Ney Copse as prevented the enemy from turning us
altogether out of it. Most of the time, too, he was suffering from
a dislocated knee. Then the enemy finished the raid scientifically,
with a hot barrage of three quarters of an hour on all communications
till the Wurtembergers had comfortably withdrawn. It was an
undeniable “knock,” made worse by its insolent skill.
Losses had not yet been sorted out. The C.O. wished to withdraw
what was left of his posts across the river—there were two still in
Ney Copse—and not till he sent his reasons in writing was the sense
of them admitted at Brigade Headquarters. Officer’s patrols were
then told off to search Ney Copse, find out where the enemy’s new
posts had been established, pick up what wounded they came across
and cover the withdrawal of the posts there, while a new line was
sited. In other words, the front had to fall back, and the patrols
were to pick up the pieces. The bad luck of the affair cleaved, as
it often does, to their subsequent efforts. By a series of errors
and misapprehensions Ney Copse was not thoroughly searched and one
platoon of No. 3 Company was left behind and reported as missing. By
the time the patrols returned and the Battalion had started to dig in
its new front line it was too light to send out another party. The
enemy shelled vigorously with big stuff all the night of the 13th
till three in the morning; stopped for an hour and then barraged
the whole of our sector with high explosives till six. During this,
Lieutenant Gibson, our liaison officer with the French, was wounded,
and at some time or another in a lull in the infernal din, Sergeant
M’Guinness and Corporal Power, survivors of No. 2 Company, which had
been mopped up, worked their way home in safety through the enemy
posts.
The morning of the 14th brought their brigadier who “seems to think
that our patrol work was not well done,” and had no difficulty
whatever in conveying his impression to his hearers. Major Ward went
down the line suffering from fever. There were one or two who envied
him his trouble, for, with a missing platoon in front—if indeed any
of it survived—and a displeased brigadier in rear, life was not
lovely, even though our guns were putting down barrages on what were
delicately called our “discarded” posts. Out went another patrol that
night under Lieutenant Bagot, with intent to reconnoitre “the river
that wrought them all their woe.” They discovered what every one
guessed—that the enemy was holding both river-crossings, stone bridge
and duck-boards, with machine-guns. The Battalion finished the day in
respirators under heavy gas-shellings.
Then came a piece of pure drama. They had passed the 15th September
in the usual discomfort while waiting to be relieved by the 1st
Coldstream. Captain Redmond with his dislocated knee had gone down
and Lieutenants FitzGerald and Lysaght had come up. The talk was all
about the arrangements for wiring in their new line and the like,
when at 4.30, after a few hours’ quiet, a terrific barrage fell on
their front line followed by an SOS from somewhere away to the left.
A few minutes later five SOS rockets rose on the right apparently
in front of the 1st Scots Guards. Our guns on the Brigade front
struck in, by request; the enemy plastered the landscape with H.E.;
machine-guns along the whole sector helped with their barrages to
which the enemy replied in kind, and with one searching crash we
clamped a big-gun barrage on the far bank of the Broembeek, till it
looked as if nothing there could live.
When things were at their loudest a wire came in from the Brigade
to say that a Hun captured at St. Julien reported that a general
advance of the enemy was timed for 6.30 that very morning! By five
o’clock the hostile barrage seemed to have quieted down along our
front, but the right of the Brigade sector seemed still to be at odds
with some enemy; so the Brigadier kept our local barrage hard-on
by way of distraction. And at half-past six, tired, very hungry,
but otherwise in perfect order, turned up at Brigade Headquarters
Sergeant Moyney with the remainder of No. 3 Company’s platoon which
had been missing since the 12th. He had been left in command of an
advanced shell-hole post in Ney Copse with orders neither to withdraw
nor to let his men break into their iron ration. The Wurtembergers’
raid had cut off his little command altogether; and at the end of it
he found a hostile machine-gun post well established between himself
and the duck-board-bridge over the river. He had no desire to attract
more attention than was necessary, and kept his men quiet. They had
forty-eight hours’ rations and a bottle of water apiece; but the
Sergeant was perfectly definite as to their leaving their iron ration
intact. So they lay in their shell-hole in the wood and speculated
on life and death, and paid special attention to the commands of
their superior officer in the execution of his duty. The enemy knew
they were somewhere about, but not their strength nor their precise
position, and having his own troubles in other directions, it was not
till the dawn of the 16th that he sent out a full company to roll
them up. The Sergeant allowed them to get within twenty-five yards
and then ordered his men to “jump out and attack.” It was quite a
success. Their Lewis-gun came into action on their flank, and got off
three drums into the brown of the host while the infantry expended
four boxes of bombs at close quarters. “Sergeant Moyney then gave
the order to charge through the Germans to the Broembeek.” It was
done, and he sent his men across that foul water, bottomed here with
curly barbed-wire coils while he covered their passage with his one
rifle. They were bombed and machine-gunned as they floundered over to
the swampy western bank; and it was here that Private Woodcock heard
cries for help behind him, returned, waded into the water under bombs
and bullets, fished out Private Hilley of No. 3 Company with a broken
thigh and brought him safely away. The clamour of this fierce little
running fight, the unmistakable crack and yells of the bombing and
the sudden appearance of some of our men breaking out of the woods
near the German machine-gun emplacement by the river, had given the
impression to our front of something big in development. Hence the
SOS which woke up the whole touchy line, and hence our final barrage
which had the blind good luck to catch the enemy as they were lining
up on the banks of the Broembeek preparatory, perhaps, to the advance
the St. Julien prisoner had reported. Their losses were said to be
heavy, but there was great joy in the Battalion over the return of
the missing platoon, less several good men, for whom a patrol went
out to look that night in case they might be lying up in shell-holes.
But no more were found. (“’Twas a bad mix-up first to last. We
ought never to have been that side the dam’ river at that time at
all. ’Twas not fit for it yet. And there’s a lot to it that can’t
be told.... And _why_ did Moyney not let the men break into their
ration? Because, in a tight place, if you do _one_ thing against
orders ye’ll do _annything_. An’ ’twas a dam’ tight place that that
Moyney man walked them out of.”)
They were relieved with only two casualties. The total losses of the
tour had been—one officer missing (Lieutenant Manning), one (2nd
Lieutenant Gibson) wounded; one man wounded and missing; eighty
missing; fifty-nine wounded and seventeen killed. And the worst of it
was that they were all trained hands being finished for the next big
affair!
Dulwich Camp where they lay for a few days was, like the others, well
within bombing and long gun-range. They consoled themselves with an
inspection of the drums and pipes on the 17th, and received several
six-inch shells from a naval gun, an old acquaintance; but though one
shell landed within a few yards of a bivouac of No. 2 Company there
were no further casualties, and the next day the drums and pipes
went over to Proven to take part in a competition arranged by the
Twenty-ninth Division (De Lisle’s). They played beautifully—every
one admitted that—but what chance had they of “marks for dress”
against line battalions whose bands sported their full peace-time
equipment—leopard skins, white buckskin gloves, and all? So the 8th
Essex won De Lisle’s prize. But they bore no malice, for when, a few
days later, a strayed officer and forty men of that battalion cast up
at their camp (it was Putney for the moment) they entertained them
all hospitably.
They settled down to the business of intensive training of the new
drafts that were coming in—2nd Lieutenant Murphy with ninety-six men
one day, and 2nd Lieutenants Dame and Close the next with a hundred
and forty-six, all to be put through three weeks of a scheme that
included “consolidation of shell-holes” in addition to everything
else, and meant six hours a day of the hardest repetition work.
Sports and theatrical shows, such as the Coldstream Pierrots and
their own rather Rabelaisian “Wild West Show,” filled in time till
the close of September when they were at Herzeele, warned that they
would be “for it” on or about the 11th of the next month, and that
their attack would not be preceded by any artillery registration.
This did not cheer them; for experience had shown that the chances of
surprising the enemy on that sector were few and remote.
The last day of September saw the cadres filled. Three 2nd
Lieutenants, Anderson, Faulkner, and O’Connor, and Lieutenant Levy
arrived; and, last, Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. H. R. Alexander, who took
over the command.
Rehearsals for the coming affair filled the next few days at Herzeele
camp, and their final practice on the 4th before they moved over
to Proven was passed as “entirely satisfactory.” Scaled against
the tremendous events in progress round them, the Broembeek was
no more than a minor action in a big action intended to clear a
cloudy front ere the traitorous weather should make all work on the
sector impossible, and, truly, by the time it was done, it cost the
Division only two thousand casualties—say four battalions of a peace
establishment.
The battle they knew would depend on the disposition of the little
Broembeek. If that chose to flood it would be difficult to reach
across its bogs and worse to cross; and, under any circumstances,
mats and portable bridges (which meant men having to halt and bunch
under fire) would be indispensable.
The existing line was to be held by the 3rd Guards Brigade till the
9th of October, when the attack would be put through by the 1st
and 2nd Brigades on the right and left respectively. In brigade
disposition this would lay the 2nd Irish Guards next to the French on
their left, and the 1st Scots Guards on their right. The usual three
objectives were set for the Division; making an advance in all of
rather more than three thousand yards from the Broembeek to the edge
of the Houthulst Forest; and equally, as usual, when the leading
battalions had secured the first two objectives, the remaining
battalions of each brigade would go through them and take the final
one.
With the idea of concealing the attack, no preliminary work was
undertaken, but on the morning of the 6th the light bridges and mats
were issued, and the Battalion practised fixing and laying them over
a piece of ground marked to represent the river. They moved from
Putney Camp to the front line on the 7th, when Nos. 3 and 4 Companies
relieved the 2nd Scots Guards who had been getting ready the mats
and bridges for the real thing. The last day concerned itself with
disposing the companies in the trenches so that they should be able
to have a good look at the ground ahead while it was yet light.
No one could pretend that the sweeping of the small-featured,
ill-looking, and crowded landscape would be an easy job, and at the
far end of the ominous perspectives lay the dull line of Houthulst
Forest upon which rain shut down dismally as the day closed. The
enemy made no signs beyond occasional shelling, in which Battalion
Headquarters, a collection of three concrete block-houses, was hit
once or twice with 5.9’s, but no harm followed.
At dusk Nos. 3 and 4 Companies laid out the tapes parallel to the
Broembeek that were to make forming-up easier. For some reason
connected with the psychology of war, this detail has always a
depressing influence on men’s minds. An officer has observed that
it reminded him of tennis-courts and girls playing on them at home.
A man has explained that their white glimmer in the dusk suggests a
road for ghosts, with reflections on the number of those who, after
setting foot across on dead-line, may return for their rum-ration.