wind. Zero of the 9th October was 5.20 A. M. which gave light enough
to see a few hundred yards. An intense eighteen-pounder barrage
was our signal to get away. Four barrages went on together—the
creeping, a standing one, a back-barrage of six-inch howitzers and
60-pounders, and a distant barrage of the same metal, not to count
the thrashing machine-gun barrages. They moved and halted with the
precision of stage machinery or, as a man said, like water-hoses at
a conflagration. Our two leading companies (3 and 4) crossed the
river without a hitch, met some small check for a few moments in Ney
Wood where a nest of machine-guns had escaped the blasts of fire,
and moved steadily behind the death-drum of the barrage to the first
objective a thousand yards from their start. There the barrage hung
like a wall from the French flank, across the north of Gruyterzaele
Farm, over the Langemarck road and Koekuit, and up to Namur Crossing
on the battered railway track, while the two leading companies set to
work consolidating till it should roll back and the rear companies
pass on behind it. The dreadful certainty of the job in itself masked
all the details. One saw and realised nothing outside of one’s own
immediate task, and the business of keeping distances between lines
and supports became a sort of absurd preoccupation. Occasionally a
runner passed, very intent on his errand, a free man, it seemed,
who could go where he chose at what pace suited his personal
need to live; or the variously wounded would lurch by among the
shell-holes, but the general impression in the midst of the din was
of concentrated work. The barrage held still for three quarters of an
hour, and about half-past seven the 2nd Coldstream came up through
our Nos. 3 and 4 Companies who were lying down, curiously unworried
by casualties, to carry on the advance to the last objective which
was timed to take place about eight. No. 3 Company was told to move
up behind the Coldstream and dig in a couple of hundred yards behind
Nos. 1 and 2 as a support to them, where they lay behind the second
objective, in event of counter-attacks. Unluckily a French gun on the
left began to fire short, and that company had to be withdrawn with
some speed, for a “seventy-five” that makes a mistake repeats it too
often to be a pleasant neighbour. Battalion Headquarters came up as
methodically as everything else, established themselves behind the
first objective, strung their telephones, and settled down to the
day’s work. So far as the Battalion was concerned they suffered no
more henceforward than a few occasional shells that do not seem to
have done any damage, and at six in the evening their two leading
companies were withdrawn, with the leading companies of the 1st Scots
Guards, and marched back to Dulwich Camp. The remaining two companies
of the Scots Guards passed under the command of the C.O. of the Irish
(Alexander), who had been slightly wounded in the course of the
action. The four companies then were in direct support of the troops
at the third objective waiting on for counter-attacks which never
came.
On the dawn of the 10th October, Battalion Headquarters moved forward
again to the second objective line, but except for some low-flying
enemy planes, the day passed quietly till the afternoon when the same
French “seventy-five,” which had been firing short the day before,
took it into its misdirected head to shell No. 1 Company so savagely
that that had to be shifted to the left in haste. There was no
explanation, and while the company was on the move the enemy put down
a two hours’ barrage just behind the second objective. It has often
been remarked that when the Hun leads off on the wrong foot, so to
say, at the beginning of a fray, he keeps on putting his foot into it
throughout. Luckily, the barrage did not do much harm.
The Welsh Guards relieved in the late evening, and by eleven o’clock
the whole Battalion was safe in Dulwich Camp with an amazingly small
casualty list. The only officer killed had been Captain Hanbury.
Lieutenants Close and Bagot were wounded and also Alexander and
Father Browne, these last two so slightly that they still remained on
duty. Of other ranks they had but twenty dead, eighty-nine wounded,
and two missing. The Wurtembergers’ raid had cost them more. And
that, too, was the luck of war.
None of them knew particularly how the fight outside their limited
vision had gone. The Scots Guards were comfortably on their
right, keeping step for step; and the French on the left, barring
their incontinent gun, had moved equally level. But they were all
abominably stiff from negotiating the slippery-sided shell-holes and
the mud, and it took them two days’ hard work to clean up.
On the 13th October they relieved the 1st Scots Guards for
fatigue-parties to the front, and lay in a camp of sand-bag and
corrugated iron hovels where the men had to manufacture shelter for
themselves, while a long-range German gun prevented that work from
being too dull. But again there was no damage. They were relieved on
the 16th October from these duties by a battalion of the Cheshires
and marched to Elverdinghe, leaving the Pioneers behind for a little
to put up crosses over the graves of the newly dead. That closed
the chapter and they lapsed back to “the usual routine,” of drill,
inspections, and sports. They were at Houlle Camp near Watten on
the 21st when the 2nd Guards Brigade was inspected by H.R.H. the
Duke of Connaught, and the Battalion, in walking-out order, lined
the roads and cheered. Sir Douglas Haig, too, inspected them on
the 25th October with the whole of their Division, dealt them all
those compliments on past work which were their undeniable right,
and congratulated them on their turn-out. The Battalion then was
specially well set up and hard-bitten, running to largish men even
in No. 2 Company. Their new drafts had all been worked up and worked
down; the new C.O.’s hand and systems were firmly established;
company cooks and their satellites had been re-formed, and—which puts
a bloom on men as quickly as food—they were “happy” under a justice
which allowed an immense amount of honest, intimate, domestic fun.
Of the tales which ran about at that period there is one perhaps
worth recording. During the fatigues on the Boesinghe front it
fell to them to relieve some battalion or other which, after much
manœuvring in the mud, at last drew clear of its trenches to let in
the wet and impatient Irish. The latter’s C.O., wearied to the bone,
was sitting in the drizzling dark beside the communication-trench,
his head on his hand and on his wrist his campaign watch with its
luminous dial. Suddenly, as the relieved shadows dragged themselves
by, he felt his wrist gently taken, slightly turned, and after an
instant’s inspection, loosed again. Naturally, he demanded by all
the Gods of the Army what the unseen caitiff meant by his outrageous
deed. To him, from the dark, in irresistible Cockney, “Beg pardon,
Sir, but I thought it was a glow-worm,” and the poor devil who had
been cut off from all knowledge of earthly time for the past three
days shuffled on, leaving behind him a lieut.-colonel of the Brigade
of Guards defeated and shaken with mirth.
Their rest lasted till the 9th November, during which time 2nd
Lieutenants Cary-Elwes and A. F. Synge joined, and Captain Sassoon
came up from the base and took over No. 3 Company. Lieut.-Colonel
Pawlett of the Canadian Army was attached to the Battalion from the
6th of the month, and Captain the Hon. H. A. V. Harmsworth rejoined
from the staff where, like a brother-officer in the entrenching
battalion, his heart was not. On the 9th, too, Lieutenant Lysaght and
Sergeant R. Macfarlane were decorated with the Croix de Guerre by
General Antoine commanding the First French Army.
On the 10th of November they were ordered out into the St. Pol area
which, as a jumping-off place, offered as many possibilities as
Charing Cross station on a Bank holiday. One knows from the record
of the 1st Battalion that the whole Division now on the move were
prepared for and given to believe anything—even that they might be
despatched to Italy, to retrieve October’s disaster of Caporetto.
But it is known now that the long series of operations round the
Salient—Messines, the two months’ agony of the Third Battle of
Ypres, and the rest—had drawn the enemy forces and held them more
and more to the northward of our front; and that Sir Julian Byng had
been entrusted to drive at the Hindenburg Line on the Somme with
the Sixth, Fourth, Third, and Seventh Army Corps, from Bullecourt
southward to a little south of Gonnelieu.
It was to be a surprise without artillery preparation, but very many
tanks were to do the guns’ work in rooting out trenches, barbed wire,
and machine-gun nests.
The main attack was on a front of six miles, and, as has been noted
elsewhere, the official idea was not to make the capture of Cambrai,
behind the Hindenburg Line, a main feature of the affair, but to get
as far into the enemy’s ground as could be, and above all, to secure
a clean flank for ourselves to the north-east of Bourlon Wood near
Cambrai where the lie of the Somme Downs gave vital observation and
command. The Guards Division, as usual, would wait upon the results.
If the thing was a success they would advance on Cambrai. If not,
they would assist as requisite.
It was late in the year, and the weather was no treat as the 2nd
Battalion Irish Guards marched out in the wet from Houlle on the
10th November to Ecques, and, in billets there, made its first
acquaintance with a battalion of Portuguese troops. Two days more
brought them to Ostreville’s bad billets and a draft of a hundred
new hands with Lieutenant M. R. Hely-Hutchinson and 2nd Lieutenant
F. C. Lynch-Blosse. Not a man had fallen out on the road, but they
were glad of a four days’ halt and clean-up, though that included
instruction in outpost companies and positions.
On the 17th they continued their march south to Ambrines over the
large, untouched lands of the high water-shed between the Scarpe and
the little streams that feed the Authies River. The next day carried
them no longer south, but east towards the noise of the unquiet Somme
guns, and had they any doubts as to their future, it was settled by
one significant gas-helmet drill. (“But we knew, or at least, _I_
did, having done my trick here before, that we were for it. Ye could
begin to smell the dam’ Somme as soon as ye was across that Arras
railway.”)
They heard the opening of Cambrai fight from Courcelles in the early
morn of the 20th November—a sudden and immense grunt, rather than
roar, of a barrage that lasted half an hour as the tanks rolled out
through the morning mists, and for the first time the Hindenburg Line
was broken.
BOURLON WOOD
They held on, under two hours’ notice, through Achiet-le-Grand,
Bapaume, and Riencourt to Beaulencourt in icy rain and mud. The
wreckage of battle was coming back to them now, as they moved in
the wake of the Fifty-first Division that was pressing on towards
Flesquières, and passed a number of prisoners taken round Noyelles
and Marcoing. Here were rumours of vast captures, of Cambrai fallen,
and of cavalry pushing through beyond. The 24th November brought
them, in continuous drizzle, to the smoking and ruined land between
Trescault and Ribecourt, which was crowded with infantry and the
Second Cavalry Division near by; and they lay out in a sound
unoccupied trench, once part of the Hindenburg Line. Our tanks had
left their trails everywhere, and the trodden-down breadths of
wire-entanglements, studded here and there with crushed bodies,
suggested to one beholder “the currants in the biscuits one used
to buy at school.” Suddenly news of Cambrai fight began to change
colour. They were told that it had “stuck” round Bourlon Wood, a
sullen hundred-acre plantation which commanded all the ground we
had won north of Flesquières, and was the key to the whole position
at the northern end of the field. Seldom had woodland and coppice
cost more for a few days’ rental, even at the expensive rates then
current on the Somme. Here are some of the items in the account: On
the 21st November the Fifty-first Division, supported by tanks, had
captured Fontaine-Notre-Dame village which lay between Bourlon Wood
and Cambrai, and, till beaten out again by the enemy, had worked
into the Wood itself. Fontaine was lost on the 22nd, and attacked
on the 23rd November by the Fifty-first Division again, but without
definite result. The Fortieth Division were put in on the evening of
the same day and managed to take the whole of the Wood, even reaching
Bourlon village behind it. Here they held up a fierce counter-attack
of German Grenadiers, but, in the long run, were pushed out and back
to the lower ground, and by the evening of the 25th were very nearly
exhausted. Five days of expensive fighting had gained everything
except those vital positions necessary to security and command
of gun-fire. Hence the employment of the Guards Division, to see
what could be fished out of the deadlock. The decision was taken
swiftly. The 1st and 3rd Guards Brigade had been sent up on the 23rd
November to relieve two brigades of the Fifty-first Division round
Flesquières, and also to assist the Fortieth then battling in the
Wood. It was understood that the whole of the Guards Division would
now be employed, but no one knew for sure in which direction.
As far as the 2nd Guards Brigade was concerned, their brigadier was
not told of the intended attack on Bourlon till the afternoon of the
26th; the C.O.’s of battalions not till four o’clock, and company
commanders not till midnight of that date. No one engaged had seen
the ground before, or knew anything about the enemy’s dispositions.
Their instructions ran that they were to work with the 186th Brigade
on their left “with the object of gaining the whole of Bourlon Wood,
La Fontaine, and the high ground behind it.” As a matter of fact,
they were to be brought up in the dark through utterly unknown
surroundings; given a compass-bearing, and despatched at dawn into a
dense wood, on a front of seven hundred yards, to reach an objective
a thousand yards ahead. This pleasing news was decanted upon them at
Brigade Headquarters in the dusk of a November evening hailstorm,
after the C.O., the Assistant Adjutant, and all company commanders
had spent the day reconnoitring the road from Trescault to the front
line by Anneux and making arrangements for taking over from the 2nd
Scots Guards, who were supporting the Fortieth Division outside the
Wood.
The official idea of the Brigade’s work was that, while the 3rd
Grenadiers were attacking La Fontaine, the 2nd Irish Guards should
sweep through Bourlon Wood and consolidate on its northern edge;
the 1st Coldstream filling any gap between the Irish Guards and the
Grenadiers. When all objectives had been reached, the 1st Scots
Guards were to push up and get touch with the 3rd Grenadiers who
should have captured La Fontaine. (It may be noted that the attack
was to be a diverging one.) They would advance under a creeping
barrage, that jumped back a hundred yards every five minutes, and
they would be assisted by fourteen tanks. Above all, they were to be
quick because the enemy seemed to be strong and growing stronger,
both in and behind the Wood.
The Battalion spent the night of the 26th working its way up to the
front line, through Flesquières where bombs were issued, two per
man; then to La Justice by Graincourt; and thence, cross-country,
by companies through the dark to the Bapaume-Cambrai road, where
they found the guides for their relief of the Scots Guards. Just as
they reached the south edge of Bourlon Wood, the enemy put down a
barrage which cost forty casualties. Next it was necessary for the
C.O. (Alexander) to explain the details of the coming attack to his
company commanders, who re-explained it to their N.C.O.’s, while the
companies dressed in attack-order, bombs were detonated and shovels
issued. (“There was not any need to tell us we were for it. We knew
that, and we knew we was to be quick. But that was all we _did_
know—except we was to go dancin’ into that great Wood in the wet,
beyond the duck-boards. The ground, ye’ll understand, had been used
by them that had gone before us—used and messed about; and at the
back, outside Bourlon, all Jerry’s guns was rangin’ on it. A dirty
an’ a noisy business was Bourlon.”)
By five in the morning, after a most wearing night, the Battalion
was in position, the 2/5th West Riding of the 1st Brigade on its
left and the 1st Coldstream on its right; and the Wood in front alive
with concealed machine-guns and spattered with shells. They led off
at 6.20 behind their own barrage, in two waves; No. 1 Company on
the right and No. 2 Company on the left, supported by No. 3 Company
and No. 4. Everything was ready for them, and machine-guns opened
on well-chosen and converging ranges. Almost at the outset they met
a line of enemy posts held in strength, where many of the occupants
had chosen to shelter themselves at the bottom of the trenches under
oil-sheets, a protection hampering them equally in their efforts
to fight or to surrender. Here there was some quick killing and a
despatch of prisoners to the rear; but the Wood offered many chances
of escape, and as our guards were necessarily few, for every rifle
was needed, a number broke away and returned. Meantime, the Battalion
took half a dozen machine-guns and lost more men at each blind step.
In some respects Bourlon was like Villers-Cotterêts on a large scale,
with the added handicap of severe and well-placed shelling. A man
once down in the coppice, or bogged in a wood-pool, was as good as
lost, and the in-and-out work through the trees and stumpage broke
up the formations. Nor, when the affair was well launched, was there
much help from “the officer with the compass” who was supposed to
direct the outer flank of each company. The ground on the right of
the Battalion’s attack, which the Coldstream were handling, was
thick with undestroyed houses and buildings of all sorts that gave
perfect shelter to the machine-guns; but it is questionable whether
Bourlon Wood itself, in its lack of points to concentrate upon, and
in the confusion of forest rides all exactly like each other, was
not, after all, the worst. Early in the advance, No. 2 Company lost
touch on the left, while the rest of the Battalion, which was still
somehow keeping together, managed to get forward through the Wood
as far as its north-east corner, where they made touch with the 1st
Coldstream. Not long after this, they tried to dig in among the wet
tree-roots, just beyond the Wood’s north edge. It seemed to them
that the enemy had fallen back to the railway line which skirted
it, as well as to the north of La Fontaine village. Officially, the
objective was reached, but our attacking strength had been used up,
and there were no reserves. A barrage of big stuff, supplemented
by field-guns, was steadily threshing out the centre and north of
the Wood, and, somewhere to the rear of the Battalion a nest of
machine-guns broke out viciously and unexpectedly. Then the whole
fabric of the fight appeared to crumble, as, through one or other of
the many gaps between the Battalions, the enemy thrust in, and the
2nd Irish guards, hanging on to their thin front line, realized him
suddenly at their backs. What remained of them split up into little
fighting groups; sometimes taking prisoners, sometimes themselves
being taken, and again breaking away from their captors, dodging,
turning, and ducking in dripping coppices and over the slippery soil,
while the shells impartially smote both parties. Such as had kept
their sense of direction headed back by twos and threes to their
original starting-point; but at noon Battalion Headquarters had lost
all touch of the Battalion, and the patrols that got forward to
investigate reported there was no sign of it. It looked like complete
and unqualified disaster. But men say that the very blindness of
the ground hid this fact to a certain extent both from us and the
enemy, and the multiplied clamours in the Wood supplied an additional
blindage. As one man said: “If Jerry had only shut off his dam’ guns
and _listened_ he’d ha’ heard we was knocked out; but he kept on
hammer—hammering an’ rushin’ his parties back and forth the Wood, and
so, ye see, them that could of us, slipped back quiet in the height
of the noise.” Another observer compared it to the chopping of many
foxes in cover—not pleasant, but diversified by some hideously comic
incidents. All agreed that it was defeat for the Guards—the first
complete one they had sustained; but the admitted fact was that they
had been turned on at a few hours’ notice to achieve the impossible,
did not spoil their tempers. The records say that the 2nd Guards
Brigade with the rest of the Division “fell back to its original
line.” Unofficially: “We did—but I don’t know how we did it. There
wasn’t any Battalion worth mentioning when the Welsh Guards relieved
us in the dark, but stray men kept on casting up all night long.”
The losses were in proportion to the failure. Of officers, two were
killed—Cary-Elwes, just as they reached their objective, by a bullet
through the head, and A. F. Synge shot down at the beginning of the
attack, both of them men without fear and with knowledge. Three were
missing, which is to say, dead—2nd Lieutenants N. D. Bayly of No. 2
Company, W. G. Rea of No. 3, and N. F. Durant of No. 4 who was also
believed to have been wounded. Four were wounded—Captain the Hon.
H. A. V. Harmsworth, No. 1; Captain Reford, No. 3, bullet through
the shoulder; and Lieutenant S. S. Wordley, of the same company,
in the head. Also 2nd Lieut. F. C. Lynch-Blosse of No. 2 blown up,
but able to get back. The C.O. (Colonel the Hon. H. R. Alexander),
the Second in Command (Captain the Hon. W. S. Alexander), Captain
Nugent, Adjutant, 2nd Lieutenant W. D. Faulkner, Assistant Adjutant
Captain Sassoon and Lieutenant O’Connor, these last two being company
officers in reserve who were kept with Battalion Headquarters, were
unhurt. Twenty-five men were known to be dead on comrades’ evidence;
one hundred and forty-six were missing, of whom a number would
naturally be dead; and one hundred and forty-two were wounded and
brought back. Total, three hundred and twenty-two.