THE “HUSH” OPERATION AND THE COCKCROFT.
I.
The result of the first day’s fighting at Ypres was on the whole
satisfactory. The left of the attack had been quite successful. The
French, Guards, and 51st Division had carried their final objectives,
and the French had even gone beyond theirs. But from St Julien
southwards things had not gone so well. Repeated counter-attacks
during the afternoon and night drove our infantry out of St Julien
itself, and away at Hooge the net result of twenty-four hours’ terrible
fighting was a very small gain indeed. The 2nd and 3rd Tank Brigades,
operating in this southern sector, suffered heavy casualties, although
the average time during which their machines were in action was
comparatively short--five hours in the case of the 2nd Brigade and
seven in that of the 3rd. The same average in G Battalion, the only
representative of the 1st Brigade, worked out at sixteen hours. The
two southern brigades sent in between them 94 fighting and 13 supply,
signalling, and cable-laying tanks--a total of 107. Thirty-three were
disabled by shell-fire, a similar number remained ditched at the end
of the day, and 22 had mechanical breakdowns. This last figure appears
extraordinarily high. Nine officers and 27 men were killed, 29 officers
and 168 men were wounded, and 8 men were reported missing--in all,
241 casualties out of some 800 of all ranks who went into action. In
many cases valuable help was given to the infantry, especially by the
3rd Brigade (C and F Battalions), working with the 19th Corps against
Spree and Bank Farms, Beck House and Capricorn, and Frezenberg. The
2nd Brigade was hampered by the appalling state of the ground in the
Hooge area. Most of its tanks were late in coming up, and the infantry
in the meanwhile having been checked, machine after machine was hit
in the narrow defiles by which they endeavoured to get forward. Our
counter-battery work, thorough as it appeared to be, failed completely
in this region to keep down the German artillery fire. The two tank
battalions, A and B, lost more tanks and men than the other two
brigades together.
Individual tank actions during this day presented, one and all, similar
features, and I shall not consider them here. The machines dragged
themselves laboriously through the mud, became ditched and extricated
themselves, and then probably became ditched again. Crews, while in the
open during unditching operations, were much harassed by machine-gun
fire from low-flying aeroplanes. There were fifty-one recorded cases
in which tanks assisted the infantry. Sixteen of these were credited
to our two companies on the left, and there can be no doubt that G
Battalion, in its first action, carried off such honours as the Heavy
Branch gained in that dismal battle. Whether this performance was
due to the ground in our sector being a trifle less atrocious than
elsewhere (although in all truth it was bad enough), or whether, as one
likes to think, it was due rather to the excellent training and spirit
of the battalion, must remain a matter of personal opinion. It is
certain, however, that our discussions with the infantry beforehand led
to a standard of co-operation in the field which does not seem to have
been reached in other cases. On several occasions the infantry directed
our tanks on to objectives, or called them up from a considerable
distance; for we had brought their officers to understand that the view
from a tank is so restricted that without such help half its value
will be wasted.
‘Weekly Tank Notes,’ a concise history of the corps issued recently
from the Headquarters in London, sets out the main lessons to be
drawn from this day’s fighting, as follows: “The unsuitability of
the Mark IV. tank to swamp warfare; the danger of attempting to move
tanks through defiles which are swept by hostile artillery fire; the
necessity for immediate infantry co-operation whenever the presence of
a tank forces an opening, and the continued moral effect of the tank
on both the enemy and our own troops.” This last was exemplified very
strikingly in the case of one of 21 Company’s tanks, which led the 51st
Division to the Steenbeek, and helped it to establish itself there,
without firing a shot. Successive German posts surrendered as soon as
the tank came within range. As for “swamp warfare,” the unsuitability
for this of an experimental machine weighing thirty tons had been
manifest to every one in the corps itself long before. But to infantry
commanders, regular British officers with the conservative outlook and
the prejudices common to their type, this consideration carried no
weight. They had never liked this newfangled weapon. It was absurd, in
their eyes, to attempt to introduce the tactics of naval warfare on
land, and they seized upon the inevitable failures at Ypres as a happy
confirmation of all their doubts. The three corps commanders concerned
supplied the 5th Army H.Q. with their opinions on the work of tanks
during the battle. Major Williams-Ellis, in his book, deals with this
incident so effectively that I cannot do better than quote him.
“The three summaries were agreed that the courage and
perseverance shown by tank personnel had been admirable. One
corps, however, had given way thoroughly to the spirit of the
time. They practically reported that tanks had been of no
use to any one, and moreover that they were never likely to
be. With the 30th Division they had been unable to deal with
certain machine-gun emplacements; with the 24th they had been
late--they always drew enemy shell-fire; and with the 8th
Division one tank had even lost direction and been reported as
firing on our own men. Another corps had found tanks helpful,
and said all they could for them. Tanks had greatly assisted
the Gordons and Black Watch at Frezenberg; they had dealt
effectively with concrete dug-outs; with the 55th Division they
had broken the wave of an enemy counter-attack at Winnipeg, and
everywhere their moral effect on the enemy had been of great
assistance. Twenty-four tanks had been put out of action by bad
going or shell-fire.
“A third corps, with fewer machines, had in many cases reached
their objective without being held up. The tanks had in these
cases merely followed the infantry, but they reported that
without tanks the capture of the strongly-wired position of
Alberta would have cost the 39th Division dear, and that on
the Steenbeek near Ferdinand Farm the enemy, who had bolted at
the mere sight of a tank, had been ‘dealt with’ at ease with
a machine-gun by infantry of the 51st Division. Upon these
summaries and upon later failures the commander of the 5th Army
was subsequently to base a generally unfavourable report upon
tanks.
“The report may be condensed into a simple syllogism:--
1. Tanks were unable to negotiate bad ground.
2. The ground on a battlefield will always be bad.
3. Therefore tanks are no good on a battlefield.
“He added to this, that being no longer a surprise to the
enemy, he considered that tanks had lost their moral effect,
and had no value used in masses. This report was not officially
presented for some weeks, but the Higher Tank Command must
early have perceived the drift of affairs.”[17]
The prospects of the Tank Corps, in fact, were become suddenly very
gloomy. I cannot say how near the corps came to extinction, or at
least to drastic limitation, at this period; but by all accounts it
came very near. All the prophets of evil were up and about and busy,
saying everywhere, “I told you so!” The labour of three years, the
sacrifice of many lives, seemed likely to come to nothing after all.
A weapon which, properly applied, could alter the whole face of the
war, was in imminent danger of abandonment because it had been used, in
defiance of all authoritative opinion, amid conditions for which it was
wholly unfitted. By a parity of reasoning the cavalry might have been
threatened with abolition; for their patrols were supposed to be at
hand to cross the Steenbeek, and not a trooper got even as far as the
canal. And, when one comes to think of it, a state of mind which can
hope that cavalry will be of any use whatever at such a stage of such
a battle must be capable of the most astounding misjudgments. It was
in this state of mind that too many senior officers, even after three
years of shattering surprises and disillusionment, looked upon tanks or
any other new thing. Faced by so obstinate a prejudice, now fanned into
activity by the events of the 31st July, the position of the new arm
obviously was precarious. It is possible also that the Treasury, always
alarmed by the growth of a very expensive organisation, and encouraged
by the fact that the Tank Corps, unlike the R.A.F., had few friends
and no publicity agents, was backing up any proposals made at home for
economical reform. In short, it looked very like becoming a question
whether the corps would have another chance of justifying itself before
its fate was taken out of its hands. For, in the meantime, at Ypres the
rain still fell, the whole offensive came virtually to a standstill,
and the mere idea of further tank operations in that dissolving world
seemed ludicrous. One such attempt, indeed, was made, and ended as an
inglorious but inevitable fiasco.
Before we come to this, however, and to the surprising success which,
following immediately after, re-endued the Tank Corps with life and
hope, another and unique enterprise falls to be noticed.
II.
The most interesting phase of the third battle of Ypres, as originally
planned, was never fought. This was the landing on the Flanders coast.
Tanks were to have played an important and indeed essential part in the
undertaking.
The landing was designed to take place in the neighbourhood of
Middelkerke, a little _plage_ midway between Nieuport and Ostend.
The sea-front along the whole of this flat coast is protected by a
high concrete wall, on the top of which runs the usual esplanade
and roadway. On the other side of the road are the villas and cafés
and _pensions_ where, in happier days, visitors crowded during the
summer and autumn. The whole esplanade now was all but hidden by
barbed wire, and there was more wire along the beach; batteries were
emplaced at close intervals along the wall; and the ground-floors and
cellars of the lodging-houses were become concrete machine-gun posts.
A landing here presented extraordinary difficulties, but the main
problem before the assailants (assuming that all else went well) was
how to haul field-guns and supplies rapidly over the concrete wall
under fire. Infantry might be got ashore under cover of a smoke-screen
and a bombardment from the sea; but infantry alone, even if it could
capture that fortified esplanade, could not hope to hold it. Guns were
essential, and, if possible, some other factor which would upset the
enemy’s _moral_ and prevent him recovering from the initial surprise.
For this purpose tanks, of all things, were to be employed.
The attacking force consisted of the 1st Division, several batteries of
field-guns and 4.5 howitzers, a company or two of engineers, and nine
Mark IV. tanks. To throw this considerable force ashore three immense
pontoons or barges were constructed, each 700 feet long. These were
taken over to Dunkirk harbour toward the end of July. On the night of
the attack (which, as I have said before, was to follow the capture of
the Passchendaele Ridge, provided that was effected within three or
four days) these barges were to be pushed on to the beach by pairs of
monitors, lashed together, one barge at Middelkerke itself and one on
either side of that place. Each barge carried a brigade of infantry,
several batteries, three tanks, and some motor-lorries. The landing was
to take place just before dawn, covered by a dense smoke and ordinary
bombardment from warships supplied by the Dover Patrol, which was in
charge of the naval side of the enterprise.
The wall itself was a very serious obstacle. It rose to a height of
some thirty feet, sloping up from the beach at an easy angle, but
ending at the top in a vertical coping with a lip or overhang. A
tank, fitted with special shoes on the tracks, could climb the slope
easily enough, but the vertical coping was too high to be surmounted
without additional appliances. To each tank, therefore, was fitted
in front a massive detachable steel ramp, slightly wider than the
machine, supported on lattice-work girders carrying a pair of wheels,
and so constructed that it sloped upward from the inclined part of
the sea-wall to the top of the overhang. When the tank reached the
foot of the incline, the ramp would be lowered by tackle until its
wheels rested on the concrete, pushed up against the coping, and there
detached. The tank could then climb over it on to the esplanade.
Afterwards this highly ingenious contrivance was to be used for the
haulage of guns and motor-lorries over the obstacle, the tanks being
fitted with special cables and attachments for this purpose. Another
clever device was a system of wooden sledges carrying ammunition-boxes,
the sledges being simply jammed on to a rope and hauled up by the
tanks, releasing themselves automatically as they cleared the top of
the overhang. The actual disembarkation from the huge barges to the
beach was effected by strong hinged gangways, which fell over the bows.
The troops detailed for this hazardous attempt were trained very
thoroughly. The infantry, segregated for weeks in a camp near Dunkirk,
practised repeatedly the whole attack with the aid of a concrete model
of a section of the sea-wall. A similar model was built at Merlimont,
where the special tank detachment, commanded by Major the Hon. J. D. Y.
Bingham, and made up of volunteers from the original four battalions,
climbed up and down with their machines, towed up guns and lorries, and
demonstrated conclusively that this essential part of the enterprise
was perfectly feasible. The ramps worked admirably. Major Bingham
informs me that tanks made as many as 200 ascents of the model at
Merlimont.
Had this attack taken place, it would have been profoundly interesting.
Obviously it was an immense gamble. It bore many points of resemblance
to the successful raid at Zeebrugge, with this great difference: it
was intended not as a raid but as a permanent landing. Once troops and
tanks were ashore, it is difficult to see how they could have been got
off again if things went wrong. The great barges would have been blown
to matchwood if they remained on the beach after daybreak, unless an
extensive clearance of the sea-front was effected at the very start.
The roadway above the sea-wall was none too wide, and there were doubts
as to whether the tanks would have room to tow the guns, to say nothing
of the lorries, up the narrow ramps. It was found afterwards that the
lower storeys of the houses across the road were veritable fortresses
of concrete. There were a hundred other obstacles to success which
might arise, such as bad weather, premature discovery, or even a wind
sufficient to dissipate the smoke-screen. And it seems probable that,
well as the secret was kept in England, the Germans had some uncertain
information about it. I believe that the camp near Dunkirk was bombed
with quite exceptional thoroughness. The chances, in short, seem to
have been very greatly against success, and failure would have meant a
ghastly slaughter on the beach and along that narrow esplanade. On the
other hand, whatever the Germans suspected, it does not seem likely
that they possessed any exact information. Some sort of a landing
somewhere on the Flanders coast was always a bogey to them. And after
so prolonged a crying of “Wolf!” the prospects of a genuine surprise,
if one could be effected, were very hopeful. Above all, if the German
machine-gunners, buried in their concrete basements and discouraged by
news of a successful advance at Passchendaele, threatening their whole
coast-line, were to be confronted suddenly with tanks where no rational
human being could expect tanks to be, a widespread panic was possible.
One can imagine these men, deluged with gas and high explosive and
blinded by smoke, peering anxiously out of their loopholes for human
targets, and seeing instead, huge and distorted in the gloom, tanks
which seemed to have arisen from the sea....
But this great experiment was never attempted. By our sanguine
calculations, it was due for the 3rd or 4th of August. It was
admittedly useless, however, to land a force at Middelkerke unless
the armies from Ypres were in a position to do their share of the
work; and at the end of the month, and for many weary weeks after,
the armies from Ypres were still floundering in a morass a bare mile
or two from where they started. Passchendaele and its insignificant
ridge were not ours until November. And with the ruin of its parent
enterprise, the conception of the Flanders landing, the great “Hush”
operation, necessarily came also to nothing. Long before we had even
a footing on the ridge, the amphibious attack had been abandoned.
The infantry dispersed to more normal fields of action, the great
barges lay derelict, like Napoleon’s, in Dunkirk harbour, and the
special tank detachment was disbanded. The scheme remains one of those
unfulfilled but deeply interesting adventures over which any person of
a speculative mind could write pages of inconclusive arguments.
III.
We will return from these cursory surveys of the whole field of
operations to the small world of Oosthoek Wood and the camp by Lovie
Château.
The morning after I rejoined from Frascati, the tank commanders
left in our two companies--eight out of the twenty-three had become
casualties--were interviewed by the brigade commander and his
Intelligence officer, that same Major (then Captain) Williams-Ellis
whose book I have quoted. For the next two or three days most of us
were suffering from the reaction after the strain and fatigue of the
approach-marches and the battle itself. For all tank personnel (and
this applied to every other arm) the fighting at Ypres was by far the
most exhausting and nerve-wracking ordeal undergone throughout the
war. The dreadful conditions of ground and weather, on top of all the
ordinary trials of warfare, brought every one to the limit of endurance
very quickly. The hard labour involved in taking and fighting tanks
anywhere was multiplied tenfold in the Salient; and after a severe
action there, it was a physical impossibility for any crew to go in
again until it had been given a complete rest. On other fronts the same
tanks and men often were fit enough for a renewed march and attack
after a few hours’ sleep. In our case there was now little or nothing
for some of us to do, for the two companies were left for the moment
virtually without tanks. Of the twenty-three which went into action,
one only returned the same day to the neighbourhood of Frascati. Four,
which had received direct hits, were lying in the new No Man’s Land
around St Julien; others, like G 46, were derelict in positions where
salvage work at present was out of the question; and the rest, half
engulfed or mechanically crippled, or both, lay scattered about the
west slope of the Pilkem Ridge. During the next fortnight most of these
nearer machines were brought back to a spot known as Ghent Cottages,
near Brielen, where the battalion had established an advanced base.
In the meantime it rained. The camp at Lovie, its leaky tents immersed
in dripping shrubs and undergrowth, and surrounded by sodden parapets
of sandbags as a protection against the persistent bombing raids, grew
always more evil-smelling, steamy, and unhealthy, and those of us who
had little to do became more melancholy every day. There was a time,
some four days after the battle, when the reaction was at its worst,
and when, personally, I felt I could cut my throat for twopence. An
expedition up the line to retrieve my six Lewis guns from Maelor
Jones’s tank was a diversion, but not a strikingly attractive one. For
once, it is true, it was not raining; I do not know why. We went by
lorry to Salvation Corner, a miserable road-junction near the Dead End
of Ypres, and thence walked once more over the familiar route by Bridge
4, Frascati, and La Brique. At Frascati, under the trees where our
tanks had lain during Y-Z day, 9.2 howitzers were being “assembled”--if
one may use this expression with regard to such imposing weapons. A
few duckboard tracks had been laid over the tumbled waste of mud and
water beyond, by which we proceeded with comparative ease for a part
of the way. I was able for the first time to examine at leisure the
ground over which we had advanced, and it appeared to me to be rather
astonishing that tanks had got over it at all. A good number of dead
were still lying about, among them a whole batch of Highlanders, I
remember, near Hurst Park, and everywhere hung the horrible sweet odour
of decomposing animal matter. Away on the top of the ridge the Germans,
with a curious futile industry, were shelling with heavy metal the big
concrete mebus in front of Kitchener’s Wood.
Our directions for finding the tank were not too explicit, and even so
large an object was easily missed in that distorted wilderness, where
everything was mud-coloured. When at length we discovered it, we found
it had been hit on one track. The guns were lying rusting inside amid
a litter of tools, petrol-tins, and rubbish, and mud was everywhere.
I had intended to go on to G 46, if the situation seemed propitious,
to collect Kessel’s cherished flag and my binoculars, which I had left
somewhere under water, but the auguries were not favourable. The enemy
began to burst heavy black shrapnel overhead. As no one else was within
sight, I concluded that my little party probably was under observation,
and the epidemic of high explosive on the crest appearing to spread at
the same time, we made for home with all the speed of which we were
capable, hampered as we were by half a dozen Lewis guns. Johnstone,
who was not in good health, presently became so ill that I took his
burden from him. It was while I was staggering along under this
double load, gingerly circumnavigating craters and cursing the very
name of the American Colonel who invented the weapons, that I stepped
literally into an inglorious predicament. I tried foolishly to cross a
well-churned artillery track, went into the soft mud up to my knees,
and there stuck, absolutely helpless, with the wretched guns occupying
both my hands and weighing me down, and at the same time totally unable
to move my legs. It required the cautious assistance of most of my
crew, helped by some providential gunners who brought bits of board, to
get me out.
There ensued another week of rain, squalor, and depression at Lovie
Camp. Our doctor was despatching officers and men by twos and threes
to a rest-camp at Wormhoudt, just over the Belgian frontier, and
I managed to get Johnstone away with one of these parties. He was
not over strong, and he had never recovered from the strain of our
thirty-six hours’ vigil on the ridge following on that of driving for
the best part of three successive nights and a part of the fourth day.
Neither of my other drivers had his knowledge or skill, and during the
latter stages of the approach-march, when he should have been resting,
I had been obliged to call upon him. As it happened, he was still at
Wormhoudt when the sudden call came for the Cockcroft operation. In
the meantime the general outlook, from what we could deduce, was not
encouraging. The great offensive, launched with so vast a preparation,
had come to a sudden standstill at the very start. Fighting continued
every day: there were minor attacks and counter-attacks all round the
Salient, and we had blown our way once more into St Julien and into
various other posts captured and then lost again on the 31st; but
in essentials our line remained where it had been on the evening of
that day. Already more than a week had passed since, by the original
time-table, Passchendaele should have fallen, and now it was tacitly
confessed that the whole ambitious plan (persistently described as a
“residue” of something even greater, although before the end almost
every division in the British Army was involved and decimated in it)
had dwindled to a struggle, amid conditions indescribably ghastly,
for that single ridge, which at one time was to have been but the
starting-point for infinitely bigger things. Into this struggle the
Tank Corps was drawn virtually to the last tank and the last man. We
have seen what happened on the 31st, and how hopeless it was, even
then, to expect decisive results from these machines in such a country.
A fortnight later, when the ground was a mere slimy pulp, 20 Company
of G Battalion moved up to take part, if possible, in a second serious
attempt to advance.
This attack was fixed for the 16th August. 20 Company, which had been
in corps reserve on 31st July, had since moved forward to our old park
at Halfway House. On the 13th the twelve tanks started for Frascati.
The ground everywhere was now in so appalling a state that one machine
actually became bellied in Rum Road, a few hundred yards from the
start. As she could not be got out that night, I was detailed on the
following day to take my crew down and see what I could do, while her
own people came back to camp for the short rest. We worked the whole
afternoon, digging round the tank, which was sunk to the sponsons, and
building a small causeway of timber and brick-rubble in front; and when
her crew returned in the evening they were able, with the help of the
unditching beam, to pull her out at once. But if this sort of thing
happened on Rum Road, what would happen in the shelled zone? In fact,
the progress of the company across the old trench systems and up the
slope toward St Julien, during the dark hours of the 14th and 15th, was
one long nightmare of ditching and unditching under shell-fire and gas.
Four only got anywhere near the front line, and at length it was clear
that even these could not arrive in time. When the infantry attacked,
these four were still a mile behind. So far as the 1st Tank Brigade was
concerned, this was the last attempt made to move tanks across country
in the Salient.
The infantry assault was, in results, very similar to that of the
31st. The left, where Langemarck was carried by eight o’clock in the
morning, was successful, but from St Julien southwards little or
no progress was made. In this part of the field we had now come up
against the main system of fortified farms and other strong field forts
already mentioned. A cluster of these forts, just beyond St Julien,
checked every attempt to debouch from the village up the Poelcapelle
road; and until they could be carried no further general advance was
possible, as our line now bulged out into an awkward little salient
in the north. General Maxse, commanding the 18th Corps, was told
that an attack on these forts would cost him 600 to 1000 casualties,
without any guarantee that we should capture them in the end. The
Lieutenant-General, who had more faith in tanks than some of his
colleagues, for they had served him well on the 31st, consulted with
the Brigadier of the 1st Tank Brigade. The position of the forts,
disposed about a triangle of roads, was such that tanks could get close
to them, and in some cases absolutely alongside, without necessarily
venturing into the slough of mud on either side of the _pavé_. Details
of the operation were accordingly hurriedly worked out. One company
of tanks was to be used, and G Battalion, straitened for machines
as it was, once more was called upon. This, at least, was a notable
compliment, for D Battalion, one of the old originals, as it never
failed to remind us by word and behaviour, had not yet been into action
at all.
IV.
About midday on 17th August, Kessel, I, and several others were
standing together in the marquee which served us for a company mess at
Lovie, drinking the usual sherry and bitters, or something of the kind,
before lunch. To us entered Paisley, second in command of the company.
He held a sheet of paper, from which he proceeded to read. “The
following officers will take over tanks this afternoon, fill up with
petrol, oil, and ammunition, and be prepared to move at six o’clock.”
The officers named were Coutts, Claughton, Chaddock, Bubb, and myself.
It transpired further that four tanks from 20 Company, and three from
19 also were to move: that we were to trek that night to Bellevue, on
the old German front line, and again the night following to St Julien;
and that we were going into action on the morning of the 19th. The
charge of this composite detachment had been given to Major Broome, who
had just arrived from the depot at Erin to replace Torbett, invalided
home, in command of my own company. There were to be three section
commanders, Kessel, Guy of 20 Company, and Wright of 19.
Sudden orders of this kind, when one has been contemplating a quiet
afternoon with a book, are always somewhat disturbing. There ensued
now the inevitable bustle, for there was no time to lose, as we were
leaving by lorry at 1.30. My first task was to make up my crew. I
had lost one man on the 31st, and now Johnstone was away; and it was
essential to get a good first driver in place of the latter. I went
immediately to find Sergeant Meyrick, the section sergeant (already
mentioned as Merchant’s N.C.O.), and told him what I wanted. He
volunteered on the spot to come himself as an ordinary gunner under
my own corporal. Meyrick was, I think, one of those rare people who
positively enjoy a battle, and, what was more valuable, he was a
peculiarly intelligent and competent regular soldier, who had come
out with his battery in the original Expeditionary Force. For a
first driver he recommended Waller, of his own crew, who volunteered
as promptly. I was extremely fortunate in obtaining these two men.
Leaving Meyrick and Corporal Mitchell to arrange about rations and
other details, I reported, with the rest of the tank commanders, to
the Major for further instructions. The first thing to be settled was
the allotment of tanks to one or two of us who had none. My own, of
course, was still lying by Kitchener’s Wood; but by this time some
six or eight of the others had been got back to Ghent Cottages, where
they were parked under a hedge in various stages of unreadiness or
actual disrepair. We could just about manage to provide five dependable
machines. John Alden being away at the Wormhoudt rest-camp, I was told
to take over his tank, G 47, or “Gitana,” my second eponym from the
variety stage. The general idea and tactics of the proposed attack
were then discussed. At this time our outpost line just skirted St
Julien on the north and east. A thousand yards beyond the village two
important roads cross one another--the St Julien-Poelcapelle road,
pointing almost due north at this point, and the Zonnebeke-Langemarck
road, running north-west. A triangle, of which these thoroughfares
form two sides, has for its base a third road, running eastward from
St Julien and cutting the Langemarck road at Winnipeg. A fourth road,
whose direction is also roughly east and west, bisects the triangle
250 yards from its apex. Around the sides, or within this symmetrical
boundary, lay all, save two, of our objectives. Of the two exceptions,
one, called the Maison du Hibou, was situate west of the triangle,
and some 300 yards along the fourth or bisecting road; the other, the
Cockcroft, was due north of this, a quarter of a mile from the apex
up the Langemarck road. In the original scheme, four tanks were to
devote themselves to these two objectives, while the remaining eight
moved in line ahead along the roads right round the triangle, dealing
with the other strong-points as they passed, and beginning and ending
at St Julien. Very unfortunately, as it turned out, this plan was
afterwards modified considerably, for what reason I do not know. The
eastern side and base of the triangle were left for another day. Our
work was confined to the two outlying forts, the Poelcapelle road, and
a couple of farms at the apex. It was, in any case, an entirely novel
operation in every respect, much resembling a naval action where a
squadron of ships passes by and reduces a line of batteries. The tanks,
if possible, were to keep strictly to the roads, as the neighbouring
ground, watered by one or two small tributaries of the Steenbeek, was
now reduced by rain and shell-fire to a swamp notable even in the
Salient. The infantry was to follow on either side of the roads, one
platoon to each tank 250 yards behind it, and was not to attempt to
occupy the objectives until the tanks signalled that all was clear, or
that they wanted help. The signal in either case was a shovel waved out
of the manhole in the roof. There was to be no artillery preparation:
the affair was intended as a genuine surprise; but at zero, which was
4.45 or dawn, an ordinary creeping barrage would come down, together
with a heavy smoke barrage on the German third-line trenches, which
lay behind the posts to be attacked. This was devised to blind the
enemy’s observation of what was happening. A large number of extra
field batteries were brought up to supply this smoke-screen, much to
the disgust of the weary gunners who manned them, and who had just gone
back to rest. The infantry concerned were the 48th and 11th Divisions,
the former a Midland unit. Our own arrangements for the attack and the
particular objectives allotted to tanks will be better left until I
come to deal with the Divisional conference held on the 18th, when we
were told of the modification already referred to, and when all final
details were decided.
Having obtained this rough outline of the scheme, we ate a hasty and
uninspiring lunch; collected such articles as we thought we might
require; were loaded in addition with maps, periscopes, compasses, and
clocks; and departed by lorry at 1.30. Very fortunately the weather
was fine, and remained so, by some miracle, over the next two days. On
arriving at Ghent Cottages--a row of melancholy ruins on the Brielen
road--I found that I had a great deal of work to get through in a
very short time. G 47 having suffered from some mechanical trouble,
it had taken Alden and his crew several days and nights to repair her
temporarily and drive her back from Mousetrap Farm, where he had left
her on the 31st, to her present quarters. Since then she had been in
the hands of our workshops personnel. Although very dirty, she appeared
now to be in good order mechanically, but she had to be greased up and
filled with water, oil, and petrol. She was short of about a hundred
Lewis drums (Alden must have used a fair amount of ammunition in
capturing Alberta and engaging the German train), and many tools and
spare parts were missing. This last calamity we considered, perhaps
unjustly, to be inevitable when workshops had been about. I raided
a supply-tank and replaced most of the deficiencies, while my crew
cleared up inside, greased the rollers and stauffers, and cleaned the
six Lewis guns we had brought with us from store. We had time for tea,
and were ready to start when the first tank moved off just after six
o’clock. I should have mentioned that there were only eleven fit tanks
at Ghent Cottages. Our twelfth machine--a doubtful starter belonging
to 19 Company--was on the other side of the canal, where she had lain
since the 31st with a twisted extension-shaft and badly ditched into
the bargain. To such an impoverished state had the Salient already
reduced us!
The first stage of the night’s journey was a short one. As we did not
wish to cross the canal before dusk, we pulled up before seven o’clock
at Murat Farm, close to Marengo Causeway. I never saw any vestige of a
farm at this place; but there was a row of tall splintered trees hung
with camouflage netting, a few muddy enclosures bounded by overgrown
hedgerows, and the usual squalid dug-outs and elephant-iron shelters.
Behind one of the hedges was a 9.2 naval gun on a railway mounting. The
brigade had formed a petrol dump here, and we took in a final supply of
the spirit. Although we had come such a short distance the water in my
radiator was boiling furiously, and for some time we could not discover
the cause, until, with the help of Paramor, the engineer of 20 Company,
who was ministering to the detachment, we found that the workshops
people had unscrewed a large baffle-plate from one side of the copper
envelopes and omitted to replace it. The plate was lying on the floor
beneath an accumulation of oil-drums and water-tins. We readjusted this
by 7.30, when the eleven tanks moved off again.
We now began one of the most wearisome and maddening treks I have ever
undertaken with tanks. At first everything went well. The evening
was fine: the German artillery was inoffensive, although our own was
very noisy and persistent; and we crossed the causeway and the bad
ground beyond without a hitch, for there was still light to see by.
We passed 19 Company’s ditched tank, still immobile and plainly in no
condition to attempt even to catch us up later. It was just getting
dark when we swung out of the wire and shell-holes on to Boundary
Road, with the trees of Frascati to our left. Boundary Road, as I
have mentioned in the last chapter, eventually crosses the old front
lines, passes the north end of Kitchener’s Wood, and then descends to
the Steenbeek. Our route now followed it as far as our old acquaintance
Hammond’s Corner, and thence by Buffs Road to the main St Julien
highway. Both Buffs and Boundary Roads, presumably having been (at a
prehistoric era) ordinary country lanes, had gone utterly to pieces
under the impact of high explosive, and long stretches of them since
our advance had been timbered. A tank on a timbered road can do a great
deal of damage, especially if the driver is inexpert and swings too
often. During this trek I had the misfortune to meet the R.E. officer
responsible for the upkeep of Buffs Road at the moment when G 47 was
swinging unavoidably round a bend, and when, to the accompaniment of
loud rending and crashing noises, all the beautifully laid and clamped
baulks of timber on our off or turning side were opening upward and
outward like a fan. It was not my fault, as I hope he realised after
a period of reflection. At the moment his language and despairing
gestures seemed fully adequate to the situation, and I was too much
occupied with my own troubles to spare much sympathy for his. For long
before this we had begun to experience some of the vicissitudes which
attend the movement of tanks by road at night anywhere near the front
line. Our first encounter after getting on to Boundary Road was with
one of our own machines on its way home, in charge of a young officer,
Wayne, who had joined the battalion only the day before. To acclimatise
him without delay, Wayne had been detailed immediately to bring in
this tank from some unhealthy spot near St Julien, where it had been
lying in the mud undergoing repairs since the last battle. By this
time it was growing dark rapidly, and we now began to encounter the
mules. I have never seen so many mules as we met that night. I did not
know there were so many in the world, or that any modern quadruped
could be so stupid. We had collided, of course, with the usual nightly
ammunition trains, going up loaded to the forward battery positions and
returning empty. Even a mule could not travel at night across country
in the Salient, and there were only three or four roads for all this
vast traffic. Buffs Road and its continuations rearward formed one of
the most important lines of supply. It was well choked with opposing
streams of mules and limbers, when into it turned our eleven tanks.
The result, I hope, can be imagined: it was something beyond the power
of polite language to describe. The night fell intensely black; one
could see only a hundred yards or so ahead, and the world seemed to be
full of mules. My tank was one of the last, so that the beasts were
thoroughly disorganised by the time I reached them or they reached me.
The latter state of affairs seemed the more normal of the two, for I
was forced to stop continually for five or ten minutes at a time while
limbers or pack-mules were pulled and pushed and cajoled past G 47.
Occasionally there would supervene a thoroughly satisfactory block,
when the road in front was filled from edge to edge, and, as far
ahead as one could see (which was not far), by a seemingly insoluble
congestion of animals and transport--the former heading to every point
of the compass, some standing rooted as if stricken with paralysis,
some bucking and kicking, some deliberately getting entangled in their
own and others’ harness, and a number wandering casually off into
the mud on either side. I was sorry for their drivers, who must have
had a perfectly abominable evening, but I was still more sorry for
myself. I soon lost touch with the tanks in front. They were swallowed
up in the nightmare ahead, wrestling with their own problems. I was
expecting every minute the whistle of a shell, and I shall never
understand why the German gunners, who were very prodigal of ammunition
at that time, and who possessed, in the 5.9, the most accurate of
created guns, did not devote themselves every night and all night
to such arteries as the St Julien road. They would have found it far
more profitable than the blind “area” shooting to which they were
so addicted. I am speaking, of course, in the judicial spirit that
comes with comfortable surroundings where 5.9’s are not. There were
nights and to spare when the Germans did shell the roads and turned
them into shambles, and I shall be the last to complain because they
omitted to do so that evening. Wedged for hours amid the stream of
demoralised animals, the expectancy was bad enough. We were infinitely
fortunate that it was not realised. For our progress up that road was
in itself like some fiendish torture invented for animal haters by the
S.P.C.A. Hour after hour went by, the night grew blacker and blacker,
dawn, even, was drawing near, and still we were embedded in mules.
Under the circumstances, no better obstacle to tanks could have been
devised. We were entirely helpless. We could not drive over the mules,
if only because they were controlled, in theory, by human beings,
who (when they were not falling off) were blaspheming and raving in
their saddles. We could not drive round them, because in the dark we
did not dare to leave the road. We could only wait their pleasure.
Like ships struggling against a violent current, we forged slowly,
very slowly, ahead. I do not wish to appear to be exaggerating, and a
trivial arithmetical computation will prove in a few lines what has
taken me several pages to explain in words. From the point where we
turned on to Boundary Road to our destination at Bellevue is roughly
a mile and a half: it is actually 2500 yards. (I have just measured
it on a large-scale map with a simple but ingenious instrument like
a speedometer.) Judging by the light, it cannot have been later than
8.30 P.M. when I struck the road. When I turned off the road again at
Bellevue, it was two o’clock in the morning. It had taken me five and a
half hours to cover those 2500 yards--on a road. With no obstructions,
the tank could have done it in thirty minutes.
If I have written flippantly about this journey, it did not strike
me as being in the least amusing at the time. I walked outside, of
course, throughout, and nothing is in itself more fatiguing than
this sort of enforced crawl with frequent stoppages. Added to it was
a consuming anxiety about shells and other things peculiar to an
approach-march. Waller, who drove most of the way, must have been even
wearier than I was. I do not remember how I discovered Bellevue, which
was nothing but a name on the map, but I think I overtook the tank
in front, thanks to some unexpected hiatus in the torrent of mules.
Kessel was there, however, to guide me to a vacant space behind an
exiguous hedge. The place struck me as being extraordinarily noisy. We
were, in fact, surrounded by field batteries, all of which were very
busily in action. The gun-flashes supplied our only illumination, and
this was insufficient, as I discovered when I had fallen three times
into a cesspool under the nose of my tank while helping to rig up the
camouflage net. After this we lighted primus stoves, brewed ourselves
some cocoa, wound up with a tot of rum, and then crawled inside with
an optimistic notion of obtaining a little sleep. It was just on three
o’clock.