YPRES
(_September 1917_)
The Division reached Watou, a village in the Poperinghe area, on the 23rd
of August, and, with the exception of the artillery, which went straight
into the line near Potijze Château, under the 15th Division, remained
in that district for a few days’ training prior to going into the line
at Ypres, rather more than a dozen kilometres to the east. Parties of
officers and other ranks from all units were attached to units of the
15th Division in order to learn the geography of the sector. Except for
the nightly bombing raids by hostile air squadrons this would have been
an uneventful week.
At the end of August the Territorials from East Lancashire marched from
Poperinghe into the Flemish city which had become a tragic household word
throughout the British Isles. The name of Ypres had a deeper, fuller
significance for the men and women at home than that of any other foreign
town, and however queerly it might be pronounced the word was rarely
uttered without stirring emotions of pride, admiration, horror and pity.
In the streets and country lanes of the homeland were vast numbers of
men, clad in garments of bright blue or grey, who had been maimed and
battered in defence of the ruins of an ancient city of which they had
never even heard before the autumn of 1914; the wards of hundreds of
hospitals were filled with the wounded and gassed, who spoke unwillingly
of the horrors of Ypres; and thousands of British homes mourned the loss
of one or more who had fallen there. Ypres stood for death and mutilation
and agony, and all that was most cruel and horrible in war. To wives and
parents it was the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where their husbands
and sons fought a never-ending fight with the Powers of Darkness, and
never gave ground, yet never gained the victory.
On July 31, 1917, the Third Battle of Ypres had opened with a terrific
bombardment of the Hun positions, which had lasted ten days and had
obliterated every sign of life and every green thing that grew. But the
ill-luck that dogged the British arms had been consistent; the fine
weather on which the complete success of the long-prepared offensive
largely depended, came to a sudden end, and when the troops made the
attack an unusually heavy rainstorm had turned the scarred, shell-pitted
ground into a vast quagmire, and the thousands of shell-holes into ponds.
The tanks, from which so much had been anticipated, struggled gallantly
against the adverse conditions, but many of them were “bellied” at an
early stage, and some of those which went furthest into the Boche lines
suffered the ignominious fate of conversion into German pill-boxes and
sniper-posts. A little ground had been gained, a great deal of unavailing
heroism had been shown, there had been much slaughter of British and
Germans, and that was all.
Sooner or later almost every fighting unit of the B.E.F. had been moved
to Ypres. Veterans, indeed, considered that no soldier had been properly
“blooded” until he had taken his place in the line at the famous salient;
and there were probably few soldiers with any length of service in
France or Flanders who had not passed the traffic-man at the cross-roads
leading to Hell Fire Corner, where the tide of motor ambulances ebbed
and flowed so regularly. On the night of September 1 the 42nd Division
passed through the Menin Gate on their way to the front trenches, now
between four and five kilometres from the town. The Menin Road had been
subjected to almost incessant shelling for more than two years. The
German gunners had registered every square yard of it, and of every other
road and track that led towards the front, and the men declared that if a
large fly crossed the Menin Road in the daytime the Boche would at once
put down a barrage of 6-inch shells. At night their guns would search
every stretch of the road systematically on the chance—which was almost a
certainty—of getting a bag. Night after night rations and ammunition were
brought to the troops in the trenches through a hail of shells, which
too often caught men, animals and vehicles and blotted them out. Night
after night the roads were converted into shell-holes, but still the work
of repairing them went on unceasingly; the gunners brought their teams
along at the gallop; the transport men arrived with their precious loads
and returned to pass through the inferno again, and often the ration
limbers came back bearing burdens very different from those they had
borne on the outward journey. And for every hundred struck by Death amid
that never-ending hail of shells a thousand tricked him by hairbreadth
escapes. At dawn there would often be a brief respite—a semblance, or
rather a mockery, of peace. For an hour or two the crashes and rumblings
ceased, as though the guns were pausing for breath through the very
violence of their fury, and, while pausing, were plotting some still more
devilish form of hate.
[Sidenote: _The Ypres Salient_]
The whole terrain through which the Division passed on its three miles’
journey to the trenches was stiff with guns. The 18-pounders had been
brought close behind the infantry, and they stood in mud and shell-holes
almost wheel to wheel. They appeared to be innumerable, and it was
something of a shock to the Lancashire gunners to find so many guns
within a radius of one hundred yards. The 4·5-inch howitzers were in
groups, also close to the front; further back were the 6-inch howitzers,
the 60-pounders, and the guns of heavier calibre, though there was a
battery of 9·2-inch howitzers only twenty yards behind one of our R.F.A.
batteries. The huge naval and 15-inch guns were well to the rear of
Ypres, but though they could not be seen their tremendous power appealed
to the imagination of the infantryman, who regarded them somewhat in the
light of influential friends or patrons who, if occasion should arise,
would see that he had fair play and would keep the ring. The enemy had
also concentrated a similarly vast array of artillery in this sector,
which he too regarded as the most important and most to be dreaded of
all. Day and night the guns of both sides barked and thundered, and the
strain on the gunners would have been considered unbearable before the
Great War had taught the lesson that the limit of man’s endurance cannot
be calculated. British and Germans lost more guns and gunners here in a
week than an army would have lost in a year’s campaigning in any previous
war. At night, high above the flashes of our 18-pounders, the beautiful
coloured stars and golden rain of the German signal-rockets recalled
memories of Belle Vue nights. In the daytime the swans calmly paddled
in the moat round the eastern ramparts of Ypres, though the 60-pounders
blazed away within a few yards of the water’s edge.
[Illustration: YPRES. THE CLOTH HALL.]
[Illustration: YPRES. RAILWAY WOOD DUG-OUTS.]
[Illustration: POTIJZE ROAD. THE A.D.S. AT THE WHITE CHÂTEAU.]
[Illustration: POTIJZE ROAD. BAVARIA HOUSE, AN R.A.M.C. COLLECTING POST.]
[Illustration: YPRES. BORRY FARM OR “PILLBOX.”]
The Division, now part of the 5th Corps of the Fifth Army, had a strength
of 703 officers and 16,972 men on September 1. The sector taken over
from the 15th Division was about 1500 yards in width, from a point
south-east of the Ypres—Menin railway on the right to a point 500 yards
north-east of Frezenberg on the left. The roads were soon left, and the
units proceeded to their positions by the duckboard paths which were
the arteries from the bases to the front line, and along which generals
and privates, stretcher-bearers and casualties, rations and ammunition,
passed. It was more easy to lose one’s way than to keep to the track,
and soldiers of both armies strayed into their opponents’ lines. A
German officer, returning from leave, walked into the territory of the
Division one night, and at breakfast time he was being interrogated
at D.H.Q. Along the whole dreary length of duckboards the probability
of slipping into one of the countless shell-holes filled with water
and deep slime, was an ever-present menace which might prove fatal. At
intervals small signboards were erected with the distinctive number or
letter of the path in luminous paint. The front line was merely a series
of linked-up shell-holes, with Battalion and Company Headquarters in
pill-boxes captured from the enemy in the recent offensive. Despite such
discouraging conditions a covey of partridges would often be put up at
dawn by men returning along “J” trench, between Cambridge Road and the
Menin Road.
One shrinks from the attempt to describe the conditions that prevailed
in the Ypres salient. No part of it was ever at rest. By day, aircraft
sought to spot every movement that was attempted on either side, and day
and night the guns sprayed the trenches, the roads, the duckboard paths,
with shrapnel and H.E., the grim resolve to kill dominating every other
thought or desire. The ghastly evidences of the fighting in three great
battles and nearly three years of warfare were brought to light by the
bombardments that tore and flung up the earth. The flares at night showed
up in silhouette the figures of ration and ammunition carriers and of
transport men, and brought swift destruction upon them. The runners who
bore messages from one headquarters to another took their lives in their
hands every time. Even for those few who were endowed by nature with
the sixth sense of locality the odds were against their safe arrival
and return. But the average town-bred lad has little sense of locality,
so the carrying of a message meant wandering in a maze in which lurked
enemies real and imaginary, varied by tumbles into shell-holes. Yet the
runners generally got their messages through, and when one failed it was
because another casualty had been added to the list. But if the Ypres
Salient was detested by the British soldier, the enemy, although not
penned within the narrow salient, regarded this sector with even greater
abhorrence, and German prisoners declared that their troops, on being
sent to the Ypres front, considered the order as equivalent to “certain
death or worse.”
One night, at Hell Fire Corner, an ammunition depot was set on fire by
enemy artillery, which continued to shell the dump and its vicinity
furiously. In spite of the bombardment and constant explosions a party
of the divisional transport loaded up alongside the depot, and got all
teams and wagons safely away. Fighting patrols and working-parties went
out nightly, and many were the unrecorded acts of heroism. There were
also minor operations, which with one exception were quite small affairs.
The 125th Brigade was ordered to attack on September 6 the positions
known as Iberian, Borry and Beck House Farms, strong posts protected by
the usual elaborate system of outworks. Two similar assaults in this
vicinity had already failed—one by the 15th Division, in which a little
ground had been gained by the Black Watch and the Gordons, who had lost
very heavily and had been driven out in the morning by a counter-attack;
and the second, on September 5, against Hill 35 by the 61st Division,
had been no more successful. Prior to the date fixed for the attack by
the Lancashire Fusiliers a daring reconnaissance in daylight was carried
out by Sergeant Finney, 8th L.F., who, accompanied by a rifle-grenadier
and two Lewis-gunners, pushed out to within twenty-five yards of Beck
House. Although he knew that for the last hundred yards he was under
observation, and could see the enemy manning the shell-holes, he worked
parallel to the position until forced by rifle fire to withdraw and lie
down in No Man’s Land. The following night Finney went alone to this
post and lay out to study the enemy dispositions at night. He brought
back valuable information, and was awarded the D.C.M. His bold move the
previous day had evidently affected German nerves, for the enemy put up a
many-coloured firework display and disclosed their general dispositions
and barrage line, which previously had only been known vaguely.
[Sidenote: _Iberian, Borry, and Beck House_]
Practice barrages had been carried out by the artillery for three or
four days before the 125th Brigade launched its attack, and rarely have
gunners worked with such keenness as the divisional artillery displayed
in the early hours of September 6. Four rounds per minute was the order,
but eight, nine and ten rounds found their way into the enemy lines, and
the gunners state that never were the guns so hot as on that day. The 5th
and 6th L.F., with the 7th and 8th in support and the 6th Manchesters as
carrying parties, advanced under the heavy barrage. A thunderstorm on the
previous day made the going heavy, and the German machine-gunners, from
the security of their apparently invulnerable concrete pill-boxes, were
able to direct a devastating fire upon the advancing waves. Within a few
minutes many officers and men were down, one company being reduced to
thirty men commanded by a corporal. The survivors pressed doggedly on,
but their courage was unavailing, and the Iberian and Borry positions
were never reached. In the centre the troops attacking Beck House had
a less exposed approach, and by 7 a.m. they had gained a footing and
had captured the garrison. They now suffered heavily, however, from the
machine-guns in the posts not included in the objective, as well as from
those in Borry and Iberian, and all who had penetrated into Beck House
were killed or captured in a counter-attack by three companies of fresh
storm-troops. The order was received to abandon the attack on the other
posts, and the survivors withdrew reluctantly and with difficulty from
an impossible position, having lost nearly 800 officers and men. Much
gallantry had been shown by all ranks, and a number of distinctions were
awarded for deeds of which the following are merely typical examples.
Private James Dolan, 5th L.F., though twice blown up by shells and badly
bruised, succeeded in bringing his Lewis-gun into action. After the rest
of the team had become casualties, he worked the gun alone with great
vigour and—to quote the official report—“in an extraordinarily cheerful
manner” against two strong counter-attacks. Private W. Walliss, of the
same battalion, worked as stretcher-bearer during the attack and for
twenty-four hours subsequently, after the attack had been held up and
two of his fellow bearers had been killed. He was subjected to harassing
fire the whole time, and his disregard of risk and untiring devotion to
duty saved many lives. Sergeant George Ward, 6th L.F., went out six times
into the open under heavy enemy barrage and sniping to bring in wounded
men, and was himself badly wounded on completing his sixth successful
journey. Lance-Corporal E. Taylor, 6th L.F., seeing enemy reinforcements
threatening, rushed his Lewis-gun into a shell-hole and opened a deadly
fire, breaking up the attack. After all other members of his team had
been killed or wounded Taylor stuck to his gun until ordered to withdraw.
Sergeant J. H. Ashton, 3rd Field Ambulance, “worked unceasingly and
without rest for forty-eight hours, often under heavy fire, in charge of
squads removing the wounded.”
The assistance given by the 6th Manchesters, who had been lent to the 5th
and 6th L.F., was warmly acknowledged by Brig.-General Fargus and the
Battalion Commanders. Lieut.-Colonel Hammond Smith, commanding the 6th
L.F., in a letter to Lieut.-Colonel C. S. Worthington, D.S.O., commanding
the 6th Manchesters, regretting the heavy loss suffered by the companies
attached to his battalion, added: “To-day I asked for help to bury some
of our dead, involving a carry of three-quarters of a mile through the
barrage area. Seventy-two of your men volunteered, and that speaks for
itself. We could not bear to think of burying men in this area where they
were bound to be blown up again, otherwise we should not have asked.”
The Division had had an object lesson in the peculiar strength of the
German defensive system and the futility of “minor operations.” The
losses from continuous shelling and from unproductive local assaults
were heavy during the next ten days. There were deeds of valour, too,
but the pill-box problem was no nearer solution. Gunner S. Hardcastle,
“B” Battery, 211th Brigade, during a heavy bombardment of the battery
position near Potijze on September 7, left cover to go a hundred yards
through the shelled area to get water for a wounded comrade, and three
days later, seeing an ammunition dump belonging to the battery on his
left struck and set on fire by a hostile shell, he ran across and was
first to begin the dangerous work of extinguishing the fire. But for
his prompt action a large amount of ammunition would have been lost.
During an attack on an enemy blockhouse on the night of the 11th-12th
September, Private T. M. Howard, 9th Manchesters, volunteered to bring in
an officer who lay wounded about forty yards from the blockhouse, from
which severe machine-gun and rifle fire was maintained. Howard reached
the officer and carried him 200 yards over exposed ground illuminated by
enemy flares. On the following day Corporal W. White, 8th Manchesters,
made five successive journeys through a continuous barrage, and each
time brought in a wounded man. On the night of September 11 a covering
party protecting workers in No Man’s Land found a wounded private of
the Inniskilling Fusiliers, who had been lying out since August 11,
unable to crawl into safety. In spite of thirty-one days exposure and
starvation—except for the meagre rations found upon the bodies within
reach—he recovered.
[Sidenote: _Frezenberg Ridge_]
Among the casualties of these ten days were Lieut.-Colonel R. P. Lewis,
10th Manchesters, killed by shell fire, and Brig.-General A. C. Johnson,
D.S.O., seriously wounded within two days of his arrival to take over
the command of the 126th Brigade in succession to Brig.-General Tufnell,
who was Chief Staff Officer of the Division on the outbreak of war,
and who had returned home for a much-needed rest. Brig.-General W. W.
Seymour succeeded to the command of the Brigade a few days later. On
September 18 the Division was relieved by the 9th Division, and D.H.Q.
moved to Poperinghe, the infantry concentrating in camps in that region
preparatory to a march northwards to the coast. The artillery remained in
the Ypres sector for nearly three weeks, when they rejoined the Division
at Nieuport. The East Lancashire Artillery did some of its best work
in the Ypres Salient, and its best was very good. Losses in guns and
personnel were heavy, especially from the accurate and relentless fire
of the enemy’s 5·9 howitzers, for there was no cover and no protection
other than the accuracy of their own fire. They were content to give
more than they received, and they gave it with hearty goodwill. As an
indication of their activity it is interesting to record that on one
night, September 13, more than 1100 horsed vehicles conveyed supplies
to the Divisional Artillery, in addition to the supply of ammunition by
motor-lorries and pack-animals. Night after night, in pitch darkness,
over cut-up and waterlogged ground, amid constant shell-storms, the daily
supply of ammunition was brought up, and the gunner had little rest and
less sleep. Dumps were set on fire by the daily bombardment, and officers
and men vied with one another in fighting the flames, while shells from
the enemy and from the burning dumps exploded right and left. Guns sank
axle-deep in the mud—Napoleon’s _fifth_ element—and were salved under
deadly fire. After the rest of the Division had left for the coast, the
artillery took part in continuous fighting from September 20 onwards,
advancing to forward and exposed positions on Frezenberg Ridge on the
25th. These were the days of the greatest artillery battles of the war,
and it was not unusual for a single battery to fire 5000 rounds in
twenty-four hours. There were many casualties from gas, as the batteries
were in small depressions in the ground, and these were never really free
from gas. Men wore masks sometimes for five hours at a stretch—until they
had to discard them through sheer exhaustion. In the course of a few days
the four batteries of the 210th Brigade lost 120 men in gas casualties
alone. When relieved on the 29th September batteries could barely muster
more than 100 N.C.O.s and men. Majors Boone and Simon had been killed and
Brig.-General Walshe and Major Highet severely wounded, Lieut.-Colonel
A. Birtwistle, C.M.G., assuming temporary command of the Divisional
Artillery.
Of numerous instances of devotion to duty and disregard of personal
safety three examples (on September 25-26), taken haphazard from the
Honours List, must suffice. Padre A. C. Trench, attached to the 211th
Brigade, R.F.A., followed up the infantry to their forward positions and
worked all day under shell fire, setting a fine example of cheerfulness
to all ranks, bandaging the wounded and ministering to the dying.
Sergeant H. Bentley was in command of “A” Battery, 210th Brigade—the
officers being casualties—when an ammunition dump close to the guns
was set on fire. Bentley kept the guns working, and with Corporal A.
Butterworth tackled the burning dump and put out the fire, saving
ammunition at a time when it was most valuable. A similar act was that of
Sergeant W. L. Breese, Corporal E. Fletcher, and Driver A. Hughes, of
“C” Battery, 210th Brigade. A gun-pit and an ammunition dump were fired
during a bombardment, and the fire spread to the camouflage of the guns
and to ammunition pits on both flanks. At great personal danger from
bursting shrapnel and H.E., the three extinguished the newly-started
fires and saved two guns and much ammunition.
Lighter incidents were not wholly absent on Frezenberg Ridge. A barrel
of beer had arrived; naturally enough the Boche could not ignore so
important an event, and before the barrel could be put in a safe position
it was shelled. Men ran to cover, but kept an anxious eye on the barrel,
which was soon punctured. The sight of beer running to waste was too much
for one gunner, who ran to the barrel, calling out: “Hey, chaps, coom on!
Jerry has knocked t’bung-hole in!” He remained by the barrel, stopping
the leak until the shelling ceased, and ever afterwards marvelled at the
lack of a sense of proportion shown in decorating men for saving guns and
ammunition while one’s sole reward for rescuing a barrel of beer is to be
hailed as a public benefactor.
While in the Ypres Salient the three Field Companies, R.E., as usual
did all manner of work, from the maintenance of duckboard tracks to the
construction of concrete emplacements. The Signal Sections displayed
the efficiency that one learned to expect from them. A Lamp Signalling
Station on the ramparts did useful work, and the carrier-pigeon service
proved surprisingly quick and reliable. The linemen had a particularly
hot time, as communications were exceedingly difficult to maintain
in this sector; and their coolness, courage, and skill in repairing
the constantly damaged lines gained several decorations, and also the
admiration of their comrades of all arms.
Equally cool must be the stretcher-bearer. Casualties had to be conveyed
by hand carriage over the duckboard tracks before wheeled carriers
could be used. Yet day and night the bearers kept a continuous stream
of wounded flowing to the rear. The distance between the front and the
region of comparative safety made the evacuation of the wounded a matter
of difficulty. The Field Ambulances were, however, equal to their task,
and though the Advanced Dressing Stations at Railway Dugout, Bavaria
House, and Potijze Château were cramped for space and were frequently
gassed and always shelled, all the wounded were dressed and got away. The
pressure in rear was so great that some bandages were not changed until
the men reached England.
The Army Service Corps had a most trying time, but in spite of serious
losses the supply services never failed. Reference has already been made
to the dangerous and difficult work carried out so competently by the
battalion transports.
[Sidenote: _Depression_]
The period at Ypres ended on a note of depression. One felt that the
Division was beginning to doubt its ability to achieve the impossible. It
was not the imminent menace of death from above in the form of shell or
bomb, or from the trenches in front in the shape of machine-gun bullet.
But the secrecy and furtiveness of every movement, the ghastliness of the
abomination of desolation all around, the sickening sights and smells,
the saturation of the whole terrain with gas to such an extent that
men often preferred to lie out in the open under fire rather than risk
suffocation in dug-outs—these combined to awaken a vague, inarticulate
protest against the cruelty and futility of war. Had the men been able
to get at those responsible for turning a peaceable countryside into
something viler than any man’s imaginings of hell, indignation and
righteous anger would have left little room for the depression generated
by the sense of impotence—the beating one’s head against a concrete wall,
the waste of effort and of lives thrown away in futile local assaults.
The men were glad to quit the Ypres salient, but they did not leave it in
a happy frame of mind. Every one felt that the Division was not at its
best; that it was capable of better things had opportunity been given.
[Illustration: FREZENBERG RIDGE.]
[Illustration: YPRES. SQUARE FARM, USED AS BATTALION HEADQUARTERS AND AID
POST.]
[Illustration: NIEUPORT. THE FIVE BRIDGES AND R. YSER.]
[Illustration: NIEUPORT. “THE REDAN.”]