THE FIGHT FOR THE SALIENT
I.
THE CAPTURE AND LOSS OF HILL 60.
The grass has grown up thick and long about the little graves strung
out in a great semicircle about Ypres, marking the line of the famous
salient, in the defence of which so many thousands of Britons and
Frenchmen cheerfully laid down their lives. Spring and summer have
smiled on the wooded and undulating plain about the ruined towers of
Ypres, and the profusion of wild flowers, the wealth of green foliage,
which their gentle caress has brought forth, has so transformed the
land that the awful battle-pictures these green pastures have seen now
seem like a far-off dream.
With wise strategy we drew in the horns of the Yser salient on May 3,
and fell back to the position we now hold, at the beginning of August,
from the Yser Canal, north of Ypres, through Wieltje, Verlorenhoek, and
Hooge, back to the foot of Hill 60, and thence down to St. Eloi. Thus
a great part of the battlefield, which was the scene of the tremendous
struggle lasting from April 17 until May 13, is now in German
hands--St. Julien, sacred for ever in the Empire’s history in memory
of Canadian gallantry there; St. Jean, where the gallant Geddes died;
Zonnebeke, where, by the light of candles stuck in beer-bottles, those
gallant doctors, Ferguson and Waggett--Waggett, the throat specialist
of Harley Street, now Major Waggett, R.A.M.C.--in the cellars of the
ruined houses worked for hours over the wounded, and brought them
safely away.
Yet I have contrived to visit in person many corners of the battlefield
of Ypres, sometimes a day or two after the great contest had raged
itself out. On the _chaussée_ by the Yser Canal, north of Ypres, I have
seen the humble graves, many of them nameless, in which the poor French
victims of the first great gas attack were laid to rest, their rusting
rifles and blood-stained uniform close at hand. I have stood in the
emplacements of our guns about Ypres amid the putrefying carcasses of
horses and piles of empty shell-cases. I have walked through trenches
dug across the battlefield where, through fissures in the ground, one
yet might see the dead, buried as they died, in uniform.
I have looked upon the hill of St. Eloi--the Mound of Death--that
tumulus of glory of the Princess Pat.’s. I have seen the brown and
scarred top of Hill 60, where in the yawning craters rent by our mines
2,000 Britons and Germans are yet lying awaiting the Last Trump, where
shells and bullets have stripped the trees of their last leaf, and
where chlorine gas has stained the herbage yellow.
I have talked with the Generals who directed the fight, who spoke
eagerly of its strategy and tactics, and of the undying heroism of our
men. I have spoken with the humble privates, whose only recollection
of this classic struggle is of long marches over the hard and galling
_pavé_ of the Belgian roads, of such an inferno of shell-fire as no
man ever dreamt of before, of hours spent, hungry and thirsty, with
nerves benumbed, in narrow trenches where comrades cried sharply “Oh!”
and “Ah!” as fragments of shell or bullets struck them, where dead men
sprawled around, where wounded sighed and died, where one fired and
loaded and fired and “stuck it,” because, avowedly, one wouldn’t go
back for no bloody German--in reality, because one was British.
I have been among the Canadians who went through the gas horror with
a gallantry that made the Empire ring. I have talked with soldiers
to whom, but five days out from England, the hell of fire that swept
the salient night and day was their first taste of war, and with
veterans fresh from the fight on whose breasts the discoloured medal
ribbons spoke of former service in the field. From all I have seen
myself and all I have heard from others, my mind has focussed so
sublime a spectacle of heroism, of pluck undaunted by adversity, of
resourcefulness never foiled by confusion, that I have felt impelled to
try my hand at painting the picture of that battle which history will
set down as one of the crucial struggles of the war.
[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES.
(_From “The Times,” by kind permission._)]
The second battle of Ypres has been called the second German thrust for
Calais. It may have become so in the upshot; it was not at the outset.
There is no doubt that the Germans were preparing an offensive, the
main object of which was to test the efficacy of their asphyxiating
gas, one of their great devices of “frightfulness” with which the
German Government, through its newspapers and its agents, was wont
to make our flesh creep. Their offensive was certainly in the nature
of an experiment, and it seems probable that the large number of
troops which, as my friend and colleague, Mr. James Dunn, _Daily Mail_
correspondent at Rotterdam, a week before the battle, warned us, were
being transported through Belgium and massed on the Western front
were intended to press home any advantage that might be won by the
asphyxiating gas.
A decided lack of vigour on the part of the German infantry at Ypres
has been attributed, and is probably due, to the fact, clearly
established by the statements of prisoners, that the German soldiers
were terrified of their gas-cylinders, and showed the utmost reluctance
to advance immediately behind their gas-cloud. That they had good
reason to look askance at their new instrument of frightfulness is
shown by the circumstance that, both at Hill 60 and farther northward
in the salient, more than once the gas-cloud was seen to drift back
into the German lines. Shortly after the second battle of Ypres I was
told by an unimpeachable witness, a Belgian who had escaped from Ghent,
that there were German gas victims in the military hospitals there, and
that their sufferings had caused the military authorities the greatest
embarrassment, owing to the effect thereby produced on the German
wounded in the wards. The German soldiers’ dread of their unholy ally
may to some extent account for the enemy’s failure to press home his
advantage, but in my own mind I am convinced that the real explanation
is that the German plans were entirely upset by our offensive at Hill
60 on April 17.
As the result of the dashing feat of arms by the 1st Royal West Kents
and the 2nd King’s Own Scottish Borderers in capturing the hill, the
German offensive was forestalled. The second battle of Ypres, in a
figure of speech, went off at half-cock. The German General Staff may
well have believed that the attack on Hill 60, instead of being a
purely local affair as it really was, was the precursor of a vigorous
offensive by the Allies.
The Germans had their pipe-lines laid and their gas-cylinders embedded
in front of their trenches in the northern part of the salient. They
obviously had no gas at Hill 60, otherwise, seeing that from April 22
on the wind was favourable, they would have gassed the 13th Brigade
off the hill immediately the position fell into our hands, instead of
waiting until May 1, when they gained a footing on the hill by means
of their first gas attack (against the Dorsets), and May 5, when they
overwhelmed the Duke of Wellington’s and recaptured the position.
Believing, then, that the attempt was to be made to pierce their line
at Hill 60, they naturally turned their hand to the best offensive
weapon they believed themselves to possess--namely, the line of
gas-cylinders installed ready for their experiment in the northern part
of the salient.
They had been accumulating a formidable concentration of artillery in
anticipation of their attack. Their plans were certainly not ripe, for
during the battle they had to bring down heavy naval guns from the
Belgian coast to reinforce their artillery. Fortune favoured them in
respect of guns.
The second battle of Ypres was an artillery battle. As I have said,
the German infantry showed want of vigour. Its attacks, when they
were made, were half-hearted and comparatively easily repulsed. Their
strength lay in their artillery, of which they possessed guns of all
calibres, and used them with a reckless expenditure of ammunition that
must have struck our gunners, starved of high-explosive shells, hot
with angry envy. From April 22 until May 13 they pounded our men in
their trenches, wherever they were, night and day, with relentless
energy until the trenches were obliterated in places and choked with
débris. They stretched a curtain of fire right across the salient,
over Ypres (from which all the main roads radiate like the spokes of a
wheel) and far beyond, and the brigades rushed up into action had to
traverse this inferno before they came into the fight.
It was a battle of machinery. It was scientific slaughter--death and
destruction poured out from miles away. There was a British brigade
in the fight that lost all its Colonels but one, and battalions that
lost heavily without ever seeing a German. For the Germans not to have
won through, against an enemy thrown into confusion by a foul and
diabolical surprise and out-gunned from start to finish, is in itself a
defeat. Their failure to blast their way through to the sea, which was
their objective as the battle developed for them with such unexpected
success, must be counted a signal triumph for the Allies--not only for
the British troops that held the salient, but also for the gallant
French, whose counter-attacks were instrumental in delaying the onrush
of the German hordes down the western bank of the canal.
The balance of the second battle of Ypres cannot have been agreeable
reading for the Supreme War Lord. On the credit side the gain of a
mile or two of a position which we could hardly have hoped to hold
against a really strong thrust, on the debit side an expenditure of
ammunition, only exceeded by the colossal Austro-German bombardment
before Przemysl, and extremely severe casualties. The battle marked
the end of all German offensives on the Western front for months, and
in this theatre the war relapsed into the state of stalemate, in which
Time, most valued ally of the Western Powers, can make his assistance
most efficaciously felt against the enemy of mankind.
As, in my opinion, the capture of Hill 60 by the British was in reality
the starting-point of the fight for the salient, no account of this
historic battle would, I believe, be complete without the story of
the capture and loss of the hill, a chaplet of stirring incidents in
which the 13th Infantry Brigade won immortal glory. In order to make a
connected narrative, I will group together the incidents marking the
capture and loss of Hill 60, though, in reality, the fight for the
salient had begun before the hill was finally lost.
* * * * *
Hill 60 lies in an isolated position on the extreme western ridge of
the Klein Zillebeke Ridge with the Ypres-Comines railway-line, which
here runs through a deep cutting, spanned by a small bridge on the one
side and the Klein Zillebeke-Zwartelen Road on the other. It is a low
hill, with a flattish top, about 45 feet above the surrounding country.
The Germans held the upper slopes and the summit of the hill, while our
trenches ran round the lower slopes.
[Illustration]
For some months before the events which I am about to describe the
trenches round Hill 60 were held by a division whose General was not
slow to recognize the strategical advantage which the possession of
the hill conferred. He accordingly began to make his plans to this end,
but before he could bring them to fruition his division was ordered
north to take over some of the line from the French.
It fell to the lot of the 13th Brigade to put to the test the plan for
the capture of the hill. Like all successful offensives, the attack was
the object of the most minute preparation in advance. It was decided
that the summit of the hill should be mined, after which the infantry
should advance to the capture of the hill. While underground the mining
operations went forward, the Brigadier reconnoitred the positions in
person. Finally everything was ready for the attack, which was timed to
be launched at seven o’clock on the evening of April 17.
The 1st Royal West Kents, otherwise “The Gallant Half-Hundred,”
and the 2nd King’s Own Scottish Borderers, who were for so long in
garrison in Dublin, were entrusted with the initial attack. Officers
and non-commissioned officers received their instructions as to the
order in which the storming parties were to go forward, ammunition and
bombs were laid ready, the doctors selected their regimental aid-posts,
where first aid is administered to the wounded, and all along the line
the requisite measures were taken for the replenishment without delay
of the supplies in men, ammunition, and provisions as the wastage of
the fight should make itself felt. So it is before every engagement.
Meanwhile the West Kents and the K.O.S.B.’s spent a long day in the
trenches on the fateful April 17, waiting for the shadows to fall and
the hands of the watch to point to 7 p.m. When an attack of this kind
is impending men’s nerves are strung up tight. It speaks well for the
discipline of these two battalions that they stood the test without a
trace of nerves.
Thin blue threads of smoke were rising from the German trenches into
the clear evening air when, with a dull, low thud, accompanied by a
billowing quiver of the earth, the summit of Hill 60 was blown sky-high
in an immense black spout of earth and débris and human fragments.
Immediately afterwards, with a deafening roar, the second mine went
up--exploding, it is believed, a German mine with it, so loud was the
report. In the space of a minute or two five mines were touched off,
and immediately after our artillery opened rapid fire on all the German
positions in the vicinity, on the woods in the rear, on the ruins of
Zwartelen village on the left (see map), and on the railway cutting.
As our guns spoke, Major Joslin, who was commanding the West Kents’
storming party, standing beside the Royal Engineers officer who fired
the mines, blew the charge on his whistle, and the attack got away, the
bombers in front.
The Germans were as completely surprised as they were at Neuve
Chapelle. Their trenches had been practically obliterated, and in their
place appeared five yawning craters, the largest of which measured
about 50 yards across by 40 feet deep. These gulfs were filled with
dead and wounded men. A few Germans made a show of resistance, but were
speedily accounted for. Many who fled headlong across the open behind
their trenches were mown down by our machine-guns, which had been
expecting this development. The West Kents went through the craters
and bombed their way down the communication trenches into the German
support trenches, while digging parties of the K.O.S.B.’s set about
making trenches across the lips of the craters.
At 7.20 p.m. Hill 60 was ours.
The loss of the hill was a bad shock for the enemy. He did not recover
from it that evening at any rate. After a rather feeble bombardment
with “whizz-bangs,” he attempted three counter-attacks in the small
hours of the morning, but they were easily smothered by our machine-gun
fire.
As the night wore on, however, his bombardment began to increase in
violence. The K.O.S.B.’s, who came up to the relief of the West Kents
about 2.30 a.m. (April 18), came in for it badly. It was pitch dark,
and the going was made difficult by the holes in the ground, the dead
bodies scattered around, and the innumerable strands of broken barbed
wire strewing the Hill. Major Joslin was killed, so was the company
commander of the relieving party, while Major Sladen, the commanding
officer of the K.O.S.B.’s, was wounded and his Adjutant mortally
wounded. It was a subaltern who finally took the K.O.S.B.’s into their
new trenches on the hill-top.
By this time the German bombardment was extremely severe.
High-explosive shells were bursting in regular volleys on the exposed
slopes, and the Germans, whose trenches in some places were but a few
yards distant from ours, separated by only a sandbag barrier thrown
across a communication trench, kept up a merciless fusillade of
bombs. The flares broke in a gush of green light over the battered
hill, showing the green and yellow eddies of smoke from the bursting
projectiles. But the K.O.S.B.’s, swathed in choking smoke, their
trenches clogged with the dead and wounded, kept a brave heart. Some
of them actually whiled away the night in song, shouting in chorus
that ditty which is, above any other, the song of our fighting-men in
Flanders:
“Here we are! Here we are!
Here we are again!
Tommy, Jack, and Pat, and Mac, and Joe!”
Dawn stole with lemon streaks into the sky, and found them there amid
the bursting shells. But they had had to give ground a little and
abandon the trenches on the far side of the crater on the extreme left
of our position.
Their condition was rather precarious, and the West Kents sent a
company up in support. The officer commanding the company described how
he found the K.O.S.B.’s Captain dead in the crater between the British
and German trenches, on top of a pile of dead and wounded men so thick
that “_hardly a portion of the ground could be seen_.”
At 11.30 a.m. the Duke of Wellington’s (The West Riding) Regiment,
2nd Battalion, arrived to relieve the K.O.S.B.’s and West Kents, who
by this time had been able to retain possession of only three of the
craters on the near side of the hill (the three right-hand craters
in the map). “The Duke’s,” as they are called, did magnificently
that day. “The Old Duke would be as proud of you to-day as he was
when he commanded you,” the Brigadier said afterwards in addressing
the shattered remnant of the battalion that came away from the hill.
Despite the rain of shells and bombs, they held on grimly all through
the day. By the early afternoon the Germans had recaptured the whole of
the hill save only for a section behind the second and third craters
(counted from the right in the map), where “The Duke’s” still resisted.
Their General saw them clinging to the brown, scarred ridge “like a
patch of flies on the ceiling.”
The day wore on and “The Duke’s” still held out. It was decided to
relieve the pressure on them by a counter-attack with artillery
support. The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry were brought up, and
at six o’clock “The Duke’s,” their numbers thinned, it is true, by
heavy casualties, particularly in officers, were over the parapet and
away, their fellow county men of Yorkshire at their heels. Behind came
some of the K.O.S.B.’s and the “Q. Vic.’s” (the Queen Victoria Rifles,
that well-known London Territorial battalion). These young Londoners
covered themselves with glory in this day’s fighting and later. Second
Lieutenant Woolley, one of their subalterns, won the Victoria Cross for
a magnificent display of endurance and gallantry.
“B” Company of “The Duke’s,” on the right, reached the German trenches,
and established themselves there with slight loss; “C” Company had to
cross open ground, got badly hammered, and only Captain Barton and
eleven men reached their objective. They never stopped to see how many
men they had lost, however. They went for their crafty enemy with
bayonet and bomb, and killed or routed every man in the trench. Their
blows would have been struck doubly hard had they known what stood
before. “D” Company, on the left, had also a patch of open country to
traverse. All its officers were killed or wounded in its passage over
the broken ground swept by shell and machine-gun fire, but with the
help of the stout-hearted Yorkshire Light Infantry it managed to secure
the trench.
Hill 60 was ours once more. It would still be in our hands to-day but
for the German crime against civilization and humanity, the nameless
horror of the asphyxiating gas. Sir John French said as much in his
despatch on the second battle of Ypres (dated “Headquarters, June 15”).
Referring to the loss of Hill 60, the Commander-in-Chief wrote:
“The enemy owes his success ... entirely to the use of asphyxiating
gas. It was only a few days later that the means, which have since
proved so effective, of counteracting this method of making war, were
put into practice. Had it been otherwise, the enemy’s attack on May
5 would most certainly have shared the fate of all the many previous
attempts he had made.”
On the morning of the 20th, in the small hours, the 13th Brigade,
exhausted by its spell of hard fighting, was relieved by the arrival
of another brigade, which took over the hill. The East Surreys and
the Bedfordshires went into the trenches, and forthwith had to bear
the brunt of a whole series of most desperate efforts made by the
Germans to recapture the hill, or, failing that, to prevent us from
consolidating the positions gained. Desperate hand-to-hand fights,
bombing encounters, and point-blank rifle and machine-gun fire,
together with an incessant stream of shells, marked the whole of that
day and the following night, when the Devons came up and relieved.
The East Surreys and the Bedfords fought most gallantly, and were
splendidly seconded by the 6th King’s Liverpools, a Territorial
battalion, which, notwithstanding the terrific fire, rendered very
real support to the regulars in the front line by carrying up stores
of all kinds throughout the fighting. A quartermaster-sergeant of
the Bedfordshires paid a fine tribute to the work of these gallant
Territorials. “The approaches to our positions,” he wrote to me, “were
swept by a storm of bullets and shells of all kinds, and they (‘The
King’s’) had a large number of casualties, but they never flinched, and
it was largely owing to the manner in which they kept up the supply of
hand-grenades and ammunition of all kinds that we were able to hang on
and finally drive back the enemy’s attacks.”
The losses of the East Surreys and the Bedfordshires were very severe,
but two V.C.’s and many other decorations were afterwards awarded to
the two battalions in recognition of their fine behaviour.
In the meantime the 13th Brigade had marched off to its rest-billets,
looking forward to a spell of well-earned repose. But it was not to be.
Hardly had the brigade settled down in its new quarters before urgent
orders reached the Brigadier to push it up with all speed through Ypres
to the Pilckem Road in support of the French, who had been driven in
by the German gas attack, and of the Canadians, whose flank had been
left “in the air” by the French withdrawal.
The Germans could not do without Hill 60. They wanted it notably as
a vantage-point from which to sweep the Ypres salient with a rain of
fire to support the tremendous effort, which they were just developing,
to pierce the Allied line. “Necessity knows no law” is a saying that
served to justify in German eyes the murder of Belgium. It served
equally well to explain (if the moral aspects of the question were ever
discussed, which I doubt) the employment of gas to wrest from our grasp
the hill we had won and held with untarnished weapons.
On May 1 the gas appeared on Hill 60. The Dorsets held the line. It
was in the early hours of the morning that a low greenish cloud came
rolling over the top of the hill on to our trenches. Our men were taken
unawares, unprepared. Of respirators they had none. Respirators were
only just beginning to arrive at the front as the result of an appeal
made to the women of England after the gas attack against the French
and Canadians on April 22 and 24. In a minute or two the gas had got
the Dorsets in its grip, and they were choking with its stifling fumes.
The Germans came on at them behind their gas-cloud, but the Dorsets
were ready for them. Half-asphyxiated as they were, they scrambled
on the parapet of the trench and swept down the advancing files with
machine-gun and rifle-fire.
That day the spirit of England, as enshrined in the begrimed and
mud-stained exterior of these Dorsetshire lads, rose superior to
the menace of a hideous and long-drawn-out death. Again and again
throughout the morning and afternoon messages came down from the
Dorsets on the hill to the Devons in support asking for machine-gun
ammunition. All day long the Devons waiting in the woods heard the
brave tap-tapping of the machine-guns on the hill, and knew that the
Dorsets were keeping their end up.
The Devons went up in relief that night, cleverly led to our trenches
without the loss of a man. They still speak with reluctance of the
sights that met their eyes on the way, for the fields were strewn with
many gallant Dorsets who had crawled into the fields and ditches to
die. The men cursed the Germans savagely as they stumbled over the
prostrate forms.
The 13th Brigade had not taken “The Duke’s” into action with them at
Ypres, and on May 4 this battalion relieved the Devons on the hill.
The following morning the Germans made another and stronger bid for
the position. At eight o’clock in the morning of a balmy May day they
opened their gas-cylinders behind the crest of Hill 60, and presently,
“like mist rising from the fields,” in the words of an eyewitness, the
vapours came creeping up in greater volume than ever. At the same time
the German guns opened a heavy bombardment.
The gallant “Duke’s” were overwhelmed. The ordeal was too severe. They
were forced to give ground. Alone they stood the full brunt of the
attack, officers and men sticking to the trenches until the sandbags
fell in upon them, until there was no room to move for dead and wounded
men and débris. Standing at the entrance to his dug-out in the rear
that morning, the Adjutant of “The Duke’s,” as he afterwards told me
himself, saw an officer and an orderly staggering towards him. The
officer spoke in a gasping voice. “They’ve gassed ‘The Duke’s,’” he
said. “I believe I was the last man to leave the hill. All the men
up there are dead. They were splendid. I thought I ought to come and
report.” The officer was new to the regiment, having been detached from
the 3rd East Yorks for service with “The Duke’s” after the heavy losses
of the latter at Hill 60 on the 18th. The high spirit of duty that
impelled him, a dying man, to struggle down the hillside and make his
report is characteristic of the British regimental officer. He died at
the field ambulance that night, a hero if there ever was one. He was
Captain G. U. Robins.
The situation was highly critical. The Devons in support at the foot
of the hill collected every man they could find, and lined them up in
anticipation of a German rush. It never came.
The British Army has passed through some stern trials in this war, but
I doubt if any were more terrible than the ordeal of May 5 at Hill 60.
The sun shone hotly out of a cerulean sky on the slopes of the hill,
where the dead lay in thick clusters on the grass stained yellow by the
gas-fumes. The railway cutting was a shambles, dead and wounded lying
in places so thickly that men had to move them out of the way in order
to pass. Our soldiers, who went along the cutting where the shells were
crashing with reverberating explosions, were positively sickened at
the sights they saw, and filled with fierce anger against the fiends
who had perpetrated this nameless crime.
The men at Hill 60 had their fight to fight out alone. Farther to the
north one of the greatest battles of the war was raging. The horrors
of the hill and the railway cutting were but an incident in the mighty
struggle of nations which was swaying to and fro in the fields and
woods about Ypres. Yet it had cost in lives many more men than the
costliest battle of the South African War.
Now the 13th Brigade, which had shortly before come out of the inferno
about Ypres, returned to Hill 60 with orders to counter-attack and
recapture it if possible. We were back in our old positions on the
lower slopes of the hill. The work had to be begun again. It was tired
men who had to do it. Such is the fortune of war.
West Kents and K.O.S.B.’s were again to furnish the storming parties.
It was a pitch-black night. Not even a flare rent the inky curtain
which had descended on the hill. Craters and holes innumerable, dead
bodies, fragments of timber, splintered barbed-wire posts, miles of
barbed wire in inextricable tangles, made a forward rush impossible.
But the hill had to be taken, and the army had entrusted the gallant
“Half-Hundred” and the lads of the Kilmarnock bonnets with the task. So
on the stroke of ten they were ready to go, the West Kents on the left,
the K.O.S.B.’s on the right.
It was a desperate undertaking, and it failed from the outset. As the
first files of men clambered out over the parapet, the Germans, as
though they had been waiting for the attack, opened a storm of shell
on them, while the air fairly whizzed with machine-gun bullets. Only a
few officers and a handful of men reached the German trench, and were
there shot down or took cover in the numerous shell-holes dotted about.
With the first light of daybreak another attempt was made to gain
the hill. The Yorkshire Light Infantry and the Cheshires attacked,
supported on either side by the bombers of the Irish Rifles and the
K.O.S.B.’s respectively. Two companies of the Yorkshire Light Infantry,
despite a murderous fire, fairly burst their way into the Zwartelen
salient, a very strong German redoubt, and were never heard of again.
The Germans in their stronghold enfiladed the Cheshires on the right,
and after a desperate struggle we had to fall back to our trenches.
Throughout the night heavy fighting, often at close quarters with bomb
and bayonet, went on amid a terrific bombardment, whilst from the north
the guns thundered incessantly.
That was our last attempt to capture Hill 60. Honeycombed with mines,
eviscerated, battered, and blasted, the summit of the hill lay
abandoned and desolate when I visited the positions in July. The dead
were still lying in the craters, huge yawning chasms of crumbling
brown earth, the edges strewn with a wild jumble of rags of uniform,
haversacks, splintered rifles, and barbed wire. Just below the summit
the German trenches, with sandbags of brown and blue and red and green,
wound their way round the side of the hill, seeming to tower above our
narrow trenches which clung to the lower slopes.
II.
THE FIGHT FOR THE SALIENT.
The afternoon of April 22 was drawing to a close, and a fresh breeze
was blowing from the north-east, when the German Supreme Command
decided that the moment had arrived for the perpetration of the crime
that will brand the German Army with infamy until the end of time. Our
line about Ypres ran, more or less as the first great German thrust
for Calais had left it in November, in a wide semicircle about Ypres.
The French were on our left on the east bank of the Yser Canal, along
a line running eastward through Langemarck to the point where our
line began. Here the Canadian Division was in the trenches which went
through Kersselaere along the Gravenstafel ridge to a point adjacent to
the cross-roads at Broodseinde, where the 28th Division under General
Bulfin held the line as far as the outer, the eastern, edge of the
Polygon Wood. Here the 27th Division under General Snow took over the
line which bent back westward down to where the 5th Division was in
position about Hill 60.
This, then, was the famous salient of Ypres. It was in the northern
part that the Germans launched their first gas attack, and one can
imagine with what eager expectation their gas engineers throughout that
fine April day fingered the taps of the cylinders embedded in front
of their trenches, where our outlook men had observed them working
for several weeks before. We have never heard the French version of
what happened after 5.15 on the evening of April 22, when the fatal
greenish-yellow cloud, the significance of which no man could fathom
at that time, rising to about man’s height, began to roll sluggishly
forward from the white and blue sandbags marking the German line. We
only know that our artillery observation officers in their different
coigns of vantage in this region saw a mysterious greenish haze
hovering over the French lines, and that presently down all the roads
leading from the canal to Ypres and Vlamertinghe and Poperinghe a
stream of French infantry and Turcos appeared, most of them with terror
in their faces, with streaming eyes and gasping breath, in the grip of
a horror they feared because they did not understand it.
It was a grim and awful ordeal to be the first to endure a method of
warfare so diabolical in its conception, so fiendish in its effects,
that its equal has hardly been encountered in all the blood-stained
history of man. The whole British Army applauded the noble words in
which its Commander-in-Chief alluded to the conduct of the French
on that occasion. In his despatch of June 15 Sir John French said,
referring to the gas attack on the French: “I wish particularly to
repudiate any idea of attaching the least blame to the French Division
for this unfortunate incident. After all the examples our gallant
Allies have shown of dogged and tenacious courage in the many trying
situations in which they have been placed throughout the course of this
campaign, it is quite superfluous for me to dwell on this aspect of the
incident, and I would only express the firm conviction that, if any
troops in the world had been able to hold their trenches in the face
of such a treacherous and altogether unexpected onslaught, the French
Division would have stood firm.” We know now that many of our brave
Allies, both officers and men, stayed and died at their posts, victims
of slow asphyxiation. You may find the graves of many of them to-day,
among other places by the canal bank, around Ypres, and in a little
burial-ground close to a road leading out of Poperinghe.
Fortunately, the healthy respect the Germans had for their new ally
delayed their advance, and enabled the news of the overwhelming of the
right of the Allied line to reach General Headquarters, where it was
received with amazement. Prompt measures were taken, for it was at once
recognized that the Canadian left was dangerously exposed.
The fact that the Germans had, on April 20, started bombarding Ypres
with 17-inch shells had aroused the suspicions of General Bulfin,
commanding the 28th Division, which was on the right of the Canadians.
Knowing that most of the practicable roads from west to east led
through Ypres, he very wisely ordered everything to come east of
the city, in anticipation of some German move which at that time he
was unable to fathom. The most urgent need of the moment, after the
retirement of the French, was to fill the gap left in the line between
the French who had escaped the poisoned gas and were still in their
old positions and the Canadian left. Colonel Geddes of the Buffs was
accordingly put in command of four battalions in reserve east of
Ypres--the Buffs, the Middlesex, the 5th King’s Own, and the Yorks and
Lancaster--and two Canadian battalions in billets at Wieltje, and sent
up to stop the gap. At the same time the 13th Brigade, which had just
emerged exhausted from the fighting at Hill 60, was rushed up from its
rest-billets to support the French and the Canadians along the Pilckem
Road.
It was a critical night for the Canadians. The Germans, realizing
at last that the French trenches opposite their gas-cylinders were
unoccupied, and that their experiment had succeeded beyond their widest
hopes, had advanced, and were now threatening the Canadian flank.
Advancing with the utmost gallantry, Geddes’s strange conglomeration
of British and Canadian troops had succeeded in capturing by assault
a small wood west of the village of St. Julien, in which four 4·7
guns--the 2nd London Heavy Battery--lent to the French some time
before, had fallen into German hands. The 10th Canadian Regiment and
the Canadian Highlanders made a most spectacular and splendid charge
through the wood that night, routing the Germans and recapturing the
guns. Unfortunately, the “heavies” could not be brought away, so the
breech-blocks were removed and the guns otherwise rendered useless.
That night the Canadians bent back their left flank against the attack
they knew could not be long delayed. Indeed, reports showed the Germans
to be busy outside their trenches. The Canadians dug themselves in
along their new line whilst the dawn came creeping up heralding the
day that was to win immortal glory for the Maple Leaf. They knew that
they must hold out against the arrival of the British troops which were
coming to reinforce them, and of the French reinforcements which were
hastening up to try and regain what had been lost.
It was at 4 a.m. that the gas was released. It came on in its sluggish
rolling billows against the Canadians lined up behind their sandbags
on the Gravenstafel ridge from a distance calculated by the Winnipeg
Rifles (8th Canadian Battalion) to be about 200 yards. They had time to
load and discharge two charges of their Ross rifles before the gas was
on them, rolling over the parapet, creeping in and out of the sandbags
and eddying into the dug-outs. Urgent messages were telephoned back to
the batteries as the Germans were seen assembling in front of their
main trench. The enemy waited ten minutes or so before attacking, and
when they did come on were driven back by our guns and the rifles of
the men who were still able to stand upright.
For the Canadians stood fast. As long as the Empire endures the story
of their fight shall live. Stifled like wasps in a nest, battered
incessantly by a terrific bombardment which increased in intensity as
the day wore on, they held out grimly. The Highlanders in the wood west
of St. Julien, badly enfiladed, as the flank was bent back here, got
the full blast of the vapours, but they would not fall back. At one
place where part of one battalion was forced to evacuate their trench,
the survivors made an extraordinarily plucky attempt to reoccupy it in
the face of a withering fire.
The Canadian left--the 3rd Canadian Brigade--was sorely pressed.
Once the brigade sent word to its sister brigade--the 2nd Canadian
Brigade--on its right that the Germans were advancing unchecked on
its trenches. Two platoons were despatched as reinforcements, and some
of the Northumberland Fusiliers under Lieutenant Hardy. One of this
officer’s reports was so characteristic of the circumstances of this
epic fight and of the spirit in which our men went through with it that
I think it is worth quoting textually. Here it is:
“_The greater part of the officers and men are asphyxiated by gas.
I understand that the enemy is on three sides of me. Unless I am
reinforced fairly well, it will be impossible to do anything great._”
You observe no trace of panic, no heroics; just a blasé suggestion
that, failing reinforcements, the “Fighting Fifth” might not be able to
live up to its fine record and _do anything great_.
Soon after noon word reached the Canadian left that it was to fall
back. But the Brigadier, hearing that the other brigade was going to
counter-attack, decided to stay where he was and await developments. He
communicated this decision to his troops, whereupon the officers sent
back word to say they would hang on as long as they had a man to line
the parapet.
It now became clear that St. Julien and the wood could no longer be
held. The Canadian left had withstood all through the day of the 23rd
furious onslaughts from three sides, and a fresh gas attack on the
morning of the 24th settled the question. The left brigade fell back on
a line running from St. Julien to Fortuin whilst awaiting the arrival
of reinforcements from a British Division, which was coming up with
all speed through a deadly zone of shell-fire. This was the morning
of the 24th. By this time the Germans to the north had succeeded in
establishing themselves on the west bank of the canal, having captured
Steenstraat and some works south of Lizerne from the French.
On the 23rd Sir John French had had an important interview with
General Foch, one of the most brilliant of the French Generals, who
commands the left group of French Armies. General Foch gave the British
Generalissimo a clear account of what had happened, informed him of his
intention to make good the original line, and requested him to allow
the British troops to hold on until the necessary reinforcements could
arrive. Sir John French agreed to do this, but stipulated that he could
not suffer his troops to remain in their present exposed position for
an unlimited period of time.
It was now imperative to hold the Germans at all costs. There were
two highly critical periods in the battle, and the first began now
with April 24. On the canal bank Geddes’s detachment, reinforced by
some battalions of the 13th Brigade, had been making a series of
small attacks on the Germans at a heavy price but with good effect,
for the Germans never got through here. The Lahore Division of the
Indian Corps subsequently relieved Geddes’s gallant troops at the very
moment that their intrepid leader, his work done, paid the supreme
sacrifice. He was killed by a shell on the 26th in the upper room of a
house in which the General commanding the 13th Brigade had established
his headquarters, and where Geddes spent the night. The shells were
bursting continually about the vicinity when Colonel Geddes arrived,
and he was killed by one which entered the breakfast-room the next
morning. The General commanding the 13th Brigade had a providential
escape, as he had left the room to fetch a map a few seconds before.
The retirement of the Canadian left from St. Julien on the 24th had
exposed the flank of the Canadian Brigade on the right, and it was
essential to stop the gap. By this time General Hull’s 10th Brigade of
the 4th Division, which was coming up to reinforce the Canadians, had
reached the canal, and was on its way to Wieltje, where it arrived at
2.30 a.m. the following morning. It had been placed under the orders
of the General commanding the Canadian Division, who sent an urgent
message asking the brigade to attack St. Julien immediately.
It was a desperately difficult undertaking. The night was extremely
dark, the ground, which had not been reconnoitred, was honeycombed with
trenches and strewn with barbed wire, and, moreover, the artillery
had not been able to “register”--that is to say, get its range of the
_terrain_. Just before the attack was launched word came back that
some Canadians were still holding out in the village of St. Julien.
Therefore the place could not be shelled. The guns, however, opened on
the wood west of the village.
It was half-past four in the morning when the attack got away. The 7th
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a Territorial battalion that was
on its trial that day, led with splendid dash on the right, the 1st
Warwicks on the left. They were followed on right and left respectively
by the 1st Royal Fusiliers and the 2nd Dublins, whilst the 2nd
Seaforths were ordered to connect with General Riddell’s Brigade of the
Northumbrian Division, which had been sent up to relieve the Canadians.
As soon as our men got out of their trenches they were met by a
terrific machine-gun and rifle fire at close quarters, whilst the
German heavy guns in the rear spouted a continual torrent of shells
over the fields through which the assault was delivered. Our men
dropped left and right, but they never wavered, and the Irish Fusiliers
and the Dublins, Irishmen all, fighting shoulder to shoulder, actually
got into the outskirts of St. Julien. The scattered ruins, the maze
of trenches, and the barbed wire strung out everywhere, seriously
delayed these two battalions and checked our advance. Two battalions
of a brigade of the Northumberland Division, supporting the Dublins,
lost their direction. These men had only been a few days in France, and
were advancing over country which was totally unknown to their officers
and themselves. On the left the Warwicks and on the other flank the
Highlanders got to within 70 yards of the German trenches in front of
the wood. Here they were hung up, and could make no further progress.
They dug in, and were “properly hammered,” in the words of one who was
there, by German high-explosive shells. Nevertheless, by this gallant
attack, the gap between the Canadians east of St. Julien and north of
Fortuin was filled.
The next day another attack on St. Julien was delivered, but also
without success. General Riddell, commanding the Northumberland Brigade
of the Northumbrian Division, received a pressing order from the
Canadians to attack with the Lahore Division and a battalion of General
Hull’s Brigade. There had been no time to reconnoitre. It was for this
brigade a “boost in the dark,” but the urgency of the crisis admitted
of no delay. So our men went forward again, three battalions of the
Northumberland Fusiliers and the Indians, straight into an inferno of
shell and rifle fire. All through the afternoon they struggled on under
a terrific bombardment, the worst that the battle had brought forth
up to that time. At half-past three the gallant Riddell was killed by
a bullet as he was going up to see for himself the position of his
battalions, who had dug themselves in 200 yards away from St. Julien.
Let us pause a minute here, and contemplate the work of this North
Country Territorial Division. Landed in France on April 19, five days
later the stout North Countrymen, the majority of whom were miners
from Northumberland, Yorkshire, and Durham, were undergoing an ordeal
of fire which tried the nerves of our hardiest veterans. They knew
nothing of the country, they had had no practical experience of war. In
the ordinary course of events they would have had a progressive course
of acclimatization in the field before taking their turn of duty in
the firing-line as a divisional unit. “Had they been only a couple of
months in France,” a competent observer said to me after the battle,
“their losses would not have been so heavy. There are things about this
war which no amount of careful training at home can teach. But the need
for reinforcements was imperative, and they had to go into the fight.
They never flinched from their ordeal. They fought and died like men.”
That was a Territorial division, if there ever was one, men of the same
mould, of the same speech, mostly led by the men they were wont to
follow in their civilian callings. In battle, says the old German song,
a man must depend on himself. That is what the Northumbrian Division
did. On them, the untried battalions of but five days’ active service,
devolved the proud honour of serving the Empire as a homogeneous unit,
and they did not shirk the call. The mind dwells with a thrill on the
advance of those sturdy, thick-set fellows suddenly confronted with the
most hideous side of modern war, yet accepting the ordeal stolidly,
unflinchingly, with many a rough word of encouragement and comfort
bandied from mouth to mouth in their broad northern speech.
The abandonment of St. Julien had placed the Canadian right in a
precarious position. Their position on the Gravenstafel ridge, which
had now become the acute angle of the salient, was untenable. Another
brigade of the Northumbrian Division having come up to their relief
with great difficulty, the Canadians fell back on the night of the 26th
to behind the Hannabeek stream. Alter that the Canadian Division was
withdrawn, its place being taken by the Lahore Division, part of the
4th Division, and the Northumbrian Division.
Some battalions of the Durham Light Infantry of the Northumbrian
Division which carried out the relief came in for a most tremendous
hammering from German 8-inch guns. One battalion on the Gravenstafel
ridge repelled an attack delivered by several German battalions at 2
p.m. on the 26th, losing all save one officer and fifty men, but then
had to retire. The Germans, pressing forward, started to envelop,
so our men fell back in good order to behind the Hannabeek stream.
Other battalions of this regiment were sent to stop a gap where the
Germans, pushing on after the Canadian retirement, had broken through
at Zevenkote. They, too, suffered heavily from the terrific German
bombardment, and, indeed, never caught a glimpse of the enemy at all.
On the evening of April 26 they dug themselves in on a line near
Zevenkote to the left of the railway-line skirting Zonnebeke.
The retirement of the Canadians from the Gravenstafel ridge had created
a grave situation for the brigade on its right, the left-hand brigade
of the 28th Division, which, you will remember, was holding the centre
of the salient. When the Canadians fell back, the Royal Fusiliers’
flank was left “in the air,” as the saying goes. The 11th Brigade
of the 4th Division, which had come to the relief of the Canadians,
arrived most providentially, and the Hampshires were rushed up to get
connection with the “Seventh” in their perilous position.
On the 25th the Germans delivered a furious attack against the East
Surreys and the Middlesex, but the Londoners stood firm and beat
the Boche back to his trenches, the Surreys capturing a number of
prisoners. The order was to hold the line at all costs, and it was
held. Both battalions behaved splendidly, but one must make particular
mention of the gallantry of the 8th Middlesex, a Territorial
battalion, which stood its first taste of modern war with admirable
coolness.
All next day the Germans kept up a tremendous bombardment, and a gap
appeared between the Hampshires and the Royal Fusiliers, the point of
least resistance of our line here. It was eventually filled by the
Shropshire Light Infantry at dusk. Some battalions of the Northumbrian
Division were brought in to reinforce the line here.
Meanwhile on the extreme left the French had carried out their promise,
and had counter-attacked. In conjunction with our gallant Indian
troops, who fought most stoutly in this battle, they were able to push
the enemy farther north. The French recaptured Lizerne, and made some
progress at Steenstraat and Het Sas; but the Germans, profiting by the
north-easterly breeze, which unexpectedly held in their favour during
the greater part of the three weeks’ fighting, made free use of their
gas-fumes, and little real progress was realized. All through the 27th,
28th, 29th, and 30th the Germans kept up a tremendous bombardment
right round the curve of the salient. Our line now ran from the canal
straight across the Ypres-Langemarck Road in front of St. Julien,
through Fortuin to Zevenkote, and thence bent round Zonnebeke (for
Broodseinde had had to be abandoned), through the Polygon Wood, back to
Hill 60. The Germans made full use of their superiority of artillery,
and swept the trenches with a never-ending deluge of heavy projectiles
and mortar bombs, while all the roads leading through Ypres to the
front were sprayed day and night with fire.
Not Meissonnier, nor Détaille, nor Werner, nor even Verestchagin, I
believe, could have thrown on canvas an adequate impression of the
awful ordeal which these endless days of pitiless bombardment imposed
on our troops. They could have painted you a picture of the British
in the trenches running through green fields and pastures and woods,
with the wrecks of cottages and churches dotted about the landscape,
and the grey ruins of Ypres, seen through bursts of black and white
smoke, in the background. They could have shown you our men, unshorn,
unwashed, their eyes shining whitely out of their faces, begrimed,
burnt by the sun, standing at the parapet firing steadily, or digging,
filling sandbags and piling them up to close the breaches rent in
the parapet by the enemy’s shells bursting on every side. They could
have shown you the dead, the pitilessly mangled, the hideously limp
victims of the shells; they might have conveyed by a touch of the
brush the indifference with which men in the firing-line will pass
to and fro before the yet warm bodies of their comrades. They could
have shown you the wounded, quiet, dull-eyed, the long processions of
the stretcher-bearers dodging their way down to houses and barns and
churches and stables, where, under the Cross of Geneva, the doctors
were working swiftly and silently, without fuss.
But they could never have conveyed to you the overwhelming,
unimaginable truth--that this little sketch of a few yards of trench
must be repeated over miles and miles of front, with the same dusty
figures at the parapet, the same headless and armless dead, the same
suffering wounded, the same rain of shells, if one would bring home an
impression of the second battle of Ypres.
One reads that the endurance of the men was wonderful. But one does
not understand. I saw the men who came alive out of that hell in the
salient, and they were as men transfigured. Not that they were shaken,
depressed, or, on the other hand, exultant. They were just uncannily
quiet, sitting about in the sunshine, rather limp, like men recovering
from supreme fatigue. Talking to them, one felt somehow that their
characters had changed; that they would never look on life again as
they had done in the past; that they had acquired a new seriousness of
mind, as though their glimpse into the dark valley had sobered them.
And they all had a puckered, strained look about the eyes, the look one
sometimes sees in men who have spent their lives in the open under a
tropical sun. At first these symptoms used to puzzle me. They did after
the battle of Ypres. Afterwards I found out that they were the badge of
the modern battle, and that, with a week of rest and change of scene,
they pass away.
The ruthless bombardment with which the Germans occupied the last
days of April were the preliminary to a fresh onslaught on the troops
holding the northern part of the salient. In the meantime, the French
counter-attacks having made no progress, Sir John French, in accordance
with his arrangement with General Foch, decided that he could not
afford to hold on any longer to our present exposed position. He
therefore gave orders to Sir Herbert Plumer, who was directing the
operations of the army engaged in defending the salient, to fall back
upon a new line which had already been prepared in anticipation of this
emergency. The effect of the withdrawal was to diminish considerably
the arc of the salient, the whole of the centre falling back to a line
starting east of Wieltje on the Ypres-Fortuin Road, running across
the Ypres-Frezemberg Road south of Frezemberg, cutting through the
Ypres-Thourout railway-line, and then the Ypres-Menin Road east of
Hooge.
Before the withdrawal could be begun, however--the day was May 2--the
Germans, having obtained fresh supplies of chlorine gas in tank waggons
from Belgium, launched a gas attack from St. Julien against the 12th
and 10th Brigades, which, with the 11th Brigade, were holding the
line round this village and down to Fortuin. By this time our men
were provided with respirators of a sort, as the result of the appeal
made by the army, and magnificently responded to by the women of
Britain. Unfortunately the respirators were of rather a rudimentary
pattern--they have since been replaced by an entirely efficacious
model--and they did not serve wholly to protect our men from the
poisonous fumes. Notably the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers and the Essex
Regiment got the full blast of the noxious vapours. Despite many acts
of individual gallantry shown by officers and men of the Lancashire
Fusiliers, they could not hold the trench, and the line was forced back.
It was here that Jack Lynn won the Victoria Cross, conferred
posthumously, for this brave fellow did not survive his gallant action.
He was in the machine-gun pit when the deadly cloud approached, but
without waiting to adjust his respirator he kept his machine-gun
playing on the dense billows of greenish-yellow smoke. The cloud caught
him and eddied about him, but his fingers never left the button of the
gun, which barked on incessantly as the dimly descried forms of the
Germans appeared creeping over the open. Choking and gasping as he was,
Lynn hoisted his machine-gun on the parapet, and there, amid a storm of
bullets, a lonely figure in a trench full of dead and dying, he kept
his gun going on the enemy till he collapsed. The German infantry could
not face the storm of fire, and returned to their trenches.
Lynn had collapsed by his gun when his comrades found him. They took
him to a dug-out, half-conscious, but even then, when a machine-gun
started barking near by, that gallant spirit struggled to regain his
feet to get back to “his gun.” He died there in the sunset, with the
din of battle ringing in his ears, only a Liverpool van-boy, “jes’ a
little bet of a chaap,” one of his mates told me afterwards, but a man
with a mighty soul.
The 2nd Seaforths were also badly gassed, but with true Scottish
tenacity they stuck to their trenches until relief came. It was not
long delayed. The Cavalry Division in support sent up the 4th Hussars,
who executed a splendid charge side by side with the 7th Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders (Territorials), who had already done so well at
St. Julien. Hussars and Highlanders went forward, head down, through
the gas fumes straight into the Germans, ambling to what they imagined
was an easy triumph. There was some swift and silent slaying, and the
Germans went back the way they had come with sorely diminished numbers.
Said General Hull to me afterwards with a chuckle: “We got the Boches
on the hop that time.”
Fighting went on all that day and the next. It was essential to conceal
from the enemy our withdrawal, which was timed to begin after dark.
The continual counter-attacks delivered by these brigades effectually
contrived to mask our intentions from him. As a result we were able
to withdraw the whole centre of our line and take up the new position
we had prepared almost without a casualty, and without the Germans
being a penny the wiser. In fact, they continued to pour a devastating
fire into our empty trenches until 3.30 on the afternoon following the
withdrawal.
The retirement began at 10 p.m. on the night of May 3. The arrangement
was that, first, part of the infantry should withdraw, followed after
an interval by a portion of the remainder, each battalion leaving
behind twenty picked shots to man the parapet and pick off any
German that showed himself. It was a most delicate undertaking. The
least mistake would have betrayed our move to the Germans. At some
places--for instance, at Broodseinde--the trenches were only ten yards
apart. Talking and smoking were forbidden. Our men just slipped away in
silence through the darkness, the officers hoping in their hearts that
they might get away undiscovered.
With a muttered “Good-night and good luck” to the lonely figures
left at the parapet, looking out over the dreary expanse between the
trenches, where spasmodic flares vouchsafed a glimpse from time to
time of gaping shell-holes, a wild tangle of barbed wire and dead in
uniforms brown and green, the first batch of troops silently filed out
of the trenches. What a crew they were, with an eight-days’ beard,
unwashed and unkempt, their faces and uniforms smeared with clay! With
that peculiar hitch that Tommy gives to his pack behind when he starts
off, they trudged out into the black night, their backs turned to the
enemy.
Thus to turn the back on danger and face the unknown, worn out with
fatigue and hunger, shaken by the loss of many dear comrades--what
a test of discipline! The men were admirable; their officers were
magnificent. The success of the withdrawal was, first and last, the
work of the Regimental Officer, as those most qualified to speak
readily attest. With most of the field officers killed or wounded or
gassed, it was primarily the subaltern, the boy fresh from a public
school or the Varsity, from Sandhurst or the O.T.C., or, in the
Territorials, the young clerk or business man, who led his men down
over unreconnoitred ground through the rain and the darkness, steeling
them against the danger that always threatened by a fine display of
nonchalance and good-humour.
Nothing was left behind. All the arms and ammunition and supplies that
could not be taken away were destroyed. They tell of a Colonel who did
away with a box of kippers rather than let them fall into the hands of
the Germans. To his surprise at breakfast the next morning in the new
line the kippers appeared on the breakfast-table (an ammunition-box on
the bottom of a trench). The Regimental Sergeant-Major confessed that
the sacrifice had been too great. He could not bring himself to take
any chance of making a present of the kippers to the Germans. So he had
clandestinely rescued them.
At midnight the last men quitted our front trenches, and, going “as
they pleased,” made off through the pouring rain to rejoin their
comrades. A private in the 2nd Cheshires got left behind. He remained
at his post at the parapet with a waterproof sheet over his shoulders,
firing at intervals at the German parapet opposite him. Presently he
noticed that the trench had grown very still. He left his post and went
round the adjacent traverse. Nobody there! He went round the traverse
on his other side. Again a vista of empty trench! He hurried down the
trenches for a hundred yards or so, and found that everyone had gone.
He was, as he put it afterwards, “left to face the whole blooming
German Army alone.” He lost no time in joining the retirement.
Many of the wounded of the days of heavy fighting had been taken to
the ruined villages of Frezemberg and Zonnebeke, where the doctors
tended them by candlelight in the cellars. During the evening, in
anticipation of the withdrawal, by hook and by crook, seventy-six
motor ambulances were got together. From dusk until half an hour after
midnight, it had been found impossible to remove a single wounded man,
as each would have had to be carried by hand over marshy ground through
inky darkness, and without lights, for no lights could be shown. The
Germans were shelling both villages heavily, and I should like to pay
a tribute here to the splendid courage of the motor-ambulance drivers
who sat imperturbably at the steering-wheel of their cars in the open
street and waited for the wounded, with shells falling fast about them.
The evacuation of the wounded at Zonnebeke was the work of Colonel
Ferguson, R.A.M.C., and of Major Waggett, R.A.M.C., the throat
specialist of Harley Street. Thanks to the untiring devotion of these
two officers, every wounded man was safely got away, with the exception
of a few men with shattered limbs whom it would have been dangerous to
move, and who were left behind with comforts and medicines, and two
R.A.M.C. orderlies to tend them. Every man of the R.A.M.C., doctors
and orderlies alike, worked like Trojans that night, and added fresh
laurels to the rich harvest which the corps has gleaned already in this
war.
On our right centre, where the men had stood for days a very heavy
bombardment, the troops were very loth to fall back. Some of the men
left insulting messages addressed to the “Germs,” as they call them,
pinned on to the trenches. One man was seen going round “tidying up”
his section of trench, “just to leave things clean for the Germs,” as
he naïvely explained!
The enemy did not let us remain in peace for long. After a few days’
shelling, during which it was observed that his 6-inch howitzers were
“registering,” at 5.30 on the morning of May 8, he made a sledgehammer
attempt to smash in the front of the 5th Corps. He started as usual
with a terrific bombardment from north of Passchendaele and from
Zonnebeke, which gradually concentrated on the front of the 28th
Division between north and south of Frezemberg.
The General commanding this division told me that it was the most
terrible bombardment he had ever listened to. The German shooting was
marvellously accurate, and their guns simply wiped out our trench
line. “This fire,” in the blunt phrase of Sir John French’s despatch,
“completely obliterated the trenches and caused enormous losses.”
It was an awful ordeal. The men who came out of it alive told me in
awed voices that the shelling was like machine-gun fire, an incessant
rain of high-explosive shells that fairly plastered the whole of the
ground. The din was ear-splitting, the earth trembled, the air was
unbreathable with the fumes from the explosives, and in the space of
a minute or two the trenches were reduced to broken heaps of rubbish
crowded with dead and wounded men. At one place a trench became
impassable with the dead, so the survivors filled it in and planted a
cross on top--surely the finest grave for a soldier!
A heavy infantry attack followed the bombardment. It was too much for
our men. Some battalions had been for a fortnight in the firing-line
without the chance of a wash (“A lick and a promise was all the
cleaning up we did,” a Colonel of one of these battalions said to me
afterwards, “and, by Jove! it was a long promise”), with a scant supply
of drinking-water, and salt beef and hard biscuit the only food. Most
wires were cut, and the only connection between the firing-line and
the Brigade Headquarters in many cases was by orderly. The gallantry of
the despatch-bearers in these terrible days was beyond all praise. They
were shot down by the dozen, but there were never lacking volunteers
“to have a shot” at getting through when no word had come back from the
last man sent back.
Isolated, battered, worn, our men could do no more. The line broke.
First it went on the right of a brigade near Frezemberg. It was
10.15 on May 8. Then the centre of the same brigade gave, and then
part of the left of the brigade in the next sector to the south. It
was here that the Princess Pat.’s Light Infantry, the colours that
their graceful patroness had embroidered for them with her initials
flying throughout the battle over their regimental headquarters,
sustained their trial by fire. Their own Record Officer has given to
the world their story of matchless heroism, has told how they held
their fire-trench until it was annihilated, then fell back to their
support trench, and held it until the Shropshires relieved them, a
battered handful, 150 strong. I have seen the peaceful graveyard near
Voormezeele where many of the dead of that gallant stand are sleeping,
and it was as though the soul of the Empire was beating beneath the
rows of white crosses.
North of the Frezemberg Road that Saturday morning the first battalion
of the 1st Suffolks trod the blood-stained path to glory. They held out
in their trenches under the terrific bombardment and against repeated
assaults by the Germans until they were surrounded and overwhelmed.
Of the 500 men that went into action of that gallant regiment, only
seven emerged unhurt. North of the Frezemberg Road the 1st Yorkshire
Light Infantry, which the army dubs the “ K.O.Y.L.I.’s,” likewise got
a terrible hammering. Supported by a company of Monmouth Territorials,
they stayed on till night, when the 12th London Regiment (The Rangers)
going up to relieve were practically destroyed by shell-fire, only
seventy surviving.
At half-past three in the afternoon a strong counter-attack made
by the 1st Yorks and Lancs, the 3rd Middlesex, the 2nd East Surrey
Regiment, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, and the 1st Warwicks, reached
Frezemberg, but was eventually driven back, and finally remained on a
line running north and south through Verlorenhoek. The Middlesex lost
their Colonel, who, as he fell, cried, in the words of the Middlesex
Colonel killed at Albuera: “Die hard, boys!” A charge by the Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders side by side with the 1st East Lancs towards
Wieltje connected up the old trench-line with the ground won by the
counter-attack.
May 9 and 10 saw the continuation of the hellish bombardment. The
enemy, who had lost heavily on the 8th, notably against the 2nd Essex
Regiment, which let a party of Germans come close up to their trenches
and then simply wiped them out, furiously attacked the trenches of
the 2nd Gloucester and the 2nd Cameron Highlanders, but were repulsed
with heavy casualties. There was ding-dong fighting of the severest
description about the trenches on either side of the Ypres-Menin Road,
where a gas attack delivered on the 10th was driven back by the 2nd
Cameron Highlanders, the 9th Royal Scots (Territorials), and the 3rd
and 4th King’s Royal Rifles. The Rhodesian detachment serving with the
3rd K.R.R.’s had their baptism of fire in this fight, and suffered very
heavily.
The following day the Germans concentrated their artillery fire on a
point a little more to the north, against the 2nd Cameron Highlanders
and the 1st Argyll and Sutherland; but the Scotsmen, as tenacious as
ever, gave a good account of themselves, though the Germans attacked in
force. A brilliant charge by the Royal Scots “Terriers” ejected them
from a section of trench in which they had gained a footing. In the
afternoon there were two more spells of shelling, each followed by an
attack, but the first attack was beaten off, and, though the Germans
gained ground in the second, the lost trenches were recovered during
the night.
Meanwhile desperate fighting had been proceeding in the northern part
of the salient, where, as has been seen, the Germans were making a
tremendous effort to smash in our line. A great rambling Flemish
homestead, situated west of the Wieltje-St. Julien Road, and called
by our men “Shell-trap Farm,” was the centre of some of the hardest
fighting of the war. The place owed its curious name to the sheer
incredible number of shells which the Germans fired into the old
red-brick buildings surrounded by a deep, broad moat. At one period 117
shells a minute were counted at this spot. Nevertheless, “Shell-trap
Farm” proved too much for the authorities who regulate the nomenclature
of places on the map, and a fiat went forth that the place should be
known as “Mouse-trap Farm.”
As “Shell-trap Farm,” however, it will remain in the memory of the
men who fought there. The farm changed hands several times during
the fighting, finally remaining in our possession. With its wrecked
walls, its shell-pitted front and splintered shutters, and its floors
strewn with empty cartridge-cases, it reminds one of the _Maison de la
Dernière Cartouche_ on the field of Sedan.
The Germans got into the farm, but the 2nd Essex got them out in quick
time. The enemy was shelling heavily at the time, but the Essex,
advancing “as they pleased,” literally dodged the shells and rushed
the farm. Theirs was a most inspiriting charge, and the Rifle Brigade,
whom they passed on their way up, were so thrilled that they stood up
in their trenches and gave the Essex a cheer. Presently the Germans
regained possession of “Shell-trap Farm.” Then the East Lancs drove
them out. By this time the farm and its approaches were a shambles, and
the moat was full of dead men.
We held the farm that night. The next morning it was lost again. This
time a Territorial battalion--the 5th South Lancs--won it back for us,
and kept it. While the South Lancs were in possession a shell came
into the farm, and laid out every officer and non-commissioned officer
in the place. Thereupon a private sprang into the moat, swam across,
and reported the situation to the commanding officer at Regimental
Headquarters. The message he took back with him to “Shell-trap
Farm” was that the Colonel hoped the men would hang on. Presently
a bandolier was flung out across the moat bearing the Territorials’
reply. It ran: “We shall hold out.”
The 1st Hampshires beat off one German attack by killing every man
that approached within fifty yards of their trenches. They and the
men of the 1st Rifle Brigade and the 1st Somerset Light Infantry
actually stood up on the parapets and defied the Germans to come on!
The London Rifle Brigade, that holds so high a place among the London
Territorial regiments, here earned battle honours that in years to come
will figure proudly on its colours. They were practically overwhelmed
by shell-fire, but stuck to their trenches through it all. They
kept sending back cheerful messages to the rear. “Our trenches are
irrecognizable,” ran one such report, “but we are quite cheerful.” When
it was suggested to them that it might be as well if they evacuated
their trenches, which were falling in on them, the reply was that they
would be damned if they would. It was in this fighting that young
Douglas Belcher, salesman of Waring and Gillow’s, of Oxford Street, won
the Victoria Cross by holding a section of trench with a few comrades
when the Germans had forced back the cavalry on one side of him. His
daring bluff saved our left flank, and his decoration was indeed well
earned. But I have anticipated.
The battle was nearing its close. What result had the Germans gained by
their unprecedented expenditure of ammunition? By their “unquestionably
serious losses”? (Sir Herbert Plumer, quoted in Sir John French’s
despatch). Certainly they had inflicted casualties, very heavy,
enormous casualties, on us, and had gained ground in the salient,
which, however, had exposed us to danger as long as we held it. But
they had not broken our line, despite two tremendous blows (those of
April 24 and May 8), nor had they in any sense of the word defeated
the French or the British armies. Our line was intact. Their effort
had failed. No wonder that there has been less written in the German
newspapers about the second battle of Ypres than about any other
engagement of the war. For this two motives are responsible--the one
the desire to hide from the German public the fact that the initial
advantage was won by a treacherous breach of the Hague Convention, the
second the desire to conceal what must be reckoned tantamount to a
German defeat, since the plan of the German Generals was not realized.
On the night of May 12 our line was reorganized, the 28th Division,
which on May 8 had undergone such a tremendous ordeal, being withdrawn,
its place being taken by two cavalry divisions, dismounted, which, with
the artillery and engineers of the division relieved, formed, under the
command of General de Lisle, what was known as “De Lisle’s Force.”
At 4.30 on the morning of May 13 the Germans opened the heaviest
bombardment yet experienced in the battle on the trenches occupied by
two cavalry brigades on a line running from the Ypres-Roulers railway
to the Bellewaarde Lake. The Germans shelled mercilessly the whole
triangle between the railway and the lake, while Bellewaarde Wood was
enveloped in dense masses of smoke from the bursting shells. The
cavalry trenches were simply obliterated (one of the lessons of this
battle is that no trench will stand a really heavy bombardment). The
3rd Dragoon Guards were buried, and though the North Somerset Yeomanry
held on with magnificent endurance, the line could not be held, and
here we fell back about 800 yards. The Royals (1st Dragoons) were
rushed up to reinforce, and suffered heavily on the way. Presently news
came back that on the right the Life Guards had been buried in their
trenches, and had had to fall back, but that the Leicester Yeomanry
were holding out. The 2nd Essex Regiment managed to fill one of the
gaps by a fine charge, and held out until relieved by the cavalry
supports.
A counter-attack was organized. It was preceded by a very heavy
bombardment of the German positions with all available guns firing
high-explosive shells. Then--it was 2.30 p.m.--the attack went forward.
It was led by the 10th Hussars, who went forward with such splendid
dash that at the sight of them the gallant Leicester Yeomanry, reduced
in numbers as they were, could not restrain themselves, but tumbled out
of their trenches and joined in the rush. The Essex Yeomanry and the
Blues (Royal Horse Guards) also took part in the attack. The behaviour
of the Blues has been described to me as particularly fine. These
magnificent men went forward under a very heavy fire of shrapnel and
high-explosive as steady as on parade. The Germans were routed out of
the trenches they had won from us. The Germans fairly bolted, in some
instances with the cavalry after them.
Our armoured motor-cars, great heavy vehicles, played a part in this
counter-attack. It was, I believe, their début in the war. Some of
them, under Lieutenant Cadman, dashed down the _chaussées_ and opened
fire on the Germans in their trenches in the roadside woods. For a
little while it was as though we had returned to the war in the open.
But the position we had won was untenable.
The trenches were merely holes half filled with dead and débris, and
the German shell-fire was pitiless. So our men had to fall back to “an
irregular line in rear, principally the craters of shell-holes,” to
quote Sir Herbert Plumer once more. That night our line remained intact
in its former position, with the exception of a small distance lost by
one cavalry division. Later the line was advanced, and fresh trenches
dug slightly in the rear of the original line, but in a less exposed
position.
May 13 may be reckoned the last day of the second battle of Ypres.
It is too early to say how many men “went west” in the interval that
elapsed between the April evening when we blew up the mines on Hill 60
and the May afternoon when almost for the first time for twenty-six
days the inferno of fire abated in the woods and pastures about
Ypres. It was not a battle like the first battle of Ypres, when our
men met the flower of the Prussian Army face to face, and withstood
a succession of onslaughts delivered with an incredible disregard of
human life. The second battle of Ypres was a battle of machinery,
in which the German infantry skulked behind their gas-cylinders and
machine-guns, and waited for their heavy guns to prepare for them
victory at a cheap price.
The moral of the battle, brought home to every man that took part in
it, was that the ultimate victory in this war will lie with the nation
that best organizes itself to provide its armies with the sinews of
war. If at Neuve Chapelle we bitterly felt our shortage of shells, at
Ypres we realized even more intensely the enormous advantage which the
enemy’s superiority in artillery and high-explosive ammunition gave
him. The fighting at Neuve Chapelle and Ypres, and later on at the
Fromelles ridge, showed us that the principal weapon of modern warfare
is the heavy gun, and gave us due warning that the next German attempt
to break our line will be preceded and accompanied by an artillery
bombardment even severer than that inferno of fire which played for
more than three weeks on the Ypres salient, and failed to pierce our
front. Artillery fire can only be crushed by artillery fire, so we have
our lesson. And because that lesson has at length been learnt, the
thousands of Britons who made the supreme sacrifice at Ypres will not
have died in vain.