BACK TO THE MESSINES RIDGE: JULY TO SEPTEMBER 1918
The new sector was at the north-west corner of the great salient
made by the Lys offensive. It ran from Fontainehouck, a hamlet
north-east of Meteren, which was in the hands of the enemy, to the
high ground south of the Croix de Poperinghe. It was about a mile
and a half north of Bailleul. Here, as all along the line of hills,
the enemy was at heavy disadvantage. His territory was overlooked.
Every movement, every gun-flash, could be noted from Mont Noir and
the other hills. Bailleul crumbled away before the eyes of our men.
St. Jans Cappel, for so long Divisional Headquarters in days that now
seemed very far away, was not far behind the front line. It was to a
great extent destroyed. Many of the isolated farms, with which that
countryside is bestrewn, were, however, undamaged, right up to the
front line. The country was deep in crops, the wheat having to be cut
round the outposts to prevent surprise attacks and provide a field of
fire. As for vegetables, the men had all the potatoes and green peas
they could eat without walking a hundred yards from where they slept.
After Ypres, it was a very agreeable position. German artillery
fire was not as a rule severe, owing to the fact that the battery
positions were overlooked from the hills. The worst disturbance
was caused by night bombing, assiduously practised by the enemy.
Casualties were low. They would have been lower had our troops been
as circumspect in following the hedges, and confining their movement
to the night, as their predecessors, the French, had been. But the
lesson of "lying low," so well learnt by Frenchman and German, never
had been mastered by the British soldier, nor ever was.
On July the 19th the 9th Division, in line on the right, captured
Meteren, the Artillery of the 36th Division co-operating in the
attack. The 36th Division did not at first strive to improve its
position in a similar way, but contented itself with raids on a large
scale. One, by the 109th Brigade, resulted in very heavy fighting,
the enemy being on the alert. Though the enemy's casualties were
estimated at thirty, and a prisoner was taken, the raid hardly ranked
as a success, since our casualties were seventeen, including four
men missing. The 107th Brigade, on the left, had a more satisfactory
venture. A strong patrol of the 2nd Rifles surrounded a farm in which
there was an enemy garrison of ten. Two of these were taken prisoner,
the rest killed. The patrol had not a casualty, despite heavy
machine-gun fire. Further prisoners were taken by the 107th Brigade
on a later occasion, while the only raid attempted by the enemy, from
Haagedoorne, where his troops held the old railhead, was beaten off
by rifle fire, even though the Germans got within twenty yards of the
outposts before being seen.
An interesting event of this period was the visit of His Majesty the
King to the area. On August the 6th, at Oxelaere, a little village
on the slopes of Cassel Hill, he presented to Lieutenant Knox, 150th
Field Company, R.E., the Victoria Cross won by him during the March
retreat in circumstances that have been described. On the following
Sunday His Majesty attended a parade service at Terdeghem, where were
Divisional Headquarters.
The 36th Division, being in the Second Army, was not destined to
take part in the early great counter-offensives that raised all
men's spirits and showed the world that at last the tide had turned.
The first of these had been French, though four of the best British
Divisions had played their part in it. In what is now known as the
Battle of Tardenois, beginning on July the 18th, the salient of the
great German advance to Château-Thierry had been crushed in, and the
enemy routed, with great loss of prisoners and booty. Then, on the
8th of August, came a second mighty blow. The Fourth British and
First French Armies began a great offensive down the Amiens-Roye
Road. The quality of the resistance with which it was met showed that
German discipline and German steadfastness were weakening at last. On
the 21st the British Third Army, and a little later the First Army,
launched still greater attacks, sweeping swiftly across the waste of
the old Somme battlefield, and once more approaching the Hindenburg
Line. Before that was reached the 36th Division, up in Flanders, was
again in action.
Various local offensives had been planned, to take from the enemy
what little good ground he held near the point of his salient. The
9th Division's capture of Meteren has been mentioned. At the end
of July, the 1st Australian Division, further south, had retaken
Merris. On August the 18th the 9th Division carried out a further
successful operation, capturing the important Hoegenacker Ridge,
south-east of Meteren. It was now the turn of the 36th Division to
improve its position. On August the 22nd an attack carried out by
the 15th Rifles, on the right of the line, advanced it a quarter
of a mile on a front of half a mile. Twenty-two prisoners and two
machine-guns were captured. A curious and vastly effective ruse was
employed in conjunction with this operation. The demoralising effect
of the Livens projector upon the enemy was well known, but its use,
charged with gas, would have prevented any immediate attack by our
troops upon the area bombarded. The drums were therefore filled with
a scent which resembled the smell of gas. Many of the enemy had run
back before our men advanced, while others were caught wearing their
respirators.
Two days later an attack on the left by the 1st and 9th Irish
Fusiliers, under a barrage of smoke and shrapnel, advanced the line
to the Haagedoorne-Dranoutre Road on a front of upwards of a mile. So
great was the surprise and so swift the assault, that the enemy was
"smothered," and did not make a serious resistance. Sixty prisoners
and eleven machine-guns were taken here. An enemy counter-attack in
the evening was brought to a stop by rifle and machine-gun fire,
though the 108th Brigade lost one small post. The line was now a
thousand yards only from Bailleul, and the defences of the town
were pierced. An attack upon the salient would now have resulted in
a great German rout. The enemy did not await it. Under the skilful
leadership, that was never more apparent than in the months of defeat
and humiliation which were to follow, he flitted in a night.
The 36th Division, on the morning of August the 30th, was awaiting
relief by the 35th Division, to be given a short period of rest
and training before being launched upon the great series of final
offensives in Flanders. Its right-hand neighbour, the 9th Division,
had already been relieved by the 31st Division on the Hoegenacker
Ridge, with a like object. That rest the 36th Division was not
destined to enjoy. At ten o'clock that morning came a report from the
31st Division that the enemy was gone from its front, and that its
men were entering Bailleul from the south. Before two o'clock patrols
of the 36th were in the huge Asylum north of the town, and upon the
Neuve Eglise Road. The relief was cancelled and an immediate advance
ordered, to be carried out by the 109th Brigade.
This was not the first enemy retirement in the Western theatre. There
had been that of 1917, in which some of the troops now in the 36th
Division had been the pursuers. No doubt the men who had then tracked
the retreating Germans had felt elation. But that had been false
dawn. Now, as men sprang up eagerly to set about their preparations,
a conviction spread among them that this was the true, that not again
would they have to turn back. Some of our present-day pessimists
pretend that by the summer of 1918 the horror, the iron ruthlessness,
of the war had robbed men of their stores of latent enthusiasm, and
that, even for victory, they had none to summon forth.
It is untrue. Were it true, they could not have so swiftly prevailed
against an enemy, disheartened indeed, but still disciplined,
tenacious and well led, still admirably equipped, and, above all,
backed by a series of defences such as the Allies, in their days
of adversity, had never dreamed of. All testimony, moreover, is to
the contrary. Like a flame the spirit of victory, the bright-hued
prospect of deliverance, spread among all ranks. Defeat and
retirement had bred melancholy and bad temper. The new atmosphere
dissipated them. To go forward, to strike, to make an end--those were
the impulses and the hopes that swept through the waiting ranks.
The ground immediately to be recovered had a double appeal, a
sentimental interest. It was that which had been the area of the
Division for a year. The Château of St. Jans Cappel had been
Divisional Headquarters for the greater part of that period. The
remains of that pleasant villa--_heu quantum mutata!_--were to
shelter General Coffin's staff during the advance.[58] On the
Ravelsberg Ridge, the first objective, had been the Divisional
School. In Neuve Eglise, the second, had been a Brigade Headquarters.
Not a house, not a lane, not a forlorn camp with shell-punctured
hutments, not a machine-gun position further forward in the old
battle-line, but was known to some of the officers and men now making
ready to advance. There was triumph even, mingled with the pathos,
in re-entering poor, battered Bailleul, which had been a good friend
in time past. From a handsome town it was become a mass of ruins,
so completely destroyed that, across a fine central _place_ of
several acres, there was now but a single narrow track for transport
through the rubble. By midnight on the 30th the patrols were half
a mile along the Neuve Eglise Road and a mile from the summit of
Ravelsberg Hill. To capture that on the morrow was the task of the
109th Brigade. The Brigade had a wide frontage, roughly a thousand
yards north of the Neuve Eglise Road, and two thousand south of
it. The advance was steady, but made in the teeth of considerable
machine-gun fire. The Germans had evacuated their positions, but they
did not want to be hurried, nor were they prepared to forego the
opportunity of inflicting loss upon our troops which such a height
as the Ravelsberg afforded. But, once that hill captured, the enemy
rearguards were hustled down the further slope. By night the Brigade
had reached the foot of the next hill, a mile east of the Ravelsberg.
A mile and a half to the south the 1st Inniskillings had its right
upon the main Armentières Road.
Neuve Eglise was the first objective for September the 1st. The 2nd
Inniskillings was ordered to extend its left flank as far as the
road from that village to Dranoutre, and advance with its left upon
Wulverghem. The 108th Brigade had meanwhile moved up in support
to Haagedoorne, the 107th being in the area of Mont Noir and Mont
Kokereele. Great efforts were being made to bring artillery forward
over the very bad roads. Kemmel Hill was once again in British hands,
and good news came in the morning from the 30th Division, on the
left, which had reached Lindenhoek and south of it as far as the
valley of the Douve.
The severest resistance was met at Westhof Farm and De Broeken, both
well known of old, where German machine-guns caused serious loss.
German artillery fire was also heavy. The various strong points were
taken one by one. The German rearguards slipped back in each case
before our men came upon them, but a number were killed in flight
and, outside Neuve Eglise, a machine-gun and two prisoners captured.
By afternoon the enemy had been driven back to the western outskirts
of the village. Some of the 2nd Inniskillings appear actually to have
reached its houses, but the line finally taken up at night was five
hundred yards short of it.
The 108th Brigade was ordered to pass through the 109th at night and
resume the advance, its objectives being from Red Lodge, in the
north-west corner of "Plug Street Wood," to South Midland Farm on the
Wulverghem-Messines Road. The artillery was now in a position to give
it adequate support. The attack was carried out by the 12th Rifles on
the right and 1st Irish Fusiliers on the left. On its southern flank,
Kortepyp Cabaret and the Custom House on the Steenwerck Road gave
trouble.[59] A Stokes mortar here well repaid the labour of bringing
it and its ammunition forward, enabling the infantry to rush these
places after a short bombardment. Then the line pressed forward to
the Nieppe Road running south-east from Neuve Eglise. Machine-gun
fire from this village was at first galling, but, after it had been
heavily shelled by the artillery, a company of the 12th Rifles took
it in most gallant fashion, while two other companies made progress
to the south of it. By four o'clock the line was east of Neuve Eglise.
The next obstacle was a fairly formidable one, an old British
system, the name of which recalled the days when the British Army
had been a very small force indeed--the G.H.Q. Line. The Germans
had put up some wire to defend its support trench from the west. At
7-30 p.m., light being still good, our artillery bombarded these
defences heavily for an hour, after which the infantry advanced to
the attack. The trenches were not taken without fighting, though,
in all the circumstances, the enemy's resistance must be reckoned
feeble. Desultory encounters continued all night, but by morning the
infantry was in possession of the G.H.Q. Line along the whole front.
On the left, meanwhile, the troops of the 30th Division had entered
Wulverghem.
On the 3rd, as resistance stiffened, the frontage was narrowed. A
Brigade of the 29th Division had just relieved the 31st Division
troops on the right for the assault on the very important position
of Hill 63. The new objective of the 108th Brigade was from White
Gates, at the western foot of this hill, to South Midland Farm. At
9-30 a.m. the 12th Rifles and 1st Irish Fusiliers went forward. In
the early stages they had artillery support. Thereafter, owing to
constant movement and the difficulty of ascertaining the position of
the front line, the only assistance that could be rendered by the
artillery was by fire on objectives far in rear, save for occasional
opportunities that came the way of single mobile guns. The attack
resolved itself into individual assaults upon German machine-gun
positions, which were taken in flank by Lewis guns worked forward,
and then rushed with the bayonet. Three were thus taken, and their
detachments killed or captured, while none of the latter, which ran
before the infantry came upon them, escaped without loss from our
fire. By evening the line ran from L'Alouette, a mile east of Neuve
Eglise, to La Plus Douve Farm, a famous old battalion headquarters of
the 36th Division, south-east of Wulverghem. The whole of this front
was taken over after dark by the 9th Irish Fusiliers, which battalion
had not yet been in action.
The 108th Brigade's attack next morning began at 8-30 a.m. under a
creeping barrage. Half an hour prior to it, on the extreme right,
the 9th Irish Fusiliers advanced about a hundred yards toward Hill
63, to support an attack on the hill by troops of the 29th Division.
The attack was completely successful. Hill 63 was of the greatest
importance to the enemy, and was very strongly held, as was proved by
the capture of nearly two hundred and fifty prisoners by the men of
the 29th Division. The hill being in British hands made affairs far
easier for the 108th Brigade. The advance of the 9th Irish Fusiliers
met with considerable opposition. Gaps appeared, and there was some
loss of direction, not astonishing when it is considered that the
battalion was on a frontage of over a mile. Eventually a company of
the 1st Irish Fusiliers had to be brought up on the right flank,
on the Neuve Eglise-La Basseville Road. Before noon all objectives
were attained. On the right the 1st Irish Fusiliers had advanced
beyond White Gates. On the left, Gooseberry Farm, a mile east of the
starting-line, was in the hands of the 9th.
All had gone excellently so far. But the British were now facing
positions which the Germans desired to hold for some time longer, for
which they were prepared to fight. An immediate local counter-attack
down the Douve valley was repulsed with the aid of artillery fire.
But at 4-15 p.m., after a heavy bombardment, the enemy launched
a counter-attack from the south-west on this part of the line.
Gooseberry Farm and Stinking Farm[60] were lost, and the line driven
back five hundred yards.
On the following day the 36th Division actually lost a little ground
instead of gaining it. An attack carried out at dawn by the 1st and
9th Irish Fusiliers, under a light artillery barrage, insufficient to
keep down the very heavy machine-gun fire, was unsuccessful. A heavy
hostile counter-attack drove our troops back beyond their original
line. The 108th Brigade had now been fighting for four days, with no
shelter but that of old and dirty trenches, in persistent rain. The
men were in good spirits still, but fatigue was beginning to tell
upon them. It was decided that the 107th Brigade should relieve them
after dusk, to continue the attack upon the morrow. The 108th Brigade
had captured thirty-five prisoners and three machine-guns. Its
casualties, however, especially during the last two days, had been
very heavy, numbering upwards of four hundred. The 29th Division, on
the right, was again being relieved by the 31st.
The night of the relief was very unpleasant. The Germans, beginning
about ten o'clock, deluged all the low-lying valleys with mustard
and other gas shell. The new advance was to be supported by the fire
of two Machine-Gun Companies, instead of the one which had been in
action hitherto. Captain Walker describes how he rode out in the
darkness to find his sections, scattered among battalions of the
109th Brigade in reserve, and came into the cloud at Neuve Eglise,
forced to keep his eyes uncovered to find his way, but keeping the
nose-clip and mouth-piece of his respirator in position. When dawn
broke he discovered that the pool of gas lying in the basin in which
107th Brigade Headquarters were situated almost lipped the entrance
floor of the dug-out. Most fortunate it was that the dug-out was
half-way up the side of the basin. When, later, he walked down the
main road to Wulverghem, he found the occupants of the dug-outs which
bordered it "being sick by the score." A good many casualties were
caused during the relief, but for the most part the gas was not of
the most noxious sort, and many of those who had inhaled it were able
to take part in the action of September the 6th. It had the effect,
however, of delaying the relief. When dawn broke all the companies of
the 2nd Rifles were not in position; nor was it possible to move them
forward afterwards, owing to the forward slope on which that position
lay being in full view of the enemy.
The 36th Division Artillery was now prepared to put down a really
effective barrage, to advance at the rate of a hundred yards in three
minutes, then to form a protective curtain two hundred and fifty
yards in front of the objective, till an hour and a half after Zero.
This objective was the old British front line, from the Douve on the
right to the Wulverghem-Messines Road on the left.
At 4 p.m. the attack was launched. The companies of the 2nd Rifles
not already in position began to move up in little columns as
the bombardment opened, continuing this method of advance as the
barrage lifted. On the right, troops of the 31st Division attacked
simultaneously. Despite heavy German artillery fire the infantry went
forward with great spirit. After heavy fighting, all objectives,
except Gabion Farm on the right, were taken. Nineteen prisoners
were captured, and many Germans killed. How strongly the line was
held was shown by the capture of eight machine-guns, as well as a
trench mortar. The troops of the 31st Division also had reached their
objectives. Early on the morning of the 7th the advance was rounded
off by the capture of Gabion Farm, where a post was established.
The enemy was not yet resigned to the loss of the position. At
dawn on the 8th, after an intense bombardment, two groups advanced
to recapture the advanced posts. They were literally annihilated
by machine and Lewis-gun fire, a wounded survivor of each being
captured. That night the 30th Division took over the front to Gabion
Farm, while the 107th Brigade extended its right to Hyde Park Corner,
in "Plug Street Wood," becoming responsible for the defence of Hill
63.
Comparative stagnation ensued, broken only by two small attacks upon
the 15th Rifles, which had now taken over the line. The period was
marked by one distressing accident. General Thorpe, commanding the
107th Brigade, had gone up with General Brock on the night of the
13th to visit Hill 63 and the sentry-posts north of it. Moving along
"Winter Trench" he was suddenly fired at from point-blank range by
one of his own men and severely wounded in the arm, his elbow-bone
being shot away. It was a stroke of cruel ill-fortune, which
prevented General Thorpe from leading the Brigade to final victory.
He was able to return to the command of his regiment after the
war, but with an arm well-nigh useless for life, from which he has
since suffered incessant pain. Lieutenant-Colonel R. H. MacKenzie,
C.R.E. of the Division, took over command of the Brigade till the
appointment of his successor. That successor was General Brock, who,
after bringing the Divisional Artillery to France and commanding it
in the field for more than two and a half years, was to finish his
career with the 36th Division by leading an Infantry Brigade with
equal success. He was succeeded as C.R.A. by Brigadier-General C.
St. L. Hawkes, D.S.O. Another senior officer of the Division lost to
it a short time before was Lieutenant-Colonel J. E. Knott, D.S.O.,
commanding the 2nd Inniskillings, severely wounded by a shell which
killed the Intelligence Officer of the 109th Brigade, Lieutenant J.
J. Fox, and wounded the Brigade Major R.A., Major H. F. Grant Suttie,
D.S.O., M.C., by his side. Another calamity was the bombing of the
wagon lines of the Divisional Train near St. Jans Cappel. Here a
single bomb killed five men, wounded nine, and killed no less than
fifty valuable horses, besides injuring about twenty more. A bomb or
big shell in crowded horse-lines was always one of the ugliest sights
of many very ugly that the war had to display.
On the night of September the 15th the 109th Brigade took over
the front, now slightly extended on the right toward Ploegsteert.
There was constant patrol activity in the days that followed, but
no further ground was to be gained by those methods. The enemy
was maintaining himself very stoutly and his line bristled with
machine-guns. It was evident that only a great "full-dress" assault
would retake the Messines Ridge.
The tide of victory meanwhile had continued to flow strongly on
other fronts. On the 12th of September the Third Army had crashed
through the Hindenburg trenches at Havrincourt. Three days later
the Balkan offensive, so long awaited that men had come to doubt
its possibility, had been launched, and attended with overwhelming
success. Within a few days Bulgaria was prostrate and Turkey out
of the war. It would have been poetical justice had it fallen to
the lot of the 36th Division to have a hand in the second capture
of the Messines Ridge, as the 62nd Division had taken Havrincourt
for the second time. If that were denied it, it was only because it
had a task even more important to perform, a task the successful
prosecution of which would render to the enemy the famous ridge of
no avail. As a necessary complement to the great convergent thrusts
of British, French, and American armies further south, a powerful
offensive, mainly Anglo-Belgian, but in which a French force also
took part, had been planned in Flanders, from Voormezeele northwards.
It was to be under the supreme command of His Majesty the King of
the Belgians, so that co-ordination between the three nationalities
should be assured. For this the 36th Division was required. For the
third time in its career, but in circumstances vastly different to
the two first, it was directed upon Ypres. For the new battle some
training had been obtained by the 107th and 108th Brigades during
the days that the 109th held the line.
The movements were carried out with greatest secrecy. All marches
took place after dark, on the nights of September the 21st and 22nd.
The 107th moved thus to Wormhoudt, north of Cassel, the 109th Brigade
to Eecke, east of that town, and the 108th to Houtquerque. The
Divisional Artillery moved straight to the neighbourhood of Ypres.
The Infantry of the Division was not to take part in the first day's
attack, and, for the preliminary barrage, the 153rd Brigade R.F.A.
was to be attached to the 9th Division, the 173rd Brigade to the 29th
Division, on its right, the troops of which were in line slightly
over a mile east of the famous ruined town.
After a few days of rest and training, the concentration took place
on the nights of the 26th and 27th. By the morning of the 28th,
the date of the attack, the three Brigades were in camps between
Poperinghe and Vlamertinghe. Headquarters were at Vogeltje Château,
near the better-known Lovie Château, in the woodlands west of
Poperinghe. The Division was again in General Jacob's II. Corps,
under which it had served in April, May, and June. It was in Corps
Reserve, its mission being to hold itself in readiness for a move
forward to assist in the exploitation of any success gained by the
first-line Divisions.
The late operations had been heartening. Despite, however, their
difficulty and costliness, they represented, at least till the final
stages, no more than hard and steady pressure upon a rearguard. No
great number of prisoners could be taken in such fighting, while the
casualties to be inflicted upon the enemy were comparatively small.
The Division had not yet had a hand in one of the great offensives.
All ranks knew that the attack about to open ranked in that category,
and that resistance of far more serious quality was to be expected.
For that they were prepared. It is no exaggeration to say that they
looked forward to the coming struggle, just because they believed it
would be the last. Officers who came back from England the day after
the opening of the attack, when the news that from Ypres to the sea
the whole line was advancing had been flashed abroad, describe the
returning leave-boat as being so full of cheerful faces that it might
have been taken for one homeward bound. Some were less ambitious than
others. In one officer's diary is expressed the opinion that the
Passchendaele Ridge, if captured, would serve as a good "jumping-off"
ground for an offensive the following spring! But for the most part,
men, beholding victory upon victory, had come to believe that the war
could be ended this year. For that speed was essential, else winter
would come to the aid of the enemy and give him time to collect
himself. That reasoning could be grasped by all, and acted upon all
as an added spur to endeavour in the days that followed.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] General Coffin was at this time on leave, the Division being
commanded by Brigadier-General Brock, the C.R.A.
[59] _i.e._, the Belgian Custom House, Neuve Eglise being in Belgium,
Steenwerck and Bailleul in France.
[60] The farm had earned its horrible name in 1915 from the odour
of a huge store of rotten potatoes in its cellars. These had been
removed the following year by sappers of the 36th Division, wearing
gas-masks. Thereafter it stank no worse than any other ruin in the
Flanders front line.