structure which was a viaduct carried on steel piles. The two heavy
concrete piers were erected by the Germans to make the Mole again
usable after the destruction caused by the exploded submarine._]
It was, of course, against the open part of the structure, the steel
viaduct, that Lieutenant Sandford steered his old submarine, full
of explosives, with the object of blowing up the viaduct, and so
preventing any help from the landward side getting to the men who were
resisting our landing farther on. The viaduct is said to have been
covered with soldiers watching the approach of C 3, and unsuspecting
their fate. The boat was rammed into the structure, the Lieutenant
and his crew got away safely, the fuse did its duty, the viaduct
disappeared with everyone on it, and communication with the land was
cut off. Plate 22 shows the viaduct, seen from the bend of the mole on
the inner side, looking shorewards. The two concrete blocks supporting
the landward end of the viaduct were, of course, built by the Germans
after the attack--they show exactly the place where C 3 did its work.
Plate 23 was taken from the outer side of the mole, and shows the
present temporary viaduct on its concrete piers, and in deep water
beside it a flagstaff carrying a white ensign which has been placed on
the spot, very charmingly, by the Belgians, as a memorial of the pluck
of the men who, under that flag, carried out the great exploit.
IV.--THE LYS SALIENT
(PLATES 24 TO 34.)
The region between the Ypres Salient and the La Bassée Canal, extending
from the high ground by Wytschaete and Messines to Kemmel and then
south-westwards by Bailleul and Meteren to Merville, and finally
sharply eastwards to Festubert and Givenchy, forms the ground which the
German advance in April, 1918, made into the "Lys Salient," which was
to have opened the way for them to the Channel ports, and to have cut
the Allied Armies in two.
Neuve Chapelle lies on the main road four miles north of La Bassée,
near the southern end of what became the Lys Salient later on, and was
the scene of the first great action in March, 1915, after the hold-up
by the mud of the winter. It had been lost very early in the war, and
was regained after heavy fighting and great losses on both sides. The
German papers complained characteristically that our artillery firing
"was not war--it was murder"! All counter-attacks failed to recover
it for the Germans, but, on the other hand, our own troops were not
able to make any further advance towards the higher ground, known to
us as the Aubers Ridge, which lay between them and Lille. After the
attack the reports told us that two crucifixes still remained standing.
One was at the cross-roads, and has since fallen or been removed. The
other (Plate 24) was in the churchyard, and is still standing, with
a dud shell embedded in its shaft. The village itself, like all the
others, has disappeared; my photograph was taken from a heap of stones
which represented what was left of the church. An attack in May made
a valiant attempt to carry the Aubers Ridge, and some detachments
succeeded in getting close to the Lille suburbs, but the ground
could not be held. It was on this ground, at Escobecques, about six
miles from Lille, that I found the late German Divisional H.Q. in
farm-buildings fortified with something like 2,000 tons of reinforced
concrete. "Bauern Gefecht Stelle" seems to have been the name of the
buildings when in German occupation--"Fin de la Guerre" has come from
the French. The "ridge" is by no means visible as a ridge, but is shown
by the contours as a stretch of country from 30 to 50 feet higher than
its surroundings. The deserted and blown-up pillboxes (Plate 18) of
reinforced concrete are very much in evidence here, as they are farther
north in the Passchendaele region, and the villages are often quite
destroyed. But where the land has not been keenly fought over the shell
and trench damage is not considerable, and cultivation is being carried
on actively. At La Fresnoy, on the higher part of the ridge, a farm
known to our people as "Somerset Farm" was utilised by the Germans
as an O.P. (Plate 25) and a light signal station. An engraved stone
tablet on the wall (barely visible on the right of the photograph)
records that it is the "Schultze Turm," and that it was built in six
weeks--certainly an excellent record. The O.P. tower still stands, a
fine piece of solid construction, although the barn within which it
was built, and which must have effectually concealed it, is a good
deal damaged. Plate 26 shows, for comparison, a British double O.P.
which I found standing (and which probably still stands) not far from
La Bassée. The concrete and brick towers have resisted all attempts at
their entire destruction, but the buildings which must originally have
enclosed and concealed the towers appear only as heaps of brick rubbish.
In April, 1918, the German advance on the Lys--which, like its
predecessors, succeeded all too nearly, but just not quite enough--and
which proved to be Ludendorff's final despairing effort, started at
Neuve Chapelle, then held by the Portuguese, who were to have been
withdrawn the next day. The troops were hopelessly outnumbered, and
gave way at once under the attack, and the British divisions right and
left of them were uncovered. Givenchy and Festubert held firm[15] and
Bethune was saved, but farther north everything gave way.
[15] See p. 25.
It was at this critical time that Haig issued the famous order which
indicated at once the serious nature of the situation and the General's
confidence in his troops:
"There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every
position must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement.
With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause,
each one of us must fight to the end. The safety of our homes and the
freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at
this critical moment."
It must have been the greatest of trials to the General to be compelled
to order retirements a few days later on, but he had not deceived
himself as to the quality of his men: they did fight to the end--fought
the enemy to a standstill first, and later on drove him back over all
the country he had overrun.
Estaires was taken on the next day and Merville two days later, this
town forming the farthest progress westward in the April advance. An
interesting note in Haig's Despatch[16] says:
[16] Despatches, p. 225.
"There is evidence that the German troops that had entered Merville
had got out of hand, and instead of pressing their advantage wasted
valuable time in plundering the town. On the 12th the 5th Division
arrived and secured this front."
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIII._
"C 3."
_The outer side of the Zeebrugge Mole at the place where "C 3" was
driven against it and blown up on St. George's Day, in 1918. The white
ensign forms a graceful remembrance, on the part of the Belgians, of
Lieutenant Sandford's great exploit._]
Finally the Ypres Salient was almost wiped out (the enemy was within a
mile and a half of the city), Armentières and Bailleul, Wytschaete and
Messines, had to be evacuated, and the Lys Salient came into existence.
Mount Kemmel was taken on the 25th, the French, overwhelmed, dying
without surrendering. An advance of about ten miles had been made by
the Germans over a very considerable distance, and over country which
was of enormous importance to the Allies. North of Ypres, happily,
the Belgians had been able to stand firm, and recovered at once, by
counter-attacks, a small area on which they had had to give way. But
once more sheer exhaustion, probably hastened by rashness after what
must have been the unexpected success of the first onslaught, helped to
bring the enemy to a stand, while the splendid stand of the Belgians
to the north and our Territorials at Festubert and on the canal at
Givenchy indicated clearly enough that no further advance could be
gained. The fighting died down for two or three days, and then at last
came the crucial attack, directed north-westwards across a line from
Meteren to Voormezeele, where French and British were fighting side
by side "with their backs to the wall." The attack failed, and on the
next morning the German lines were considerably farther back than they
had been at the start. This proved to be the real end of the fighting,
and only minor changes in the lines due to our advances and those of
the French occurred until our final advance. Towards the end of July,
when the great attack of Foch from the Marne to the Aisne had declared
itself, the Germans commenced a withdrawal of their stores from the Lys
Salient. Merville and Estaires had both been knocked about very much by
our artillery during the German occupation. Merville was retaken on the
19th of August, and after that date our advance, and the retreat of the
Germans, went on continuously. Kemmel Hill was again in the hands of
the Allies by the 5th of September, and by the 6th the Lys Salient had
disappeared. "Plug Street" Wood and Messines were cleared of the German
rearguards on the 29th of September, at the time when Belgian and
British troops together were finally annihilating the Ypres Salient,
and succeeding in forty-eight hours in covering ground which had
required four months in 1917. Armentières was again in our possession
early in October.
Plates 27 to 32 are photographs of places which became of special
interest--and anxiety--while the Germans were succeeding in creating
the "Lys Salient." Merville (Plate 27) and Estaires (Plate 28) were
totally wrecked by us while they were in German occupation, but with
them, as with Bailleul (Plate 29), reconstruction is going on rapidly.
Agricultural operations in this area are going on vigorously, and the
damage was chiefly confined to the villages and little towns. The
western half of Armentières had been pretty thoroughly rebuilt between
my visits of 1919 and 1920, but the eastern half (Plate 30) was still
largely ruinous.
The top of Kemmel Hill is about 350 feet higher than Ypres, and looks
from the salient--even at a distance of seven to eight miles--as quite
a little mountain. Plate 31 is a view taken from north of "Plug Street"
Wood, about three miles from the hill, and Plate 32[17] was taken on
the hill itself near the top. The hill was originally largely covered
with woods, but only groups of bare stems are now remaining.
[17] This photograph is from a negative taken by Colonel Gill.
On the way from Armentières to Plug Street we found the ruins of a
little estaminet, within which an O.P. of 1914 had been constructed
by Colonel Gill. Towers with walls 3 feet thick had not been thought
of in those days, and the light steel framework of the O.P. stood up,
spidery, above the brick rubbish. At a farmhouse still standing across
the road it was interesting to find a kindly French peasant woman who
had now been able to return to her house, where she had stayed with
her family for six months during the earlier fighting, living in the
cellar. Her children seemed to cherish affectionate recollections of a
certain kindly English "Capitaine Frederic," who was "rouge" and who
gave them chocolates, and whom by these particulars I was afterwards
able to identify. I suppose we are likely always to call Ploegsteert
"Plug Street." The village is, of course, in ruins, but the wood, of
which Plate 33 shows only a corner, is too large to have been totally
destroyed like the woods north of the Somme. At "Hyde Park Corner"
(there were several "Hyde Park Corners" in Flanders) one came across
the sight, only too familiar in many parts of the war area, of a
British cemetery (Plate 34). It had been carefully tended and looked
after, as we found to be always the case.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIV._
NEUVE CHAPELLE.
_Two crucifixes remained standing at Neuve Chapelle after the Action
of March, 1915. One of them has disappeared; the one photographed
stands in what must have been the churchyard. A dud shell has split
the shaft without bringing it down._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXV._
ON THE AUBERS RIDGE.
_The Schultze Turm, a very substantial German O.P. enclosed in
"Somerset Farm." An inscription states that it was built in six
weeks._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVI._
AN O.P.
_A British double O.P. between Bethune and La Bassée. The buildings
which once concealed it lie round it in a heap, but the towers have
still some substance._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVII._
MERVILLE.
_The farthest west point reached in the Lys Salient during the German
advance in April, 1918. The town was practically destroyed by our
shell-fire during the German occupation._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVIII._
ESTAIRES.
_Like Merville, which lies four miles west of it, Estaires was
terribly damaged by our shelling during its occupation by the Germans
from April to August, 1918._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIX._
BAILLEUL.
_Not to be confused with the village of the same name north of Arras,
close to the Vimy Ridge. It was thoroughly ruined by the fighting in
both directions during 1918._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXX._
ARMENTIÈRES.
_In 1919 very little had been done by way of reconstruction in
Armentières, but a year later the western half of the town had been
largely rebuilt, although the other half was still in the condition
shown in the photograph._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXI._
KEMMEL HILL.
_This photograph was taken from a distance of three miles, from which,
however, the hill looks hardly as bold as it does from the higher part
of the Menin Road. Its summit is about 350 feet higher than Ypres,
which it entirely commands._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXII._
KEMMEL HILL.
_The upper part of the hill itself, which was once largely covered
with trees of which only the stems remain. It was captured, after
an heroic French defence, in April, 1918, and held until the final
retreat of the Germans began four months afterwards._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIII._
"PLUG STREET" WOOD.
_Ploegsteert will probably be "Plug Street" for all time in this
country. Many trees are still standing in the wood. The turning to the
left is the road to Messines._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIV._
A CEMETERY AT "PLUG STREET."
_A Royal Berks Military Cemetery at the north-east corner of "Plug
Street" Wood._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXV._
BETHUNE.
_The lighter-coloured masonry halfway up the fine old tower shows
where houses were standing built closely round it. Their debris has
been entirely cleared away and the Grande Place is as tidy as it is,
unhappily, empty._]
V.--BETHUNE, LA BASSÉE, AND LOOS
(PLATES 35 TO 42.)
The pleasant little town of Bethune, with its friendly, Scotch-like
name, lies just beyond the coal district, a dozen miles north-west
of Lens and seven miles west of La Bassée. Our front lines during
most of the war crossed the Bethune-La Bassée road about the line
of Festubert and Givenchy, two and a half miles short of La Bassée.
Although so near the German lines, it was not seriously shelled until
the attempted German advance in March and April, 1918, when in two
months the whole centre of the town was reduced to ruins. Colonel Gill,
taking me through it a few months later, had some difficulty even in
recognising "Bond Street," which for years had been a tolerably safe
place for buying tobacco, or visiting a barber, or taking lunch, or
meeting friends. We walked over 2 feet of brick débris along what must
have been the roadway. The outlying parts of the town are comparatively
little damaged. The fourteenth-century belfry tower (Plate 35) was
closely encircled by houses, built up against it, which have altogether
disappeared, and the tower itself shows hideous cracks over practically
its whole height. The Church of St. Vaast is so completely destroyed
that one can only tell one end from the other by the orientation of its
site.
In the great German attack of April, 1918, the town was saved by the
Lancashires when the Portuguese had failed us near Neuve Chapelle,
and when we were compelled to give way from Armentières to Merville,
a few miles farther north. The same troops ("second-rate troops" the
Germans called them) held Givenchy, on the La Bassée Canal. The village
has entirely disappeared. Plate 36 was taken from a mound on which
I believe that the church once stood (but there were not even stones
visible on the surface to mark the place), looking back over the
British lines. Lord Haig[18] tells how two batteries each left a gun
within 500 yards of the draw-bridge at Givenchy, and, assisted by a
party of gunners who held the bridge with rifles, succeeded in stopping
the German advance at this most critical time.
[18] Despatches, p. 226.
The country between Bethune and La Bassée and northwards and southwards
for miles from that line, was in 1919 a desert, bare of trees, of
houses, of crops, of people, growing nothing but shell craters and
barbed wire, with thousands of tons of buried broken shells likely to
be very offensive to agricultural implements! The seven miles of road
between the two towns runs eastward through the desolation, never very
far south of the canal, and at Cuinchy close to the brickfields and the
"railway triangle," the scene of specially hard fighting in 1915. The
triangle again defeated our attack in September, 1916.
The little town of La Bassée (Plate 37), the name of which was for
long so familiar to us, is, of course, a heap of ruins. I remember a
statement in a German paper in 1914 to the effect that, La Bassée and
the canal (Plate 38, which shows a reconstructed bridge) being in their
hands, their final success was quite assured! The eight miles of road
from La Bassée to Lens passes Hulloch and Loos and Hill 70, and enters
Lens by the Cité St. Laurent, a suburb which was in our hands long
before we were in the town itself. The road from Bethune to Lens passes
between Loos and the "Double Crassier." The ruined pithead (Plate 39)
near Hulloch is only an example of the condition to which the Germans
reduced all the colliery workings in the district on which they could
lay hands.
The story of the great fights at Loos is full of splendid episodes,
although the results of the fighting were very much less than had been
hoped for. In April, 1915, the German front lay from a point west of
Loos and Lens southward nearly as far as Arras, covering the colliery
villages and the Lorette and Vimy Ridges. It was first broken by the
great attack in 1915, which gave the French all the Lorette Ridge
except its extreme east end. Opposite Loos, across the Lens-Béthune
road, lay the twin slag heaps known as the Double Crassier (Plate 40),
where for many months the opposing front trenches were literally within
a few yards of each other, the Germans holding the slag heaps. There
are stories of mutual courtesies and jocularity between Saxons and our
own men under these conditions, which came to an end (from the German
side) when Prussians replaced Saxons. But if the trenches had been in
our Midlands, with Yorkshire laid waste beyond them, instead of in a
foreign country, probably our boys would have felt differently. We did
not hear of, or expect to hear of, any similar friendliness where the
French poilus were concerned. Farther north came the strongly fortified
"Fosse No. 8" and the Hohenzollern Redoubt close to Haisnes, and just
short of the canal at Givenchy. What we got to know as the Loos battle
began on the 25th of September, 1915. The Double Crassier was taken at
once. A man in the London Irish is said to have kicked off a football
from the parapet in this attack and dribbled it across No Man's Land to
the German first lines.[19] The Hohenzollern Redoubt was penetrated,
the Highlanders got to the northern suburbs of Lens, and the front line
passed to the east of the Lens-La Bassée road. But further progress
became impossible, and early in October our front line was for the
time "stabilised" west of the road. The great redoubt still remained
practically in German hands. In this fighting the 47th Division London
Territorials took part, the first complete Cockney division to take the
field.
[19] Buchan, vol. x., p. 174.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVI._
GIVENCHY.
_The British positions at Givenchy, north of the La Bassée Canal,
looking back from the site of the village. The holding of these
positions in April, 1918, prevented Ludendorff's final attack from
reaching Bethune._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVII._
LA BASSÉE.
_The ruined village as it was left, when the roadways were cleared,
after the evacuation by the Germans in their retreat in 1918._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVIII._
THE LA BASSÉE CANAL.
_The temporary lifting bridge over the canal at La Bassée. The
buildings are, of course, reconstruction. The German newspapers
proclaimed that the capture of the canal here, in 1915, made the
result of the war quite certain!_]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIX._
A PITHEAD.
_Pithead work near Hulloch--a fair example of the state to which all
pit works in the district were reduced before the Germans left._]
Of the Loos episodes there will not be forgotten that which got Piper
Laidlaw, of the 7th K.O.S.B., his V.C., for marching up and down on
the parapet (close to the Cité St. Laurent, a suburb of Lens) with his
pipes until all the men were out of the trenches, and carrying on until
he was himself wounded. Nor will it be easily forgotten how Mdlle.
Moreau, the daughter of a miner, devoted herself, during the first
German occupation, to saving and nursing British wounded soldiers, or
how later on, when we arrived there, she met our entering troops and,
obtaining a rifle, was able to shoot sundry German soldiers who were
attacking wounded men. She lost father and brother during the war. One
is glad to know that she was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and that some
of the soldiers, to whose welfare she was so devoted, regardless of
her own safety, have bought land at Bethune and built a little house
on it where she can carry on business, which one hopes will be most
successful.
The zigzag communication trench, which will be familiar to many of
our soldiers (Plate 41), forms a bit of roadside scenery typical of
the country here over which the fighting went on in 1915 and for long
afterwards. Loos itself was afterwards handed over to the French, who
were not, unfortunately, able to retain it. Just beyond Loos, after it
had been regained in 1918, I was stumbling over a bit of ground covered
with all sorts of débris beside what had been lately German trenches,
and which was even then being occasionally enviously shelled, when I
saw growing in a crevice below the brick rubbish a garden pansy. I was,
no doubt, walking over some cottager's garden, but garden and cottage
were all now the same and all equally unrecognisable. The bright little
flower, blowing uninjured at the bottom of its rubbish heap, seemed a
pleasant emblem of the freeing and recovery of France which was just
then coming so near.
Near to my discovery of the heartsease I found some of Colonel Gill's
men in charge of a height-finder. They had comfortable enough quarters
in a German dugout in which I found, and secured as a prize, a little
booklet left behind by its late occupants. It is entitled "Wer da?"
("Who goes there?"), and contains a dozen chapters of a very pious and
didactic kind on the duties of a soldier, his oath, his honour, his
religion, and so on. The chapter on "Der Kriegsherr und der Eid" is
rather pathetic in view of subsequent events. Here is a paragraph from
it:
"It is thoroughly _altergermanisch_ and entirely in correspondence
with the character of the German people to follow a King, who
represents the might of God in earthly things ... who is a father to
his country and a guide and war-lord to his soldiers. Between this
prince and the soldiers there exists the most special and intimate
relationship. He is the head and the heart of the Army; it is his
shield and his sword. It protects his rights and his sacred person. He
cares for it and shares its troubles and dangers."
What a cynical comment on this sort of stuff that the precious
Kriegsherr ran away from his country and his beloved army a few weeks
later! Then, again: