THE WINTER CAMPAIGN
The first purpose of the Allies' scheme of military envelopment was to
arrest and eventually to break the German offensive. Even after their
losses in the battle of Ypres and the concurrent Battle on the Yser,
the Germans still had on the West a superiority in numbers. The shock
of those defeats was bitter. That is sufficiently proved by the
proclamation which soon afterwards the Emperor of Germany issued to
his troops. A cruel hour, he told them, had struck for them and for
the Fatherland. He exhorted them to meet it with a greater
determination. For a time Germany became a land of mourning. The
German newspapers of this date, the later part of November, appeared
day by day with pages of private obituary advertisements. The dream of
conquest, except as regarded Belgium, was shattered, and it was
realised that even to keep that country as a reward of what were
called the sacrifices made, Germany would have to face a struggle to
the death with Powers whose united superiority was now only too
manifest.
That mood, however, soon passed, and feeling, directed at the outset
of the war against Russia, was with a redoubled intensity excited
against England. The reasons are not far to seek. Extraordinary
efforts had become necessary, not only on the East to repair the
disaster of the Battle of the Vistula, and to furnish General von
Hindenburg with the forces for his great "drive" towards Warsaw, but
to make good the wastage on the West.
It is a recognised axiom among military men that for such a scheme as
the Germans had in view in France, the lowest superiority in numbers
necessary is a proportion of four to three. Even that assumes equal
training and equipment, and equal skill in leadership. The last
factor, skill in leadership, which is in war the most difficult to
estimate beforehand, is, at the same time, as this struggle has
proved, tremendously important. In regard to it the odds were heavily
against the Germans. The Battle of Ypres, it has become evident, was
on their part a series of bad mistakes--mistakes which were not seen
until too late. After the defeat at Reims Count von Moltke was removed
from his place as Chief of the Staff and Baron von Falkenheyn
appointed. The strategical scheme of Baron von Falkenheyn was sound
and bold enough if Antwerp had not got into the way of it, and if,
too, the tactical blunders of Ypres had not ruined its execution.
Besides defects in leadership, the Germans had to face the striking
comparative deficiency of their field artillery, and the fact that
their gunnery had not turned out so practically sound as that of the
French. It followed that to resume the offensive they must have a
superiority of even more than four to three. They had begun with a
superiority of two to one. Yet through the unexpected skill in their
opponents' leadership they had been foiled and had had their
initiative wrested from them. In view, however, of the demands of the
campaign on the East, this necessary weight of numbers they could not
on the West supply. One resource was to make it up by an appeal to the
spirit of the army. That took the form of an unusually liberal
distribution of rewards for individual valour.
The Battle of Ypres had at one and the same time brought the second
German plan of a Western offensive to the ground, and ensured the
accomplishment of General Joffre's envelopment scheme. There was
nothing now before the German Staff, therefore, but to attack that
envelopment scheme while it remained, as they thought, still in its
inceptive stages. If we turn to the day-to-day record of the
operations as disclosed in the official reports we shall at once see
that there was on the part of the enemy a series of attempted wedging
movements. They tried by wedging to break the Allied front
simultaneously at Roye and at Arras. This, had it been successful,
would have forced out the section of the Allied front lying between
those points, and have broken up the Allied position. The movement was
not successful. Another movement of this kind was tried between La
Bassee on the one side and the Yser on the other. This time the
Germans did get a foothold on the west side of the Yser. They were
driven out of it, however, by the Belgians cutting the dykes and
flooding the country all along the lower course of the river. When the
flood burst upon them large numbers of the enemy caught in their
entrenchment diggings were drowned.[14] Many of their guns could not
be recovered. A third of these wedging attempts was made between La
Bassee and Arras. Though they led to desperate fighting, these efforts
proved barren of result.
[14] A correspondent of the Paris _Gaulois_, describing
the annihilation of a brigade (nearly 9,000) Wurtembergers
by the floods on November 4, wrote:
"At midday, the Wurtembergers, in formidable numbers,
had succeeded, under the protection of their artillery,
in crossing the Yser on planks.
"After a week's fighting the river was choked with
sunken boats, trunks of trees, bodies of men, and
carcasses of horses. It was over a veritable bridge
of corpses that the enemy passed.
"Meanwhile the Allied troops had taken up a position a
little in the rear, some regiments remaining in position
to cover this movement. Massed on the left bank of the
Yser, the enemy's infantry prepared to attack. Some caps
skilfully arranged over empty trenches drew the German
artillery, which wasted its shells on the decoy. Then
the Wurtembergers advanced, and were astonished to find,
instead of bodies of the enemy, nothing but a few caps.
Just then a loud rumbling noise was heard in a westerly
direction. The noise gradually became clearer,
resembling the rush of the tide. Suddenly a flood of
seething water burst upon the astonished Germans. Trees
and corpses were carried on the current, which swept
everything before it. Cries of rage and terror came from
the German lines. It was too late. Down came the
torrent, and in a few moments the enemy's trenches were
filled. The terrified herd of Wurtembergers fled to the
high ground, to get clear of the inundation, but from
the heights the Allied artillery poured volleys of
shrapnel into them. The enemy was taken between water
and fire. Those who escaped drowning succumbed to our
bullets or shells. A few came to our lines, thus evading
death by captivity. This was the end of the Wurtemberg
brigade."
Let us turn to the side of the Allies. For them the first necessity
was to solidify their front. If they could do that they would:
(1) Hold these German armies so that they would be able neither to
advance nor to retreat whatever might be the developments of the
war on the East front. That meant that the Germans must fight with
divided forces, and feed the struggle on the East out of their
last reserves.
(2) Bring into fullest play the Allies' superiority in field guns,
and by imposing on the enemy the necessity of constant
counterattacks, eliminate in the end his advantage in numbers. The
effects of this elimination would be that his power in any event
of resuming the offensive would progressively disappear, and that,
as the process proceeded, the advantage in numbers would pass to
the Allied side, and eventually make an Allied offensive both
practicable and successful.
Now it is quite certain on the events which have since taken place
that the German Headquarters Staff clearly recognised these
possibilities. Not only is that shown by the heavy losses they
incurred in the wedging battles, which lasted from the middle of
November to early part of February, but in the adoption of tactics,
designed, as their relative strength in numbers fell, to economise
their force. In short, not being able to change the features of the
situation, they made a virtue of necessity by trying as far as they
could to convert their front into an impregnable barrier of defence,
and concurrently doing their utmost to increase the Allies' losses.
Evidently both these means were calculated to delay the accomplishment
of the Allied scheme. If at the same time there could be set on foot
in the Allied countries the legend, not that the Germans had failed
in their great invasion project, as they had, but that they were
successfully withstanding an attempt of the Allied forces to push them
back, then public opinion in the Allied countries might grow tired of
the struggle, and at the finish withdraw from it, leaving Belgium in
German hands. The Government of Germany well knew that in England more
especially, where the misconception of military operations was
profound, operations would be estimated on the, for the immediate
purposes of this campaign, entirely false basis of a movement of
the front from place to place. The object of the Allied commanders,
and the conditions of a successful Allied advance would, in all
probability, be alike misunderstood. Experience has shown that these
calculations were only too well founded. The nearer the Allied scheme
approached to accomplishment, the more energetic became the efforts to
propagate the notion that it was a failure.
The German plan of defence, which may be dealt with first, had then,
apart from political calculations, two main features. The first was
the fortification along their front of advantageous points in such a
manner that they could be permanently held. The second was an
elaboration of the tactics of trench warfare.
From Ypres southwards to the spur of Notre Dame de Lorette near Arras
the German front followed approximately the "inland coastline" already
spoken of, and the only break in it geographically of any consequence
was the valley of the Lys, the flat stretch lying between the hills
south of Ypres and the spur at Aubers south-west of Lille.
On the promontories of this "coastline" the enemy proceeded to fortify
themselves. They did the same at other points along their front and
notably on the ridge across Champagne, and on the hills to the
south-east of Verdun, as well as on the eastern spurs of the Vosges.
Simultaneously in the trench warfare they revived grenade throwing,
and the use of the trench mortar, expedients which had disappeared
from military operations for 200 years. These devices were accompanied
by systematic sniping. As skill with the rifle is not a strong point
with the German army, a prismatic telescopic sight was invented. This
reduced sniping practically to a mechanical trick. If the object fired
at was centred on the prism a hit became a certainty--wind permitting.
Sapping and mining were also persistently carried on, and the front
became for mile after mile a monstrous network of pits, barbed-wire
entanglements, electric alarm traps, and obstacles of every sort. In
short, what the Germans lacked in comprehensive military skill they
made up in laborious detail.
If now we glance at the activity of the Allies, we find that the
hardest part of their work was that of solidifying their line in order
in the first place to make it invulnerable against German
counter-attacks. Those counter-attacks were, as we have seen, to begin
with heavy. In support of them the advantage which the enemy then had
in howitzers was utilised to the full. During the first weeks of the
winter campaign the Allied troops had to hold trenches for the most
part hastily made in the stress of battle, and hold them both against
this prodigal bombardment with heavy German shells, and through bitter
conditions of wet and cold. To reach their trenches along the flooded
area in Flanders men had in some places to cross stretches of country
on planks, the targets in coming and going for the enemy's shrapnel.
The weather, too, was sometimes so severe that the water in the men's
drinking bottles turned to ice. The trenches were frozen puddles.
Writing at this time the French "Eye Witness" said:
From the sea to the Lys the operations to the north of the Lys
have become terribly difficult. The liquid and cold mud from which
the men suffered invaded the breeches of the guns, so that they
could no longer fire, and they had to fight with the butt-end of
their rifles and with their fists. Our soldiers, according to the
expression of one of their leaders, have become blocks of mud. The
attempt has been successful to provide for them when they leave
the trenches a proper bath and a complete change of linen, which
they appreciate very much. Their unalterable good humour enables
them to endure with the best possible grace the rough life which
is imposed upon them.
A vivid impression of Flanders at this time (the end of November) has
been recorded by Alice and Claude Askew, who as members of Dr. Hector
Munro's Red Cross Ambulance Corps went to the front to distribute
woollen comforters, cigarettes, coffee and chocolates:
Up at Furnes the cold was terrible. The picturesque old town has
been shelled twice, but as yet no great damage has been done, and
the doctors and nurses working up at the Field Hospital--once a
college--are hoping that their hospital may be spared, for this
hospital, with its hundred beds and capable band of workers, is
doing splendid service.
The patients are so cheerful. Those who are well enough smoke--how
the soldier loves his "fag" and how lightly they take their
injuries.
* * * * *
Mr. Seeker was operating in the theatre--a patient had just been
brought in from the trenches and immediate operation was
necessary. A few oil lamps supplied the only illumination; the
room was in complete shadow save round the operating table.
Outside the wind howled and moaned, and firing could be heard in
the distance. We felt very close to the naked heart of war.
The drive back to Dunkirk a few hours later was a strange drive.
The road has been broken and battered by the passing of countless
military wagons, trodden down by marching feet, it has become a
furrow, the plough of war has been over it. On either side gaunt
trees lift up gaunt boughs; their branches look like skeleton
fingers pointing to the sky, and they look like grim sentinels;
the water is half frozen in the dykes.
The whole thing seems unreal--the torn road--those blurred lines
of men--the distant gun fire. The effect is that of a dream. We
have seen the grim and terrible side of war--the bleeding side.
The moon--a pale sickle moon--shines out of the dun sky--the cold
becomes more intense every moment--more freezing.
By continuous labour, however, the entrenchment system developed bit
by bit into a vast underground military town. The fire trenches were
connected by zigzag communication ways with supports trenches in the
rear. From the latter opened the "dug-outs" which were the dwelling
places of the men on trench duty. Made and furnished out of the
wreckage of towns and villages, some of the "dug-outs" had doors and
windows. Here and there the appointments of these underground quarters
included desks and long-case clocks. Trench pumps were installed, and
the troops provided with sheepskin coats. Entrenchment kitchens, too,
were fitted up. The work of improvement went on in fact without a
pause.
By day, where fighting was not in progress, these mazes of trenches
seemed unutterable desolations of deserted silence. No sign of
movement betrayed the thousands who were in them. At night, however,
they were scenes of incessant activity. It was by night that
entanglements were laid and defences strengthened. At night took place
the changes and reliefs. From their billets in the cellars or lower
stories of a ruined farm, the smashed windows barricaded with planks
and sandbags, or from quarters in some deserted village or abandoned
works, the reliefs moved across a country totally without lights, felt
their way along lanes and roads pitted into craters by shells;
navigated on planks and temporary bridges, ditches, streams, and
canals; or crept under the shelter of partly demolished walls, until
the rear communication ways into the trenches were reached. In this
manner nearly all movements close to the firing line was made.
Acknowledgment too high can never be paid to the devotion and valour
of the men who, through the weeks of an unusually dreary and bitter
winter, both withstood the fury of the German attacks, and patiently
day by day and night by night, solidified the barrier which was to
consummate the enemy's ruin. Dangerous though it was the work may well
have appeared unheroic. To some interpreters of public opinion at home
it did appear unheroic. The soldiers' devotion, however, is a devotion
to duty. This was, in his dispatch of November 20, well expressed by
the British "Eye Witness."
It is difficult to do justice amid comfortable surroundings to the
fortitude of those who day and night support the rigour of life in
the trenches. It is true that everything is done for them which
foresight and experience can suggest. It is true that by universal
admission the rations are unlimited in amount and excellent in
quality. But no attention and care can make trench life in winter
anything but an extreme test of soldierly fortitude.
It is a small thing that it is dangerous, for danger is the
condition of a soldier's life; but it is monotonous, it is damp,
it is insanitary, it is intolerably cold, and it is a strain upon
the nerves. This war, more than any other, is one of unrecorded
heroisms.
Not only the British army, however, but the French and the Belgian
armies had unshaken confidence in their leaders, and with good reason.
In time the entrenched front became completely organised, a system of
settled communications linked up by telephone wires in every
direction. The French trenches formed a seemingly endless labyrinth.
In Flanders along the Yser rats, driven out of their usual haunts and
starving in the desolated country, took up their abode with the men in
the dug-outs, and became domesticated and friendly.
To many whose ideas of war remained based on the marches and
counter-marches of earlier campaigns it was puzzling to see armies of
hitherto unheard of magnitude thus fortifying themselves against each
other. Taken together the combatants numbered millions. Their diggings
stretched over more than 500 miles of country. A vast amount of labour
is needed to complete a modern entrenched post, yet such posts were to
be counted along these lines not by thousands but by tens of
thousands.
It has been stated that in face of the hugely multiplied power of
modern firearms, and of the destructiveness of modern high explosives
as used now in war, there is no alternative save for the fighting
hosts of the present day to dig themselves in, and thus to remain
locked in a deadly embrace. The explanation is crude. Like the
astonishment called forth by this spectacle because it was
unprecedented, the idea that all this represented merely a "deadlock"
sprang from failure to grasp the realities of this gigantic struggle.
At the back of every operation of war there is a strategic purpose. In
this instance, so far from there being no strategy in the so-called
impasse, it was wholly dictated by strategy. So far from there being
no manoeuvres in it, it was nothing else, from the beginning, but a
mighty series of manoeuvres. They were modern manoeuvres, not ancient,
but that is all.
To every student of this campaign with a knowledge of military
affairs, the strategy on both sides which brought about this situation
has been clear. Let it be remembered that entrenchment economises
force. The proposition presented to General Joffre was that of
arresting and breaking the offensive of an enemy not only superior in
numbers, but with traditions which led him to cling to and cherish the
offensive as his chief instrument of victory. General Joffre therefore
knew that the Germans would struggle to regain the offensive until
their power to do so became too exhausted to keep up the effort. He
knew further that in the position in which he had succeeded in placing
them they must make that effort at a disadvantage, and that that
advantage must grow rather than diminish. For these reasons it was
that the labour of entrenching was undertaken by the Allied troops. No
part of that labour was thrown away.
In enclosing the Germans in an entrenched front he so economised his
force that it became, though less in number, equal to that of the
enemy in power. The simple proof of that is that the Germans were
unable to break the barrier. They did their utmost to break it. Their
success or their failure in the war depended upon being able to break
it. They sacrificed at Ypres, on the Yser, and in later battles more
than half a million of men in the endeavour to break it. It remained
firm against every assault.
Nor was the loss of life the only loss. These battles has led to a
vast, and as it proved, wasteful expenditure of ammunition. Since the
barrier could not be broken, the question now was how to render the
envelopment scheme abortive by inflicting on the Allies losses which
would delay or make impossible the offensive on the part of the Allies
to which the scheme was designed to lead. Expedients to that end had
to be devised more effective than the fire of heavy howitzers. They
must also be less costly expedients. Thus hand grenades and trench
mortars reappeared, and mechanical sniping. The reserve of shells with
which Germany had begun the war was used up. Such munitions had to be
employed more sparingly. Besides, owing to the scarcity of copper
resulting from the British naval blockade, both the cost and the
difficulty of manufacturing shells had immensely increased.
The German ordinary grenade was nothing more than the small iron bomb
which had been used during the campaigns in Flanders in the
seventeenth century. It was now filled with a charge of guncotton, and
hurled into the hostile trenches by hand. Another variety had attached
to the globe a short iron stump. This enabled the grenade to be stuck
on to the muzzle of a rifle, and fired into the opposing trenches when
the distance was too great to allow of the use of hand bombs. The
trench mortar fired in the same way an iron globular bomb about a foot
in diameter. The bomb was stuck on to the muzzle of the mortar by a
short iron stump projecting from it, and filled with a heavy charge of
nitro-glycerine, was fired at a high angle, so that it might fall
right into a hostile trench and by the tremendous force of the
explosion wreck it.
These projectiles, grenades and mortar bombs, were now turned out of
the German arsenals in huge quantities. They were both much cheaper
than shells, always a primary consideration in German warfare, and the
mortar bombs required no copper driving bands.
In addition to these expedients mines were resorted to. Several blind
saps--tunnels slightly below the surface--driven towards a hostile
line of trench would be connected by a cross tunnel, and in this just
in front of the trench the mines would be laid. At the moment chosen
for attack they would be exploded from the German position by
electricity, and a rush made to occupy the craters so formed. Yet
another ruse was to drive an open sap--a narrow zigzag cutting--to a
point commanding a hostile trench, and there instal a machine gun. For
daring in these operations military distinctions were freely bestowed,
and it is not surprising that in carrying them out many of the enemy
displayed an audacious cunning.
When, however, we consider that the British and Belgians alike were
much more expert riflemen, and that all three Allies as time went on
steadily emphasised their ascendancy in artillery, the failure of
these efforts of German perseverance to make up for the German want of
military genius, was, it is not difficult to see, inevitable. The
British troops improvised hand grenades out of army jam or beef tins.
In grenade throwing they speedily became expert. Every German device
was countered and improved upon. Parties engaged in mining met each
other underground, and fought it out hand to hand. To diminish the
losses arising from rifle and artillery fire, the larger German
operations in this stage of the campaign were their night attacks. In
these night battles the country before plunged in total darkness would
suddenly present the spectacle of flights of star shells and flares,
mingled with the play of searchlights, and the lurid flash of guns and
rifles.
Attack and counter-attack, varied in every interval of clearer weather
by artillery duels, went on during week after week. The lines round
Ypres and to the west of Lille, more especially about La Bassee,
remained among the main scenes of German activity.
Round Ypres the shot-torn and shell-ploughed woods became those
melancholy and unapproachable "zones of the dead" where the German
slain lay unburied, and many of the wounded had been left miserably to
perish.
Frequent allusion has been made (the British "Eye Witness" wrote
on November 20) to the losses of the enemy. Round Ypres we are
continually finding fresh evidence of the slaughter inflicted. On
November 15 one of our battalions, upon advancing discovered a
German trench manned by seventeen corpses, while there were
forty-nine more in a house close by. Next day a patrol discovered
sixty dead in front of one trench, and fifty opposite another. In
fact, all the farms and cottages to our front are charnel houses.
The significance of such small numbers lies only in the fact that
they represent the killed in a very small area.
According to prisoners the German attempts to take Ypres have
proved costly. One man stated that there were only fifteen
survivors out of his platoon which went into action fifty strong;
another reported that of 250 men who advanced with him only
nineteen returned.
It is believed that one Bavarian regiment, 3,000 strong, which
left Bavaria for the front on October 19, had only 1,200 men left
before the attack made along the Menin-Ypres road on November 14,
when it again suffered severely. The plight of some of the units
of the new formations is even worse. One regiment of reserve corps
having but 600 men out of 3,000.
If the period since the beginning of the war is considered the
numbers are greater. For instance of the 15th Corps one regiment
has lost sixty officers and 2,560 men, and another has lost 3,000
men. These figures include casualties of every kind--killed,
wounded, and missing.
By dint of persistence the Germans succeeded in establishing on the
west bank of the Yser a bridgehead at a point known as the Ferryman's
Hut. They lost it, however, on November 27.
The action (says the French official account) was particularly
brilliant. Several German trenches were carried in succession.
The operation was one of the most arduous and difficult tasks
which our troops have accomplished. The object was to drive from
the left bank of the Yser the Germans who had succeeded in
establishing themselves there for a length of over a mile.
The difficulty in the attack lay in the fact that the canal was
bordered by marshes which could not be crossed, and the only way
of approach was along the bank and on a very narrow front.
Moreover, the right bank, where the enemy had taken up his
position, dominated the left bank, which was exposed to a
machine-gun fire. The assault on the Ferryman's hut was delivered
by a detachment of 100 volunteers from the African battalions.
Our men fought knee deep in the water in a downpour of rain. The
Germans displayed the greatest courage, and our men had to kill
one officer and fifteen men who refused to surrender.
In the ferryman's hut itself, which had been turned into a little
fort, there were fifty-three lying dead, two of whom were
officers. They had been killed by our 8·6 shells. Close by was the
wreckage of their searchlight and their machine guns.
Across the Yser the Germans had tried to push their outposts westward
as far as possible. Mr. A. Beaumont, special correspondent of the
_Daily Telegraph_, gathered the story of one of these expeditions
which reached a ruined village:
Amid the ruins the church alone was standing, though the belfry
was demolished. A score of Germans on outpost duty had taken
shelter in the church for the night. They found the sexton, an old
man of more than seventy, and mercilessly flogged him because he
would not or could not tell them where the enemy was.
He crept out into the fields, found a French company concealed in
some trenches, and told them his story. There was an instant rush
of picked men into the village, the church was surrounded. The
Germans taken by surprise hid in the choir, but to light up the
place the old sexton found a bundle of straw, to which he set
fire. As he held it up the Germans were slain on the spot.
The efforts of the Germans were directed not only towards gaining a
crossing over the Yser, but to driving the British out of the valley
of the Lys. This it has already been noted was geographically a weak
point in their front. Down the valley of the Lys, besides, lay the
railway junctions of Menin and Courtrai, vital to the maintenance of
their positions alike between the Lys and the sea, and from Lille to
Arras. South of Ypres they had at length succeeded by sapping and
mining in getting possession of the Kleine Zillebeke ridge, though
they had been unable to capture it in the battle. At the same time
they tried to push the British line westward from Lille. Repeated and
desperate attacks were made on the British posts at Cuinchy and
Givenchy. Cuinchy they captured. Later, however, the place was
retaken, and with it a large depôt of German bombs and hand grenades.
On January 25 the enemy, advancing from La Bassee in two powerful
columns, made a furious effort to take Givenchy. Five assaults were
delivered against that place. The first attack was in the nature of a
surprise.
Unexpectedly in the cold and misty dawn the mass, brought up with
secrecy during the night, surged from the German trenches. The British
trenches were not more than 100 yards away. Across this space, ankle
deep in mud, the attackers ploughed their way despite severe losses.
The British trenches were taken, though not without a stiff fight. The
resistance enabled the British supports to be called out. Charging
into Givenchy village the Germans found themselves confronted at the
end of the main street by these additional troops. The fire lasted
only seconds. Without further ado the British dashed in with the
bayonet. The clash was desperate. It was a melee of man to man. Not
only bayonets were used. Many Germans were knocked out by British
soldiers' fists. The remnant who could not get out of the village in
time sought refuge in the houses. They were hunted out. One man broke
into a house where eight Germans had sheltered themselves, bayonetted
four, and made prisoners of the others.
With the defeat of this attack the British regained the trenches lost.
The later attacks of the enemy never got home. A determined struggle
was all this while being waged to the south of La Bassee in the area
of the brickfields. At one point the Germans broke through the British
line. Early in the afternoon, however, a combined French and British
counter-attack drove them back. Here, too, there was hand to hand
fighting.
From October onwards La Bassee remained one of the hottest corners in
the war. Perched on an inland promontory which had been elaborately
fortified, the German front here formed a salient. It was an important
part of their plan to pierce the Allied front at this point. To carry
out that plan they made repeated attacks in great force. That these
attacks failed was due to the remarkable fighting qualities of the
troops opposed to them. About this struggle, of vital importance in
its bearing on the campaign, many stories have been told. The two
following, both authentic, illustrate the spirit which inspired our
men, British and Indians alike:
In one trench which had become in the course of the fighting more
or less isolated, forty of our men continued to hold firm until
every one of them was either killed or wounded. Eventually there
were only three left capable of firing, and these three continued
to hold the enemy at bay. In the meantime word had been brought to
those in rear that their ammunition was nearly exhausted, and
seven men, the strongest available, were selected to bring up as
much ammunition as they could carry. These latter found the three
wounded survivors still standing amid the bodies of their dead and
disabled comrades and still firing steadily. The support, slender
as it was, came in the nick of time, for at that moment the
Germans launched another assault, which, like the previous ones,
was beaten off, and the position saved.
A very striking instance of resource and presence of mind was
shown by a private (Indian) since been promoted from the ranks in
recognition of his services. He and another were instructed to
creep out of the trench they were defending in order to make
observations of a German trench 200 yards away. They advanced,
creeping in the dark, with about forty yards laterally between
them. When they had covered half the distance a brilliant German
searchlight was suddenly flung over the space which divided the
two trenches. The flood of light left one of the two fully
exposed, while just avoiding with its outer rim his companion.
Concealment was useless for the man so exposed, and he was
quick-witted enough to realise that no ordinary resource would
save his life. He at once rose to his feet, and, in view of the
British trench, advanced, salaaming to the German trench. Its
occupants, taken aback by so unusual an advance, ceased fire. He
still advanced, and, approaching quite close to the trench, was
allowed after some dumb show to enter. A dialogue followed. The
Germans, anxious to define his status, mentioned several Indian
nationalities. He shook his head until the word Mussulman was
mentioned. Then he nodded vigorously. A moment later his
questioners mentioned the British. He drew his hand across his
throat with a lively gesture of disgust. The Germans, encouraged
by this indication, gave him some rations and a blanket.
He spent the night with them. Next morning, by the use of his
fingers, he indicated to a superior officer who had been sent for
to deal with so novel a case, that there were twenty-five other
Mussulman in his trench, whom, if released, he could certainly
bring in. The Germans, completely deceived, gave him a final cup
of coffee, and set him on this promising errand. He rejoined his
friends, who had long since given him up, with a report of far
more than local interest.
These acts of valour are but typical of a thousand like them. By such
devotion to the soldier's ideal--his duty--by a courage, a morale, and
a disciplined fortitude which have never been surpassed in any armies
at any time, the first and essential part, the foundation, of the
Allied generals' scheme, the most brilliant and daring stroke of
strategy till then attempted in war, was accomplished. The Germans
were held as in a vice.