PART V

THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS

I

BREAKING THE SALIENT

JULY 31

The battle which all the world has been expecting has begun. After weeks

of intense bombardment, not on our side only, causing, as we know, grave

alarm throughout Germany and anxiety in our enemy's command, we launched

a great attack this morning on a front stretching, roughly, from the

River Lys to Boesinghe. We have gained ground everywhere, and with the

help of French troops, who are fighting shoulder to shoulder with our

own men, in the northern part of the line above Boesinghe, we have

captured the enemy's positions across the Yser Canal and thrust him back

from a wide stretch of country between Pilkem and Hollebeke. He is

fighting desperately at various points, with a great weight of artillery

behind him, and has already made strong counter-attacks and flung up his

reserves in order to check this sweeping advance. Many Tanks have gone

forward with our infantry, sometimes in advance and sometimes behind,

according to the plan of action mapped out for them, and have done

better than well against several of the enemy's strong points, where,

for a time, our men were held up by machine-gun fire.

So far our losses are not heavy, and many of these are lightly wounded,

but it is likely that the enemy's resistance will be stronger as the

hours pass, because he realizes the greatness of our menace, and will,

beyond doubt, bring up all the strength he has to save himself from a

complete disaster. During the past few weeks the correspondents in the

field have not even hinted at the approach of the battle that has opened

to-day, though other people have not been so discreet, and the enemy

himself has sounded the alarm. But we have seen many of the preparations

for this terrific adventure in the north, and have counted the days when

all these men we have seen passing along the roads, all these guns, and

the tidal wave of ammunition which has flowed northwards should be ready

for this new conflict, more formidable than any of the fighting which

raged along the lines since April of this year.

I am bound to say that as the days have drawn nearer some of us have

shuddered at the frightful thing growing ripe for history as the

harvests of France have ripened. Poring over maps of this northern

front, and looking across the country from the coast-line and newly

taken hills, like those of Wytschaete, the difficulty of the ground

which our men have to attack has been horribly apparent. Those swamps in

the north around Dixmude, the Yser Canal, which must be bridged under

fire, the low flats of our lines around Ypres, like the well of an

amphitheatre, with the enemy above on the Pilkem Ridge, were so full of

peril for attacking troops that optimism itself might be frightened and

downcast.

As I have written many times lately, the enemy has massed great

gun-power against us, and has poured out fire with unparalleled ferocity

in order to hinder our preparations. Our bombardments were more

terrific, and along the roads were always guns, guns, guns, going up to

increase the relative powers of our own and the German artillery. There

was little doubt that in the long run ours would be overwhelming, but

meanwhile the enemy was strong and destructively inclined. All the time

he was puzzled and nerve-racked, not knowing where our attack would fall

upon him, and he made many raids, mostly unsuccessful, to find out our

plans, while we raided him day and night to see what strength he was

massing to meet us. Russia lured him, and in spite of our threat he has

sent off some six divisions, I believe, to his Eastern theatre of

operations, but at the same time he relieved many of the divisions which

had been broken by our fire in the lines, replacing them by his freshest

and strongest troops. They did not remain fresh, even after only a few

hours, for our guns caught some of them during their reliefs, as late as

two o'clock this morning in the case of the 52nd Reserve Division, so

that they stepped straight into an inferno of fire.

[Illustration: The Passchendaele ridge]

The weather was against us, as many times before a battle. Yesterday it

was a day of rain and heavy, sodden clouds, so that observation was

almost impossible for our flying men and kite-balloons, and our

artillery was greatly hampered. The night was dark and moist, but luck

was with us so far that a threatening storm did not break, and our men

kept dry. The darkness was in our favour, and the assaulting troops were

able to form up for attack very close to the enemy's lines--lines of

shell-craters in fields of craters from which our storms of fire had

swept away all trenches, all buildings, and all trees. The enemy held

these forward positions lightly by small groups of men, who knew

themselves to be doomed, and waited for that doom in their pits like

animals in death-traps. In their second-line defences, less damaged, but

awful enough in wreckage of earthworks, the enemy was in greater

strength, and from these positions flares went up all through the

night, giving a blurred white light along the barriers of mist, and

rising high into the cloudy sky. Scores of thousands of our men, lying

on the wet earth in puddles and mud-holes, watched those flares and

hoped they would not be revealed before the second when they would have

to rise and go forward to meet their luck. They lay there silently,

never stirring, nor coughing, nor making any rattle of arms, while

German shells passed over them or smashed among them, killing and

wounding some of those who lay close. Enemy aircraft came out in the

night bolder than by day, since they have been chased and attacked and

destroyed in great numbers by British flying men, determined to get the

mastery of the air, and to blind the enemy's eyes before this battle,

and beyond any doubt successful as far as this day goes. The night-birds

swooped over places where they thought our batteries were hidden and

dropped bombs, but as they could see nothing their aim was bad, and they

did no important damage, if any at all. So the hours of the night crept

by, enormously long to all those men of ours waiting for the call to

rise and go. Our gun-fire had never stopped for weeks in its steady

slogging hammering, but shortly after half-past three this ordinary

noise of artillery quickened and intensified to a monstrous and

overwhelming tumult. It was so loud that twelve miles behind the lines

big houses moved and were shaken with a great trembling. People farther

away than that awakened with fear and went to their windows and stared

out into the darkness, and saw wild fireballs in the sky, and knew that

men were fighting and dying in Flanders in one of the great battles of

the world. This morning I watched the fires of this battle from an

observation-post on the edge of the salient. I knew what I should have

seen if there had been any light, for I saw those places a day or two

ago from the same spot. I should have seen the ghost-city of Ypres, and

the curve of the salient round by Pilkem, St.-Julien, and Zillebeke, and

then Warneton and Houthem below the Messines Ridge. But now there was no

light, but hundreds of sharp red flashes out of deep gulfs of black

smoke and black mist. The red flashes were from our forward batteries

and heavy guns, and over all this battlefield, where hundreds of

thousands of men were at death-grips, the heavy, smoke-laden vapours of

battle and of morning fog swirled and writhed between clumps of trees

and across the familiar places of death round Ypres, hiding everything

and great masses of men. The drum-fire of the guns never slackened for

hours. At nine o'clock in the morning it beat over the countryside with

the same rafale of terror as it had started before four o'clock.

Strangely above this hammering and thundering of two thousand guns or

more of ours, answered by the enemy's barrage, railway whistles screamed

from trains taking up more shells, and always more shells, to the very

edge of the fighting-lines, and in between the massed batteries, using

them as hard as they could be unloaded.

Over at Warneton and Oostaverne, in the valley below the Messines Ridge,

the enemy was pouring fire along our line, shells of the heaviest

calibre, which burst monstrously, and raised great pillars of white

smoke. It was a valley of death there, and our men were in it, and

fighting for the slopes beyond.

It is a battle, so far, of English, Scottish, and Welsh troops, with

some of the Anzacs--New-Zealanders as well as Australians--and all along

the line they have fought hard and with good success over ground as

difficult as any that has ever been a battlefield, because of the canal

and the swamps and the hollow cup of the Ypres area, with the enemy on

the rim of it.

Among the battalions who fought hardest were the Liverpools, the South

and North Lancashires, the Liverpool Scottish and Liverpool Irish, the

Lancashire Fusiliers, Lancashire Regiment, the King's Royal Rifles, West

Kents, Surreys, Durham Light Infantry, the Cheshires, Warwicks,

Staffords, Sussex, Wiltshires and Somersets, the Royal Irish Rifles, the

Black Watch, Camerons, Gordons and Royal Scots, the Welsh battalions,

and the Guards. From north to south the Divisions engaged were the

Guards, the 38th (Welsh), the 51st (Highland), the 39th, the 55th, the

15th (Scottish), the 8th, 30th, 41st, 19th, and Anzacs on the extreme

right.

One can always tell from the walking wounded whether things are going

ill or well. At least, they know the fire they have had against them,

and the ease or trouble with which they have taken certain ground, and

the measure of their sufferings. So now, with an awful doubt in my mind,

because of the darkness and the anxiety of men conducting the battle

over the signal-lines, and that awful drum-fire beating into one's ears

and soul, I was glad to get first real tidings from long streams of

lightly wounded fellows coming along from the dressing-station. They

were lightly wounded, but pitiful to see, because of the blood that

drenched them--bloody kilts and bloody khaki, and bare arms and chests,

with the cloth cut away from their wounds, and bandaged heads, from

which tired eyes looked out. One would not expect good tidings from men

who had suffered like these, but they spoke of a good day, of good

progress, of many prisoners, and of an enemy routed and surrendering. "A

good day"--that was their first phrase, though for them it meant the

loss of a limb or sharp pain anyhow, and remembrance of the blood and

filth of battle. They were eager to describe their fighting, and I saw

again the pride of men in the courage of their comrades, forgetting

their own, which had been as great. These lads told me how they lay out

in the night, and how the German planes came over, bombing them; how

they rose and went forward in attack. The enemy was quickly turned out

of his front line of shell-craters, and there were not many of him

there. In the second line he was thickly massed, but some of them threw

up their hands at once, crying "Mercy!"

The Scots came up against a strong emplacement fitted with machine-guns,

and here the German gunners fired rapidly, so that our men were checked.

They rushed the place, and at the last a German hoisted a white flag,

but even then others fired, and I met one young Scot to-day who had a

comrade killed after that sign of surrender.

Beyond Ypres, on the way to Menin, there was a big tunnel where our

English lads expected trouble, as it could hold hundreds of Germans. But

when they came to the tunnel and ferreted down it they only found

forty-one men, who surrendered at once. Some of the enemy's troops were

quite young boys of the 1918 class, but most of them were older and

tougher men. The success of the day is shared by English troops,

including the Guards, with the Welsh, who fought abreast of them with

equal heroism, and with Scottish and Anzacs. The Welsh have wiped out

the most famous German regiment of the Third Guards Division, known as

the "Cockchafers."

Fighting with us, the French troops kept pace with their usual

gallantry, carrying all their objectives according to the time-table.

In one great and irresistible assault, these troops of two nations swept

across the enemy lines and have reached heights on the Pilkem Ridge, as

I hope to tell to-morrow in greater detail. For the day, it is enough to

say that our success has been as great as we dared to hope.

II

FROM PILKEM RIDGE TO HOLLEBEKE

AUGUST 1

The weather is still abominable. Heavy rain-storms have water-logged the

battlefields, and there are dense mists over all the countryside. It is

bad for fighting on land, and worse for fighting in the air. But

fighting goes on. Yesterday the enemy made strong counter-attacks at

many points of our new line, and especially to the north of Frezenberg,

west of Zonnebeke, where, at three in the afternoon, his infantry

advanced upon the 15th (Scottish) Division after a violent bombardment.

They were swept down by artillery and machine-gun fire. At five o'clock

they came on again, moving suddenly out of a dense smoke-barrage, and

gained 300 yards of ground. Our guns poured shells on to this ground,

and at nine o'clock last night our men went behind the barrage and

regained this position. The enemy's gun-fire is intense over a great

part of the country taken from him, and his long-range guns are shelling

far behind the lines. Generally the situation is exactly the same as it

stood at the end of the first day of battle, when our advance was firm

and complete at the northern end of the attack, where the Guards and the

Welsh had swept over the Pilkem Ridge without great trouble, and where

farther south the troops who had advanced beyond St.-Julien had to fall

back a little, partly under the pressure of counter-attacks, but chiefly

in order to get into line with their right wing, which had been engaged

in the hardest fighting, and had not reached the same depth of country.

That was in the wooded ground south-east of the salient, where the enemy

had a large number of machine-guns in the cover of Glencorse Copse,

Inverness Wood, and Shrewsbury Forest, and repulsed the very desperate

attacks of the 8th and 30th Divisions.

Outside one copse there was a very strong position, known to our men as

Stirling Castle. It was once a French chateau, surrounded by a park and

outbuildings, long destroyed but made into a strong point with concrete

emplacements. Rapid machine-gun fire poured out of this place against

our men, but it was captured after several rushes. The trenches in front

of it were also gained by the Royal Scots and Durham Light Infantry of

the 8th Division. Later a counter-attack was launched against them by

the Germans of one of the young classes, and here at least these lads,

who do not seem to have fought very well elsewhere, came on like tiger

cubs and gained some of their trenches back. From all the woods in this

neighbourhood there was an incessant sweep of machine-gun bullets, and,

as I have already said in earlier dispatches, many small counter-attacks

were launched from them, without much success, but strong enough to make

progress difficult to our men, now that the weather had set in badly, so

that our guns were hampered by lack of aeroplane observation. All

through the night and yesterday the enemy's barrage-fire was fiercely

sustained, and our men dug themselves in as best they could, and took

cover in shell-holes.

Hard fighting had happened that day southward and on the right of our

attack past Hollebeke and the line between Oostaverne and Warneton.

Opposite Hollebeke there were English county troops of the 41st

Division--West Kents, Surreys, Hampshires, Gloucesters, Oxford and

Bucks, and Durham Light Infantry--and they went "over the bags," as they

call it, in almost pitch-darkness, like the men on either side of them.

This was the reason of an accident which was almost a tragedy. As they

went forward over that shell-destroyed ground they left behind them

Germans hidden in shell-pits, who sniped our men in the rear, and picked

off many of them until later in the day they were routed out. Beyond

this open country the ruins of Hollebeke were full of cellars, made into

strong dug-outs, and crowded with Germans who would not come out. They

will never come out. Our men flung bombs down into these underground

places, and passed on to the line where they stay on the east side of

the village. At a little bit of ruin there was some delay because of the

machine-guns there, and for some time it was uncertain whether we held

the place, as a messenger sent down to report its capture was killed on

his journey. Along the line of the railway here there was a row of

concrete dug-outs, and a bomber of the Middlesex went up alone climbed

the embankment, and dropped bombs through their ventilator. So there was

not much trouble from them.

In some of the dug-outs in this neighbourhood about a score of bottles

of champagne were found, for a feast by German officers. But our

soldiers drank it; indeed, one--a Canadian fellow--drank a whole bottle

to himself, being very thirsty, and after that he found one of the

officers for whom the drink was meant, but for the fortune of war. He

was lying on his truckle bed below ground, hoping, perhaps, to be asleep

when death should come to him out of the tornado of fire which had swept

over him for days. "Come out of that," shouted the Canadian, and then,

having left his arms behind him, dragged him out by the hair.

South of Hollebeke three little rivers run. One of them is the

Rozebeek, and another is the Wambeek, and the third is the

Blawepoortbeek, and there is a small ridge between each of them, and

a copse between them. Two bodies of English troops of the 19th and 37th

Divisions--Lancashires, Cheshires, Warwicks, Staffords and Wiltshires,

Somersets, Bedfords, South Lancashires, and Royal Fusiliers--attacked

these positions, those on the right making their assault four hours

later than those on the left. They had already pushed out by small raids

and rushes half-way to the copse before the attack, and when the signal

to go forward came they made the rest of the way very quickly, so that

the copse fell. The enemy here fought hard, and had cover in concrete

emplacements, with underground entries. Beyond he held out stoutly under

machine-gun and rifle barrage. Meanwhile, on the extreme right of attack

were the Australians and New-Zealanders in the ground below Warneton. It

was difficult country. The enemy had gone to great trouble to wire his

hedges and camouflage the shell-holes with wire netting, below which he

hid machine-guns and snipers. The village of La Basseville, like all the

places we call villages, a mere huddle of broken bricks, had already

been taken once and lost in a counter-attack. Now it was the

New-Zealanders who took it. The same thing happened as at Hollebeke. The

enemy refused to leave his dug-outs and was bombed to death in them.

"Can't make any use of the cellars," came a message through, "as they

are choked with dead." Not far from La Basseville was the stump of an

old windmill standing lonely on a knoll. Because of its observation it

was important to get, and it was the Australians who captured it after

hard fighting. At 9.30 in the morning the Germans came out in waves

across the Warneton-Gapaard road and so encircled the windmill that the

Australians had to draw back and leave it. But at midnight, after it had

been shelled for several hours, they went back, routed out the garrison,

and now hold it again. At half-past three the same afternoon the

New-Zealanders were counter-attacked at La Basseville, but the Germans

were beaten back.

So the fortunes of the day were alternating, but at the end of it the

position became clear. We had made and held all the ground that we

intended. Then our men dug in, and the rain, which had begun on the

afternoon of the battle, grew heavier. It has rained ever since. The

ground is all a swamp and the shell-holes are ponds. The Army lies wet,

and all the foulness of Flemish weather in winter is upon them in

August. Through the mist the enemy's shell-fire never ceases, and our

guns reply with long bombardments and steady barrages. The walking

wounded come back over miles of churned-up ground, dodging the shells,

and when they get down to the clearing-stations they are caked with mud

and very weary. War is not a blithe business, even when the sun is

shining. In this gloom and filth it is more miserable.

The weather has been bad for flying men. Impossible, one would say,

looking up at the low-lying storm-clouds. Yet on the day of battle our

airmen went out and, baulked of artillery work, flew over the enemy's

country and spread terror there. It was a flying terror which, when told

in the barest words of these boys, is stranger than old mythical stories

of flying horses and dragons on the wing. Imagine one of these winged

engines swooping low over one as one walks along a road far from the

lines, and above the roar of its engine the sharp crack of a revolver

with a bullet meant for you. Imagine one of these birds hovering above

one's cottage roof and firing machine-gun bullets down the chimneys, and

then flying round to the front and squirting a stream of lead through

the open door, and, after leaving death inside, soaring up into a

rain-cloud. That, and much more, was done on July 31. These airmen of

ours attacked the German troops on the march and scattered them, dropped

bombs on their camps and aerodromes, flying so low that their wheels

skirted the grass, and were seldom more than a few yards above the

tree-tops. The narrative of one man begins with his flight over the

enemy's country, crossing canals and roads as low as thirty feet, until

he came to a German aerodrome. The men there paid no attention, thinking

this low flier was one of theirs, until a bomb fell on the first shed.

Then they ran in all directions panic-stricken. The English pilot

skimmed round to the other side of the shed and played his machine-gun

through the open doors, then soared a little and gave the second shed a

bomb. He flew round and released a bomb for the third shed, but failed

with the fourth, because the handle did not act quickly enough. So he

spilt his bomb between the shed and a railway train standing still

there. By this time a German machine-gun had got to work upon him, but

he swooped right down upon it, scattering the gunners with a burst of

bullets, and flew across the sheds again, firing into them at twenty

feet. His ammunition drum was exhausted, and he went up to a cloud to

change, and then came down actually to the ground, tripping across the

grass on dancing wheels, and firing into the sheds where the mechanics

were cowering. Then he tired of this aerodrome and flew off, overtaking

two German officers on horses. He dived at them and the horses bolted.

He came upon a column of 200 troops on the march, and swooped above

their heads with a stream of bullets until they ran into hedges and

ditches. He was using a lot of ammunition, and went up into a cloud to

fix another drum. Two German aeroplanes came up to search for him, and

he flew to meet them and drove one down so that it crashed to earth.

German soldiers gathered round it, and our fellow came down to them and

fired into their crowd. A little later he flew over a passenger train

and pattered bullets through its windows, and then, having no more

ammunition, went home.

There was a boy of eighteen in one of our aerodromes the night before

the battle, and he was very glum because he was not allowed to go across

the German lines next day on account of his age and inexperience. After

many pleadings he came to his squadron commander at night in his pyjamas

and said, "Look here, sir, can't I go?" So he was allowed to go, and set

out in company with another pilot in another machine. But he soon was

alone, because he missed the other man in a rain-storm. His first

adventure was with a German motor-car with two officers. He gave chase,

saw it turn into side roads, and followed. Then he came low and used his

machine-gun. One of the officers fired an automatic pistol at him, so

our boy thought that a good challenge and, leaving go of his

machine-gun, pulled out his own revolver, and there was the strangest

duel between a boy in the air and a man in a car. The aeroplane was

fifty feet high then, but dropped to twenty just as the car pulled up

outside a house. The young pilot shot past, but turned and saw the body

of one officer being dragged indoors. He swooped over the house and

fired his machine-gun into it, and then sent a Very-light into the car,

hoping to set it on fire. Presently he was attacked by a bombardment

from machine-guns, "Archies," and light rockets, so he rose high and

took cover in the clouds. But it was not the last episode of his day

out. He saw some infantry crossing a wooden bridge and dived at them

with rapid bursts of machine-gun fire. They ran like rabbits from a

shot-gun, and when he came round again he saw four or five dead lying on

the bridge. From the ditches men fired at him with rifles, so he stooped

low and strafed them, and then went home quite pleased with himself.

There were scores of flying men who did these things. The pilots of two

units alone flew an aggregate of 396 hours 25 minutes, and fired 11,258

rounds of machine-gun bullets at ground targets, to say nothing of

Very-lights. Those machines were not out in France for exhibition

purposes, as gentlemen now abed in England are pleased to think. All

this sounds romantic, and certainly there is the romance of youthful

courage and fearless spirit. But apart from human courage, the ugliness

and foulness of war grow greater month by month, and if anybody speaks

to me of war's romance I will tell him of things I have seen to-day and

yesterday and make his blood run cold. For the sum of human agony is

high.

III

THE BEGINNING OF THE RAINS

AUGUST 1

A violent rain-storm began yesterday afternoon after our advance across

the enemy's lines to the Pilkem Ridge and the northern curve of the

Ypres salient, and it now veils all the battlefield in a dense mist. It

impedes the work of our airmen and makes our artillery co-operation with

the infantry more difficult, and adds to the inevitable hardships of our

men out there in the new lines where the ground has been cratered by our

shell-fire into one wild quagmire of pits. To the enemy it is not

altogether a blessing. His airmen get no observation of our movements,

and his gunners do not find their targets, while his poor, wretched

infantry, lying out in open ground or in woods where they get no cover

from our fire, must be in a frightful condition, unable to get food

because of our barrages behind them, and wet to the skin.

The enemy's command has been unable to organize any effective

counter-attacks, and so far has sent forward small bodies of storm

troops moving vaguely to uncertain objectives and smashed by our fire

before they have reached our lines. There were many of these attacks

yesterday. Against the Lancashire regiments of the 15th and the Scots of

the 55th Division they were repeated all through the day, beginning at

three o'clock in the afternoon, and coming again at eleven o'clock,

1.45, and 7.15 this morning.

The Lehr Regiment, whom the Kaiser called his brave Coburgers during the

battles of the Somme, were very severely mauled yesterday and suffered

heavy losses. Both the 235th Division and the Third Guards Division,

engaged by our men on the Steenbeek line, have been shattered. So great

has been the alarm of the enemy at the menace to his line that he has

been rushing up reserves by omnibuses and light railways to the

firing-line over tracks which are shelled by us day and night. The

suffering of all the German troops, huddled together in exposed places,

must be as hideous as anything in the agony of mankind, slashed to bits

by storms of shells and urged forward to counter-attacks which they know

will be their death.

I saw this morning large numbers of prisoners taken during the past

twenty-four hours and just brought in. They had the look of men who have

been through hell. They were drenched with rain, which poured down their

big steel helmets. Their top-boots were full of water, which squelched

out at every step, and their sunken eyes stared out of ash-grey faces

with the look of sick and hunted animals. Many of them had cramp in the

stomach through long exposure and hunger before being captured, and

they groaned loudly and piteously. Many of them wept while being

interrogated, protesting bitterly that they hated the war and wanted

nothing but peace. They have no hope of victory for their country. An

advance into Russia fills them with no new illusions, but seems to them

only a lengthening of the general misery. They do not hide the

sufferings of their people at home, and say that in the towns there is

bitter want, and only in the rural districts is there enough to eat. In

the field they are filled with gloomy forebodings, and live in terror of

our tremendous gun-fire. The older men, non-commissioned officers who

have come back after wounds, and other soldiers of long training, say

that the boys of the young classes who are now filling up the ranks have

no staying power under shell-fire and no fighting spirit. Among the

prisoners I saw to-day I think about a quarter of them, or perhaps a

little less, were these young boys, anaemic-looking lads, with terror in

their eyes. The others were more hardy-looking men, though pale and

worn. It is certain that they made no great fight yesterday when our men

were near them, except when they still had cover in concrete

emplacements. And it is no wonder that all fight has gone out of them.

Some even of our own men were startled and stunned by the terrific blast

of our gun-fire. Some of these men have told me that when they went

forward to get into line before the attack, they had to pass through

mile after mile of our batteries, the heavy guns behind, and gradually

reaching the lighter batteries forward, until they arrived at the

field-guns, so thickly placed that at some points they were actually

wheel to wheel. The night was dark, but there was no darkness among

these batteries. Their flashes lit up their neighbourhood with lurid

torches, blinding the eyes of the troops on the march, and all about the

air rocked with the blast of their fire and the noise was so great that

men were deafened. As the troops went forward for five or six miles to

the assembly-lines flights of shells passed over their heads in a great

rush through space, and it was terrifying even to men like one of those

I met to-day, who has become familiar with the noise of gun-fire since

the early days of Ypres and the fury of the Somme. But the worst came

when the field-guns began their rapid fire before yesterday's dawn. It

was like the fire of machine-guns in its savage sweep, but instead of

machine-gun bullets they were 18-pounder shells, and each report from

thousands of guns was a sharp, ear-splitting crack.

An Irish fellow who described his own adventures to me as he lay wounded

and told his tale as vividly as a great orator, because of the perfect

truth and simplicity of each phrase, said that he and all his comrades

hurried to get away from their own lines when the signal of attack came

in order to escape from the awful noise. They preferred the greater

quietude of the enemy's positions. They went across blasted ground. It

had been harrowed by the sweep of fire. Trenches had disappeared,

concrete emplacements had been overturned, breastworks had been flung

like straws to the wind. The only men who lived were those who were

huddled in sections of trench which were between the barrage-lines of

our fire. Our men had no fear of what the enemy could do to them. They

went forward to find creatures eager to escape from this blazing hell.

It was only in redoubts like the Frezenberg Redoubt which had escaped

destruction that the German machine-gunners still fought and gave

trouble. Many of the enemy must have been buried alive with machine-guns

and trench-mortars and bomb stores. But there were other dead not

touched by shell-fire, nor by any bullet. They had been killed by our

gas attack which had gone before the battle. Rows of them lay clasping

their gas-masks, and had not been quick enough before the vapour of

death reached them. But others, with their gas-masks on, were dead. One

of our men tells me that he came across the bodies of a group of German

officers. They belonged to a brigade staff, and they were all masked,

with tin beast-like nozzles, and they were all stone dead. It is the

vengeance of the gods for that gas, foul and damnable, which they used

against us first in the second battle of Ypres and ever since. It is the

worst weapon of modern warfare, and has added the blackest terror to all

this slaughter of men.

Because there was not great fighting with infantry yesterday, it must

not be thought that our men had an easy time. The enemy was quick to put

down his barrage, and although it was not anything like our annihilating

fire, it was bad enough, as any shell-fire is. I met some young Scots of

the Gordons and Camerons to-day, who had been through an episode of a

thrilling kind, which was horrible while it lasted. When the signal for

attack came yesterday, they were a little mad, like some of their

comrades, because they said they saw the Germans running away on the

other side of our wall of shells. Without waiting for the barrage to

creep forward, these Scots ran forward right among our own shells, and,

by some miracle, many of them escaped being hit, and went forward in

pursuit. A party of about a hundred went right beyond their goal and

found themselves isolated and out of touch with the main body. They were

heavily shelled and attacked by bombing parties. They sent runners back

asking for reinforcements, but none came because of their far-flung

position. They tried to signal for an artillery barrage to protect them,

but this call was not seen. They ran out of ammunition, and saw that

death was coming close to them. It touched some men with great chunks of

hot shell, and they fell dead in their shell-craters. Other men were

buried by the bursts of 5.9's. These boys of the 8/10th Gordons were

proud. They did not want to retire, though they knew they had gone too

far, but at last, when all their officers had been killed but one, the

order was given to this little remnant of men to save their lives and

get back if they could. They went back through heavy fire, and I talked

with two of them this morning, happy to find themselves alive and

bright-eyed fellows still. It is extraordinary what escapes many of them

have had. A group of them in the farthest line of advance lay down in

craters under a rapid sweep of machine-gun fire from a redoubt in front

of them. They watched over the edge of their craters how two Tanks came

up, heaving and lurching over the tossed earth, until they were within

gun-range of the redoubt. Then they opened fire. But the enemy's gunners

had seen them, and tried to get them with direct hits. Most of the

shells fell short all around those English lads hiding in the craters.

Some of these were buried and some killed. But the others held on to

their ground, which is still in our hands.

The stretcher-bearers were magnificent, and worked all day and night

searching out the wounded and carrying them back under fire. Many of the

German prisoners gladly lent a hand in this work on their way back. At

the dressing-stations to-day I saw them giving pickaback to

men--ours--who were wounded about the legs and feet. They prefer this

work to fighting.

After yesterday's battle our line includes the whole of the Pilkem

Ridge and the ground in the valley beyond to the line of the Steenbeek

river, and southwards in a curve that slices off the old Ypres salient.

It has been a heavy blow to the enemy. Now it is all rain and mud and

blood and beastliness.

IV

PILL-BOXES AND MACHINE-GUNS

AUGUST 3

The weather is still frightful. It is difficult to believe that we are

in August. Rather it is like the foulest weather of a Flemish winter,

and all the conditions which we knew through so many dreary months

during three winters of war up here in the Ypres salient are with us

again. The fields are quagmires, and in shell-crater land, which is

miles deep round Ypres, the pits have filled with water. The woods loom

vaguely through a wet mist, and road traffic labours through rivers of

slime. It is hard luck for our fighting men. But in spite of repeated

efforts the enemy has not succeeded in his counter-attacks, after our

line withdrew somewhat at the end of the first day south and south-east

of St.-Julien. In my first accounts of the battle I did not give full

measure to the hardness of the fighting in which some of our troops were

engaged, nor to the stubbornness of the enemy's resistance. It is now

certain that, whereas many of the German infantry, terror-stricken by

our bombardment, surrendered easily enough, others made good use of

strong defences not annihilated by our fire, and put up a desperate

defence. Fresh troops, like the 221st Division, were flung in by the

German command in the afternoon of the first day and made repeated

attacks, under cover of the mist, against our men, who were tired after

twenty-four hours in the zone of fire, who in some sectors had suffered

heavily, but who fought still with a courage which defied defeat. A

commanding officer of a Lancashire battalion went to meet some of his

men coming back yesterday. They were wet and caked with mud and unshaven

and dead-beat, and they had lost many comrades, but they had the spirit

to pull themselves up and smile with a light in their eyes when the

commanding officer said he was proud of them, because they had done all

that men could, and one of them called out cheerily, "When shall we go

on again, sir?" An officer who was left last out of his battalion to

hold out in an advanced position said to the padre, who has just visited

him in hospital, "I hope the General was not disappointed with us." The

General, I am sure, was not disappointed with these men of the 55th

Division. No one could think of them without enthusiasm and tenderness,

marvelling at their spirit and at the fight they made in tragic hours.

Because it was a tragedy to them that after gaining ground they had been

asked to take, and not easily nor without losses, they should have to

fall back and fight severe rear-guard actions to cover a necessary

withdrawal.

These Lancashire men, with many men of the Liverpool battalions, had to

attack from Wieltje through successive systems of trenches. This ground

is just to the right of St.-Julien and to the left of Frezenberg, below

the Gravenstafel Spur, Zonnebeke, and Langemarck. The way lay past a

number of German strong points--Beck House, Plum Farm, Pound Farm, and

Square Farm--once small farmsteads, long blown to bits, but fortified by

concrete strongholds with walls of concrete two yards thick. Our

gun-fire wrecked all the ground about them and toppled over a few of

these places, but left a number untouched, and that was the cause of the

trouble. Each one had to be taken by a separate action led by our young

platoon commanders, and it was a costly series of small

engagements--costly to officers, especially, as always happens at such

times. These young subalterns of ours handled their men not only

gallantly, but skilfully, and the men followed their lead with cunning

as well as pluck, and got round the concrete works by rifle-fire and

bombing until they could rush them at close quarters. In this way two

strongly held farms were taken, while from the right the Lancashire men

were swept by enfilade fire from a third farm until its garrison was

routed out and 160 of them captured. There was hard fighting farther on

for a line of trenches where some of the wire was still uncut, with

machine-gun fire rattling from the left flank.

But the fiercest fighting came after that against another series of

those concrete forts, among them the Pommern Redoubt, where separate

actions had again to be made by little groups of men under platoon

commanders. The enemy's machine-gunners served their weapons to the

last. In this ground, too were five batteries of German field-guns, who

fired upon our men until they were within 500 yards. The gunners had to

be shot down, and our men streamed past the guns in perfect order just

as they had rehearsed the attack beforehand, sending back reports,

carrying through the whole operation as though on a field-day behind the

lines. Yet by that time their strength had been ebbing away, and many of

them had fallen. They reached the extreme limit of their advance with

outposts at two more fortified farms--Wurst and Aviatik Farms--from

which two days later a delayed report came back from the last remaining

officer of the party that he had reached this high ground in front of

Wurst Farm, and that his battalion was badly depleted. That was an

heroic little message, but a few hours later that ground was no longer

in our hands. The troops of the 39th Division on the left of the

Lancashire men had found some trouble with uncut wire, and the enemy

developed a strong counter-attack from the north, taking advantage of

that exposed flank. They prepared for attack by a heavy artillery

barrage, controlled by low-flying aeroplanes and co-operating with the

infantry. At the same time another counter-attack came down from the

high ground on the right to strike between the Lancashire men of the

55th Division and the Scottish troops of the 15th on their right. It was

decided to withdraw to a better defensive line, and 160 Lancashire

Fusiliers got into Schuler Farm, and held it against heavy odds in order

to cover this movement. They stayed there, using machine-guns and rifles

until only thirty of them were left standing, and all around them were

dead and dying. Their work was done, for they had held out long enough

to protect the withdrawing lines, and the thirty survivors decided to

fight their way back through an enemy fast closing in upon them. So they

left the farm, and of the thirty ten reached the new line. Since then

the enemy has made repeated attacks from the high ground on the right,

and especially against the Pommern Redoubt, but every time he has been

cut up by the fire of our guns and rifles. I hear that this afternoon he

is again massing for another attempt, according to the orders given to

the German troops that they must get back all the ground they have lost,

and at all costs, by August 3, which is to-day.

I have already told in a general way in previous dispatches how the

Scots of the 15th Division farther south than the Lancashire men fought

their way up to the Frezenberg Redoubt, coming under a blast of

machine-gun fire from a neighbouring farm until they captured its

garrison, and then going on to two other enemy redoubts. They had the

same trouble as the Lancashire men with these concrete forts, but

attacked them with stubborn courage, and put them out of action. One of

my good friends was wounded in front of one of these emplacements in

command of his battalion of 8/1Oth Gordons, and it was by an odd chance

that I saw him as he lay wounded in a casualty clearing-station a few

hours later. "I hear my men have done well," he said. They did as well

as they have always done in many great battles, and not only well, but

wonderfully, and they went as far as they were allowed to go, and held

on in their old grim way when things were at their worst. The whole line

of the Scottish troops below the Langemarck-Zonnebeke road was attacked

at two in the afternoon, or thereabouts, and their advanced line

gradually withdrew under a fierce fire. At six o'clock the enemy

slightly penetrated the advance line, driving the Gordons back a hundred

yards, but the Camerons drove them out and away. This was on a front to

the east of St.-Julien and south of Zonnebeke.

The general position remains the same. The weather remains the same, and

the mud and the discomfort of men living under incessant rain and

abominable shell-fire do not decrease: nevertheless, they have smashed

up attack after attack, and their spirit is unbreakable. The enemy is

suffering from the same evil conditions, and his only advantage is that

perhaps he has better cover in which to assemble his men, and that,

owing to his defeat, he is nearer to his base, so that they have not so

far to tramp through the swamps in order to get up supplies of food for

guns and men. As usual, we have behind us a wide stretch of shell-broken

ground, which, in foul weather like this, becomes a slough.

* * * * *

AUGUST 5

For the first time for four days and nights the rain has stopped, and

there is even a pale gleam of sunshine, though the sky is still heavy

with rain-clouds. Oh, foul weather! What a curse it has been to our men!

But the guns have never ceased their fire because of the rain and the

mist, and all last night again and to-day there has been tremendous

gunning. Our gunners have been working at high tension for several

weeks, and the admiration of the infantry goes out to these men who,

though they do not go over the top, are under heavy fire from German

counter-battery work and bombed by German aeroplanes and strained by the

enormous responsibility of protecting the infantry and keeping up

barrage-fire without rest. In this battle the gunners have done

marvellously, to the very limit of human endurance. As for the infantry,

words are not good enough to describe the grit of them all. Apart from

all the inevitable beastliness of battle, they have had to fight in this

filthy weather, and it has made it a thousand times worse. In August men

don't expect to get drowned in shell-holes, nor to get stuck to the

armpits in mud before they reach the first German line. It was not as

bad as that everywhere, but exactly that in parts of the line even

before the heavy rains came on. The men of the 8th and 30th Divisions

who attacked over ground like this east of Zillebeke went through

abominable adventures. It was almost pitch-dark when they went forward,

and the first thing that happened was that battalions became hopelessly

mixed because of the darkness and the nature of the ground; and the

second thing that the barrage went ahead of them so that they had to

struggle behind in the morass unsupported by its fire, and shot at by

Germans on their flanks.

Two lines of trenches known to our men as Jackdaw Support and Jackdaw

Reserve were captured without much difficulty as far as the enemy was

concerned, about eighty prisoners being taken in them, but with enormous

difficulty on account of the boggy ground. Imagine these men, loaded up

with packs and rifles and sand-bags and shovels, slipping and falling

among the shell-pits, which were full of mud, water, and wire. Fellows

stopped to pull out their comrades and were dragged in after them. It

took them three-quarters of an hour to get over two lines of undefended

trenches, whole platoons getting bogged in them and slipping back when

they tried to climb out. It was a trying time for the officers who saw

the barrage of our guns getting away ahead. Beyond them was high ground,

from which German machine-gun and rifle fire swept them, and not far

away German snipers potted our men, and especially our officers, as they

climbed in and out of shell-craters. Two officers of the Manchesters had

been killed by one of these fellows when a private crept out alone on

his flank, stole round him very quietly, pounced and killed him. It took

two and a half hours to get to Jackdaw Reserve Trench in Sanctuary Wood,

and the enemy's riflemen who had been firing at close range then ran

back, or as our men say, "hopped it." The Menin road from Ypres runs

through the high ground just here, and it was about here that the

hardest time came for the 30th Division, because of the fierce

machine-gun fire. It was here, also, that many gallant deeds were done

by men who had lost their officers, and by the officers who had lost

their men but collected stragglers and groups from mixed units to get on

with the attack. A young private soldier of a machine-gun company

advanced with his Lewis gun and by rapid fire put a German machine-gun

out of action, so that a bombing party could get on. A lance-corporal of

the Manchesters rallied up stragglers, organized groups, and rushed some

of the German strong points. A captain behaved throughout the battle

with the most fearless gallantry, and when his men wavered and fell back

before the blast of machine-gun bullets that drove across the Menin

road, rallied them and gathered up lads from other units, and captured

two strong points with these storming parties. He was wounded in this

action, but paid no heed to that, and continued to lead his men. It was

here that the great tunnel ran across the Menin road, from which

forty-one Germans were taken. To the right of the road this side of

Inverness Copse and the Dumbarton Lakes stood Stirling Castle on the

high ground of a semi-circular ridge surrounded by deep shell-pits. The

"castle" itself was just a heap of broken bricks on this commanding

ground, and behind those bricks were German machine-gunners, who served

their weapons until our men were close to them. Then they "hopped it"

again, but stayed on the other side of the ridge, firing at any men who

showed themselves over the crest. Our men fought round the castle for

hours, heavily shelled as soon as the enemy's gunners knew it was in our

hands, and meeting counter-attacks which developed later.

A thousand and more acts of courage were done in those hours by men who

knew that their comrades' lives and their own depended upon "getting on

with the job," as they call it. It was necessary to get reports back to

brigade headquarters at all costs, so that supplies and supports might

be sent up, and to get into touch with battalion and company commanders

from the advanced line. It was not easy either to write or to send down

these messages. Wires were cut and runners killed. But it had to be

done. A company sergeant-major, though lightly wounded first and then

badly wounded after leading his men up under a sweep of machine-gun

bullets, sat down in the mud and scribbled out his report. There was a

young Irish private in these Manchesters who did wonderful work as a

runner with these messages. He volunteered whenever there was a

dangerous bit of work to do, exposing himself over and over again, and

gathering up stragglers to fill up gaps in the line of defence. A

sergeant acted as runner when two of his own had been killed, and got

through under intense fire. And one of these runners had a great

adventure all to himself on his journey under fire. This young private

was going up with a message when he saw something move outside a

dug-out. He went forward cautiously, and saw a German soldier disappear

into the dark entry. The Manchester lad was all alone, but he followed

the German into the hole, down a flight of mud stairs and into an

underground cave. He stood face to face with eighteen men. One of them

was a non-commissioned officer. They stared back at him with brooding

eyes, as though wondering whether they should kill him. He shouted at

them, "Now then, come out, and look sharp about it," and made a sign to

the door. They put their hands up and said, "Kamerad." "Well, then, get

out," said the boy. They filed out past him, and he waited till the last

had gone. Then he went up the mud stairs to open ground again, and saw

that the eighteen men had scattered, finding that he was all alone. He

shouted to them and fired his rifle over their heads, so that they

thought twice of escape, and then came back to him meekly. So he formed

them up, and marched behind them down to the prisoners' cage, where he

took his receipt for eighteen prisoners.

There was now great shelling, and the enemy was massing for a

counter-attack. Through this fire a young Irish officer in the

machine-gun section brought up nine out of his twelve guns in order to

meet the attack, and without that great courage of his the position

would have been very bad. A sergeant of machine-gunners stood in a bit

of a trench with his team when a shell burst, killing two men and

wounding others. He stood there, splashed with blood and in great danger

of death, without losing his nerve or his spirit, and after helping the

wounded he "carried on" and kept his guns in action.

Meanwhile, down at brigade headquarters the situation was very obscure;

so obscure that the brigadier sent up a young captain, his brigade

major, to find out the situation and report on it. Not a safe and easy

job to do at such a time; but this officer, whom I met to-day, went up

to Stirling Castle, where he found mixed units still under heavy

machine-gun fire, and only one or two officers without knowledge of the

general situation owing to the difficulty of getting communications. The

brigade major reorganized the situation with a cool head and a fine

courage, collected parties of mixed riflemen, and took them to the high

ground, where there was a good field of fire, and then, with his

orderly, moved across the Menin road, which was at that time

unprotected. He organized the support of this, and on the way came

across the entrance to the tunnel under the road. He stopped and

listened. It seemed to him that he could hear movements and voices. He

went into the tunnel, and heard and saw a German there. He covered him

with a revolver, and the man put his hands up. But the German was not

alone. There was a shuffling of feet farther down, and the German said,

"There are four of us farther in the tunnel." The brigade major went

farther down, with his revolver ready, and met the four men and told

them in French and English that he would kill them if they moved a step.

They surrendered, two of them speaking good English, and the brigade

major's orderly took one of their rifles, not being armed himself, and

with that weapon escorted them back. They were men of the 238th

Regiment, and had only been in that line twenty-four hours. It was the

brigade major's report that cleared up the situation from his

headquarters and made it more easy of control.

Some Scottish troops who fought alongside the Manchesters at Stirling

Castle behaved with equal valour. They endured long and intense

shelling, while through the murk and smoke enemy aeroplanes flew very

low, firing their machine-guns at the troops, batteries, and mule

convoys, with a good imitation of our own air pilots. What I have told

so far covers only a small section of the Front, but I have now given a

broad picture of all the length of battle, and these episodes I have

just described will give a closer idea of the way in which all our

soldiers have been fighting in this country around Ypres, and of all

they have suffered in the foulest weather I have ever seen in summer.

* * * * *

AUGUST 4

The Tanks have justified themselves again, and won their spurs--spurs as

big as gridirons--in the battle of Flanders. They had plenty of chance

to show what they could do.

As I described yesterday, the way of our advance was hindered by a

number of little concrete forts built in the ruin of farmsteads which

had withstood our gun-fire. At Plum Farm and Apple Villa, and in

stronger, more elaborate, fortified points, like the Frezenberg and

Pommern Castle and Pommern Redoubt, the enemy's machine-gunners held out

when everything about them was chaos and death, and played a barrage of

bullets on our advancing men. Platoons and half-platoons attacked them

in detail at a great cost of life, and it was in such places that the

Tanks were of most advantage. It was at Pommern Castle, east of

St.-Julien, that one of the Tanks did best. Don't imagine the castle as

a kind of Windsor, with big walls and portcullis and high turrets, but

as slabs of concrete in a huddle of sand-bags above a nest of deep

dug-outs. On the other side of it was Pommern Redoubt, the same in style

of defence. Our men were fighting hard for the castle, and having a bad

time under its fire. The Tank came to help them, and advanced under a

swish of bullets to the German emplacement, lurching up the piled bags

over the heaped-up earth, and squatting on top like a grotesque creature

playing the old game of "I'm the King of the Castle; get down, you dirty

rascals." The dirty rascals, who were German soldiers, unshaven and

covered in wet mud, did not like the look of their visitor, which was

firing with great ferocity. They fled to the cover of Pommern Redoubt

beyond. Then the Tank moved back to let the infantry get on, but as soon

as it had turned its back the Germans, with renewed pluck, took

possession of the castle again. The men who were fighting round about

again gave a signal to the Tank to get busy. So it came back, and with

the infantry on its flanks made another assault, so that the enemy fled

again. Pommern Redoubt was attacked in the same way with good help from

the Tank.

The Frezenberg Redoubt was another place where the Tanks were helpful,

and they did good work at Westhoek, the remnant of a village to the

right of that. One of them attacked and helped to capture a strong point

west of St.-Julien, from which a good many Germans came out to

surrender, and afterwards some Tanks went through the village, but had

to get out again in a hurry to escape capture in the German

counter-attacks. It was not easy to get back in a hurry, as by that hour

in the afternoon the rain had turned the ground to swamp, and the Tanks

sank deep in it, with wet mud half-way up their flanks, and slipped and

slithered back when they tried to struggle out. Many of the officers and

crews had to get out of their steel forts, risking heavy shelling and

machine-gun fire to dig out their way, and in the neighbourhood of

St.-Julien they worked for two hours in the open to de-bog their Tank

while German gunners tried to destroy them by direct hits. In a farm

somewhere in this neighbourhood no fewer than sixty Germans came out

with their hands up in surrender as soon as the Tank was at close

quarters, and a story is told, though I haven't the exact details, that

in another place the mere threat of a Tank's approach was enough to

decide a party of eight to give in. It is certain beyond all doubt that

the enemy's infantry has a great fear of these machines, and does not

see any kind of humour in them. In this battle there is not a single

case of an attack upon a Tank by infantry, though we know that they have

been given special training behind their lines with dummy Tanks

according to definite rules laid down by the German Command.

One fight did take place with a Tank, and it is surely the most

fantastic duel that has ever happened in war. It was queer enough, as I

described a day or two ago, when one of our airmen flew over a

motor-car, and engaged in a revolver duel with a German officer, but

even that strange picture is less weird than when a German aeroplane

flew low over a Tank, and tried to put out its eyes by bursts of

machine-gun bullets. Imagine the scene--that muddy monster crawling

through the slime, with sharp stabs of fire coming from its flanks, and

above an engine, with wings, swooping round and about it like an angry

albatross, and spattering its armour with bullets. It was an unequal

fight, for the Tank just ignored that waspish machine-gun fire, and went

on its way with only a scratch or two. The Tanks were in action around

the marshes and woodlands by Shrewsbury Forest. Here, as I have already

said, there was very severe infantry fighting, in which the Leicesters,

Northamptons, and above all the Middlesex Regiment had desperate

engagements, and the enemy made many counter-attacks, so that the

progress of our men was slow and difficult. The Tanks helped them as

best they could.

So goes the tale of the Tanks on the first day of the battle of

Flanders. It will be seen from what I have written that they gave good

help to the troops. The pilots and crews behaved with splendid

gallantry, and not only took great risks, but endured to the last

extremity of fatigue in that narrow, hot space where they work their

engines and their guns.

V

THE SONG OF THE COCKCHAFERS

AUGUST 8

One of the most bitter blows to Germany, if she has heard the news, must

be the destruction of the famous regiment of "Maikaefer," or

Cockchafers, by our Welsh troops. The Kaiser called them his brave

Coburgers. In Germany the very children sang in the streets about them.

And proud of their own exploits, they had their own soldier poets who

wrote songs about the regiment, to which they marched through Belgium

and France and Galicia. I saw one of these songs yesterday, picked up on

the battlefield near Pilkem. It was written by one Paul Zimmermann of

theirs, and was printed in a leaflet sold at ten pfennigs (a penny). It

tells how the Cockchafers come out in the spring and how the children

sing when they come. They are ready for battle then, wherever it may be.

The call comes for them wherever there is the hardest fighting, so the

Cockchafers swarmed through Belgium, and taught the French a lesson, and

pressed after the wicked English, who--so the lying legend goes--used

dumdum bullets, and swept back the Russians through Galicia. Old

Hindenburg calls for them every time when there are brave deeds to be

done. I have copied out two verses for those who read German:

_Der Mai der bringt uns Sonnenschein,

Er bringt uns Bluhtenpracht;_

_Der Mai der bringt uns Kaeferlein

Viel tausend ueber Nacht;

Und von der Kinderlippen klingts:

"Maikaefer, fliege, flieg"

Und durch den Fruehlingesjubel dringts:

"Dein Vater ist im Krieg."_

_Uns Garde Fusiliere nennt

Maikaefer jeder Mund,

Weil unser stolzes Regiment

Im Mai stets fertig stand._

Well, old Hindenburg will call in vain now for his Cockchafers, the

Guard Fusilier Regiment of the 3rd Guards Division, for nearly six

hundred of them are in our hands and others lie dead upon the ground

near Pilkem. They had relieved the 100th Infantry Reserve Regiment on

the night of July 29, and lay three battalions deep in their trench

systems across the Yser Canal north-east of Boesinghe, scattered thinly

in the shell-craters which were all that was left of the trenches in the

front lines, more densely massed in the support lines, and defending a

number of concrete emplacements and dug-outs behind. The 9th Grenadier

Regiment and a battalion of the Lehr Regiment reinforced the Cockchafers

and lay out in the open behind the Langemarck-Gheluvelt line, and in the

support lines a battalion of the Lehr of the 3rd Guards Division had

already relieved a regiment of the 392nd Infantry Reserve Regiment. Some

sections of the 3rd Battalion of the 9th Grenadier Regiment had been

sent forward from Langemarck to act as sniping posts, and two special

machine-gun detachments were also pushed up to check our assault. They

were enough to defend this part of the Pilkem Ridge, and the ground

itself was in their favour as our men lay in the hollow with their backs

to the Yser Canal, across which all their supports and supplies had to

pass.

What was in the favour of the Welsh was that they knew the ground in

front of them in every detail from air photographs and from night and

day raids, having lived in front of it for several months, digging and

tunnelling so as to get cover from ceaseless fire, and storing up a

great desire to get even with the enemy for all they had suffered. They

had suffered great hardships and great perils, intensified before the

battle because of violent shelling by high explosives and gas-shells, so

that when the hour for attack came they had been hard tried already. It

made no difference to the pace and order of their assault. Our

bombardment had been overwhelming, and the heavy barrage which signalled

the assault was, according to all these Welshmen, perfect. They followed

it very closely, so closely that they were on and over the Cockchafers

before they could organize any kind of defence. Many of the enemy's

machine-guns had been smashed and buried. Those still intact were never

brought into action, as their gunners had no time to get out of the

concrete shelters in which they were huddled to escape from the

annihilating fire.

It was in these places that most of the prisoners were taken--there and

in a big trench, ten feet wide and twelve deep, on the outskirts of

Pilkem village, where there is no village at all. The Cockchafers came

out dazed, and gave themselves up mostly without a show of fighting. In

some of their concrete shelters, like those at Mackensen Farm--don't

imagine any buildings there--and Gallwitz Farm and Boche House and

Zouave House, there were stores of ammunition, with many shells and

trench-mortars.

So the Welsh went on in waves, sending back the prisoners on their way,

through Pilkem to the high ground by the iron cross beyond, and then

down the slopes to the Steenbeek stream. On the left were the Royal

Welsh Fusiliers, who took the ground of Pilkem itself. On the right were

men of the Welsh Regiment. In the ground beyond Pilkem they found the

regimental headquarters in finely built dug-outs, but the staff had fled

to save their skins. There was another big dug-out near by used by the

enemy as a dressing-station. It had room enough for a hundred men. There

were fifty men. The Welsh swarmed round it--thirty wounded and twenty

unwounded Germans. The doctor in charge was a good fellow, and, after

surrendering his own men, attended to some of the wounded Welsh. Two

machine-guns and sixteen prisoners were taken out of a place called

Jolie Farm, and thirty prisoners out of Rudolf Farm--concrete kennels in

a chaos of craters--and three officers and forty-seven men came out of

the ruins of a house somewhere near the Iron Cross. All the Welsh troops

behaved with great courage, and a special word is due to the runners,

who carried messages back under fire, and to the stretcher-bearers, who

rescued the wounded utterly regardless of their own risks. Afterwards

the mule drivers and leaders were splendid, bringing up supplies under

heavy barrage fire. Wales did well that day, and the Welsh miners, who

had already proved themselves as great diggers and great tunnellers and

very brave men, showed themselves cool and fearless in the assault.

* * * * *

AUGUST 6

I am now able to mention more of the troops whose adventures I have

described in previous dispatches, in addition to the Guards and the

Welsh, who in a great assault, hardly checked by the enemy, captured the

heights of Pilkem and went down the slopes beyond to the Steenbeek

stream.

The Manchesters, with Royal Scots, Royal Irish Rifles, and Durham Light

Infantry of the 8th Division, were amongst those who attacked Stirling

Castle below Inverness Copse, as I narrated in full detail yesterday,

with the incident of the runner who captured eighteen prisoners in a

dug-out and of the young brigade major who reorganized the position and

found five Germans in the great tunnel under the Menin road.

As I have already said, it was the men of Lancashire with battalions of

the Liverpool Regiment of the 55th Division who went up from Wieltje

against the concrete forts, where they fought in many independent little

actions under platoon commanders, who shot down the gunners of five

German batteries, and went forward as though on the drill-ground, in

spite of heavy losses and great fire, to Wurst Farm and the high ground

below the Gravenstafel, until they were forced to fall back somewhat

under a heavy German counter-attack, when 160 men covered the

withdrawal, and ten alone got back.

Farther south, they were Scots of the 15th Division who attacked the

Frezenberg--Gordons and Camerons among them--and farther south still on

their right were Sherwood Foresters and others of the 39th Division, who

had some of the hardest fighting of the day, up through Hooge, that

place of old ill-fame, round Bellewaerde Lake and across the Menin road

to the Westhoek Ridge.

It was these Scots and these English who bore the brunt of the great

German counter-attack on the afternoon of August 1. After fighting their

way forward past the pill-box emplacements or concrete redoubts with a

stiff and separate fight at the ruin of an estaminet on the cross-roads

at Westhoek, where a sergeant and ten or twelve men captured forty of

the enemy, the Sherwood Foresters and their comrades took "cover" during

the night, exposed to fierce shell-fire and drenched in the rain, now

falling steadily, and filling the shell-craters with mud and water, so

that men were up to their waist in them. It was at about 2.30 on the

following afternoon that the enemy developed his counter-attack from the

direction of Bremen Redoubt and the high ground beyond our line, taking

advantage of the mist to assemble and get forward. It was the critical

hour of the battle.

The enemy's attack was preceded by a heavy artillery barrage, and by an

incessant and wide-stretching blast of machine-gun fire. His assaulting

troops drove first at the Midland men south of the Roulers railway, and

the Sherwoods and Northamptons tried to hold their line by rifle-fire,

Lewis-gun fire, and bombs. When officers fell wounded the

non-commissioned officers and men carried on and fought a soldiers'

battle. One Lewis-gunner drove the enemy back from a gap in the lines

and others held back the enemy's storm troops long enough to give their

comrades time to get into good order as far as was possible in a fight

of this kind. The Germans forced their way forward among the

shell-craters and ruins hoping to surround the Sherwoods and the men of

Nottingham and Derby, who were steadily firing and fighting, so that the

enemy's losses were not light. Meanwhile the Scots of the 15th Division

on the left were meeting the attack and found their flank exposed owing

to these happenings on their right. It became more and more exposed as

the attack proceeded, and just before three o'clock the Gordons, who

were in this perilous position, had to swing back. This movement

uncovered the battalion headquarters, where one of the officers, acting

as adjutant, had turned out his staff, which fought to defend the

position. He then gathered all the Gordons in his neighbourhood and held

on to the station buildings. Meantime the left of the Gordons had been

swung back to form a defensive flank, and with two Vickers guns they

swept the rear lines of the storm troops with deadly fire. The enemy

fell in great numbers, but other waves came on and nearly reached the

top of the crest upon which our men had formed their line. There a young

officer of the Gordons seized the critical moment of the battle and by

his rapid action proved himself a great soldier. With some of the

Camerons he led his men forward down the slopes towards the advancing

enemy, each man firing with his rifle as he advanced, making gaps in the

German wave. The enemy stood up to this for a minute or two, but when

the Highlanders were within fifty yards of them they broke and ran. As

they fled our gunners, who had not seen the first S O S signals owing to

the mist, came into action and inflicted great losses upon the

retreating men. But the day was saved by the action of the Scottish

infantry, who had learned the use of the rifle in open warfare, and who

had been trained for this kind of action in small groups, acting largely

on individual initiative. Many of the enemy were surrounded by fire, and

one officer and seven men gained our line in safety, while the others

were caught in a death-trap. There were moments when, but for the

courage and discipline of our troops, the enemy's counter-attack had a

great chance of success, and the history of this battle might have been

less victorious for us.

VI

WOODS OF ILL-FAME

AUGUST 12

There was violent fighting yesterday. After our successful advance at

dawn across the Westhock Ridge, when more than 200 prisoners were taken,

the right of our attack in Glencorse Wood, or Schloss Park as the

Germans call it, and among the tree-stumps which were once woods south

of that, was heavily engaged with an enemy concealed in the usual

concrete emplacements, and defending himself with well-placed

machine-guns.

Among our troops who had the hardest struggle were the Irish Rifles,

Cheshires, Lancashire Fusiliers, North Lancashires, and Worcestershires

of the 25th Division against Glencorse Wood, and the Bedfords and

Queen's of the 18th Division against Inverness Copse.

As on the ridge, the infantry came to close quarters and fought with

bombs and rifles and bayonets, but it was mainly gun-fire again which

decided the issues of the day and caused most losses on both sides. As I

have said many times, since the battle of July 31 the enemy has massed a

great power of artillery against us, and has apparently no immediate

lack of ammunition. For miles the horizon was seething with the smoke

of heavy shells. The enemy's barrage-fire was great. Ours was greater.

Between Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse, and all about Stirling

Castle and the Frezenberg, he made a hell of fire, and many of our men

had to pass through its fury, and not all passed or came back again. But

afterwards the enemy's turn came, and masses of his men, thick waves of

them, sent forward with orders to counter-attack, were caught under the

fire of our guns and smashed to pieces.

The enemy attempted five separate counter-attacks yesterday, and in

spite of all his losses renewed his efforts this morning with great

determination, so that, after the exhaustion and ordeal of the night

under continual fire, our men were compelled to give way in Glencorse

Wood. That was necessary, because farther south the enemy had held their

ground, and the copse was a salient exposed to harassing fire from large

numbers of guns in the neighbourhood of Polygon Wood and the country

east. It is a favourite device of the enemy to withdraw his guns on to

the flanks of our advance, as soon as we have penetrated his lines, in

order to check further progress, and he did this as soon as the battle

of July 31 was fought, though he had to leave many of his field-guns in

the mud of No Man's Land, where they still lie.

This method of defence did not ensure the success of his

counter-attacks, though it had made the progress of our men hard south

of Glencorse Wood. It was at about midday yesterday that our troops, who

had made good their ground along Westhoek Ridge, had to call for further

help from the guns. At the same time aeroplanes, taking advantage of

wonderful visibility after the rains, were above the German lines, and

saw a great gathering of German troops in Nuns' Wood and Polygon Wood.

The calls were answered by large groups of batteries over a stretch of

country miles deep. The heavies, far behind the lines, answered with

15-inch and 12-inch shells. The 9.2's heard the call in the quiet

fields, where wild flowers grow over old shell-holes. Their 8-inch

brothers heard the call and came quick into action. Six-inch and 4.2's

made reply, and from them broke out one great salvo, followed by long

rolls of drum-fire. Among the shell-craters of Nuns' Wood there were

hundreds of men lined up for attack. They had their rifles at the slope,

and they were hung round with bombs and trench-spades and cloth bags

with iron rations, and they began to move forward just as that

bombardment opened upon them. All the shell-fire burst over them and

into them. They were swept by it. They were killed in heaps. Afterwards

one of our airmen flew low over that stricken wood where they had been,

and he came back with his report. Never before, he said, had he seen so

many dead men. The German soldiers were lying there in great numbers.

Other attempts were made to get forward, but it was only on the right,

where there was close fighting, that the enemy made any progress.

At about six in the evening there was another call on our gunners, and

this time the report came that the enemy was assembling in the valley of

the Hanebeek. Two battalions of them were able to advance into the open

towards our lines before our guns found their target. Then they flung

themselves down under this new storm of fire or tried to escape from it

by running or plunging into shell-craters. There were not many who

escaped.

One of them who became a prisoner in our hands said that two battalions

were annihilated--he used the phrase "wiped out." Perhaps that was an

exaggeration. There are always some men who slip through, but in this

case whole ranks of men were blown to bits.

I talked to-day with some of our own wounded who came limping through

the casualty clearing-stations. They were men of the Worcesters and

Bedfords and Queen's, whose battalions I have met before after battles.

One of them told me how he lay out all night waiting for the attack in

the dawn on Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse. There are only

tree-stumps there in the great white stretch of shell-craters, and the

enemy was holding the place lightly with machine-guns in those pits that

had been made by our fire. Our men were upon them quick after the

barrage, and they were routed out of their holes before they had time to

put up a strong defence. By bad luck, as sometimes happens, owing to the

eagerness of our men to cover as much ground as possible, the Irish

Rifles and the North Lancashires of the 25th Division went at least 200

yards beyond their goal, and were caught in our barrage, which was

preventing supports coming up to the enemy. As soon as they realized

their deadly error they fell back again, carrying their wounded.

* * * * *

LATER

There was sharp hand-to-hand fighting on the Westhoek Ridge by the

Lancashire Fusiliers, North Lancashires, and Cheshires. Both sides at

last came into the open, the enemy standing about his concrete houses as

our men advanced upon them, and using machine-guns and rifles. Most of

these Germans were men of the 54th Reserve Division, and bold fellows

who did not surrender so easily as I first imagined, in spite of the

intense and prolonged barrage that had swept over them and wrecked their

ground. In a strong point at the south end of the ridge, one of those

concrete blockhouses which shelter machine-guns, they held out for three

hours, and it was only taken when it had been battered by trench-mortars

brought up into action at close range by some gallant men of ours, and

when it was rushed from the flanks while the ground was still being

swept by bullets. After that the ridge was ours on its forward slopes,

at the northern end dropping below the western slopes southwards.

In Glencorse Wood the Lancashire men were enfiladed by machine-guns when

a large part of the wood was no longer in our hands. It is on high

ground, and with other slopes beyond, like those of Nuns' Wood and

Polygon Wood, forms the barrier guarding the vital centres of the German

position in the north, so that he fights to hold it with the full weight

of his power in men and guns. Both are powerful, and his fire on Friday

and Saturday was the fiercest ever faced by men who have fought through

the Somme and later battles.

But his counter-attacks have failed against our Westhoek positions, and

everything I have heard shows that his battalions, above all the 27th

Regiment, were massacred by our artillery. Those Germans did not all die

by shell-fire. The Lancashire Fusiliers and the North Lancashires fired

their rifles all through Friday and Saturday at human targets they could

not fail to hit. German reserves hurried up to relieve the shattered

battalions and flung straight into the counter-attacks, wandered about

in the open, ignorant of our men's whereabouts, like lost sheep. They

were in full field kit, and as they came into the open our men shot at

them with deadly effect. The first sign of the first great

counter-attack on Friday was when seventy men or so came forward on the

left and tried to rush an old German gun-emplacement. They were seen by

the Lancashire Fusiliers, and the commanding officer, believing that an

attack was imminent, sent through the call for the guns which led to the

bombardment I have described in my earlier message.

We also opened a widespread barrage of machine-gun fire, and this caused

heavy slaughter. All the country was aflame throughout the afternoon of

Friday, and it was before the attack, at 6.40 in the evening, that the

enemy's artillery concentrated in full and frightful fury. This

artillery-fire has never ceased since then, though slackening down a

little from time to time, and to-day it was in full blast again. It is a

day of wonderful light, so that every tree and house and field of

standing corn is seen for miles from any height in a stereoscopic

panorama below a fleecy sky with long blue reaches between the cloud

mountains. There was a lot of air fighting this morning because of this

light across the landscape, and wherever I motored to-day there was the

loud drone of the flying engines, and little fat bursts of shrapnel

trying to catch German planes who came over on bombing adventures above

our camps and villages. The enemy is all out, and it seems to me likely

that he wishes to make this battle a decisive one of the war. I do not

see how he can hope to decide it in his own favour after the loss of the

Pilkem and Westhoek Ridges, but he is out to kill regardless of his own

losses.

VII

THE BATTLE OF LANGEMARCK

AUGUST 16

This morning our troops made a general advance beyond the line of our

recent attacks and gained about 1500 yards of ground on a wide front,

which includes the village of Langemarck, and goes southward in the

region of Glencorse Copse and Polygon Wood. From north to south the

divisions engaged were the 29th, 20th, 11th, 48th, 36th (Ulster), 16th

(Irish), 8th, and 56th.

On the left of our troops the French went forward also, and struck out

into the swampy neck of ground which they call the Peninsula or

Presqu'ile, surrounded on three sides by deep floods. On the right of

our attack the fighting has been most violent, and the enemy has made

strong and repeated counter-attacks over all the high ground which

drops down to Glencorse Wood from the Nuns' Wood to the Hanebeek. His

losses have been high, for although the weather is still stormy, making

the ground bad for our men, there is light for our flying men and

artillery observers, and at various parts of the Front his assembly of

troops has been signalled quickly, so that our guns have smashed up his

formations and caused great slaughter.

The Germans used to call the battles of the Somme the "blood-bath."

Their diaries and their letters revealed the horror they had of the

shambles into which they were driven. In the early days of this year

they made a strategic retreat, under the guidance of Hindenburg, with

the one object of escaping from our intense artillery-fire, but their

methods of defence have been entirely changed by holding the front lines

lightly by weak troops and scattered machine-gun emplacements, and

concentrating their best troops behind for counter-attacks, in order to

save man-power and lessen the tide of casualties. It is a sound system

of defence, but it is the policy of an army fighting a retreat and

giving up ground at the highest possible cost, never getting back by

counter-attack to quite the same line over which the enemy had flowed.

As a life-saving policy, however, the success has not been great, for it

is certain that the German troops are suffering hideously from our

shell-fire, and their counter-attacks have been costly in blood.

I suppose these words of mine convey nothing to people who read them.

How could they when for three years we have been talking in superlatives

without exaggerating the facts, but without understanding them, as minds

are numbed by colossal figures? But out here, seeing the flame of

shell-fire night after night stretching away round a great horizon, and

hearing from near and from afar the ceaseless hammer-strokes of great

guns, and watching the starlit sky, as I watched it last night from

quiet cornfields, all red and restless with winking lights leaping up in

tongues and spreading lengthwise in a sullen glare, one does realize a

little the monstrous scale of all this and the destruction that is being

done among the masses of men in the dark and in the hiding-places of the

woods and trenches.

Experts are wrangling over the numbers of the German reserves. Fantastic

figures are given of the millions of Germans still under arms. Well,

there is no exact data, and all we know with any certainty is that the

enemy is still outwardly strong--strong at least in defence. But the

magnitude of his losses during three years is revealed by the fact of

to-day's fighting and the place in which it happened. It was in the

autumn of 1914, during the first battle of Ypres, that the Germans

attacked our Third Brigade at Langemarck, where our English troops made

a great and victorious assault to-day. Three years ago they were the

German lads of the 1914 class who marched up to our lines, linked arm in

arm to be mowed down by the most deadly rifle-fire in the world, because

those men of our old Army were the finest marksmen. Yesterday at Lens,

or rather at Hill 70, there were boys of the 1919 class who helped to

hold the German lines, and that fact is one great tragedy of German

hopes and the great proof of her defeat.

Last night our English troops who were going to attack the village of

Langemarck, the old ghost-village which has been wiped out of all but

history, went across the Steenbeek stream and lay there waiting for the

hour of their assault. They were all light-infantry men, the King's, the

Duke of Cornwall's, Somerset, the "Koylies" (King's Own Yorkshire Light

Infantry), the King's Royal Rifles, and the Rifle Brigade of the 20th

Division.

As we know now from captured orders a German regiment was ordered to

attack our lines at 3.45 this morning. Only forty men of that regiment

were seen advancing and they were annihilated. Our men went forward when

there was light enough. Immediately on their right, in front of them,

was the ruin of an old estaminet called Au Bon Gite, made into a

fortified emplacement and defended by machine-guns. It was a nasty

place, and our men avoided it, and swept both sides of it and beyond, so

that its garrison of gunners had to surrender. Keeping a steady line as

much as possible over bad ground, they went forward, leaving the waves

that followed them to deal with batches of prisoners who had been left

alive after our bombardment of the night, and made their way toward

Langemarck. Here they were in real trouble, but not from the enemy. It

was the state of the ground that threatened them with the worst

disaster. All round Langemarck the floods were out, and the heavy rains

of the week had filled old shell-holes to the brim and made a bog

everywhere. Men sank up to their waists as in the worst days of the

fighting during the winter on the Somme. It was not water but wet mud

that made their cold bath, and they had to use their rifles to keep

themselves from sinking deep, and men on little islands of more solid

ground had to haul out their comrades. All this meant loss of time, so

that our barrage would sweep ahead of them and the German gunners would

be able to do dirty work.

On the left of Langemarck the men were delayed by these bogs. On the

right they were able to push up with great difficulty, but still to get

on and work up to the village. The enemy ran as soon as they saw that

our men were near. There were some spasmodic bursts of machine-gun fire,

but the defence was feeble, and here, anyhow, the enemy had been

demoralized by our frightful gun-fire.

A regimental commander, a full colonel, was taken here, and that is a

rare bird to catch, as in most cases German officers of that rank are

well behind the line. He was dejected and nerve-shaken, and spoke freely

of the great losses of his men. They were men of the 79th Reserve

Division who had been holding Langemarck, and they have suffered most

severely, having lost large numbers of men in the previous attacks.

Other prisoners came from the 214th Division, holding the line north of

the Staden Railway--the railway to the ground above Bixschoote. The

regiment which perhaps suffered worst of all was a battalion of the

262nd, which was broken to pieces in the British attack across the

Steenbeek.

To the right of the attack on Langemarck our light-infantry men were

successful, and in spite of concrete blockhouses and some deadly

machine-gunning, won all the ground they had been asked to get. The men

report that they saw large numbers of German dead, and that little

groups of men fled before them as they advanced. Later in the morning

the enemy rallied, and came back in counter-attacks, one of which seems

to have come within ten yards of our men before it withered away under

rifle and machine-gun fire.

It was on the right centre of the attack that, as I have said, the

fighting was most uncertain. The Irish Divisions were heavily engaged

here working towards Polygon Wood and the high ground thereabouts. They

had to advance over frightful ground, and against the enemy in his

greatest strength, because he is determined to defend these high slopes

if he loses all else.

VIII

CAPTURE OF HILL SEVENTY

AUGUST 15

This morning, at dawn, the Canadians captured Hill 70, attacked and

gained a maze of streets and trenches forming the mining colonies of

St.-Laurent and St.-Emilie, and are now fighting on the outskirts of

Lens. A fair number of prisoners have been taken--I saw parties of them

marching down under escort an hour or two ago. Some of the enemy's

troops were seen running away from the wreckage of the red houses in the

suburbs of Lens as soon as Hill 70 was taken, but in some parts of the

outer defences north and west of the city the garrison is fighting

fiercely. The Canadians have, at any rate, gained most of the outward

bastions of Lens formed by the separate colonies, or cites, as they are

called, made up of blocks of miners' cottages and works united in one

big mining district.

Hill 70 is ours again after two years since we took it and lost it. I

don't know whether that will cause a thrill to people at home. I think

it will to those whose men fought there in the September of 1915. One of

my own great memories of the war is of those days in the battle of Loos,

when the Scots of the 15th Division and the Londoners of the 47th, and

afterwards the Guards, went through the village of Loos and gained that

dirty ridge of ground among old slag-heaps under frightful shell-fire.

It was gained in the first great rush of the Londoners and the Scots.

The Londoners played a football up the slopes, and the Scots went up

with their pipes--do you remember?--and for a few hours they had a quiet

time here and collected souvenirs, until later the enemy came back in

fierce counter-attacks, and the Guards and the 1st Division fell back

after heroic fighting and great losses. I saw the Jocks on that first

day coming back with German helmets on their heads, laughing in spite of

their wounds, and for the first time I saw masses of German prisoners

taken by British troops, and in the square of Bethune, through which, in

driving rain, there went a steady tide of men and artillery, there was a

group of German guns as trophies of victory. It seemed a great victory

at first. It was only afterwards we knew how much more might have been

gained. And there was a tragic story to tell. Some of the Jocks went as

far as an outlying northern suburb of Lens, but few of them ever came

back again. Now to-day, after two years less a month, the Canadians have

fought over the same ground, and have gone over and beyond Hill 70 and

linked up many of their former gains in these mining cites on the

outskirts of Lens.

In describing former fighting round Lens I said it was like a war in

Wigan. The comparison is true. But to-day, when I watched the scene of

the Canadian attack with heavy shell-fire over all these houses and

pit-heads, I thought of another northern town which would look very much

like this if the hell of war came to it. I thought of Bolton and its

suburbs, Entwistle and other straggling little towns on the edge of the

moors, with Doffcocker and rural villages among cornfields, and factory

chimneys on the horizon, and slag-heaps beyond green fields. That will

give an image to English people of the scene of war to-day, except that

Lens and its suburbs were never so black as our English factory towns,

and its walls are still red in spite of their shell-holes.

Before the attack began at dawn wild flights of shells passed over this

little world of ruin to Hill 70, which is no hill at all, but just a low

hummock of ground criss-crossed with trenches and burrowed with dug-outs

and barren and filthy with relics of death, on the northern side of the

city of Lens. From all the ruins around, separate villages of ruin

joining up with the streets of Lens itself, red flames gushed up when

our batteries fired at a hot pace, and where the shells burst there were

long low flashes spreading across a sky heavy and black with

storm-clouds. Over the German lines and the houses where they held the

cellars the shells burst in a tumult which had a sudden beginning just

before the dawn, and above all their smoke and fire there were fountains

of wonderfully bright light, of burning gold and of running flame all

scarlet and alive. The light was from our smoke-producing rockets, and

the running flame was from drums of boiling oil which we fired into the

enemy's trenches to burn him alive if we caught him there. I saw the far

spread of gun-fire in the early morning after the thin crescent moon had

faded, and when there was a grey, moist light over the city and fields.

Soon after the Canadians had taken Hill 70 the enemy flung back a great

barrage, so that the ridge was vomiting up columns of black smoke like

scores of factory chimneys on a foggy day. And in all the suburbs of

Lens, those cites of St.-Laurent and St.-Emilie and St.-Pierre, and into

Lievin and Calonne, and Maroc and Grenay, he pitched heavy shells which

came howling across the wilderness of bricks and slag-heaps, and broke

into gruff enormous coughs out of which black demons of smoke rose like

the evil genii out of the bottle, darkening the view. An hour or so

later the sun came brightly through the clouds, and these cites of

strife, girdled by cornfields in which the stooks are standing, and by

green hills across which the tide of slaughter has swept, leaving them

in peace again, were flooded with fresh, glinting light, so that the

scene was rich in colour. There was not a figure to be seen on Hill 70,

not a movement of life among the houses around Lens. The Canadians had

gone across in the smoke, and now they were hidden among the ruins. The

only life was that of shell-fire, and it has a life of its own, though

it is meant for death.

A little to the left in front of me was one of the fosses which rise

among the broken houses. For some reason the enemy had special spite

against it, and every few minutes a great shell came with a yell and

smashed about it. The German gunners were flinging their stuff about in

a random way, searching for our batteries and hoping to kill collections

of men. They did not have much luck, and they all but caught sixty of

their own men who had just come along as prisoners, and, having escaped

from the barrage-fire, hoped for safety from their own guns. One of

their shells fell within twenty yards of them, but before the next one

came their guards told them to quick march, and they ran hard. They were

wretched-looking men, more miserable in physique than any I have seen

for a long time, and sallow and pinched and gaunt. Some of them were

very young, but not all, and there were none so young as those described

to me by some Canadian soldiers who fought with them to-day.

"They were children," said one man, "no bigger than schoolboys. I call

it cruel to send such youngsters into the fighting-line."

Another man told me that he saw boys lying dead who looked no older than

fourteen, and it made him feel sick. They could not all have been like

that, these men of the 155th and 156th Reserve Regiments, regiments from

whom some of the prisoners come, because they are making a very stiff

fight in some parts of their defensive system, and the Canadians have

real men against them. It seems that Hill 70 was held lightly and by the

younger class of soldiers, the best Prussian troops being kept back to

hold the inner defences of Lens, and to make counter-attacks.

"It was a walk-over," said a Canadian, describing the assault on the

hill. "Our barrage was great, and it had simply smashed the ground to

pulp. I thought it a worse wreck than Vimy, which was some wreck. One

could just see a faint suggestion of trenches, but everything was clean

swept. There were two or three machine-gun emplacements which gave us a

bit of trouble, but not much. We jumped on them and wiped them out. I

can't say I saw many German dead, but just a few boys. I expect the

others were buried and smashed up." These Canadians were wonderful. They

went into the battle with an absolute confidence. "I knew we should do

the trick," said one of them, who came walking back with a wound in his

thigh, "and all my pals were of the same mind."

He said one amazing thing, lying there waiting for his operation in the

back parlour of a miner's cottage, in one of these mazes into which the

enemy was plugging shells at times: "I enjoyed the show very much," he

said, "it was a fair treat."

Next to him lay another badly wounded man with a piece of wire plucked

from his own flesh wrapped up in a piece of cotton-wool as a trophy, and

a hole through his leg. He grinned at me and said: "We put it across

them all right. I wouldn't have missed it, but I'm sorry I got this leg

messed up. I didn't come over to get a Blighty wound. I want to see the

end of this war. That's what I want to do. I want to be in at the end."

The wounded men came back like that unless they came back with only the

soles of their boots showing over the edge of the ambulance.

Fortunately, up to midday at least, there were not many badly wounded

men. The spirit of men who have fought and fought and seen the worst

horrors of war, and suffered its most hideous discomforts, is one of

those miracles which I do not understand. I only record the fact about

these hardy Canadians and the Canadian Scottish.

Of the same character are the civilian inhabitants of one of these

mining cites on the edge of the battlefields, where they have remained

since the beginning of the war. Nearer even than the edge. They live in

streets where most of the houses have been hit and many of them wrecked.

Death comes about and above them. Many of the people have been killed,

and the children go to school in cellars with gas-masks because of the

poison, that comes on an east wind or a north. They were there again

to-day: old women drinking early morning coffee in little rooms that

have stood between masses of ruin; a widow in black weeds, like a

dowager duchess, walking slowly down a street shelled last night and

to-day; girls with braided hair standing at street corners, among

soldiers in steel helmets, watching shells bursting a little way off,

with no certainty that that is their limit.

One of these girls came along, and I saw that she had a bandaged head.

"Wounded?" I asked. She nodded and said, "Yes, a day or two ago."

"Why do you stay in such a place?" I said. "Aren't you frightened?"

She laughed. "What can one do? My mamma keeps living here, so how can I

go away? Besides, one gets used to it a little."

I am bound to say I don't get used to these things, but see them always

with amazement.

* * * * *

A FEW DAYS LATER

Lens itself is now no better than its outer suburbs, a town of battered

houses without roofs and with broken walls leaning against rubbish-heaps

of brickwork and timber. The enemy sent out a wireless message that the

English gunners were destroying French property by bombarding the city,

and then made a deep belt of destruction by blowing up long blocks of

streets. After that our guns have completed the ruin, for there was a

German garrison in every house, and in this kind of warfare there must

be no tenderness of sentiment about bricks and mortar if the enemy is

between the walls. So now in Lens the only cover for Germans and their

only chance of safety is below ground in the tunnels and cellars

reinforced by concrete and built by the forced labour of civilians two

years and more ago when the city was menaced by a French attack. Into

these tunnels the German garrisons of Lens make their way by night, and

in them they live and die. Many die in them it is certain, for a tunnel

is no more than a death-trap when it is blocked at the entrance by the

fall of houses, or when it collapses by the bombardment of heavy shells

which pierce down deep and explode with monstrous effect. That has

happened, as we know, in many parts of the German line, and recently on

the French front whole companies of German soldiers were buried alive in

deep caves. It is happening in Lens now, if the same effect is produced

by the same power of artillery. But death comes to the German soldiers

there in another way, without any noise and quite invisible, and very

horrible in its quietude. Many times lately the Canadians have drenched

the city of Lens with gas that kills, and soaks down heavily into

dug-outs and tunnels, and stifles men in their sleep before they have

time to stretch out a hand for a gas-mask, or makes them die with their

masks on if they fumble a second too long. The enemy, who was first to

use poison-gas, should wish to God he had never betrayed his soul by

such a thing, for it has come back upon him as a frightful retribution,

and in Lens, in those deep, dark cellars below the ruins, German

soldiers must live with terror and be afraid to sleep.

Yesterday, when I went to that neighbourhood, I saw four German soldiers

who had come out into the open, rather risking death there than by

staying in their dungeon. They appeared for a minute round the corner of

some brick-stacks in the Cite St.-Auguste. I was watching the German

lines there, and staring at the ruined houses and slag-heaps and broken

water-towers of Harnes and Annay, beyond the outer fields of the mining

city. The church towers in both those villages still stand, though a

little damaged, and some of the red roofs are still intact. The German

lines were away beyond a strip of No Man's Land, and here not a soul was

to be seen, no trace of life in all this land of death until suddenly I

saw those four figures come stealthily up behind the brick-stacks. They

stood up quite straight and looked towards our ground, and then after a

second crouched low so that only their heads showed above a little dip

in the ground. A few minutes later I saw two more Germans. They ran at a

jog-trot along a hedge outside the Cite St.-Auguste and made a bolt

through a gap. It was as strange to see them as though they were

visitors from another planet, for, in this district of Lens, no man

shows his body above ground unless he is careless of a quick death, and

one may stare for days at the empty houses and the broken mine-shafts

and the high black slag-heaps without seeing any living thing.

On our side of the lines, during a long walk yesterday to the crest of

Hill 70, I saw only a few lonely figures above ground, although below

ground there were many, and in one dug-out where I was lucky to go I

found a luncheon-party of officers discussing the psychology of Kerensky

and news of the world one day old, and the chances of three years more

of war or thirty, as men do round a London dinner-table, though there

were loud, unpleasant noises overhead, where German shells were in

flight to a trench which had been recommended to me as a nice safe place

for a Sunday walk. Somehow, I did not believe in the safety of any walk

in this neighbourhood, because there were fresh shell-holes along the

tracks between the ruined houses which could not inspire the simplest

soul with confidence. There is not a house there which has not been

knocked edgewise or upside down, and the little village church I passed

is no longer a place for worship but a nightmare building, inhabited by

the menace of death. The German gunners cannot leave these mining

villages alone, though they are as deserted as the Polar regions, with

no cheerful Tommy's face to be seen through any of the empty

window-frames, or through any of the holed walls or down any of the

sand-bag shelters which used to be the homes of British soldiers when

the fighting was closer this way.

It is the loneliness which one hates most in these places, especially

when shells come along with a beastly noise which seems a particular

menace to one's own body as there is nobody else to be killed. So I was

glad to fall in with a young officer who was working his way up the

line. He had just brought down a wounded man, and was stopping a while

in a wayside dressing-station, where there was a friendly and lonely

doctor, who offered the hospitality of his sand-bags and steel girders

to any passer-by, and said "Stay a bit longer" when bits of shell could

be heard whining outside. We went along the way together, close to the

grim old muck-heap, the Double Grassier, where Germans and English lived

cheek by jowl for two years until recent weeks, fighting each other with

bombs when they were bored with each other's company, and so past the

village of Loos.

The way up to Hill 70 is historic ground, and every bit of brickwork,

every stump of a tree, every yard or so of road, is haunted by the

memory of gallant men, who in September just two years ago came this way

under frightful shell-fire and fell here in great numbers. Among them

were the Londoners of the glorious 47th Division and the Scots of the

15th--as I walked by the village of Loos I thought of some friends of

mine in the Gordons who had great adventures there that day amongst

those dreadful little ruins--and Hill 70 was taken and lost again after

heroic fighting and tragic episodes, which are still remembered with a

shudder by men who hate to think of them.

It is only a few weeks ago that we took the ground beyond in that great

Canadian assault upon Hill 70 which I described at the time, and up

there on the hill-side--it is not much of a hill, but goes up very

gradually to the crest--the trenches are still littered with German

relics, and in the deep dug-outs burnt out and blown out there are still

German bodies lying. The smell of death comes out of these holes, and it

is not a pleasant place.

Before the Canadian assault English troops of the glorious old 6th

Division captured and held the approaches and raided the Germans in Nash

Alley, which is a famous trench in the history of the Durhams and the

Essex Regiment and of the Buffs and West Yorkshires, and resisted

ferocious German attacks with the most grim courage. Under their

pressure the Germans yielded part of their line one night, withdrawing

to another line of trenches secretly, but these troops of ours followed

them up so quickly that they were in the German dug-outs before the

candles had gone out. The Canadian capture of Hill 70 was a great blow

to the German command, and they tried vainly to get it back by repeated

counter-attacks. They will never get it back now, and Lens, which lies

below it, remains for them a death-trap, which only pride makes them

hold, and where in the cellars men are forced to live hellishly under

our shells and gas in order to uphold that pride in men who do not take

the risks nor suffer the agony of this hidden death.

IX

LONDONERS IN GLENCORSE WOOD

AUGUST 17

The battle of Langemarck yesterday, and all the struggle southward to

the ground about Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse was one of the most

heroic as well as one of the bloodiest days of fighting in all this war.

The enemy put up a fierce resistance except at points where underfed

boys had been thrust out in shell-holes, as in the neighbourhood of

Langemarck, to check the first onslaught of our men if possible, and if

not to die. Behind them, as storm troops for counter-attack, were some

of the finest troops of the German army. Among them was the 54th

Division, which had already been severely mauled by our gun-fire and was

utterly exhausted. But other divisions, like the 34th, who were in front

of our Londoners, were fresh and strong, only just brought into the

battle-line. Behind the immediate supporting troops were massed reserves

whom the German command held ready to hurry up in wagons and light

railways to any part of the field where their lines were most

threatened, or when instant counter-attacks might inflict most damage on

our men.