A TROOPER’S TALE
[It has been said that in this war cavalry have ceased to exist. As
mounted men their opportunities have undoubtedly been very limited;
but in other ways they have done much to maintain their ancient
reputation. In the earlier days of the fierce attempt of the Germans to
break through the Allied Armies and get to Calais the teller of this
tale--Trooper Notley, of the 5th Dragoon Guards--was engaged and was
finally wounded and invalided home.]
There are a good many men who, like myself, were at Mons, the Marne and
the Aisne, and then went into the Fight for the Coast, and I think they
would all tell the same story--that that tremendous battle was fifty
times worse than the Aisne.
The Aisne was very bad; but even there, though the Germans fought
desperately to prevent themselves from being driven back and turned
away from Paris, their efforts were not to be compared with the
determination they showed in their attacks upon the troops who barred
their way to Calais.
The Germans were mad in their resolve to hack their way through to
Paris; but they were madder to break through and get to the coast, so
that they could get within sight of hated England. They tried all they
knew; even as I talk they are trying as hard as ever, but I’m as sure
that they won’t succeed as I am that to-morrow will come.
People have heard and read a lot about the fighting at Ypres and
Messines, and it is of this part of the battle that I am going to talk,
because it was at these places that the 5th Dragoon Guards shared in a
great deal of furious fighting.
We had had a long inning at the Aisne, then our brigade moved on to
the Ypres region, which we reached after being fourteen days in the
saddle. We made a short break at Amiens, where it was thought that we
might have to help the French; but before long reinforcements arrived
for them and we went on our road to the north, approaching Ypres as the
advanced guard of a brigade.
It had been hard going on the march, and there was plenty of excitement
with it, even before we got into the real fight for the coast. There
were prowling Uhlans everywhere, and nothing would have pleased us
better than to get at them in a thundering charge; but they didn’t
give us the chance, they are not keen on that sort of thing, and kept
in scattered bodies. But at one point quite a little surprise had been
prepared for us by about three hundred Uhlans.
We were marching along when we discovered that these Uhlans had taken
up a position commanding a road, and they had planted a Maxim, so that
they could give us a warm welcome. They soon discovered that we were
not going to be caught napping. Instead of keeping to the road we were
promptly ordered to leave it and to take to a field running alongside.
We made for the Uhlans as fast as we could go, but they did not stop to
finish the welcome; they vanished, and I was unable to see the end of
them; but it seems that they were completely surrounded and gathered in
by some of our infantry.
[Illustration:
_To face p. 172._
BRITISH CAVALRY AT THE FRONT.]
This was the sort of small affair that was constantly happening, but
it was a trifle compared with the real big fighting around Ypres. The
cannonade was terrific, and the everlasting firing made it seem as
though nothing existed on earth but the thundering of big guns and the
screeching and bursting of shells all around.
In and around Ypres, the Allies had pushed far into the enemy’s line,
and the Germans were concentrating all their men and metal to crumple
us up. They strained every nerve and made the most dreadful sacrifices
to carry out the Kaiser’s command to break through; but though they
hurled themselves to certain death, in thousands, they were driven back.
Messines, a village quite near to Ypres, came within the zone of this
furious attack, and it was at Messines that most of the brigade,
including my own squadron, was posted.
When we got to the village, which we reached by way of the
fields--rough going, but safer than the roads--my squadron was ordered
to hold the place by the main road, and another squadron went about
nine hundred yards up the road and spent the night in digging trenches,
which were occupied by the whole regiment on the following morning.
As we moved into the trenches we were under incessant fire, and we were
fired on all the time we were in them.
For twelve days and twelve nights we held fast to our trenches, against
the onslaughts of forces that were certainly five times as great as our
own--and, in spite of their countless losses, the proportion of the
Germans was never less than that.
We seemed to have nothing but shell fire and night attacks, and to get
anything like decent rest under such conditions was impossible.
There was a curious sameness in this life in the trenches. We had no
chance, as we had at the Aisne, of digging ourselves in, because the
lie of the land was against us. At the Aisne our positions were very
strong and we could afford to smile at the efforts of the Germans to
dig us out; but it was a very different matter in country which is as
flat as a floor. There was nothing impregnable in our little artificial
gullies, and in this absence of help from Nature we had to keep our
wits about us to escape the shrapnel and to prevent the nightly visits
of our German neighbours.
We were a mixed lot at Messines. Our line consisted of the Connaught
Rangers, the Somersets, Bengal Lancers and some Ghurkas--a mere handful
compared with the hosts of Germans that were flung against us, with an
enormous number of guns. The more troops they sent the more we shot.
Day after day this fighting went on, the German attacks getting fiercer
every day. Nightfall was the time when they would make particularly
stubborn attempts to drive us out. They would leave their own trenches
and advance two or three hundred yards at a time, then throw themselves
flat on the ground before beginning the next stage. We had them under
observation all the time, but did not let a sound reach them; in fact,
we lured them on by seeming not to be there.
On they came, till they were something like fifty yards away, then we
got the order for rapid fire, and let drive into the ranks that it was
not possible to miss. In this manner great numbers of Germans were
destroyed; we punished them terribly, for our rapid fire was certain
destruction for their front ranks.
It is not always clear to people, I find, that trenches may be
constructed according to the needs of the moment, at all sorts of
odd corners and angles. The idea seemed to be that the Germans dug
themselves in along a perfectly straight line, while we dug ourselves
in along a parallel line a few hundred yards away. In our position
by Messines the trenches were splayed out, so to speak, some of them
making an angle of ninety degrees or so with each other. We were so
entrenched that we were inviting the Germans to step into a hollow
square, or rather to form the fourth side of it, which with their heaps
of dead and wounded they occasionally did. Of course the positions
varied from hour to hour, both in guarding against attempts to enfilade
us and in avoiding cross-fire between units of our own forces.
One night a supreme effort was made by the Germans. The Indians had
relieved us that very morning, and one troop of our men had got into a
barn and cut loopholes in the walls, while another troop had taken up a
position at a barricade made up of old wagons and sacks of earth.
At about three o’clock in the morning we suddenly heard the sound of
a bugle, and presently the Germans set up a hullabaloo and fairly
hurled themselves at our trenches. They came in such strong numbers
that the Indians, who had been dealing out death half the night, were
overweighted by the enemy, who got round their flank and attacked them
in the rear.
A Maxim gun section of the 11th Hussars was hurried down, and from
the window of one of the buildings it blazed away at the Germans and
covered the retirement of the Indians. The way in which the Maxims have
been handled in the war has been a revelation to a lot of people. These
handy weapons have been got into upstairs and downstairs rooms and even
into the tops of trees, and they have caused terrific havoc in the
Germans’ solid ranks.
That night affair was desperate; but it seemed as if nothing could stop
the mad onrush of the Germans, and at last there was nothing for it but
to give way, and so we received orders to evacuate the barn.
Near this particular point the road forks, and a couple of men were
left to fire up the right-hand road and two to fire up the road on the
left, and for the time being we were effectually covered.
It was at this stage that there arose the chance for a Territorial
regiment to come into action for the first time. The Territorials to
win this great distinction were the London Scottish.
The Scottish had been ordered up to relieve the pressure, and they came
on quickly and in gallant style and took up a position at one end of
the barn, while the Highland Light Infantry, the brave old 71st, took
up a position at the other, and between them the two carried the barn
with a bayonet charge and killed, captured or drove away the Germans.
The Scottish had their baptism of blood in proper good style, with a
very strange preparation in the shape of a cunning German trick.
Not far from the Scottish was a windmill which had had three of its
sails blown away or destroyed, leaving only the fourth sail, and that
looked as if it had been cut clean in half. It was noticed that this
crippled sail was working about in the most astonishing fashion, and
those who saw it were puzzled to account for the movements; but it was
soon discovered that there was a German spy hidden in the mill, and
that he was moving the sail to indicate the position of the Scottish,
and so bring the German gun-fire to bear on them. When the dodge had
been discovered and the signaller settled the Scottish got their own
back.
By this time I was blazing away from a barricade in an old covered
yard, and there was a straggling fire going on all around; but it was
clear that we should want reinforcements if we were to hold our own and
save Messines.
At last we heard shouts, and I cannot tell you what it meant to us
when we knew that the shouts came from our own fellows, and that three
battalions of infantry had hurried up and got into action and given the
Germans more than they could comfortably carry.
It was at this moment of the saving of Messines that I was struck by a
shrapnel bullet and had to leave the fighting-line and come home, with
the fight for the coast going on. I had been in it right from the start
and had got used to the awful business, even to the “coal-boxes,” which
the Germans were everlastingly firing. They made a particular target of
the church, and for nine days bombarded it before they set the building
on fire.
One of the strangest things about a shell is that you never know what
it is going to do, and some of the “coal-boxes” acted like freaks.
During this bombardment of the church I watched one of the shells
come, and expected that it would do something smashing, for it hit the
building full in the middle of one of the main walls. I looked for the
wall to be shattered, but the shell never shifted a brick or a bit of
mortar; it simply burst in on itself, so to speak, and did no damage to
anything except itself, and in the end the Germans got a fire going by
sending a much smaller shell, something like a fifteen-pounder.
In a general way of speaking, however, these “coal-boxes” did some
terrible mischief when they really exploded, and no living thing within
their reach had a chance of escaping. Horses, guns, men, wagons,
everything that came within the area of explosions was shattered or
wiped out. Often enough men who were killed by the explosions were
found in the holes, so that the shell which had destroyed them had also
scooped out their grave.
There were all sorts of side issues to the actual fighting. We billeted
in every kind of building, some of them very strange; but I think the
strangest of all was a cow-house. This does not sound promising; but
that cow-house was one of the finest places I ever slept in.
The farm itself was beautiful, and everything about it was on
the latest and best scale, so that the cow-house was lighted by
electricity, and the fittings were in keeping with the illumination.
I had a very comfortable stretch there, and it would not have been
possible for us to be better looked after. The proprietor had had
notice of our coming and had made every preparation for us, and we were
only too grateful for the many good things he freely gave away. We had
the same sort of kindness shown to us by the French wherever we came
into contact with them.
It may seem somewhat odd that a cavalryman in talking of the war should
dwell so much on the trench work and the shell-fire; but in this war
a great deal of the work of the cavalry has been dismounted, and
practically the same as the infantry, and there has not been the chance
that every cavalryman longs for to get to close grips with the enemy’s
mounted forces.
We had heard so much about the Uhlans that we expected to have some
stirring times with them; but these big encounters did not come off,
and one great thing we learned about the Uhlans was their skill in
avoiding us. We saw them everywhere, but in scattered bodies, and they
never gave us a chance of getting at them in the mass. Whenever we
formed up in anything like force they melted away; but one fine day we
had better luck--we came across them when they were in fair numbers,
and before they could perform their vanishing trick we had got at them.
At the end we found that we had punished them pretty heavily, for we
broke up seven hundred lances which we had captured from them.