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mortars and projectors, and our own two-inch Stokes in the front line
strove to cover the noise by separate rapid fire. Thanks to past
practice with the box-respirators, in which our perspiring men had at
last learned to work, there were no casualties when a gas “short”
burst just behind the front line. It was their first acquaintance with
gas-shells but, all told, only one officer and five men were gassed,
nearly all of whom returned to duty in a few days. The relief was a
small action in itself, for the companies had to be extricated one by
one, and “the dispositions of the relieving battalions were different
from ours.” Nor was it a clean departure, since the back-lines were
more and more crowded with fatigue-parties, each claiming right of
way, and the Battalion was held up in Hunter Street, which at its
widest was perhaps four feet and a half, by a couple of hundred men
shifting trifles such as mats and bridges towards the firing-line. When
they were getting away between Bleuet and Marguerite Farms,
Lieutenant Keenan was hit in the thigh by a splinter of shell.
That tour cost the Battalion six officers killed or wounded and sixty
casualties in other ranks. Considering the shelling, the heavy traffic
and the back-line “furniture removals,” the wonder was that they had
not suffered thrice as much; but for the eve of a first-class
engagement it was ample.
Their last preparations for the attack were put in in bivouac in the
wooded area about half a mile north-west of De Wippe Cabaret,
where half the Battalion was requisitioned for long, heavy, and
unpleasant fatigues across shelled ground into forward areas, which
led to a small group of casualties. Accommodation in the woods was
insufficient, and many slept where they could under the trees (no
bad thing with wandering planes at large); but the weather held fine
and hot. And then, with everything ready to loose off, the attack was
delayed. The reason given was that the French were to spend a few
days more in making sure of success before carrying out their end of
it. A battalion takes the smallest interest in its neighbours at any
time, and on the edge of battle less than usual. All that the men
knew was that the French were on their left, where the Belgians had
been, and they hoped that they were strong in .75’s. (“Ye can hear
the French long before ye can see them. They dish out their field-
gun fire the way you’d say it was machine-guns. A well-spoken, quiet
crowd, the French, but their rations are nothing at all.”)
There is pathetic interest on the entry of the 26th July that the C.O.
(Eric Greer) “wrote out Operation Orders for Father Knapp”—a dead
man, as the Fates were to decree it, for a dead man. Those orders
were as simple as the problem before the Battalion. They had to
advance straight to their front, with the 1st Scots Guards on their
right, the latter Battalion’s right being neatly bounded by the
Langemarck-Staden railway which again was the dividing line
between the Guards and the Thirty-eighth Division. If luck held, and
pill-boxes did not turn out to be too numerous, they would all fetch up
eventually on the banks of the Steenbeek River, three thousand five
hundred yards north-east by east from their starting-point.
A happy mixture of chance and design had shown that the enemy
were in the habit of abandoning their front line along the canal during
daylight, and of manning it lightly at night. General Feilding,
commanding the Guards Division, promptly took advantage of the
knowledge to throw the 3rd Coldstream across and establish them
on the far bank. The coup was entirely successful, and it saved the
Division the very heavy casualties that would have followed a forcing
of the canal had that been held in strength.
On the 27th, at a conference of C.O.’s, they were told that the
enemy had further withdrawn on that sector, about five hundred
yards up the stage, so to speak, and were resting their front line on a
system known to us as Cariboo and Cannon trenches. One of our
scouting-aeroplanes had been searching the ground at two or three
hundred feet level, and was of opinion there was nobody there who
cared to shoot back. It was a curious situation, for though the
Battalion had rehearsed and rehearsed what they were to do till, as
men said, they could have done it in their sleep, nobody was at
ease. (This, by the way, disproves the legend that battalions know by
instinct whether they are going to win or lose.) Late that night a
hostile plane came over the forest area and woke them up with
bombs. Lieutenant Arthur Paget, attached to the M.G.C., was slightly
wounded. On the same day a draft of ninety men arrived as
reinforcements. Their position was that of supers, for in a corps
trained as the 2nd Irish Guards had been to carry out this one affair
in a certain way, no amateurs were allowed. Greer had seen to it that
every soul over whom he had authority should study the glass, sand,
tin, and twig model of the ground till he knew it by heart, and had
issued, moreover, slips of paper with a few printed sentences (“like
home post cards”) to serve for unit commanders’ reports in action.
On the back of these was a map of the sector itself, and “every one
was instructed to mark his position with an X.” The results were
superb, though Greer did not survive to see them.
The Division had its battle-patrols out and across the canal on the
night of the 28th July, pressing forward gingerly, digging themselves
in or improving existing “slits” in the ground against shell-fire. The
Battalion did much the same thing at the back, for all the world
where they walked with cautious shoulders was very unwholesome,
and the barrages clanged to and fro everlastingly. Yet, had they been
asked, they would have said, “Our guns were doing nothing out of
the way.” Men were so broke to the uproar they hardly noticed it.
On the 29th July two companies (1 and 2) of the Battalion moved
out to relieve the leading companies of the 3rd Coldstream, who had
been for some time on the far side of the canal. All went well in the
summer afternoon till a hostile aeroplane saw them filing across, and
signalled a barrage which killed or wounded forty men, wounded
Lieutenant Hannay of No. 2 Company, and killed Captain Synge in
command of No. 1. Synge was perhaps one of the best company
commanders that the Battalion had ever known, and as popular as
he was brave.
Colonel Greer went up into the line directly afterwards with
Captain D. Gunston as his second in command, and Lieutenant
Hanbury as adjutant. They were cruelly short of combatant officers—
past casualties had reduced the number to ten; and the only ones
left in reserve were Major Ferguson and Lieutenant Hely-Hutchinson.
The day and night were spent by the two companies in digging in
where they were, while Nos. 3 and 4 waited on.
Early on the morning of the 30th July the French on their left and
the whole of the Fifth Army put down a half-hour barrage to find out
where the enemy would pitch his reply. He retaliated on the outskirts
of Boesinghe village and the east bank of the canal, not realising to
what an extent we were across that obstacle. In the evening dusk
the remaining two companies of the Battalion slipped over and took
up battle positions, in artillery (“pigtail”) formation of half-platoons,
behind Nos. 1 and 2 Companies, who had shifted from their previous
night’s cover, and now lay out in two waves east of the Yper Lea. By
ten o’clock the whole of the Guards Division was in place. The 2nd
and 3rd Guards Brigades were to launch the attack, and the 1st,
going through them, was to carry it home. A concrete dug-out in the
abandoned German front line just north of the railway was used as a
Battalion Headquarters. It was fairly impervious to anything smaller
than a 5.9, but naturally its one door faced towards the enemy and
had no blind in front of it—a lack which was to cost us dear.
July 31st opened, at 3.30 a. m., with a barrage of full diapason
along the army front, followed on the Guards sector by three minutes
of “a carefully prepared hate,” during which two special companies
projected oil-drums throwing flame a hundred yards around, with
thermit that burned everything it touched. The enemy had first shown
us how to employ these scientific aids, and we had bettered the
instruction.
His barrage in reply fell for nearly an hour on the east bank of the
canal. Our creeping barrage was supposed to lift at 4 a. m. and let
the two leading battalions (2nd Irish Guards and 1st Scots Guards)
get away; but it was not till nearly a quarter of an hour later that the
attack moved forward in waves behind it. Twelve minutes later, Nos.
1 and 2 Companies of the Battalion had reached the first objective
(Cariboo and Cannon trenches) “with only one dead German
encountered”; for the enemy’s withdrawal to his selected line had
been thorough. The remaining companies followed, and behind them
came the 1st Coldstream, all according to schedule; till by 5.20 a. m.
the whole of the first objective had been taken and was being
consolidated, with very small loss. They were pushing on to the
second objective, six hundred yards ahead, when some of our own
guns put a stationary barrage on the first objective—Cariboo
trenches and the rest. Mercifully, a good many of the men of the first
and second waves had gone on with the later ones, where they were
of the greatest possible service in the annoying fights and checks
round the concreted machine-gun posts. Moreover, our barrage was
mainly shrapnel—morally but not physically effective. No. 2
Company and No. 4 Company, for example, lay out under it for a half
and three quarters of an hour respectively without a single casualty.
But no troops are really grateful for their own fire on their own tin
hats.
About half-past five, Colonel Greer, while standing outside
advanced Battalion Headquarters dug-out in the first objective line,
was killed instantly by shrapnel or bullet. It was his devoted work, his
arrangement and foresight that had brought every man to his proper
place so far without waste of time or direction. He had literally made
the Battalion for this battle as a steeple-chaser is made for a given
line of country. Men and officers together adored him for his justice,
which was exemplary and swift; for the human natural fun of the
man; for his knowledge of war and the material under his hand, and
for his gift of making hard life a thing delightful. He fell on the
threshold of the day ere he could see how amply his work had been
rewarded. Captain Gunston took command of the Battalion, for, of
the seniors, Captain Alexander was out ahead with No. 4 Company,
and Major Ferguson was in Regimental Reserve. Headquarters were
moved up into Cariboo trench, and by six o’clock the second
objective had been reached, in the face of bad machine-gun fire from
Hey Wood that had opened on us through a break in our barrage.
No. 3 Company on the right of our line, next to the Scots Guards,
found themselves at one point of this advance held up by our own
barrage, and had the pleasure of seeing a battery of German field-
guns limber up and “go off laughing at them.” Then they came under
oblique machine-gun fire from the right.
Lieutenant Sassoon,[2] commanding No. 3, got his Lewis-gun to
cover a flank attack on the machine-gun that was doing the damage,
took it with seven German dead and five wounded prisoners, and so
freed the advance for the Scots Guards and his own company. As
the latter moved forward they caught it in the rear from another
machine-gun which had been overlooked, or hidden itself in the
cleaning-up of Hey Wood.
Sassoon sent back a couple of sections to put this thing out of
action (which they did) and pushed on No. 4 Company, which was
getting much the same allowance from concrete emplacements
covering machine-guns outside Artillery Wood. Captain Alexander
launched an attack at these through a gap in our barrage, outflanked
them and accounted for three machine-guns and fourteen Germans.
There was some slight difficulty at this point in distinguishing
between our barrage, which seemed to have halted, and the
enemy’s, which seemed to be lifting back. So Captain Alexander had
to conduct his advance by a series of short rushes in and out of this
double barrage, but somehow or other contrived to consolidate his
position without undue delays. (“Consolidatin’ positions at Boesinghe
meant being able to lie down and get your breath while the rest of ye
ran about the country hammerin’ machine-gun posts an’ damnin’ our
barrages.”) Thus occupied, he sent back word to Captain Gunston
that in the circumstances he waived his seniority and placed himself
under the latter’s command. “The pace was too good to inquire.”
This was in the interval before Ferguson, acting Second in
Command, who by regulation had been left behind, could get word of
Greer’s death, reach Battalion Headquarters and take over, which he
did a little later. On his way up, their brigadier (Ponsonby) told him
that “he could not find words strong enough to express his
appreciation of the way in which the Battalion had behaved, and for
its dash and devotion to duty.” Indeed, they admitted among
themselves—which is where criticism is fiercest—that they had
pulled the scheme off rather neatly, in spite of their own barrages,
and that the map and model study had done the trick. By ten o’clock
of the morning their work was substantially complete. They had
made and occupied the strong points linking up between their
advanced companies and the final objectives, which it was the
business of the other brigades to secure. As they put it, “everything
had clicked”; and, for a small reward, Fate sent to Battalion
Headquarters the commanding officer and adjutant of the 73rd
Hanoverian Fusiliers who had been captured near the second
objective, and who wore in gold braid on their left sleeve the word
“Gibraltar” in commemoration of the siege when that regiment, as
Hanoverian, fought on the English side. The adjutant spoke English
well, and thought that the U.S.A., coming into the war at last, would
be bad for Germany. When they asked him if he wanted peace he
replied: “The country wants peace. The men want peace, but I am an
officer, and an officer never wants peace.” Herein he spoke more
truly concerning his own caste than was ever realised by the British
politician.
He was immensely interested, too, in our “Zero” hour and its
arrangements, but seemed unable to grasp the system. “How,” he
asked, “do you manage your—love hour, your nought hour—how do
you call it?” He appeared to think it was something like lawn-tennis,
and they explained to him in the wet-floored dug-out, which had
already received two direct high-explosive souvenirs, that there was,
as he might have observed, very little of “love” about a British Zero.
Then there fell, most naturally, a great thirst upon all the world, for
bottles had been drained long ago, and a carrying-party of the 3rd
Grenadiers had gone astray in that wilderness, and word had come
in from Brigade Headquarters that the pontoon bridge over the canal
was not yet finished, so they would have to draw on the water-dump
on its west bank. Fatigue parties were sent off at once from the two
companies panting there. The other two in the second objective
further on would ... but orders had scarcely been issued when
Lieutenant Nutting pushed up with a string of pack-beasts and made
a forward water-dump just behind the first objective, which saved
trouble and that exposure which means men’s lives. (“All that time, of
course, the battle was ragin’—that is to say, we was being shelled
and shot over as usual—but, ye’ll understand, we wanted water
more than we minded the shells. Thirst is stronger than death with
the need on ye.”)
They disposed themselves for the afternoon, Nos. 1 and 2
Companies taking over from the 1st Scots Guards in the first
objective, and Nos. 3 and 4 in the second, with linked strong posts
connecting both lines. They also withdrew a couple of platoons sent
forward from Nos. 1 and 2 Companies to the final objective (all
objectives had now been reached) to rejoin their companies. At three
o’clock Father Knapp appeared at Battalion Headquarters—that
most insanitary place—and proposed to stay there. It was pointed
out to him that the shelling was heavy, accommodation, as he could
see, limited, and he had better go to the safer advanced dressing-
station outside Boesinghe and deal with the spiritual needs of his
wounded as they were sent in. The request had to be changed to a
reasonably direct order ere he managed to catch it; for, where his
office was concerned, the good Father lacked something of that
obedience he preached. And a few hours after he had gone down to
what, with any other man, would have been reasonable security,
news arrived that he had been mortally wounded while tending
cases “as they came out” of the dressing-station. He must have
noticed that the accommodation there was cramped, too, and have
exposed himself to make shelter for others. Captain David Lees, the
Battalion M.O., seems to have been equally careless, but luckier. He
walked through what is described as “an intensely hostile” barrage
(there were not very many friendly ones falling that day) to the corner
of Artillery Wood, where he found a batch of wounded exposed to
barrages and machine-guns. He was shelled all the time he was
dressing them, and when he had finished, he carried, in turn,
Lieutenant Buller, Sergeant McNally, and Private Donoghue to a safe
trench just outside the barrage zone. To do this he had to go four
times through the barrage before he could continue his round of
professional visits which took him through it yet a fifth time.
During the afternoon, though there was a general bombardment
by the enemy of the first and second objectives for ten minutes every
half-hour, the bulk of the shelling was aimless and wandering, as
though the gunners could not hang on to any target. Men were killed,
but not with intention, and the living could feel that the sting had
gone out of the affair. They finished the interminable day under a
barrage of gas-shells and H.E., which suggested at first a counter-
attack behind it. At that moment, Nos. 2 and 4 Companies were
holding an advanced position near Captain’s Farm towards the last
objective; and it looked as though they would have to be left there all
night, but by eleven o’clock the shelling had died out, the mopping-
up companies of the 1st Coldstream relieved our outlying two, and a
quarter of an hour later, dripping and muddy, the whole Battalion got
away to a low, wet, and uncomfortable camp in the Roussel area,
whose single mitigation was a rum-issue.
They had lost in the past three days three officers (Greer, their
C.O.; Synge, by shrapnel, on the 29th; and Lieutenant Armfield,
found shot on the 31st, not far from the dug-out they had converted
into Battalion Headquarters). Lieutenants Crawford, Buller, and
Vaughan-Morgan were the wounded. Casualties in other ranks came
to 280, a large part due to machine-gun fire. It was a steadying
balance-sheet and, after an undecided action, would have been fair
excuse for a little pause and reconstruction. But a clean-cut all-out
affair, such as Boesinghe, was different, though it had been
saddened by the loss of an unselfish priest who feared nothing
created, and a commanding officer as unselfish and as fearless as
he. The elder and the younger man had both given all they had to
the Battalion, and their indomitable souls stayed with it when, next
day (August 1), the authorities inquired whether it felt equal to going
into the line again for what would certainly be an unusually
abominable “sit and be hit” tour. The Battalion replied that it was
ready, and spent the day cleaning up and putting in
recommendations for awards for the battle. Among these were
Lieutenant Black, the intelligence officer who in the course of his
duties had had to wander for eighteen hours over the whole position
captured by the Battalion, reporting situations, meeting crises as
they arose, and keeping his head and his notes under continuous
barrages. His right-hand man had been Sergeant Milligan, who
“succeeded in establishing advanced Battalion Headquarters in the
first objective five minutes after it had been captured, in spite of the
fact that the barrage fell on that line for the next half-hour.” He then
found a company, all of whose officers, save one, had been
wounded, helped to “reorganise it” with a strong hand and a firm
voice, went on with it, assisted in outflanking three machine-gun
positions, and kept communication unbroken between the front and
back of their attack. Be it remembered that the right sector over
which the 2nd Irish Guards and the Scots Guards moved was much
more blinded with houses, woods, and the like than the left; and
there was room for every sort of trouble if the sectors did not work
together. But Greer’s insistence that the men should know the model
of the ground, and their officers the aeroplane maps of it, and his
arrangements whereby all units could report lucidly at any moment
where they were, had brought them success. So, with 50 per cent. of
their strength gone, and the dismal wet soaking the stiff survivors to
the bone, they hobbled about, saying, “If he were only here now to
see how he has pulled this off!”
Their work on the 2nd August was to take over from a 1st Brigade
Battalion on the left of the divisional front next to the French. The
latter’s front here ran several hundred yards in rear of the Guards,
and since their centre was well forward again, the re-entrant angle
was an awkward and unsafe pocket, which necessitated any
battalion that lay on the French right spending men and trouble in
making a defensive left flank. The advance at this point had been
carried forward to within a few hundred yards of the Steenbeek
River. Indeed, on the right of the divisional front the 2nd Grenadiers
were across and established. The Battalion moved up in rain across
the water-logged, shell-pitted ground at dusk, to be welcomed by
news that the enemy were massing. The enemy would surely have
stuck in the mud had they attempted any counter-attack, but the
Thirty-eighth Division on the right seemed to see them advancing in
battle-array and sent up urgent demands for a barrage, which at
once brought the hostile barrage down all along the line. Under this
quite uncalled-for demonstration the companies floundered to their
shallow trenches, which were a foot deep in mud. They had no
particular idea where they or their rendezvous might be, but,
obviously, the first thing was to get into touch with the French and
beg them to straighten up their line where it nicked into ours. This
was done in the dawn of the 3rd August, and before the end of the
day our allies had attended to the matter and advanced up to the line
of the Steenbeek. Then they, in turn, asked us to supply a standing-
patrol to link up their right to our left at Sentier Farm on the extreme
edge of the ground won. It was not a locality, however, where any
move could be attempted in daylight. The 3rd Coldstream had some
men there, but these, for good reason, were lying low till we could
relieve them. Captain Alexander and Lieutenant Hanbury had been
sent down for a rest after their heavy work; and the Battalion, under
Ferguson, was divided into two wings, the right commanded by
Sassoon, with Lieutenants Van der Noot and Kane; the left by
Captain Gunston, with Lieutenant Rea and, temporarily, Lieutenant
Black. The 1st Coldstream turned up just on the edge of dusk to take
over from the Battalion which was to relieve the 3rd Coldstream in
the front line. Here, for once, efficiency did not pay. The handing
over was completed all too well before the light had gone, and as
they moved forward a burst of shrapnel killed one man and seriously
wounded Lieutenant Van der Noot and five men. They disposed two
companies in snipe-bogs at Signal Farm, and the other two, in like
conditions, at Fourché Farm. There was practically no shelter
against heavy shelling. Battalion Headquarters was an eight-by-four
concrete dug-out with three inches of water on the floor, and the only
people who kept warm seem to have been Lieutenant Rea and a
couple of platoons who got into touch with the French and spent the
night making a strong standing-patrol of two sections and a Lewis-
gun at Sentier Farm, which was where the French wanted it. For the
rest, “practically no shelter, incessant rain, continuous shell-fire, and
mud half-way up the legs, but casualties comparatively few, and the
spirit of all ranks excellent.”
The Welsh Guards relieved them on the night of the 4th, and they
got hot tea (the adjutant had gone down on purpose to see to that) at
Bleuet Farm, entrained at Elverdinghe for Proven, and at Porchester
Camp, which they reached on the morning of the 5th, found a dry
camp that had been pitched before the rain, more hot tea, a change
of clothes, socks, and rum waiting for them. They breakfasted
“before retiring to bed.” (“We was dead done, but ye’ll understand,
’twas nothing more than that. Our hearts was light—except for
Father Knapp an’ Greer; but if they had not been taken that day
’twould have been later. That sort of men they are not made to live.
They do an’ they die.”)
The general impression at Porchester Camp was that the Guards
Division would be out of the line for the next two weeks or so, while
the Twenty-ninth Division took over their work and secured a
jumping-off place on the far side of the Steenbeek, with a new
advance, in which the Guards would take part, towards Houthulst
Forest. Meantime, sufficient to the day was the camp’s daily small
beer—rows, for instance, with company cooks about diet-sheets (this
was a matter Greer had been deep in just before his death), an
inspection which kept them standing-to for nearly a couple of hours
and was then cancelled; a farmer who, meaning to be kind, cut his
crops early so that they might have a nice stubbly parade-ground,
which no one in the least wanted; a lecture on Boesinghe by the
C.O. to Captains Ward and Redmond and Lieutenants FitzGerald
and De Moleyns, and all the N.C.O.’s who had come up with the last
drafts that were making good the Battalion losses and giving the old
hands a deal of trouble. For the enemy had developed at Boesinghe
a defensive system of shell-holes filled with a few men and a
machine-gun, and further protected by modest flanking machine-gun
pill-boxes, over a depth of fifteen hundred or two thousand yards
before one got to his main-line system of triple trenches. It was
wholly damnable because, as the Guards and the Twentieth and
Twenty-ninth Divisions had found out, artillery was not much use
against holes in the ground, even when the field-guns could be
brought close enough across the morasses to reach them. Warley
knew little about the proper forms of attack on such positions, and
the new hands had to be taught it under menace of the daring
planes. The Hun never threw away an opportunity of doing evil to his
enemy, and while they lay at Bedford Camp (August 13) a number of
the A.S.C. horses died owing to steel shavings having been
cunningly mixed in their baled hay by some pro-Boche agent in the
far-off lands where it was purchased.
On the 18th August orders came to move up the line to a camp
west of Bleuet Farm, where aeroplanes were more vicious than ever.
There they had to construct the camp almost from the beginning,
with tents and shelters as they could lay hands on them, while most
of the Battalion was busy making and mending roads; and a draft of
one hundred and fifty new men, under Lieutenant Manning, came in,
so that nothing might be lacking to the activity of the days.
On the 20th August, owing to the aeroplanes, they had to spread
out and camouflage the shelters for the men, which were too
bunched together and made easy targets. Lieutenants D. FitzGerald,
Dalton and Lysaght joined that afternoon, and in the evening there
was a heavy air-raid along the east edge of the camp. Lieutenant
Bellew, who had only joined with his draft ten days before, went to
see the result, was hit and mortally wounded; and Lieutenant de
Moleyns, who accompanied him, was also hit. The trouble was a
couple of twelve-inch howitzers near our camp which were greatly
annoying the enemy, and their machines rasped up and down like
angry hornets hunting for them.
The 2nd Coldstream relieved the Battalion on the 21st August,
when they returned to Elverdinghe, and were shifted to Paddington
Camp—no improvement on its predecessor from the overhead point
of view. Here the awards for Boesinghe came in: Captain Lees, who
had been recommended for the V.C., getting the D.S.O. with Captain
Alexander; Lieutenant Sassoon the M.C.; and Sergeant Milligan, that
reorganiser of officerless companies, the D.C.M.
On the 22nd August Father Browne, who had taken Father
Knapp’s place as chaplain, held a short service over Lieutenant
Bellew’s grave, while the drums played the Last Post. His platoon,
and a platoon has every opportunity for intimate knowledge, reported
him “A grand little officer.” (“There was so many came and went, and
some they went so soon that ’tis hard to carry remembrance of them.
And, d’ye see, a dead man’s a dead man. But a platoon will
remember some better than others. He’ll have done something or
said something amongst his own men the way his name’ll last for a
while in it.”)
On the 25th of the month they were told that the Guards Division
offensive was cancelled for the time being; that they would probably
be used in the line till about the 20th September, and that the final
attack on Houthulst Forest would be carried out by a couple of other
divisions. Meantime, they would be shifted from camp to camp,
which they rather detested, and lectured and drilled. As an earnest of
this blissful state they were forthwith shifted to Abingley Camp, in the
Elverdinghe area and on the edge of trouble, in cold, driving wet, to
find it very dirty and the tentage arrangements abominably muddled.
Naturally, when complaints might have been expected, the men were
wildly cheerful, and wrestled with flapping, sodden canvas in a half
gale as merrily as sailors. The house-keeper’s instinct, before
mentioned, of primitive man always comes out best at the worst
crisis, and, given but the prospect of a week’s stay in one place, a
Guards Battalion will build up a complete civilisation on bog or bare
rock. The squally weather was against aeroplane activity till the 2nd
of September, when the neighbourhood of the camp was most
thoroughly searched with bombs, but nothing actually landed on
them. Next midnight, however, they had all to flee from their tents
and take refuge in the “slits” provided in the ground. This is ever an
undignified proceeding, but the complaint against it is not that it is
bad for the men’s nerves, but their discipline. The Irish appreciate
too keenly the spectacle of a thick officer bolting, imperfectly clad,
into a thin “slit.” Hence, sometimes, unfortunate grins on parade next
morning, which count as “laughing.” Vastly more serious than the
bombing, or even their occasional sports and cricket matches, was
that their C.O. inspecting the Pipers “took exception to the hang of
their kilts.” It ended in his motoring over to the Gordons at
Houbinghem and borrowing the pipe major there to instruct them in
this vital matter, as well as in the right time for march music. They
were then sent to the master tailor to have some pleats taken out of
the offending garments and fetched up, finally, on parade wearing
their gas-helmets as sporrans! But they looked undeniably smart and
supplied endless material for inter-racial arguments at mess.
These things and their sports and boxing competitions, where
Drill-Sergeant Murphy and Private Conroy defeated two black
N.C.O.’s of a West Indies battalion, were interludes to nights of
savage bombing; carrying and camouflage parties to the front line,
where they met a new variety of mustard gas; and the constant
practice of the new form of attack. The real thing was set down now
for the 14th September but was cancelled at the last moment, and
the Battalion was warned for an ordinary trench tour on the night of
the 12th-13th. Unluckily, just before that date Captain Sassoon and
Lieutenant Kane and twenty-seven men of a big fatigue a day or two
before, were badly burned and blistered by the new mustard gas
shells. It put them down two officers at the time when every head
was needed.
 They were to take over from the 3rd Coldstream on the 12th
September on what was practically the old Boesinghe sector. That
battalion which lay next the French had just been raided, and lost
nine men because their liaison officer had misunderstood the French
language. Hence an order at the eleventh hour that each battalion in
the sector should attach a competent linguist to the liaison-post
where the two armies joined. The advance across the Steenbeek,
after Boesinghe, had only gone on a few hundred yards up the
Staden railway line and was now halted three thousand yards
sou’west of Houthulst Forest, facing a close and blind land of woods,
copses, farms, mills, and tree-screened roads cut, before any sure
advance could be made, less than a quarter of a mile from the
Guards divisional front by the abominable Broembeek. This was
more a sluit than a river. Its banks were marsh for the most part; and
every yard was commanded by hostile fire of every kind. On the
French right and our extreme left was a lodgement of posts the far
side of the Broembeek which the Coldstream had been holding when
they were raided. These lay within a hundred yards of the enemy’s
line of strong posts (many lectures had been delivered lately on the
difference between lines of trenches and lines of posts), and were
backed by the stream, then waist-deep and its bed plentifully filled
with barbed wire. Between Ney Copse and Ney Wood, say five
hundred yards, they could only be reached by one stone bridge and
a line of duck-boards like stepping-stones at the west corner of Ney
Copse.
The Battalion went up in the afternoon of the 12th September,
none the better for a terrific bombardment an hour or two before from
a dozen low-flying planes which sent every one to cover, inflicted
twenty casualties on them out of two hundred in the neighbourhood,
and fairly cut the local transport to bits. The relief, too—and this was
one of the few occasions when Guards’ guides lost their way—lasted
till midnight.
Six platoons had to be placed in the forward posts above
mentioned, east of the little river whose western or home bank was
pure swamp for thirty yards back. Says the Diary: “This position
could be cut off by the enemy, as the line of the stream gives a
definite barrage-line, and, if any rain sets in, the stone bridge would
be the only possible means of crossing.”
A battalion seldom thinks outside of its orders, or some one might
have remembered how a couple of battalions on the wrong side of a
stream, out Dunkirk way that very spring, had been mopped up in
the sands, because they could neither get away nor get help. Our
men settled down and were unmolested for three hours. Then a
barrage fell, first on all the forward posts, next on the far bank of the
stream, and our own front line. The instant it lifted, two companies of
Wurtembergers in body-armour rushed what the shells had left of the
forward posts. Lieutenant Manning on the right of Ney Wood was
seen for a moment surrounded and then was seen no more. All
posts east of Ney Copse were blown up or bombed out, for the
protected Wurtembergers fought well. Captain Redmond
commanding No. 2 Company was going the rounds when the
barrage began. He dropped into the shell-hole that was No. 6 post,
and when that went up, collected its survivors and those from the
next hole, and made such a defence in the south edge of Ney Copse
as prevented the enemy from turning us altogether out of it. Most of
the time, too, he was suffering from a dislocated knee. Then the
enemy finished the raid scientifically, with a hot barrage of three
quarters of an hour on all communications till the Wurtembergers
had comfortably withdrawn. It was an undeniable “knock,” made
worse by its insolent skill.
Losses had not yet been sorted out. The C.O. wished to withdraw
what was left of his posts across the river—there were two still in
Ney Copse—and not till he sent his reasons in writing was the sense
of them admitted at Brigade Headquarters. Officer’s patrols were
then told off to search Ney Copse, find out where the enemy’s new
posts had been established, pick up what wounded they came
across and cover the withdrawal of the posts there, while a new line
was sited. In other words, the front had to fall back, and the patrols
were to pick up the pieces. The bad luck of the affair cleaved, as it
often does, to their subsequent efforts. By a series of errors and
misapprehensions Ney Copse was not thoroughly searched and one
platoon of No. 3 Company was left behind and reported as missing.
By the time the patrols returned and the Battalion had started to dig
in its new front line it was too light to send out another party. The
enemy shelled vigorously with big stuff all the night of the 13th till
three in the morning; stopped for an hour and then barraged the
whole of our sector with high explosives till six. During this,
Lieutenant Gibson, our liaison officer with the French, was wounded,
and at some time or another in a lull in the infernal din, Sergeant
M’Guinness and Corporal Power, survivors of No. 2 Company, which
had been mopped up, worked their way home in safety through the
enemy posts.
The morning of the 14th brought their brigadier who “seems to
think that our patrol work was not well done,” and had no difficulty
whatever in conveying his impression to his hearers. Major Ward
went down the line suffering from fever. There were one or two who
envied him his trouble, for, with a missing platoon in front—if indeed
any of it survived—and a displeased brigadier in rear, life was not
lovely, even though our guns were putting down barrages on what
were delicately called our “discarded” posts. Out went another patrol
that night under Lieutenant Bagot, with intent to reconnoitre “the river
that wrought them all their woe.” They discovered what every one
guessed—that the enemy was holding both river-crossings, stone
bridge and duck-boards, with machine-guns. The Battalion finished
the day in respirators under heavy gas-shellings.
Then came a piece of pure drama. They had passed the 15th
September in the usual discomfort while waiting to be relieved by the
1st Coldstream. Captain Redmond with his dislocated knee had
gone down and Lieutenants FitzGerald and Lysaght had come up.
The talk was all about the arrangements for wiring in their new line
and the like, when at 4.30, after a few hours’ quiet, a terrific barrage
fell on their front line followed by an SOS from somewhere away to
the left. A few minutes later five SOS rockets rose on the right
apparently in front of the 1st Scots Guards. Our guns on the Brigade
front struck in, by request; the enemy plastered the landscape with
H.E.; machine-guns along the whole sector helped with their
barrages to which the enemy replied in kind, and with one searching
crash we clamped a big-gun barrage on the far bank of the
Broembeek, till it looked as if nothing there could live.
When things were at their loudest a wire came in from the Brigade
to say that a Hun captured at St. Julien reported that a general
advance of the enemy was timed for 6.30 that very morning! By five
o’clock the hostile barrage seemed to have quieted down along our
front, but the right of the Brigade sector seemed still to be at odds
with some enemy; so the Brigadier kept our local barrage hard-on by
way of distraction. And at half-past six, tired, very hungry, but
otherwise in perfect order, turned up at Brigade Headquarters
Sergeant Moyney with the remainder of No. 3 Company’s platoon
which had been missing since the 12th. He had been left in
command of an advanced shell-hole post in Ney Copse with orders
neither to withdraw nor to let his men break into their iron ration. The
Wurtembergers’ raid had cut off his little command altogether; and at
the end of it he found a hostile machine-gun post well established
between himself and the duck-board-bridge over the river. He had no
desire to attract more attention than was necessary, and kept his
men quiet. They had forty-eight hours’ rations and a bottle of water
apiece; but the Sergeant was perfectly definite as to their leaving
their iron ration intact. So they lay in their shell-hole in the wood and
speculated on life and death, and paid special attention to the
commands of their superior officer in the execution of his duty. The
enemy knew they were somewhere about, but not their strength nor
their precise position, and having his own troubles in other
directions, it was not till the dawn of the 16th that he sent out a full
company to roll them up. The Sergeant allowed them to get within
twenty-five yards and then ordered his men to “jump out and attack.”
It was quite a success. Their Lewis-gun came into action on their
flank, and got off three drums into the brown of the host while the
infantry expended four boxes of bombs at close quarters. “Sergeant
Moyney then gave the order to charge through the Germans to the
Broembeek.” It was done, and he sent his men across that foul
water, bottomed here with curly barbed-wire coils while he covered
their passage with his one rifle. They were bombed and machine-
gunned as they floundered over to the swampy western bank; and it
was here that Private Woodcock heard cries for help behind him,
returned, waded into the water under bombs and bullets, fished out
Private Hilley of No. 3 Company with a broken thigh and brought him
safely away. The clamour of this fierce little running fight, the
unmistakable crack and yells of the bombing and the sudden
appearance of some of our men breaking out of the woods near the
German machine-gun emplacement by the river, had given the
impression to our front of something big in development. Hence the
SOS which woke up the whole touchy line, and hence our final
barrage which had the blind good luck to catch the enemy as they
were lining up on the banks of the Broembeek preparatory, perhaps,
to the advance the St. Julien prisoner had reported. Their losses
were said to be heavy, but there was great joy in the Battalion over
the return of the missing platoon, less several good men, for whom a
patrol went out to look that night in case they might be lying up in
shell-holes. But no more were found. (“’Twas a bad mix-up first to
last. We ought never to have been that side the dam’ river at that
time at all. ’Twas not fit for it yet. And there’s a lot to it that can’t be
told.... And why did Moyney not let the men break into their ration?
Because, in a tight place, if you do one thing against orders ye’ll do
annything. An’ ’twas a dam’ tight place that that Moyney man walked
them out of.”)
They were relieved with only two casualties. The total losses of the
tour had been—one officer missing (Lieutenant Manning), one (2nd
Lieutenant Gibson) wounded; one man wounded and missing; eighty
missing; fifty-nine wounded and seventeen killed. And the worst of it
was that they were all trained hands being finished for the next big
affair!
Dulwich Camp where they lay for a few days was, like the others,
well within bombing and long gun-range. They consoled themselves
with an inspection of the drums and pipes on the 17th, and received
several six-inch shells from a naval gun, an old acquaintance; but
though one shell landed within a few yards of a bivouac of No. 2
Company there were no further casualties, and the next day the
drums and pipes went over to Proven to take part in a competition
arranged by the Twenty-ninth Division (De Lisle’s). They played
beautifully—every one admitted that—but what chance had they of
“marks for dress” against line battalions whose bands sported their
full peace-time equipment—leopard skins, white buckskin gloves,
and all? So the 8th Essex won De Lisle’s prize. But they bore no
malice, for when, a few days later, a strayed officer and forty men of
that battalion cast up at their camp (it was Putney for the moment)
they entertained them all hospitably.
They settled down to the business of intensive training of the new
drafts that were coming in—2nd Lieutenant Murphy with ninety-six
men one day, and 2nd Lieutenants Dame and Close the next with a
hundred and forty-six, all to be put through three weeks of a scheme
that included “consolidation of shell-holes” in addition to everything
else, and meant six hours a day of the hardest repetition work.
Sports and theatrical shows, such as the Coldstream Pierrots and
their own rather Rabelaisian “Wild West Show,” filled in time till the
close of September when they were at Herzeele, warned that they
would be “for it” on or about the 11th of the next month, and that their
attack would not be preceded by any artillery registration. This did
not cheer them; for experience had shown that the chances of
surprising the enemy on that sector were few and remote.
The last day of September saw the cadres filled. Three 2nd
Lieutenants, Anderson, Faulkner, and O’Connor, and Lieutenant
Levy arrived; and, last, Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. H. R. Alexander, who
took over the command.
Rehearsals for the coming affair filled the next few days at
Herzeele camp, and their final practice on the 4th before they moved
over to Proven was passed as “entirely satisfactory.” Scaled against
the tremendous events in progress round them, the Broembeek was
no more than a minor action in a big action intended to clear a
cloudy front ere the traitorous weather should make all work on the
sector impossible, and, truly, by the time it was done, it cost the
Division only two thousand casualties—say four battalions of a
peace establishment.
The battle they knew would depend on the disposition of the little
Broembeek. If that chose to flood it would be difficult to reach across
its bogs and worse to cross; and, under any circumstances, mats