Part 4

Extraordinary scenes took place on the canal bank when the enemy tried to cross. In the twilight of early dawn a party came out of a wood and tried to get across the water, but was seen by the British machine gunners and shot down.

Then another body of men advanced and carried with them a floating bridge, but when those who were not hit reached the water's edge they found the bridge as fixed did not reach to the other side. Some of them walked on it, expecting perhaps to jump the gap, but were shot off, and other men on the bank also were caught under British fire.

A Corporal went down to the canal edge and flung hand grenades at the Germans still struggling to fix the bridge, and then a Lieutenant and a few men rushed down and pulled the bridge on to their side of the bank.

Later this young officer saw one of the British pontoons drifting down and swam to it and made it fast beyond the enemy's reach, but in a position so that some of his men ran across and caught the enemy under their fire on his side of the canal.

At 7 o'clock yesterday morning, while a handkerchief was hoisted by the enemy, three hundred of them made signs of surrender. Some of them changed their minds at the last moment and ran away, but 150 gave themselves up, and some of them swam the canal in order to reach our side for this purpose. They were shivering in their wet clothes and in the northeast wind, which lashed over the battle lines yesterday, and they were very miserable men.

THE BELGIAN VICTORY

_Mr. Gibbs declares that had the Germans been able to pass Givenchy or cross the canal north of Béthune on the 18th and 19th the result would have proved disastrous. He gives credit for the repulse to the British and French combined lines. He thus describes the achievement of the Belgians on April 17_:

The Germans on the 17th pressed the attack in force against the Belgians. Besides three regiments of the 1st Landwehr Division usually holding this sector, between the Ypres-Staden railway and Kippe, they brought up from Dixmude--poor Dixmude, into whose flaming ruins I went when it was first bombarded in October, 1914--two regiments of the 6th Bavarian Division, and from the coast the 5th Matrosen Regiment of the 2d Naval Division, with a regiment of the 58th Saxons. It was a heavy force, and they hoped to surprise and annihilate the Belgian resistance by their weight and quickness of attack.

The Belgians were waiting for them, standing, too, in those swampy fields which they have held against the enemy for three and a half years, always shelled, always paying daily a toll of life and limb, not getting much glory or recognition because of the great battles elsewhere, but patient and enduring as when I knew them on the Yser in the first dreadful Winter of the war, and their little regular army fought to a finish.

Even before the battle the German marines, Saxon troops, and Landwehr suffered misery and lost many men. They lay out in the flat, wet fields two nights previously, and were very cold, and scared by the Belgian gunfire which burst among them. They had no great artillery behind them, and the Saxons and German sailors now prisoners of the Belgians curse bitterly because they were expected to get through easily in spite of this.

Germans Cut Off

The enemy's intention was to take Bixschoote and advance across the Yser Canal, driving south to Poperinghe. What they did by their massed attacks was to penetrate to a point near Hoekske, southeast of Merckem, the main weight of their pressure being directed along the Bixschoote road. The Belgians delivered a quick counterattack, with wonderful enthusiasm among officers and men. They had perfect knowledge of the country, and used this fully by striking up from a place called Luyghem in such a way that the enemy was driven toward the swamp, where any who went in sank up to his neck in the ice-cold water.

The Germans were cut off from their own lines and trapped. Seven hundred of them surrendered, men of all the regiments I have mentioned, and they seemed to think themselves lucky at getting off so cheaply, though they quailed when they were brought back through the towns behind the lines, and the Belgian women, remembering many things, raised a cry as these men passed. It was not a pleasant sound. I heard it once in France when a German officer passed through with an escort. It was a cry which made my blood run cold. But there is gladness among the Belgian troops, for they had long waited for their chance of striking, and made good.

Heroism of the Doctors

As heroic a story as anything in all this history of the last four weeks is that of the medical officers, nurses, orderlies, and ambulance men belonging to these casualty clearing stations, who were not far behind the fighting lines when the battle began on March 21.

And then in a few hours they were on the very edge of the enemy's advancing tide, so that they were almost caught by it and had to make brave efforts to rescue the wounded, save their equipment, and get away to a place where for a little while again they could go on with their noble work until the red edge of war swept up with its fire again and they had to retreat still further.

I used to pass very often the outer ring of those casualty clearing stations on the right of the British line beyond Bapaume, in the Cambrai salient, and away toward St. Quentin.

They were almost caught on that day of March 21 when the infernal bombardment was flung over a wide belt of the British lines, and the enemy stormed the defenses and the British fought back in heroic rearguard actions. It became a question of only a few hours, sometimes of the last quarter of an hour, when these brave medical officers with the nurses and orderlies could get away.

It is always the rule of patients first, and at Ham there were 1,200 wounded, and many others in other places. The railways were choked with military transport or destroyed by shellfire. On the roads refugees were mixed up with the transport and guns and troops. It was a frightful problem, but the medical staffs did not lose their nerve, and set about the business of removal with fine skill and discipline.

Caring for the Wounded

What wounded could walk were gathered together and sent on to the roads to make their way back as far as their strength would carry them. The badly wounded were packed into all the available ambulances and sent away. The equipment had sometimes to be put on any train, regardless of its destination. It was gathered in afterward from whatever place it went to.

A casualty clearing station of 1,000 beds needs 100 lorries to move it, but nine lorries take a full kit for 200 beds, and always nine lorries moved off first after the wounded to take up a new station further back and carry on. The medical officers looked after the surgical instruments and trundled them along the roads on wheeled stretchers. One officer went twenty-five miles this way and another seventeen miles. The sisters, after the wounded had left, were put on any vehicle going back from the battleline.

During these days I saw them squeezed between drivers and men on motor lorries, sitting among the Tommies in transport wagons, one at least on a gun limber, and others perched on top of forage, still merry and bright in spite of all the tragedy about them, because that is their training and their faith.

In this retreat one poor sister was killed and another wounded. Many of them, with the medical officers, lost their kits. At Achiet le Grand, on March 21, a shell killed eight orderlies and blew out the back of the operating theatre, and at another village on a second night, three ambulances were smashed up by bombs. Two drivers, with some of their patients, were killed, but all the wounded were brought away from the outer ring of casualty clearing stations safely, and then from the second ring through Roye and Marincourt, Dernacourt, and Aveluy.

At Roye there was no time to spare, owing to the enemy's rapid advance, and seventy patients remained with a medical officer and twelve orderlies until they could be rescued, if there was any possible chance. There seemed at first no chance, but on the way back to Villers-Bretonneux the medical officer in command of the first convoy met some motor ambulances and begged the drivers to go into Roye and rescue those who had been left behind. They went bravely and brought away all the wounded and the staff, and had no time to spare, because the last ambulance came under the German rifle fire.

It is a strange and wonderful thing that the patients do not seem to be harmed in any way by this excitement and fatigue, and one of the chiefs who made a tour of inspection of all his clearing stations at this time tells us he found all the wounded in good condition and apparently no worse for their experience.

Fall of Villers-Bretonneux

_ On April 24 the Germans attacked the important village of Villers-Bretonneux, near Amiens; it is on a hill above the Somme, and was used as a corps headquarters and administrative office by the British. The attack was in great force, including tanks, the first time they had been used by the Germans._

_The initial assault was a success and the Germans took the village and advanced nearly a mile beyond--but let Mr. Gibbs tell the rest:_

During the night they were driven out by Australian troops, who, by a most skillful and daring piece of generalship, were sent forward in the darkness without preliminary artillery preparation, and, relying absolutely on the weapons they carried to regain this important portion, which gave the enemy full observation of the British positions on both sides of the Somme Valley beyond Amiens.

The splendid courage of the Australian troops, the cunning of their machine gunners, and the fine leadership of their officers achieved success, and, in conjunction with English battalions, they spent the night clearing out the enemy from the village, where he made a desperate resistance, and brought back altogether something like 700 or 800 prisoners.

It was a complete reversal of fortune for the enemy, and in this twenty-four hours of fighting he has lost great numbers of men, whose bodies lie in heaps between Villers-Bretonneux and Warfusee and all about the ruins and fields in that neighborhood.

First German Tanks

The attack on Villers-Bretonneux was made by four divisions. They were the 4th Guards, the 77th, quite new to this phase of the war, the 228th, and the 243d. They were in the full strength of divisions, twelve regiments in each, and a great weight of men on such a narrow front against one British division, whose men had already been under frightful fire and had been living in clouds of poison gas with masks on.

An officer of the Middlesex was in a bit of a trench when the first German tank attacked his men on the east side of the village, and it went right over him as he lay crouched, and traveled on, accompanied by bodies of troops.

The Middlesex and West Yorks put up a great fight but had to give ground to superior numbers. The East Lancashires, who were the garrison of Villers-Bretonneux, were also attacked with great odds, and after a brave resistance fell back with the general line, which took up a position toward the end of this first phase of the battle west of Villers-Bretonneux and in the edge of Bois Abbé to the left of it. Into this wood in the course of the day a German patrol of one officer and forty men made their way and stayed there out of touch with their own men, and were taken prisoners last night.

The Night Battle

The attack by the Australians was made after 10 o'clock at night. It was difficult to attack suddenly like this. There was no artillery preparation. There should have been a moon, but by bad luck it was veiled in a thick, wet mist.

It was decided by the Australian General that his men should go straight into the attack with bayonet and machine gun, not waiting for artillery protection which would tell the enemy what was coming.

The plan of attack was to push forward in two bodies and to encircle Villers-Bretonneux, while some Northamptons and others were in the centre with the order to fight through the village from the north. This manoeuvre was carried out owing to the magnificent courage of each Australian soldier and the gallantry of the officers.

The Germans fought desperately when they found themselves in danger of being trapped. They had nests of machine guns along the railway embankment below the village, and these fired fiercely, sweeping the attackers who tried to advance upon them.

Those who worked around north and east of the village also came under a burst of machine-gun fire from weapons hidden among the ruins and trenches, but they rounded up the enemy and fought him from one bit of ruin to another in streets which used to be filled with civilian life only a few weeks ago and crowded with staff officers and staff cars, but now were littered with dead bodies and raked by bullets.

The Australians captured two light field guns, which the enemy had brought up in the morning, according to his present habit of advancing guns behind his third wave of men, and several minenwerfer and many machine guns.

Great Piles of Dead

During the night they and the English troops seized over 500 men as prisoners and sent them back, and several hundred seem to have been routed out. Today, [the 25th,] judging from these I saw myself, the living were not so many as the dead.

It was fierce fighting in Villers-Bretonneux and around it last night and this morning the enemy fought until put out by bayonet, rifle bullet, or machine gun. The Australian officers say that they have never seen such piles of dead, not even outside of Bullecourt or Lagnicourt last year, as those who lie about this village of frightful strife.

The German tanks, which were first seen in this battle, though heavier than the British, with bigger guns, have now beaten a retreat, leaving one of their type in No Man's Land. The tank has a high turret and thick armor plates, and is steered and worked on a different system from the British. One of them was "killed" by a tank of the old British class, and then the British put in some of the newer, faster, and smaller types, which can steer almost as easily as a motor car, as I know, because I have traveled in one at great pace over rough ground.

These set out to attack bodies of German infantry of the 77th Division forming up near Cachy. It was a terrible encounter, and when they returned this morning their flanks were red with blood. They slew Germans not by dozens nor by scores, but by platoons and companies. They got right among the masses of men and swept them with fire, and those they did not kill with their guns they crushed beneath them, manoeuvring about and trampling them down as they fell. It seems to have been as bloody a slaughter as anything in this war.

Battle for Kemmel Hill

_The furious battle for the possession of Kemmel Hill, an eminence of strategic importance in the Ypres region, occurred April 25, 26, and 27, and was as sanguinary as any in Flanders. Although the Germans won the hill, their victory involved such colossal sacrifices that this deadly thrust ended their serious offensive for the time. Mr. Gibbs's description of this battle in part follows:_

After several attempts against Kemmel had been frustrated the enemy all went out, April 25, to capture this position. Four divisions at least, including the Alpine Corps, the 11th Bavarians, and the 5th, 6th, and 107th, were moved against Kemmel in the early morning fog after a tremendous bombardment of the Franco-British positions. It was a bombardment that begun before the first glimmer of dawn, like one of those which the British used to arrange in the days of their great Flanders battles last year. It came down swamping Kemmel Hill so that it was like a volcano, and stretched away on to the British lines on the left of the French by Maedelstede Farm and Grand Bois down to Vierstraat.

Then the German infantry attacked in depth, battalion behind battalion, division behind division, and their mountain troops of Alpine Corps and Jägers and Bavarians came on first in the assault of Kemmel Hill, which was not much more than a hillock, though it looms large in Flanders, and in this war. The French had suffered a terrible ordeal of fire, and the main thrust of the German strength was against them.

Foe Strikes in Two Directions

The enemy struck in two directions to encircle the hill and village of Kemmel, one arrowhead striking to Dranoutre and the other at the point of junction between the French and British northward.

In each case they were favored by fog and the effect of their gunfire. They were able to drive in a wedge which they pushed forward until they had caused gaps. The French on Kemmel Hill became isolated and there was a gulf between the British and the French and between the French left and right.

On the hill the French garrison fought with splendid heroism. These men, when quite surrounded, would not yield, but served their machine guns and rifles for many hours, determined to hold their positions at all costs, and to the death. Small parties of them on the west of the hill held out until midday or beyond, according to the reports of the airmen, who flew low over them, but by 9 o'clock this morning, owing to the gaps made by the enemy, the French main line was compelled to draw back from Kemmel.

They inflicted severe losses on the enemy as they fell back and thwarted his efforts to break their line on the new defensive positions. Meanwhile a body of Scottish troops were seriously involved. Some of their officers whom I saw today tell me the fog was so thick, as on March 21, that after a terrific bombardment the first thing known at some points a little way behind the line was when the Germans were all around them.

Germans Under Von Arnim

The German army of assault upon Kemmel and the surrounding country was under command of General Sixt von Arnim, who was the leading opponent of the Allies in the long struggle of the first Somme battles, and whose clear and ruthless intelligence was revealed in the famous document summing up the first phase of that fighting, when he frankly confessed to many failures of organization and supply, but with acute criticism which was not that of a weak or indecisive man.

Under his command as corps commanders were Generals Seiger and von Eberhardt, and they had picked troops, including the Alpine Corps and strong Bavarian and Prussian divisions specially trained for assault in such country as that of Kemmel. Their plan of attack to strike at the points of junction between the French and British east of Kemmel, and also at the French troops south of it, near Dranoutre, proved for the time successful, and by driving in wedges they were able to make the Allies fall back on the flanks and encircle Kemmel Hill after furious and heroic fighting by the French and British troops.

The British now were in weak numbers compared with the strength brought against them. Their withdrawal to the new lines of defense by Vierstraat and the furious attacks across the Ypres-Comines Canal gave the enemy some ground in the region of St. Eloi and the bluff and the spoil bank of the canal itself. It is villainous ground there, foul with wreckage of the old fighting.

British troops and Canadian troops were put to the supreme test of courage to take and hold these places. The glorious old 3d Division, commanded in those days of 1915 and 1916 by General Haldane, fought from St. Eloi to the bluff, month in and month out, and lost many gallant officers and men there after acts of courage which belong to history.

German storm troops made three violent attacks on Locre, which were flung back by the French, with heavy casualties among the enemy, and it was only at the fourth attempt with fresh reserves that they were able to enter the ruins of the village, from which the French then fell back in order to reorganize for a counterattack. This they launched today at an early hour, and now Locre is in their hands after close fighting, in which they slew numbers of the enemy.

After their success on April 25, when they captured Kemmel, the Germans have made little progress, and, though there was fierce fighting all day yesterday, they failed to gain their objectives, and were raked by fire hour after hour, so that large numbers of their dead lie on the field of battle. At 4 in the afternoon they engaged in fresh assaults upon the positions near Ridge Wood, to which the line had fallen back, but English and Scottish troops repulsed them and scattered their waves. It was a bad day for them because of their great losses. The British have broken the fighting quality of some of the enemy's most renowned regiments.

The Country Devastated

All the roads and camps around Ypres are under a heavy, harassing fire once more, Ypres itself being savagely bombarded by high-explosive and gas shells, so that after some months of respite those poor ruins are again under that black spell which makes them the most sinister place in the world. Suicide Corner has come into its own again, and the old unhealthy plague spots up by the canal are under fire.

The enemy's guns are reaching out to fields and villages hitherto untouched by fire, and these harassing shots, intended, perhaps, to catch traffic on the roads or soldiers' camps, often serve the enemy no more than by the death of innocent women and children. A day or two ago a monstrous shell fell just outside a little Flemish cottage tucked away in an angle of a road which I often pass. It scooped out a deep pit in the garden without even scarring the cottage walls, but two children were playing in the garden and were laid dead beside a flower bed.

Yesterday a small boy I know went grubbing about this plot of earth and brought back a great chunk of shell bigger than his head. Those are the games children play in this merry century of ours. They are astoundingly indifferent to the perils about them, and sleep o' nights to the thunder of gunfire not very far away, or slip their heads under the bedclothes when bombs fall near.

But older folk find this gradual creeping up of the war a nervous strain and a mental agony which keeps them on the rack. It is pitiful to watch their doubts and perplexities and their clinging on to their homes and property. Shells smash outlying cottages to dust with their people inside them, but still the people in the village itself stay on, hoping against hope that the Germans' guns have reached their furthest range.

"I shall not go till the first shell falls in the middle of the square," said a girl.

Another woman said:

"If I go I lose all I have in life, so I will risk another day."

They take extraordinary risks, and our officers and men find some of them on the very battlefields and in farmyards where they unlimber their guns.

Heavy German Losses

The enemy's losses in this continual fighting have been severe. We have been able to get actual figures of some of their casualties, which are typical of the more general effect of the British fire. Of one company of the 7th German Division which fought at St. Eloi on Friday only 40 men remained out of its full strength of 120.

The 4th Ersatz Division lost most heavily, and a prisoner of the 279th Pioneer Company, which relieved the 360th Regiment of that division, says the average company strength was fifteen men.

The entire regimental staff was killed by a direct hit of a British shell on their headquarters dugout near Cantieux. The same thing happened to the battalion headquarters of the 223d Regiment, which is now in a state of low morale, having been fearfully cut up.