Part 12

So we fell back about 200 yards through the wood, and straightened up our line--in a much worse defensive position as regards our own bit, but it could not be helped. My suggestions as to the line were overruled, and we took up our second line of trenches and constructed a little réduit in the wood, ringed around with barbed wire and holding about twenty-five men, who would--we were sanguine enough to expect--hold off any serious rush that came.

I forgot to mention that Singer, commanding the 17th Fd. Co. R.E., had arrived, and did an extraordinary amount of good work with his company in circumstances of the greatest difficulty and danger. He told me that the first night he went out, in order to put up some wire entanglement in a dangerous place, it was as black as pitch. He made his sections hold on to each other's coats, but within ten minutes they had not only lost each other in the dense black woods--chiefly through tumbling into trenches and falling over telephone wires,--but Singer had lost the whole company, and after wandering helplessly in what he thought the right direction for some time, he discovered that he had lost himself as well. He said he felt inclined to sit down and have a good cry, so utterly miserable did he feel!

In falling back to the second line we had a fairly easy job, but for the 9th Brigade it was a regular Chinese puzzle, for by this time some of their trenches were in German hands at one end and English at the other, whilst Northumberland Fusiliers, Lincolns, Sussex, West Ridings, Cavalry, and even part of the 2nd Grenadiers,[21] who had turned up from goodness knows where, were inextricably tangled up; not to mention that a party of Northumberlands, numbering about 120, under one gallant subaltern called Brown, had been holding out for three days in front of our line, with no food or drink, and Germans in trenches only 30 yards off them. I believe this lot eventually got away in safety, but the retirement of all was about as difficult as it could be. This was on the 13th.

[Footnote 21: My old battalion.]

On the 14th the Bedfords were heavily attacked, and the Germans pushed a machine-gun right forward through the wood and enfiladed the Cheshire left. These stood it for some time and then retired further down their trench, being unable to let the Bedfords know. Consequently this beastly gun got in a heavy fire on the Bedfords right as well and forced them to retire. The réduit was no good--the wood was too thick--and some of the garrison were captured. So the Bedfords had to fall back, fighting, on to their third line 50 yards back, where they held the enemy.

Edwards, who commanded the advanced Bedford company, came up to the château to report, and gave a most cheery and amusing account of the whole thing, but the result was not at all amusing, as we had lost ground and a lot of men.

Meanwhile the big attack by the German Guards was being made on the brigades on our flanks, but, as all the world knows, it was completely repulsed, though the 15th Brigade was not very heavily engaged as a whole. The fighting was terribly confused in the woods, and nothing but the individual grit of our men held the line, for it was practically impossible to give directions or exercise control in this horrible terrain.

During this period we got much "mixed" as regards our machine-guns. We took over some from the 7th Division and lost some of those. Then we borrowed some more from other units in rear and recovered some of the lost ones. Sergeant Mart of the Bedfords did a splendid thing, and recovered two of the lost Bedford guns practically by himself, stalking the Germans with only one other man and rushing their trench, killing the few men in it. I wanted to recommend him for the V.C., but had such difficulty in getting sufficient evidence about it that an official recommendation would not have held water. Meanwhile poor Mart was shot through the neck. I got him a D.C.M., but do not know whether he lived to receive it.

Then three out of our five guns got damaged by shells and bullets and mud and stopped work. So we borrowed some more, and had some difficulty in working them, as they were a new pattern. By the time we understood them two other guns were _hors de combat_,--it was a real nightmare, and it needed strenuous efforts to keep even one or two guns[22] going; yet they were of enormous importance, and accounted for a lot of the enemy, especially on the right flank of the Cheshires.

[Footnote 22: It does indeed seem extraordinary now that in those strenuous days of 1914 we only had about three machine-guns to two battalions. Nowadays we should have at least twenty!]

Meanwhile the weather had turned beastly cold--snowstorms and sleet during the day and a hard frost at night. The men suffered terribly in the trenches--especially the Cheshires, whose trenches were very wet. Although we kept the wet ones occupied as lightly as possible, we could not abandon them altogether and dig others further forward or back, as there was water everywhere only a foot below the ground. Breastworks were attempted, but they were very visible and attracted large numbers of shells: altogether the Cheshires had a very poor time, I fear. The Bedfords were rather better off, their trenches in the wood being on rather higher and sandy ground, but they were not dry by any means.

It was very awkward getting to the trenches, even in broad daylight, by this time, for such numbers of trees had been blown down by the shells, there were so many shell-holes and so much wire about, and the mud and pools of water so universal, that it was really quite a physical effort to get through at all.

About this time--the 17th--the Germans in our immediate front appeared to have retired a bit, but they certainly had not gone far, for our scouts on pushing on for 50 yards or so were greeted with a heavy fire, so we were unable to get on as much as we wanted. But though the rifle-bullets were rarer for a day or two, shells certainly were not, and continued with the utmost regularity.

On the evening of the 17th, by the way, the enemy, annoyed perhaps at our scouts pushing on, made what was probably meant to be a counter-attack. It was not made in much strength, and we repelled it with ease. But it appeared to us at the château to be more serious than it was, for a messenger from the trenches arrived with the information that the Bedfords were being very severely pressed, and the Cheshires had had very heavy losses, and could not hold their trenches for more than ten minutes unless they were supported at once. I had no supports to send them. A message to Griffith by telephone for confirmation of this alarm produced no result, for the wires were, of course, broken at that critical moment. So I wired to General Wing asking him to send me some supports if he could, and got 200 Royal Fusiliers shortly afterwards. But I did not use them, for the news of the messenger--who protested that he had been sent with a verbal message (not likely) by an officer whose name he did not know--turned out to be grossly exaggerated, and by the time the Fusiliers arrived the fighting was over. I never could trace whether any officer was responsible for the original message: I believe not. Anyhow, there was trouble for the messenger.

On the 18th and 19th we had comparatively quiet days--except for nervousness about our left flank, where certain troops who had joined the 9th Brigade were very heavily shelled and lost one or two of their trenches. They managed, indeed, to get most of the lost ground back, but I was not entirely happy about it, for the ground between us and them was extremely difficult and could not be properly covered by either of us. There was a pond hereabouts, with a little island on it with a summer-house; and we found, on extending our left to take it over, that there must have been a German sniper there for several nights, for many empty Mauser cartridge-cases were found in the summer-house, and a very dicky punt was discovered in the rushes. This latter we sank, and were no more troubled; but it shows the cool pluck of the enemy's snipers in getting right into our lines by themselves (and also--I regret to add--certain other things as well).

Rumours now came of an approaching relief, and certainly troops had rarely been more in want of it, for our two battalions had been in the trenches for fourteen days, with pretty stiff fighting--and nervous, jumpy fighting in the dark at that--all the time, and no chance of being comfortable or quiet during the whole of this period. Each battalion had had to find its own supports or reserves; but even the latter had to be pretty close up to the firing line, for in such cramped country one could not afford the risk of a sudden rush which might have succeeded before the reserves could get up. Our line, it is true, was not a particularly long one; but it was awkward, and the troops were much cramped and confined by nearly all being obliged to take cover in the wood, which gradually grew too small to hold them.

_Nov. 19th._

On the 19th General Wing arrived and told us that, after settling to relieve us to-day, the French had been unable to find the men and could not do it. This was a disappointment; but a later message arrived to say that the Worcesters, coming from the 5th Brigade, would arrive that afternoon and relieve both of our battalions, who by that time were reduced to 540 Bedfords and 220 Cheshires altogether (the Bedfords having started with 1100 and the Cheshires with 600 odd).

In the evening a battalion of Worcesters--from goodness knows where--turned up and announced that they were to relieve us. We had already, as above mentioned, heard that they were coming, and were ready for them; but it was funny that they should arrive for only twenty-four hours, for the French were going to occupy our trenches on the morrow.

Anyhow, by midnight or so the Bedfords and Cheshires had cleared out, thankful to leave the horrible rabbit-warren where they had been stuck for nearly three wet, cold, and beastly weeks; and they retired to the wood and dug-outs close behind our château, so as to be in reserve in case of necessity.

_Nov. 20th._

But they were not wanted as such, and the following day was fairly quiet as far as trench fighting was concerned.

But not so for the staff. We were sitting in the housekeeper's room after breakfast working out our orders for the withdrawal that night, when there was a terrific bang just outside the château--nearer than ever before. We looked at each other, and would, I verily believe, have settled down again to our work, so accustomed were we to shells of all sorts, had not Naylor, who had joined us two days before as temporary signal officer (_vice_ Cadell, gone sick with light typhoid at Hille eighteen days before), jumped up and run outside in order to see where it had gone. Being Divisional signal officer, he had not, perhaps, had quite so much experience of shells as we had, and he wanted to get into closer touch. The example was infectious, and we also strolled out to see where the shell had fallen. Hardly had we got outside into the passage, and halfway up the basement steps into the fresh air, when there was a roar and an appalling crash which shook the building. The concussion made me stagger, and blew my cap off. St André's hat fizzed away into the bushes, and, surrounded by a cloud of red dust and stones and chips of balustrades and hunks of wood and branches, we held on to anything we could. No damage to ourselves; but a glance down the passage showed us that the shell, or most of it, had exploded in or just outside the kitchen, and blown that chamber, as well as the housekeeper's room, which we had just left, into absolute smithereens.

No time to look into further details; a hurried issue of orders, and we legged it for all we were worth across the open and into our funk-hole in the shrubbery 300 yards off, whilst the signal section and servants and orderlies made a bolt for the stables in the opposite direction.

But the Germans seem to have been satisfied with this little exhibition of "hate," and bombarded us no more--except casually, with shrapnel, as usual. We crept back to the château at intervals during the morning, and removed various possessions and chairs and tables to our dug-out, which was not a very luxurious abode, though dry and fairly deep. Poor Conway, Weatherby's servant, whom he had left behind, was the only casualty; his dead body was found, with both legs broken and an arm off, blown down a cellar passage at the back. The next most serious casualty was Moulton-Barrett's new pair of breeches, arrived that morning from England, and driven full of holes like a sugar-sifter. Our late room was a mass of wreckage--half the outer wall and most of the inner one blown down, tables and chairs and things overturned and broken, and the floor knee-deep in plaster and rubbish. Of the kitchen there was still less; and nothing was to be rescued from the debris except one tin plate and one tin mustard-pot. It would have taken days to clear it, for a good deal of the room above seemed to have fallen into it as well, and one could hardly get in at the door, so full was the place of plaster, wreckage, and stones, and hot-water pipes and bits of iron and twisted rails, and dust and earth and broken laths and rafters. Luckily the concussion put the fire out, or there might have been still more damage.

We spent our day somewhat uncomfortably in the dug-out, for there was a hard frost and very little room to turn round in, and though we had a brazier, its charcoal fumes in the confined space nearly poisoned us. In the middle of the day three French officers turned up, and we made mutual arrangements for the taking over by them of this portion of the line, Milling (of the Bedfords) guiding one party and St André the other.

Food was rather a difficulty, for the mess servants had disappeared, and had last been seen hastening in the direction of Ypres--for which we cursed them loud and long. We did our best with small hunks of bully and odd bits of chocolate and a modicum of tea and biscuits in our haversacks--for all the rest of our food had been buried by that infernal shell,--but it was neither comfortable nor filling; and, in truth, as the dark winter evening came on with only one or two candle-stumps between us, we were not as happy as we should otherwise have been.

Help was, however, at hand; for our servants, Inskip and Stairs, who we thought had ignominiously run away, suddenly turned up with heaps of food. They had gone all the way to our cook's waggon three miles the other side of Ypres for comestibles, and whilst we were d--ing their eyes for bolting, were trudging, heavily laden, along the road back to us--good youths.

It was a lengthy business getting the relief through. The French troops, due at 7.30 P.M., did not arrive till 9.15 P.M., and even then it was difficult to pilot a lot of troops, fresh to the ground, in pitch darkness, over shell-holes and wires and broken trees and stumps, and through mud and undergrowth and dead horses, &c., &c., into the trenches destined for them. The details had to be very carefully arranged indeed, and it was not till nearly 2 A.M. that we had got the French into the trenches, the Worcesters into reserve, and the Bedfords and Cheshires on their way back to Ypres.

Then, with a sigh of some thankfulness apiece, we stumbled back in the darkness to the château, where we waited to collect the remains of the Signal Section and staff, and then moved off, mounted this time, down the Menin-Ypres road.

It was freezing very hard--as I think I remarked before--and the road was frightfully slippery. Trotting was almost out of the question, but I tried it on Squeaky for a few yards, on a dry broken bit. She pulled back on to the slippery part, slid up, and sat down heavily, whilst I fell gracefully off on to my shoulder. And she repeated the performance the other side of the town. Ypres, in the bright starlight, was still quite impressive, and the Cloth Hall was still almost intact. But there were many shell-holes about, and some of the houses were still smouldering. The town happened to be respited from shells for the actual moment, but I believe that the very next day a heavy bombardment began again, and the Cloth Hall was destroyed till hardly the skeleton thereof was left.

_Nov. 21st._

We were due to billet in Locre, and there we arrived at about 7 A.M. It was frightfully cold, but, after we had seen the two battalions billeted, the military policeman who had been told to turn up and show us to our billets was nowhere to be found, so we wandered on as far as the Convent, staggering and slipping on the snowy ice and blowing on our fingers as we went. The thermometer must have shown ten degrees of frost or more, but I only know that I was very glad to reach our little house at last (having passed it already once half a mile before) and get in between the sheets of an ancient but respectably clean bed, covered by all the mackintoshes, blankets, and rugs I could get hold of.

The Cheshires were billeted on the Mont Rouge close by, and the Bedfords near us, at the corner of the Westoutre road. They had all struggled over the fourteen miles or so that divided them from their trenches, but having arrived and their feet having swollen terribly during the long march, any number of them could not get their boots on again, and they went to hospital by twenties and thirties, hobbling along the road with their feet tied up in rags or socks, for they were deformed with rheumatism and swollen joints,[23] and would not fit any boot. The Cheshires, as I expected, were much the worse of the two battalions, for their trenches had been very wet, and most of the men had sat with cold feet in water for many days; yet there was not a single case of pulmonary complaint amongst them, and hardly even a cough or a cold.

[Footnote 23: What would now be known as "trench feet."]

Here we stayed, at Locre, till the 25th, the men enjoying a most well-earned rest, and filling up with hot baths, warm clothes, socks, parcels from home, and comforts of all sorts. The Divisional Headquarters were in the Convent, a clean huge building which did very well for the purpose, and here we went almost daily, either on business or on a meal intent. The Cheshires--only 230 of them left--were of no practical value, alas, with their bad feet; so they were sent in to 2nd Corps Headquarters (Sir H. S.-D.) at Bailleul, nominally to "find" the Headquarters Guard, but in reality to convalesce.

On the 25th we--that is, Headquarters and the Bedfords, for that was all there was left of the 15th for the moment--moved to St Jan's Cappel, a nice little village only a few miles behind Locre. We lived in the Curé's (M. de Vos) house, clean and pleasant; and the Curé, who liked the good things of this world, brought his stout person to coffee every evening, and did not disdain to make the acquaintance of an occasional tot of British rum or whisky, except on Fridays.

Two days afterwards we were inspected both by Sir Horace and, half an hour later, by Sir John French, who were both pleased to say complimentary things of the Brigade. It did us good. The Bedfords again put me to confusion by calling out "'Ear! 'ear!" at telling points of the speeches--curious folk,--the only battalion I ever heard do so. 587 men and 8 officers on parade, not one of the latter of whom, except the Quartermaster, had come out with the battalion. Griffith was on leave, his place being taken by Major Mackenzie, V.C., who had just joined. All the other officers who had left Ireland with me in August were either killed, wounded, or sick.

We were under orders to go into the trenches again shortly, taking over from Maude,[24] now commanding the 14th Brigade; he also had the Dorsets and Norfolks, scraped up from various places, attached to him. His line was in front of Dranoutre.

[Footnote 24: The victor of Baghdad.]

On the 29th November we took over there, a most complicated arrangement which only evolved itself clearly during the next week. I had the East Surreys and Manchesters under me for a time, and then the K.O.S.B.'s, all interchanging and intershuffling with my battalions, the main reason being that I had not got the Cheshires, so had to shift as best I could without them, picking up a battalion of the 13th or 14th Brigade when one was available.

The line was not exactly nice. We had, it is true, got rid of the worst bit, Hill 73, on to the 3rd Division, which was next door on the left; but it extended all the same for an unpleasant length on our right, which was south of the Wulverghem-Messines road, the right of the Brigade on our right being on the Douve. At the longest--the length that the Brigade had to defend varied according to circumstances--the line was just over 2500 yards; at its shortest it was about 2200. Considering that the normal frontage (defensive) of the Brigade at full strength was 900 to 1300 yards, this was a bit "thin" in more senses than one.

As we were here for three months, off and on--from the beginning of December to the end of February,--it may be worth while trying to describe it, if I can.

Imagine a bit of rolling country--rather like parts of Leicestershire,--fair-sized fields, separated mostly by straggling fences interspersed with wire (largely barbed), and punctuated by tall trees. Patches of wood in places, spinney size for the most part. Low hills here and there--Kemmel, Scherpenberg, Ploegsteert Wood,--but all outside our area. For villages, Dranoutre, Neuve Église, Wulverghem, and Lindenhoek, of which the two last were already more than half shot to pieces and almost deserted. Opposite our right was Messines--a mile and a half in front of our line,--its big, square, old church tower still standing; it may have had a spire on the top, but if so it had disappeared before we came. Nearly opposite our extreme left, but out of our jurisdiction and in the sphere of the Division on our left, was Wytschaete (pronounce Wich Khâte), one and a half miles off. The cavalry had held both Messines[25] and Wytschaete at the end of October, but had been overwhelmingly attacked here and driven out of them, so that the two villages formed a hostile bulge into our line. We had been in hopes of driving attacks into the base of the bulge and thus forcing a retirement. But the Germans reinforced the bulge and entrenched it heavily, and instead of our cutting off the bulge, it became flatter and flatter, without giving way at the point, so that we had to retire slightly, on either side, and not they.

[Footnote 25: Locally pronounced Mersé.]

Farms, nearly all of them roofless and half-ruined, were dotted about over the country. Small ones for the most part they were, and of the usual type--a liquid and stinking manure-heap surrounded on three sides by a living-house and barns. Of the roads, those from Dranoutre to Lindenhoek, Dranoutre to Neuve Église, and Neuve Église _viâ_ Wulverghem to Messines, were _pavé_--_i.e._, cobble-stones down the centre and mud on both sides. Those joining Lindenhoek to Neuve Église and Wulverghem were also mostly _pavé_. The remainder were mere field tracks for the most part, rarely metalled, and in wet weather almost impassable for mud.