Part 6

Major Arbuthnot (Scots Guards) arrived on the 14th December with Queen Alexandra’s presents to the Battalion which were duly issued to selected officers, N.C.O.’s, and men, but at the time, the Battalion was under two hours’ notice to move either to support an attack then being delivered by the Third Division upon the wood at Wytschaete, or “for any other purpose.” The attack was not a success except in so far as it pinned the enemy forces to one place, but the Battalion was not called upon to help. It lived under “short notice” for a week which naturally interfered with extended route-marches or training. Companies were sent out one by one to dig in the water-logged soil and to extemporise means of keeping their feet out of the water by “blocks of wood made in the form of a platform at the bottom of the trenches.” Thus laboriously is described the genesis of what was later to grow into thousands of miles of duck-board, plain or wired.

Meantime, between the 20th and 22nd of December the fierce and unsatisfactory battle of Cuinchy, the burden of which fell heavily on our devoted Indian troops, had been fought out on a front of half-a-dozen miles from south of the Béthune Canal to Festubert. Nothing had been gained except the all-important issue--that the enemy did not break through. There was a long casualty-list as casualties were then counted, and the Indian Brigades were withdrawn from their wrecked and sodden trenches for a little rest. The Guards Brigade was ordered to relieve them, and on the 22nd marched out from Meteren. The Herts Territorial Battalion (to be honourably and affectionately known later as “The Herts Guards”) led that first march, followed by the 2nd Coldstream, 1st Battalion Irish Guards, the 3rd Coldstream, and the 2nd Grenadiers. They billeted at Béthune where, on the 23rd December, the 2nd Coldstream in support, they took over their share of the Indian trenches near Le Touret between Essars and Richebourg L’Avoué, and on Christmas Eve after tea and the distribution of the Christmas puddings from England, the Battalion, with the Hertfordshires relieved the 4th Dogras, 6th Jats, and 9th Gurkhas. It is recorded that the Gurkha, being a somewhat shorter man than the average Guardsman, the long Irish had to dig their trenches about two feet deeper, and they wondered loudly what sort of persons these “little dark fellas” could be.

The Christmas truce of 1914 reached the Battalion in severely modified form. They lay among a network of trenches, already many times fought over, with communications that led directly into the enemy’s lines a couple of hundred yards away. So they spent Christmas Day, under occasional bombardment of heavy artillery, in exploring and establishing themselves as well as they might among these wet and dreary works. In this duty Lieutenant G. P. Gough and Lieutenant F. H. Witts and six men were wounded.

Earl Kitchener, their Colonel, sent them Christmas wishes and the King’s and Queen’s Christmas cards were distributed. Their comfort was that Christmas night was frosty so that the men kept dry at least.

Boxing Day was quiet, too, and only four men were wounded as they dug in the hard ground to improve their communications with the 2nd Coldstream on their left. Then the frost broke in rain, the clay stuck to the spade, the trenches began to fill and a deserter brought news of an impending attack which turned out to be nothing more serious than a bombing affair which was duly “attended to.” Some of our own shells bursting short killed one man and wounded six. Princess Mary’s gifts of pipes, tobacco, and Christmas cards were distributed to the men and duly appreciated.

The impossibility of keeping anything free from mud forced them to reduce their firing-line to the least possible numbers, while those in support, or billets, made shift to clean rifles and accoutrements. The days went forward in rain and wet, with digging where water allowed, and a regular daily toll of a few men killed and wounded.

On the 30th December Captain Eric Gough was killed by a stray bullet while commanding his Company (No. 1) and was buried next day in a cemetery a few miles along the Béthune-Richebourg road. He had been Transport Officer since the Battalion left London in August, but had commanded a company since the 21st November, and was an immense loss to the Battalion to which he was devoted. Lieutenant Sir G. Burke and 2nd Lieutenant J. M. Stewart came from England on the same day and were posted to No. 1 Company now commanded by Lieutenant L. Hargreaves.

The Diary ends the year with a recapitulation more impressive in its restraint than any multitude of words:

The country round this part is very low-lying, intersected with ditches with pollarded willows growing on their banks. No sooner is a trench dug than it fills with water.... The soil is clay, and so keeps the water from draining away even if that were possible. In order to keep the men at all dry, they have to stand on planks rested on logs in the trenches, and in the less wet places bundles of straw and short fascines are put down. Pumping has been tried, but not with much success. The weather continues wet, and there does not seem to be any likelihood of a change. Consequently, we may expect some fresh discomforts daily.

1915

LA BASSÉE TO LAVENTIE

They were not disappointed. New Year’s Day was marked by the flooding out of a section of forward trenches, and by experiments with a trench-mortar, from which 2nd Lieutenant Keating and some Garrison gunners threw three bombs at an enemy digging-party a couple of hundred yards away. This is the first reference to our use of trench-mortars in the young campaign. The enemy retaliated next day by bombing from their real trench-mortars, at a distance of seven hundred yards, the small farm-house where Battalion Headquarters lay. The bombs could be seen “coming at a very steep angle, but the house was only once hit.” Daylight showed the work of the Irish trench-mortar to have been so good--it had blown a gap in the German trench--that they continued it and inflicted and observed much damage.

They were relieved on the 3rd January by the King’s Royal Rifles and got to billets near Vieille Chapelle late that night. A London Gazette announced that the Distinguished Conduct Medal had been awarded No. 2535 Sergeant C. Harradine; No. 1664 Corporal C. Moran; No. 4015 Private W. Moore (since killed in action); No. 2853 Lance-Corporal W. Delaney. Also “the new decoration called the Military Cross” had been awarded to Lieutenant the Hon. H. W. Gough.

The Battalion, as a whole, had its reward for the past ten days when the Brigadier expressed his approval of the work of the Guards Brigade “and especially that of the Irish Guards.”

Cleaning and refit, classes in bomb-throwing (both by hand and from rifles) under the Engineers and an elementary machine-gun class under 2nd Lieutenant Straker, filled in the week; but the most appreciated boon at Vieille Chapelle was some huge tubs in which the men could be boiled clean. Father Gwynne held service in the roofless shell-wrecked church, long since wiped out.

They took over trenches from the Worcesters on the 8th with a cold knowledge of what awaited them; for the Diary notes, the day before: “Another wet day, which will probably completely fill trenches on the left of the new line with water.” But it did not fill them more than two feet deep, though the whole line was afloat, and in the communication-trenches seven men got stuck in the mud; one of them was not extricated for six hours. The relief took six and a half hours in pouring rain, with one man killed and two wounded. The front line of the Guards Brigade was held by the 3rd Coldstream on the right, the 2nd Coldstream in support; one Company of the 2nd Grenadiers in the centre, and the rest of the Battalion in support; the Irish Guards on the left, the Herts Territorials in support. The Grenadiers relieved their front company every twenty-four hours, the others every forty-eight. This meant that Battalion C.O.’s had to spend most of their time in the front line studying what was, in effect, the navigation of canals.

On the 9th January, for example, the water averaged three feet in the trenches and, as that average rose, it was decided to leave a few strong posts in comparatively dry positions and withdraw the others along the Rue du Bois into the destroyed village of Richebourg L’Avoué. Luckily, the enemy, not two hundred yards away, had his own troubles to attend to and, despite his lavish flares and musketry-fire, our men were extricated, bodily in some instances, with but 3 killed and 2 wounded.

On the 10th January the Herts Regiment relieved them, and the whole Battalion billeted at Richebourg St. Vaast. Casualties from small-arm fire had been increasing owing to the sodden state of the parapets; but the Battalion retaliated a little from one “telescopic-sighted rifle” sent up by Lieutenant the Earl of Kingston, with which Drill-Sergeant Bracken “certainly” accounted for 3 killed and 4 wounded of the enemy. The Diary, mercifully blind to the dreadful years to come, thinks, “There should be many of these rifles used as long as the army is sitting in trenches.” Many of them were so used: this, the father of them all, now hangs in the Regimental Mess.

Then trench-feet and rheumatism developed, and in forty-eight hours fifty men had to be sent to hospital for one form or other of these complaints.

A draft of a hundred fresh men arrived between the 11th and 12th of January with six officers: Captain P. S. Long-Innes, 2nd Lieutenants F. F. Graham, J. R. Ralli, R. B. H. Kemp, D. W. Gunston (Derek) and J. T. Robyns. Economy in officers and men was not yet possible; for when an officer was not in the front line he had more than all he could do to look after what comforts were obtainable for the men. Yet concessions were made to human weakness; for when the Battalion returned to its trenches on the 12th an order was received and, to some extent, obeyed that “men were not to stand in the water for _more than twelve hours at a time_.” This called for continuous reliefs of the platoons, as it took a man most of his rest in billets to scrape himself moderately clean. To save the labour of portage through the mud, each man was given two days’ supplies when he went into the trenches, plus some dry tea and a couple of tins of maconochie to heat up over the braziers. The idea worked satisfactorily; for the days of the merciless air-patrols had yet to come; and the braziers flared naked to heaven while the Irish “drummed up,” which is to say, stewed their tea or rations on them.

The hopeless work of improving positions in soil no stiffer than porridge was resumed, and the “telescopic-sighted rifle,” in the hands of Sergeant-Major Kirk and Drill-Sergeant Bracken, who were later congratulated by the G.O.C. Second Division, continued its discreet and guarded labours among the enemy. Only 1 man was killed and 1 wounded on the 13th January, and the night of that easy day passed off quietly, “the enemy occupying himself chiefly with singing songs or playing on mouth-organs.” Here and elsewhere he was given to spasms of music for no ascertainable reason, which the Irish, who do not naturally burst into song, rather resented. Between morceaux he sent up many coloured flares, while our working-parties silently completed and christened by the name of “Gibraltar” a post to command a flooded gap in the oozy line.

They were relieved on the 15th January by the Highland Light Infantry of the 3rd Brigade (Lahore Division) which was taking over the line held by the 4th (Guards) Brigade. The Battalion went back to Brigade reserve billets at Locon.[5]

Their last week in the trenches had cost them 82 casualties including sick, but it is worth noting that, at this time, Captain McCarthy, the Medical Officer, by issuing mustard mixed with lard for the men to rub on their feet, had in three days got the better of the epidemic of “trench” or, as they were then called, “swollen” feet.

It was while in reserve that 2nd Lieut. Keating, Bombing Instructor and in charge of the trench-mortars, lost his life and 13 men were wounded owing to the premature explosion of an old-type fused bomb with which he was instructing a class. Second Lieutenant Keating was buried next day in the cemetery near Le Touret, where many Guardsmen were already laid, and his epitaph may worthily stand as it was written--“A very capable officer, always ready to undertake any task however difficult or dangerous.”

After a few days the Battalion went into Corps Reserve and spent a week in being “smartened up” behind the line with steady drill, rifle exercises, route-marching and kit inspection, on rainy days, lest life in the caked filth of the trenches should lead any one to forget the standard of the Brigade of Guards which under no circumstance allows any excuse.

Their work was interrupted by another “Kaiser-battle,” obediently planned to celebrate the All Highest’s birthday. It began on the 25th January with a demonstration along the whole flat front from Festubert to Vermelles. Béthune was also shelled from an armoured train run out of La Bassée, and a heavy attack was launched by Prussian infantry on a salient of our line, held by the 1st Infantry Brigade, where it joined the French line among the tangle of railway tracks and brick-fields near Cuinchy. Owing to the mud, the salient was lightly manned by half a battalion of the Scots Guards and half a battalion of the Coldstream. Their trenches were wiped out by the artillery attack and their line fell back, perhaps half a mile, to a partially prepared position among the brick-fields and railway lines between the Aire-La Bassée Canal and the La Bassée-Béthune road. Here fighting continued with reinforcements and counter-attacks knee-deep in mud till the enemy were checked and a none too stable defence made good between a mess of German communication-trenches and a keep or redoubt held by the British among the huge brick-stacks by the railway. So far as the Battalion was concerned, this phase of the affair seems to have led to no more than two or three days’ standing-to in readiness to support with the rest of the Brigade, and taking what odd shells fell to their share.

No institutions are more self-centred than a battalion in the face of war. “Steady drill,” and company kit inspections were carried on in the lulls of the waiting, and their main preoccupation was how much water might be expected in the new trenches when their turn came to occupy them. The Germans were devoting some of their heavy artillery to shelling the lock of the Aire-La Bassée Canal at Pont Fixe, between Givenchy and Cuinchy, in the hope of bursting it and flooding the country. They spent more than a hundred eight-inch howitzer shells on that endeavour in one day, and later--long after the lock had been thoroughly protected with sandbags--used to give it stated doses of shell at regular intervals. Similarly, they would bombard one special spot on the line near Béthune because once in ’14 an armoured train of ours had fired thence at them.

The Battalion had just been reinforced by a draft of 107 men and 4 officers--Captain Eric Greer, Lieutenant Blacker-Douglass, 2nd Lieutenant R. G. C. Yerburgh, and 2nd Lieutenant S. G. Tallents. They were under orders to move up towards the fighting among the brick-fields which had opened on the 25th, and had not ceased since. Unofficial reports described the trenches they were to take over as “not very wet but otherwise damnable,” and on the 30th January the Battalion definitely moved from Locon, with the 2nd Coldstream, _via_ Béthune to Cuinchy. Here the Coldstream took over from the 2nd Brigade the whole line of a thousand yards of trench occupied by them; the Irish furnishing supports. The rest of the Brigade, that is to say, the Herts Territorials, the Grenadiers, and the 3rd Coldstream were at Annequin, Beuvry, and Béthune.

The companies were disposed between the La Bassée-Béthune road and the railway, beside the Aire-La Bassée Canal. The centre of their line consisted of a collection of huge dull plum-coloured brick-stacks, mottled with black, which might have been originally thirty feet high. Five of these were held by our people and the others by the enemy--the whole connected and interlocked by saps and communication-trenches new and old, without key or finality. Neither side could live in comfort at such close quarters until they had strengthened their lines either by local attacks, bombing raids or systematised artillery work. “The whole position,” an officer remarks professionally, “is most interesting and requires careful handling and a considerable amount of ingenuity.”

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Except for railway embankments and culverts, the country about was so flat that a bullet once started had no reason to stop. The men were billeted in solid-built Flemish houses with bullet-proof partitions, and therefore, unless noticeably shelled, were inclined to walk about in front of the houses in the daylight, till they were sternly set to work to clean their billets of months of accumulations of refuse and to bury neglected carcases. War and all connected with it was infinitely stale already, but houses and the ruins of them had not yet been wholly wiped out in that sector.

They were installed by the last day of the month with no greater inconvenience than drifts of stray bullets over the support trenches, and unsystematic shelling of Battalion Headquarters two or three hundred yards in the rear, and some desultory bombing in the complicated front line.

Early in the morning of the 1st February a post held by the Coldstream in a hollow near the embankment, just west of the Railway Triangle--a spot unholy beyond most, even in this sector--was bombed and rushed by the enemy through an old communication-trench. No. 4 Company Irish Guards was ordered to help the Coldstream’s attack. The men were led by Lieutenant Blacker-Douglass who had but rejoined on the 25th January. He was knocked over by a bomb within a few yards of the German barricade to the trench, picked himself up and went on, only to be shot through the head a moment later. Lieutenant Lee of the same Company was shot through the heart; the Company Commander, Captain Long-Innes, and 2nd Lieutenant Blom were wounded, and the command devolved on C.Q.M.S. Carton, who, in spite of a verbal order to retire “which he did not believe,” held on till the morning in the trench under such cover of shell-holes and hasty barricades as could be found or put up. The Germans were too well posted to be moved by bomb or rifle, so, when daylight showed the situation, our big guns were called upon to shell for ten minutes, with shrapnel, the hollow where they lay. The spectacle was sickening, but the results were satisfactory. Then a second attack of some fifty Coldstream and thirty Irish Guards of No. 1 Company under Lieutenants Graham and Innes went forward, hung for a moment on the fringe of their own shrapnel--for barrages were new things--and swept up the trench. It was here that Lance-Corporal O’Leary, Lieutenant Innes’s orderly, won his V.C. He rushed up along the railway embankment above the trenches, shot down 5 Germans behind their first barricade in the trench, then 3 more trying to work a machine-gun at the next barricade fifty yards farther along the trench, and took a couple of prisoners. Eye-witnesses report that he did his work quite leisurely and wandered out into the open, visible for any distance around, intent upon killing another German to whom he had taken a dislike. Meantime, Graham, badly wounded in the head, and Innes, together with some Coldstream, had worked their way into the post and found it deserted. Our guns and our attack had accounted for about 30 dead, but had left 32 wounded and unwounded prisoners, all of whom, with one exception, wept aloud. The hollow was full of mixed dead--Coldstream, Irish, and German.

The men who remained of No. 4 Company did not settle down to the work of consolidating their position till they had found Blacker-Douglass’s body. At least a couple of his company had been wounded in the first attack while trying to bring it away. Lee’s body was recovered not far off.

A quarter of an hour after the post had fallen, the Engineers were up with unlimited sand-bags and helped the men who worked as they ate among the piled horrors around them, while everything was made ready for the expected German counter-attack. It did not come. Not only had the post been abandoned, but also a couple of trenches running out of it to the southward. These were duly barricaded in case the enemy were minded to work back along them at dusk. But for the rest of the day they preferred to shell; killing 2 and wounding 5 men of the two companies which were relieved by a company of the 3rd Coldstream and one of the 3rd Grenadiers. Our men returned to billets “very tired and hungry, but very pleased with themselves.” That day’s work had cost us 2 officers and 8 men killed; 3 officers and 24 men wounded, and 2 men missing. In return, two machine-guns, 8 whole and 24 wounded prisoners had been taken, the post recovered and, perhaps, sixty yards of additional trench with it. Such was the price paid in those years for maintaining even a foothold against the massed pressure of the enemy. It is distinctly noted in the Diary that two complete machine-guns were added to the defence of the post after it had been recaptured. Machine-guns were then valuable articles of barter, for when the French who were their neighbours wished to borrow one such article “for moral and material support,” a Brigadier-General’s permission had to be obtained.

This experience had shown it was better for each battalion in the line to provide its own supports, and they reorganized on the 2nd February on this basis; the 2nd and 3rd Coldstream Guards taking over the left half of the line up to within fifty yards of the Keep, while for their right, to the main La Bassée road, the 2nd Grenadiers and the Irish Guards were responsible--each with two companies in the fire trench and two in support, and all on forty-eight hours’ relief.

The enemy continued to shell the captured position, killing 2 and wounding 9 men that day, but no counter-attack developed and a few days later it was decided to straighten out the front then held by the 4th (Guards) Brigade. The fighting on the 25th had left it running irregularly through the big brick-yard, before mentioned. Of the dozen or more solid stacks of brick, four or five connected by a parapet of loose bricks and known as the Keep, were in our hands. The other eight, irregularly spaced, made a most awkward wedge into our line. They were backed by a labyrinth of German trench-work, and, being shell-proof, supports could be massed behind them in perfect safety. The nearest were within bombing distance of the Keep, and, in those days, the Germans had more and better bombs than we. On every account, then, the wedge had to be cleared, the stacks and their connecting trenches overrun and the line advanced a hundred and fifty yards or so to get a better field of fire. As a preliminary, a small but necessary piece of German trench on the flanks of the Keep was captured by the Irish on the 5th February with a loss of but 2 killed and none wounded.