Chapter 29

AUTUMN AT ARRAS AND THE MOVE TO CAMBRAI,

OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER, 1917.

The Battalion's return to Arras.--A quiet front.--The Brigadier and his staff.--A novelty in tactics.--B Company's raid.--A sudden move.--The Cambrai front.--Havrincourt Wood.--Christmas at Suzanne.

From Arras the 61st Division came to Ypres: to Arras it returned. After a week spent in the back area, advance by the usual stepping stones was made to the front line. The 184th was the last Brigade to go into the trenches; not till the beginning of October did it take over the line. The front held by the 61st Division stretched from the Chemical Works of Roeux upon the right to a point south of Gavrelle upon the left. Two Brigades were in the line at once and stayed twenty-four days, Battalions changing places during the period. A rest of twelve days back at Arras followed.

This process of relief and the general conditions brought a return of trench-warfare almost on its old lines. As autumn waned gumboots were even spoken of. The trenches were mostly of chalk, and had been left by the 17th Division in excellent condition. The experience of a former winter prevented the error being made, at all events in theory, of leaving trenches unfloored and unrevetted, until winter, bringing its consequence of mud, arrived. Especially the mile-long communication trenches called 'Chili' and 'Civil' Avenues, if they were to be kept passable, required attention. A thorough programme of work with R.E. and the Pioneers was put in hand. Dry trenches would have repaid its labour spent in carrying and digging, had the Battalion stayed in this sector for the winter. As not unexpectedly happened, we had left the scene of our labours before winter set in.

More than three weeks of October were spent by the Battalion in the trenches. This was no great hardship. Half of the time was spent nearly two miles behind the line in an old German trench known as the Gavrelle Switch. In this position there was little restriction, if indeed there could ever be any--short of its prohibition--on the making of smoke, and with good rations and day working parties the men were happy enough. But these long periods in the trenches, when no proper parades or drill were possible, though acquiesced in by the men themselves, were bad for the Battalion's discipline. Much regard was always paid--especially in the 61st Division--to what is called 'turn out.' This meant more than button-polishing. It was that quality of alertness and self-respect which even in the trenches could be maintained. Trench-life bred loafers, and loafers never made the best soldiers. It was a good thing when October 28 came and the Battalion moved back to Arras for a twelve days' spell in rest. Billets were the French prison, whose cells provided excellent accommodation.

Arras in the autumn of 1917 was an attractive place. The clear atmosphere, through which the sun shone undimmed by factory-smoke, lent to its majestic ruins almost Italian colouring. Upon the western side of the town quite a number of undamaged houses still remained; at its centre the theatre and concert hall had luckily escaped destruction, and to hear the various divisional troupes most crowded audiences assembled every night. The streets, though unlighted, were thronged with jostling multitudes. The Arras front, as though in acknowledgement of greater happenings elsewhere, had become dormant since midsummer. Against the trenches themselves little activity by the enemy was shown, and in the back area, pending a change of policy by us, quietude reigned during the early autumn. A big German gun occasionally threw its shells towards our Transport lines at St. Nicholas or into Arras Station. One day a party which had come several hours early to secure good places on the leave train was scattered by the unscheduled arrival of a shell.

During the stay of the Battalion at the prison, Thomas, our champion boxer, issued a challenge to the divisions near the town. A man from the 15th Division, heavier than Thomas, accepted. In the fight which ensued before many spectators the Oxford man won on a knock-out in the fourth round. So strong at this time was the Battalion in boxing that Brigade competitions became foregone conclusions.

Another feature of this period was a Brigade school, with Bennett as its commandant, at Arras. A week's course was held for each platoon in the Brigade. The school was well run and partly recompensed for the lack of training during the long tours in the trenches.

More than a year had passed since General White first took command of the 184th Infantry Brigade. During that time the Brigade had improved out of all recognition. For such result its commander was more than partially responsible. The General had to the full the quality called 'drive'; that, rather than profound knowledge of military science, made him a first-rate Brigadier. War is a department of the world's business, in which capacity not only to work oneself, but to make others work, begets success. I should hesitate to say of General White that he 'used' others, but his prudent selection of subordinates ensured that all units in his Brigade were well commanded. He was more than a good judge of character: hollow prevarication was useless with him, and bluff--though, when he liked, he was himself a master of it--a dangerous policy. Among the shrewd qualities of this man there were the abilities to summarize rapidly whatever he had been told, and to remember most of everything he saw. His power of observation was so developed that sometimes the actual picture of some detail--such as a dirty rifle, a man without equipment, or a few sand bags laid awry--lent him a false impression of the whole. Yet his memory and rapid power of observation made him a real tactician--I use the adjective advisedly. No man who knew less, and there were few who knew more, of the front line than he did, could afford to argue with him about the position of a machine-gun, although if the matter had been presented as of theory at some headquarters rather than upon the ground, the machine-gun expert would perhaps have held his own.

'Bobbie' did not interfere with his staff officers in their 'paper-work,' but if ever occasion demanded he did not hesitate to draw his pen, not in self-defence, but in defence of the Brigade and his subordinates. He was no party to that unctuous politeness that sprang up during the war when staff met staff upon the telephone. He thought nothing of ringing up Corps, and expected speech with the head of a department, for he was the enemy of all high-placed obstructionists. His fame spread widely on the telephone. Impatient of camouflage, he learnt with difficulty the language of code-names under which it was sought to disguise our units to the enemy. 'Brigadier of 184 speaking,' he would say; 'Are you the Bucks.... What regiment are you?' There was an 'amplifier' at 'Tank Dump'; it was always most faithfully manned about 8 p.m.

The example which the General set was especially fine. He spent every day and nearly all day in the front line. Nothing annoyed him more than, say, at 9 a.m. to receive the message of a divisional conference fixed for his headquarters at 11. Equipped in his short overalls and shrapnel-helmet (conspicuous in a light cover) and carrying a white walking-stick, he used to quit Brigade Headquarters with matutinal punctuality. His outset borrowed something of the atmosphere of 'John Peel' on a fine morning. Battalion Headquarters, if not warned surreptitiously of his arrival, would scramble through their breakfast (not that the General designed to interfere either with rest or eating) as his form outlined itself in the doorway, accompanied by cheery greeting. In the front line itself his visits were refreshing. Prospects of shelling never deterred him. No post was too far forward for him to pay it a call. Often, when shells fell, he deliberately remained to share the danger. Once I knew him to return to a trench, which had been quite heavily shelled while he was there, because the Germans started on it again. A prodigious walker, he tired of daylight imprisonment to trenches and chose the 'top.' His figure must have been familiar to enemy observers. But his route was so erratic that, though he drew fire on many unexpected places after he had left, he was rarely himself shot at during his progress.

The General is a great representative of _esprit de corps_, and believes strongly in military comradeship. In a sense his claim for 'esprit de Brigade' was a little far-fetched, for Battalions held to themselves very much, and the fact that they relieved each other, though often a bond of alliance, was sometimes also a cause of friction. Between Battalions he did not shrink from making comparisons. 'My Berks' had done this; 'My Bucks' should do the same. Much good resulted. The standard of efficiency was raised. Though at times he was discovered to be naïvely inconsistent, one thing was certain--the 184th Brigade felt throughout its members that it was the best in the Division. The war has not produced many great men, but it has produced many great figures--amongst whom Robert White is by no means the least.

If it was well commanded by its General, the 184th Brigade was as well served by its staff. Gepp, the Brigade Major at Laventie, had been the pattern of a staff officer. His advice was at the service of the most recent company commander or newest subaltern. With Gepp as author, no march-table ever went wrong. Moore fell no whit short of his predecessor in ability. He was alike eager to acquire and to impart his knowledge, which in military matters was both profound and practical. He made friends readily with regimental officers, for he remained one of them at heart and in outlook. His powers were truly at the service of the whole Brigade. When George Moore left in September, 1917, to take command of a Battalion, the third Brigade Major who makes a figure in my history appeared--H. G. Howitt. In the sequence fortune continued to favour the Brigade. Howitt was a Territorial whose prowess had been proved in the Somme fighting. In place of a long staff training he brought business powers. He was indulgent of everything save fear, laziness, and inefficiency. Stout-hearted himself, he expected stoutness in others; this was the right attitude of a staff officer. Though a business man by training, he did not negotiate with the war; in him everything was better than his writing.

Of these three, Gepp, Moore, Howitt, it would be difficult to name the best Brigade Major; the 184th Brigade was happy in the trio.

On November 9 the 2/4th Oxfords returned to the trenches in weather that was still relatively fine. The Brigade sector had been changed; its front now stretched across the Douai railway below the slope of Greenland Hill. The previous quietude of the trenches now gave place to more activity. German shelling much increased. The ruins of the famous Chemical Works, which covered several acres of ground, were daily stirred by the explosions of shells among the tangled wreckage of boiler-pipes and twisted metal. In the front line trench-mortaring became frequent. On November 14 Cuthbert was wounded by a bomb which fell inside the trench, and other casualties occurred, including the General's runner. Many new officers and men had joined since Ypres. Wiltshire took up the adjutantcy when Cuthbert left.

Plans were afoot for a big demonstration to cover the surprise by English tanks at Havrincourt on November 20. A series of gas projections, smoke barrages, and raids were to take place. The better to maintain secrecy from the German 'listening-sets' no telephones were used. The Battalion bore its share in the programme; already at Arras plans for a novel raid were under contemplation. Cuthbert had devised a scheme, which Colonel Wetherall adopted and chose B Company, under Moberly, to carry out. The details of this raid, inasmuch as their novelty is of some historical interest, demand an explanation.

Gas fired in shells was of two sorts, lethal and non-lethal. The former was a deadly poison. Unless taken in large quantities, the latter had no fatal, nor indeed serious, effects; designed to irritate the throat and eyes, it caused such sneezing and hiccoughing that whosoever breathed this sort of gas lost temporarily his self-control. Lethal and non-lethal gas were intermingled both by the Germans and ourselves with high explosive shells; the effect of each assisted the effect of the other. If one began to sneeze from the effect of non-lethal gas, one could not wear a gas-helmet to resist the lethal; the high-explosive shells disguised both types. Now it was planned by Wetherall to fire lethal gas against the enemy for several nights. On the night of the raid and during it, non-lethal only would be used. The two gases smelt alike and the presumption was that on the night of the raid the enemy would wear gas-helmets.

On the evening of November 17, only an hour before the raid was to take place, it was announced that the wrong type of shells had been delivered to the artillery. Barely in time to avert a fiasco, the affair was cancelled. Two nights afterwards, when the wind luckily was again from the right direction, the raid was carried out. The Germans, of whom some were found in gas-helmets, had no inkling of our plan. B Company, though they missed the gap through the enemy's wire, entered the trenches without opposition and captured a machine-gun which was pointing directly at their approach but never fired. Wallington, the officer in command of the storming party, killed several Germans. As often, there was difficulty in finding the way back to our lines; in fact, Moberly, the commander of the raid, after some wandering in No-Man's-Land, entered the trenches of a Scotch division upon our right. His appearance and comparative inability to speak their language made him a suspicious visitor to our kilted neighbours. Moberly rejoined his countrymen under escort.

For a long time it seemed that no material results had been achieved in the raid. But the next morning Private Hatt, who for his exploit gained the D.C.M., crawled into our lines carrying the machine-gun which he had hugged all night between the German lines and ours. This raid took place the night preceding the great Cambrai offensive, and the success of Moberly and B Company formed part of the demonstration designed to attract enemy reserves away from the area of the operation mentioned.

On the last day of November the Division was withdrawn from the Arras sector: its move to relieve some of the troops who had been severely handled by the enemy at Bourlon Wood seemed probable. Events occurred to change the destination. The Battalion, after two nights at Arras, entrained amid all symptoms of haste on the morning of November 30 and travelled without the transport to Bapaume. The noise of battle and excited staff-officers greeted its arrival. In the back area it was on everybody's lips that the enemy had broken through. Bapaume was being shelled, many officers had travelled unprepared for an early engagement with the enemy, and the General was not yet on the scene; the situation was as unexpected as it was exciting. At 3 p.m. we were placed in buses under Bicknell's directions and moved rapidly to Bertincourt, a village four kilometres west of Havrincourt Wood. The night of November 30/December 1 was spent in an open field. It was intensely cold. At 4 a.m. a flank march was made to Fins, where some empty huts were found. Enemy long range shells, aimed at the railway, kept falling in the village. Through Fins at 10 a.m. on December 1 the Guards marched forward to do their famous counter-attack on Gouzeaucourt; on the afternoon of the same day the Battalion moved up to Metz, whither Brigade Headquarters had already gone. During the night, which was frosty and moonlight, the Colonel led the Battalion across country to occupy a part of the Hindenburgh Line west of La Vacquerie. On the following morning the enemy delivered a heavy attack upon the village, from which, after severe losses in killed and prisoners, troops of the 182nd Brigade were driven back. To assist them C Company was detached from the Battalion. The trenches--our front was now the Hindenburg Line--were frozen, there was snow on the ground, and the temporary supremacy of the enemy in guns and sniping produced a toll of casualties. It was an anxious time, but the Battalion was involved in no actual fighting; the German counter-attack, for the time-being, was at an end.

The 61st Division was left holding a line of snow-bound trenches between Gonnelieu and La Vacquerie, consisting of fragments both of the Hindenburg Line, the old German front line, and our own as it stood before the Cambrai battle opened. Except in the 184th Brigade the casualties suffered by the Division during the heavy German counter-attacks had been heavier than those at Ypres. The 2/4 Oxfords by luck had escaped a share in this fighting, and the Battalion's casualties during these critical events were few.

The German counter-attack from Cambrai was an important step in the war's progress. At the time it was considered even more important than it was. Judged by the rapidity with which they were replaced, the loss of guns and stores by us was not of high moment; it mattered more that for the first time since the Second Battle of Ypres the enemy had driven back our lines several miles. A counter-surprise had been effected. On a small scale the panic of defeat was proved by its physical results upon the ground. The valley north-east of Gouzeaucourt was littered with all kinds of relics, which in trench warfare or in our attacks had been unknown. Whole camps had been sacked and their contents, in the shape of clothing, equipment and blankets, were strewn broadcast. Packets of socks and shirts showed where an English quartermaster's stores had been, and flapping canvas and dismantled shelters were evidence of a local _débâcle_ to our side. The sight of derelict tractors, motor cars, and steam rollers, left in the sunken road at Gouzeaucourt, produced a sense of shock. A broad-gauge railway train, captured complete with trucks and locomotive and recovered in our counter-attack, bore witness to a victory seized but not secured. The battles of Ypres and Cambrai, 1917, though well-fought and not without results, robbed the British army for the time being of the initiative upon the Western Front. America became spoken of--1918, it was said, would be a defensive year. Yet the German success had in reality no effect upon our Infantry's morale. By the troops engaged in it Cambrai had been almost forgotten before Christmas. Less than a year afterwards the Germans had lost, not only Cambrai, but the war.

The end of 1917 was as cold as its beginning. Snow and frost, destined to play utter havoc with the roads, laid their white mantle on the battlefield. Fighting had slackened when the Battalion went into the line in front of Gonnelieu. The trenches there ran oddly between derelict tanks, light railways, and dismantled huts; in No-Man's-Land lay several batteries of our guns.

On December 7 the 183rd Brigade relieved the Battalion, which moved back to tents in Havrincourt Wood. It was bitter! Shells and aeroplane bombs made the wood dangerous as well as cold. On the 10th a further tour in the front line commenced This time trenches north-east of Villers Plouich were held. Wiring was strenuously carried out, but save for activity by trench-mortars the enemy lay quiet. The Battalion returned to Havrincourt Wood on December 15 and remained in its frozen tents until the Division was relieved by the 63rd. After one night at Lechelle the Battalion entrained at Ytres and moved back to Christmas rest-billets at Suzanne, near Bray.

Huts, built by the French but vacated more than a year ago and now very dilapidated, formed the accommodation. In them Christmas dinners, to procure which Bennett had proceeded early from the line, were eaten. And O'Meara conducted the Brigade band.