Chapter 33

THE TURNING OF THE TIDE,

MAY, JUNE, JULY, AUGUST, 1918.

Rations and the Battalion Transport.--At La Lacque.--The bombing of Aire.--General Mackenzie obliged by his wound to leave the Division.--Return of Colonel Wetherall.--Tripp's Farm on fire.-- A mysterious epidemic.--A period of wandering.--The march from Pont Asquin to St. Hilaire.--Nieppe Forest.--Attack by A and B Companies on August 7.--Headquarters gassed.--A new Colonel.-- The Battalion goes a-reaping.

Though used to being told that our army was the best fed of any in the war, few English people have any idea how rations reached the line. They came up every day from the Base by train as far as Railhead--which meant a convenient station as far forward as possible while still being outside the range of ordinary German guns--and were thence conveyed, normally in lorries, by the A.S.C. to the various 'refilling points' assigned to Infantry Brigades. From the refilling point, which was only a stretch of the roadside, the Transport collected the Battalion's rations and delivered them to the Quartermaster's stores; and by means of the Transport the Quartermaster, after their necessary division between companies, forwarded rations to the front line. Latterly it was rarely possible to cook in the trenches and it never was during active operations, so to Murray, our Quartermaster, and his staff fell the duty of sending up cooked food. It is impossible for me here to explain the system practised; but by means of food-containers, specially improvised from petrol tins and rammed into packs stuffed with hay, we were able to supply the men with hot food in the front line. Murray's organisation was excellent, and the four Company Quartermaster-Sergeants--Holder, Freudemacher, Taylor, and Beechey--and the Company Cooks earned equal credit in the performance of these important duties, which never miscarried.

The Battalion was fortunate in keeping as its Transport officer 'Bob' Abraham. He suited the job, and the job him. He had organised the Transport in 1914 and brought it overseas. Several pairs of mules, which had come out with the Battalion in 1916, were still at work and thriving three years later. By a riding accident Abraham was lost to the Battalion for a time, but his place was taken by Kirk, who proved himself an excellent substitute, and when Kirk left Woodford carried on with equal efficiency.

Long before the war was reaching its close I had ceased really to envy the Transport Officer, nor did our men in the trenches forget the responsibilities and danger of the drivers. In their turn the transport men felt that it was their duty to make up for the part they were not called upon to play with bomb and bayonet by never failing to deliver promptly and faithfully at company headquarters their limber-loads of rations. In its turn-out, whether at a Brigade horse-show, a veterinary inspection or on the line of march, our Transport set a high standard; men and animals were alike a credit to the Battalion.

During the warm weather of the spring, when the canal banks were lined with bathers, our Transport was situated at La Lacque, a village a few miles west of Aire. Not far off stood the tall chimneys of the Isbergues steel works--a large factory, which, like Cassel and Dunkirk, had in the early days of the war attracted occasional shells from German long-range guns. Now that the line was only a few leagues distant the steel works became the almost daily target for 'high velocities.' Once the tiles had been shaken from the workshops no visible damage seemed to result from the many hundred shells which fell inside the factory's area. None the less the continuous shifts of workmen afforded a striking example of the national devotion of French industry, to be compared with that total dislocation of London business which even an air-raid warning was sufficient to engender. Isbergues village was now crowded with Portuguese, who spent their time tormenting dogs and washing themselves in the canal, but who officially were employed in making trenches, which they could be trusted to dig deep. At La Lacque a second Brigade School was established. The details of its management were under Coombes, who possessed considerable ability in this direction. The Battalion instructors were Sergeants Brooks and Brazier, both of whom were well versed in regimental drill and tradition and shewed much zeal in the work. Than Sergeant Brazier no more hearty sportsman ever belonged to the Battalion.

At the end of May, 1918, when the whereabouts of his next attack were yet uncertain, the enemy's power reached its apparent zenith. A Canadian corps had been in reserve along the line of the La Bassée Canal for three weeks in expectation of a renewed attempt against Hazebrouck and Béthune. From prisoners' statements more than once an attack upon the Battalion seemed imminent and special precautions were adopted. All this time our artillery had been recovering its ascendancy, until the enemy, cooped up as he was within a salient bounded by canals, became faced with the two alternatives of attack or retreat. Meanwhile his aircraft used the fine nights of the early summer to wreak the utmost spite on our back area. During one night Aire, which had hitherto been left unscathed was so severely bombed that one could have fancied the next day that the town had been convulsed by an earthquake. St. Omer, though less damaged, was frequently attacked. In northern France the visits of German aeroplanes became such that all towns, alike by military and civil populations, came to be deserted before nightfall.

How I should introduce appropriately and with becoming respect a reference to our Major-General has somewhat puzzled me. Sir Colin Mackenzie, K.C.B., had commanded the 61st Division through many difficult vicissitudes. His watchful eye and quiet manner gained everywhere the confidence and admiration of his regimental subordinates, who saw in him great soldierly qualities. The General's bearing and his string of real war-ribbons made many an eye rove at an inspection. By a wound he was obliged in June, 1918, to retire from command of the Division. He was much missed.

Towards the end of May Colonel Wetherall returned to take command of the Battalion. To be his Second in Command was both a pleasure and a privilege. Similar feelings were evoked towards the Brigadier, General Pagan, in whose small frame beat a lion's heart. When the frontage of the Brigade was changed from one to two battalions, we had to give up Baquerolle and Carvin and occupy instead the barren fields on the other side of the Calonne road, where most wretched front-line accommodation existed. Headquarters for the new sector were in Les Amusoires; and rations came up each night as far as a farm, called Tripp's Farm, forward of which neither cooking could be done nor any water obtained. One night German shelling, that tune to which rations were usually carried, set light to Tripp's Farm. Quartermaster-Sergeants, mules' heads, and guides were mingled in the glare, while from a concrete pill-box hard by machine-gunners (its rightful occupants) were compelled to avoid roasting by flight. About this time both St. Venant and Robecq were burning for several days. Of the former, most of the remaining houses near the church (which had been frequently struck) were destroyed, but in Robecq the fire almost confined itself to the famous café near the cross-roads. To quench these conflagrations no measures were, or could be, taken, for their occurrence was a great gratification to the German artillery, which always redoubled its efforts in the hope of spreading a fire as far as possible.

In the middle of June, during a stay at La Pierrière, the Battalion was ravaged by a mysterious epidemic, which claimed hundreds of victims before it passed. Starting among the signallers, it first spread through Headquarters, and then attacked all Companies indiscriminately. Among the officers, Cubbage and Shields (the doctor) were the first to go to hospital; soon followed by Clutsom, who was adjutant at this time, and Tobias the very doctor who had come to replace Shields. The Colonel and myself were the next victims, and when the time came for the Battalion to go into the line, it was necessary to send for Christie-Miller, of the Gloucesters, to take command and to make Murray from quartermaster into adjutant. This epidemic was not confined to the Battalion, nor to the 61st Division. Isolation camps had hastily to be formed, for the evil threatened to dislocate whole corps and even armies. Among the Germans the same complaint seems to have spread with even greater virulence; indeed, it may well have prevented them from launching a further offensive against Béthune and Hazebrouck. By doctors it was classified under the name of Pyrexia of Unknown Origin ('P.U.O.') while in such guarded references as occurred our Press spoke of it as 'Spanish Influenza.' The symptoms of the illness consisted in high temperature, followed by great physical and mental lassitude. Most cases recovered within a week, but some took longer, nor was a second attack following recovery from the first at all uncommon. Such was the only epidemic of the war. Thanks to the care and efficiency of our Regimental M.O.s the dreaded scourges of past wars--cholera, dysentery, and enteric--in France could together claim few, if any, victims.

On June 25 it was time for the 184th Infantry Brigade to move out of the line to Ham and Linghem, two villages south-east and south of Aire. The relief took place, but at the last minute it was decided that the 182nd Brigade was so depleted by the epidemic that it was necessary for the 2/4th Oxfords to remain at La Pierrière to assist them in holding the line. At the Brigade sports, held at Linghem on July 7, the Battalion easily carried off the cup offered for competition by General Pagan. In the relay race Sergeant Brazier accomplished a fine performance, while in the boxing we showed such superiority that no future Brigade competition ever took place.[12]

[Footnote 12: In the realm of sport a later achievement of the Battalion deserves record. On July 27 at the XI Corps horse-show our team won the open tug-of-war.]

Before we left La Pierrière what can well be looked back to as a red-letter day was spent in sports and a full programme of entertainments, including the Divisional 'Frolics,' who were prevailed on to perform in a farmyard. Jimmy Kirk also brought his coaching party of clowns--who on this occasion avoided a conflict with the Military Police--and of course the Battalion Band regaled us with choice items throughout the day. In the sports a race had to be re-run because one of the competitors, instead of waiting for the 'pistol' (A. E. G. Bennett with home-made 'blanks') started at the report of our 6-inch gun in the next orchard, which occurred a fraction of a second earlier. The evening was saved from bathos by the news that the Division was to be relieved. Life operates by contrast, and though the war was going on a few miles to the eastward I believe as much pleasure was experienced that day in the small orchard behind Headquarters at La Pierrière as in any elaborate peace celebration in this country. Indeed, to see the crowd 'celebrating' the armistice up and down the Strand was enough to make one recall with regret such an occasion of the war as I have described.

On July 10 we moved back, most of the way by 'bus, to Liettres, a very pretty village well behind the line and south-west of Aire. Hardly were we settled before we were ordered to move, which we did with no very good grace to St. Hilaire, a much inferior village. Two days later our tactical location was discovered to be still unsatisfactory, so we tried a march northwards to Warne, where for the third time in ten days a quartermaster's store had to be built from the materials we had managed to drag along with us. Almost before our headquarter runners had learnt the whereabouts of companies we were on the road again. This time we left the XI Corps, with which so many of the Battalion's fortunes and misfortunes had been associated, and passed into General Plumer's Army as part of the XV Corps. The paradise which every division, sent back for 'rest,' fancies will have been prepared for it, now degenerated to a mere field. Still, there are many worse places, if some better, than a grass field; footballs were soon bouncing merrily, and on the air floated the monotonous enumeration of 'House.' One evening the Colonel, myself, and the company commanders returned wet-through from a voyage of inspection of the Hazebrouck defences, for a German attack was still anticipated. The last of these shuttle-cock moves occurred on July 31, from our field at Pont Asquin back to St. Hilaire, whose billets few of us were anxious to revisit.

As I have not loaded my narrative with marches my readers shall hoist full pack (no air-pillows allowed!) upon their backs and fall in with the Battalion. It is already dusk as the sanitary men, like so many sorcerers, stoop in the final rites of fire and burial. Some days ago I taxed the band-master, Bond, with the possibility of playing in the dark; for a moment his face was as long as Taylor's bassoon, but since then by means of surreptitious practice and, I fancy, the sheer confiscation of his bandsmen's folios, the impossible has been achieved. Every band is the best in France, but only ours can play in darkness. Thus, as the column swings past the pond and waiting cookers, the Band strikes up one of its best and loudest marches....

Such midnight music, if it drowned the drone of German aeroplanes, which ever and anon swam overhead, looking like white moths in the beams of our searchlights, served also to arouse the village inhabitants, whose angry faces were framed for an instant in windows as we passed. Our musical uproar set dogs barking for miles, cocks crowed at our passage, and generals turned in their second sleep to hear such martial progress in the night. The march--through Racquinghem and Aire--was long, lasting nearly all night. To flatter its interest a sweepstake had been arranged among the officers for who should name the exact moment of its conclusion. Years of foot-slogging in France made my considered guess formidable in the competition. More dangerous still was that of the Colonel, for to him would fall the duty of the decisive whistle-blast, and his entry ultimately was not accepted by the 'committee.' As in most sweepstakes, the first prize fell to a most undeserving winner.

July closed with a feeling of dissatisfaction at the cycle of moves which had rendered futile both rest and training. Consciousness that one was helping to win the war was more often imputed than felt. Early in August, 1918, the 61st relieved the 5th Division in front of the Nieppe Forest. Minor attacks had already cleared the enemy from the eastern fringe of the forest and driven him back towards Neuf Berquin and Merville. At 7 p.m. on August 7 A and B Companies attacked and captured the trenches opposite to them, causing the enemy to retire behind the Plate Becque, a stream as wide as the Cherwell at Islip but far less attractive. We had a dozen casualties in this attack, which was rewarded by half as many German prisoners and a machine-gun. Sergeant Ravenscroft, of B Company, for an able exploit during the advance, received the D.C.M.

Already the Forest of Nieppe had become notorious for German gas. It was now a nightly programme of the enemy to drench the wood, which was low-lying and infested with pools and undergrowth, with his noxious 'Yellow Cross'--shells whose poisonous fumes bore the flavour of mustard. Throughout the night of August 7/8, when things generally were very active, a heavy gas-bombardment was kept up. The Colonel was away from his headquarters at the time. He returned after the shelling to find that gas helmets had been taken off. No harm was expected, but the next day, after the sun's heat had awakened dormant fumes, the Colonel, Symonds (the adjutant), Kirk, who had brought up the rations, and Cubbage, as well as the Regimental Sergeant-Major and many signallers and runners, all found that they were gassed. Their loss was serious. It was known that Wetherall would soon have to leave the Battalion, for he had been appointed to a command in the Machine Gun Corps; indeed already his successor, Colonel Woulfe-Flanagan, had arrived to take his place. Under the present unlucky auspices (for more than half Headquarters were knocked out) the interchange took place.

Herodotus says of the kings of Sparta that the last was always regretted as the best the country had ever had. Colonel Wetherall's merit did not depend on his being the last of a series. Phrases such as 'he was worshipped by the men' have become so hackneyed as to be meaningless, nor shall I use an even worse commonplace, that 'he was sparing of his words.' Wetherall was just a rattling good Commanding Officer, a true friend, and a fine soldier. His successor, E. M. Woulfe-Flanagan, came from the East Surreys. He bore a distinguished record of pre-war service and had been wounded in the Mons retreat. A regular soldier of the old school, in ideas and methods he differed widely from his predecessor. But he was worth his salt every time. Certainly no braver officer ever set foot in France.

After we had finished our first tour in the Nieppe Forest sector, both the Berks and Gloucester were sent forward against the enemy, who was rightly suspected by the staff to be on the point of retreating from the Lys salient. The attack had to cross the Plate Becque, whose eastern bank the enemy was fighting hard to hold. Gloucesters and Berks rushed forward at misty dawn and flung bridges over the stream; but the machine-gun fire was too intense, and though some parties got across, others did not, co-operation broke down, and the attack gained no result. A few days afterwards the Germans went back, giving up Calonne, Merville, and Neuf Berquin-villages which our artillery had utterly pulverised. As in the March retreat of 1917, the 184th Brigade had no immediate share in following up the enemy as he retired. The Oxfords had withdrawn on August 14 to Spresiano Camp, in the forest, and waited without eagerness to be ordered forward to the new devastated area. It is curious to reflect that at this time, so distant did the end of the war still seem, we grumbled at losing our comfortable base at Steenbecque, which we hoped to keep perhaps through the winter. Most thinking people could see neither value nor wisdom in pursuing the Germans in their retreats, planned and carried out in their own time, from salients. Hardly on one occasion did we hustle them, and the policy, deprecated by most commanders of lower formations, of snatching at the first morsels of abandoned territory always cost us heavy casualties. Between war and chess there is a close analogy. In front of Nieppe Forest there were now a hopeless crowding of the pieces, moves aimlessly made from square to square, and the reckless calling of 'check,' which to a good opponent means time and renewed chances to escape defeat.

During the early stages of the retreat the Battalion was sent to fresh fields of conquest among the crops, which the German withdrawal had done nothing to ripen but had at least removed from shell range. Plans were afoot to harvest a large area adjacent to the forest and present its fruits to the rightful owners. If harvesting weather should be hot, conditions were ideal. This novel form of working-party at first delighted the men, who set about the crops in goodly earnest. In a short space of time wheat, oats, and barley were added to our battle-honours. But if the spirit was willing, our reaping implements were correspondingly weak. The Corps 'Agricultural Officer' had collected from surrounding farms a fantastic assortment of cast-off scythes, jagged hooks, and rusty sickles, which fell to pieces 'in the 'ands' and refused to do more than beat down the crops to which they were opposed. The scythes seemed hardly able to stick their points, in the approved manner, into the ground, sickles were back-to-front or left-handed, and the entire panoply issued to this Reaping Battalion should have been seconded for duty at a music-hall or gazetted out of agricultural service as old iron. The Major-General, visiting the scene of our labours, was scandalised to find that fewer acres of corn had been put out of action than reports from other parts of the harvest front inclined him to expect. A 'stinker' followed, to which we could only retaliate by posting sentries the next day to warn us of the General's approach. Of course he came by a fresh road. And now, to avoid the inevitable anti-climax, I will ring down the curtain as the General steps from his car, demoralised reapers bestir themselves into some semblance of activity, and the commander of the party simply is not.