CHAPTER VIYPRES(September 1917)

The Division reached Watou, a village in the Poperinghe area, on the 23rd of August, and, with the exception of the artillery, which went straight into the line near Potijze Château, under the 15th Division, remained in that district for a few days’ training prior to going into the line at Ypres, rather more than a dozen kilometres to the east. Parties of officers and other ranks from all units were attached to units of the 15th Division in order to learn the geography of the sector. Except for the nightly bombing raids by hostile air squadrons this would have been an uneventful week.

At the end of August the Territorials from East Lancashire marched from Poperinghe into the Flemish city which had become a tragic household word throughout the British Isles. The name of Ypres had a deeper, fuller significance for the men and women at home than that of any other foreign town, and however queerly it might be pronounced the word was rarely uttered without stirring emotions of pride, admiration, horror and pity. In the streets and country lanes of the homeland were vast numbers of men, clad in garments of bright blue or grey, who had been maimed and battered in defence of the ruins of an ancient city of which they had never even heard before the autumn of 1914; the wards of hundreds of hospitals were filled with the wounded and gassed, who spoke unwillingly of the horrors of Ypres; and thousands of British homes mourned the loss of one or more who had fallen there. Ypres stood for death and mutilation and agony, and all that was most cruel and horrible in war. To wives and parents it was the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where their husbands and sons fought a never-ending fight with the Powers of Darkness, and never gave ground, yet never gained the victory.

On July 31, 1917, the Third Battle of Ypres had opened with a terrific bombardment of the Hun positions, which had lasted ten days and had obliterated every sign of life and every green thing that grew. But the ill-luck that dogged the British arms had been consistent; the fine weather on which the complete success of the long-prepared offensive largely depended, came to a sudden end, and when the troops made the attack an unusually heavy rainstormhad turned the scarred, shell-pitted ground into a vast quagmire, and the thousands of shell-holes into ponds. The tanks, from which so much had been anticipated, struggled gallantly against the adverse conditions, but many of them were “bellied” at an early stage, and some of those which went furthest into the Boche lines suffered the ignominious fate of conversion into German pill-boxes and sniper-posts. A little ground had been gained, a great deal of unavailing heroism had been shown, there had been much slaughter of British and Germans, and that was all.

Sooner or later almost every fighting unit of the B.E.F. had been moved to Ypres. Veterans, indeed, considered that no soldier had been properly “blooded” until he had taken his place in the line at the famous salient; and there were probably few soldiers with any length of service in France or Flanders who had not passed the traffic-man at the cross-roads leading to Hell Fire Corner, where the tide of motor ambulances ebbed and flowed so regularly. On the night of September 1 the 42nd Division passed through the Menin Gate on their way to the front trenches, now between four and five kilometres from the town. The Menin Road had been subjected to almost incessant shelling for more than two years. The German gunners had registered every square yard of it, and of every other road and track that led towards the front, and the men declared that if a large fly crossed the Menin Road in the daytime the Boche would at once put down a barrage of 6-inch shells. At night their guns would search every stretch of the road systematically on the chance—which was almost a certainty—of getting a bag. Night after night rations and ammunition were brought to the troops in the trenches through a hail of shells, which too often caught men, animals and vehicles and blotted them out. Night after night the roads were converted into shell-holes, but still the work of repairing them went on unceasingly; the gunners brought their teams along at the gallop; the transport men arrived with their precious loads and returned to pass through the inferno again, and often the ration limbers came back bearing burdens very different from those they had borne on the outward journey. And for every hundred struck by Death amid that never-ending hail of shells a thousand tricked him by hairbreadth escapes. At dawn there would often be a brief respite—a semblance, or rather a mockery, of peace. For an hour or two the crashes and rumblings ceased, as though the guns were pausing for breath through the very violence of their fury, and, while pausing, were plotting some still more devilish form of hate.

The Ypres Salient

The whole terrain through which the Division passed on its three miles’ journey to the trenches was stiff with guns. The 18-pounders had been brought close behind the infantry, and they stood in mud and shell-holes almost wheel to wheel. They appeared to be innumerable, and it was something of a shock to the Lancashire gunners to find so many guns within a radius of one hundred yards. The 4·5-inch howitzers were in groups, also close to the front; further back were the 6-inch howitzers, the 60-pounders, and theguns of heavier calibre, though there was a battery of 9·2-inch howitzers only twenty yards behind one of our R.F.A. batteries. The huge naval and 15-inch guns were well to the rear of Ypres, but though they could not be seen their tremendous power appealed to the imagination of the infantryman, who regarded them somewhat in the light of influential friends or patrons who, if occasion should arise, would see that he had fair play and would keep the ring. The enemy had also concentrated a similarly vast array of artillery in this sector, which he too regarded as the most important and most to be dreaded of all. Day and night the guns of both sides barked and thundered, and the strain on the gunners would have been considered unbearable before the Great War had taught the lesson that the limit of man’s endurance cannot be calculated. British and Germans lost more guns and gunners here in a week than an army would have lost in a year’s campaigning in any previous war. At night, high above the flashes of our 18-pounders, the beautiful coloured stars and golden rain of the German signal-rockets recalled memories of Belle Vue nights. In the daytime the swans calmly paddled in the moat round the eastern ramparts of Ypres, though the 60-pounders blazed away within a few yards of the water’s edge.

YPRES. THE CLOTH HALL.

YPRES. RAILWAY WOOD DUG-OUTS.

POTIJZE ROAD. THE A.D.S. AT THE WHITE CHÂTEAU.

POTIJZE ROAD. BAVARIA HOUSE, AN R.A.M.C. COLLECTING POST.

YPRES. BORRY FARM OR “PILLBOX.”

The Division, now part of the 5th Corps of the Fifth Army, had a strength of 703 officers and 16,972 men on September 1. The sector taken over from the 15th Division was about 1500 yards in width, from a point south-east of the Ypres—Menin railway on the right to a point 500 yards north-east of Frezenberg on the left. The roads were soon left, and the units proceeded to their positions by the duckboard paths which were the arteries from the bases to the front line, and along which generals and privates, stretcher-bearers and casualties, rations and ammunition, passed. It was more easy to lose one’s way than to keep to the track, and soldiers of both armies strayed into their opponents’ lines. A German officer, returning from leave, walked into the territory of the Division one night, and at breakfast time he was being interrogated at D.H.Q. Along the whole dreary length of duckboards the probability of slipping into one of the countless shell-holes filled with water and deep slime, was an ever-present menace which might prove fatal. At intervals small signboards were erected with the distinctive number or letter of the path in luminous paint. The front line was merely a series of linked-up shell-holes, with Battalion and Company Headquarters in pill-boxes captured from the enemy in the recent offensive. Despite such discouraging conditions a covey of partridges would often be put up at dawn by men returning along “J” trench, between Cambridge Road and the Menin Road.

One shrinks from the attempt to describe the conditions that prevailed in the Ypres salient. No part of it was ever at rest. By day, aircraft sought to spot every movement that was attempted on either side, and day and night the guns sprayed the trenches, the roads, the duckboard paths, with shrapnel and H.E., the grim resolve to kill dominating every other thought or desire. The ghastlyevidences of the fighting in three great battles and nearly three years of warfare were brought to light by the bombardments that tore and flung up the earth. The flares at night showed up in silhouette the figures of ration and ammunition carriers and of transport men, and brought swift destruction upon them. The runners who bore messages from one headquarters to another took their lives in their hands every time. Even for those few who were endowed by nature with the sixth sense of locality the odds were against their safe arrival and return. But the average town-bred lad has little sense of locality, so the carrying of a message meant wandering in a maze in which lurked enemies real and imaginary, varied by tumbles into shell-holes. Yet the runners generally got their messages through, and when one failed it was because another casualty had been added to the list. But if the Ypres Salient was detested by the British soldier, the enemy, although not penned within the narrow salient, regarded this sector with even greater abhorrence, and German prisoners declared that their troops, on being sent to the Ypres front, considered the order as equivalent to “certain death or worse.”

One night, at Hell Fire Corner, an ammunition depot was set on fire by enemy artillery, which continued to shell the dump and its vicinity furiously. In spite of the bombardment and constant explosions a party of the divisional transport loaded up alongside the depot, and got all teams and wagons safely away. Fighting patrols and working-parties went out nightly, and many were the unrecorded acts of heroism. There were also minor operations, which with one exception were quite small affairs. The 125th Brigade was ordered to attack on September 6 the positions known as Iberian, Borry and Beck House Farms, strong posts protected by the usual elaborate system of outworks. Two similar assaults in this vicinity had already failed—one by the 15th Division, in which a little ground had been gained by the Black Watch and the Gordons, who had lost very heavily and had been driven out in the morning by a counter-attack; and the second, on September 5, against Hill 35 by the 61st Division, had been no more successful. Prior to the date fixed for the attack by the Lancashire Fusiliers a daring reconnaissance in daylight was carried out by Sergeant Finney, 8th L.F., who, accompanied by a rifle-grenadier and two Lewis-gunners, pushed out to within twenty-five yards of Beck House. Although he knew that for the last hundred yards he was under observation, and could see the enemy manning the shell-holes, he worked parallel to the position until forced by rifle fire to withdraw and lie down in No Man’s Land. The following night Finney went alone to this post and lay out to study the enemy dispositions at night. He brought back valuable information, and was awarded the D.C.M. His bold move the previous day had evidently affected German nerves, for the enemy put up a many-coloured firework display and disclosed their general dispositions and barrage line, which previously had only been known vaguely.

Iberian, Borry, and Beck House

Practice barrages had been carried out by the artillery for three or four days before the 125th Brigade launched its attack, and rarely have gunners worked with such keenness as the divisional artillery displayed in the early hours of September 6. Four rounds per minute was the order, but eight, nine and ten rounds found their way into the enemy lines, and the gunners state that never were the guns so hot as on that day. The 5th and 6th L.F., with the 7th and 8th in support and the 6th Manchesters as carrying parties, advanced under the heavy barrage. A thunderstorm on the previous day made the going heavy, and the German machine-gunners, from the security of their apparently invulnerable concrete pill-boxes, were able to direct a devastating fire upon the advancing waves. Within a few minutes many officers and men were down, one company being reduced to thirty men commanded by a corporal. The survivors pressed doggedly on, but their courage was unavailing, and the Iberian and Borry positions were never reached. In the centre the troops attacking Beck House had a less exposed approach, and by 7 a.m. they had gained a footing and had captured the garrison. They now suffered heavily, however, from the machine-guns in the posts not included in the objective, as well as from those in Borry and Iberian, and all who had penetrated into Beck House were killed or captured in a counter-attack by three companies of fresh storm-troops. The order was received to abandon the attack on the other posts, and the survivors withdrew reluctantly and with difficulty from an impossible position, having lost nearly 800 officers and men. Much gallantry had been shown by all ranks, and a number of distinctions were awarded for deeds of which the following are merely typical examples.

Private James Dolan, 5th L.F., though twice blown up by shells and badly bruised, succeeded in bringing his Lewis-gun into action. After the rest of the team had become casualties, he worked the gun alone with great vigour and—to quote the official report—“in an extraordinarily cheerful manner” against two strong counter-attacks. Private W. Walliss, of the same battalion, worked as stretcher-bearer during the attack and for twenty-four hours subsequently, after the attack had been held up and two of his fellow bearers had been killed. He was subjected to harassing fire the whole time, and his disregard of risk and untiring devotion to duty saved many lives. Sergeant George Ward, 6th L.F., went out six times into the open under heavy enemy barrage and sniping to bring in wounded men, and was himself badly wounded on completing his sixth successful journey. Lance-Corporal E. Taylor, 6th L.F., seeing enemy reinforcements threatening, rushed his Lewis-gun into a shell-hole and opened a deadly fire, breaking up the attack. After all other members of his team had been killed or wounded Taylor stuck to his gun until ordered to withdraw. Sergeant J. H. Ashton, 3rd Field Ambulance, “worked unceasingly and without rest for forty-eight hours, often under heavy fire, in charge of squads removing the wounded.”

The assistance given by the 6th Manchesters, who had been lent to the 5th and 6th L.F., was warmly acknowledged by Brig.-General Fargus and the Battalion Commanders. Lieut.-Colonel Hammond Smith, commanding the 6th L.F., in a letter to Lieut.-Colonel C. S. Worthington, D.S.O., commanding the 6th Manchesters, regretting the heavy loss suffered by the companies attached to his battalion, added: “To-day I asked for help to bury some of our dead, involving a carry of three-quarters of a mile through the barrage area. Seventy-two of your men volunteered, and that speaks for itself. We could not bear to think of burying men in this area where they were bound to be blown up again, otherwise we should not have asked.”

The Division had had an object lesson in the peculiar strength of the German defensive system and the futility of “minor operations.” The losses from continuous shelling and from unproductive local assaults were heavy during the next ten days. There were deeds of valour, too, but the pill-box problem was no nearer solution. Gunner S. Hardcastle, “B” Battery, 211th Brigade, during a heavy bombardment of the battery position near Potijze on September 7, left cover to go a hundred yards through the shelled area to get water for a wounded comrade, and three days later, seeing an ammunition dump belonging to the battery on his left struck and set on fire by a hostile shell, he ran across and was first to begin the dangerous work of extinguishing the fire. But for his prompt action a large amount of ammunition would have been lost. During an attack on an enemy blockhouse on the night of the 11th-12th September, Private T. M. Howard, 9th Manchesters, volunteered to bring in an officer who lay wounded about forty yards from the blockhouse, from which severe machine-gun and rifle fire was maintained. Howard reached the officer and carried him 200 yards over exposed ground illuminated by enemy flares. On the following day Corporal W. White, 8th Manchesters, made five successive journeys through a continuous barrage, and each time brought in a wounded man. On the night of September 11 a covering party protecting workers in No Man’s Land found a wounded private of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, who had been lying out since August 11, unable to crawl into safety. In spite of thirty-one days exposure and starvation—except for the meagre rations found upon the bodies within reach—he recovered.

Frezenberg Ridge

Among the casualties of these ten days were Lieut.-Colonel R. P. Lewis, 10th Manchesters, killed by shell fire, and Brig.-General A. C. Johnson, D.S.O., seriously wounded within two days of his arrival to take over the command of the 126th Brigade in succession to Brig.-General Tufnell, who was Chief Staff Officer of the Division on the outbreak of war, and who had returned home for a much-needed rest. Brig.-General W. W. Seymour succeeded to the command of the Brigade a few days later. On September 18 the Division was relieved by the 9th Division, and D.H.Q. moved to Poperinghe, the infantry concentrating in camps in that regionpreparatory to a march northwards to the coast. The artillery remained in the Ypres sector for nearly three weeks, when they rejoined the Division at Nieuport. The East Lancashire Artillery did some of its best work in the Ypres Salient, and its best was very good. Losses in guns and personnel were heavy, especially from the accurate and relentless fire of the enemy’s 5·9 howitzers, for there was no cover and no protection other than the accuracy of their own fire. They were content to give more than they received, and they gave it with hearty goodwill. As an indication of their activity it is interesting to record that on one night, September 13, more than 1100 horsed vehicles conveyed supplies to the Divisional Artillery, in addition to the supply of ammunition by motor-lorries and pack-animals. Night after night, in pitch darkness, over cut-up and waterlogged ground, amid constant shell-storms, the daily supply of ammunition was brought up, and the gunner had little rest and less sleep. Dumps were set on fire by the daily bombardment, and officers and men vied with one another in fighting the flames, while shells from the enemy and from the burning dumps exploded right and left. Guns sank axle-deep in the mud—Napoleon’sfifthelement—and were salved under deadly fire. After the rest of the Division had left for the coast, the artillery took part in continuous fighting from September 20 onwards, advancing to forward and exposed positions on Frezenberg Ridge on the 25th. These were the days of the greatest artillery battles of the war, and it was not unusual for a single battery to fire 5000 rounds in twenty-four hours. There were many casualties from gas, as the batteries were in small depressions in the ground, and these were never really free from gas. Men wore masks sometimes for five hours at a stretch—until they had to discard them through sheer exhaustion. In the course of a few days the four batteries of the 210th Brigade lost 120 men in gas casualties alone. When relieved on the 29th September batteries could barely muster more than 100 N.C.O.s and men. Majors Boone and Simon had been killed and Brig.-General Walshe and Major Highet severely wounded, Lieut.-Colonel A. Birtwistle, C.M.G., assuming temporary command of the Divisional Artillery.

Of numerous instances of devotion to duty and disregard of personal safety three examples (on September 25-26), taken haphazard from the Honours List, must suffice. Padre A. C. Trench, attached to the 211th Brigade, R.F.A., followed up the infantry to their forward positions and worked all day under shell fire, setting a fine example of cheerfulness to all ranks, bandaging the wounded and ministering to the dying. Sergeant H. Bentley was in command of “A” Battery, 210th Brigade—the officers being casualties—when an ammunition dump close to the guns was set on fire. Bentley kept the guns working, and with Corporal A. Butterworth tackled the burning dump and put out the fire, saving ammunition at a time when it was most valuable. A similar act was that of Sergeant W. L. Breese, Corporal E. Fletcher, and Driver A. Hughes,of “C” Battery, 210th Brigade. A gun-pit and an ammunition dump were fired during a bombardment, and the fire spread to the camouflage of the guns and to ammunition pits on both flanks. At great personal danger from bursting shrapnel and H.E., the three extinguished the newly-started fires and saved two guns and much ammunition.

Lighter incidents were not wholly absent on Frezenberg Ridge. A barrel of beer had arrived; naturally enough the Boche could not ignore so important an event, and before the barrel could be put in a safe position it was shelled. Men ran to cover, but kept an anxious eye on the barrel, which was soon punctured. The sight of beer running to waste was too much for one gunner, who ran to the barrel, calling out: “Hey, chaps, coom on! Jerry has knocked t’bung-hole in!” He remained by the barrel, stopping the leak until the shelling ceased, and ever afterwards marvelled at the lack of a sense of proportion shown in decorating men for saving guns and ammunition while one’s sole reward for rescuing a barrel of beer is to be hailed as a public benefactor.

While in the Ypres Salient the three Field Companies, R.E., as usual did all manner of work, from the maintenance of duckboard tracks to the construction of concrete emplacements. The Signal Sections displayed the efficiency that one learned to expect from them. A Lamp Signalling Station on the ramparts did useful work, and the carrier-pigeon service proved surprisingly quick and reliable. The linemen had a particularly hot time, as communications were exceedingly difficult to maintain in this sector; and their coolness, courage, and skill in repairing the constantly damaged lines gained several decorations, and also the admiration of their comrades of all arms.

Equally cool must be the stretcher-bearer. Casualties had to be conveyed by hand carriage over the duckboard tracks before wheeled carriers could be used. Yet day and night the bearers kept a continuous stream of wounded flowing to the rear. The distance between the front and the region of comparative safety made the evacuation of the wounded a matter of difficulty. The Field Ambulances were, however, equal to their task, and though the Advanced Dressing Stations at Railway Dugout, Bavaria House, and Potijze Château were cramped for space and were frequently gassed and always shelled, all the wounded were dressed and got away. The pressure in rear was so great that some bandages were not changed until the men reached England.

The Army Service Corps had a most trying time, but in spite of serious losses the supply services never failed. Reference has already been made to the dangerous and difficult work carried out so competently by the battalion transports.

Depression

The period at Ypres ended on a note of depression. One felt that the Division was beginning to doubt its ability to achieve the impossible. It was not the imminent menace of death from abovein the form of shell or bomb, or from the trenches in front in the shape of machine-gun bullet. But the secrecy and furtiveness of every movement, the ghastliness of the abomination of desolation all around, the sickening sights and smells, the saturation of the whole terrain with gas to such an extent that men often preferred to lie out in the open under fire rather than risk suffocation in dug-outs—these combined to awaken a vague, inarticulate protest against the cruelty and futility of war. Had the men been able to get at those responsible for turning a peaceable countryside into something viler than any man’s imaginings of hell, indignation and righteous anger would have left little room for the depression generated by the sense of impotence—the beating one’s head against a concrete wall, the waste of effort and of lives thrown away in futile local assaults. The men were glad to quit the Ypres salient, but they did not leave it in a happy frame of mind. Every one felt that the Division was not at its best; that it was capable of better things had opportunity been given.

FREZENBERG RIDGE.

YPRES. SQUARE FARM, USED AS BATTALION HEADQUARTERS AND AID POST.

NIEUPORT. THE FIVE BRIDGES AND R. YSER.

NIEUPORT. “THE REDAN.”

Back to Index Next