Chapter II: Part 2

On the 15th September patrols reported that the enemy had fallen back a little from his position, and at daylight two companies entrenched themselves on the edge of the wood. Judged by present standards those trenches were little more than shallow furrows, for we did not know that the day of open battle was ended, and it is curious to see how slowly our people broke themselves to the monotonous business of trench construction and maintenance. Even after they had dug the casual ditch which they called a trench, it cost some time and a few lives till they understood that the works could not be approached in the open as had been war’s custom. Their first communication-trench was but three hundred yards long, and it struck them as a gigantic and almost impossible “fatigue.”

The enemy had not fallen back more than a thousand yards from the Cour de Soupir farm which they were resolute to retake if possible. They fired on our burying-parties and shelled the trenches all through the 16th September. Patrols were sent out at dawn and dusk--since any one visible leaving the trenches was fired upon by snipers--found hostile infantry in full strength in front of them, and the Battalion had to organize its first system of trench-relief; for the Diary of the 18th September remarks that “Nos. 1 and 4 Companies relieved 2 and 3 Companies in the trenches and were again shelled during the day.”

Sniping on Hun lines was a novel experience to the Battalion. They judged it strange to find a man apparently dead, with a cloth over his face, lying in a hollow under a ridge commanding their line, who turned out to be quite alive and unwounded. His rifle was within short reach, and he was waiting till our patrols had passed to get to his work. But they killed him, angrily and with astonishment.

On the morning of the 18th September Lieut.-Colonel Lord Ardee, Grenadier Guards, arrived and took over command from Major Stepney. The following officers--the first of the long line--also arrived as reinforcements:

Major G. Madden; Captain Norman Orr-Ewing, Scots Guards, attached; Captain Lord Francis Scott, Grenadier Guards, attached; Captain the Hon. J. F. Trefusis, Lieutenants George Brooke, L. S. Coke, R. H. Ferguson, G. M. Maitland, C. R. Harding, and P. Antrobus.

The Battalion reorganized as follows after less than four weeks’ campaign:

Lieut.-Colonel Lord Ardee C.O.
Major Herbert Stepney Senior Major.
Capt. the Hon. J. Trefusis Adjutant.
Lieut. E. J. Gough Transport Officer.
Lieut. C. A. S. Walker Quartermaster (acting).
Capt. Hon. A. E. Mulholland O.C. No. 1 Company.
Capt. N. Orr-Ewing O.C. No. 2 Company.
Capt. Lord Francis Scott O.C. No. 3 Company.
Major G. Madden O.C. No. 4 Company.

The trench-war was solidifying itself; for the Diary of that same day notes that the enemy “shelled the trenches and the two howitzer-guns which were in position below.” Ours was an army, then, which could count and place every gun that it owned. As many as three howitzer batteries per division had accompanied the Expeditionary Force, and more were being sent from home.

The night of the 19th was very wet. They were relieved by the 3rd Coldstream, and went into billets at Soupir, “having been in the trenches for five days.” There was an alarm in the afternoon, and the machine-guns and 100 men of No. 1 Company were sent to help the Coldstream in the trenches, whilst the rest of the Battalion marched at 6 P. M. to be ready to assist the 2nd Grenadiers on the left of Cour de Soupir farm. Only “the machine-guns,” however, came into action, and the Battalion returned to its billets at 10 P. M.

Much the same sort of thing occurred on the 20th--a furious fusillade from the trenches, the despatch of reinforcements up a “muddy lane,” not yet turned into a communication-trench, to help the 3rd Coldstream, while Nos. 2 and 4 Companies went out to reinforce the Oxfordshire Light Infantry and to hold the road at the back of it “in case of a retirement,” and the rest of the Battalion with the machine-guns stayed as a reserve in Soupir market-square. But beyond shrapnel bursting over the village and the wounding of two men by stray machine-gun bullets, there were no special incidents. Major G. Madden this day had to return to England, ill.

On the 21st the Battalion relieved the 2nd Grenadiers on the left at Soupir farm at 3.30 A. M.--the safest hour, as experience was to prove, for reliefs. Nos. 2 and 3 Companies were in trenches, and Nos. 1 and 4 about 300 yards in the rear, with the Headquarters in one of the caves, which are a feature of the country. The word “dug-out” had not yet been invented. The nearest approach to it is a reference in a private letter to “a shelter-recess in the side of the trench to protect one from shrapnel.” The Diary marks that the “usual alarms occurred at 6.30 when the patrol went out and the enemy fired a good deal of shrapnel without effect.” Soupir, like many French villages, was full of carefully planted spies of singular audacity. One was found in an officer’s room. He had appeared from a cellar, alleging that he was an invalid, but as the Gunners’ telephone-wires near the cellar had been cut and our movements had been reported to the enemy with great regularity, his explanation was not accepted, nor were his days long in that land.

Patrols, too, were elastic affairs. One of them, under Lieutenant R. H. Ferguson, went out on the night of the 21st, came on the enemy’s trenches half a mile out, lay down to listen to the conversation there, were all but cut off by a wandering section of snipers, and returned to their lines unmolested, after the lieutenant had shot the leading pursuer with his revolver.

On the 22nd September the Battalion--both entrenched and in reserve in the caves behind--experienced four hours’ high-explosive howitzer fire, which “except for the effect on the nerves did very little damage.” (They had yet to learn what continuous noise could do to break men’s nerve.) This was followed by a heavy fusillade, varied by star-shells, rockets, and searchlights, which lasted intermittently throughout the night. The rocket-display was new to the men. Searchlights, we know, they had seen before.

On the 23rd a telephone-line between Battalion Headquarters and the advanced trenches was installed (for the first time). Nos. 2 and 3 Companies relieved Nos. 1 and 4 in the trenches, and a man bringing back a message from No. 4 Company was killed by a sniper. The Battalion was relieved by the 3rd Coldstream in the evening and returned to its billets in the barns and lofts of Soupir village, where next day (September 24) the Diary observes they spent “a quiet morning. The men got washed and shaved, and company officers were able to get at their companies. There are so many new officers who do not know their men that any rest day should be made use of in this manner.” They relieved the 3rd Coldstream again that evening, and “digging operations to improve existing trenches and make communication-trenches were at once begun.” (Here is the first direct reference in the Diary to communication-trenches, as such.)

Snipers were active all through the 25th September. The trenches were heavily shelled in the afternoon, and “one man was hit in the leg while going to fetch water.” They returned to Soupir in the evening and spent the 26th standing to, in anticipation of enemy attacks which did not develop into anything more than an artillery duel, and in digging trenches for the defence of Soupir village. This work, however, had to be stopped owing to heavy shell-fire brought to bear on the working-parties--presumably through information from the many spies--and after a wearing day relieved the 3rd Coldstream in the trenches at night. The Diary gives no hint of the tremendous strain of those twenty-four hours’ “reliefs” from being shelled in a trench to being shelled in a village, nor of the inadequacy of our artillery as it strove to cope with the German guns, nor of the rasping irritation caused by the knowledge that every disposition made was reported almost at once to the enemy.

On September 27--a Sunday--the enemy’s bands were heard playing up and down the trenches. Some attempt was made by a British battalion on the right to move out a patrol covered by the fire of No. 2 Company, but the enemy shells and machine-guns smothered every movement.

On the 28th September (their day in billets) stakes were cut out of the woods behind Soupir, while the Pioneers collected what wire they could lay hands on, as “the Battalion was ordered to construct wire entanglements in front of their trenches to-night.” The entanglements were made of two or three strands, at the most, of agricultural wire picked up where they could find it. They heard heavy fighting throughout the night on their right--“probably the First Division.” Both sides by now were feeling the strain of trench-work, for which neither had made preparations, and the result was an increasing tension manifesting itself in wild outbursts of musketry and artillery and camp rumour of massed attacks and breaks-through.

On the 30th September, F.-M. Lord Roberts’s birthday, a congratulatory telegram was sent to him; and “a great quantity of material was collected out of which huts for the men could be built.” These were frail affairs of straw and twig, half dug in, half built out, of the nearest banks, or placed under the lee of any available shelter. The very fabric of them has long since been overlaid with strata of fresh wreckage and the twig roofs and sides are rotted black under the grass or ploughed in.

The month closes with the note that, as it was a very bright moonlight night, the Battalion’s usual relief of the Coldstream was “carried out up the communication-trenches.” Some men still recall that first clumsy trench-relief.

October 1 was spent in perfecting communication-trenches and shelters, and “the Brigadier came up in the morning and was taken round the trenches.” Two officers were sent to Chavonne to meet the 5th Brigade--one to bring the Worcesters to the Battalion’s trenches, the other to show the Connaught Rangers their billets in Soupir. The 3rd Coldstream marched out of Soupir and took up the line to the left of the 2nd Grenadiers near Vailly, and next day, 2nd October, No. 1 Company of the Irish Guards dug a connecting-trench between those two. Otherwise, for the moment, life was smooth.

It may be noted for the instruction of generations to come that some of the Reservists grumbled at orders not to talk or smoke in the trenches, as that drew fire; and that a newly appointed platoon-officer, when he had admonished them officially, fell them out and informed them unofficially that, were there any more trouble, he would, after the C.O. had dealt with the offenders, take them on for three rounds “boxing in public.” Peace and goodwill returned at once.

On the 3rd October, a platoon was despatched to help the Royal Engineers in the construction of a road across a new bridge they had put up between Soupir and Chavonne. The Battalion relieved the 3rd Coldstream in its new position three-quarters of a mile east of Vailly, and next day “quietly improved trenches and head-cover,” which latter is mentioned for the first time. It was all casual timber picked up off the country-side.

On the 5th October a patrol explored through the wood, in front of the right trenches, but found only dead Germans to the number of thirty and many half buried, as well as five British soldiers killed in some lost affair of a fortnight before. Private O’Shaughnessy, No. 1 Company, was shot dead by a sniper when on observation-post at the end of this wood. He had only arrived that morning with a draft of one hundred men, under Lieutenant Gore-Langton, and had asked to be allowed to go out on this duty. In the afternoon three shells burst on the road near Battalion Headquarters, and fatally wounded Lieutenant G. Brooke, who was on his way to Soupir to take over the transport from Lieutenant E. J. Gough. He was sent in to Braisne, where he died on the 7th October. The Diary notes “he would not have been found so soon had not the shells broken the telephone-wire to Headquarters. A message was coming through at the time and when communication was stopped the Signalling Sergeant sent two men to repair the wire and they found him.” He was brought in to the A.D.S. at Vailly-sur-Aisne by his own men, who made the R.A.M.C. stretcher-bearers walk behind as they would allow none but themselves to carry him. They bade him farewell before they returned to their trenches, and went out openly weeping. When he was sent to Braisne that evening, after being dressed, his own men again got an ambulance across the pontoon-bridge, which had been hitherto reckoned impassable, for his convenience. His last words to them were that they were to “play the game” and not to revenge his death on the Hun.

On the afternoon of the 6th October, which was cold and misty, the Germans pushed a patrol through the wood and our standing-patrol went out and discovered one German under-officer of the 64th (Imperial Jäger Guards) dead, and the rifle of another man.

The enemy sent out no more patrols. Men had grown to be cunning among the timber, and noticed every tree they moved under. When the Coldstream relieved the Battalion that night, one of our patrols found a felled tree had been carefully placed across their homeward path by some unknown hand--it might have been the late Jäger under-officer--who had expected to attack the patrol while it was climbing over the obstacle.

On the 7th the Battalion rested in Soupir all day, and on the 8th Lieutenant G. Brooke’s body was brought in from Braisne and buried in Soupir cemetery.

The 9th was a quiet day except for an hour’s shelling, and a good deal of cheering from the German trenches in the evening, evidently in honour of the fall of Antwerp. It annoyed our men for the reason that they could not retaliate. Our guns had not a round to throw away.

THE MOVE TOWARD THE SEA

The opposing lines had been locked now for close upon a month and, as defences elaborated themselves, all hope of breaking-through vanished. Both sides then opened that mutually outflanking movement towards the west which did not end till it reached the sea. Held up along their main front, the Germans struck at the Flanders plain, the Allies striving to meet the movement and envelop their right flank as it extended. A British force had been sent to Antwerp; the Seventh Division and the Third Cavalry Division had been landed at Zeebrugge on the 7th October with the idea of helping either the Antwerp force or co-operating with the Allied Armies as circumstances dictated. Meantime, the main British force was being held in the trenches of the Aisne a hundred and twenty miles away; and it seemed good to all concerned that these two bodies of British troops should be consolidated, both for purposes of offence, command and, by no means least, supply, on the Flanders flank covering the Channel. There were obvious dangers in moving so many men from high ground across a broad river under the enemy’s eye. It could only be effected at night with all precautions, but as the western pressure developed and was accentuated by the fall of Antwerp, the advantage of the transfer outweighed all risk. Our cavalry moved on the 3rd October by road for Flanders, and a few days later the infantry began to entrain for St. Omer. The Second Corps was the first to leave, the Third Corps followed, and the First was the last.

Orders came to the Battalion on Sunday, October 11, to be prepared to move at short notice, and new clothes were issued to the men, but they did not hand over their trenches to the French till the 13th October, when they marched to Perles in the evening and entrained on the 14th at Fismes a little after noon, reaching Hazebrouck _via_ (the route is worth recording) Mareuil-sur-Ourcq, Ormoy, St. Denis, outside Paris, Epluches, Creil, Amiens (10.15 P. M.), Abbeville (3.15 A. M.), Etaples, Boulogne, Calais and St. Omer, every stone of which last six was to be as familiar to them as their own hearths for years to come.

At 5 P. M. on the 15th the Battalion went into billets at Hazebrouck. It was a sharp change from the soft wooded bluffs and clean chalky hills above the Aisne, to the slow ditch-like streams and crowded farming landscape of Flanders. At Hazebrouck they lay till the morning of the 17th, when they marched to Boeschepe, attended church parade on Sunday the 18th, and marched to untouched Ypres _via_ St. Kokebeele, Reninghelst and Vlamertinghe on the 20th with the Brigade, some divisional troops and the 41st Battery, R.F.A. The Brigade halted at Ypres a few hours, seeing and being impressed by the beauty of the Cloth Hall and the crowded market-place. The 2nd Coldstream and the 2nd Battalion Grenadiers being eventually sent forward, the remainder of the Brigade billeted in St. Jean, then described impersonally as “a small village about one and a half kilometres east of Ypres.” They halted at the edge of the city for dinner, and the men got out their melodeons and danced jigs on the flawless pavé. Much firing was heard all day, and “the 2nd Coldstream came into action about 4 P. M. and remained in the trenches all night.”

That was the sum of information available at the moment to the Battalion--that, and orders to “drive the enemy back wherever met.” So they first were introduced to the stage of the bloody and debatable land which will be known for all time as “The Salient.”

The original intention of our Army on the Flanders flank had been offensive, but the long check on the Aisne gave the enemy time to bring forward troops from their immense and perfectly prepared reserves, while the fall of Antwerp--small wonder the Germans had cheered in their trenches when the news came!--released more. Consequently, the movement that began on the Allies’ side as an attempt to roll up the German right flank before it could reach the sea, ended in a desperate defence to hold back an overwhelmingly strong enemy from sweeping forward through Belgium to Calais and the French sea-board. Out of this defence developed that immense and overlapping series of operations centring on Ypres, extending from the Yser Canal in the north to La Bassée in the south, and lasting from mid-October to the 20th November 1914, which may be ranked as the First Battle of Ypres.

It will be remembered that the Second and Third British Army Corps were the first to leave the Aisne trenches for the west. On the 11th October the Second Army Corps was in position between the Aire and Béthune and in touch with the left flank of the Tenth French Army at La Bassée.

On the 12th of October the Third Army Corps reached St. Omer and moved forward to Hazebrouck to get touch with the Second Army Corps on its right, the idea being that the two corps together should wheel on their own left and striking eastward turn the position of the German forces that were facing the Tenth French Army. They failed owing to the strength of the German forces on the spot, and by October 19, after indescribably fierce fighting, the Second and Third Army Corps had been brought to a standstill on a line, from La Bassée through Armentières, not noticeably differing from the position which our forces were destined to occupy for many months to come. The attempted flank attacks had become frontal all along the line, and in due course frontal attacks solidified into trench-warfare again.

North of Armentières the situation had settled itself in much the same fashion, flank attacks being outflanked by the extension of the enemy’s line, with strenuous frontal attacks of his daily increasing forces.

The Seventh Division--the first half of the Fourth Army Corps--reached Ypres from Dixmude on the 14th October after its unsuccessful attempt to relieve Antwerp. As the First Army Corps had not yet come up from the Aisne, this Division was used to cover the British position at Ypres from the north; the infantry lying from Zandvoorde, on the south-east, through Zonnebeke to Langemarck on the north-west. Here again, through lack of numbers and artillery equipment, the British position was as serious as in the south. Enemy forces, more numerous than the British and Belgian armies, combined, were bearing down on the British line from the eastward through Courtrai, Iseghem, and Roulers, and over the Lys bridge at Menin. Later on, it was discovered that these represented not less than five new Army Corps. The Seventh Division was ordered to move upon Menin, to seize the bridge over the river and thus check the advance of further reinforcements. There were, of course, not enough troops for the work, but on the 18th October the Division, the right centre of which rested on the Ypres-Menin road, not yet lined throughout with dead, wheeled its left (the 22nd Brigade) forward. As the advance began, the cavalry on the left became aware of a large new German force on the left flank of the advance, and fighting became general all along the line of the Division.

On the 19th October the airmen reported the presence of two fresh Army Corps on the left. No further advance being possible, the Division was ordered to fall back to its original line, an operation attended with heavy loss under constant attacks.

On the 20th October the pressure increased as the German Army Corps made themselves felt against the thin line held by the Seventh Division, which was not amply provided with heavy batteries. Their losses were largely due to artillery fire, directed by air-observation, that obliterated trenches, men, and machine-guns.

On the 21st October the enemy attacked the Division throughout the day, artillery preparations being varied by mass assaults, but still the Division endured in the face of an enemy at least four times as strong and constantly reinforced. It is, as one writer says, hardly conceivable that our men could have checked the enemy’s advance for even a day longer, had it not been for the arrival at this juncture of the First Army Corps. Reinforcements were urgently needed at every point of the British line, but, for the moment, the imminent danger lay to the north of Ypres, where fresh German forces, underestimated as usual, might sweep the Belgian army aside and enter the Channel ports in our rear. With this in mind, the British Commander-in-Chief decided to use the First Army Corps to prolong the British line, already, as it seemed, nearly worn through, toward the sea, rather than to strengthen any occupied sector. He posted it, therefore--until French reinforcements should arrive--to the north, or left of the Seventh Division, from Zonnebeke to Bixschoote.

Our front at that date ran from Hollebeke to Bixschoote, a distance, allowing for bends, of some sixteen miles. To protect this we had but three depleted Infantry Divisions and two Cavalry Brigades against opposed forces of not less than a hundred thousand. Moreover, the ground was hampered by the flight, from Roulers and villages in German possession, of refugees, of whom a percentage were certainly spies, but over whom it was impossible to exercise any control. They carried their goods in little carts drawn by dogs, and they wept and wailed as they straggled past our men.

THE SALIENT AND THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES

The orders for the Guards Brigade on October 21 to “drive back the enemy wherever met” were not without significance. All their news in billets had been of fresh formations coming down from the north and the east, and it was understood that the Germans counted with confidence upon entering Calais, _via_ Ypres, in a few days.

The Brigade, less the 2nd Coldstream, “assembled in a field about four kilometres along the Ypres-Zonnebeke Road, and after a wait of three hours No. 4 Company of the 1st Irish Guards advanced to the support of the 2nd Grenadiers, who had been ordered to prolong the line to the right of the 2nd Coldstream. This company and both the advanced battalions suffered somewhat severely from shell-fire and occasional sniping.” Thus coldly does the Diary enter upon what was in fact the first day of the First Battle of Ypres, in which companies had to do the work of battalions, and battalions of brigades, and whose only relief was a change of torn and blood-soaked ground from one threatened sector of the line to the next.

It was not worth while to record how the people of Ypres brought hot coffee to the Battalion as it passed through, the day before (October 20); and how, when they halted there a few hours, the men amused their hosts by again dancing Irish jigs on the clattering pavements while the refugees clattered past; or how it was necessary to warn the companies that the enemy might attack behind a screen of Belgian women and children--in which case the Battalion would have to fire through them.

On the evening of the 21st October the Battalion was ordered up to the support of what was left of the 22nd Brigade which had fallen back to Zonnebeke. “It came under a heavy burst of artillery fire and was forced to lie down (in a ploughed field) for fifteen minutes”--at that time a novel experience. On its way a hare started up which was captured by a man of No. 2 Company to the scandal of discipline and the delight of all, and later sold for five shillings. At Zonnebeke it found No. 4 Company already lining the main road on the left of the town and took up a position in extended order on its right, “thus establishing the line into Zonnebeke.” The casualties, in spite of the artillery fire, are noted as only “one killed and seven wounded,” which must have been far under the mark. The night was lit by the flames of burning houses, by which light they hunted for snipers in haystacks round the village, buried stray dead of a battalion of the Seventh Division which had left them and, by order, did a deal of futile digging-in.

The next day the 22nd Brigade retired out of Zonnebeke about a kilometre down the main road to Ypres, the Battalion and half the 2nd Coldstream conforming to the movement. This enabled the Germans to enter the north of Zonnebeke and post machine-guns in some of the houses. None the less, our patrols remained in the south end of the town and did “excellent work”; an officer’s patrol, under Lieutenant Ferguson, capturing three mounted orderlies. One man was killed and 8 wounded in the Battalion that day.

On the 23rd October “the enemy brought up more machine-guns and used them against us energetically all the day.” A platoon of No. 1 Company, under Lieutenant the Hon. H. Alexander, attempted an outflanking movement through Zonnebeke, towards the church, supported by a platoon of No. 4 Company, under Lieutenant W. C. N. Reynolds, in the course of which the latter officer was wounded. The trenches were shelled with shrapnel all the afternoon, and a German advance was sprayed down with our rifle-fire. In the evening the French made an attack through Zonnebeke helped by their .75’s and established themselves in the town. They also, at 9 P. M., relieved the Battalion which moved at once south-west to Zillebeke and arrived there at 2 A. M. on the morning of the 24th, when it billeted “chiefly in a brick-yard” ready to be used afresh.

The relieving troops were a division of the Ninth French Army Corps. They took over the line of our Second Division, while our Second Division in turn took over part of the front of the Seventh Division. At the same time French Territorials relieved our First Division between Bixschoote and Langemarck, thus freeing us of all responsibility for any ground north of the Ypres-Zonnebeke road. Our Army on the 24th October, then, stood as follows: From the Zonnebeke road to a point near the race-course in the historic Polygon Wood west of Reutel was the Second Division; on its right, up to the Menin road, lay the First Division; and from the Menin road to Zandvoorde the Seventh Division with the 3rd Cavalry Brigade in the Zandvoorde trenches. Our line had thus been shortened and strengthened; but the enemy were continuously receiving reinforcements from Roulers and Menin, and the pressure never ceased.

In the early morning of the 24th October, and before the transfer of all the troops had been effected, the British Ypres front was attacked throughout in force and once more the shock of the attack fell on the remains of the Seventh Division. Reserves there were none; each battalion stood where it was in the flood and fought on front, flank, and rear indifferently. The Irish Guards had a few hours’ rest in the brick-fields at Zillebeke, where, by some miracle, it found its mail of home-letters and parcels waiting for it. Even before it could open them it was ordered out from Zillebeke[2] along the Ypres-Menin road to Hooge to help the 20th Brigade (Seventh Division), which had been attacked on the morning of the 25th October, and parties of the enemy were reported to have broken through into Polygon Wood.

_THE YPRES SALIENT_
_First Battalion Actions_

_Emery Walker Ltd. del. et sc._]

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EMERY WALKER LTD., LONDON

That attack, however, was repulsed during the day, and in the evening the Battalion was despatched to act in support of the 5th Brigade near Race-course (Polygon) Wood, due north of Veldhoek, where the Battalion bivouacked for the night in a ploughed field. This was the first time it had marched up the Menin road or seen the Château of Hooge, of which now no trace remains, sitting stately among its lawns.

On the 25th October, after a heavy bombardment, as bombardments were then reckoned, the whole Division was ordered at dawn to advance against Reutel; the 2nd Grenadier Guards and the Irish Guards being given the work of clearing out Polygon Wood, of which the enemy held the upper half. They were advancing through the woods, and the trenches of the Worcester Battalion there, when a big shell burst in Lieutenant Ferguson’s platoon, No. 3 Company, killing 4 and wounding 9 men, as far as was known. Ferguson himself, knocked down but unwounded, went back to advise No. 2 Company coming up behind him to deviate a little, “for the ground was a slaughter-house.” The Battalion fought its way to a couple of hundred yards north of Reutel and was then brought under heavy rifle-fire from concealed trenches on a ridge. The 2nd Grenadiers on the right had, earlier, been held up by a German trench on their left, and, as dark came on, touch between the battalions there was lost, and the patrol sent out to regain it only stumbled on the German trench. The left of the Battalion lost touch by nearly a quarter of a mile with the 5th Brigade, and as the wet night closed in they found themselves isolated in darkness and dripping autumn undergrowth, with the old orders “to hold ground gained at all costs.” Meantime they hung with both flanks in the air and enemy patrols on either side. The nearest supports of any kind were the trenches of the Worcesters, six hundred yards behind, through the woods; so the Battalion linked up with them by means of a double front of men, back to back, strung out tail-wise from their bivouac to the Worcesters. The manœuvre succeeded. There was sniping all night from every side, but thanks to the faithful “tail” the enemy could not get round the Battalion to make sure whether it was wholly in the air. The casualties this day were reported as 4 killed and 23 wounded.

At 4 A. M. on the 26th October, just after the night’s rain had ceased, word came from Brigade Headquarters that the 3rd Coldstream were to be expected on the Battalion’s right. They arrived an hour and a half later and the Battalion attacked, again to be held up in a salient heavily enfiladed from every angle by machine-guns, and though No. 2 Company carried a couple of farm-houses outside the woods, they were forced to retire from one of them and lost heavily. An attack by the 6th Brigade in the afternoon relieved the pressure a little, and helped the Battalion to get in touch with, at least, its brigade. Lieutenant Shields (R.A.M.C. attached) was killed here while attending our wounded. He had been remonstrated with only a few minutes before for exposing himself too much, and paid as much heed to the rebuke as did the others who succeeded him in his office. The casualties for the day were 1 officer and 9 men killed and 42 wounded. The night was memorable inasmuch as the Battalion, which had had no food for forty-eight hours, was allowed to eat its emergency rations.

There was a German attack on the night of the 27th October, lasting for less than an hour, but the advance of the 6th Brigade on the Battalion’s left, together with the advance of the French still farther to the left, threatening Passchendaele, kept the enemy moderately quiet till the Battalion was relieved in the evening of the 27th by the 3rd Coldstream, and went into bivouac just west of Race-course Wood. It was shelled while settling down here and at intervals throughout the night. Major Herbert Stepney was slightly wounded in the back by a bullet when at supper in a farm-house; 2 men were killed and 3 wounded. Captain A. H. L. McCarthy, R.A.M.C., joined for duty, replacing Lieutenant Shields.

Next morning (October 28) the 5th Brigade was attacking and the Battalion was ordered to support. It was heavily shelled again in the wood and dug itself in north-west on the race-course, where it stayed all day ready to support the Coldstream, and had a quiet time. The C.O. (Lord Ardee) went to hospital with a bad throat; Lieutenant Greer was wounded while serving his machine-gun, which had been lent to the 3rd Coldstream, and a couple of men were wounded. Drill-Sergeant A. Winspear joined the Connaught Rangers as 2nd Lieutenant--one of the earliest of the army officers promoted from the ranks.

The enemy at that date were so sure of success that they made no attempt to conceal their intentions, and all our spent forces on the Ypres front were well aware that a serious attack would be opened on them on the 29th. Rumour said it would be superintended by the Kaiser himself. But, so far as the Battalion was concerned, that day was relatively quiet. The 2nd Brigade had been ordered to retake the trenches lost by the 1st Brigade east of Gheluvelt, and the Battalion’s duty, with the 2nd Grenadiers, was to fill up whatever gaps might be found in a line which was mainly gaps between the left of the 2nd and the right of the 1st Brigade near Polderhoek. It reached the light railway from Gheluvelt to Polderhoek, discovered that the gap there could be filled up by a platoon, communicated with the C.O.’s of the two brigades concerned, sent back three companies to the 4th Brigade Headquarters, left one at the disposal of the 1st Brigade, and at night withdrew. For the moment, the line could be held with the troops on the spot, and it was no policy to use a man more than was necessary. The casualties to the men for that day were but 4 killed and 6 wounded, though a shell burst on the Brigade Reserve Ammunition Column, west of Race-course Wood, and did considerable damage.

The 30th October opened on the heaviest crisis of the long battle of Ypres. The Battalion, to an accompaniment of “Jack Johnsons,” dug trenches a quarter of a mile west of Race-course Wood in case the troops at the farther end of it should be driven back; for in those years woods were visible and gave good cover. German aeroplanes, well aware that they had no anti-aircraft guns to fear, swooped low over them in the morning, and men could only reply with some pitiful rifle-fire.

In the afternoon orders came for them and the 2nd Grenadiers to stop digging and move up to Klein Zillebeke to support the hard-pressed Seventh Division on whose front the enemy had broken through again. When they reached what was more or less the line, Nos. 1 and 2 Companies were sent forward to support the cavalry in their trenches, while Nos. 3 and 4 Companies dug themselves in behind Klein Zillebeke.[3] A gap of about a quarter of a mile was found running from the Klein Zillebeke-Zandvoorde road north to the trenches of the 2nd Gordon Highlanders, and patrols reported the enemy in force in a strip of wood immediately to the east of it. Whether the gap had been blasted out by concentrated enemy-fire, or whether what the guns had left of our cavalry had retired, was never clear. The Battalion was told off to hold the place and to find out who was on either side of them, while the 2nd Grenadiers continued the line southward from the main road to the canal. Beginning at 11 P. M., they dug themselves in till morning light. A burning farm-house blazed steadily all night in a hollow by Zandvoorde and our patrols on the road could see the Germans “in their spiked helmets” silhouetted against the glare as they stormed out of the woods and massed behind the fold of the ground ready for the morning’s attack. Two years later, our guns would have waited on their telephones till the enemy formation was completed and would then have removed those battalions from the face of the earth. But we had not those guns. During the night the Oxfordshire Light Infantry came up and occupied a farm between the Battalion and the Gordon Highlanders and strengthened the situation a little. Company commanders had already been officially warned that the position was serious and that they must “hang on at all costs.” Also that the Kaiser himself was in front of them.

On the 31st, after an attack by the French towards Hollebeke which did not develop, the full storm broke. The Battalion, backed by two R.F.A. guns, was shelled from seven in the morning till eleven o’clock at night in such trenches as it had been able to construct during the night; while machine-gun and infantry fire grew steadily through the hours. The companies were disposed as follows: No. 4 Company immediately to the north of the main wood; then No. 3 with No. 1 in touch with the Oxfordshire Light Infantry at a farm-house, next to the Gordons; No. 2 was in reserve at a farm with Headquarters.

On the afternoon of the 31st October, Lord Ardee arrived from hospital, though he was in no state to be out of it, and was greeted by the information that the Gordons on the left, heavily shelled, had been driven out of their trenches. The Oxford L.I. and also No. 1 Company of the Battalion which was in touch with them had to conform to the movement. The section of R.F.A. had to retire also with the Gordons and, after apologies, duly delivered among bursting German shell, for “having to look after their guns,” they “limbered up and went off as though it were the Military Tournament.” There was a counter-attack, and eventually the enemy were driven back and the line was re-established before night, which passed, says the Diary “fairly quietly.” The moonlight made movement almost impossible; nor could the men get any hot tea, their great stand-by, but rations were distributed. The casualties among officers that day were Lieutenant L. S. Coke killed, and buried in the garden of the farm; Captain Lord Francis Scott, Lieutenant the Earl of Kingston, and Lieutenant R. Ferguson wounded. There were many casualties in the front trenches, specially among No. 3 Company, men being blown to pieces and no trace left. The depressing thing, above all, was that we seemed to have no guns to reply with.

Bombardment was renewed on the 1st November. The front trenches were drenched by field-guns, at close range, with spurts of heavy stuff at intervals; the rear by heavy artillery, while machine-gun fire filled the intervals. One of the trenches of a platoon in No. 3 Company, under Lieutenant Maitland, was completely blown in, and only a few men escaped. The Lieutenant remained with the survivors while Sergeant C. Harradine, under heavy fire, took the news to the C.O. It was hopeless to send reinforcements; the machine-gun fire would have wiped them out moving and our artillery was not strong enough to silence any one sector of the enemy’s fire.

In the afternoon the enemy attacked--with rifle-fire and a close-range small piece that broke up our two machine-guns--across some dead ground and occupied the wrecked trench, driving back the few remains of No. 3 Company. The companies on the right and left, Nos. 4 and 1, after heavy fighting, fell back on No. 2 Company, which was occupying roughly prepared trenches in the rear. One platoon, however, of No. 1 Company, under Lieutenant N. Woodroffe (he had only left Eton a year), did not get the order to retire, and so held on in its trench till dark and “was certainly instrumental in checking the advance of the enemy.” The line was near breaking-point by then, but company after company delivered what blow it could, and fell back, shelled and machine-gunned at every step, to the fringe of Zillebeke Wood. Here the officers, every cook, orderly, and man who could stand, took rifle and fought; for they were all that stood there between the enemy and the Channel Ports. (Years later, a man remembering that fight said: “’Twas like a football scrum. Every one was somebody, ye’ll understand. If he dropped there was no one to take his place. Great days! An’ we not so frightened as when it came to the fightin’ by machinery on the Somme afterwards.”)[4] The C.O. sent the Adjutant to Brigade Headquarters to ask for help, but the whole Staff had gone over to the 2nd Brigade Headquarters, whose Brigadier had taken over command of the 4th Brigade as its own Brigadier had been wounded. About this time, too, the C.O. of the Battalion (Lord Ardee) was wounded. Eventually the 2nd Battalion Grenadiers was sent up with some cavalry of the much-enduring 7th Brigade, and the line of support-trenches was held. The Battalion had had nothing to eat for thirty-six hours, so the cavalry kept the line for a little till our men got food.

A French regiment (Territorials) on the right also took over part of the trenches of our depleted line. Forty-four men were known to have been killed, 205 wounded and 88--chiefly from the blown-up No. 3 Platoon--were missing. Of officers, Lieutenant K. R. Mathieson had been killed (he had been last seen shooting a Hun who was bayoneting our wounded); Captain Mulholland died of his wounds as soon as he arrived in hospital at Ypres; Lieut.-Colonel Lord Ardee, Captain Vesey, Lieutenant Gore-Langton and Lieutenant Alexander were wounded, and Lieutenant G. M. Maitland, who had stayed with his handful in No. 3 Company’s trench, was missing. Yet the time was to come when three hundred and fifty casualties would be regarded as no extraordinary price to pay for ground won or held. One small draft of 40 men arrived from home that night.

On November 2 the Battalion was reduced to three companies since in No. 3 Company all officers were casualties and only 26 men of it answered their names at roll-call. They were heavily shelled all that day. They tried to put up a little wire on their front during the night; they collected what dead they could; they received several wounded men of the day’s fight as they crawled into our lines; they heard one such man calling in the dark, and they heard the enemy turn a machine-gun on him and silence him. The regular work of sending forward and relieving the companies in the front line went on, varied by an attack from the enemy, chiefly rifle-fire, on the night of the 3rd November. On that date they received “a new machine-gun,” and another draft of sixty men (under Captain E. C. S. King-Harman) several of whom were killed or wounded that same afternoon. The night was filled with false alarms as some of the new drafts began to imagine crowds of Germans advancing out of the dark. This was a popular obsession, but it led to waste of ammunition and waking up utterly tired men elsewhere in the line.

On the 4th November there was an outburst of machine-gunning from a farm-house, not 300 yards away. One field-gun was brought up to deal with them, and some of the 2nd Life Guards stood by to help in event of an attack, but the enemy contented themselves with mere punishing fire.

On the evening of November 5 they located our one field-gun which was still trying to cope with the enemy’s machine-guns, shelled it for an hour vigorously, blew up the farm-house that sheltered it, but--clean missed the gun, though it had been firing at least one round every ten minutes. One of our wounded of the 1st November managed to crawl into our lines. He had been three days without food or water--the Germans, who thought he would die, refusing him both. There was heavy shelling and about thirty casualties in the line “as far as known.”

On the 6th after an hour’s preparation with heavy-, light-, and machine-gun fire, the enemy attacked the French troops on the Battalion’s right, who fell back and left the flank of the Battalion (No. 2 Company) open. The Company “in good order and fighting” fell back by platoons to its support trenches, but this left No. 1 Company practically in the air, and at the end of the day the greater part of them were missing. As the Germans occupied the French trenches in succession, they opened an enfilade fire on the Irish which did sore execution. Once again the Adjutant went to the Brigadier to explain the situation. The Household Cavalry were sent up at the gallop to Zillebeke where they dismounted and advanced on foot. The 1st Life Guards on the left were detailed to retake the Irish Guards’ trenches, while the 2nd Life Guards attacked the position whence the French had been ousted. A hundred Irish Guardsmen, collected on the spot, also took part in the attack, which in an hour recovered most of the lost positions. Here Lieutenant W. E. Hope was killed, and a little later, Lieutenant N. Woodroffe fell, shot dead in the advance of the Household Cavalry. Two companies, had these been available, could have held the support-trenches after the Household Cavalry had cleared the front, but there were no reinforcements and the unceasing pressure on the French drove the Battalion back on a fresh line a couple of hundred yards behind the support trenches which the cavalry held till the remains of the Battalion had re-formed and got some hot tea from the ever-forward cookers. In addition to Lieutenants Hope and Woodroffe killed, Captain Lord John Hamilton and Lieutenant E. C. S. King-Harman, who had come out with the draft on the 1st November, were missing that day.

On November 7 the Battalion relieved the cavalry at one in the morning, and dug and deepened their trenches on the edge of the wood till word came to them to keep up a heavy fire on any enemy driven out of the wood, as the 22nd Brigade were attacking on their right. That “Brigade” now reduced to two composite battalions--the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, with the 2nd Queens and the Warwicks with S. Staffords--both commanded by captains, did all that was humanly possible against the pressure, but in the end, as the Diary says, “having failed to get the line required, withdrew under heavy shell-fire.” Their attack was no more than one of many desperate interludes in the desperate first battle of Ypres--a winning fight against hopeless odds of men and material--but it diverted attention for the moment from the Battalion’s particular section of the line and “the enemy did not shell our trenches much.” Early in the day Major Stepney, commanding, went out from the support trenches and was not seen again alive. His body was found late in the evening between the lines. The command of the Battalion now fell to Captain N. Orr-Ewing.

Since October 31 6 officers had been killed, 7 wounded, and 3 were missing. Of N.C.O.’s and men 64 were dead, 339 wounded, and 194 missing. The total casualties, all ranks, for one week, were 613.

The remnant were made into two shrunken companies next day (the 8th) which was a quiet one with intermittent bursts of shelling from French .75’s on the right, and German heavies; the enemy eighty yards distant. Captain A. Perceval, who had been blown up twice in the past week, and Lieutenant J. S. N. FitzGerald were sent to hospital.

On the night of the 9th November the Battalion of four platoons, three in the firing-line and one in reserve, was relieved by the S. W. Borderers; drew supplies and men at Brigade Headquarters, moved back through Zillebeke and marched into bivouacs near a farm south of the Ypres-Zonnebeke road, where they settled down with some Oxford L.I. in deep trenches, and dug-outs which had been dug by the French.

They spent the 10th in luxury; their cookers were up and the men ate their first hot meal for many days. Blankets also were issued, and a draft of about two hundred men arrived under Lieutenant Hon. W. C. Hanbury-Tracy, which brought up the strength of the re-organized two-company Battalion to 360 men. Major Webber, “S.R.” (this is the first time that the Diary makes mention of the Special Reserve), arrived the day before and as Senior Officer took over from Captain Orr-Ewing. The other officers who came with him were Captain Everard and Lieutenant L. R. Hargreaves, both Special Reserve, with Lieutenant St. J. R. Pigott, and, next day, 2nd Lieutenant Straker, Machine-gun Officer, with “two new guns.” All these reinforcements allowed the Battalion to be organized as two companies instead of four platoons.

On the morning of the 11th November, they were moved out by way of the Bellewaarde Lake and under cover of the woods there, in support of the Oxfordshire L.I. who cleared the wood north of Château Hooge and captured some thirty prisoners of the Prussian Guards. This was the first time, to their knowledge, that they had handled that Corps. Though heavily shelled the Battalion lost no men and spent the rest of the day behind the O.L.I. and the Grenadiers, waiting in the rain near the Headquarters of the First Division (Brigadier-General FitzClarence, V.C.) to which it was for the moment attached.

It was here that one of our officers found some enemy prisoners faithfully shepherded under the lee of a protecting haystack while their guard (Oxford L.I.) stood out in the open under casual shrapnel. A change was made at once.

At 9 P. M. the Battalion was told it might go back and get tea and supplies at some cross-roads or other in the darkness behind it. The cookers never came up and the supplies were not available till past midnight on the 12th. As their orders were to return to 1st Brigade Headquarters at 2 A. M. to take part in an attack on a German trench, the men had not much sleep. The trench had been captured by the enemy the day before, but they had abandoned it and dug another, commanding, in the rear, whence they could deal with any attempt at recapture on our part. The composite force of the 2nd Grenadiers, Munster Fusiliers, Irish Guards, and Oxfordshire L.I. discovered this much, wading through mud in the darkness before dawn, at a cost to the Battalion of Major Webber and Lieutenant Harding and some twelve men wounded. They were caught front and flank and scattered among the shell-holes. General FitzClarence was killed by enemy fire out of the dark, and eventually the troops returned to 1st Brigade Headquarters where a company of the Grenadiers were told off to dig trenches in a gap which had been found in the line, while the remainder, the Irish Guards and the Munsters, were sent back to the woods near Hooge Château which was full of fragments of broken battalions, from Scots Guards to Zouaves.