CHAPTER XI.

THE ATTACK ON HILL 35,

SEPTEMBER, 1917.

Iberian, Hill 35, and Gallipoli.—The Battalion ordered to make the seventh attempt against Hill 35.—The task.—A and D Companies selected.—The assembly position.—Gassed by our own side.— Waiting for zero.—The attack.—Considerations governing its failure.—The Battalion quits the Ypres battlefield.

'At 4 p.m.' said the 61st Divisional Summary for the twenty-four hours ending 12 noon, September 11, 1917, 'we attacked the Battery Position on Hill 35. This attack was not successful.' A grim epitaph. The terse formula, as though wasted words must not follow wasted lives, was the official record of the seventh attempt to storm Hill 35.

Against the concrete gunpits which crowned this insignificant ridge the waves of our advance on July 31 had lapped in vain. Minor attacks designed to take Gallipoli, a German stronghold set behind the ridge, and against the sister position of Iberian on its flank, proved throughout August some of the most costly failures in the 5th Army operations. The defence of the three strongholds, Iberian, Hill 35, and Gallipoli provided a striking example of German stubbornness and skill, but added an object-lesson in the squandering of our efforts in attack. Operations upon a general scale having failed to capture all three, it was fantastically hoped that each could be reduced separately. Iberian, Hill 35, and Gallipoli supported one another, nor was it feasible to hold any without holding all. Yet to take Hill 35 on September 9 the 2/4th Oxfords were specially selected. The spirit of A and D Companies, chosen by Colonel Wetherall for the attack, was excellent. We confidently believed that we could succeed where others failed. Optimism, so vital an ingredient in morale, was a powerful assistant to the English Army. It was fostered, perhaps unconsciously, throughout the war by the cheerful attitude preserved by our Generals and staff, but its foundation lay in our great system of supply. The A.S.C., which helped to win our victories, helped, too, to temper our defeats.



On September 7 Brown and myself went up through Ypres to view the scene of the attack. At Wieltje, where Colonel Wetherall and B and C Companies already were, we descended to a deep, wet dug-out and that night listened to a narrative brought by an officer who had participated in the last attempt to take the hill. He dispensed the most depressing information about the gunpits, the machine-guns, the barrages, and last, but not least terrible (if believed), the new incendiary Verey lights used by the Germans to cremate their assailants. The description of a piece of trench, which we were to capture and block, particularly flattered our prospects. 'Wide, shallow trench, enfiladed from Gallipoli, filled with —th Division dead,' it ran. The tale of horror becoming ludicrous, we soon afterwards clambered on to the wire bunks and slept, dripped on, till the early morning.

The next day was misty. Our 15-inch howitzers on whose ability to smash the enemy's concrete strongholds reliance was staked, could not fire. The attack was postponed until September 10, but that decision came too late to stop our companies quitting the camp according to previous orders and marching up through Ypres. They could have stayed at Wieltje for the night, but the men's fear that by so doing they would miss their hot tea, decided their vote in favour of a return to Goldfish Chateau. Tea is among the greatest bribes that can be offered to the British soldier.

Accordingly the march through Ypres, or rather, round it (for no troops chose to pass its market place) was repeated on the morrow. The tracks towards the line were shelled on our way up, but we came safely through. Dusk was awaited in a much war-worn trench in front of Wieltje.

As daylight fades we file away, each man with his own thoughts. Whose turn is it to be this journey?

Along the tortuous track of tipsy duckboards we go for a mile, until acrid fumes tell that the German barrage line is being passed. This is a moment to press on! To get the Company safely across this hundred yards is worth many a fall.

... Presently the shattered pollards of the Steenbeek are left behind and flickering Verey lights cast into weird relief the rugged surface of the earth. At Pommern Castle our front trenches, in which figures of men loom indistinctly, are reached. At one corner, where the trench is littered with fragments, we are cautioned by a sentry, whose voice is a little shaken, not to linger; the entrance to a pill-box (which faced the enemy) was hit a short time ago. From the trench we proceed further into No-Man's-Land, where the Bucks are said to have linked up shell-holes since nightfall. (Those will be our 'assembly position' for the attack to-morrow afternoon).

By now all shells are passing over our heads; we are level with where Verey lights are falling, and the sweep of bullets through the air shows that the enemy is not far off. Figures appear as if by magic. All at once there is a crowd of men, rattling equipment and talking in suppressed voices. A few commands, and the relief is complete. We are in No-Man's-Land, strung in a line of shell-holes, from which in sixteen hours' time the attack is to start.

* * * * *

Soon after 3 a.m. I set out to visit all the scattered groups of men to give my last instructions, for from dawn onwards no movement would be possible. It was an eerie situation. The night was filled with multifarious noise—peculiar 'poops,' the distant crash of bombs, and all the mingled echoes of a battlefield. At one time German howitzers, firing at longest range, chimed a faint chorus high above our heads; anon a hissing swoop would plant a shell close to our whereabouts. Lights rose and sank, flickering. Red and green rockets, as if to ornament the tragedy of war, were dancing in the sky. Occasionally a gust of foul wind, striking the face, could make one fancy that Death's Spectre marched abroad, claiming her children....

Our guns fired incessantly. Their shells came plunging down with an arriving whistle that made each one as it came seem that it must drop short—and many did. Mist drifted fitfully around and hid, now and again, two derelict tanks, at which a forward post of my company was stationed. This post I was on my way to visit, when, suddenly, what seemed trench-mortar bombs began to fall. About twenty fell in a minute, the last ones very close to where I stood.

They were gas. It was a sickening moment; surprise, disaster, and the possibility that here was some new German devilry fired at us from behind, joined with the fumes to numb the mind and powers. Half-gassed I gave the gas-alarm. By telephone I managed to report what had happened. The Colonel seemed to understand at once; 'I've stopped them,' conveyed everything of which it was immediately necessary to make certain.



For it was an attack by our own gas. Some detachment, without notifying our Brigade staff or selecting a target which sanity could have recommended, had done a 'shoot' against my company's position under the mistake that the enemy was in it. Two casualties, which I believe proved fatal, resulted. Many men vomited. I was prostrated for two hours. The effect on the morale of some of my men was as pitiable as it was amply justifiable.

For this dastardly outrage I fancy that no person was ever brought to book. Infantry loyally condoned the so-called 'short shooting' by our guns. Out of thousands of shells fired at the enemy some must and did fall in our lines. But from such condonation is specifically to be excepted this instance of a gas projection carried out with criminal negligence upon my comrades. For or by its perpetrator no excuse was offered; and yet the facts were never in dispute.

Proverbially the worst part of an attack was waiting for it. On September 10, from dawn till 4 p.m., A and D Companies lay cramped in shell holes on the slopes of Hill 35. In my own hole, so close that our knees touched, sat Sergeant Palmer, Rowbotham, my signalling lance-corporal, Baxter, another signaller, Davies, my runner, and myself. With us we had a telephone and a basket of carrier pigeons.

At 8 a.m., while some of us were sleeping heavily, there came a crash and a jar, which shook every fibre in the body. An English shell had burst a yard or two from the hole wherein we lay. Voices from neighbouring shell-holes hailed us—'Are you all right?': and we replied 'We are.' We had no other shell as close as that, but all day long there were two English guns whose shells, aimed at the Germans on the ridge in front, fell so near to where we lay that we became half-used to being spattered with their earth. As the air warmed the error of these guns decreased, but we counted the hours anxiously until the attack should liberate us from such cruel jeopardy.[8]

[Footnote 8: At this stage in the war the barrels of many of our guns and howitzers in use on the Western Front were very worn. That fact alone and not any want of care or devotion on the part of our Artillery or staff would have accounted for the 'short shooting' which I record. To locate a worn barrel, when scores of batteries were bombarding together according to a complicated programme, was naturally impossible. Infantry recognised this.]

The intolerable duration of that day baffles description. The sun, which had displaced a morning mist, struck down with unrelenting rays till shrapnel helmets grew hot as oven-doors. Bluebottles (for had not six attempts failed to take the hill?) buzzed busily. The heat, our salt rations, the mud below, the brazen sky above, and the suspense of waiting for the particular minute of attack, vied for supremacy in the emotions. The drone of howitzers continued all the day. Only at 2.30 p.m., when a demonstration was made against Iberian, did any variety even occur. There was no choice nor respite. Not by one minute could the attack be either anticipated or postponed.

Of the attack itself the short outline is soon given. Promptly at 4 p.m. the creeping barrage started. In a dazed way or lighting cigarettes the men, who had lost during the long wait all sense of their whereabouts, began to stumble forward up the hill. Our shrapnel barrage was not good. One of the earliest shells burst just behind the hole from which I stepped. It wounded Rowbotham and Baxter (my two signallers) and destroyed the basket of carrier pigeons. Of other English shells I saw the brown splash amongst our men. Prolonged bombardment had ploughed the ground into a welter of crumbling earth and mud. Our progress at only a few dozen yards a minute gave the Germans in their pill-boxes ample time to get their machine-guns going, while correspondingly the barrage passed away from our advance in its successive lifts. Heavy firing from Iberian commenced to enfilade our ranks. Long before the objective was approached our enemies, who in some cases left the pill-boxes and manned positions outside, were masters of the situation. The seventh attempt had failed to struggle up the slopes of Hill 35.

Despite the disappointment of this immediate failure of the enterprise, I realised at once the impossibility of its success. Yet on this occasion less was done by the men than the conduct of their leaders deserved. Almost as soon as bullets had begun to bang through the air some men had gone to shelter. Those who stood still were mown down. A handful of D Company, led by the company commander, by short rushes reached a ruined tank, close to the enemy, but the remainder disappeared into shell-holes, whence encouragement was powerless to move them. Only in A Company was any fire opened.

No sense of anti-climax could be demanded of the English soldier, whose daily shilling was paid him whether he was in rest-billets, on working-party, or sent into the attack.[9]

[Footnote 9: Nowhere is this truth better expressed than in the words of 'Tommy's' own song, the refrain of which ends:— 'But you get your "bob" a day, never mind!']

On the part also of the Artillery less was done than the scheme promised or our attacking Infantry had counted on. By shell-fire the issue of Hill 35 was to have been placed beyond doubt. When the artillery machine broke down, achievement of success demanded more initiative on the part of the Infantry than if no artillery had been used. In a sense our loss of a hundred guns at Cambrai a few weeks later became a blessing in disguise, for it restored the scales in favour of the Infantryman as the decisive agent on the field of battle.

So ended the attack on Hill 35. Upon its slopes were added our dead to the dead of many regiments. But our casualties were few considering that the attack had been brought to a standstill by machine-gun fire. Of D Company officers Guest was wounded (he had behaved with gallantry in the attack) and Copinger missing. Viggers, a very brave sergeant, was killed. Three lance-corporals, Wise, Rowbotham, and Goodman, had been wounded. The total casualties to the Battalion, including several in B Company Headquarters from a single shell and others in passing afterwards through Ypres, were, happily, under fifty.

A few days after its attack on Hill 35 the Battalion marched away from Ypres, never to return. What credit had been earned there by the 61st Division was principally associated with the work of the 184th Infantry Brigade and of the 2/4th Oxfords. Improvement in morale flowed from the test of this great battle. The losses of the Battalion had been heavy; fourteen officers and 260 men were its casualties. The final winning of the war could not be unconnected with such a sacrifice. Like others before and others after it, the Battalion at Ypres gave its pledge to posterity.



CHAPTER XII.

AUTUMN AT ARRAS AND THE MOVE TO CAMBRAI,

OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER, 1917.

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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



CHAPTER XIII.

THE GREAT GERMAN ATTACK OF MARCH 21,

JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH, 1918.

The French relieved on the St. Quentin front.—The calm before the storm.—A golden age.—The Warwick raid.—The German attack launched.—Defence of Enghien Redoubt.—Counter-attack by the Royal Berks.—Holnon Wood lost.—The battle for the Beauvoir line. —The enemy breaks through.

The Battalion's mid-winter respite was brief. On New Year's Eve, 1917, the 2/4th Oxfords quitted the wretched Suzanne huts and marched through Harbonnieres to Caix. No 'march past' was necessary or would have been possible, for so slippery was the road that the men had to trail along its untrodden sides as best they could. Old 61st Divisional sign-boards left standing nearly a year ago greeted the return to an area which was familiar to many. The destination should have been Vauvillers, but the inhabitants of that village were stricken with measles. Better billets and freedom from infection compensated for a longer march. At Caix the Battalion was comfortable for a week.

The Division's move from the Bray-Suzanne area to south of the Somme heralded a new relief of the French, whose line was now to be shortened by the amount on its left flank between St. Quentin and La Fere. About January 11 the Battalion found itself once more in Holnon Wood, where a large number of huts and dug-outs had been made by the French since last spring. The front line, now about to be held between Favet and Gricourt, was almost in its old position. The outpost line of nine months ago had crystallised into the usual trench system. Those courteous preliminaries, so much the feature of a French relief, were, on this re-introduction to scenes soon to become so famous—and so tragic—a little marred by an untimely German shell which wounded Weller, who had accompanied the Colonel to see the new line.

Industrious calm succeeded the relief. Since the Russian break-up and the consequent liberation from the Eastern Front of fresh German legions, the British army had been on the defensive. A big effort by the enemy was expected, and when it came, the St. Quentin front was not unlikely to receive the brunt of his massed attack. The months of January and February and the first half of March were ominously quiet. Shelling was spasmodic. After the artillery activity of the last summer and autumn our guns seemed lazy. So quiet was it that Abraham used to ride up to the two small copses that lay behind our front.

For the time being the 'offensive spirit' was in abeyance; our paramount task was the perfection of our defensive system. By this time in the war it was acknowledged that against attacks in weight no actual line could be held intact. Faith in 'lines' became qualified in favour of the series of 'strong points' or redoubts, which were constructed to defend 'tactical features.' This policy, founded on our experience of the German defence during the Third Battle of Ypres, was very sound. All the redoubts constructed in the area occupied by the 184th Brigade were so well sited and so strongly wired that the faith seemed justified that they were part of one impregnable system. But against loss of one important factor no amount of industry could serve to insure. 'Strong points' must act in concert and for such mutual action 'on the day' good visibility was essential. As we shall see, this factor was denied. In rear of these redoubts, which lay along the ridge west of Fayet, a line known as the 'Battle Line' was fortified, and in rear again a trench was dug to mark the 'Army Line,' where the last stand would be made. These lines were strong, but more reliance was apt to be placed upon their mere existence on the ground than, in default of any co-existent scheme to fill them at a crisis with appropriate garrisons, was altogether justified.[10]

[Footnote 10: For the terrain referred to in this chapter see the maps ante pp. 83 and 95.]

Early in the year the Bucks had been taken from the Brigade (now like all Infantry Brigades reduced to three Battalions) and went to Nesle to work as an entrenching Battalion. Many old friends, including especially Colonel 'Jock' Muir, had to be parted with. The three Battalions which remained were now arranged in 'depth,' a phrase explained by stating that while one, say the Berks, held the front line 'twixt Fayet and Gricourt, the Gloucesters as Support Battalion would be in Holnon Wood and ourselves, the Oxfords, in reserve and back at Ugny. When a relief took place the Gloucesters went to the front line, ourselves to Holnon, and the Berks back to Ugny. The Battalion holding the line was similarly disposed in 'depth,' for its headquarters and one company were placed more than a mile behind the actual front.

After the January frost and snow had gone, a period of fine, clement weather set in. This, in a military sense, was a golden age. Boxing, thanks to encouragement from the Colonel and Brown and under the practical doctrine of 'Benny' Thomas, the Battalion pugilist, flourished as never before. Each tour some officers, instead of going to the line, were sent to worship at the shrine of Maxse. The Battalion reached the zenith of its efficiency. Early in March some reinforcements from the 6th Oxfords, who had been disbanded, arrived; they numbered two hundred. Among the new officers who joined were Foreshew, Rowbotham, and Cunningham. Foreshew received command of C Company, whose commander Matthews went to England for a six months' rest. To Hobbs also, our worthy quartermaster, it was necessary to bid a reluctant farewell. His successor, Murray, a very able officer from the 4th Gloucesters, arrived in time to check the table of stores before the opening of the great offensive.

On the night of 18/19 March the Battalion went into the front line. C Company was on the right, in front of Fayet; B Company, under the command of Wallington, was on the left, just south of Gricourt. A went to Fayet itself and D Company, commanded in Robinson's absence by Rowbotham, provided the garrison of Enghien Redoubt, which was a quarry near Selency Chateau; Battalion Headquarters also were at this redoubt. During the night of March 20 a raid on the Battalion's right was carried out near Cepy Farm by the 182nd Brigade. It was successful. German prisoners from three divisions corroborated our suspicion that the great enemy offensive was about to be launched. From headquarters to headquarters throbbed the order to man battle stations. Ere dawn was due to lighten the sky a dense mist shrouded everything and added a fresh factor to the suspense.

Early on March 21, only a short time after the Colonel had returned from visiting the front line posts, the ground shook to a mighty bombardment. At Amiens windows rattled in their frames. Trench mortars of all calibres and field guns, brought to closest range in the mist and darkness, began to pound a pathway through our wire. Back in artillery dug-outs the light of matches showed the time; it was 4.50 a.m. The hour had struck. Our guns, whose programme in reply was the fruit of two months' preparation, made a peculiar echo as their shells crackled through the mist. Some 'silent' guns[11] fired for the first time.

[Footnote 11: Defensive artillery, whose inactivity prior to the German attack was intended to ensure against discovery by enemy sound-rangers and observers.]

On all headquarters, roads, redoubts, and observation posts the enemy's howitzer shells were falling with descending swoop, and battery positions were drenched with gas.

In the back area the fire of long-range guns was brought with uncanny accuracy to bear against our rest billets, transport lines, and dumps. Cross-roads, bridges, and all vital spots in our communications, though never previously shelled, were receiving direct hits within a short time of the opening of the bombardment. The Berks had casualties at Ugny. Some English heavy batteries, recent arrivals on the front and seemingly undiscovered by the enemy, were now knocked out almost as soon as they had opened fire. The Artillery level crossing was hit by an early shell which blocked the road there with a huge crater. Never in the war had the Germans flung their shells so far or furiously as now.

By daylight all front line wire had been destroyed, and our trenches everywhere were much damaged. The mist hung thick, but the Germans did not yet attack. About 9.30 a.m. the barrage was felt to lift westwards from Fayet and the fitful clatter of Lewis guns, firing in short bursts with sometimes a long one exhausting a 'drum,' was heard. In the front line showers of stick bombs announced the enemy's presence. Everywhere it seemed that quick-moving bodies in grey uniforms were closing in from either flank and were behind. In the mist our posts were soon over-run. Few of our men were left to rally at the 'keeps.' A messenger to A Company's platoons, which had been stationed in support at the famous 'Sunken Road,' found that place filled with Germans. Before noon the enemy had passed Fayet and his patrols had reached Selency and the Cottages.

At Enghien Redoubt Battalion Headquarters had received no news of the attack having begun; the dense mist limited the view to fifty yards. The earliest intimation received by Colonel Wetherall of what was taking place was enemy rifle and machine-gun fire sweeping the parapet. At one corner of the redoubt some of the enemy broke in but were driven out by D Company with the bayonet. Outside Headquarters the first three men to put their heads over were killed by Germans, who had crept close along the sunken road which leads from Favet to Selency Chateau. The rifles and machine guns of the garrison opened up and gained superiority. The defence, destined to last for many hours, of Enghien Redoubt proved an important check to the enemy's advance and helped to save many of our guns.

At 12 noon, after several patrols had failed to find out whether the enemy had captured Holnon, the Colonel himself went out to see all that was happening. He did not return, and shortly afterwards Headquarters were surrounded by the enemy, who had made ground on either flank. Nevertheless till 4.30 p.m. Cunningham, the officer left in command, held out most manfully. Of all the companies, Jones and less than fifty men had escaped capture. They reached the 'Battle Line' of trenches east of Holnon Wood, and there joined the Gloucesters, who had not yet been engaged in the fighting. The enemy, having captured Maissemy, Fayet, and Holnon, paused to reorganise as evening fell.

Towards evening on the 21st the Berks, who were in reserve when the attack started, were sent to counter-attack against Maissemy, which had been lost by the division on our left. Near the windmill, which stands on the high ground west of the village, Dimmer, the Berks V.C. Colonel, was killed leading his men on horseback. This local attempt to stem the German onslaught proved of no avail. At 10.30 a.m. on March 22 the enemy, whose movements were again covered by mist, pressed the attack against the Battle Line. Almost before the Gloucesters knew they were attacked in front, they found themselves beset in flanks and rear.

At noon the enemy from its north side had penetrated Holnon Wood. Gloucesters and Oxfords fell back to join the garrison of the Beauvoir Line, all parts of which were heavily engaged by evening. A gallant resistance, in which the Gloucesters under Colonel Lawson were specially distinguished, was made by the 184th Infantry Brigade. The General encouraged the defence in person. But the line was too weakly manned long to withstand the enemy; though parts of it held till after 8 p.m. on March 22, before midnight the whole of this last Army Line had been lost. The enemy had 'broken through.'



CHAPTER XIV.

THE BRITISH RETREAT,

MARCH, 1918.

Rear-guard actions.—The Somme crossings.—Bennett relieved by the 20th Division at Voyennes.—Davenport with mixed troops ordered to counter-attack at Ham.—Davenport killed.—The enemy crosses the Somme.—The stand by the 184th Infantry Brigade at Nesle.—Colonel Wetherall wounded.—Counter-attack against La Motte.—Bennett captured.—The Battalion's sacrifice in the great battle.

After the battle for the Beauvoir Line the 184th Infantry Brigade was ordered back to Nesle. At Languevoisin on March 23 we find the relics of the 2/4th Oxfords under the command of Major Bennett, who with a force including other members of the Battalion had been providing rear-guards at the crossings of the Somme. What force was this? To understand the story it is necessary to go back a little and see what had been happening behind the line since March 21.

When the attack was known to have commenced, all transport, quartermasters' stores, and men left out of the line were ordered back to Ugny, where Bennett as senior Major present formed all our divisional details into a composite Battalion some 900 strong. Early on March 22 Colonel Wetherall, limping and tired, arrived. He bore the tale of his adventure. During the 21st we saw him disappear from Enghien Redoubt to go on a reconnaissance. Near Holnon he was surrounded by an enemy patrol and led a prisoner towards St. Quentin; but when the fire of 6-inch howitzers scared his escort into shell-holes, the Colonel escaped, and the same night, choosing his opportunity to slip between the German digging parties, contrived to reach our lines.

As March 22 lengthened out, the tide of battle rolled nearer and nearer towards Ugny, above which air fighting at only a few hundred feet from the ground was taking place. At 7 p.m. Bennett had orders to move his men westwards across the Somme. Soon afterwards a runner came post-haste. He told of the fighting on the Beauvoir line; the intrepid General had been wounded in the head while with his shrapnel helmet in his hand he waved encouragement to his men. Colonel Wetherall had already started on the way to Languevoisin but was caught up at Matigny. He the same night (22nd) regained the Beauvoir line and took command of the Brigade. As we have seen, he moved back with the Brigade on the next day.

Further developments soon diverted Bennett's force, whose fortunes we are following. At Matigny he was ordered by the Major-General with half his force to guard the Offoy bridgehead and with the other half to hold Voyennes. The Offoy garrison was despatched under Moberly, who was commanding the details of the 184th Brigade, including a hundred Oxfords. Moberly's force comprised many administrative personnel. 'What your men lack in numbers they must make up in courage,' was the Major-General's encouragement.

But the men were not at once put to the test. The 20th Division, which was covering the retreat across the Somme, relieved the Offoy rear-guard, of which Davenport had now assumed command, early in the morning of March 23, and Bennett was likewise relieved in his duties at Voyennes, where the bridge was blown up. Though the Offoy bridgehead had been taken over by the 20th Division, Davenport's troops were kept in support along the railway embankment at Hombleux, for it was feared that the enemy had already commenced to cross the Somme at Ham. During the morning of the 23rd Davenport received peremptory orders to make a counter-attack against the town with the object of regaining possession of its bridgehead. Considerable success resulted; Verlaines was cleared of the enemy's patrols, and the advance reached the ridge east of that village.



With fresh troops acting on a concerted plan something might have been accomplished. Davenport's men were a disorganised mixture of many battalions, including, besides the Oxfords and other representatives of the 184th Brigade, a number of Cornwalls and King's Liverpools. They were unfed, and the demoralisation of the retreat was beginning to do its work. As always on these occasions, when officers of different services were thrown together, divided counsels were the result. Moberly, an officer who could have been relied upon to make the best of the situation, was wounded in the leg during a moonlight reconnaissance with Davenport.

By March 24 the position was unaltered; the troops were still lining the ridge east of Verlaines and awaited the enemy's next move with their field of fire in many cases masked by, or masking, that of their comrades. Against this type of defence the enemy's tactics did not require to be as infallible as they perhaps seemed. Our pity is drawn to these English troops, disorganised, without their own proper commanders, unsupplied with rations—the stop-gaps thrust forward in the last stages of a retreat.

At 9 a.m. the enemy, whose patrols had during the night of March 23/24 been feeling their way up the slopes from the Somme Canal, commenced to press forward in earnest. The mixed troops, who were lining the ridge, had been 'down' too long to offer much resistance. They melted away, as leaderless troops will. Davenport, a gallant officer who to the very last never spared himself, was killed, shot through the head at Verlaines. The enemy, whose advanced artillery was already in action from behind Ham, had secured Esmery Hallon by the evening. Nesle was threatened.



On the same day of which I was last speaking—March 24—the 184th Brigade, minus those Oxfords who were in action with the 20th Division, though sadly wasted in numbers, formed up again to make a stand. Colonel Wetherall, the acting Brigadier, had received orders to hold the line of the Canal east and south east of Nesle. On the left of this line stood the Oxfords under Bennett, 200 Berks under Willink were in the centre, while the Gloucesters, about 120 strong under Colonel Lawson, guarded the right. At 11 a.m. on March 25 the enemy attacked. As often during these days, when a line was held solidly in one place, it broke elsewhere. By noon the enemy had captured Nesle, and the left flank of the Brigade was turned. During the fight Colonel Wetherall was wounded in the neck by a piece of shell and owed his life to the Brigade Major, Howitt, who held the arteries.

The line was driven back to Billancourt and the same night (25th) the remnants of the XVIII Corps withdrew in darkness to Roye, a town where our hospitals were still at work, evacuating as fast as possible the streams of wounded from the battle. One of the last patients to leave by train was Wetherall, who at this crisis passed under the care of Stobie, the Oxfords' old M.O.

On March 26 we see the 184th Brigade held in reserve near Mezieres, to be suddenly moved at midnight of March 27/28 by lorries. The lorries made towards Amiens, and it appeared that the battered relics of the Brigade were being withdrawn. The belief was disappointed. At Villers Bretonneux Bennett received orders from a staff officer to go to Marcelcave, where the 61st Division was being concentrated for a counter-attack at dawn against the village of La Motte. In the darkness the route was missed and the convoy drove straight into our front line. Marcelcave was reached eventually, but so late that a dawn attack was impossible. At 10 a.m. on March 28 the forlorn enterprise, in which the 183rd Brigade, the Gloucesters, and the Berks shared, was launched from the station yard. The troops were footsore, sleepless, and unfed. They were mostly men from regimental employ—pioneers, clerks, storemen—to send whom forward across strange country to drive the enemy from the village he had seized on the important Amiens-St. Quentin road was a mockery. Such efforts at counter-attack resulted in more and more ground being lost. Still, the men staggered forward bravely, to come almost at once under fierce enfilade machine-gun fire. The losses were heavy. Craddock, a young officer now serving under Bennett, moved about among the men, encouraging them by his example of coolness and gallantry.

When 350 yards short of La Motte the advance was driven to take cover. It was useless to press on; in fact, already there was real danger of being surrounded. Bennett, whose leadership throughout was excellent, with difficulty extricated his men by doubling them in two's across the open. Towards evening those that got back were placed in trenches outside Marcelcave.

By now that village was being severely shelled and bombed, and in danger of becoming surrounded by the enemy. Soon after dark it was attacked in earnest. Bennett stayed too long in Marcelcave attempting to get news of the situation and some orders. Brigade Headquarters had in fact already left, before Bennett, instead of returning to his former headquarters, decided to join his men in the trenches before the village. Those trenches were no longer being fought for. Near the railway bridge he ran straight into the enemy as they swarmed towards the village and was captured. The remains of the Battalion were driven back on Villers Bretonneux, the contents of which village had to make up for absent rations. Robinson, who had returned from leave in time to take part in the La Motte affair, assumed command. The Australians were at hand; fresh troops arrived to relieve those worn out by a week's continuous fighting. After four days at Gentelles all that were left of the 2/4th Oxfords, together with the other fragments of the 61st Division, were withdrawn for rest and reorganisation west of Amiens.

A Battalion is too small for its historian to enter into any controversy upon the measures taken for the defence of the St. Quentin front. Whatever else the Oxfords could have done would have had no effect upon the main issues of this great attack. But for the mist the German onslaught, delivered in the preponderance of four to one, would hardly have achieved the same historical result. The Battalion had stood in the forefront of the greatest battle of the war. Accounts, already growing legendary, tell how our men acquitted themselves that day. Some posts fought on till all were killed or wounded. There were few stragglers. Of B Company, only one man returned from the front line. It is said of A Company that, when surrounded by the enemy, Brown formed the men into a circle, back to back, and fought without surrender.

The monument which stands above Fayet is happily placed. It is inscribed to the sons of France who fell in action nearly fifty years ago. On March 21, 1918, it was enriched by its association with a later sacrifice. The credit won in this lost battle gives to the 2/4th Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry a share of honour in the war equal to that which has been earned by our most successful troops in the advance.

The loss in all ranks had been so heavy that the killed and missing could only be computed by counting over those few that remained. Bennett and all four company commanders in the line were missing. The Colonel and Moberly had been sent to England wounded. Jones was the only officer from the front line who remained safe. Cairns, the Sergeant-Major of A Company, had come through and earned distinction. The loss in Lewis gunners, signallers, and runners had been especially heavy. Douglas, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, after most valuable work in the Battalion, had been killed. Transport and stores, for extricating which credit was due to Abraham and Murray, alone came out complete.



CHAPTER XV.

THE BATTLE OF THE LYS,

APRIL-MAY, 1918.

Effects of the German offensive.—The Battalion amalgamated with the Bucks.—Entrainment for the Merville area.—A dramatic journey.— The enemy break-through on the Lys.—The Battalion marches into action.—The defence of Robecq.—Operations of April 12, 13, 14. —The fight for Baquerolle Farm.—A troublesome flank.—Billeted in St. Venant.—The lunatic asylum.—La Pierriere.—The Robecq sector.

The closing phases of the war are so comparatively fresh and vividly remembered that a less close description need be attempted of them than of more early periods. I feel that justice cannot easily be done to the events of last year, events which in dramatic force eclipsed any since the Battle of the Marne. Of 1918, moreover, the facts have not yet had time to drop into that relief which a historian prefers before reducing them to chronicle. It is unlikely that, in years hence, when the full history of the war is written, the German offensive of 1918 will not be taken as the turning point in the great conflict. For the second time since the invasion of Belgium and for the first since conscription, readers of the Times saw a black line sagging across the map towards the English Channel. In France at the end of March conditions meriting the popular description of 'wind up' were recognisable. Bases were crowded to overflowing. Train services were seriously deranged by the German approach to Amiens. The traffic upon the main roads in the Somme valley was an eloquent intermingling of troops, guns, and civilians evacuating as much of their property as possible upon wagons and carts, which were piled high with children, tables, utensils, bedsteads, farm implements, and always mattresses. The shelling of Amiens Cathedral and the long gun which played on Paris were signs of the destructive ascendancy of the enemy. Our railways, which depended on a few junctions now placed none too far behind the line, were attacked vigorously by the enemy in the hope of their disorganisation. St. Pol station was shelled to ruins; Hazebrouck, Chocques, and Doullens were nightly targets for German bombs. Already at Tinques and Achiet the R.T.O.s had been killed. (We had done the same and more to the Germans for two years). Our railwaymen and engine drivers showed staunch devotion to duty and were as much responsible as any branch of the service for keeping our armies fighting during the critical months of the spring and early summer.

To Avesne, a remote village behind Amiens, the 2/4th Oxfords were withdrawn early in April for completion with new drafts and for refitting. An amalgamation—which was a great advantage to both units—of the Battalion with the Bucks now took place. As the 25th Entrenching Battalion the Bucks had been engaged in the fighting round Nesle, when they became attached to a Brigade of the 20th Division. They were now most anxious to be sent to join us or at all events to rejoin the 61st Division. Unable to obtain the orders they desired, the Bucks availed themselves of the prevailing confusion to march away 'without authority' and were already at Avesne when the Oxfords arrived.

The addition of some 300 N.C.O.s and men, with whom came such valued officers as Clutsom, Buttfield, Kemp, Lodge, Boase, Kirk, and several others, acted as an infusion of new blood and vigour into the Battalion which had given nearly all of its best in the St. Quentin fighting. As the senior officer now present, I was placed in command of the Battalion after the amalgamation, for which no more suitable surroundings could have been found than Avesne, whose chateau and grounds we had to ourselves. On April 7, before the regimental tailors had half finished substituting the red circles for the black ones previously carried by the Bucks, a large draft of 431 men joined the Battalion from England. Many of these were boys, but among them stood a few veteran soldiers who had been out before and been wounded. With this draft, which I believe was posted without the knowledge that the Bucks had joined us, the Battalion reached the strength of over 1,000 men. It was a goodly force, unhampered by passengers. With Abraham, Murray, and Regimental Sergeant-Major Hedley (from the Bucks) those departments of the Battalion not purely tactical were sure to be well managed. I felt quite confident in the command of this force of men, and General Pagan, the new Brigadier, was kind enough to express his confidence in my ability.

Our billets at Avesne—the entire Battalion was accommodated in the buildings of a large chateau from which some army school had been precipitated by the German advance—were too good for much hope to be entertained of a long stay in them. The unified command from now onwards brought more rapid moves than formerly had been the custom. Thus at a few hours' notice 'billeting parties' were ordered, not back towards Amiens, but to Merville and St. Venant. The 61st was to become a Division in G.H.Q. reserve behind the old Laventie sector. But before Battalions could follow their representatives and while the billeting was still in progress the Germans attacked and broke through on the Lys, south of Armentieres. We marched, however, from Avesne on April 11 in happy ignorance of this new battle. Not till Hangest, and there by means of a Continental Daily Mail, was the changed prospect of our destination revealed. The Hangest R.T.O. was half beside himself with excitement and delay. There were several hours to spend in waiting, and during this time the kits were retrieved from the station yard and a prudent change was made from soft hats into shrapnel helmets and fighting equipment. After a rapid entrainment we at last pulled out at about 2 p.m. So strong was the Battalion that D Company, which itself numbered over 200, was unable to travel with us and had to follow by a later train. In its early stages the journey, though similar to most of the kind, produced one formidable incident, for at the top of the steep gradient between Candas and Doullens the train snapped in half; its hind portion was left poised in a cutting for an hour, until two locomotives arrived to push it on to Doullens, whither the forward half, in gay ignorance, had run.

The night was overcast, a fact which doubtless saved us from the attention of enemy aeroplanes. The journey from St. Pol through Chocques and Lillers to Steenbecque is stamped on the memory by its more than many halts, the occasional glare of mines and munition factories which, in anticipation of another break-through, seemed to be working at tensest pressure to evacuate coal and manufactured stores from capture by the enemy; by the loud booming of artillery, to which the train seemed to draw specially near at Chocques and Isbergues; and the final sudden grinding of the brakes at Steenbecque, distracted railwaymen, and the small hut in which Bennett and the Brigade Staff were exhibiting a mixture of excitement, impatience and a sort of reckless familiarity with this apparent repetition of the Somme retreat. At Steenbecque station, which is three miles short of Hazebrouck and hidden behind the Nieppe Forest, we received the latest news of the battle into which we were being so dramatically plunged: the enemy had broken through the feeble resistance of the Portuguese and was outside Merville. My orders were to take up a line, which was at present covered by the 51st Division, between Robecq and Calonne and for that object to detrain and move forward immediately. The station yard was ill-suited to a rapid detrainment, there being few ramps or sidings, and despite the impatience of Bennett, a Divisional Staff Officer, who was most anxious to get finished before dawn, we were kept seated in the train for nearly two hours. This delay was really most valuable, for it enabled me to appreciate the situation and issue detailed orders, which otherwise it would never have been possible to give.

As the dawn of April 12, 1918, was breaking, we set foot to the long pave road which runs through the Nieppe Forest to St. Venant, followed by the transport and the cookers, from which at the cost of never so much delay I felt determined to give the men, who had had no proper meal for twenty-four hours, a good square feed before becoming involved in the uncertain and possibly rationless conflict which lay before us in country that was likely to have been looted by the retreating Portuguese. Nevertheless, during this breakfast, taken at the eastern edge of the great Forest of Nieppe, feverish messages arrived, which said that the enemy was in Robecq and already crossing the La Bassee Canal. This, of course, was not true, but troops who are moving up towards an advancing enemy, though met by exaggerated and conflicting reports of the hostile progress, are almost confined, until actual encounter occurs, to this species of information. By now Corps Headquarters, after a three years' sojourn at Hinges, had commenced to scour the country west of Aire for a suitably remote chateau. Except for Howitt there was no staff officer upon the spot, and we found after passing St. Venant towards Robecq that it was every man for himself in the task of stemming the German attack. Parts of the Division, notably the 5th D.C.L.I. and the 2/6th Warwicks, which had been detrained earlier than ourselves to join in the battle, had been roughly handled in fighting south of Merville during the night of April 11/12. The 51st Division was to all intents out of action, and there was a gap of more than a mile between Robecq and Calonne on the morning of April 12. Into, but not through, this gap German patrols had penetrated, and at Carvin had crossed the streams Noc and Clarence. As a matter of fact these enemy were but the flankers of an advanced guard, whose objective at this time lay in the direction of Haverskerque. Thus it befell that the Battalion came into no direct conflict with the main enemy forces on April 12.



Still the situation at 9 a.m. was both obscure and difficult. Until their ammunition seemed to be expended, our artillery, which had withdrawn behind the La Bassee Canal, kept up a fire upon the open ground between Les Amusoires, where the Battalion was concentrating, and the Calonne road, which it was necessary for us to cross. Doubtless this untoward shelling was due to the reports spread by stragglers, of whom there was a considerable number from different units. Shortly after this occurrence I had the good fortune to meet a gunner subaltern, and for the next few days, pending a reinforcement of the artillery, what guns there were gave us excellent support. A greater menace came from the long dumps of our shells north of Robecq cemetery, to which some irresponsible person had set fire. An acre of explosives was ablaze, barring progress across a wide area. Later a fusillade of small-arms ammunition broke out near St. Venant station, suggestive of fighting in our rear. There also it had been the final errand of some dump-keeper, in a fancied performance of duty, to destroy ammunition of which there was a crying need. Subsequently St. Venant was quite heavily bombed by our own aircraft—an example of what could happen during the time that our higher organisation was out of gear.

The appearance of the Battalion, which could easily have passed for a Brigade of Infantry as it issued, about 10 a.m., from among the trees of Les Amusoires, may have been a moral factor in itself sufficient to indispose the German outposts to remain longer upon the outskirts of Robecq. From my former knowledge of the ground I decided to use no delay in occupying the network of orchards and as many of the farms as possible along the Calonne road before hostile opposition increased. After sharp fighting and some 30 casualties, mostly in C Company, which was on the left, a line was reached beyond Noc river, between Robecq and Calonne. On the right we linked up with the Berks (who placed their headquarters in the estaminet at Robecq cross-roads) and on the left with the 2/7th Warwicks, whose line bent back at a right angle across the Calonne road towards La Haye. During the afternoon fighting for the possession of Baquerolle Farm and its adjacent orchards engaged the Battalion's left flank. In this fighting Lodge, a young officer to whom command of C Company had fallen in consequence of a wound to Captain Buttfield, and also Boase much distinguished themselves. To them and to the N.C.O.s of C Company, and also to the conduct of the new draft, was owing the success of the day's operations. By 3 p.m. not only had the Battalion accomplished the task assigned to it twenty-four hours previously, when the extent of the German advance was unknown, but ground was being made and the enemy was being driven backward upon Calonne. Robecq was guaranteed.

All day very severe fighting was in progress a mile to our left. Merville and Calonne were almost blotted out in smoke, and the air was thronged with aeroplanes. The heap of shells behind us still burned. By now the clouds which rose from this bonfire had become such a pall in the sky that the German balloons—the enemy was expert in moving forward this machinery of observation—could see nothing of the surrounding country. The Robecq district was remarkable for its well-stocked farms, and with the general flight of the civilians large numbers of unmilked cows, geese, goats, hens, and all manner of farmyard creatures commenced to stray across the fields and down the roads. Battalion Headquarters, which were ultimately established at a large farmhouse in Les Amusoires, as dusk approached, seemed to become the rendez-vous for lowing cattle, hens, pigs, goats, and small armies of geese, to manage all of which a certain number of cowherds and farm-hands had to be detailed. Nor was it only at Battalion Headquarters that these movable larders were in the process of congregation.

At nightfall, when the companies—D Company had rejoined during' the afternoon—were settled into a secure outpost position and the Brigadier (General Pagan) had visited and approved the dispositions, an order from Corps was received to retreat a mile and to dig trenches across the open, hedgeless fields which stretched between Robecq and St. Venant. The whole of the Calonne road was to be abandoned. It was difficult to account for such a policy, which meant, not only the relinquishment of two bridge-heads of some importance and numerous farms and orchards which had been carried at expense and since garrisoned to good purpose, but the adoption instead of a position in rear, which was condemned with every tactical disadvantage and in which it would be impossible to remain once the enemy had secured possession of the ground we were now ordered to give up. I am happy to say that these orders, which can only have emanated from some staff inadequately informed upon the situation, were cancelled during the night and before the Battalion had acted on them. The fact is, I expressly remained in the forward position until at least rations had been delivered to the men, and by the time that had been done the staff pendulum had swung again. The salient of Baquerolle Farm, which it had cost valuable lives to reach, was retained.

On the morning of April 13 the enemy, under cover of a dense mist, which allowed his use of close-range artillery, attacked St. Floris, in front of which the Gloucesters were stationed. A demonstration against the Battalion accompanied, and in the mist it was uncertain whether an enemy attack on Robecq were not developing. The attack died down without the Germans having penetrated the Gloucesters, who put up a stout defence. Our line elsewhere was firm.

On the next day it was decided to use an opportunity to improve the position of our outpost line by occupying a group of cottages which lay in front. A platoon of A Company practically reached the nearest cottages without a sign of hostile opposition being shown. The fate of this little operation was the fruit of my miscalculation of the enemy's strength. The Germans knew better than ourselves how to sit still behind their machine-guns and avoid discovery. French civilians were moving about among the cottages at the time when our advance to occupy them was made and it seemed impossible that the enemy could be holding them even weakly. Civilians, too, were mingled in the fray as well on this as on later occasions. After trench-warfare days there was an incongruity in some episodes, which was not devoid of humour. One old Frenchman, at an hour when his farm was actually being fought over, arrived at Company Headquarters with a special passport to feed his beasts; and the tenacity of an old woman in clinging to her household goods terminated in her discovery, at the time of an attack, in a shell-hole in No-Man's-Land, where she was sheltering from the machine-gun barrage under a large umbrella (one felt that she at least deserved a copy of the operation orders!) During the ensuing weeks visits by French civilians to the front line became such that almost as many sentries were required to watch or restrain their movements as were needed against the enemy.



A more serious attack, in which the 4th Division upon our right was intended to co-operate, was made by B Company at 7.30 p.m. on April 15 against the same cottages, which formed part of the hamlet called La Pierre au Beurre. Our bombardment in support of this attack was almost due to start, when an urgent message from the line announced that large forces of the enemy were massing opposite our front. To have called for S.O.S. fire by the artillery would totally have upset the programme of attack, and one could only hope that our zero would be the earlier. Luck was in our favour. Whatever else happened that night, it is certain that the enemy received a severe shelling from our guns.

The attack, carried out by B Company under Stanley, with D in support, was quite successful in its plan but not in its result. From a cause such as every series of complicated operations in open warfare threatened to introduce, the troops of the 4th Division on our right failed to co-operate as we expected. O'Meara, whom Stanley had placed in charge of his leading troops, after securing the cottages named as his objective, found himself attacked by the enemy from the very direction whence he had counted on assistance. After ineffectual attempts by our 'liaison' officer, Kirk, to get our neighbours to do their share, B Company had to be withdrawn to their original position. The 4th Division at this time were the flank division of one corps while we were of another. To reach the Battalion acting on our right a notice of our plan had to climb up through our Brigade, Division, and Corps to Army and down again as many steps the other side. A staff-officer from Army or from Corps should have been on the spot.

Coucher and Kemp, two capital officers, were killed during the evening when this attack took place. Our other casualties were Killed, 2; Wounded, 18; Missing, 1.

Throughout April 13 and for several days afterwards desultory fighting, in which our trench-mortars under Miller performed good service, was maintained for the possession of Baquerolle Farm and another lying 150 yards south of it and christened Boase's Farm. Both remained in our hands. With the troops on our left flank there was some difficulty. Their line bent back awkwardly, and when the enemy shelled the houses on the Calonne road, where their right flank rested, they showed signs of withdrawing and leaving our C Company 'in the air.' The Germans quickly benefited by this irresolution, for they commenced to push forward from house to house along the Calonne road, until Baquerolle Farm was in danger of being taken in its rear. The prompt determination of Lodge, the officer I have already mentioned as commanding C Company, served to avert critical consequences. He delivered a local counter-attack, capturing a machine-gun and killing several of the enemy. Our neighbours thus reoccupied their former positions, but were warned in Divisional Orders not to give up any more of the Robecq-Calonne road. This incident, which rightly earned for 'Tommy' Lodge a Military Cross, had a vexatious sequel a few days later. In quoting where the left flank of the Battalion in fact rested I made a slip in the co-ordinates of its map reference. By that mistake I was trapped, when it appeared as black and white in relief orders, into having to hand over 100 yards of extra frontage, and had the mortification of causing several hours of troublesome delay to the front line, besides innocently saddling my successors with responsibility that was not honestly theirs to receive.

By April 16 the tactical situation was already stable. On that night—in reality during the early hours of April 17—the Battalion was relieved almost in the ordinary way by the Gloucesters, who came forward from the luxury of St. Venant and took over the line between Carvin and Baquerolle. St. Venant had been Portuguese G.H.Q. but was so no longer. It was by now receiving plenty of 5.9s and was rapidly losing the character of the quiet, well-to-do little town in which part of the Division was to have been billeted when it left the Amiens district. Still, for the time being, what St. Venant received in shells it paid for in choice vintages and fine houses. The Germans were not the only people to taste a glass of French wine during the Great War. About this time Colonel Boyle, who had commanded the 6th Oxfords until their disbandment, arrived to assume command of the Battalion. He remained till Wetherall, whose wound had taken him to England, returned.

For the rest of April and during May the Battalion continued to do tours in the Robecq sector, which, owing to its proximity to Givenchy and Bethune, was never quiet so long as the enemy was planning to attack those places. An alteration of the front was brought about on April 23, when the Gloucesters under Colonel Lawson advanced in co-operation with the 4th Division and captured Riez du Vintage and La Pierre au Beurre. Of this victory some spoils fell to the Battalion, which was holding the front line. Company Sergeant-Major Moss, of D Company, who went out to reconnoitre two hours after the attack had taken place, brought in forty-five prisoners, and during the following night half-a-dozen machine-guns were collected by the company.

German shelling at this time was often heavy. The tracks across the open up to the front line were rendered specially unpleasant by the pernicious '106' fuzes, with which the enemy's artillery was well supplied. From Robecq, which was steadily being shelled to ruins and through which one passed with reluctance, a disinterested salvage party, consisting of Stanley and the officers of B Company, brought a piano, which was destined to be an historic instrument. On more than one occasion the Battalion returned from its spell in the front line to the St. Venant Asylum, a large institution said to be the second largest of the kind in France. Its protesting inmates had been removed in lorries at the time of the German capture of Merville, and the long galleries and rooms thereafter became filled with troops. The ample bath-house, laundry, and kitchen of the Asylum, though ravaged by shelling and rifled by the mysterious depredations of looters, more than provided for the Battalion's wants. I have to record a very regrettable incident in connection with St. Venant Asylum. On the morning of May 21, during some shelling, when most of us had descended to cover, a German shell pierced the building where C and D Company Headquarters were and dropped through into the cellar, where it exploded. Several men were killed and also 'Tommy' Lodge, the officer whose conduct had earned him distinction three weeks before at Baquerolle Farm. Robinson, too, was wounded and was lost to the Battalion.

At the Asylum, despite its comfort, it was difficult to feel at ease. On May 7 the Orderly Room was struck full on its door by a 5.9. Headquarters had many an anxious moment (as when a large aeroplane bomb was heard coming through the air; it fell 30 yards from the Mess). At the end of May rest billets were altered to La Pierriere, a small straggling village west of the La Bassee Canal, where few shells fell but whither the civilians were as yet timid to return. At La Pierriere, whenever the Battalion came out for its four days' rest, the Canteen was established on the most up-to-date lines with a full stock, including beer and the current newspapers from England. During the summer several local papers were kind enough to send me copies every week for free distribution to the men. I make this an opportunity to thank Mr. Stanley Wilkins and the Bucks Comforts Fund for most generous gifts of 'smokes,' which more than once helped to stave off a cigarette famine.

The Canteen, though I have not before mentioned it, was a great feature in Battalion life. For the last eight months of the war, while I was President of the Regimental Institute, I was most anxious that our Canteen should be as good as possible. But my anxiety would have been worthless without the industry and enthusiasm of Lance-Corporal Kaye and Private Warburton, who managed every detail.

At this stage in my history, when, almost reluctantly, I am drawing towards its close, there are many features of the Battalion life which crowd upon me in their demand for mention. The Pioneers lining out for their match in six-a-side football against the Shoemakers and Tailors, the Stores piled high with 'hay-packs' and wicker baskets filled with unissued signalling equipment, Sergeant Birt quietly demanding last month's war-diary, Connell the arch-footballer, Kettle, the Sergeant-Cook, arguing about an oven, and the four Company Quartermaster-Sergeants whose vote was always unanimous—to proceed further would be to enumerate a list of people and things over whom it is my regret to pass so rapidly.

At the end of my chapters I have so often shown the Battalion marching back to rest that I shall leave it this time in the line. You must picture a medley of small fields and orchards, bounded on one side by the Calonne-Robecq road (which is the avenue of supply to the front line and much shelled) and on the other by the small streams called Noc and Clarence. Among the orchards stand numerous farmsteads, of which a large one known as Gloucester Farm had been our Battalion Headquarters in 1916, during a period of back-area rest. It has again been Battalion Headquarters. Recently the farm was shelled and the Berks Colonel, then in occupation, quitted it in favour of a two-storied house called Carvin. In the domed cellar of Baquerolle Farm—an old-fashioned building looking out across a wide midden to numerous cowsheds and outhouses—were usually the headquarters of C or D Companies and the Trench-Mortars. This farm was freely shelled. On April 24 the early-morning attention of the German guns set fire to the buildings; and Robinson was obliged to leave the cellar and repair with his headquarters to a trench to windward. The Posts themselves, as spring deepened into summer, became half lost in the crops and grass, until many of them could be reached in daylight. This fact, combined with his undaunted spirit of enterprise, led Colonel Lawson of the Gloucesters to crawl forward one morning to the German lines. His reckless bravery paid the penalty, for he was killed when only a short way from where a German post was lurking. Lawson was a brilliant soldier and a fine example of English character; his sudden and needless death cast a gloom over the whole Brigade.

On the evening of May 13 the last raid to be made by the Battalion was carried out by No. 1 Platoon, commanded by Rowlerson. The affair was a small one but satisfactory, for two prisoners were brought in and we had no casualties.



CHAPTER XVI.

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 Bassee Canal for three weeks in expectation of a renewed attempt against Hazebrouck and Bethune. 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 cafe 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.