From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 Part 13

This thrusts the enemy by Fontaine-lez-Croisilles, where he is still holding out, into a narrow pointed salient, which should be utterly untenable. The way to Chrisy was taken rapidly by men of the West Kents and East Surreys of the 18th Division without any serious check, although there was savage machine-gun fire. At Fontaine-lez-Croisilles our men found it very difficult to get forward owing to the strength of the enemy's defences south of the wood, and an abominable barrage of heavy sh.e.l.l-fire. They bombed their way down 600 yards of trench, and established themselves round Fontaine Wood on the north-west side of the village.

Farther north fighting carried our line out from Gumappe towards St.-Rohart Factory, just above Vis-en-Artois, but signal rockets sent up here by our men may only come from advanced posts ahead of the main line.

South of the Scarpe, between Monchy and those two woods of ill repute, the Bois du Vert and Bois du Sart, the battle has been similar to other struggles over the same ground, where the enemy stares across to our lines from good cover and has every inch of earth registered by his guns, with a clear field of fire for his machine-guns, of which he has got numbers in enfilade positions. English and Scottish battalions attacked here this morning, and would not give way under the terrific fire, but fought forward in small bodies until they gained the line on the crest of Infantry Hill and 300 yards short of the two woods, now linked together by the Germans with belts of wire and well-dug trenches.

North of the River Scarpe there is great fighting round Roeux, Gavrelle, and Oppy by the Household Battalion, Seaforths, Royal Irish Fusiliers, Warwicks, South African Scottish of the 4th, 9th, and 6th Divisions, and other English and Scottish battalions.

Gavrelle has already been the scene of many attacks and counter-attacks.

It was here that in the fighting last month the enemy advanced time after time in close waves, only to be scythed down by our machine-guns, so that heaps of those field-grey dead lie out there on the barren land.

To-day those dead were joined by many comrades. When our men advanced they were met by ma.s.ses of Germans, and once more the line of battle had an ebb and flow, and both sides pa.s.sed over the dead and wounded in a.s.sault and retirement. Four times an old windmill beyond the village changed hands. Four times the Germans who had dislodged our men were cut to pieces and thrust out. Men are fighting here as though these bits of brick and wood are worth a king's ransom or a world's empire, and in a way they are worth that, for the windmill of Gavrelle is one point which will decide a battle or a series of battles upon which the fate of two Empires is at stake. So it happens in this war that a dust-heap like that other windmill at Pozires in the crisis of the Somme battles becomes for hours or days the prize of victory or the symbol of defeat.

In Oppy, above Gavrelle, which I described yesterday as I saw it in the golden haze, the Germans there, whom I could not see, have been very busy. They knew this attack was coming; it was clear that it must come to them, and at night they worked hard to protect themselves, fear being their taskmaster. They made machine-gun emplacements not only in pits and trenches, but in branches of many trees, and wired themselves in with many twisted strands. The Second Guards Reserve, newly brought up, held the village and wood and the white chteau, with its empty windows and broken roofs, and kept below the ground when our gun-fire stormed above them. So when our men attacked in that pale darkness of a May night they found themselves at once in a hail of machine-gun bullets, and later under sh.e.l.l-fire, which made a fury about them. They penetrated into Oppy Wood, but owing to the ma.s.sed German troops, who counter-attacked fiercely, they did not go far into the wood or lose themselves in such a death-trap. They were withdrawn to the outskirts of Oppy, so that our guns could get at the enemy and drive him below ground again.

Northwards we stormed and won long trenches running up from Oppy to Arleux, and most necessary for further progress, linking up with the Canadians, who made a great and successful attack upon the village of Fresnoy, just south of Acheville.

That was certainly a very gallant feat in face of many difficulties of ground and most savage fire. They completely surrounded the village and caught its garrison in a trap from which they had no escape. After brief fighting with bombs and bayonets the survivors surrendered, to the number of eight officers and about 200 men belonging to the Fifteenth Reserve Division of Prussians. What made them sick and sorry men is that two of their battalions had just arrived in high spirits, having troops in front of them who were weak, they had been told, and they were ordered to attack Arleux this morning. The Canadians attacked first, and by six o'clock these Prussians were sadder and wiser men. The prisoners escaped our sh.e.l.l-fire, but were nearly done to death behind our lines by their own guns. I saw this incident this morning. They had been put in an enclosure, next to a Canadian field dressing-station flying the Red Cross, when suddenly the enemy's guns began to sh.e.l.l the area with five-point-nines. They burst again and again during half an hour with tremendous crashes and smoke-clouds.

"If those Germans are still there," said a Canadian, "there won't be much left of them."

When the sh.e.l.ling eased off I went towards their place but found it empty. As soon as the sh.e.l.ling started their guards hurried them away to safety farther back behind the lines, and the Canadian wounded were diverted to another route. One of these Prussian officers was shown his old lines captured on April 9, and he asked what regiment had done such gallant work. "The Canadians did it," he was told, "and the same fellows that captured Fresnoy this morning." The Prussian officer could hardly believe it, but when he was convinced of its truth he complimented the Canadian troops who had fought so hard and so far. They were proud young officers, and when I spoke to one or two they would not admit that they had been mastered in this war. They seem to have an unbounded faith in Hindenburg's genius, and in the effects of submarine warfare.

I found no such spirit among the non-commissioned officers and men. They spoke as men under an evil spell, hating the war, but seeing no end to it. "Neither side will win," said one of them, "but who will stop it?

The papers write about the conditions of peace, but one party says one thing and one party says another, and we don't know what to believe."

I asked them about the Russian revolution, and whether it had any influence in the German trenches, but they seemed to have heard of it only as a vague, far-off event, not affecting their own lives and ideas.

They were more interested about their food, and said their bread ration had been reduced by one-third. Behind the lines the scene of war to-day was on white, dusty plains under the glare of the sun, where men waiting to go into battle slept beside their arms, where mules kicked and rolled beside heavy batteries and transport. Guns were thundering close, and hostile sh.e.l.ls were bursting among the tents and kinema pavilions, and a band was playing. No sane man would believe it unless he saw it with his own eyes and heard it with his own ears, for it was all fantastic as a nightmare of war, with wounded men hobbling back from the b.l.o.o.d.y strife and wending their way through the old trenches, in which other men sat polishing rifles, or whistling in tune with the band.

MAY 21

Before darkness, when the shadows were lengthening across the fields and the glow of the evening sun was warm on the white walls of the French cottages, I went into an old village to meet some men who have just come out of the fires of hate. They were the East Kents of the 12th Division, whom I met last, months ago now, during the battle of the Somme, where they had hard fighting and tragic losses. In the twilight and dusk and darkness I heard their tales of battle--the things these men had done just a little while ago before coming down to this village of peace--tales of frightful hours, of life in the midst of death, of English valour put to the most b.l.o.o.d.y and cruel tests.

Men of Kent and boys of Kent. There was one boy with black eyes sitting with his tunic off on the window-sill above a terraced porch who seemed too young to be one of the King's officers, and is no more than nineteen, but ninety in the experience of life and death. He told me how he was sent up with some signallers to keep touch with his company, who had gone forward in the attack at Monchy in the darkness before daybreak on the morning of May 3. He lost his way, as other men did, because of the darkness, and found his men being hit by machine-gun bullets. He put them into sh.e.l.l-holes, and worked from one hole to the other, dodging the heavy crumps which flung the earth up about them, and the more deadly sweep of bullets. When the first glimmer of dawn came he met a man of his company bringing down two prisoners, and heard that the objective had been taken. It seemed good news and good evidence. The young officer pushed on with what men were with him, and presently saw a body of men ahead of him. Our fellows, he thought, and signalled to them. He thought it queer that they didn't answer his signals, but waved their caps in reply. He thought it more queer that they were wearing overcoats, and he was sure his company had gone forward without coats.

But if those were not his men, where were they? That was where they ought to be, or farther forward. He went forward a little way, uneasy and doubtful, until all doubts were solved. Those men waving caps to him, beckoning him forward, were Germans. The enemy had got behind our men, who were cut off. It was a narrow escape for this boy of nineteen, and he had others before he got back with a few men, sniped all the way by the enemy on the hill-side. It was worse for men who had been fighting forward there. They had gone over the ground quickly to the first goal, though many had lost their way in darkness and many had fallen. Then the enemy had dribbled in from positions on each side of them and closed up behind them. The East Kents were cut off, like other men of other regiments fighting alongside. Many officers were picked off by snipers or hit by sh.e.l.ls and machine-gun fire. Second lieutenants found themselves in command of companies, sergeants and corporals and privates became leaders of small groups of men. The Buffs were cut off, but did not surrender. One young officer was the only one left with his company. He cheered up the men and said it was up to the Buffs to hold out as long as possible, and they built cover by linking up sh.e.l.l-holes and making a defensive position. Three times the enemy attacked in heavy numbers, determined to get their men, but each time they were beaten off by machine-gun fire and bombs. Fifteen hours pa.s.sed like this, and then night came, and with it grave and dreadful anxiety to the officer with what remained of the company of men who looked to him for leadership.

There were no more bombs. If another attack came, nothing could stop it.

"We must fight our way back," said the second lieutenant. Between them and their own lines were two German trenches full of the enemy. It would not be easy to hack a way through. But the East Kents left their sh.e.l.l-holes, scrambled up into the open, and, with the second lieutenant leading, stumbled forward through the darkness as stealthily as possible to the German lines between them and our old positions. Then they sprang into the enemy's trench, bayoneting or clubbing the sentries. A German officer came out of a dug-out with a sword, which is an unusual weapon in a trench, but before he could use it our second lieutenant shot him with his revolver. So to the next trench, and so through again to a great escape.

There were other officers and men who had to fight desperately for life, like this. Young Kentish lads behaved with fine and splendid bravery. A private belonging to a machine-gun team remained alone in a sh.e.l.l-hole when all his comrades were killed, and stayed there for three days, keeping his gun in action until relieved by our advancing troops. Three days had pa.s.sed when he rejoined his unit, and they, after a brief rest, were moving forward again to the front line. The escaped man was given the offer of remaining behind, but he said, "Thanks, but I'll go up along, with the rest of the chaps," and back he went.

Another young private saw his company commander fall by his side. The stretcher-bearers had not yet come up to that spot, though all through the battle they did most n.o.ble work; and this private soldier was desperate to get help for his officer. He resolved to make the enemy help him, and went forward to where he saw Germans. By some menace of death in his eyes, he quelled them--six of them--into surrender, and, bringing them back as prisoners, made them carry the young officer back to the dressing-station, so saving his life. I have told the story of the Buffs, or a brief glimpse of it, and they will forgive me when I add that what they have done has been done also by other English battalions, not with greater valour but with as great, in many battles and in these now being fought. Our English troops, through no fault of mine, get but little praise or fame though they are the backbone of the Army, and are in all our great attacks. The boys of England, like those of its garden county of Kent, have poured out their blood on these fields of France, and have filled the history of this appalling war with shining deeds.

XII

FIELDS OF GOLD

MAY 23

The beauty of these May days is so intense and wonderful after the cold, grey weather and sudden rush of spring that men are startled by it, and find it outrageously cruel that death and blood and pain should be thrust into such a setting. Once in history two fat kings met in a field of France, between silken tents and on strips of tapestry laid upon the gra.s.s, so that this scene of glitter and shimmer was called for every age of schoolboys "The Field of the Cloth of Gold." Out here in France now there is a field of honour, stretching for more than a hundred miles, held by British soldiers; and that is a true field of cloth of gold, for everywhere behind the deep belt of cratered land, so barren and blasted that no seed of life is left in the soil, there are miles of ground where gold grows, wonderfully brilliant in the warm sunshine of these days. It is the gold of densely growing dandelions and of b.u.t.tercups in great battalions. They cover the wreckage of old trenches, and bloom in patches of ground between powdered fragments of brick- and stone-work which are still called by the names of old villages swept off the face of the earth by fierce bombardments.

If you wish to picture our Army out here now, the landscape in which our men are fighting--and they like to think you want to do so--you must think of them marching along roads sweet-scented with lilac and apple-blossom, and over those golden fields to the white edge of the dead land. They are hot under heavy packs all powdered with dust, so that they wear white masks like a legion of Pierrots, and on their steel helmets the sun shines brazenly. But there is a soft breeze blowing, and as they march through old French villages showers of tiny white petals are blown upon them from the wayside orchards like confetti at a wedding feast, though it is for this dance of death called war. And these hot, dusty soldiers of ours, closed about by guns and mule teams and transport columns surging ceaselessly along the highways to the Front, drink in with their eyes cool refreshing shadows of green woods set upon hill-sides where the sun plays upon the new leaves with a melody of delicate colour-music, and spreads tapestries of light and shade across sweeps of gra.s.s-land all interwoven with the flowers of France.

Our soldiers do not walk blindly through this beauty. It calls to them, these men of Surrey and Kent and Devon, these Shropshire lads and boys of the Derbyshire dales, and at night in their camps, before turning in to sleep in the tents, they watch the glow of the western sun and the fading blue of the sky, and listen to the last song of birds tired with the joy of the day, and are drugged by the scent of closing flowers and of green wheat growing so tall, so quickly tall, behind the battlefields. These tents are themselves like flowers in the darkness when candlelight gleams through their canvas, and at night the scene of war is lit up by star-sh.e.l.ls and vivid flashes of light as great sh.e.l.ls fall and burst beyond the zone of tents, where British soldiers crouch in holes and burrow deep into the earth. It is under the blue sky of these days, and in this splendour of spring-time, that English boys and young Scots go into the fires of h.e.l.l, where quite close to them the birds still sing, as I heard the nightingale amidst the crash of gun-fire.

They were Shropshire lads of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry of the glorious 3rd Division, who helped to turn the tide of battle on one of these recent days when there was savage fighting through several days and nights. The officer in command of one of their companies found the ruined village of Tilloy-les-m.u.f.flaines in front of him still held by the enemy when our troops a.s.saulted it. They were working their machine-guns and raking another body of infantry.

"Come on, Shropshires," shouted the young officer, and his boys followed him. They worked round the flank of the village, cut off ninety of the enemy and captured them, and thereby enabled other troops to get forward. One of these Shropshire officers went out with only a few men 200 yards beyond the front line that night, and took twenty prisoners in a dug-out there.

Into that same village of Tilloy cleared by Shropshires an officer of the King's Own Liverpools, with a lance-corporal, dashed into a ruined house from which the enemy was sniping in a most deadly way, and brought out two officers and twenty-eight men as prisoners. It was a subaltern of the Suffolks who went out in daylight under frightful fire to reconnoitre the enemy's lines and brought back knowledge which saved many lives. On the night of May 3, when all the sky was blazing with fire, it was the Royal Scots of the 3rd Division who held part of the line against heavy counter-attacks. The men had been fighting against great odds. Many of them had fallen, and the wounded were suffering horribly. Thirst tortured them, not only the wounded but also the unwounded, and there was no chance of water coming up through the h.e.l.lish barrage. No chance except for the gallantry of the adjutant of the Royal Scots away back at battle headquarters near Monchy, where heavy crumps were bursting. He guessed his men craved for water, and he risked almost certain death to take it to them, going through all the fire with a few carriers and by a miracle untouched. This same adjutant went out again across the battle-ground under heavy fire to reorganize an advanced signal-station where there were many dead and wounded, and all the lines were cut. It was a young second lieutenant of the Royal Fusiliers of the 3rd Division who took command of two companies when all the other officers had been killed or wounded, and so comforted the men that under his leadership they dug a line close to the German position east of Monchy, and all through the day and night of tragic fighting held it against strong attacks and under infernal sh.e.l.l-fire. Day after day, night after night, our men are fighting like that. And when for a little while they are relieved and given a rest they come back across those fields of the cloth of gold, beyond those barren fields where so many of their comrades lie, and look around and take deep breaths and say, "By Jove, what perfect weather!" and become a little drunk with the beauty of this world of life, and hate the thought of death.

PART IV

THE BATTLE OF MESSINES

I

WYTSCHAETE AND MESSINES

JUNE 7

After the battle of Arras and all that fierce fighting which for two months has followed the capture of Vimy and the breaking of the Hindenburg line, and the taking of many villages, many prisoners, and many guns, by the valour and self-sacrifice of British troops, there began to-day at dawn another battle more audacious than that other one, because of the vast strength of the enemy's positions, and more stunning to the imagination because of the colossal material of destructive force gathered behind our a.s.saulting troops. It is the battle of Messines.

It is my duty to write the facts of it, and to give the picture of it.

That is not easy to a man who, after seeing the bombardments of many battles, has seen just now the appalling vision of ma.s.sed gun-fire enormously greater in intensity than any of those, whose eyes are still dazed by a sky full of blinding lights and flames, and who has felt the tremor of earthquakes shaking the hill-sides, when suddenly, as a signal, the ground opened and mountains of fire rose into the clouds.

There are no words which will help the imagination here. Neither by colour nor language nor sound could mortal man reproduce the picture and the terror and the tumult of this scene.

Our troops are now fighting forward through smoke and mist--English regiments, New-Zealanders, Protestant and Catholic Irishmen. Their Divisions from north to south were the 23rd, 47th (London), 41st, 19th, 16th (Irish), 36th (Ulster), 25th, New Zealand, and 3rd Australian.

They are fighting shoulder to shoulder in an invisible world, from which they are sending up light signals to show the progress they have made to the eyes of men flying high above the storm of battle, and to watchers in the country from which they went just as the faint rays of dawn flushed a moonlight sky. They have made good progress up the slopes of Wytschaete and Messines. Prisoners are already coming back with tales of how our men swept over them and beyond. So far it seems that the day goes well for us, but it is early in the day, and I must write later of what happens later on that ridge hidden behind the drifting clouds of smoke.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINE BEFORE THE BATTLE OF MESSINES]

For two and a half years the Messines Ridge had been a curse to all our men who have held the Ypres salient--a high barrier against them, behind which the enemy stacked his guns, shooting at them every kind of explosive, directed upon these troops of ours in the swamps of the Douve, in the broken woods of Ploegsteert, in all the flat ground north and west of Kemmel, by German observing officers very watchful behind their telescopes on that high ground which rises up from Wytschaete to Messines. In the early days of the war, before the enemy's grey legions had swept down through Belgium in a great devastating tide, some of our artillery and our cavalry rode along the hog's back of the ridge and held it for a time against the enemy's advanced patrols. On November 1, 1914, some of our guns were parked in the market square of Warneton beyond the ridge, and on the next day found a good target in German cavalry attacking from the woods, and held their fire until these mounted men were within a thousand yards of them, when riders and horses fell under a merciless storm of shrapnel. Many Germans died that day, but behind them was the vast army which came on like a rolling sea, beating back our ten divisions--those first ten wonderful divisions who fought against overwhelming odds and ma.s.sed artillery which gave them no kind of chance. So we lost Wytschaete--Whitesheet, as our men have always called it--and the Messines Ridge, and not all our efforts could get it back again.

It is more than two years ago now--it was in March of 1915--that I saw an attack on Wytschaete, the first of our British bombardments which I watched after adventures in Belgium and France. Standing upon the same ground to-day, looking across the same stretch of battlefield, watching another attack up those frightful slopes, I thought back to that other day, upon that early demonstration of our artillery covering an infantry advance, and the remembrance was amazing in its contrast to this new battle in the dawn. Then our shrapnel barrage was a pretty ineffective thing--terrible as it seemed to me at the time. In those two years our gun-power has been multiplied enormously--by vast numbers of heavy guns and monstrous howitzers, and great quant.i.ties of field-guns--so that at daybreak this morning, before our men rose from their trenches to go forward in a.s.sault, the enemy's country up there was upheaved by a wild tornado of sh.e.l.l-fire, and the contours of the land were changed, and the sky opened and poured down shrieking steel, and the earth was torn and let forth flame.

This battle of ours has started with such preparations as to ensure all but that last certainty of success which belongs to the incalculable fortune of war. It is not an exaggeration to say that they began a year ago, when miners began to tunnel under the slopes of Wytschaete and Messines, and laid enormous charges of ammonal, which at a touch on this day should blow up the hill-sides and alter the very geography of France. For a year Sir Herbert Plumer and his staff prepared their plans for this attack, gathered their material, and studied every detail of this business of great destruction. While other armies were fighting in the Somme, and all the world watched their conflict, the Second Army held the salient quietly, always on the defensive, not asking for more trouble than they had. They waited for their own offensive, and trained their own troops for it. A week ago they were ready, with railways, guns, Tanks, every kind of explosive, every kind of weapon which modern science has devised for the killing of men in great ma.s.ses. A week ago all the guns that had been ma.s.sing let loose their fire. Night and day for seven days it has continued with growing violence, working up to the supreme heights of fury as dawn broke to-day. For five days at least many Germans were pinned to their tunnels as prisoners of fire. No food reached them; there was no way out through these zones of death. A new regiment which tried to come up last night was broken and shattered. A prisoner says that out of his own company he lost fifty to sixty men before reaching the line. For a long way behind the line our heavy guns laid down belts of sh.e.l.l-fire, and many of the enemy's batteries kept silent.