The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade Part 14

His line was in front of Dranoutre.

[Footnote 24: The victor of Baghdad.]

On the 29th November we took over there, a most complicated arrangement which only evolved itself clearly during the next week. I had the East Surreys and Manchesters under me for a time, and then the K.O.S.B.'s, all interchanging and intershuffling with my battalions, the main reason being that I had not got the Cheshires, so had to shift as best I could without them, picking up a battalion of the 13th or 14th Brigade when one was available.

The line was not exactly nice. We had, it is true, got rid of the worst bit, Hill 73, on to the 3rd Division, which was next door on the left; but it extended all the same for an unpleasant length on our right, which was south of the Wulverghem-Messines road, the right of the Brigade on our right being on the Douve. At the longest--the length that the Brigade had to defend varied according to circ.u.mstances--the line was just over 2500 yards; at its shortest it was about 2200. Considering that the normal frontage (defensive) of the Brigade at full strength was 900 to 1300 yards, this was a bit "thin" in more senses than one.

As we were here for three months, off and on--from the beginning of December to the end of February,--it may be worth while trying to describe it, if I can.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Messines Front.]

Imagine a bit of rolling country--rather like parts of Leicestershire,--fair-sized fields, separated mostly by straggling fences interspersed with wire (largely barbed), and punctuated by tall trees. Patches of wood in places, spinney size for the most part. Low hills here and there--Kemmel, Scherpenberg, Ploegsteert Wood,--but all outside our area. For villages, Dranoutre, Neuve eglise, Wulverghem, and Lindenhoek, of which the two last were already more than half shot to pieces and almost deserted. Opposite our right was Messines--a mile and a half in front of our line,--its big, square, old church tower still standing; it may have had a spire on the top, but if so it had disappeared before we came. Nearly opposite our extreme left, but out of our jurisdiction and in the sphere of the Division on our left, was Wytschaete (p.r.o.nounce Wich Khate), one and a half miles off. The cavalry had held both Messines[25] and Wytschaete at the end of October, but had been overwhelmingly attacked here and driven out of them, so that the two villages formed a hostile bulge into our line.

We had been in hopes of driving attacks into the base of the bulge and thus forcing a retirement. But the Germans reinforced the bulge and entrenched it heavily, and instead of our cutting off the bulge, it became flatter and flatter, without giving way at the point, so that we had to retire slightly, on either side, and not they.

[Footnote 25: Locally p.r.o.nounced Merse.]

Farms, nearly all of them roofless and half-ruined, were dotted about over the country. Small ones for the most part they were, and of the usual type--a liquid and stinking manure-heap surrounded on three sides by a living-house and barns. Of the roads, those from Dranoutre to Lindenhoek, Dranoutre to Neuve eglise, and Neuve eglise _via_ Wulverghem to Messines, were _pave_--_i.e._, cobble-stones down the centre and mud on both sides. Those joining Lindenhoek to Neuve eglise and Wulverghem were also mostly _pave_. The remainder were mere field tracks for the most part, rarely metalled, and in wet weather almost impa.s.sable for mud.

O that mud! We have heard lots about Flanders mud, but the reality transcends imagination, especially in winter. Greasy, slippery, holding clay, over your toes in most places and over your ankles in all the rest--where it is not over your knees,--it is the most horrible "going" I know anywhere. Whether you are moving across plough or gra.s.s fields, or along lanes, you are perpetually skating about and slipping up on the firmer bits and held fast by the ankles in the softer ones. There is no stone in the district, nothing but rich loamy clay, _alias_ mud. However much you dig, you never come across stone, nothing but sticky mud which clings to your shovel and refuses to be parted from it--mud that has to be sc.r.a.ped off at almost every stroke, mud that absorbs water like a sponge yet refuses to give it up again.

Every little puddle and rut, every hoof-depression full of rain, remains like that for weeks; even when the weather is fine the water does not seem to evaporate, but remains on the surface.

And when it rains, as it did all that winter (except when it snowed), the state of the trenches is indescribable. Some were, frankly, so full of water that they had to be abandoned, and a breastwork erected behind. But a breastwork is slow work, especially if you are less than 100 yards from the enemy. For weeks, indeed, the garrison of one particular trench had to lie out on the mud, or on what waterproofs they could get, behind a shelter two to three feet high--always growing a little, yet never to be made to a real six feet height for reason of conspicuousness and consequent cl.u.s.ters of Black Marias.

Other trenches varied from five inches to five feet deep in mud; in one a Dorset man was literally almost drowned and drawn forth with great difficulty. Many cases occurred of semi-submersion, and as for moving up the communication trenches during the winter, it was generally an impossibility, for they were either knee-deep in water or in mud, and simply refused to be drained. So men preferred the risk of a stray bullet to the certainty of liquid mud to the knees and consequent icy discomfort for twenty-four hours and more. And as for the unfortunate ration-parties and men bringing up heavy trench stores, their task was really one of frightful labour, for, for two men to cross a large and slippery muddy series of fields carrying a 100 lb. box between them was no joke. First one would slide up and skate off in one direction whilst the other did his best to hold on, generally resulting in dropping his end of the box or finding himself on the flat of his back. Then the parts would be reversed, but they always slid up in opposite directions--the mud saw to that,--and they would arrive in the trenches, after their stroll of a mile or less, absolutely exhausted and dripping with sweat. It was difficult enough, over much of the ground, to avoid slipping up even when burdened by nothing more than a walking-stick; that I know from personal experience. Yet for many weeks the men had to do this and suffer, for fascines and bricks, besides sandbags, were only just beginning to make their appearance in December; and floor-boards and gratings and gravel and trench stores and wire-netting, and revetments and planks and iron sheeting and trestles and hurdles of all sorts, did not really materialize in anything like sufficient numbers till March.

The draining of the trenches was heartbreaking. After a heavy day or two of rain the parapets would fall down in hunks into the foot of water or so in the trenches, and would churn up into liquid mud, only to be removed by large spoons, of which we had none, or buckets, of which we had but very few. It was too thick to drain off down the very, very gradual slopes which were the best we could do, and too liquid to be shovelled away; so there it would remain, and our strenuous efforts in rebuilding the parapets (for at this period we had no revetting material) would only result, a night or two later, in still further collapses.

The R.E. companies, both 17th and 59th, worked like heroes, and so particularly did the Norfolks and Bedfords; but it was most disheartening work. No sooner was one parapet fairly complete than another fell in; and when this was mended the first one would collapse again under the incessant downpour. And all this time wire entanglements had to be put up in front under hostile fire, trenches connected up and drained, support trenches dug, communication trenches improved, loopholes made, defences thickened and strengthened, saps pushed out, all under the fire of an enemy anything from 60 to 200 yards off, and always on rather higher ground than ourselves, worse luck, so that he had the whip-hand.

Soon came the period of hand grenades, in which he had six to one the best of us in numbers; and then in rifle grenades ditto ditto; and then in trench mortars, flare-lights, searchlights, and rockets--wherein we followed him feebly and at a great distance; for where he sent up 100 (say) light b.a.l.l.s at night, we could only afford five or six; and other things in proportion. Later on came the Minenwerfer, an expanded type of trench mortar, and its bomb, but up to the end of February his efforts in this direction were not very serious, though I allow that he did us more harm thereby than we him.

For our trench mortars were in an experimental stage, made locally by the R.E., and constructed of thin gas-pipe iron and home-made jam-pot bombs, whose behaviour was always erratic, and sometimes, I regret to say, fatal to the mortarist. (Poor Rogers, R.E., a capital subaltern, was killed thus, besides others, I fear.)

Our reliefs varied. Normally the Brigade was supposed to be, at first, eight days in and four days out. Then this was rapidly changed to twelve days in and six days out; then, as the 14th Brigade suggested that it should hold Neuve eglise, a quite short front, in perpetuity, whilst the 13th and 15th Brigades relieved each other alternate eight days along the long front, it was changed nominally to eight in and eight out. But it was not always possible, and our last tour lasted twenty days in and only three out.

The reliefs made one's head whirl. It was all right to start with, two battalions in the trenches (_i.e._, fire-trenches, support-trenches, and reserve-trenches), and two battalions in reserve at Dranoutre or thereabouts--four days about, each battalion, in eight-day reliefs, or three days about in twelve-day reliefs. This was simple. But when our line was lengthened to a three-battalion length it became much more difficult, especially when one battalion was much weaker than the other three. And when, eventually, the brigade was presented with a Territorial battalion of great strength but no experience, making five battalions of varying strengths to occupy a three-battalion length, whilst one could only put the Territorial one (at first) into a comparatively safe place in the line which did not fit it, then the problem of the wolf, the goat, and the cabbage faded into complete insignificance.

It was very difficult to fit everything in so that each battalion had its fair share of duty and of rest. Even with the best intentions matters did not always pan out straight, for considerations of strength, of comparative excellence, of dangerous and of safe localities, of moral, of comfortable or uncomfortable trenches, of spade-work and of a dozen other things, had to be fitted together like a Chinese puzzle.

There was a particularly dangerous and uncomfortable length which was given to the best battalion to hold. On its relief, who should hold it? the next best, who was badly wanted somewhere else, or another one weak in numbers and consequently unfit? And when the relief came again, was the best battalion always to be doomed to the worst and most dangerous trenches, merely because it _was_ the best? Hardly an incitement to good work. And when the battalions did not fit their length, were you to add or subtract a company from somebody else, or would you put some in reserve out of their turn, thereby inflicting unfair hardship on another battalion? And would you like to reinforce one battalion, in case of attack, by another battalion? or would you like to make it thin in front and deep behind, and support itself? If the other thing was necessary, how could you do it when the two battalions were accustomed to relieve their companies, internally, in different ways, when perhaps the transport of one was deficient, or one battalion preferred sandbags, whilst the other cherished hurdles, as revetting material?--for I always found that giving the commanding officer his head in such small internal matters produced the best work. It was a matter for deep study and wet towels, and there let it rest.

We had much difficulty about quarters outside the trenches, for all the farmhouses anywhere within two miles of the enemy were sh.e.l.led pretty regularly as regards quant.i.ty of explosive material devoted to them--though, as regards dates, they varied considerably. Battalion headquarters had to be dumped down in farms half shot to pieces, with all windows broken and howling icy draughts tearing through the sh.e.l.l-holed walls. If you did not like this, you could go and dig a big hole in the side of a road or a turnip-field and live in that. The reserves were always the difficulty, and so, for a long time, were even the supports. For whatever and wherever the trenches that we dug for them, the rain came steadily down and broke away the sides of the dug-outs and provided wet legs for those that sat therein. Later on, more timber being available, as well as iron sheeting, hurdles and other things, they became a good deal more weather-proof; but at first the men as well as the officers were, I fear, very uncomfortable.

In those days one could not dream of going up to or into a trench except in the dark, or, indeed, of moving about anywhere near there except at night. Nowadays one can visit all one's trenches in broad daylight, and never care a rap for the occasional bullets which whistle over the comfortable deep communication trenches; but up to the spring of 1915 it was very different almost throughout.

I used to visit the trenches every third night or so; at least I tried to, but it was not by any means always possible. It meant a three-mile ride there, putting up the horses in Wulverghem or Lindenhoek, and a walk of a mile or so to the trenches, then a mile or less along the trenches. It was lucky for you if there was any light of moon or stars to see by, and lucky if you did not go over your knees in mud in the dark. On one occasion it came down a pitchy dead blackness just as I was arriving at the trenches, so that you literally could not see your hand in front, or the road, or anything else; so I gave it up and went back. Other nights were impossible for the same reason; and occasionally the brilliance of the moon was in fault, though not often. So we had to select our nights carefully.

Johnston, V.C.,[26] R.E., was in R.E. charge of our trenches. (Poor fellow, he was killed by a sniper near St eloi on April 15.) He must have worked something like eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. For by 9 A.M. he was collecting material near Dranoutre and receiving reports, and settling his company administrative work. At 11.30 he came to see me, and we discussed and settled the ensuing night's task.

Then back to his farm to give out instructions to his sappers, and fifty other things to do before he rode out about 6 P.M. to the trenches, remaining there till 3 A.M. or even 6 A.M.--to superintend the work and struggle about in the mud all night. He never spared himself an ounce. He was occasionally so nearly dead with want of sleep that I once or twice ordered him to take a night's sleep; but he always got out of it on some pretext or other.

[Footnote 26: He had received the V.C. for a particularly plucky piece of raft work under heavy fire at Missy.]

And with it all he was as plucky as the devil--he seemed to like getting shot at. One night he got a ricochet bullet over his heart, but this only put him in a furious rage (if you can use the word about such a seeming mild person), and spent the next twenty-four hours in collecting ammunition and bombs and extra trench-mortars and firing them himself; this seemed to soothe him. He was a wonderful fellow all round, always full of expedients and never disheartened by the cruel collapse of all his plans caused by the wet weather; and if there was a dangerous piece of work on hand, he was always first in giving the lead. One very nasty place on the left there was which was commanded by the enemy at short range, yet we could not dig in it, as the water was only a foot below the ground, and breastworks there were practically impossible; yet if the enemy had seized this bit they would have enfiladed the rest of the line; why they did not do so I do not know. He was always pressing me to attack the Germans at this point and seize a bit of false crest that they held; but my better judgment was against it, as, if we had taken the bit, we should have been commanded there from three sides instead of one, and could not have held it for half an hour. I know Johnston's private opinion of me in this matter was that I was a funk, but he was too polite to say so.

After I left, the following Brigade not only did not attack the point, but fell back some distance here, "on its own"; and I am sure they were right.

Poor Johnston--he became Brigade-Major after Weatherby left for the 5th Divisional Staff (some time in April 1915, I think), and, as I remarked, was killed shortly afterwards. His death was a very heavy loss to the Brigade.

At Dranoutre we--that is, the Brigade staff--lived in a perpetual atmosphere of mud and draughts. The Cure's house was very small and very dirty, and was not improved by the pounds of mud which every one brought in on his boots at all hours of the day and left on our best drugget--a cheap, thin thing which I bought in Bailleul (they had not such a thing as a carpet in the whole town) wherewith to cover the nakedness of the brick floor of the one tiny room in which we all worked and ate.

Weatherby and I slept in the house, and the others were billeted outside, but the quarters were none of them more than pa.s.sable--poor villagers' rooms, with a frowzy though comfortable bed, a rickety washhand-stand, if you were lucky (I did not even have that), no carpet on the dirty wooden floor, and one small hard-backed chair, generally minus a portion of a leg; never any chest of drawers or anywhere to put your things, as if there by any chance was such a thing in the room, it was sure to be full of the inhabitants' rusty old black clothes and dirty blue flannel shirts, and petticoats, thick and musty, by the ton,--I never saw so many petticoats per inhabitant.

Our mess had only had one change since the beginning of the war, and that was in the signal officer. Cadell had gone sick in November, and Miles had replaced him in December. For about a month, including all the period at Ypres, we had had no signal officer (except Naylor for two days), nor any Brigade-Major from about the 12th November (at Ypres) till the beginning of December; so Sergeant King, a first-rate signaller, though not the senior, had carried on for Cadell, and Moulton-Barrett had added the duties of Brigade-Major to his own. But by the middle of December we were complete again. Weatherby had returned from his sick leave, and Miles, of the K.O.S.B.'s, was now signalling officer. A quite excellent one he was, too--very silent, always an hour or two late for dinner (owing to strenuous night work), never asking questions, but always doing things before they were even suggested, and very thoroughly at that; he was a great acquisition.

Moulton-Barrett was still Staff Captain--very hard-working and conscientious, and very thorough; Weatherby was still Brigade-Major--keen and resourceful; Beilby was still veterinary officer--capable and helpful; and St Andre was still interpreter and billeting officer--cheerful and most willing. His duties were mostly to investigate the numerous cases of natives who wanted to go somewhere or do something--generally to fetch their cows off a sh.e.l.l-swept field, or to rescue their furniture from a burnt village, or to fetch or buy something from Bailleul--and recommend them (or otherwise) to me for pa.s.ses--a most trying duty, wearing to the temper; but he was angelic in patience, and, as a light recreation, used to accompany me to the trenches fairly often.

One case there was where, for three nights running, great fids of wire were cut out of some artillery cables connecting them with their observers--a most reprehensible deed. So I had patrols out to spy along the lines,--no result, except that next morning another 100 yards had gone. So I made St Andre publish a blood-and-thunder proclamation threatening death to any one found tampering with our wires. Spies were plentiful, and a gap in our wires might be fatal.

And then the culprit owned up. It was an old woman near whose cottage the wires pa.s.sed, and her fences required mending.

Neuve eglise, which we inhabited for a fortnight or more, and where we spent Xmas Day, was a good cut above Dranoutre. Except for the first three days, when we lived with a doctor,--and his stove smoked frightfully till we discovered a dead starling in the pipe,--we dwelt in exceeding comfort, comparatively speaking. It was a brewer's house, about the biggest in the village--which was three times the size of Dranoutre,--with real furniture in it, a real dining-room (horribly cold, as the stove refused to work), and a most comfortable series of highly civilized bedrooms. (Last time I was in the neighbourhood--August 1915--there was long gra.s.s in the streets, not a soul in the place, half the houses in absolute ruins, and our late quarters with one side missing and three parts of the house as well.) The trenches were much less pestered with sh.e.l.ls and bullets than the Dranoutre lot, and it was easier work altogether for the men. We quite enjoyed it, and on Xmas Day so did the Germans. For they came out of their trenches and walked across unarmed, with boxes of cigars and seasonable remarks.

What were our men to do? Shoot? You could not shoot unarmed men. Let them come? You could not let them come into your trenches; so the only thing feasible at the moment was done--and some of our men met them halfway and began talking to them.

We got into trouble for doing it. But, after all, it is difficult to see what we could otherwise have done, unless we shot the very first unarmed man who showed himself--_pour encourager les autres_; but we did not know what he was going to do. Meanwhile our officers got excellent close views of the German trenches, and we profited accordingly; the Boche did not, for he was not allowed close enough to ours.

Which reminds me that on one occasion, when going round the trenches, I asked a man whether he had had any shots at the Germans. He responded that there was an elderly gentleman with a bald head and a long beard who often showed himself over the parapet.

"Well, why didn't you shoot him?"

"Shoot him?" said the man; "why, Lor' bless you, sir, 'e's never done _me_ no 'arm!" A case of "live and let live," which is certainly not to be encouraged. But cold-blooded murder is never popular with our men.

Talking of anecdotes, and the trend of our men's minds, I heard that on another occasion a groom, an otherwise excellent creature, wrote home to his "girl" thus: "Me and the master rode out to the trenches last night. We was attacked by a strong German patrol. I nips off me horse, pulls out my rifle and shoots two of them, and the rest bolted." Not a single atom of truth in the story, except that he was nestling in a warm stable at an advanced village, whilst his master was shivering in the mud of the trenches that night.

Another gem was a statement by a Transport officer's servant that he had shot 1200 Germans himself with a machine-gun. This was a man who, I verily believe, had never even been within earshot of a gun, much less seen a German, his duties being exclusively several miles in rear of the firing line. And, being a civilian up till quite recently, I am sure he did not know the muzzle of a maxim from its breech.

During our tours in "Divisional reserve" we generally spent the time in St Jan's Cappel (already described) or Bailleul. The latter town, with its rather quaint old brick fourteenth-century church, porched _a la_ Louis Quinze, was tolerable rather than admirable. Nothing of civil interest, and hardly anything to buy except magnificent grapes from the "Grapperies," even in November. We housed a battalion or more in the man's series of greenhouses, and he responded--after several more battalions had been quartered there--with a claim for 2,000,000 francs. He could not prove that a single pane of gla.s.s or any of his vines had been broken, nor any grapes stolen, for indeed they had not been, but he based his claim on the damage done to them by tobacco smoke (which I always thought was particularly good for them), and by the report of the big guns, which shattered the vines'

nerves so that he was sure they would not produce again (also a fallacy, for I had some more excellent grapes there nearly a year afterwards--September '15). I did not hear what compensation he got, but he would have been lucky to get 20 francs.

I once went into a poorly furnished watchmaker's shop, but the lady there could do nothing for my watch. She told me that, being an optician in a small way as well, she had had a whole stock of spectacles and gla.s.ses. When the Germans came through the town in October, they demanded fieldgla.s.ses. The few ones she had they stole, and then because she had no more they stole her watchmaker's tools, and swept all the spectacles and gla.s.ses and watches on to the floor and stamped them to powder.

There is really little more to relate about our time at Dranoutre and neighbourhood. It was a time of a certain amount of nerve-strain, for we all knew that our trenches were by no means perfect, and that if the enemy did attack us we should have great difficulty in bringing up reserves in time to beat them off; for we could not keep them under cover within decent range--there were no billets or houses,--and if we dug trenches for them they were not only exposed to the enemy's sh.e.l.l fire but were certain to be half full of water in two days; whilst we could not get anything like enough trench stores and timber, and what we did get we had enormous difficulty in bringing up to the trenches.

During all this time the artillery helped us all they knew, and were extremely well run, first by Ballard, then Saunders, and then Sandys, as Brigade Commanders. But they were badly handicapped by want of sh.e.l.ls, especially howitzer high explosives, and we had to suffer a great deal of sh.e.l.l fire without returning it.

We used to average about four casualties a day in each battalion, say fifteen to twenty a day in the Brigade, which made a big hole in the strengths. Officers were always getting killed--often, alas, their own fault, through excess of zeal; and men used perpetually to lose their lives through getting out of the trenches in order to stretch their half-frozen limbs. Sickness was, strange to say, almost negligible.

There were far more cases of arthritis and other things due to cold wet feet than anything else; and the men were extraordinarily healthy, comparatively speaking, considering the desperately uncomfortable hard life.

General Morland was, of course, commanding the Division during this time, and used to come nearly every morning in his car to see us; also Sir C. Fergusson, now Corps Commander, often came.

But during the whole of that winter there was very little for the higher commands to do, except to collect and send up material for the trenches, and to try and keep pace with the German developments--for we could do little or nothing in the way of offensive action.

I tried to get the thing neatly organised, as to stores and times and amounts and transport for taking the things up to the trenches; but it was very difficult, as sometimes there were no engineer stores to be had, or the wires got broken by sh.e.l.l fire and took a long time to repair, or it was more urgent to bring up rations or water or ammunition, and the requisite transport for all was not available. But all the same, the trenches gradually improved.