by Bill Lamin
Plumer’s troops stopped at the Messines Ridge. Progressing beyond the initial objective would have been suicidal and was only briefly considered by the General Staff. For more than seven weeks, the trenches on the ridge were modified and ‘turned around’ to defend against attacks from the east. Fresh wire entanglements were put in place and the supporting infrastructure, artillery and logistical support were moved forward to reflect the position of the new front line.
There was, however, a body of opinion which held that it might have been better to have continued with the momentum from that first attack and immediately pressed on while the Germans were in disarray, with their morale badly dented. It was realized, however, that the problems associated with a rapid advance might have brought disaster, perhaps even leading to the loss of any gains made so far.
After the success of Messines, the troops were in the ‘hold’ phase of the ‘bite-and-hold’ operation. Plumer had asked for a two-week delay before the next phase of the offensive east of Ypres in order to consolidate the positions. Haig gave responsibility for the next operation to Lieutenant-General Sir Hubert Gough and his Fifth Army (which, until October 1916, had been the Reserve Army). The transfer of troops and logistics stretched the requested two-week pause to nearly eight weeks.
All was in place on 31 July when the new offensive started. Field-Marshal Haig, determined to build on the success of the Battle of Messines by driving the Germans from the Ypres sector altogether, had set the final objective as the small village of Passchendaele, about seven miles (11km) east-north-east of Ypres. And then it started to rain.
It is, I think, sensible to insert a short interlude here, to try to show the tactical rationale behind the Battle of Passchendaele, or, to give it its proper name, the Third Battle of Ypres. The village of Passchendaele (Passendal) was of no great military significance in itself, but it stands on the slightly higher ground to the north-east of Ypres. Once it was taken, and apart from the advantages of having driven the enemy from the high ground that overlooked the Salient, there would be the enormous psychological boost of being able to see beyond the battlefields, across the green unspoiled plains of Belgium. Haig also hoped that if he broke through the German lines here, he could wheel left towards the Channel ports, disrupt the German U-boat operations from captured bases in Belgium, and change the course of the war in the Allies’ favour. Not for the first time in that war, the mentality that considered that one more costly sacrifice would prove decisive came into play.
The battle itself, which lasted from 31 July to 10 November, actually consisted of a series of linked offensives, each one designed to wrest another piece of territory from the Germans. Messines was the precursor action that secured the high ground to the south and south-east of Ypres, and it was followed by the Battles of Pilckem Ridge, Langemarck, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle, and the First and Second Battles of Passchendaele. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides died, and the very name ‘Passchendaele’ became a byword for the senseless waste of human life in a ruined landscape of mud and shell holes.
A post-Great War map showing the stages and gains of the Third Battle of Ypres, culminating with the capture of Passchendaele, July–November 1917.
This period must have been a strange interval for the battalion. In late June, and during July and August, the 9th York and Lancasters saw little of the intense action that was continuing on the Ypres battlefield. The war diary gives an account of a unit moving from location to location behind the front line. They used the training areas and rifle ranges and, evidently, parade grounds. They marched, or were transported by lorries and trains. They stayed in billets, in tents and, at times, slept in the open.
Harry’s story resumes on 10 June 1917, at the rest camp known as Scottish Lines, a relatively safe location about six miles (10km) behind the front lines.
The stay in ‘the Lines’ was only for a couple of days. On the 12th they had a short march to nearby Meteren, another hutted camp. Also about six miles behind the front line, Meteren at this time was a dedicated training area, with all the normal facilities – rifle ranges, assault courses and parade grounds, and for the next two weeks the battalion made good use of them. This was a rare opportunity to settle in and establish a comfortable billet. Captain A. W. Sykes, whom we will come across later, joined the battalion.
The end of June brings a chilling reminder of the reality of warfare. For the last four days of the month the 9th were back in the line at a location known as Hedge Street. The war diary simply indicates the location, relative to the line, of each of the four companies (Harry’s C Company is in reserve.) An entry from that period concludes with: ‘Situation normal. Casualties, officers – 2 officers killed, one wounded. O.R. 2 killed, 1 died of wounds, 12 wounded.’ There is no mention of any raid or attack, by either side. ‘Situation normal’ – this was, simply, the casualty rate for four days in the front line. Casualties might result from shelling, sniper fire or maybe as a result of patrols or working parties venturing into no man’s land. Harry will make a brief mention of these working parties in a letter to Kate in mid-July: ‘we have had a rough time this last week or two going on working parties at night.’ Clearly, being on one of these details was not a happy occupation.
Out of the line early in July, the battalion moved back to another training camp known as Micmac (the name of a Native American tribe), close to the modern village of Dikkebus (Dickebusch to the British in 1917), for more training and some reorganization. More than 260 new soldiers joined the battalion, replacing most of the 280 or so casualties incurred at Messines. Rugeley and the other training camps at home were delivering the goods.
There were occasional breaks in the routine of military life, as the war diary entry records, although the routine was soon re-established:
July 3rd-5th Bn at MICMAC camp. On the 4th inst. H.M. the King passed HALLEBAST CORNER at about 9.15 am. The Bn collected informally by the roadside to cheer the King.
B Coy and 85 ORs of C Coy proceeded to Battersea Farm on the 4th for work in the line for 2 days.
This location in the village of Zillebeke, about a mile (1.6km) from the front line, would have been as close to the trenches as the King’s advisers would have allowed him to go. When first I came across this entry in the war diary I was surprised that Harry hadn’t mentioned the event in one of his letters. He would surely have remembered seeing King George V and been keen to tell about it. But a more careful reading of the entry explains what must have happened. Harry missed the King because he was sent off to work in the line with most of C and all of B Company. Battersea Farm would have been quite familiar territory, less than a mile from the starting point for the Messines Ridge attack.
Harry sent a couple of letters to sister Kate in July, and then they simply stopped for quite a while. Some followers of the blog became quite concerned that he might have met with misfortune.
July 6 1917
Dear Kate
I have received your letter was very pleased with it. I have received some nice letters from Jack he seems in very good health only very busy. Letters are very nice out here. Don’t send any cigs we get plenty out here you could send chocolate or biscuits anything to eat. envelopes about half a dozen. Ethel tells me Willie gets [is becoming] a rum chap always running away and getting into things. Write back as soon as you receive this letter. Address 32507, 9th Batt York and Lancs C company L. G. Section 12 Platoon BEF France. I think this is all just now will write again soon
yours truly
Harry
On the following day, the war diary records: ‘7th July The Bn less Bn HQ moved to the line on the night of 10/11th to work under supervision of the R.E.s [Royal Engineers] completing the work on the night of 12/13th.’ For troops on the Western Front, a normal part of active service was to provide the labour for developing, strengthening or repairing the trench system. The soldiers would move up through the communication trenches to the front line (and sometimes be
yond), work through the night as instructed by the Royal Engineers, and return before the dawn ‘hate’. As has been said, for obvious reasons most activities in and about the trenches took place at night.
War diary, 14 July: ‘The Battalion moved to billets in the STEENVOORDE area by motor lorry arriving in billets about 5 p.m.’ Steenvoorde is about fifteen miles (24km) from the front line. Despite its Flemish-sounding name, it lies just over the border in France, a couple of miles west of Boescheppe, and, being so far from the fighting, would have been a haven after the last few weeks spent in and just behind the front line. There, the sound of the guns would have been only a distant rumble. On arriving, Harry wrote another letter to Kate.
July 14/1917
Dear Kate
I have received your parcel it came in very nice. we were just getting ready to move when I got it, we went in lorries so I did not have to carry it far I can tell you there was not much left as me and my pals were short and we could not get anything where we landed. It is a country place a few miles behind the firing line. The weather is lovely, we are all enjoying the ride. I’m in good health but we have had a rough time this last week or two going on working parties at night digging trenches and one thing and another. One night we were between our lines and the Germans but we all came out alright. It’s a bit rough but it might be worse. My address is the same. Will write again soon. Glad to hear they are all right at home.
Yours truly
Harry
Evidently, the parcel contained some welcome food.
After that cheerful note to Kate there were no more letters from Harry until September. This led me to believe that he had been allowed leave at some time between the middle of July and the start of September. I had no ‘hard’ evidence, however, and it wasn’t mentioned in any letter. But the circumstantial evidence was quite strong. In theory, soldiers were entitled to two weeks’ leave each year. When and if it actually happened was something of a lottery, though, and very much depended upon the operational demands and the administrative efficiency of a soldier’s unit.
For the rest of July, through August and into September, the battalion tramped around Flanders from billet to billet. There were short periods supporting the line, but mainly there was training, drill, and more drill and training. Soldiering in the Great War, as all soldiering, would seem to have consisted of short intervals of unbelievable terror separated by periods of utter boredom and pointless movement.
At this point we can pause to celebrate Harry’s thirtieth birthday on 28 August 1917. The card from Willie and Connie (in Ethel’s handwriting) is impressive, but it raised some real concerns when I came across it. It could hardly have survived the battlefield, or even just the general wear and tear of active service, in such excellent condition. On the other hand, if Harry was, as I then believed, home on leave at around the time of his birthday, he might have been given the card and then left it with Ethel for safekeeping when his leave ended and he returned to the front. This was, I thought, a reasonable theory, and would explain how the card came to survive. But it simply wasn’t true. I later found out that Harry did not have any leave in the summer of 1917.
Harry’s thirtieth-birthday card from Connie and Willie, August 1917.
In the entire ninety-six days from 10 June to 15 September, the 9th Battalion, the York and Lancaster Regiment spent sixty-seven days ‘housekeeping’ and training, fourteen days moving – either marching or by lorry, four days allocated as rest days, and only ten days in the line or in direct support. In addition, on several nights some men of the battalion, including Harry, were allocated to working parties and sent forward to the front line, and sometimes into no man’s land, to improve the defences or to patrol. These were unpleasant and dangerous jobs, as Harry mentions in his letter to Kate of 14 July.
We cannot learn too much from the two letters written in this period. Harry spent a few days in the line. He spent some time in reserve and some far behind the lines. He was sent forward to work on the trenches. These are bald facts – his letters, being so infrequent, are not helpful in fleshing out his story. Yet, reading the letters in conjunction with the war diary entries, it has proved possible to get some sort of picture of his experiences.
Meanwhile, as Harry and his battalion were tramping around Western Flanders, the war continued. Specifically, in the Ypres sector it continued with a battle that ranks with the Somme as a byword for the horrors of the fighting on the Western Front: Passchendaele...
Throughout August and September 1917, the Third Battle of Ypres, usually referred to as Passchendaele, was in full flow. The main offensives in August took place to the east and north-east of the city of Ypres. The focus of the attack – or rather, series of attacks – was along a line that can be traced running eastwards through the modern locations of Pilkem, Langemark, Poelkappelle and Passendale. For the time being, however, Harry’s battalion was spared. During this period, the 9th York and Lancasters were with the rest of Second Army in the sector to the south of the city, and therefore not engaged in the major offensives.
July had been a fine month. The good weather meant that preparations for the next phase, the next assault in Haig’s plan, were able to continue. On the 16th an intense bombardment of the enemy lines to the north of Ypres started up. The shelling focused on a small rise known as Pilckem (Pilkem) Ridge, about three miles (5km) north of Ypres. In the next two weeks, the British guns fired over 4 million shells. (To get an idea of the scale of the bombardment, that works out at an almost unimaginable average of more than three shells every second for fourteen days and nights.)
The aim, of course, was to destroy the German defences in preparation for the assault. Yet once again the deep, well-prepared, strongly built and well-stocked dugouts effectively protected most of the defenders. Worse for the attackers, the Germans had developed the use of mutually supporting, machine-gun equipped pillboxes. The bombardment proved unable to destroy them, any more than it could destroy barbed-wire entanglements.
All was set for the offensive to begin on 31 July, and at 3.50 that morning the attack on Pilckem Ridge duly got under way. The weather had changed dramatically since Messines, however. From the start, fortune certainly did not favour the Allied attackers. Dawn on the 31st brought torrential rain that continued without respite for the next four days. The rain was to play a major role in the campaign, for what lay ahead, although no one yet knew it, was the wettest August-to-November period in that part of Flanders on record. The delay after Messines, from two weeks to seven, was to prove critical.
A significant by-product of the intense shelling and the rain – indeed, a significant factor in the battle – was the mud. (When I wrote earlier that the battle was in ‘full flow’, I used the wrong words. This battle did very little ‘flowing’. The mud made almost any progress virtually impossible.) The ancient drainage systems of the area, some of them natural and some dating back to the Middle Ages, had been badly affected, and often destroyed, by the shelling, with the result that the whole battlefield, which was originally drained marshland, became a quagmire. Losses through this period mounted steadily, not just to enemy action. Untold numbers of men, unable to escape the mud through wounds or the enormous weight of equipment, simply sank into the morass and drowned. Many were never found. Men, horses, mules, field guns, limbers, wagons, lorries – the mud claimed victims wherever there was no solid footing.
Yet despite the rain and the mud, and the intact defences, the first day saw most objectives taken, although at a heavy cost. The Allies incurred 15,000 casualties on the first day, a figure that had risen to around 32,000 by 2 August (with twelve VCs being won), for a gain of about one and a quarter to two miles (2–3kms). Against such losses, the capacity of the Rugeley training camp, 12,500 men, begins to seem quite modest.
On 1 August, the London Times reported:
Both British and French troops gained further ground today along their new front in Belgium, in spite of the heavy rain, which, falling sin
ce early yesterday afternoon, has turned the battlefield into a sea of mud and rendered major operations impossible.
The famous picture included here, taken on the same day as The Times’s report, shows a stretcher party struggling through the mud. Seven men to carry a single casualty, where normally two stretcher-bearers would suffice.
A single stretcher carried by seven men, one of the enduring images of the Great War. The soldier nearest the camera is wearing shorts, mentioned by Harry in a letter.
The rain continued, the conditions worsened and the attack, after the first two days, ground to a halt. Yet despite these problems, the enormous losses and the serious doubts expressed by his staff, Haig steadfastly insisted that the operation should continue until the objectives were met. He even ignored General Gough’s plea that operations in the conditions were impossible. For ever the optimist, Haig believed that the major breakthrough was always imminent.
CHAPTER 6
MID-SEPTEMBER 1917 ONWARDS
THE PACE OF WAR SHIFTED noticeably for Harry’s battalion. From the middle of September 1917, the lead role in the Passchendaele offensive passed from the Fifth Army to General Plumer’s Second Army. Harry’s battalion was in the 23rd Division, part of that army. The troops who had ‘enjoyed’ such success at Messines Ridge moved into the line. Plumer’s offensive started on 20 September. We can follow the war diary entries and Harry’s letters to get a picture of the reality of those events for the ordinary soldier.
On the 23rd Harry wrote to Jack:
September 23rd 1917.
Dear Jack
I have received your letter and I got the cigs alright. You did not mention about the mug you had got for Willie it will be very nice. I will tell Ethel he has to use it. The raid you read about in the papers was made by our Battalion. B Coy went over and we, no 12 platoon C Coy stood to [i.e. in support, if needed]. It was made to get a prisoner or two, to get information which they did, they lost one man and two wounded, it happened about five one morning. I got a slight wound in the face with shrapnel but not much it is alright now, I did not go to the doctor. There as been a big advance this last day or two but I have been left out. We get left out in turns. we are expecting our Coy out tonight. We have some rough times out here but I think the Germans have it rougher. We have to make the best of it. I should be glad when it is all over. John Bull watched us march past just over a week ago on our way to the trenches. I think we were the best batt in the Brigade, well in the division. I am pleased you’re keeping well and that they are keeping well at home. The rations have been very low lately, four and five to a loaf and small loaves too, that is the days bread. Write back as soon as possible, I’m always pleased to get a letter from you. Kate keeps sending me small parcels which come is very nice, I hope she gets on alright at her fresh situation. I’m just going to write to Ethel.