Blood and Thunder

by Alexandra J Churchill

  The BEF had continued to expand rapidly with the arrival of Kitchener’s recruits and by autumn it held a line from the Ypres area down over the French border to Lens. A large-scale battle had been in planning since the beginning of the summer but where the British would play their part was a contentious issue. The French intended to make a large push in Artois and Champagne. They therefore wanted their allies to push just on the north of their lines. Unfortunately this area, around Lens itself, was appalling as a potential battlefield. It was flat, dreary mining territory littered with houses, giant slag heaps and pit heads. The British still wanted to pursue the Lille objective but ultimately the government line had to be toed, and that was, in the end, an order to co-operate fully with the French.

  Knowing that they were attacking in a spot that was far from ideal did not put the breakers on Haig’s enthusiasm. The BEF was by now split into two armies and it was his that would undertake this main offensive. They were to push over the area around the town of Loos and advance 5 miles, taking what had been dubbed Hill 70, to the east of the town. Bursting through the German lines they would create a gap to pour into, flood behind the German lines and send them running for their lives.

  The planning was awful. There were no stages to the advance. It was a free-for-all that lacked artillery, men and experienced officers.The attack was due to begin at dawn on 25 September with a forty-minute release of gas followed by the boldest British advance of the war so far, despite the fact that the big French offensive it was originally supposed to be a subsidiary of had now drifted off miles to the south. Unit commanders had been given objectives but generally vague orders, so remained unsure of how they were supposed to achieve them. Just to crown the ludicrous situation that senior officers and battalion commanders now found themselves in, the Germans were dug in in strong lines of defence with many machine guns lined up ready to rip through the attackers.

  Yvo Charteris left Stanway on 16 March 1915, had his portrait taken and delivered himself to Sheerness. It was his first time out in the real world proper and he promptly bought a large motorcycle over which he had no control whatsoever. His mother referred to it as ‘that infernal machine’ with due cause. He had never so much as sat on one before and now he was excitedly running amok on the Isle of Sheppey, his golden hair blowing in the wind, and running an unfortunate rifleman off the road. ‘However, saluting from the dust he apologised profusely, thus showing the glorious spirit of discipline that pervades the British Army and will eventually bring the Kaiser to the doom he deserves,’ Yvo reported cheerfully.

  Lord Wemyss soon decided that he would much rather his young son served in the Grenadier Guards. Yvo was not entirely happy in the King’s Royal Rifles anyway. His mother thought it was more to do with being so far away from all of his friends and family for the first time. There was a chance he might be viewed as fickle by colleagues but he wasn’t too bothered. In actual fact he thought he would much prefer the Grenadiers, who were based in London. He left it to his father to work out. ‘I should like papa to take the responsibility as no one could mind his asking.’ Yvo did have a ‘most awful fit of indecision’ as it all went through. As casualty lists poured back from the front necessitating officers being sent out to the King’s Royal Rifle battalions he asked his mother for advice; but the countess felt ‘so lacking in conviction, or the knowledge or the power to judge’ that she abstained from getting involved.

  Robin Blacker had made the journey away from his rifle regiment too. When the 8th Rifle Brigade left for France in May 1915 he was still 17 and they had enough officers to be able to leave him behind. The simple logistical fact was that the regiment had so many battalions that he could find himself waiting for some time to be sent out to replace a casualty. He received a letter from an Eton friend, Willie Edmonstone, who pointed out that the Guards regiments had far less battalions. Thus it stood to reason that if he transferred to join him in the Coldstream Guards he had a far better chance of getting to the front. That was all the convincing that Robin needed and he was off back to Windsor with new insignia on his uniform. Not only did Robin Blacker take Willie Edmonstone’s advice and transfer the to the Coldstream Guards at Windsor, but he had convinced Pip to try to do the same. The elder of the two brothers had been considering forsaking the idea of the Devonshire Regiment in favour of one that was a little less choosy but in the end it was one of the old Eton masters who facilitated his way to a commission in the army. Mr Conybeare pointed him towards a ‘broad-minded’ doctor who Pip was sure had purposely set up his waiting room in front of the eye chart so that, with his glasses on, he might memorise the letters before his eyes were ‘tested’.

  One morning at the beginning of August, Pip returned to the room that they were sharing at the White Hart Hotel opposite Windsor Castle to find Robin in a complete state. The news of the 8th Rifle Brigade’s plight at Hooge had reached him. ‘Torn by grief and frustration,’ Robin learned of the deaths of his former friends and men. And he had transferred, so he would not be able to replace them. What if Foss, Sheep and the others thought that he had moved to ‘shirk’ the fighting? He wanted to go back to the Rifle Brigade. The authorities forbade a second transfer but Robin, aged 18 years and 2 months, managed to get his move to the front expedited. Their father begrudgingly signed a letter of permission and on 26 August, having been marked for the 1st Coldstream Guards, he waved goodbye to Pip. His elder brother returned to the White Hart and got out his diary. ‘I put the chances four in ten that I never see him again.’

  The day after Hooge, Yvo Charteris bid farewell to Stanway and went for a walk there with his mother. His hands were deep in his pockets. They walked largely in silence, ‘charged with deep emotion and thoughts beyond all words’. Soon afterwards, she watched him sleeping in front of her on the train as he returned to London for the last time, laid out across the seats opposite. She was overcome with fear at a vision of his cold, dead body laid out in a similar manner.

  All of the Guards regiments had been pulled back to St Omer to form their own specific division. Lord Cavan had been at home with his sick wife when word reached him that it was to be his. Yvo was all calmness and serenity as he boarded the train to join them. As he did so he took a small embellishment from his uniform out of his pocket and pressed it into his mother’s hand. As the train moved slowly away from the platform at Charing Cross his travelling companions crowded the window and the last glimpse that the Countess of Wemyss got of her boy was him leaping above them to see her.

  By the third week of August Yvo had found his way to his battalion, the 1st Grenadier Guards, where he was beginning to feel at home. The new Guards Division was marking time, playing drunken games of ‘hunt the slipper’ and throwing Perrier water at one another. Yvo came away from one gathering with the remnants of a pigeon egg on his forehead. The guns rumbled low in the far distance ‘like distant breakers’ reminding them of what lay in store.

  At 6.30 a.m. on 25 September, after spraying gas and wafting a smoke screen not wholly effectively towards the German lines, the first waves of British troops went over the top at Loos and streamed eastwards. Fighting was fierce all morning and success varied. Generally things went better in the southern part of the attack but the difference in how individual commanders had planned, interpreted and carried out their orders was telling. To the north, back towards La Bassee, some troops got absolutely nowhere whilst others got bogged down heavily after initial gains.

  By mid morning, Haig’s army had had the best of the success that it was going to encounter that day. The decisive break had not been made and what was needed now was quick exploitation of the gains to be able to push on. But the errors and failings of attacks earlier in the year came back to haunt them. Communications had fallen apart and therefore the artillery support was failing because it lacked information while the organisation of the troops in reserve that were supposed to be brought up was dire. They had broken in, but breaking out the other side and having the Germans t
urn and run for the border was going to be an entirely different story.

  William Winterton was another Etonian who had done his very best to try to get to the front as swiftly as possible. Born in January 1896 he was 19 years old, his recently widowed mother’s eldest son. He had arrived at Heygate’s house in 1909 and appeared to have it all. He was a talented athlete, oarsman, footballer and a cadet officer in the OTC. Whilst not a genius academically his scholarly qualities were sound. He worked hard, but he was most memorable to the younger boys he had left behind for a selfless attitude and his ‘indefatigable efforts’ to support them as they made their way through the school.

  William had been nominally attached to the Royal Berkshire Regiment in 1914 but when he left Eton at the same time as Robin Blacker and Yvo Charteris, he had opted to take a commission in the 11th Royal Scots. In May 1915 the SS Invicta carried the battalion to war and by the time the Battle of Loos commenced on 25 September they were in the thick of it. They had been working day and night under the watchful gaze of the Germans, digging additional trenches, improving communications and lugging stores to various dumps. The digging they hated, but it beat hands down carrying heavy stores through muddy, slippery trenches. Worst of all though was transporting the gas cylinders to the front lines by hand. The weight was not the concern, it was ‘the nerve wracking fear’ that a chance shell might explode nearby and set one off, resulting in horrifying death for the whole party.

  William’s battalion were in support on the first morning of the attack. The Highlanders in front of them had carried the advance forward towards the village of Haisnes through the pit head known as Fosse 8 and the forbidding Hohenzollern Redoubt. They had then begun pouring eastwards towards the next objective: Pekin Trench.

  All the while the 11th Royal Scots had been moving up towards the forward trenches. At dawn on that miserable soggy day, twenty minutes before the gas was due to go off, they began their struggle to reach the front lines. The instant the battle commenced the communication trenches leading to the scene of the fight were crammed with howling, bleeding men and parties carrying supplies up. William and his men had been scheduled to occupy these lines as soon as the Highlanders in front left them but in the reality of the battle the plan evaporated.

  It was illustrative of problems occurring all over the battlefield. It was a nightmare. Not only was William’s battalion exhausted by the halts they were compelled to make every few minutes, but constant shell fire decimated their ranks. By 8.a.m. they still hadn’t made it up the communication trench and their commanding officer began to panic that the 12th Royal Scots to their left would have gone out over the top on their own without support. The attack on William’s flank had collapsed so that in their way were all of the surviving men who had been part of that failed advance. Their approach was completely disrupted and eventually they were forced to turn off into another trench at about 9.30 where they finally managed to make some headway, but only after a battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stopped to let them pass.

  Already thoroughly spent, as soon as they set foot into no-man’s-land William and his company came under a deluge of bullets from the high ground to the left that their compatriots had failed to secure. The Germans on the rise were free to rake the ranks of the Royal Scots with bullets so that ‘every few yards of progress were purchased by a mounting list of dead and wounded’.

  At about 11.a.m. the two battalions of Royal Scots formed a single line with what was left of their ranks and finally reached Pekin Trench where they ran into the back of the Highlanders who had made the initial advance. The men had marched for five hours just to begin advancing and now they were faced with lines of Germans who had gathered themselves after the first push and were sending up reserves for a counter-attack. William’s battalion tried to creep forward in small groups, each of them providing covering fire for the other. With no artillery support; for they had no information as to what was occurring in front of them, the superior German numbers held them at bay as the rain began cascading down. The slightest movement brought on more enemy fire and in the end, cold, wet and famished, realising that no support was forthcoming, they withdrew to Pekin Trench with their rifles so clogged with mud that they would no longer fire.

  The 11th Royal Scots were in such disarray that they could not even fathom what had become of their commanding officer. William Winterton was amongst those that simply vanished into the mud. A major evacuated to a London hospital confirmed that he was wounded, but that was as much as was known. It was not until 1916 that two men who had ended up injured in the Boulogne area were able to shed just a little light on what had happened to the teenager. One recalled that he had been one of those who picked up an early wound when they first attempted to go over the top and that William had turned to the corporal next to him and said, ‘Am I not going to have a shot at these beggars?’ The corporal said that he had been the first officer to fall when they went charging towards the German lines, which suggested that William had been able to get on his feet and at least attempt to advance. The two could not agree though, on whether he had been struck down by machine-gun fire or a shell.

  William had penned a letter home in August as soon as he found out that he was leaving for the front. ‘Dear People,’ he began, ‘I am not going to make a will as I am not of age.’ If he was to ‘kick the bucket’ then he left them to ensure that anyone who wanted one should have a little memento of him. At 19 he had little to give save for all of the photographs of his ‘chums’, which he wanted his sister to have. His younger brother Frank was to have the rest. His body lost, all that remained of William Winterton were his sports’ trophies, his school photographs and his watch chain.

  As darkness fell on 25 September the British were exhausted, freezing and soaking wet. The night brought counter-attacks from the no-longer ruffled Germans, who had brought up their reserves and trained their machine guns on the British troops before they could take advantage of any advance. The initial bombardment had failed, leaving strong defences unscathed. Men were ill informed and unaware as to what they were supposed to be doing and how they should do it and things were not about to get any better.

  Problems with communications, the impotence of the artillery and the shocking planning of the day before all repeated themselves at horrific cost. At nightfall on 26 September it had become clear that Haig’s ambitious plans were in ruins. They had not even taken the German second-line positions and in certain areas the hold that they had achieved was getting weaker by the second. All the Germans had to do was remain organised and sit and watch the farcical tragedy being played out in front of them.

  The Guards contingent, including Yvo Charteris and Robin Blacker, had been marching towards the battlefield for days. On 23 September they marched off through a moonlit night, tired-looking locals lining the road outside their cottages, silently watching them pass.The following day Robin was summoned, as his battalion’s bombing officer to a conference where they were given an outline of the offensive that was to come. In the background the preliminary bombardment, ‘a continuous roar’, rumbled on.

  On Friday 25 September, as the first assault began, the Guards wound up a rain-soaked march and collapsed to try to rest. By lunchtime though, they had been given an hour’s notice and warned that there might be no food for thirty-six hours. If the attack was successful, and there was every indication that so far it was, then they would be going through the gap punched in the German lines. At 2 p.m. they moved off again and marched for seven and a half hours in the pouring rain. On their way they passed wounded men being ferried back from the front in motor-ambulances. Their spirits were buoyed though as they stopped to let several cavalry contingents overtake them; surely that pointed to a real advance?

  There were continual checks on the road, and Yvo was exhausted by the time that they reached a village named Houchain. It was ‘seething’ with troops, and after much bad language and hollering he managed to find some sheds full of straw fo
r his men to use as shelter from the downpour. Someone had procured a cottage for the officers and Yvo went to sleep on the brick floor on an air cushion, with his wet overcoat as a blanket, to the tune of a terrific bombardment going on up at the front.

  There was little hope of any significant rest. At 6 a.m. on 26 September they began marching again. That morning the entire Guards Division was put under Haig’s control when his secondary attacks failed. Orders were issued for them to march to Vermelles. Then they were halted and told to sit in a swampy field in the rain, not knowing if they should just seize the initiative and press on owing to the great congestion of troops ahead. Yvo and Robin were issued with circulars to read to their men: ‘On the eve of the biggest battle in the world’s history the General officer commanding the Guards Division wishes his troops God speed’.

  By now the severity of the situation had become apparent and the plan was changed. At 2.30 p.m. they were shifted on again. Robin was bound for the old German trench lines whilst Yvo and his battalion would be part of the brigade left in support. Yvo was beside himself. ‘Oh! What a march!’ They walked for nine more hours, or rather walked then stopped, walked then stopped in the rain, held up by long lines of cavalry. On they went, on and on all the time thinking that there couldn’t be much further to go. Then it became apparent that nobody knew where they were going. ‘It was terrible to see a gaunt railway bridge looming in the distance that we had left hours ago,’ Yvo complained. ‘Altogether a brilliant piece of Staff work.’

  His battalion was winding ever closer to the lines. The roads grew more and more congested as they moved towards Vermelles and great lorries lumbered continuously by. All the ‘sweat of war’, the wounded men, the prisoners, the supplies, greeted them on their way. As darkness fell the guns grew louder and louder and the flashes brighter. Yvo grew more and more excited. Every building that they passed seemed to be ‘battered to bits’. Streets were laid out with the wounded. They sat with their bayonets fixed; exchanging battle stories and always there was ‘the jolting of limbers on the road as the transport lorries bumped by’.