The left flank of the Second Division was held by this same 13th Essex, the 2nd South Stafford, and 17th Middlesex battalions of the 6th Brigade. This brigade was cut into two parts by the Canal du Nord, a huge trough of brick-work without any water, eighty feet across, with steep sloping sides. The bridges across were swept by German fire, and the only transit was by ropes to help the climber. All day the fight raged furiously here, the Germans within bombing distance of the defence, which was never penetrated for an instant. Save for one small isolated trench with about seventy men this whole line held firm against every form of attack. Snipers and bombers fired across from bank to bank, while down in the dried bed of the canal there was constant close-range fighting. All night the difficult post was held, as was the line on the extreme left where the 17th Middlesex were blowing back every attack with their well-sustained fire. There was no more wonderful individual record in the battle than that of Captain MacReady-Diarmid of the 17th Middlesex, who fought like a d’Artagnan of romance, and is said to have killed some eighty of the enemy in two days of fighting before he at last himself met that fate from which he had never shrunk. A V.C. was assigned to his family.
On the right of the 6th Brigade was the 99th Brigade, the victors of Delville Wood, who were also furiously engaged, meeting such waves of German infantry as were able to get past the zone of the British barrage. German field-guns unlimbered suddenly on the crest looking down on the British lines only a few hundred yards off. The crews were shot down so swiftly that only one gun got in three rounds. Then there came a rush of two battalions in full marching order, debouching in fours from Bourlon village, and deploying in the open. These also were shot to bits. The whole front of the brigade was dotted with broken guns and huddled grey figures, while many, despairing of getting back, threw up their hands and sought refuge in the British lines. Battalion after battalion was thrown in at this point, until the best part of a division was spread bleeding over some twenty acres of ground. The three battalions chiefly engaged, the 1st Berkshires, 17th Royal Fusiliers, and 1st Rifles from right to left, had such a day as trench warfare could never afford.
At the outset the force of the attack pressed back the 1st Berkshires upon the right, together with the left wing of the Forty-seventh Division. For a few moments the situation was alarming. However, after three hours of ding-dong fighting the volume of fire was too much for the stormers and they fell back. At the same time the 17th Royal Fusiliers, who had rallied under cover of their outposts, shot down everything in front of them. The 1st K.R. Rifles had a day of wonderful fighting — snipers, rifle grenadiers, Lewis gunners, and machine-gunners were all equally glutted with slaughter. “The Germans in mass formation came on in waves offering a splendid target at a range from- 1500 to point-blank. In addition they were enfiladed by the machine-gunners and subjected to very heavy fire from our guns for two and a half hours. The second attempt never looked like succeeding and was smothered in a very short time.”
The 17th Royal Fusiliers have been mentioned as being in the line at this point though they really belonged to the 5th Brigade. The fact was that in a previous operation they had won a long trench advancing at right angles to the British position and leading up to the Germans. This was called the “Rat’s Tail” on account of its shape, and it was still occupied by the Royals when the attack broke out, so that they were placed in a most difficult position and were pressed back down this long trench, fighting a desperate rearguard as will be told later. Their presence in the “Rat’s Tail” was the more unfortunate as it helped to screen the Germans, and to contract the fire-field of the main line behind them. After clearing the “Rat’s Tail” the remains of the battalion found themselves upon the right of the 1st K.R.R.
The remaining brigade of the division, the 5th, had some of its men also in the front line and as busy as its comrades. It is stated in the account already quoted that even the wounded men of the 2nd H.L.I. were propped up, so that they might continue to fire upon the Germans. It was a brigade which had suffered many an evil quarter of an hour in the past, and it is no wonder that the men took a fierce joy in such a fight when at last they could meet their hated enemy face to face. Side by side with the Highlanders were those veterans of 1914, the 2nd Oxford and Bucks, the battalion that broke the Prussian Guard. They also had many an arrear to wipe off, nor were their less experienced comrades of the Royal Fusiliers less intent upon the work in hand. It was a costly experience for the War-lord and his legions.
In the evening, save for the one loss at the Canal lock which has been already recorded, the whole 3500-yard front of the Second Division stood inviolate, and was clearly defined when the British force withdrew by the thick pile of German dead which marked it. Indeed it is claimed that at the end of the day the posts which were thrown forward by the defenders were more advanced than before the attack had broken. Those posts which had been overwhelmed in the morning were found to have perished most gloriously, for in almost every case the British dead were ringed round with the bodies of their assailants.
Among the many epics of these isolated posts none is more glorious than that of a platoon of the 17th Fusiliers under the two Company Officers, Captain Stone and Lieut. Benzeery, both mentioned in despatches, who fought absolutely to the last man in order to give time for the main body behind them to get ready for the assault. The official report of the officer commanding says: “The rearguard was seen fighting with bayonet, bullet, and bomb to the last. There was no survivor.” The annals of war can give few finer examples of military virtue.
Another splendid epic had been furnished by the posts of the 1st Berkshire battalion upon the right of the Second Division. They were all drawn from one Company under the command of Lieut. Valentin, also mentioned for his gallantry. The Germans surged in upon them in the afternoon, and there was a most grim and terrible fight. Three of the posts were destroyed, but when the ground was regained it was difficult to find the British bodies on account of the piles of German dead which were heaped round and over them. Six other posts remained intact after six hours of close fighting, in which they were continually attacked by superior numbers who fell in heaps before the steady fire of these experienced soldiers. Rapid fire had been brought to perfection by the training system of the Second Division, and General Pereira was justified of his wisdom. The six weary posts which remained intact after the storm had passed are said to have killed not less than five hundred of their assailants.
Gorringe’s Forty-seventh London Territorial Division upon the right had endured a similar experience to that of their comrades of the Second Division, and Kennedy’s 140th Brigade upon the left had been particularly strongly engaged. The 6tn London Rifles and the l0th Civil Service Rifles held the post of honour, and the conditions were much the same as those already described, save that the field of fire was more restricted. In the afternoon attack, a gap was formed between these two battalions, but was quickly closed by one of those heterogeneous musters of signallers, orderlies, and general utility men who have so often done good and unobtrusive service — silent supers who suddenly spring into the limelight, play the part of the hero, and then fade away to the wings once more. This attack of the afternoon fell with great force upon the right unit of the division, the 141st Brigade who lay in their gas-masks half poisoned with mephitic vapours among the brush-wood of Bourlon Forest. These fine troops, the London Irish, Poplar, St. Pancras, and Blackheath battalions, endured all that gun or gas could do, and held their whole line intact until the evening.
In the early morning Woolcombe’s Fourth Corps, exhausted in body but triumphant in the knowledge of the terrible losses which they had inflicted upon the enemy, withdrew unmolested and in absolute order to the smaller perimeter which had been marked out for them by General Byng when he had time to realise the exact effect of the German gains upon the south end of his line. Everything portable was carried off by the retiring troops, who made it a point of honour to leave nothing at all to the enemy. Three days
later, in conformity with the general plans, the lines were laid down afresh along the Flesquières Ridge, so that the whole salient was smoothed out, and yet Byng’s troops held all the solid advantages gained upon November 20 in the shape of a long stretch of the Hindenburg Line. This continued to be the permanent position of the Third Army during the winter, and up to the fateful 21st of March 1918, when the great German thunderbolt was hurled. In the movements entailed by this withdrawal there was no molestation from the enemy save that the rearguards of the Forty-seventh Division were strongly engaged. Two companies of the 15th Civil Service Rifles were for a time cut off, but broke their way through all resistance and rejoined the main body.
On the north of that new portion of the line which had been established by the Guards and taken over by the Ninth Division there was a long ridge called Welsh Ridge, running up from La Vacquerie Farm. The enemy was still strong in this quarter where the British artillery was particularly weak — a defect which was partly compensated for by the loyalty of the neighbouring French Commander. The Sixty-first South Midland Territorial Division had taken over from the Twelfth in this area and found themselves involved in several days of hard fighting, in the course of which La Vacquerie Farm was lost to the Badeners, but the general line of the ridge was maintained, consolidated, and turned into the permanent front of the Army.
So ended the swaying fortunes of this hard-fought and dramatic battle, beginning with a surprise attack of the British upon the Germans, and ending by an attack of the Germans upon the British which, if not a surprise to the commanders, at least produced some surprising and untoward results. The balance of these varied actions was greatly in favour of the British, and yet it could not be denied that something of the glory and satisfaction of Byng’s splendid original victory were dimmed by this unsatisfactory epilogue which was only made less disastrous to the British cause by the very heavy losses which their enemy incurred upon the northern sector. On the balance in ground gained the British had a solid grip of 11,000 yards of the famous Hindenburg Line, as against an unimportant British section between Vendhuille and Gonnelieu. In prisoners the British had 11,000 as against 6000 claimed by the Germans. In guns the British took or destroyed 145 against 100 taken or destroyed by their enemies. In the larger field of strategy the whole episode was fruitful as it stopped all reinforcement of the Germans in Italy during the critical weeks while the Italians were settling down upon the line of the Piave. One result of the action was a reorganisation of the British machine-gun system which was found to have acted in an unequal fashion during the operations, some formations giving excellent results while others were less satisfactory.
The Battle of Cambrai virtually brought the fighting of 1917 to an end, although there were several sharp local actions at different points along the line — actions which would have filled special editions in former wars, and now can hardly be afforded a paragraph if any just proportion be observed. Chief among them was a spirited German attack upon the Sixty-third Naval Division upon December 29 in the sector of the Canal du Nord, which began by the loss of some trench elements, but ended with little change. There was a sharp fight also early in December at that blood-stained country-house, Polderhoek Château, where the New Zealanders attacking upon a narrow front made an attempt upon one of the most difficult points in the Flanders line. The men of Otago and of Canterbury proved once more what extraordinarily good military material is bred in the great Pacific island, but after a sharp tussle in which both sides lost heavily, there was no substantial change in the position.
Another local fight which was sufficiently serious to demand mention here was upon December 2, when the 26th Brigade of the Eighth Division with part of the Thirty-second Division stirred up the German line in the Flanders area. After two days of fighting matters remained here much as they started.
The year 1917 had been a very glorious one both to the French and to the British Armies, which, pursuing their system of the limited objective, had hardly met with a single repulse in a long campaign. The victories of Arras, Messines, Langemarck, Paschendaale, and Cambrai were added to the great record of Sir Douglas Haig and his men, while the French, save for the losses incurred in their great April attack, had an unbroken record of success. And yet in spite of these results in the West the year was a disappointing one for the Allies, since the Russian defection which involved Rumania in ruin, greatly weakened their position and clearly showed that the year 1918 would find them confronted with the whole force of Germany aided by contingents of her Allies. Storm clouds piled high in the East. Only from over the far Western rim of the Atlantic came a slowly waxing light.
VOLUME V.
PREFACE
THIS fifth volume deals with one of the most tremendous episodes in history, when the vigour of the German attack and the desperate resistance of the British both on the Somme and in Flanders, held an awestruck world in suspense. A million men released from the Russian front, rolled across Europe and, swelling that great tide which was already banked up before the British breakwater, it washed over all the front line barriers and threatened at one time to sweep down to the sea. The account of how the British Army, upon which incomparably the greater pressure fell, rose to the occasion and first slowed and then held the terrific flood is one of the most wonderful of military epics. At the same time every credit must be given to the loyalty of the French commanders who, while guarding their own extended lines, endeavoured to spare all possible help to their hard-pressed Allies. This volume carries the story of the German attack to its close. The next and final one will describe the enormous counter-attack of the Allies leading up to their final victory.
The Chronicler has been faced by many obstacles in endeavouring to preserve both accuracy and historical proportion while writing contemporary history. He would gratefully acknowledge that his critics in the press have shown a kindly indulgence, which arises, no doubt, from an appreciation of these difficulties. There has, however, been one conspicuous exception to which he would desire to call attention, since a large question of literary etiquette is involved. From the beginning a series of unflattering and anonymous articles have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, commenting adversely upon each volume in turn, and picking out the pettiest details for animadversion. Upon enquiry, these articles — in whole or part — are admitted to have been written by the Hon. J.W. Fortescue, who is himself the official historian of the War. On being remonstrated with, this gentleman could not be brought to see that it is not fitting that he should make anonymous attacks, however bona fide, upon a brother author who is working upon the same subject and is therefore in the involuntary position of being a humble rival.
Having stated the facts they may be left to the judgment of the public.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
Crowborough, May 1, 1919.
I.
EVENTS UPON THE BRITISH FRONT
UP TO MARCH 21, 1918
The prospects of the Allies — Great dangers from the Russian collapse — State of the British line — Huge German preparations — Eve of the Great Offensive
THE New Year of 1918, the fourth of the world war, opened with chequered prospects for the Allies. Upon all subsidiary fields of action the developments were good. In Palestine, General Allenby, the victor of Arras, had shown himself to be a fine soldier upon the larger scale, and. had fought his way up the old highway of history which leads from Egypt by Gaza to Jerusalem. Homely crusaders in tattered khaki stood where once Godfrey de Bouillon and his chivalry had worshipped before the shrine of religion, and the cavalry of Australia, the yeomen of the Shires, and the infantry of London won once more the ground which Richard of the Lion Heart with his knights and bowmen had contested in the long ago. Surely in all the strange permutations and combinations of the world war there could be none more striking than that! By April the British force covered all the northern approaches to the city and extended its right wing to the Jordan, where our Arab allies in the land of Moab were pushin
g the Turks back along the line of the Damascus railway.
On another road of world conquest, that from Bagdad to Nineveh, the British and Indian columns were also both active and victorious. The knightly Maude had perished from cholera contracted by his own courtesy in drinking a proffered cup of village water. His successor, General Marshall, formerly his Chief of Staff, and as such conversant with his aims and his methods, carried on both one and the other, moving his men north until the spectator who compared their numbers with the immensity of the spaces around them, was appalled at the apparent loneliness of their position. By May his raiding cavalry were not far from the Turkish supply depot of Mosul, where the barren mounds, extending over leagues of desert, proclaim both the greatness and the ruin of Nineveh. Salonica continued in its usual condition of uneasy and malarial somnolence, but gratifying reports came of the belated rally of the Greeks, who, acting with the French, won a smart little victory against their Bulgarian enemies upon May 31. German East Africa had at last been cleared of German forces, but General Lettow-Vorbeck, to whom we cannot deny remarkable fortitude and leadership, wandered with his piebald commands in the depths of the forests and marshes of Mozambique, still evading his inevitable capture, and master only of the ground on which he camped.
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