We reached our destination and ran a wire to a shell-hole where we decided to stop. It was as good a place as any. The ‘Dinks’ (New Zealand Rifle Brigade) were holding our front line in Unbearable Trench about a hundred yards ahead of us. This trench had been our first objective and the boys were digging in for all they knew. We were now about 800 yards past Messines to the right. We established a communication with our group and began to send through messages.
At the other end of the front, the old drive which had led up to the White Chateau in the days before the war was called the Damstrasse. It was known to be strongly fortified by the Germans and it had received particular attention from the long-range artillery before the battle. This was the second objective of the 41st Division, which included Cantlon of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, Lee of the Tanks, and Fagence of the Queen s Royal West Surrey Regiment. Tom Cantlon had stopped with his battalion at the first objective and now, having captured it, they became the support-line troops as the fresher forces of the second wave passed through them to take the next objective.
On top of the ridge the KRRs dug in furiously, while the Engineers hauled materials up the slope and started digging communication trenches. The shelling was heavy, so they wore their tin hats. But the June sun was hot. The REs drove the bayonets of their rifles into the ground, hung their tunics on to the butts, and worked in shirtsleeves.
Far ahead Victor Fagence was advancing with his battalion.
Private VE. Fagence, No. 10081, 11th Btn., Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment
I remember crossing the Damstrasse, which had been considerably smashed up by our shell-fire. There were scores of dead Germans strewn around; some of the bodies were in grotesque positions but we had no time to stop and look. We were ordered to dig in about a hundred yards beyond, so we hurried on and reached the position in which we were to dig our front-line trench. It didn’t matter how tired you were. You dug as fast as you could, because it was a matter of life or death to get some protection against the enemy shell-fire. We soon had a trench about three or four feet deep and that gave us a certain amount of shelter. By now we were all absolutely parched, not just with the long advance and the warmth of the day, but with the smell of cordite and the dust. But we knew that there would be some sort of a dump in the rear, so one of our officers ordered me to go back and fetch a couple of two-gallon petrol tins filled with water. I ran back, found the dump, picked up a tin in each hand and started to go back to our new trench. On my way back and over to my right I saw one of our men sitting on the parapet of a trench with his back towards the enemy. The German shells were falling and exploding all about, everyone who was on the move was dodging hither and thither to try to avoid the explosions, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off this chap. He just sat there as calm and composed as anything in the middle of all this. It seemed so bizarre and so odd that he should be sitting back there instead of being up forward with the others that I dodged my way across, through the shell-holes, to see what it was all about. As I got nearer I saw that his face was very pale, and as I got up to the trench I could see why. The poor fellow was stone dead. His right leg had been completely severed between the knee and the thigh by a large shell splinter. It was lying there, all jagged, in the bottom of the trench and all his blood had poured out from the stump of his leg over it. There was nothing I could do for him. I hurried back with my two tins of water and reported it to the officer. He sent an NC O and a stretcher-bearer back. It was too late to help him, of course, but they were able to get his identity discs and paybook and anything else he had on him to send home.
Having accompanied the troops beyond the Damstrasse, the early afternoon had passed as successfully, and for the crews of Iron Rations and Revenge as enjoyably, as the morning. They were high on excitement.
Corporal A. E. Lee MM, No. 32198, A Co., Tank Corps
At the Green Line, the infantry started digging in and we patrolled in front until they were reasonably well consolidated, and then we had a consultation. We got out of the tanks, the two whole crews, Iron Rations’ and ourselves. What shall we do now? We did have the choice. Our job was done, so we could have gone back, but we felt we hadn’t had enough excitement; so off we went into what was still German territory, shooting at everything we could see.
About five o’clock we came up to a field. There was a farmhouse in the middle of it and behind that a wood, and all of a sudden machine-gun fire started spurting from this farmhouse. We hadn’t realised until then that it was a strongpoint, but we’d practised manoeuvres of this kind so often that we knew exactly what to do. We went left and Iron Rations went right and we started attacking the farmhouse from both sides. Well, after about half a dozen shells we must have hit something inflammable in the farmhouse, perhaps some petrol cans or some small-arms ammunition. Flames started belching out of one of the windows and to our absolute amazement we suddenly saw all these Jerries streaming out of the back door. There must have been two or three hundred of them, and they just bolted and ran and made for this wood about a hundred yards away. We both swung half-right, both tanks, and started firing at them in crossfire. Very few of them made it to the wood.
When the resistance had finished we turned away. We were getting pretty low on ammunition and low on petrol too. We’d penetrated about five miles into enemy territory, so we decided we’d better make for home.
At just about this time, 2nd Lieutenant Jimmy Naylor had almost given up hope of getting ‘home’. He’d been on the go all day long (and most of the night before) but he didn’t have the faintest idea whether or not his efforts had been of the slightest use. He’d been sent up with the infantry to observe the situation and he had certainly done his best to make sense of what was going on – noting the positions of the infantry, so far as that was possible in the confusion of the fighting, and reconnoitring suitable places to which the guns could move up.
The trouble was that he hadn’t been able to find any means of getting messages back to Battalion Headquarters. Five of them had started off at daylight – Jim Naylor, a Canadian subaltern, two telephonists and a runner. The job of the telephonists was to run wires out to certain points on the ridge and establish communication with Battalion Headquarters. The runner would then go ahead with the officers, and when necessary would run back to the telephones with their messages. In case the system broke down, the Canadian officer, McKenzie (on loan to the 36th Ulster Division), also carried a basket containing two homing pigeons.
The system did break down. Very early on, McKenzie’s telephonist was killed outright by a shell splinter. Then the runner was struck by a machine-gun bullet. The remaining telephonist simply disappeared. One moment he was there, the next he was nowhere to be seen. Naylor and McKenzie split up.
2nd Lieutenant J. W. Naylor, Royal Field Artillery
I got precious little information, I’m afraid. All I got was just enough to justify my going forward. I was able to report that there were short battles going on, hand-to-hand fighting. I did what I’d been asked to do, which was not very much, and that was the end of that. Then I tried to get back to the HQ dug-out in the line. The German artillery had pulled itself together by then and had opened up on our lines, so I was travelling through fire, with shells coming down all over the place. I heard it coming, the one that got me. I remember I threw my arms over my head. I felt a thump as a great clod of earth hit me, and that was the last I knew.
All day, Jimmy Naylor lay unconscious at the foot of the ridge. At dusk, as the reliefs were making their way up to the new line to relieve the battle-weary troops, he came round. To his delight, he found that he was able to move, to stand, even to walk, though it was a painful journey, that last half-mile over rough country to the HQ dug-out.
He reported to Colonel Simpson, gave his somewhat out-of-date information and struggled down to the advanced dressing-station, to face another excruciating hour while an RAMC Colonel dug and probed about in his head and neck and extracted eighteen small pieces o
f shrapnel, each the size of half a pea. The stinging antiseptic was dabbed on and the wounds dressed.
‘That’s the best I can do,’ said the Colonel. ‘But I think you’d better get on down to the casualty clearing station.’
Naylor wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’d rather not, sir. I’ll be all right when I’ve had a bit of a sleep.’
‘Well, you’d better lie down here for a while.’ The Colonel was a kind-hearted man of an age to have sons not much younger than Jimmy. ‘I’ll tell you what, my lad, there’s a thing here called a medical comforts chest, and a colonel is allowed to open this chest and give a chap anything that he asks for, so what would you like?’
‘Anything, sir?’
‘Anything, old chap!’
‘I’d love a bottle of Guinness, sir.’
‘Then you shall have it.’ Sitting in the field dressing-station – his head still spinning with the noise of the battle, his ears filled with the low moans of the badly wounded as they lay waiting to be carried out of the line – pale and dirty, feeling distinctly the worse for wear, Jimmy Naylor sat drinking his Guinness and enjoyed it as he’d never enjoyed a drink before.*
That evening, far to the south, soldiers from miles around had poured into the camp at Limencourt to attend a concert. It was a rather special concert, for Harry Lauder was the guest star. The majority of his audience had not yet heard the news of the victory in Flanders, for it would not be officially reported until the next day. But Harry Lauder had heard about it unofficially, for he had dined in the officers’ mess. He made a last-minute addition to his programme and provided the troops with an appropriately rousing Grand Finale.
When the fighting is over, and the war is won,
And the flags are waving free,
When the bells are ringing,
And the boys are singing
Songs of victory,
When we all gather round the old fireside,
And the old mother kisses her son,
A’the lassies will be loving a’ the laddies,
The laddies who fought and won.
The troops liked it. Lauder’s own son, Captain John Lauder of the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, had been killed at the front six months before.*
In the Ypres sector the long day of battle was drawing to a close, but the guns still rumbled and the shells still roared overhead. Tomorrow the enemy would have rallied his depleted forces and would be certain to launch a counter-attack. Where the fighting had been hardest, fresh troops marched up to take over the new front lines, now well beyond the ridge.
The 11th Battalion of the Prince of Wales’ Own West Yorkshire Regiment marched wearily out. It was a long plod in the dark, back to Batter-sea Farm. They were too exhausted, they had left too many mates behind on Hill 60 to feel like rejoicing. They only wanted to sleep. Jim Todd was ravenous. Back in the cellar dug-out at Battersea Farm someone had left a jar of jam and a half-empty tin of condensed milk on the box that served as a table. Jim attacked them with a dirty spoon and scraped and scraped until there wasn’t a morsel left. It wasn’t the ideal menu, but it would do. For years he was to remember the uncanny quiet of the cellar, lit by one flickering candle. Levey’s gramophone still stood open, just as he had left it twenty-four hours ago. Jim wound it up and lifted the needle on to the record that still lay on the turntable.
At seventeen he falls in love quite madly
With eyes offender blue,
At twenty-four he gets it rather badly
With eyes of a different hue, At thirty-five…
They were all gone. Porter, dead. Wood, dead. Hobday, dead. Miller, dead. Knowles, dead. Ostler, dead. Seven other officers wounded. Levey’s right leg blown off.†
… you’ll see him flirting sadly
With two or three or more.
When he fancies he is past love
It is then he meets his last love
And he loves her as he’s never loved before.
In London the cast of The Maid of the Mountains took curtain after curtain at the end of its 200th performance. Chattering and laughing, the audience filed out of the theatre bound for home or for supper at the Criterion. In the darkened streets newsboys were already crying the early editions of the morning newspapers. ‘Great victory at Messines! Read all about it! Great victory at Messines!’
Part 2
The Interlude
Chapter 6
To Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig from His Majesty the King:
I rejoice that, thanks to thorough preparation and splendid cooperation of all arms, the important Messines Ridge, which has been the scene of so many memorable struggles, is again in our hands. Tell General Plumer and the Second Army how proud we are of this achievement, by which in a few hours the enemy was driven out of strongly entrenched positions held by him for two and a half years.
King George V had wisely waited until the expected German counter-attacks had been launched and had failed before sending his congratulatory telegram to his Commander-in-Chief in the field. On Saturday, 9 June the message was despatched, and on the same day the King had another pleasant duty to perform. The Yanks had at last arrived, or at least a contingent of the vanguard had arrived, and their chief, Lieutenant-General Pershing, went with his staff to Buckingham Palace to receive the royal welcome. These Americans of the vanguard were regular soldiers, and it would, of course, be impossible for America to mobilise, train and despatch a large, effective army to the battlefields of Europe for many months to come. But by next year the Americans would be in Europe adding the full force of their manpower and materials to the war effort.
If David Lloyd George could have called a moratorium on the war until that happy day arrived, he would gladly have done so. But he had Haig to contend with and Haig had other ideas. A campaign in Flanders had been part of the strategic plan which had been drawn up early in the war, and now, flushed with the success of Messines, Haig was more than ever convinced that it was the right course of action to take. His motives seemed to himself to be beyond dispute. A part of the French army in the south was in a state of mutiny, and a campaign which would concentrate the German effort in Flanders would take the heat off the French and give them time to recuperate. It would also take the heat off the Russians, far away to the east, for revolution had broken out, the old military structure was gone and, faced with the might of the German assault, the Russian armies under the weak provisional government were teetering towards collapse.
But most of all, Haig wanted to make a resounding breakthrough out of the salient and beyond, and then swing his armies northwards in a circular movement towards the coastline. There they would bombard the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge in an operation which would coincide with a simultaneous attack from the sea. Once the ports had been captured the Germans would no longer be able to use them as U-boat bases, the disturbing shipping losses would drop dramatically and the enemy would be so worn down and demoralised that collapse might swiftly follow. It seemed to Haig that, as surely as day must follow night, the second stage of his long-planned Flanders offensive must follow the triumph of Messines.
On 17 June, Haig travelled to London to attend a meeting of the War Cabinet in the confident expectation of receiving its blessing.
The salient had appeared on the maps as roughly the shape of the letter S in reverse – the bulging top sector running from Boesinghe round Ypres to Hill 60, and the bottom bulge running from Hill 60 round to Messines. Now that the Germans had been shrugged from the shoulder of high ground south of Ypres, the lower bulge had been straightened out. Had any members of the War Policy Committee noticed that the salient had now assumed the form of a question mark, they might have been struck by the symbolism, for in their view a question mark hung over the whole future of the campaign in Flanders. The first meeting with the Cabinet took place on the morning of 19 June and from Haig’s point of view it was a disaster, for it was not so much a meeting as a grilling. They bombarded him with questions – Prim
e Minister Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Lord Curzon, Lord Milner, General Smuts and General Robertson. Even the Secretary to the War Cabinet, Colonel Hankey, had made some pertinent points. It would be difficult to decide which of them was the most pessimistic. Haig put his case with all the force he could muster, but he got nowhere and at one o’clock he departed, disgruntled and upset.
The mood of the country had changed. It was the 312th day of the third year of the war, and there was precious little left of the spirit of flag-waving enthusiasm that had swept through the country in 1914. There had been too many tales of the blood-bath at the front, too many men returning shattered in mind and body, too much scrutinising of the long closely-printed casualty-lists published daily in the press, too many blinds drawn in homes throughout the land, too little progress, too few victories, and too little hope of a speedy end to the war and all its horrors.
And in London, at least, the war had arrived on the doorstep. There were frequent Zeppelin raids, and public fury had been aroused when children were killed by a bomb dropped in the East End of London earlier in the week. On 20 June they were given a mass funeral at Poplar Parish Church and it was followed by a public meeting to demand reprisals.
They Called it Passchendaele Page 8