They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  While it was going on, Haig was again confronting the War Cabinet at Downing Street. Lloyd George, correctly gauging the public mood, had drawn up a memorandum which he had presented to Haig setting out his considered objections to the plan of attack. They ranged from the foolhar-diness of proceeding without the whole-hearted support of the French (which they were obviously, at that moment, incapable of giving), to his doubts that the army could break out of the salient and make the advance of thirteen miles that would bring Ostend within range of its guns. He reminded Haig that in four months of bitter fighting on the Somme, the scene of the last ‘summer campaign’, it had only been possible to advance seven miles, and that those seven miles had been soaked with the blood of the largest number of casualties ever recorded by any army anywhere. Too many battles had already been fought for limited objectives which, putting it bluntly, were of little strategical importance. The Somme, Vimy Ridge, and even, he added courageously, Messines. But, first and foremost, Lloyd George feared that more heavy losses of men in yet another inconclusive battle would have ‘disastrous effects on public opinion’. How could the War Cabinet gamble with lives ‘merely because those who are directing the war can think of nothing better to do with the men under their command’? Surely it would be better by far to mark time until the Americans were ready and the French had recovered.

  Although Haig had marshalled his arguments and had convinced himself of their worth, he might well have had to bow to the War Cabinet, against his own better judgement, had it not been for a dramatic development. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Jellicoe, dropped what Haig himself described as a bombshell. He stated categorically that shipping losses, due to enemy submarines, had been so enormous that unless the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge could be captured the war could not continue. His exact words were, ‘There is no good discussing plans for next spring – we cannot go on.’*

  The Cabinet was shaken. Most of its members, including Lloyd George, secretly believed that the First Sea Lord was exaggerating the situation. But nevertheless he had put a doubt into their minds. They all went off to think it over. The following day, 21 June, there was another meeting and another clash between Haig and Lloyd George, about which Haig later huffily wrote:

  Lloyd George made a long oration, minimising the successes gained and exaggerating the strength of the enemy. His object was to induce Robertson and myself to agree to an expedition being sent to support the Italians. It was a regular lawyer’s effort to make black appear white! He referred with a sneer to my optimistic view?.

  But Lloyd George was wavering. Finally, it was agreed that the French government should be sounded out as to what, if any, support they would be able to give to the proposed offensive. In the meantime Haig was authorised to carry on with his preparations.

  On 27 June, Haig returned to France well pleased with himself. His preparations, he was happily aware, were already well in hand. In his big staff-car, speeding inland from Boulogne to his headquarters at Montreuil, he passed convoy after convoy of lorries, and mile after mile of soldiers plodding northwards to Flanders.

  A few days later another staff-car containing a still more illustrious occupant was travelling along the same road. King George V was on his way to visit his troops in the north and to see for himself the scene of their victory at Messines. They put on quite a show for him. Several battalions of men had spent several days rehearsing it. After a thorough inspection of the grisly hard-won ridge, which was still under intermittent shell-fire, the King returned to the back area where, for his edification, the battle was to be re-enacted. It was 6 July, exactly a month since some of these same men had been going up the line to take part in the battle. Now they were to do it all over again. But this time the gunfire was represented by harmless rolls of drums. The creeping barrage which had protected them as they advanced was represented by men on horseback holding flags, who went in front of the mock-attackers, just as the curtain of shells had gone in front of the real ones. Slowly the troops advanced behind it, across the sunny meadow, and dashed into the ‘German’ trench, where they naturally met with no opposition. On the contrary ‘Germans’ by the score tumbled out of the trench with their hands high above their heads. It was a singularly bloodless victory, and so gratified were the spectators that the troops gave a repeat performance.

  In Flanders unprecedented numbers of men and weapons were pouring continuously into the back areas of the salient in preparation for the coming offensive, and beyond the salient itself the Germans too were busy. If the British War Cabinet still had doubts about where the blow should be struck, the Germans had none. Their observations and Intelligence reports told them all too clearly that it would be struck in Flanders.

  Had Haig’s plan for the next step of the offensive followed swiftly upon the victory of Messines, when the German forces were demoralised and shaken, then with the fine summer weather on their side the Allies might have had a very good chance of breaking out of the salient and pushing on to capture the Channel ports. Tactically Haig’s plan was sound. Whether such a theoretical victory at the extreme northern tip of the extended Western Front would have had any effect on the outcome of the war is debatable. But while the politicians argued in London and the armies basked in the afterglow of victory, and while the commanders played at soldiers with their monarch, the fine summer weather was slipping by. Already a month had passed since the capture of the Messines Ridge and almost another month was to elapse before the second stage of the offensive was launched. Through the long summer days, battalions of German engineers toiled and sweated in the sun, building more and more strongpoints and concrete pillboxes, until they stood like tombstones in a graveyard all over the slopes that surrounded the salient. They believed that they were working against time. In fact, they had time and time to spare.

  Around the salient and on the newly captured territory beyond the Messines Ridge, the troops were still holding the line. There the shelling and fighting had hardly diminished. But in the back areas, where hundreds of thousands of men had been gathered in preparation for the coming offensive, the soldiers of Great Britain, her Empire and her Allies were virtually on holiday.

  Chapter 7

  For most of June and July the sun burned high and hot. The fine weather was broken only by occasional thunder storms that rolled and crashed across the plain and temporarily turned the trenches into streaming torrents. But most of the troops thronging the back areas between Ypres and the coast in the hot midsummer of 1917 suffered no more inconvenience than that of having a football match rained off.

  In fact, there were football matches galore. There were field days and horse shows. There were sports; and battalion, regimental and divisional sports days where the honours were hotly contested. As more and more battalions poured into the sector, as farmlands almost disappeared under acres of burgeoning canvas, and pigs made room for men in unsavoury requisitioned barns from Bailleul to Brielen, the fever of sporting competition was whipped up by officers who realised that training could not be carried on for much more than half the day and that the troops had to be kept occupied for the other half.

  There was leave, too, for as many men as could be spared, and half a dozen trains a day left Poperinghe, bearing thousands of delighted Tommies cheering and yelling from the windows. The nurses, from the tented hospitals along the line, laughed and waved as the trains went by, before turning back to their wards and the grim duties of every day. For those who couldn’t go on leave there was ‘rest’.

  Gunner B. O. Stokes, No. 25038, 13th Battery, 3rd Brigade, New Zealand Field Artillery

  We’ve moved to Westhoff Farm for a rest. The whole 3rd Brigade was there. We made ourselves comfortable, but as to rest, well, I can hardly say it was that. Certainly it is a rest from the line, but Westhoff is neither out of the line or in it. It’s just far enough back to say you are behind the lines and yet not out of reach of the Hun shells. Then again, when you are resting like this all the officers are here too. When the g
uns are in action nearly half the officers are with them. Now we have them here, all very efficient and busy trying to find plenty to keep us occupied, so there’s plenty of red tape and regimental activity. During our stay at Westhoffa chap is continually polishing boots, buttons, bandoliers, and then there’s the never-ending job of caring for the harness. What a job! Just as if we were back in camp in New Zealand or England. I prefer it to be a bit rafferty, such as it is when we are at the guns. At Westhoffwe are not left alone for two minutes. That’s the objection to these rests. Otherwise it’s a good spell away from action.

  The New Zealanders grumbled but put up with the discipline. With the Australians, it was quite a different matter. They didn’t have the least intention of being pushed around and they did their best to make sure that nobody else was pushed around either.

  On the march north to the salient the loth Royal Fusiliers were given a few days rest at Strazeele. Their quarters were not particularly attractive: some of the men were under canvas in a field, the officers had set up headquarters in a farmhouse and the rest of the men were put up in barns and outbuildings. Charlie Miles, with his fellow runners and the Battalion Signals Section under Sergeant William Read, was allocated a lodging in the upper storey of a barn. To be more precise it was a shelf, reached by a ladder, which was normally used for storing hay. These humble quarters were something of a comedown for the ioth Royal Fusiliers, for it was the Stock Exchange Battalion.

  In the early days of recruiting, fired by collective enthusiasm and the War Office recruiting gambit that pals who joined up together would not be separated, large groups of men had joined up en bloc. They came from every level of society. In the north the men of whole streets, or even small towns, had joined up together in one glorious and exciting gesture that had turned bitterly sour during the slaughter on the Somme the year before. The terrible telegrams were frequently delivered to almost every house in a particular district, and in the course of an hour whole towns were plunged into mourning. There were battalions composed of neighbours, of workmates and also of more exclusive brotherhoods. By some administrative mystery, when Charlie Miles and two of his mates had gone along to enlist at the recruiting office in Gray’s Inn Road in London, they were enrolled in the Public Schools Battalion. This was a matter which only came to light when Charlie had his first interview with his Commanding Officer, who made a point of greeting each new recruit personally. He never forgot the conversation:

  ‘Ah, Miles, isn’t it? Delighted to welcome you. What school did you go to, my boy?’

  ‘Johnson Street, sir.’ The CO received this information with a puzzled look. ‘Oh – er… who was your tutor?’

  ‘Tutor, sir?’

  ‘Your tutor at… er… sorry, what school did you say it was?’

  ‘Johnson Street, sir. In the East End of London. Near to where I live, sir.’

  The Colonel was taken aback for the merest fraction of a second. Then he pushed back his chair, stood up, and smiling and nodding stretched out his hand to clasp Charlie’s. ‘I’m delighted, Miles, delighted to welcome you to the battalion!’

  Charlie, who was not a fool, but knew his place, was highly gratified. He had spent a happy time with the battalion and was not in the least put out when the entire strength, with the exception of himself and the two others who had enlisted with him, was sent back from France to officers’ training units in England. He thought that was quite as it should be. The casualties among infantry officers had been catastrophic, and where eke was officer material to be found if not in the ranks of the public schools? Nevertheless, it had accorded him some mild amusement when the three remaining members of the battalion were drafted into the equally illustrious ranks of the Stock Exchange Battalion. After three years in the Army, Charlie had perfected the art of taking things as they came.

  The same could not be said for the Australians who were encamped on the other side of the road from the ioth Royal Fusiliers at Strazeele. The Tommies were simultaneously shocked and impressed by their casual attitude to war – or at least to the Army. It could hardly be right for Aussie privates to address their Commanding Officer as ‘Jack’, but the Fusiliers heard them do so with their own ears. For their part, the Aussies were equally disapproving of certain rites observed by the ioth RFs.

  Private C. Miles, No. 7322, 10th Btn., Royal Fusiliers

  The Colonel decided that he would have a full dress parade of the guard mounting. Well, the Aussies looked over at us amazed. The band was playing, we were all smartened up, spit and polish, on parade, and that happened every morning. We marched up and down, up and down. The Aussies couldn’t get over it, and when we were off duty we naturally used to talk to them, go over and have a smoke with them, or meet them when we were hanging about the road or having a stroll. They kept asking us, ‘Do you like this sort of thing? All these parades, do you want to do it?’ Of course we said, ‘No, of course we don’t. We’re supposed to be on rest, and all the time we’ve got to posh up and turn out on parade.’ So they looked at us a bit strangely and said, ‘OK, cobbers, we’ll soon alter that for you.’ The Australians didn’t approve of it because they never polished or did anything. They had a band, but their brass instruments were all filthy. Still, they knew how to play them.

  The next evening, our Sergeant-Major was taking the parade. Sergeant-Major Rowbotham, a nice man, but a stickler for discipline. He was just getting ready to bawl us all out when the Australians started with their band. They marched up and down the road outside the field, playing any old thing. There was no tune you could recognise, they were just blowing as loud as they could on their instruments. It sounded like a million cat-calls. And poor old Sergeant Rowbotham, he couldn’t make his voice heard. It was an absolute fiasco. They never tried to mount another parade, because they could see the Aussies watching us from across the road, just ready to step in and sabotage the whole thing. So they decided that parades for mounting the guards should be washed out, and after that they just posted the guards in the ordinary way as if we were in the line.

  And that wasn’t the end of it with the Australians. The rations used to come up and it was all divided out, a loaf to so many men, and in the barn we began to wonder where our bread was disappearing to. Well, we knew we wouldn’t steal from each other, so it was a mystery. One morning we’d got up and were filing out of the barn after reveille to go for a wash, when there was a great rustle in the pile of straw in the bottom part of the barn, and two men appeared. They were Australian soldiers and they’d been hiding out there, and on this particular morning they made the mistake of coming out too soon. Well, then we knew where our bread had been going to. They didn’t call it deserting, they said they’d just gone for a rest because they were tired of the people over the way. Sergeant Read was in a bit of a dilemma. He should have reported them, of course, but he was a good bloke, a very good N C O. He simply said to them, ‘Right, lads, that’s your last night’s rest here. Out you go!’ ‘Oh, come on, cobber,’ they said, ‘have a heart!’ ‘Never mind the “cobber”. Out you go,’ he said. ‘Do you see these stripes? Well, I’ve worked hard to earn these stripes. If I harbour you they go, and I’m not losing my stripes for anyone. Good enough, cobber?’ So they took the point, and they just disappeared. We never knew what happened to them. As likely as not they just went back across the way.

  Forty-eight hours later the ioth Royal Fusiliers were on their way to the salient. 25 June was a day of blazing heat, and it was hard going in full marching order with more than sixty-pounds’ weight of kit on your back and your rifle slung on your shoulder. For Charlie Miles and the other runners it was somewhat easier, for they marched in front of the battalion wheeling their bicycles, and the beauty of that position was that their kit could be slung to their bikes. The runners were always in the vanguard. If it hadn’t been for that, Charlie would never have disgraced himself.

  He was the very first man in the line, on the off-side of the first row of runners as they marched four abr
east up the road from Hazebrouck to Bailleul. His mate, Sid Smith, was on his right and from time to time they whistled or sang or talked. Mostly they just sweated and counted the kilometres as their feet began to swell and ache as they trudged over the rough pave. The Colonel, the Adjutant and the senior officers clopped behind them on their horses, and the long line of marching men stretched far down the road at their backs. Suddenly there was the sound of clattering hoofs and over the breast of the hill came an army limber travelling at an amazing speed, swaying dangerously from side to side and taking up most of the road. The team was galloping full tilt towards Charlie, and Charlie was badly scared. He stopped dead in his tracks and the battalion behind him had no alternative but to stop as well. It was an outrageous breach of march discipline, the whole battalion marking time except for Private Miles, who stood stock-still, transfixed. He was brought back smartly to reality by a blow across his back from the Adjutant’s cane. ‘Get on. Get on.’ Charlie’s humiliation was complete when the driver gained control of the runaway Umber and a moment later trotted sedately past the 10th Royal Fusiliers, sufficiently in command of the situation to salute its commanding officer in the regulation manner by dropping his whip over the side. Charlie blushed scarlet. Sid Smith smirked and sneered under his breath.

  But the day ended better than it had begun. The battalion, marching through Bailleul three miles ahead, smartened up to attention as they approached the town square, the band struck up, and as it played ‘The British Grenadiers’ Charlie Miles found himself leading the battalion past General Plumer. Behind streamed the thousand men of the battalion, eyes left as they passed the dais. At the very end of the column, mounted on two limbers, were the field kitchens, the chimneys of the boilers belching the savoury steam of the bully beef stew that had been simmering gently all the time the battalion was on the march. It was dished out in a field on the other side of Bailleul. There was plum duff as well and mugs of hot tea to wash it down, and a welcome stretch on the grass before the Fusiliers marched on to Dranoutre.