They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  The officers thronged into the town as well, for in ‘Pop’ there was Skindles Hotel and officers’ clubs where a man could write or read in peace, enjoy a reasonable meal and, if he were lucky enough to have a 24-hour pass, a decent night’s sleep in a real bed. ‘Pop’ also had Talbot House (known by the gunners’ signalling code as Toe H) where similar facilities could be enjoyed by anyone. It was run by the genial Reverend Tubby Clayton on democratic lines which were particularly appreciated by officers who had friends or brothers in the ranks, and by rankers who had friends or brothers who were officers.

  Just across the Gasthuiststraat from Toe H was a shop much patronised by the troops. Oddly enough, it was an undertaker’s. One of the windows on either side of the entrance still displayed the gloomy trappings of the funereal rites, but it was the goods displayed in the other window, constituting the sideline of Mr Schaballie, that attracted the Tommies. Early in the war they had practically cleaned out his stock of funeral candles, and he was quick to see that there was a good trade to be had in supplying their wants. So, in addition to candles, Mr Schaballie now stocked the solid methylated blocks that fuelled the tommy cookers; thick black Belgian tobacco; biscuits when they were obtainable; and assorted souvenirs, including the delicately-embroidered lacy postcards, that the Tommies loved to send home. Occasionally there were sweets and ‘Cafe au Lait’, a fairly expensive luxury much like coffee-flavoured condensed milk, which, added to hot water, produced a reasonably palatable drink. One particular consignment of souvenirs, dredged up from a box which had languished forgotten on a wholesaler’s shelf since before the war, was snapped up by the Tommies and sold out in the space of a day. It consisted of a few dozen trashy metal brooches engraved with the name Ypres. They were sent off by the next post to mothers, sisters and sweethearts in England, not because of their beauty, but because the soldiers immediately recognised in them a subtle way of cheating the censor.

  Now and again, there was an easy way round censorship. ‘I am in the same place I was at Christmas,’ one would write, or, ‘I am in the place where Tom was wounded in 1915.’ But if circumstances did not permit such subtleties the Tommies had to resort to more devious means:

  2nd Lieutenant F Kenchington, Royal Field Artillery

  My own plan was to use the Field Service Postcard, which contained printed stereotyped messages, and you were only allowed to cross out those items which did not apply. You could not write anything except the name and address to which it was being sent. I calculated that the address side would not be scrutinised very closely and sent a card to Mr P. O.. Rees at my home address, where its significance was at once grasped. Later when we moved to ‘Pop’, another card to Mr P. O. Perring was equally successful.

  In Britain field postcards arrived by the sack load, the boat load. A sergeant-major of the 13th (Service) Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, was astounded when an avalanche of postcards poured through the letter-box of his house in east London, where he was enjoying well-earned home leave. Every single man in his company had sent one. The messages varied but Hope to be discharged soon was a popular choice.

  There was time for pranks in that summer of 1917, and for the young officers there was time too for tea parties, dances and even tennis parties with the nurses from the casualty clearing stations which were dotted about behind the lines. The three big ones around Proven were known facetiously as ‘Mendinghem’, ‘Bandagehem’ and ‘Dosinghem’.

  Sister Mary Pollock, Theatre Sister, ‘Mendinghem’, No. 46 Casualty Clearing Station at Proven, Territorial Force Nursing Service

  When the big pushes were on, the work went on day and night and it was very hard going. Even when it was quiet we always had plenty of casualties from shell-fire and gassing, but we got time off as well. We were very much in demand with the officers, because there were very few women around. It was the flyers that we liked best. Proven was just up the road and we had aerodromes all around, and if you were friendly with one of the boys and they went out on a flight at night they used to say, ‘Expect an envelope in the morning. I’ll try and drop one.’ And we used to go to this field and they’d drop these little weighted cellophane envelopes, flying fairly low, and there would be a message in it. That’s how they made their dates.

  We used to go to all the different officers’ messes. We were very snooty. We all kept to the officers. We used to go there and have supper with them and play cards. For some reason we weren’t supposed to dance, but we always did. They all had gramophones. There would be at least one invitation to go to an officers’ mess every day. Of course, we couldn’t all go at once, so the off-duty nurses took turns. We had a very happy time in between the bad fighting. But we needed it; we needed something just to keep our courage up.

  For the other ranks, excluded from the refined delights of socialising with the nurses, there were the more robust pleasures of the cafes and estaminets in Poperinghe. Night after night the Tommies crowded into them, consuming huge quantities of eggs and chips (in the case of the affluent colonial troops, up to nine eggs at a time) and vin blanc by the gallon at one franc a bottle. It was poor thin stuff but its potency was proved by the raucous roof-raising choruses that could be heard everywhere in Poperinghe as the evening went on. In these ‘troops only’ cafes, inhibitions went to the wall.

  Rifleman W. Worrell, No. 6905960, 12th Btn., Rifle Brigade

  The cafes were our only opportunity of seeing anything of life. We used to go into the Cafe des Allies in Poperinghe. It was a popular place because there was a little man with a squeeze-box there and he knew all the right tunes to play. He’d picked them up from the troops and some of them were pretty fruity. He’d start off very politely with ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières’ (and of course we had our own words for that one) but the universal favourite was ‘The Monk of Great Renown’, and, sooner or later, he got around to ‘Aprfc la guerre fini’:

  Après la guerre fini,

  Soldat Anglais parti,

  Mademoiselle in the family way,

  Après la guerre fini.*

  In the streets outside the cafes the Military Police patrolled.

  Private W. G. Bell, No. 4640, 9th Btn., Army Cyclist Corps

  One of the cafes had a piano in it and I used to play a lot and amuse the lads. I was playing away and they were putting the glasses of vin blanc and vin rouge on the lid of the piano and I was drinking it down. I was all right while we were inside, but when turning-out time came and Mademoiselle said ‘Allez’ it was a different matter. When I got outside into the air the roadjust started to go round and round and up and down. I remember staggering around, still singing. I was happy!

  A couple of my mates got hold of me and took me back to the billet. I remember going up the wooden stairs into the loft among the hay, and I remember having a candle in the neck of a bottle, and I remember lying down, and drunk as I was I remember a voice shouting up the stairs, ‘Put that light out.’ I also remember saying, ‘I’ll put your light out if you come up here.’ The next minute I was under arrest. It was the sergeant-major who had called up and he wasn’t a man to stand any nonsense. He called out the guard. I got the fright of my life when I saw them standing there with fixed bayonets. I was marched up the road and thrown in the stable we used for the ‘nick’, and next morning I was up for orders. I had to go before the major. Drunk on active service. He gave me a real dressing-down, then he said, ‘Since you are out at rest, I’ll take a lenient view, otherwise I hope you realise it would be the extreme penalty.’ I presumed that he meant ‘shot at dawn’. Anyway, I was scared stiff. ‘I’ll give you the maximum,’ he said. ‘Twenty-eight days’ First Field Punishment.’

  First Field Punishment was no joke. It meant that you had to parade in full pack and go up and down the road at the double. Everything was done at the double. About turn, left, right, left, right, about turn, left, right, left, right. It was all done under the Military Police and it was hard going, because you had a full pack, tin helmet and all your stuff,
sweating up and down the road. Then you took your pack off and it was up against the wagon wheel. They marched me into a field and twice a day I was strapped up against the wagon wheel of a General Service limber for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. My wife wrote out, ‘What’s happened? My money’s stopped.’ They did that. They stopped your pay and your wife’s allowance immediately you went on to punishment. She went to our headquarters in London and asked why she wasn’t getting her money. ‘Your husband’s been misbehaving himself,’ they told her. There was nothing she could do about it. That was the worst of all for me. It was such a disgrace and it was terrible being strapped to the wheel of this limber. It wasn’t so much that it was uncomfortable, though you did get hot and cramped, but I just felt such a proper poppy show. All the chaps looking at you. You really felt the disgrace. Before my twenty-eight days was up, we got orders to move up the line. So, being in the Army Cyclist Corps, I finished my last few days riding a bike and carrying another one on my back. That was my punishment.

  It seemed to the colonial troops that the British Army was obsessed by discipline. They would never have stood for it. There were cases where Australian troops, incensed by the sight of a man undergoing Field Punishment, cut him loose again and again, and threatening the MPs – who had the unpleasant duty of tying him up – with loaded rifles, dared them to truss him up again.

  A great many officers shared their opinion, and army records began to show a disturbing number of sentences imposed by courts martial which were (in the opinion of the hierarchy) ludicrously trivial in relation to the offences. The mutinies in the French Army had made some staff officers uneasy, and they feared too that the more casual attitude of the troops from the Dominions would have a deleterious effect on the more docile British troops under their command.

  As the guns boomed around the salient in preparation for the coming offensive, a meeting of senior staff officers was convened. The main item on the agenda was the lack of discipline shown by the Canadian soldiers, and the conversation turned to their deplorable habit of failing to salute superior officers. What could be done about it? The discussion continued for more than forty minutes until General Plumer, who had been growing increasingly restive, broke in abruptly. ‘Well, gentlemen, I don’t think there’s much wrong with the saluting of the Canadians. Nearly every Canadian / salute returns it.’ There was shame-faced silence and Plumer rustled his papers together. ‘If that’s all, gentlemen….’

  General Plumer had other problems to concern him and so had General Gough, for he was in command of the force which was to make the long-awaited thrust that would break the salient.

  Chapter 9

  General Plumer’s Second Army, having conquered the ridges and therefore secured the right flank of the salient, was to sit tight until after the main attack in the salient itself. This was to be the job of Gough’s Fifth Army, now disposed along the line from Zillebeke, round Ypres and along the canal bank to Boesinghe. Haig confidently expected that Gough’s army would be astride the ridges in a week. Meanwhile a force from the Fourth Army, under General Rawlinson, was despatched to Nieuport, just down the coast from German-occupied Ostend. Its purpose was to launch a seaborne attack on Ostend and the ports to the north, as soon as Gough was able to penetrate far enough inland to swing round and attack the coast from the rear. On the extreme left of the salient, between Boesinghe and Dixmude, there were to be simultaneous attacks by the French and the Belgians.

  The land beyond Dixmude petered out into impassable swamp, where the situation had been static ever since King Albert had ordered the floodgates of the canals to be opened in 1914, in a last desperate effort to stem the German advance. So the waters spread over a large area of land, a stagnant, insurmountable barrier between the opposing armies, although the Allies had managed to retain a toehold around the coastal town of Nieuport. Nieuport was literally the end of the line. On his daily inspection of the trenches, 2nd Lieutenant ‘Paddy’ King of the 2/5th East Lancashire Regiment always made a point of going right to the end of the very last trench which abutted on the beach. It appealed to his sense of humour to feel that, for a few seconds at least, he was the last man on the Western Front. At such moments, in that time of misunderstanding and confusion before the offensive, he was probably the only man on the Western Front who knew exactly where he was and what he was doing. But to a disinterested observer, like Pastor van Walleghem, there was an unmistakable air of purpose behind the lines.

  Pastor van Walleghem

  9 July 1917. There is more and more talk about the impending offensive, we see many extensive preparations here, and learn the ones of the neighbouring sectors; additional railways are being laid all around. Guns are being brought in and the ammunition depots are being enlarged and new ones established. Soldiers and officers alike tell the civilians that it will be terrible and continuous. They must break through at any cost, and in a few short weeks Flanders will be delivered. Also the newspapers make mention of the importance of the coming offensive. The people are fall of hope, but those nearest the front fear the bombing which will precede the battle. Under the circumstances, a farmer from Vlamertinghe requests permission from the military authorities to move his livestock owing to the danger of the coming offensive. Instead of obtaining this he received a visit from the Gendarmes: ‘What? An impending offensive? How do you know that? How dare you give away military preparations?’

  The Belgian civilians could hardly refute the evidence of their own eyes and ears. It was perfectly obvious to them that an offensive was imminent. The soldiers, pouring into the salient in previously unheard-of numbers, could hardly fail to be aware of it. Senior officers were naturally aufait with the hundred detailed pages of the plan of attack and, thanks to German Intelligence, the enemy was almost as well informed. If anyone doubted that, it was plain for all to see in a report from the War Correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, published on Sunday, 1 July:

  The mine battle in Flanders was conceived not only as a menace to Lille but also as a breakthrough on the whole Yser front. There is no adequate reason to suppose that General [sic] Haig will content himself with what has been achieved….

  In connection with the considerable increase of activity of the English from the sea against the Flemish coast, the renewal of an ambitious land operation with far-reaching strategic aims is doubtless to be expected. I think I am betraying no secret when I say that for a long time past we have contemplated these things in a state of preparation.

  The German information was correct in every particular. There was just one thing they did not know, and that was that the War Cabinet in London had not only failed to give the go-ahead for the offensive but were still doubtful if it should take place at all. Haig was not aware of that either. There had been an appalling failure of communication and everyone concerned was proceeding on false assumptions. The War Cabinet assumed that Sir Douglas Haig had clearly understood the final agreement which had been reached at the end of the June meetings – that he had been given approval to continue his preparations but with the proviso that the offensive would only be undertaken if the French were able to participate actively in it. The Cabinet had undertaken to ‘sound the French out’. The politicians believed that they had made it clear that they reserved the final decision to themselves, and that it would be based on their assessment of what the French were able and willing to do.

  It had been agreed that Albert Thomas was to do his best to persuade the French Cabinet to throw in all their resources and attack simultaneously with the other Allies; but a fortnight after Haig had returned to France, the Paris Conference had still not taken place and the time and energy of the War Cabinet itself was almost exclusively taken up with endless and frustratingly pointless discussions on the situation in Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, on I July, Haig had received a visit from General Anthoine, who informed him that the French would not be ready to attack on 25 July, the date that Haig had set for the beginning of the offensive. He asked for
a postponement of three days. Reluctantly Haig agreed. It is reasonable to suppose, or at least to give him the benefit of the doubt by supposing, that Sir Douglas Haig assumed that General Anthoine’s request for a delay implicitly embodied that commitment of ‘wholehearted support’ on which the politicians in London had insisted, and that there was now no obstacle to proceeding with the offensive which, for so long, had been the corner-stone of his strategy. The tragedy was that the strategy was based on assumptions which, by July 1917, were no longer wholly true.

  The offensive in Flanders would relieve the hard-pressed and demoralised French armies in the south? The French were now well on the way to recovery and rapidly recuperating both in morale and in strength.* A victory in the west would stiffen the resolve of the Russians in the east? The Russian front was crumbling and moving towards total collapse which nothing could now avert. The war could not be continued unless the Channel ports were captured and British shipping losses reduced? Thanks to the introduction of the convoy system in May, the shipping losses had already dropped dramatically and 300 submarine-chasing destroyers, nearing completion in American shipyards, were expected to be in operation within weeks.

  No one in London thought it necessary to draw the attention of the C-in-C to the significance of these developments. The War Cabinet had other things on its mind. With the increasing number of air raids on London, public morale was showing signs of becoming shaky. There was a suggestion that two squadrons of fighter aeroplanes should be taken from the Western Front and brought back to defend London against attack from the air. Haig refused point-blank to allow any such thing. Every gun, every aircraft, every man was needed on the Western Front. Flanders too was being bombarded with bombs.