They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  We’d had boys coming in all week, of course, and we’d been busy but the ones we got at the weekend were in a shocking state, because so many of them had been lying out in the mud before they could be picked up by the first-aid orderlies. Their clothes were simply filthy. They didn’t look like clothes at all. We had to cut them off and do what we could. But it was too late for a lot of them, and many a one lost an arm or a leg that would have healed up right away if he’d been brought straight in. We felt terribly sorry for them but we had to try not to show our feelings, because it would never have done. We’d all have been sunk in gloom and then we’d have been no good to the men. But it was difficult when a man was very badly wounded, wounded in a very difficult place perhaps. It was hard not to show sympathy.

  And there was always this extraordinary feeling of attraction between a wounded man and his nurse. I’ve never known anything like it. It was quite impersonal, but there was a sense of sympathy and understanding that was indescribable. In a civilian hospital – even an army hospital – the man had a home quite near and relations possibly, but the wounded man on the battlefield is miles away from his home and his family; he’s in pain and he’s amongst strangers, and I think that was why this sympathy went out from one to the other. And he somehow also had a sense of safety that he’d come to a haven where there was a roof over his head – though it was only a canvas one, at least he was having his wounds attended to.

  If it was at all possible to move them, the men were sent down the line. All day from Remy Siding, from ‘Mendinghem’ and No. 11 CCS at Godwaersveldt, the hospital trains were loaded as fast as they could pull into the sidings, and sent off down to the base hospitals in the south. AH week they had been receiving casualties in the clutch of hospitals around Boulogne and Etaples, and the ‘Blighties’ who were fit to travel, or even the lucky ones who might otherwise have been sent back to the front after two weeks’ nursing, were being cleared out to make room for the inevitable flood of wounded after the next attack. The hospital ships had left low in the water with stretcher cases, their decks crammed with walking wounded, and by 4 August the hospital trains were pulling in every hour to Charing Cross Station.

  It was Bank Holiday Saturday. Over at Victoria Station, in spite of the changeable weather, so many people were anxious to get away to the coast that supplementary booking offices had to be opened. Some holiday-makers had been queuing since five o’clock in the morning. The coastal resorts of Britain were packed and Blackpool in particular looked forward to a ‘record’ season. All weekend, as the papers reported, the seafronts of Britain’s coastal resorts ‘presented a very animated appearance’.

  Londoners who were unable to get away for the holiday weekend packed into the Queen’s Hall to attend a ‘patriotic meeting’. The Prime Minister spoke. There was a display of the flags of the Allied nations, culminating in the ceremonial unfurling of the Union Jack. This was followed by a full rendering of the National Anthem, the solo verses sung by Miss Margaret Balfbur. Many dignitaries attended, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and twenty members of the Government. They sang, ‘Oh God Our help in Ages Past’ and, as a grand finale, ‘Rule, Britannia!’ Meanwhile, a hundred or so miles away across the Channel, the Royal Scots, sitting on the Steenbeek beyond the Pilkem Ridge, anxious though they were to depart, were having considerable difficulty in getting out of the line. They knew the reliefs were there, but the trouble was that the terrain had changed so much since they went in that nobody could find his way back to Battalion Headquarters to guide up the reliefs.

  Lieutenant J. Annan, 1st/9th Btn., Royal Scots Regiment

  We sent out four runners to get to Battalion Headquarters at Minty’s Farm, and every time, after an hour, the Adjutant rang up – because somehow or other we got a line laid – to ask, ‘When is your runner coming up to take the relief out?’ That happened four times, and still he was on the blower, kicking up hell and asking where the runners were. Well, we weren’t too happy about it either! So I said, ‘Well, the only thing I can do is have a go myself and see if I can get there.’ I walked right to it and there were no landmarks at all. You couldn’t say, well, I know that tree, or I can see half a house there, or anything like that. There was nothing. Just one morass of mud as far as the horizon. The runners had simply got lost, and I didn’t blame them at all. I never knew before that I had a sense of direction, and in fact I was really surprised when I got there. But 1 did, and I managed to bring back the relief. Then we got out of it. We’d got as far as we could and held on, and we lived on iron rations for four days. We didn’t think we’d done too badly.

  My Lewis-gun team did best of all. I don’t think there was one of them over twenty. We got them into a dug-out there and in spite of the mud they kept their gun in immaculate cleanliness, ready for anything. They were a great little team. They attended to it like a mother to a baby and the thing was absolutely like a new pin, even in all that mud. I never bothered or needed to examine it. I knew they were all right and ready for anything. They were marvellous, the whole bunch, the lads and the sergeants too. Sergeant Runciman, and Sergeant Bruce, and Sergeant ‘Ecky’ Hume, and Tommy Lamb in charge of the machine-guns, and all the boys as well. They were still cheery, even after four days out among all that.

  And so, not quite so cheerily perhaps, the next lot of troops went in, held the line, and waited for the next move.

  For almost a week, between intermittent showers, the sun burned hot on the salient, so hot that in places steam rose from the sodden earth. At the front the gunfire abated a little as both sides recouped their strength, and behind the line the Tommies, newly out of the trenches, had time to dry off and spruce up for the inevitable kit inspections in every camp.

  Lieutenant G. Salisbury-Jones, ist Btn., Coldstream Guards

  It was one of the things we always made an effort to do. We got out of the line, and almost as soon as possible we had an inspection to see if the boots were clean, and so on, to get back into what I call peacetime conditions. We were inspected by Sir Douglas Haig. He was delighted with what the division had done, which was everything that had been asked of it. He also said that it did us great credit looking so smart after we had only just come out of the line. So, of course, we were very pleased, and I wrote home to my mother and told her about it.

  After the distributions of the great damp piles of letters and parcels, which for the first time ever the Army had not been able to send straight up to the men in the line, everyone was writing letters.

  Dear Mum, Just a line to let you know I’m OK.… My Dear Mother and Father, I’m sorry that I have not managed to write for a few days but, as you may have seen in the newspapers, we have been rather busy.… My Own Darling Wife, Thank you for your three sweet letters which I received when I returned from…. Dear Old Girl, Now don’t get in a state when you see I am in hospital. It is nothing but a scratch and I am quite OK, and full of beans.… Dear Mum – Auntie May – Nellie – Ada – Gwen – thank you for the socks… smokes… cake… toffee… pork pie… parcel from Fortnums.…

  Private Harold Diffey was newly out of hospital, for a fortunate attack of German measles had kept him out of the line when the 38 th Welsh Division went over on 31 July. He tried to make his letter home as tactful as possible.

  Dear Mum and Dad and all at home,

  Thank you for your very welcome letter and parcel. What a surprise I got. When I wrote from hospital and said I would love some rabbit and pork like we used to have, I never thought you’d be having rabbit and pork at home the day you got the letter. As you say, it was a funny coincidence. I see you said it was Dad’s idea to put it in an old Golden Syrup tin. Well, Dad, it was a very kind thought and I thank you very much. Unfortunately, by the time I got it, there was ferns growing out of the tin. Never mind, as the saying goes, it’s the thought that counts.

  A certain Mrs Worker had also lovingly packed a parcel for her boy, Johnny, who, far from home, was about to have his twenty-first birthday.r />
  Guardsman J. Worker, No. 15756, 1st Btn., Scots Guards

  She’d baked a birthday cake for me and packed it in a parcel, and she’d also put in something I’d asked for, which was a packet of disinfectant that would kill lice. It was called Paracitox. It tasted of carbolic, as I found out, because the packet had burst and my birthday cake was covered with this Paracitox – permeated with it. It tasted absolutely foul, but my mother had baked that cake and I was so sentimental that I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, and of course I was too ashamed to give any of it to my friends, so piece by piece I ate it, carbolic and all, rather than throw away cake that had come from my mother.

  Dear Mum, Thank you for the parcel and the lovely cake. Also for the card and your good wishes…

  But the postman, knocking at the door of 5 Kerr Street in Stockbridge in Edinburgh, brought a letter of a more disquieting nature:

  No. 2 Australian

  General Hospital.

  Re: Pte. R. Harvey. Ward K. Bed 54

  From Captain Hume Robertson.

  Dear Mr Harvey,

  Your brave son has not escaped from the battle unscathed – he was wounded on the 31 July in the right arm and abdomen.

  He is doing as well as can be expected. If you have not by the time this reaches you received any word from the Military to the contrary, you will know he still progresses to recovery.

  I trust in God’s goodness this will be granted.

  He has every care and attention. He sends his best love.

  Yours sincerely,

  Hume Robertson

  Chaplain.

  At Nieuport, General Rawlinson’s Army still waited to support the amphibious attack which would take place as soon as the troops could break out of the salient and wheel round to assault the coastline from the rear. Paddy King and some other men of the 2/5th Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, took advantage of the fine weather to enjoy a little seabathing on what was, after all, August Bank Holiday Monday. They were within sight of the German guns at Ostend, and the Germans most un-sportingly shelled the merry bathers while they were in the water. Rushing for the beach and the shelter of their trenches in the sand-dunes, they were further aggrieved to run slap into a shoal of stinging jelly-fish. There were no casualties from the shells, but the jelly-fish stings kept the MO busy for the rest of the afternoon.

  The tide would be right for the attack on 25 August. Which gave the men in the salient exactly nineteen days to conquer the Passchendaele Ridge and advance seven miles beyond it.

  Chapter 13

  It continued more or less fine until 10 August, and the ground dried up sufficiently to allow three divisions of infantry to fight their way up the last hundred yards of the Westhoek Ridge and take the hamlet of Westhoek itself. But before any significant progress could be made, the bastion of Glencorse Wood must be stormed and taken. And on the left of the salient, beyond the Pilkem Ridge, it was equally vital to take the village of Langemarck. If only the capricious weather would settle down.

  The preliminary attacks were planned for 13 August. On the night of the eleventh, just as the troops were assembling to move into position, the weather broke and for the next three days the skies thundered, winds blustered and rain poured down almost incessantly. But, bad weather or not, Langemarck must be taken and the swamp of the Steenbeek would first have to be crossed.

  The only means of doing so was to make a bridge – or rather a series of pontoon bridges – and for the last week, the Engineers had been constructing them by the dozen. Bill Worrell of the 12th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, was one of the weary men who, night after night, collected them from the REs and carried them up to a dump on the Pilkem Ridge, ready for the attack. It was to take place on 15 August. The morning before, Captain Alan Goring, who was a Platoon Commander in C Company of the 6th Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, took No. 11 Platoon across to ‘do a little show’.

  The idea of the operation was to pave the way for a full-scale attack on Langemarck village by establishing a foothold on the other side of the Steenbeek two hundred yards deep and half a mile wide; and after subduing its bristling defences, to hold the sector, so that when the big attack came, the major problem of getting the men across could take place with comparative ease two hundred yards behind the outposts. If this were not done, it was perfectly obvious that, as they struggled across the flooded ground, the soldiers would simply be mown down at point-blank range by fire from the strongpoints fifty yards beyond the morass. The preliminary operation was to take place at five o’clock in the morning, and during the dark, rainy night, working parties had managed to lay a duck-board bridge across the Steenbeek and cut gaps in the wire on the other side. 2nd Lieutenant Jelly went across first with 9 and 12 Platoons, and Alan Goring followed with 11 Platoon in single file behind him.

  Captain A. Goring MC, C Company, 6th Btn., The Yorkshire Regiment

  Well, the first thing that happened was that I lost my platoon. I waded across, got through the gap in the wire, turned round and there was nobody there. I thought, My God! – what the hell do I do now. I waited and waited, wondering what had gone wrong and eventually they began to come through. What had happened was that they had started to cross the swamp and, before they even got to this bridge track, there was a bit of flooded ground about three feet wide. Well, I’d hopped it, but of course my platoon – went straight into it. Naturally, they thought they’d crossed the Steenbeek and lined themselves up looking for me, but they were actually lined up in single file along the bank. Fortunately they realised it and came on.

  A Company on our right were instructed to go for a pillbox, and so were the people on our left. Our objective was some German strongpoints strung along a trench, which was really just a matter of shell-holes. We took three platoons across – myselfjelly and another chap – and 10 Platoon we left in support. There was quite a bit of opposition because the trenches were strongly defended, but we took them, pressed on another fifty yards and started trying to dig in and join up a few shell-holes. It was while the men were doing this that Jelly was hit. We got him down into this little trench we’d dug and there we stayed all day. The people on either side of us hadn’t been able to get so far, so we were in a little salient of our own with no one on either side, both flanks right in the air.

  We had a very busy time, for naturally there were snipers all around us and bullets zinging about all over the place. I was left with just a handful of men, all that was left out of those three platoons, so I wanted to send a message back to see if we could get a bit of help from the artillery. We had two pigeons in a basket, but the trouble was that the wretched birds had got soaked when the platoon floundered into the flooded ground. We tried to dry one of them off as best we could and I wrote a message, attached it to its leg and sent it off. To our absolute horror the bird was so wet that it just flapped into the air and then came straight down again, and started actually walking towards the German line about a hundred yards away. Well, if that message had got into the Germans’ hands, they would have known that we were on our own and we’d have been in real trouble. So we had to try to shoot the pigeon before he got there. A revolver was no good. We had to use rifles and there we were, all of us, rifles trained over the edge of this muddy breastwork trying to shoot this bird scrambling about in the mud. It hardly presented a target at all.

  Well, we did manage it but that still left the problem of trying to get a message back. We did everything to try to dry off that other bird. We had one man called Shuttleworth, a well-meaning chap, but very awkward. If there was a piece of barbed wire that everyone else had avoided, Shuttleworth fell over it. If there was a shell-hole that everybody else had skirted, Shuttleworth fell into it. Shuttleworth, anyway, was the one who suggested that if we had a tommy cooker with us we could have toasted the bird over that a bit until it dried off. Eventually, we did something nearly as ridiculous. We huddled round this bird and blew on its feathers. As a matter of fact we did get it dried off, but we
made jolly sure it was dry before we sent it off with the message.

  Then we settled down to keep the Boche amused for the rest of the day.

  They made two or three movements towards counter-attacking, which we stopped. We did some sniping. I had a very good corporal named Wall, who was an excellent shot. Wall and I had a shooting competition. We took turns at the Boche in front of us while they were running about and moving up from time to time. That kept the troops amused and took their minds off the fire from the strongpoints directly behind us on our flanks. We were standing up to our knees in mud and it kept getting deeper. I crawled along from time to time to the other part of the ‘trench’ to see how poor Jelly was, and when it got dark I went along again to see if there was some way we could get him out and back. By this time, of course, you didn’t have to take so much cover and I was just going to jump down into this little shell-hole trench when they said, ‘Mind Mr Jelly.’ I nearly jumped right on top of him. I could just see his face, otherwise he was all under water. They had three layers of packs under him for he was sinking all the time. I sent for the stretcher-bearers, but they couldn’t get up. Jelly didn’t mind. He didn’t want to be moved until everyone else had gone.

  By that time it was night and I thought, ‘I don’t like this idea of the Boche being behind me when it’s dark.’ So I went back and found a position perhaps fifty or sixty yards further back on a bit of a ridge, so that the Boche would be just in front of us. We crawled back and dug in there, and stayed there and held it until the main attack went through. After that, we were relieved.*

  The 56th Division were sheltering in Sanctuary Wood getting ready for yet another attack on Glencorse Wood, and Corporal Storeman Joseph Pincombe was one of the men responsible for getting the rations up to his battalion, the ist Queen’s Westminster Rifles, from their base camp at Dickebusch. It was not an enviable task.

  Corporal J. Pincombe, No. 40045, 1st Btn., Queen’s Westminster Rifles