They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  It was a costly exercise. The strongpoints of Beck and Borry were still undefeated. The infantry had not been able to advance by so much as an inch the line that ran between Square Farm and Low Farm. Their ranks were horribly depleted, while, in the blood-soaked field beyond, some hundreds more men had dropped to swell the ranks of the dead. The results of this minor action were regarded at Headquarters as being disappointing. It was noted with regret that two companies of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders had lost all their officers, and that over 200 other ranks were killed, wounded or missing. The Argylls and the Seaforths were relieved. It would, unfortunately, not be possible to put them back in the field until fresh drafts of men were brought in to reinforce their ranks.

  *

  It had also been a bad morning for Major Macleod. Combined with the events of the night before, it added up to the worst twelve hours of his life. His battery, C.241, was due to support an attack of infantry and tanks with the object of securing some of the ground east of St Julien. It was to fire the creeping barrage that would cover the infantry in their advance. Major Macleod’s task was to work out the barrage tables, a task involving meticulous mathematics and calculations, for every artillery officer was well aware of the fact that the infantry would pay for his errors with their lives. It was a long job. In order to maintain a constant rate of firing and allow for reloading, an individual firing-pattern had to be worked out for each gun. Rory Macleod worked at it during the late afternoon and early evening in a dug-out eighty yards behind the battery position, which was a mere sandbagged hole in the ground covered with a piece of corrugated iron. And the job was even more complicated than usual, due to the fact that a lucky shot from the Germans had knocked out one of his guns. So five guns would have to do the work of six. It took several hours to complete.

  All evening, the guns of C.241 were silent and the men rested while other batteries waited, alert, for SOS signals from the front. At midnight, Macleod and Lieutenants Gascoyne and Allday were dozing in the dugout when gas shells started falling round the battery.

  Major R. Macleod DSO, MC, C.241 Bty. Royal Field Artillery, 48th (South Midland) Division

  I shook Gascoyne and told him to put on his gas mask and go out and sound the gas alarm. He grabbed it and crawled out of the dug-out. It was like a football rattle – a terrible sound! And as he was doing this there was the most almighty explosion. I was lying on this stretcher thing facing the entrance. There was a bit of sacking hung over it and through it I saw this most tremendous sheet of flame. That was the last I knew for a bit. When I came to I was buried alive, covered with hot earth which smelt abominably. Allday and I managed to crawl out, and I was right on the edge of the most enormous crater. A shell had hit the high-explosive ammunition dump – three thousand shells – of our 4.5 howitzer battery just on the other side of the Boundary Road and fifteen yards behind us. The crater stretched right across the road, yards behind it and yards in front, right up to where our dug-out had been. Why we were not all killed I do not know. My next thought was to go and look for Gascoyne. I felt sure that we would pick him up in little pieces. But he’d also had a miraculous escape and there he was, still holding the gas rattle, staggering around,a bit dazed and slightly wounded but more or less all right. I sent him down to the dressing-station and I went with Lieutenant Allday to see what had happened to the battery. It was more or less a shambles. The two left-hand guns had been completely knocked out and several of my poor chaps had gone west. It was extraordinary that we, who were so near the explosion, suffered so little, while the battery, eighty yards from it, suffered so much. The blast and pieces of metal must have passed right over our heads.

  I left Allday to clear up the mess at the battery, for we were due to start firing the barrage at 4.45 and, of course, all my barrage tables and orders had gone west because I’d had them with me in the dug-out. We were still being shelled by gas, so I plodded over to D Battery behind us. In their dug-out, wearing my gas-mask and by the light of a candle, using D Battery’s copy of the orders and their barrage forms, I made out a fresh set of tables for my three remaining guns, which now had to do the work of the original six. I managed to get them finished off not very long before zero hour, in time to start the barrage.

  Although the night was filled with the sound of shell-fire, and despite the clanking and rattling inside the juddering tanks as they tested the engines, Jason Addy and the crew of Delysia heard the explosion as the ammunition dump went up half a mile away. The line was still static, just east of St Julien, and the attacks of 22 August, both here and on Frezenberg to the right, were intended to push it forward so that it would be in line with recently-captured Langemarck. Almost every tank that could be scraped up was in the line to support the infantry. The crew of Delysia were newly trained, newly arrived at the front and all on the small side, for it was now the policy to recruit small men for the tanks – eight of them, after all, had to fit in. Addy was five foot two, a pawky Yorkshire lad, much teased for possessing an appetite as large as his frame was small. He considered himself lucky to be in D Company, for he felt that Corporal Hardy, the Company cook, was the best cook in the Army.

  Hardy had come up himself that night, right to the front line in St Julien, to bring the boys their supper. Tonight there were hot rissoles in the dixies, made from hard biscuits which were soaked, mixed with bully beef, bound with eggs that Hardy had scrounged from somewhere, and then shaped into man-size portions. They were then rolled in more crushed biscuit crumbs and fried, sizzling hot, in bacon fat. They were still pretty hot now as the boys tucked into them – and there was plum duff to follow; biscuits again, but concocted by Hardy into a steamed pudding with the help of some sugar and a handful of raisins. There was even a hot jam sauce in a separate container to be ladled generously over each portion. Who cared about the flying shells, or that the feast had to be eaten by the reflected glare of Very lights and rockets! With a tot of rum for a digestif, the boys felt fit for anything.

  A dozen tanks were to support yet another attack by the infantry across the blood-soaked ground that separated St Julien from the Langemarck-Zonnebeke Road a few hundred yards in front of the village. It was the same stretch of ground where Major Macleod had seen them bogged down in the mud less than a week before. The ground was drier now. The troops were fresher. And, although the enemy had strongly reinforced his line, they might just possibly make it. The tanks, however, could not risk going across the same ground.

  Ten tanks were to go up the remains of the lane that had once linked St Julien with the crossroads; while the two others, commanded by Lieutenant Enoch and Lieutenant Knight, were to cover the sector further to the left, taking as their route the road which in happier times had been the main road between St Julien and Poelcapelle. It would be a bumpy passage, for beyond the British line it was pocked and cratered with shell-holes. Also, the retreating Germans had felled the vestiges of the leafl-less trees that had once lined it on either side. Their trunks now lay scattered across the length of the road, and over them the tanks would have to pass. The bombardment started. Zero hour came and the creeping barrage began. At the three remaining guns of Major Macleod’s battery, the gunners worked dementedly to keep up the firing-pattern. Behind the curtain of shells the infantry went over and the tanks moved forward up the log-strewn road. Knight’s went first, followed by Enoch’s Delysia, with Jason Addy manning one of her guns.

  PrivateJ. L. Addy, No. 94804, D Co., 4th Btn., Tank Corps

  When you’re enclosed in a tank and there’s that much racket, you don’t know whether it’s shells that’s hitting you or what you’re doing. The noise of the engine was tremendous, and we had to stand by with a pyrene fire-extinguisher and get ready to shoot it at the engine if it got too hot, because we had twenty gallons of petrol on either side of the tank and all round the sides there were racks of ammunition. If you had a fire in a tank you hadn’t an earthly. Jerry was shelling back, and you could feel the blast of the shells as
you were looking through the gun slit; and within your range of vision, you could see the infantry moving all around. You just kept your finger on that machine-gun button, trying to knock out the machine-guns that were going for the boys. Our officer, Lieutenant Enoch, was on the other gun and he kept giving directions – or screaming directions above the noise.

  We were just coming to a place called Bulow Farm, which, of course, was a big pillbox, and the infantry were having a hard time there. Lieutenant Knight’s tank was twenty yards or so in front of us and suddenly it just went boom. It was a direct hit from a heavy shell. The tank slewed right off the road, and we were just able to squeeze past it. We couldn’t stop, of course, and in any event it didn’t look as if anyone could possibly have survived that, so on we went to help with this scrap at Bulow Farm. It was unfortunate that it was a tank with six-pounder guns that was knocked out, but we did our best with the machine-guns to help the infantry bombers. And we got it! We took Bulow and even went on a bit further.

  Then we turned to go back. We were still under terrible shell-fire, for the Germans were at it with their heavies and throwing over everything they’d got. Somebody shouted out, ‘There’s Jagger, on the side of the road!’ Well, Jagger was the corporal of the tank that had got knocked out. Lieutenant Knight had been killed, and when we looked at the tank tipped off the roadside we could see his arm sticking out of the gun slit and his hand all twisted. But Jagger was standing there on the roadside waving us down, and we opened the door and he shouted in to us, ‘I’ve got two wounded chaps here, can you take them back with you?’ He had four wounded, actually, but we could only carry two in the tank. So we pulled in these two wounded chaps, laid them down on the floor on either side of the driver’s seat and left Jagger to look after the two others.*

  It was a terrible trip back for those two blokes, because we were lurching over all these felled tree-trunks across the road. It was a case of heave up – bang, heave up – bang, all the way back. And every time we banged down, those chaps were in agony. I’ll never forget their faces. And it wasn’t only the tree-trunks, for by now the road was a shambles of cartwheels and bodies. We had to go over them. You hoped they were dead but you had to go over just the same, you couldn’t help it. Sometimes you’d see the wounded lying there. You can see they’re alive, and you can see the expression on a man’s face – he’s terrified to think you’re going to go over him. Well, you do go over him, because you can’t stop, but we’d manoeuvre the tank so that the tracks would go on either side of him. There was plenty of clearance underneath the tank, but they were terrified just the same. You could see it.

  We got back to St Julien, and lifted the two boys out and laid them behind a wall and went off to look for stretcher-bearers. When we’d handed them over, we camouflaged the tanks in their parking places and got on lorries that were waiting to take us back to La Louvie. We thanked God we weren’t in the infantry.

  Delysia was lucky that day – she attained her objective and returned. Of the ten tanks that went up the lane between St Julien and the Langemarck-Zonnebeke Road, six became ditched in craters before they were half-way across. The remaining four helped the infantry to capture a part of the line, and even a strongly-held pillbox known as Springfield. Then came the counter-attacks, and the troops were pushed back. But this time, not quite to St Julien. They had managed to advance the line by 300 yards, all along the line from Langemarck to the Frezenberg Ridge. The cost, in the front line, was a score of tanks and casualties of some 2,000 men. When the heavy German guns switched their attention to shelling the rear, there were more casualties in the gun-lines. The SOS signals had gone unanswered, at least from C.241 – for C.241 had ceased to exist shortly after zero hour when a direct hit knocked out two of Rory Macleod’s three remaining guns. He signalled through to headquarters for orders and the reply came back: Hand over your remaining gun to the adjacent battery, return and draw six more from Ordnance. Sick and dispirited, Macleod ordered his small band of survivors to pack up and they started on the long trudge back to the wagon lines. At least it meant a week’s respite from the battle.

  The actions of 22 August were, of course, very minor. They were not destined to figure prominently in the official histories. But they were reported by the newspapers.

  The Times, 23 August. The following telegraphic dispatches were received from General Headquarters in France yesterday: g. 12 pm. Successful operations were undertaken by our troops this morning, east and north-east of Ypresjor the capture of a series of strongpoints and fortified farms lying a few hundred yards in front of our positions astride the Ypres–Menin Road and between the Ypres–Routers railway and Langemarck.

  Bitterfighting has taken place at all points. The enemy has again launched repeated counter-attacks which have suffered heavy losses from our artillery and machine-gunfire.

  The Times, of course, could only print the information contained in the communiques it had received, and the communique did not mention the fate of the Argylls, the Royal Scots or the Seaforths. Like Lieutenant Knight and his tank crew, like the men who had fallen trying to get to the Zonnebeke–Langemarck Road, like the men who had died at the guns of C Battery, they were already merely figures in the appropriate column of statistics.

  Field–Marshal Sir Douglas Haig studied the statistics with interest and discussed them at length with his Chief of Intelligence, General Charteris. Charteris had compiled other lists of statistics against which those of the Allied armies could be compared, for they estimated the strength of the enemy – the number of his guns, the number of reserves available to him, the fighting strength and quality of those reserves, the number of Germans taken prisoner, and the estimated number of German casualties in killed and wounded. The only ones which could possibly be accurate were those showing the numbers of German prisoners captured by the Allies. The others had been compiled by information gleaned by interrogation and by reports from spies. At best it was guess-work, sometimes inspired, more often far wide of the mark. But Charteris backed his information to the hilt and Haig, having confidence in him, drew the conclusion that if all else failed, the campaign could still be won by attrition. Furthermore, he was assured that once the troops managed to get up on to the Passchendaele Ridge they would find it ‘as dry as a bone’. There was still a chance, if the troops could only get forward, that they would be in a position to attack the coastline when the tides were right in September. Even if that were not possible, the Passchendaele Ridge would be a better place on which to stand for the winter than in the swamp half-way up. Especially if, by gaining it, one had drained the enemy’s life-blood and absorbed all his resources, so that he would be too weak to strike a blow elsewhere.

  It was about this time that a bitter joke began to circulate in the depleted ranks of the infantry. Who, the soldiers wanted to know, would take the rations up to the last man?

  It was about this time that people stopped saying, ‘When I go on leave –’ and began to say, ‘If I get out of this –’. It was about this time that Gough himself observed that the heart had gone out of the Fifth Army.

  It had lost more than its heart. Since 31 July the Army’s casualties had been 3,420 officers and 64,586 from other ranks. Many were wounded or missing. More than 10,000 were known to be dead. One of the 10,000 was Ernie Gays. And his friend Jimmy Smith knew very well that he was dead, for he had buried Ernie himself. It had happened on a working party as that bloody August drew to a close.

  Cyclist J. Smith, No. 21013, c-Co., Northern Cyclist Btn

  We were always on fatigues in the Cyclist Corps. Well, you couldn’t cycle in those conditions with nothing but shell-holes all over the place. So they had to do something with us. We were billeted in Spoilbank Tunnels – terrible place, damp and awful and always full of gas – and in August we went on working parties every night. We were up at Hill 60 digging cable trenches for the REs – and the Jerries were shelling hard, going for the guns, because it was full of batteries round there. And th
ere were bodies where you walked, and often where you dug. The burial parties couldn’t keep up with it. Well, we’d had heavy shelling that night but we didn’t have many casualties. We managed to take cover. It was only when we got back that I knew Ernie had gone, because he was working on a different stretch from me. He was our only casualty. He was my best pal and I did feel bad about it – but I felt worse about the next night. Before we went in at night, we always used to line up in single file and the sergeant would come along and he’d split us up into groups of seven. He came along the line and counted off seven – seven – seven. Then, when he came to the end, there was myself and two other blokes left over. So he said, ‘Right, you last three. You can bury Gays.’ Oh, I felt bad, being detailed to bury my own pal. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

  They’d laid him just at the side of this communication trench on Hill 60.1 stayed with him while the other two chaps went to dig the grave, just by the side of the big mine-crater. When they came back we carried him over. I took him by the ankles, the other two took him by the arms and we laid him in and covered him up. I remember feeling a bit upset, for the grave was only about four feet deep. I knew he probably wouldn’t be there for very long, because of the shell-fire. The place was getting churned up the whole time. I felt bad. You got very callous, seeing everything that was going on, but when it was your own pal – you couldn’t feel callous then. After we buried him,we had to wait for the rest of the working party to finish. Then we got back to Spoilbank just before dawn. I couldn’t go to sleep. I got up and wrote to Ernie’s mother.

  Ernie Gays was one of the last few statistics in the long columns that were totted up at the end of August.