They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  Of the 22 divisions (each consisting of 12 infantry battalions) involved in the fighting, 14 had been hit so hard that they had to be withdrawn to be rested and re-formed.*

  Haig now ordered Plumer’s Second Army to turn its flank inwards and address itself to the higher reaches of the salient, while the Fifth Army concentrated its efforts on the left flank.

  By the time August, weary and blood-stained, had dragged to a close, parts of Glencorse Wood alone had changed hands eighteen times. North of Langemarck the mighty Eagle Trench still guarded the approaches to the village of Poelcapelle. In front of St Julien the strongpoints guarding the Zonnebeke-Langemarck Road still held out against repeated attacks. While, on the Frezenberg Ridge, the Army looked out from the line between Square and Low Farm, across its field of dead, to the unattainable, inviolate fortified farms of Beck and Borry on the other side. On 6 September, they attacked them again.

  It was not to be part of a full-scale battle, of course, for General Plumer refused to move until his preparations were complete, and that would not be until well into September. But Borry and Beck, on the Frezenberg Ridge, rankled like a thorn in the side. If the troops were to reach Zon-nebeke in the first leap, then Beck House and Borry Farm must first be subdued.

  The job was given to the 5th and 6th Battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and while the 6th Lanes, attacked Beck House on the left, the 5th Lanes, were to attack Borry Farm. Or rather, four companies of the battalion were to be involved in the attack on Borry Farm and the trenches on either side of it. C and D Companies were to go forward while A and B Companies stayed in support. It was an arrangement which suited George Horridge and Bill Tickler very well indeed, for they were close friends. Tickler was to lead C Company into action, while Horridge, as commander of A Company, would support him from Low Farm in the front line. Low Farm was a captured German pillbox almost exactly opposite Borry Farm, 400 yards beyond.

  Captain W. Tickler MC and Bar, 5th Btn., Lancashire Fusiliers

  We both kept watching the time and with five minutes or so to go I said to George, ‘Well, I’m off now. See you later.’ We shook hands and I crawled out of the pillbox and got into the trench ready to take the men across. The whistles went and we started off. We could see our objective very clearly indeed. It was a long straight trench running on either side of Borry Farm. We had only got a few yards when we saw the Germans running out of these pillboxes, Beck House and Borry Farm, and lining the trenches, and they started firing at us, rapid machine-gun fire. It was hard on the men – very hard. The officer can duck down, keep close to the ground, but the men were all loaded with picks and shovels down their backs, carrying bombs and ammunition and everything under the sun, and they were dropping like ninepins. You don’t see a man going down. All you notice is that he’s gone – half a dozen of them gone, and you know they’re not funking it because they would go ahead if they could. It was criminal, because there weren’t enough of us. That’s how I felt as I went over, angry. I sent a message back by signalling lamp for stretcher-bearers.

  Captain G. B. Horridge, 5th Btn., Lancashire Fusiliers

  I couldn’t give anyone an order because I thought, well, I might as well take out my revolver and kill them here, for they’d be sure to be hit the moment they went outside. So I simply said, ‘Captain Tickler is signalling for stretcher-bearers.’ There were two stretcher-bearers there. One was Holt, a Rochdale boy who had been a corporal, but he had lost his stripe through some misconduct. The other was called Renshaw. As soon as the words were out of my mouth Holt said, ‘Well, I’m ready to go.’ And Renshaw said, ‘Yes, well, I’ll go too.’

  Holt went first. He crawled through the door and we pushed the stretcher after him. He stood up and got hold of the stretcher and put it on his shoulder, and just at that very moment there was a burst of machine-gun fire that knocked the stretcher right off his back on to the ground. He simply bent down, picked it up, put it back on his shoulder and off they both went. Neither of them was touched. I like to think that the Germans saw the stretcher and knew what they were about.

  Captain W. Tickler, MC and Bar, 5th Btn., Lancashire Fusiliers

  I’d lost a lot of men before I was half-way across, and by the time I got to the German line I was virtually on my own except for one or two chaps, and one of them was wounded. Things weren’t looking very good just where we were, but I could see that over on my right some of the blokes of D Company were making a very good job of getting hold of this Borry Farm strongpoint. So I sent another message back, asking for reinforcements. Then we lay low and waited. Horridge sent out another platoon and I watched it coming across. Very few of them got to me.

  There was a bit of a lull in the shelling, when all of a sudden I looked over and there on the edge of the German trench was one of my sergeants and a bunch of men, and he was just about to jump into the trench. I was lying behind this slight bank just a little way back, and I was so near that I could hear a German officer say, in perfect English, ‘Right, put your hands up and put your rifles down.’ So I screamed across at this bloke, ‘What the hell are you doing giving yourselves up?’ I didn’t wait for him to answer me, I just let fly with my revolver. I was aiming at the German officers, but they were all mixed up together, these blokes, and the sergeant screamed back, ‘Stop that bloody shooting!’ The German officers scuttled into a dug-out and left the sergeant and the other blokes standing there.

  Our men had just captured the pillbox of Borry Farm when I saw the Germans behind coming forward and massing for a counterattack, so I sent a message to Horridge to send up the SOS signal.

  Captain G. B. Horridge, 5th Btn., Lancashire Fusiliers

  As soon as I got Bill Tickler’s signal calling for the S O S, I got hold of a rifle and the rifle grenade with the SOS signal, which was a rocket that exploded two red and two green flares. I crawled through the hole in the wall and fired it up into the air. We waited. Ten seconds passed and it seemed like ten years, so I crawled through the hole again and shot off another signal grenade. About two seconds later our barrage started to come down. It was absolutely thrilling. Hundreds of guns in the rear opened up, and over the heads of our men there was a great curtain of smoke and shrapnel flashes. Even in the thick of it, I was absolutely thrilled to feel that I had brought this about and was virtually, at least for the moment, in command of the artillery.

  Captain W. Tickler MC and Bar, 5th Btn., Lancashire Fusiliers

  In spite of our artillery fire the Germans got Borry Farm back again. Lying there in a shell-hole in front of their line, looking to the right, I saw them bomb their way in and clear our men out. We hadn’t enough men left to consolidate the position. So those of us that were left had to try to get back as best we could. The chap who was with me was hit. A bullet hit him right in the shin-bone. It was the most extraordinary, terrible noise. The bullet screams if it hits a bone, it spins round and screams, twisting. He wasn’t badly hurt but he couldn’t make it entirely on his own, so I set off trying to get back with him and looking for any of my other men as I went. It probably took us about two hours just to cross those few hundred yards, going from shell-hole to shell-hole. By that time it had quietened down a bit. The Germans didn’t bother us much when we were going back.

  Captain G. B. Horridge, 5th Btn., Lancashire Fusiliers

  Tickler came in just before sunset, and when we had a rough count of those who had managed to get back, less than 40 men had made it out of the 160 he’d started off with. Bill Tickler was absolutely exhausted. I’ve never seen a man so worn out. He crawled into the pillbox and threw himself down on a wire stretcher-bunk and went straight to sleep. I went outside to see to the men and to watch the wounded coming in.

  Then a most peculiar thing happened. A Scottish soldier had emerged from some ruined dug-out in No Man’s Land when the stretcher-bearers were looking there for wounded, and someone brought him up to me. He was in the usual state, a bit the worse for wear and his uniform thick with dried mud. Ther
e were no Scottish troops that day anywhere near us, so I questioned him. He said that he had been there for many days, ever since a previous attack, that he had been left in No Man’s Land and had then lost direction and didn’t know which way to go to the British trenches. He had been living on the iron rations found on dead men and on water from their water bottles. It seemed perfectly reasonable so I simply told him to go off down the line. And then it struck me that, filthy though he was, the man was perfectly clean-shaven. It wasn’t the face of a man who had been unable to wash or shave for the last ten days or so; it was the face of a man who had shaved that morning! In retrospect, and much too late, I realised that he could only have been a German who spoke English, wearing a uniform taken from a dead body, who had been lying out in a forward listening-post which had been overrun in the attack.

  Even at that stage, Captain Horridge might have tried to pass on a warning had he not received a message that convulsed him with rage and put everything else out of his mind. He shook the weary Tickler out of a deep sleep.

  ‘For God’s sake, Bill, will you wake up and look at this bloody order DHQ has sent me.’

  The order from Divisional Headquarters read, You will send one officer and six men to bomb and capture Bony Farm pillbox. Should the men become casualties you will send six more, and then, if necessary, another six until the enemy post is captured. Lieutenant Pattinson will lead the first party.

  Horridge and Tickler were stunned. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to send Pattinson out. I’m damned if I’m going to send anybody out,’ Horridge exploded. ‘If they think that six men with a bag of bombs could have done the job, why the hell did they send 280 men over the top in broad daylight against machine-guns to do the same job! I don’t care if they bloody court-martial me. I’m not going to do it.’

  It was perhaps fortunate that at this point the Commanding Officer made his appearance in person. The Colonel didn’t say much. He simply asked to see the signals, and when he had read them he put them in his pocket.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see to this.’

  Neither Horridge nor Tickler heard any more about the matter. Next evening the men of the 5th Lanes, were relieved and went, wearily, out of the line, leaving several score of their number lying in the charnel-house in front of Beck and Borry.

  Chapter 15

  Everyone who could be spared was given leave or rest of some kind in the brief space of time that was left before the offensive was renewed on 20 September, and fresh divisions practised the attacks over and over again. The infantry held grimly on to the hard-won length of the new line and repulsed the few counter-attacks launched by the Germans. The truth was that the German troops had been hit as hard as the Allies, and Ludendorf was encouraged by the unexpected quiet to allow himself to entertain the hope that the offensive was over. But peering into the darkness through the slits of wet pillboxes, or shivering in an open trench in the first chill winds of autumn, the fighting troops were more sceptical. Beyond the British lines they were aware of a constant movement, of a clanking and rustling, of muffled voices; and, shooting up their flares, they would see the front-line working parties frozen in the sights of their rifles and machine-guns.

  The working parties were toihng as never before. They bridged the streams, repaired the roads and extended the winding miles of duckboard tracks up to the assembly positions. Yard by yard, the long supply roads stretched out until they reached all the way to Langemarck on the left and, on the right, past the great desolate craters of Hooge, through the skeleton of Chateau Wood and up to Westhoek. Now that the ground was drying out, there were assembly trenches to be dug in the pitted earth and, deeper still, trenches stretching beyond and behind the lines to carry the vital communication cables that would link the men in the field with Battalion Headquarters. In the two weeks before the new push, the men of the working parties bore the brunt of the battle. Of more than 10,000 casualties in the first fortnight of September, 6,000 were sustained by the engineers and almost 3,000 more by the ‘PBI’, reluctantly working under their orders.

  One such casualty was Sergeant John Carmichael of the 9th Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment.

  Sergeant J. Carmichael VC, gth Btn., North Staffordshire Regiment

  We were on Hill 60, digging a communication trench, and I was detailed off with a party of men to get it done quick. I was supervising the job. We had men working in the trench and men working outside of it as well. One of the chaps was deepening the trench when his spade struck an unexploded grenade, just lodged there in the side of the trench, and it started to fizz. I was an instructor in bombing, so, knowing a bit about explosives, I knew that there would be seven seconds before it went off unless I did something. I couldn’t throw it out, because there were men working outside the trench as well as the blokes in it. So I shouted at them to get clear and I had some idea of smothering it, to get the thing covered, keep it down until they were out of range. All I had was my steel helmet. So I took it off my head, put it over the grenade as it was fizzing away, and I stood on it. It was the only way to do it. There was no thought of bravery or anything like that. I was there with the men to do the job, and that’s what mattered.

  Well, it did go off. They tell me it blew me right out of the trench, but I don’t remember that. The next thing I remember is being carried away. That’s how I got this thing.…

  ‘This thing’ was the Victoria Cross. But it was several days before Carmichael knew anything about that. Both his legs were shattered and his right arm slightly injured, and he remembered nothing about the journey to No. 53 Casualty Clearing Station at Bailleul, nor of the first few days he spent there. Nor could he understand the fuss that was being made of him, or the flutter in the ward the morning that they told him he was to have a very special visitor – the General himself was coming to see him.

  Sergeant J. Carmichael VC, 9th Btn., North Staffordshire Regiment

  His name was General Williams, and he was very nice to me. They’d put me in clean pyjamas, and he patted me on the shoulder and called me ‘my boy’ and then he told me about the medal. I suppose I was pleased, but I’ve never been more surprised. And I was more pleased yet when my platoon came – the whole lot of them. I don’t know how they did it, managing to come together, but they came into the ward and they lined up at the foot of the bed and every one of them saluted me. Oh, I was embarrassed, but it was a great feeling. It was very good of them. They said I’d saved their lives, but I was there and I was in charge of them. I didn’t think I was doing anything extraordinary.*

  As soon as he was able, John Carmichael wrote home to his anxious mother in Airdrie, to tell her that he was recovering well. He didn’t think it worth mentioning that he had won the Victoria Cross!

  Another mother was anxious to have news of her son. As John Carmichael was lying unconscious in hospital in Bailleul, Ernie Gays’ mother was sitting down to reply to the letter she had received from her son’s friendjimmy Smith. He received it a day or so later.

  44 Milligan Road,

  Leicester

  Sunday, 9 September 1917

  Dear Friend,

  I am addressing you as friend as any friend of my Boy’s is my friend. I thank you for sending us word of how our Dear Ernest died. We had also a very nice letter from the Captain [Captain E. Johnston] the day before we received Yours. It is a dreadful thought to lose our Dear Boy in this way. We would not believe it till we had the letter from someone who saw him.

  Did you see my boy after he died, could you tell us how he was? I should like to know what time of the day or night it happened (or thereabouts). Was he up the doings (are you allowed to tell us?) or was he on Sentry?

  I am sure we are all the while thinking of you dear lads, hoping and praying for you to be kept safe, and then when these Awful tidings are sent us it shakes our faith. But then again when we get calm we know that God is still in his heaven and He orders all things for the best. I sent Ernie a parcel off on 21 August; if you shou
ld see anything of it, will you share what is good between you and his friends. I shall never forget you and hope you will write often to me. So thanking you I close.

  Yours truly,

  Mrs Gays

  PS. Write soon.

  Ernie’s parcel was still there at the dump and the boys shared its contents between them. Then Jimmy Smith wrote to Mrs Gays, to thank her and to tell her as much as he thought it appropriate that she should know of the manner of Ernie’s death. He was at least able to tell her that Ernie had been buried, no matter how haphazardly. Although that fact was a comfort to him, he could hardly expect Ernie’s mother to realise its significance, for he hoped, as all the soldiers hoped, that the womenfolk at home would never know the full horror of the carnage.* Throughout the Allied armies there was a tacit understanding which amounted to a conspiracy of silence.

  Private G. Giggins, No. 32750, 62 Machine Gun Company

  Well, the front-line dead – a lot of people won’t like this – they’re simply dead. You can’t do much about them. In most of the attacks, if they were killed they just had to lie there until they disappeared under the mud. That was the reason we had so many missing. When a fellow gets hit by a splinter or shell, or even a bullet, he collapses at the knees and usually falls face forward because of the weight on his back, which means you’ve only got to have a few inches of mud and he drowns in the mud. I was right behind the lines one day at Tor Top, going down a track towards Zillebeke, and I saw a haversack, a very good haversack, just lying there half in the mud. Now a machine-gunner can always do with a haversack because ours get very dirty and oily from carrying tripods. So I tried to pick the haversack up and it was attached to a dead body. That was the sort of thing you saw all the time. The thing was that you couldn’t do anything for the dead. It’s surprising how heavy a man is when he’s dead, and if you were being pushed back, or even if you were just going out of the line, you had enough to carry with guns and ammunition. The most important thing is to get the wounded back, because they do stand a chance.