They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  At 5.15, in the gathering gloom of the murky wet evening, already worn out by the morning’s march and the long hours of waiting in the bone-chilling rain, the 2/5th Lanes squelched their way towards the track. Joining the line of sodden Tommies moving in single file along the slippery duckboards, they started to shuffle towards the front line. It was only possible to shuffle, for, predictably, as darkness fell, the enemy started to pound the roads and duckboards with shrapnel and high explosive. The wind rose. The rain became torrential. It was just over a mile to the front line but the winding route of the duckboards, as they corkscrewed around the craters and the floodwater, covered many times that distance. Inevitably there were accidents.

  Lieutenant P. King, 2/5th Btn., East Lancashire Regiment

  It was an absolute nightmare. Often we would have to stop and wait for up to half an hour, because all the time the duckboards were being blown up and men being blown off the track or simply slipping off – because we were all in full marching order with gas-masks and rifles, and some were carrying machine-guns and extra ammunition. We were all carrying equipment of some kind, and all had empty sandbags tucked down our backs. We were loaded like Christmas trees, so of course an explosion near by or just the slightest thing would knock a man off balance and he would go off the track and right down into the muck.

  Private A. T. Shaw, No. 299572, 2/4th Btn., East Lancashire Regiment

  Word was passed down from the front saying, ‘Every man get hold of the bayonet scabbard of the man in front. We cannot wait for any man who falls in.’ This of course referred to the shell-craters brimming with stinking water on either side of the duckboards. We knew this order was not meant to be carried out, but it made you realise what could have happened if you were alone on these duckboards and staggered off. It was still raining but we were past caring.

  As dawn approached I could see the faint outline of a ridge about four or five hundred yards in front, and we then left the duckboards and moved to the white tape fastened to iron stakes. It was knee-deep in slush, and then I heard the sound of a heavy gun firing and immediately our barrage started; but we had not then arrived at the jumping-off point. Heavy German shells were already falling amongst us and shrapnel was flying all over the place. There were shouts and screams and men falling all around. The attack that should have started never got off the ground.

  Lieutenant P. King, 2/5th 9th., East Lancashire Regiment

  It had taken us more than twelve hours to get there. The Colonel had led the battalion up the track – Colonel Whitehead, a very terse man, a very brave man. And he said to me, ‘Get them into the attack.’ I passed it on to the NCOs, who gave the orders: ‘Fix bayonets. Deploy. Extended order. Advance!’ We went over into this morass, straight into a curtain of rain and mist and shells, for we were caught between the two barrages.

  Well, of course, we lost direction right away. Although the Company went into the attack in extended order it was only natural that the men got into little groups of threes and fives, and the machine-gun fire from the German positions was frightful. They were simply spraying bullets all over the place. We could hardly move because the mud was so heavy there that you were dragging your legs behind you, and with people being hit and falling and splashing down all around you, all you can do is to keep moving and look for some form of cover. The casualties were very heavy and after we’d somehow managed to get forward maybe 200 yards, I realised that the position was absolutely hopeless. I got a handful of men together and took them into a big crater, more than half full of water. We filled some of these empty sandbags that we had with slush, and put them on the edge as a base for the Lewis gun so that we could try to protect our position. And there we stayed. I sent a runner to try to report where we were to where I thought Battalion HQ was, but he never got there. I saw him blown up. So I never got in touch with Battalion HQ. We had to stop where we were – ruddy miserable. We were there for more than twenty-four hours and the rain and the shelling never stopped the whole time.

  Cold and miserable, soaked and sick, and at the extreme limit of exhaustion, the ‘Burnley Mashers’ crouched on the bank of their muddy pool. They vacated it as darkness fell and the water rose, crawling through the mud to look for another containing marginally less water. Paddy King crawled off with his sergeant to try and find other remnants of his company. He found at most a dozen and moved them to shell-holes nearer his own. He supposed that together they formed some kind of line, but exactly where it was he didn’t have the faintest idea. All he knew was that they were lying in a lake of mud in the hollow of a valley and that on their right, where the ground sloped up, was the village of Passchendaele.

  The rising ground on the left was the Bellevue Ridge, and a little way beyond it, where other battalions were trying to conquer the rest of Poelcapelle, conditions were almost as bad. The Reverend Stanley Hinch-liffe, who was padre to the 26th Northumberland Fusiliers, had filed up the duckboard track with his men.

  Padre S. Hinchliffe, 26th Btn., Northumberland Fusiliers

  It was one vast plain, interspersed by a network of small lakes and holes full of mud. Here and there, stuck amid the mud, gunners were firing on open sites. Four men had made a gallant attempt to bring up rations. All four lay dead, one with his head blown off. Legs and arms jutted out from shell-holes. There were some terrible sights, and many delays. A rifle-shot rang out in front of us, and the word went around that a man had shot his trigger-finger off. I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe that one of my men would have done such a thing. But it was impossible to find out. One couldn’t move up in the queue. The men were heavy-laden. I couldn’t carry a rifle but I wanted to be as much like the men as possible, so I rilled my haversack up with all sorts of things. I had a trench periscope, which was quite a big thing, so I put that in and I had a certain amount of my own equipment, but it wasn’t as much as the men. They were like pack mules. They had pickaxes, and guns and rifles and sometimes a spade down their backs. So I loaded myself up as much as I couldjust to save my self-respect. There was one thing I heard a padre say that always stuck in my mind. He said, ‘I’m not going to see my battalion off and say, “God be with you, men, in the trenches, for I am at the transport lines.”’ I took that as my motto.

  Of course, as a non-combatant I couldn’t be in the trenches. I went with the MO, the doctor, into the advanced aid-post he’d set up. It was the best place to be, for you could comfort the wounded. Even when a man was very badly wounded and unconscious I always believed that you could penetrate right down through his consciousness. I used to whisper in his ear. Another padre gave me that tip and I always did it, just bent down and whispered, ‘Put your trust in God.’ Of course, if they were conscious, one had to be careful not to let them think that because the padre was bending over them they were going to die. The first thing I used to say to a wounded man was, ‘Now, don’t worry, we’re going to get you right. You’ll be all right.’ Then I would have a prayer with them and say, ‘Put your trust in God.’ And, of course, I dished out lots of cups of tea.

  Sergeant T. Berry DCM, No. 4406, 1st Btn., The Rifle Brigade

  Tea was all we had that night at Poelcapelle. There was no chance of getting the rations up. We’d been in the attack, come back to support, and then we were going to attack again, because in those conditions they couldn’t get reliefs up. We were just crouched in shell-holes waiting, and there was this one little chap. He made tea all night long, and kept nipping out and getting water out of flooded ground behind us and heating it up as best he could. Every half-hour he’d say, ‘There you are, Tommy, a drop of tea.’ It wasn’t very hot, but it kept us going. The next morning when it got light he looked over the side where he’d got the water and it was a bleeding shell-hole, and there was a dead Jerry in it and blood all floating around. We’d had that and all in our tea. Well, we’d had it the night before, so we didn’t worry about it today. We seemed to have no ill-effects, and we had other things to worry about.

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nbsp; We heard screaming coming from another crater a bit away. I went over to investigate with a couple of the lads. It was a big hole and there was a fellow of the 8th Suffolks in it up to his shoulders. So I said, ‘Get your rifles, one man in the middle to stretch them out, make a chain and let him get hold of it.’ But it was no use. It was too far to stretch, we couldn’t get any force on it, and the more we pulled and the more he struggled the further he seemed to go down. He went down gradually. He kept begging us to shoot him. But we couldn’t shoot him. Who could shoot him? We stayed with him,watching him go down in the mud. And he died. He wasn’t the only one. There must have been thousands up there who died in the mud.

  The morning of 10 October found Lieutenant King and the remnants of B Company stiff, cramped and chilled to the marrow – still huddled in their shell-holes with no possibility of relief until darkness fell again. King posted sentries to keep a sharp look-out for counter-attacks. None came on their immediate front, though the men watched with horror as an SOS signal went up somewhere in the waste to the right of them, where another straggle of sodden soldiers were presumably in the same situation as themselves.

  The British artillery opened up promptly to thwart a supposed counter-attack. The enemy guns opened up too. In the confusion, not knowing exactly how far the advance had reached, the gunners miscalculated the range, and for almost an hour shells from both sides pounded the line while machine-guns rattled and spattered into the mud. When a shell landed dangerously close, swamping them in a tidal wave of muddy water, King, who had almost lost his voice, croaked over to the adjacent shell-hole, ‘Are you all right, lads?’

  ‘Aye, all’s reet here, Paddy. We’re still battin’.’

  Under the circumstances Lieutenant King did not mind the lack of formality. He rather liked being called ‘Paddy’.

  B Company was still batting when dusk began to gather half-way through the icy afternoon. The hours had dragged interminably. Exhausted though they were, there was no question of sleep; there was no question of a smoke either, for the merest wisp rising from one of the shell-holes might attract the attention of a sharp-eyed German look-out. There was nothing at all to do but munch a hard biscuit from time to time, try to dissolve Oxo cubes in cold water, and chew over the three eternal never-resolved questions that were the constant preoccupation of conversation in the Army. Does the Army make you pay for the blanket it buries you in? Has your company been secretly chosen to be a suicide force? Will the war be over by Christmas? They also wondered whether they had been totally isolated and forgotten, for no runner, no rations, no message or signal of any kind had reached them.

  Lieutenant P. King, 2/5th Btn., East Lancashire Regiment

  Suddenly, to my great surprise, I heard voices behind me and I looked back and there were three very tall figures, and one was actually smoking. I could hardly speak for astonishment. I said, ‘Who the hell are you? And put that cigarette out, you’ll draw fire!’ He just looked back at me. ‘Well, come to that, who are you?’ I said, ‘I’m Lieutenant King of the 2/5th East Lancashire Regiment.’ At which he said, ‘Well, we’re the Aussies, chum, and we’ve come to relieve you.’ And they jumped down into the shell-hole.

  Well, naturally, we were delighted, but of course there are certain formalities you’ve always got to carry out when you hand over, and I was a bit worried about that. So I explained, ‘There are no trenches to hand over, no rations, no ammunition, but I have got a map. Do you need any map references?’ He said, ‘Never mind about that, chum. Just fuck off.’

  They didn’t seem to be a bit bothered. The last I saw of them they were squatting down, rifles over their shoulders, and they were smoking, all three of them. Just didn’t care!

  We struggled back. It was an awful journey and there was no sign of the battalion or any of our men, just the couple of dozen of us. Eventually we met up with another group, another officer with a few men who’d been in the same position. It took us hours to find Battalion Headquarters, but eventually a Military Policeman guide took us along, and it was in a small Nissen hut. I pushed open the door and went in. The colonel was sitting there with the adjutant and two or three other officers. The only light was from a few candles stuck into bottles and they were drinking whisky out of enamel mugs. I saluted the colonel and said, ‘Lieutenant King, reporting back with the remnants of B Company.’ He looked at me with a really scathing expression and said, ‘At last! The bloody cotton-wool soldiers!’ And he didn’t even ask us to have a drink. The other bloke and myself just saluted and walked out. We thought it was a bloody fine reward, after all our efforts, to be spoken to like that.

  The 66th Division’s attack had resulted in a ‘sag’ in the line – and Colonel Whitehead was not the only one who was disappointed with the results.

  The Times, 11 October

  War Correspondents’ Headquarters.

  THE SAG IN THE LINE

  Another day makes us better satisfied with our last suaess than we were inclined to be yesterday. Then, as I wrote, although we had won all our objectives on both the north and the south of the advance, there was a sag in the centre of the line, where, although we knew that bodies of troops had reached their farthest goal at various points, the general line – so far as there is any general line in this extraordinary warfare – was in places short of it.

  Since the British Armies began their hammerings on this front, we have grown so spoilt by the brilliance and rapidity of successive victories that anything short of total triumph (anything less than the whole earth with a handle to carry it by) is a disappointment. But, as our new line becomes established, and communication is better across that hideous wilderness, we grow better satisfied. What robbed us of as sweeping a success as any we have seen was the weather and the indescribable condition of the ground. The German counter-attacks were few and feeble. A distinguished officer said to me this morning that it was like hitting a pudding. There was no resilience in the enemy, no reaction. But wading up to your armpits in pudding is difficult.

  However astonishing the troops might have found some of the comments in the report, not one of them would have argued with the last statement, least of all the Anzacs, for they were now in it, and in it right up to their necks. The attack was to take place on the morning of the twelfth. Between them the New Zealanders on the left and the Australians on the right were to assault the Passchendaele Ridge and capture the village itself. Reaching out on either side were forests of barbed wire thirty feet deep, and behind them machine-gun posts bristled every few yards. In the flooded hollow of the valley in front, concrete strongholds dotted the marshland; and in a line of strongly fortified outposts, in conditions as miserable as those of the British a hundred yards away, garrisons of German infantry kept watch over the swamp. The Anzacs had already relieved the Tommies in the very ‘front line’, and just below the breast of the rise at Waterloo Farm the New Zealanders, who would carry out the assault from the left, were assembling for the attack. The day before the New Zealand artillery had moved up its guns – or, at least, it had tried.

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

  C and D guns went forward first, and didn’t they have a time getting them out through the sea of mud and slush! They had to have eight horse-teams to do the job. Our team arrived at 7.30 am, and just as we were trying to get our gun out Lieutenant Chirnside told us to lay back on our SOS line, as the road was blocked by shell-fire. No sooner had he moved away than the sound of a shell coming over told us it was going to land somewhere very near. We crouched to the earth, and the shell landed only three yards away.

  The next few minutes I cannot really describe. The shock was so great, the sight too awful. When the smoke had cleared away, there lay four of our boys – dead. Then came the cries of the two wounded. Brown had both legs shattered and Lieutenant Chirnside was simply riddled with wounds. Brown’s brother, who is also in our battery, was terribly shaken. We carried them to the dressing-stati
on and Brown stayed there with his brother until he was taken away. You can’t imagine how we felt. The shelling didn’t cease for another half-hour. Shelling. Shelling. Shelling. It was an appalling sight. The wind and the rain lashing down. The horses screaming and rearing and plunging down into the mud as the shells exploded all around us. It seemed as if every gun Fritz had was trained on this small area. We had to leave the gun and shelter as best we could. Eventually, when the shelling began to tail off, we went back and hooked the team up to the gun.

  It was five o’clock in the evening before we got to the new position, and then we had to start getting the gun in. We only managed to get four guns out of our six-gun battery forward – and most of our other batteries were in the same state, or worse, which didn’t make the prospects for the morning look too good. We had to put down a ‘heavy’ bombardment for our infantry going across and the stunt was due to start at 5.25 in the morning, so as soon as we’d dragged the gun in we looked for a place to put in for the night. We found an empty pillbox with a foot of water in it, and none too sweet smelling. We put some boards in it to keep us above the water. There was no room to stretch out. We just sat on ammunition boxes and listened to the rain and the gale outside and waited for morning.

  The wind had risen to hurricane force during the evening. As he listened to the storm lashing across battered Flanders, beating at the troops already on the duckboard tracks for the long night’s trudge towards tomorrow’s battle, General Gough became more and more uneasy. He telephoned General Plumer at his headquarters at Cassel and suggested that on their own responsibility they should cancel the attack. It had, after all, been agreed in principle that attacks should be pressed home only when the weather was favourable. The events of 9 October, when most of the infantry assaulting the Passchendaele Ridge had been either wiped out or, like Paddy King and his men, isolated in hopeless positions, had shown all too clearly the futility of attacking under such conditions that the men were exhausted before they began. Plumer was similarly doubtful, but on balance felt that it was a chance worth taking. In any event it was probably too late to cancel the attack. Without General Plumer’s backing, Gough could do nothing. The attack was on. The best that could be hoped was that German vigilance would be lulled by the violence of the storm and that the enemy would be taken unawares.