Before the war, a narrow secondary road, little more than a lane that served as an access road to the farms on either side, ran up from the Zonnebeke-Langemarck Road, over the Bellevue Ridge on the left of Passchendaele, and down into the flat plain on the other side. From a hamlet called Mosselmarkt a lane ran along the top of the ridge to the village of Passchendaele some 600 yards to the right. The hamlet, of course, had long vanished. Now the Jaegers were in residence – one of the crack German machine-gun regiments. Another, the Brandenburgers, guarded the second vital approach away on the other side of Passchendaele where the Australians would attack. In the middle, the flanks of both forces would plunge forward into the moat-like swamp that guarded the frontal approach.
The jumping-off point for the New Zealanders was the place they called Waterloo Farm. Once it had been a farm on a bend of the Graven-stafel Road as it rose to breast the Bellevue Ridge. On the right the road fell away to Marsh Bottom.
In the teeth of the gale the march up had been a nightmare, for the heavy shelling of the day had blown great gaps in the duckboards – too many to repair. The long files of soldiers simply dropped into the gaps, up to their waists in mud, and struggled out as best they could. They arrived soaked to the skin, exhausted and dripping with slime, many with rifles so caked with mud that they would be as useless as feathers in the coming battle.
Private W. Smith, No. 15029, 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun Co.
It was a terrible night. We dug in as best we could at the bottom of the Bellevue Ridge – but the idea of’digging in’ was ridiculous. You can’t dig water! My section managed to throw up a kind of ridge of slush, but the water from the shell-holes around just poured into it. You couldn’t squat down, we just stood there in the rain and wind waiting for our guns to open up with the barrage.
Gunner B. O. Stokes, No. 25038, 13th Bty., New Zealand Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade
We were stiff and cold in our flooded pillbox, but we managed to doze a bit. At 4.15 we roused ourselves to get ready for the stunt at 5.25. It was still pitch-dark, still raining with a very high wind. You had to lean against it to get out of the pillbox. Our cook, old Dick, was out before me. He was crouching in the lee of the pillbox with an oil sheet round him, trying without much success to get the billy to boil. It was a valiant effort, even though all he finally managed to produce was some lukewarm tea. At five o’clock we left for the gun 400 yards away, and what a job we had to get there through all the mud and shell-holes in the rain and dark. At 5.25 we started firing.
Private W. Smith, No. 1502Q, 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun Co.
Remarkable to relate, when we popped off, the excitement left me. I settled down and never turned a hair. I don’t even remember thinking that I would be hit, and the Germans started spraying us with intense machine-gun fire as soon as we moved. I was next to Keith Moore, and he got it right away, a bullet through the knee. He grabbed at me as he fell and screamed at me, ‘Smithy!’ I kicked him. My best friend! I kicked him really viciously and knocked him away from me in my excitement. I was frothing to go and in a hurry to keep up with the main bunch on the way to Passchendaele.
We made a bad ‘blue’ in sticking to that main Passchendaele Road. It certainly looked the best part to get a footing on – covered with inches of mud, of course, but with a fairly firm footing underneath. I suppose Fritz had anticipated this. As we started up the road we were being caught in enfilade fire from the big pillboxes in the low ground to our right. People were dropping all the way. Then, as we turned the corner on top of the rise, we saw this great bank of wire ahead, maybe a hundred yards away. A rat couldn’t have got through that. The bombardment should have cut the wire but it hadn’t even dented it. Not that we could get near it anyway, for it was positively spitting fire. The hail of lead we tried to go through was simply incredible. More than half of us fell. We hadn’t gone far when our oldest surviving sergeant, Jock Stewart, dropped alongside me. I just had time to see that he had fallen on his back, with a bullet-hole in his chest in the vicinity of his heart. We went a few yards more and then pulled into the side on our right for a breather. The road had been cut slightly through the ridge, and the low bank gave us the very slightest piece of shelter if we kept ourselves low down. We were down to a dozen or so men.
Young Harold Stewart was with us, Jock’s young brother. He hadn’t seen Jock go down. He didn’t realise it until we stopped, and when he did we couldn’t hold him. He crawled back on his stomach to where Jock was lying, and got hold of his body and dragged him back along the road to where we were sheltering. The machine-gun bullets were splashing up the mud all around them. Harold got right through them all. Then, just as he reached us he eased himself up slightly to pull Jock down below the road surface, and a German sniper put a rifle bullet through his throat. I practically saw the bullet that hit him. It must have got him in the jugular vein. His blood gushed out all over me.*
Gunner B. O. Stokes, No. 25038, 13th Bty., New Zealand Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade
All the morning up until about 11 am we fired according to plan, raising our range at certain intervals to coincide with the advance the boys were supposed to make. Imagine the set-back we had when we were told to lay back on our original range. We realised then that the boys hadn’t really been able to move forward at all. We had bad trouble firing the gun. Every time we fired a shot the trail would dig deep into the mud, so with every shot we had to try to lift it back and re-lay the gun before we could fire again. It was a nightmare. And we knew things were bad up front. During the morning the walking wounded started to come back, and for a time our gun looked like a casualty clearing station. Some were quite badly wounded, but there wasn’t much we could do except to encourage them to go on to the dressing-station.
Private W. Smith, No. 15029, 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun Co.
Now we were down to one NCO. When we had finished laying out young Stewart to die, this NCO, a Sergeant Smith, suddenly issued the order, ‘Prepare to advance.’ Now this was just sheer suicide. Whatever was left of the N. Zedders round about us was just a disorganised rabble, so much so that the Germans had become very cheeky. They weren’t bothering to take cover, they had come out and were perched on top of their concrete forts picking off any fool who showed his nose.
I thought to myself, ‘Well, Sergeant Smith, if we’re going, you’ll go first!’ Sure enough, up he stepped. As he showed his nose the sniper fired. He came crashing back on top of me with his face twisted in a look I’ll never forget. He was killed outright. That was the end of any advance in that direction.
Gunner B. O. Stokes, No. 25038, 13th Bty., New Zealand Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade
Our fire became even weaker, because two of our guns had got completely bogged down and simply couldn’t be budged. Then, quite suddenly, when we were feeling very depressed about everything, up came our Maori Pioneer Battalion. What a sight it was to see these chaps, about forty of them on each side of the gun, up to their knees in mud as they hauled on ropes attached to the wheels, pulling the gun into position. We were told at midday that we had to get the guns into action because the push was to be renewed at 3.10 in the afternoon. This we thought was madness, but someone must have had second thoughts. Just before the time set for zero, the attack was cancelled.
Private W. Smith, No. 15029, 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun Co.
Everyone was either scattered, wounded or dead. There were only a few left in my bunch. We had no idea what to do, for we had no officers, no NCOs, no orders. Eventually Joe Hammersley and myself crawled across the road and set off crawling in the direction of Passchendaele. I have often thought since, what the hell did two of us think we could possibly do? We had gone no distance when suddenly Joe dropped with a clang. He lay quite still and I crawled on into the shelter of a shell-hole and lay low. Lo and behold, a few minutes later who should slither into the shell-hole alongside me but Joe! The bullet had hit his forehead and gone out through the top of his head, only grazing him. While w
e were examining the hole in his tin hat and marvelling at his miraculous escape there was a violent explosion and one of our own shells blew us right out of the hole. Poor old Joe! His arm was shattered by a splinter from the shell. When he pulled himself together he said, ‘My God, Smithy, I’m getting out of here. Both lots of the blighters are after me now, ours and theirs!’ I tried to persuade him to sit tight and wait until something turned up, but I couldn’t hold him. He crawled away down the hill*. I joined two other cobbers in a larger shell-hole a bit farther over. We sat tight. The rain never let up and it was bitterly cold. We stayed there all night. It wasn’t a picnic…
Nor was that night of 12 October a picnic for Bert Stokes and Brock McHerron, for they were on gun-guard, keeping alert for the SOS signals that still came occasionally from the front.
Gunner B. O. Stokes, No. 25038, 13th Bty., New Zealand Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade
We went on at 6.30 pm on the twelfth and came off at 8.30 am. All that time we sat on the seats of the gun, one on each side, and saw a night of fourteen hours out. No cover, in fact no nothing – only the oil sheets we had, which protected us but little. Brock and I have laughed since at the dejected picture we must have cut as we sat there, doing our best to keep warm, and the ground about us knee-deep in mud and slush. Anyone who had seen us with our unshaven, unwashed dials would have laughed for a week.
As darkness gave way to watery light on the morning of the thirteenth, the men who were crouched in the flooded shell-holes within sight of Passchendaele roused themselves and wondered uneasily what the day would bring. Bill Smith and his two companions were startled to see Bill Appleby appear above them and stand on the edge of the shell-hole grinning down.
Private W. Smith, No. 15029, 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun Co.
He just stood there with a broad grin on his face, and very gingerly we accepted his invitation to come up and have a look. And what an amazing sight greeted us! Between us and the concrete fort on the corner of the road was a thirty-yard belt of barbed wire right around. Up and down, near to the wire, marched a tall German in long gumboots carrying a Red Cross flag. We had no idea who had arranged this armistice. There was no officer or NCO within a coo-ee of where we were.
We took advantage of the lull to lug three or four of our wounded down to Waterloo Farm, where our part in the advance had started the morning before. We were well and truly back where we started, but what a sight the place presented now! We had only been there in the dark. Now we saw that it was a mass of shell-holes full of water, and on the parts of firm ground between the holes there were scores, even hundreds, of wounded men lying there, brought in by mates. In front were long lines of Northumberland Fusiliers and Durham Light Infantry, lying dead almost in formation where they had been mown down like wheat as they tried to go across against the machine-gun fire a few days before. They hadn’t even got as far as we had.
The Maoris were there. They’d formed relays to get the wounded out. There were no stretchers. They carried them in their arms like children. We watched them go, partly envious. We had to stay in the line and there was no word of relief. There were no rations either, and I was absolutely ravenous. When I’d gone into action my haversack contained a tin of bully-beef and a pair of puttees. When I’d taken it off in the shell-hole that night before to try to get a bit of food, it was a sight for sore eyes. Both the beef and the puttees were riddled with bullets. They must have missed my back by a fraction of an inch, for the back of my tunic was in shreds. I was so hungry that I went across to the dead Durhams and rooted in a few haversacks looking for eats. But I wasn’t the first. AE I could find were four small pieces of shortbread. It was home-made…
It remained quiet all morning. On the left of the sector the 4th and 18th Divisions had been luckier in their attack of the previous day, and had finally managed to capture another bit of Poelcapelle. Tom Berry had fired his rifle-grenade to such effect that he had managed to thwart a counter-attack almost single-handed, and had earned himself the Distinguished Conduct Medal. But the fighting had been hard and bitter. The conditions had been as severe as those in front of Passchendaele. In old Flemish, ‘Poelcapelle’ means, literally, ‘the church in the bog’. It had lived up to its name. Now the victors rested and drew breath. Over the ridge the demoralised remnants of the Anzacs wearily set about defending the line and prayed for reinforcement or relief. The wounded who had been left out in No Man’s Land after the attack waited for rescue. The Germans tended their wounded and seemed glad of the brief respite, for the shell-fire was described in the evening communiques as ‘desultory’. It rained that day for fifteen hours without stopping.
The fiercest fighting took place many miles away at Plumer’s headquarters at Cassel, where there was a meeting of the staff presided over by the Commander-in-Chief himself. Now everybody had had enough. The message had travelled right up the chain of command from shaken subalterns to angry company commanders, to COs furious at the demands made on their men, to brigadiers helplessly watching their battalions being decimated, to corps commanders who were now convinced that enough was enough. Appalled by the results of yesterday’s attempt, with the weather showing no signs of improvement, Generals Gough and Plumer were of the same opinion. Every officer present was unanimously agreed that no further operations should take place until conditions improved and until more guns could be got up to provide an effective bombardment. They were overruled by Sir Douglas Haig.
He was not without sympathy for their predicament. But there were stronger reasons for continuing than there were for calling a halt. The French were planning to attack in Champagne on 23 October. Until then the attention of the Germans must remain fixed on Ypres. He was now engaged in planning an alternative operation at Cambrai for which General Byng, in command of the Third Army, hoped to complete his preparations by mid-November, and he had therefore asked that the Ypres campaign should be continued as long as possible. Sir Douglas Haig was anxious to accommodate his request. It must also, he felt, be obvious that securement of the Passchendaele Ridge would not only provide a better line on which to stop for the winter, but an excellent jumping-off point for further advances in the spring.
He intended to bring in the Canadians. Vital and rested, flushed with the success of the capture of Hill 70 to the south, the Canadians would trump the German ace and succeed in capturing Passchendaele. There was such a little way to go. The men had done splendidly, although it was true that the results of the last few days had been disappointing.
Colonel Whitehead of the 2/5th East Lancashire Regiment had not recovered from his displeasure with the two companies of his battalion that had lost direction. It was just forty-eight hours after they had returned from their ordeal that they were ordered to provide men for a particularly unpleasant task. They were to go to the Frezenberg Ridge and bury the bodies of the successive waves of soldiers who had been killed there in the fighting of the two months before Borry Farm and Beck House had fallen on 20 September. The sight of the scattered dead had a depressing effect on the troops going up the line. Paddy King and the other company commander who had incurred the Colonel’s displeasure were detailed to see that the job was done.
Lieutenant P. King, 2/5th Btn., East Lancashire Regiment
We were each told to take a section of men and one NCO, draw rubber gloves, sandbags, and an extra rum ration for the men, and take our sections out to the battlefield area to bury the dead. They were mostly Scottish soldiers – Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and Black Watch. It was an appalling job. Some had been lying there for months and the bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition; and some were so shattered that there was not much left. We did have occasions where you almost buried a man twice. In fact we must have done just that several times. There was one officer whose body we buried and then shortly after we found an arm with the same name on the back of a watch on the wrist. We had to open their tunic pockets to get out their AB64S, which we had to put separately in a sandbag. If they
had any identity discs, then we marked the grave – just put the remains in a sandbag, dug a small grave and buried him. Then I had to write it on a list and give the map reference location. Where the bodies were so broken up or decomposed that we couldn’t find an identity we just buried the man and put ‘Unknown British Soldier’ on the list. It was a terrible job. The smell was appalling and it was deeply depressing for the men.
Of course, the battle had passed well on by then, but the ground was totally destroyed. We could see nothing but these two abandoned pillboxes. There was no sign of civilisation. No cottages, no buildings, no trees. It was utter desolation. There was nothing at all except huge craters, half the size of a room. They were full of water and the corpses were floating in them. Some with no heads. Some with no legs. They were very hard to identify. We managed about four in every ten. There were Germans among them. We didn’t bury them. We hadn’t been told to. We did that job for two days running. And we didn’t just dump them into a hole. We committed each one properly to his grave. Said a little prayer out of a book issued to us. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ The men all stood around and took their hats off for a moment, standing to attention. ‘God rest his soul.’ A dead soldier can’t hurt you. He’s a comrade. That’s how we looked at it. He was some poor mother’s son and that was the end of it.
They Called it Passchendaele Page 26