They Called it Passchendaele
Page 29
By the time the pastor had returned from mass and was sitting over his bowl of coffee in the presbytery at Dickebusch, fifteen miles away the first of the Canadians had penetrated the German defences and were entering Passchendaele village.
From the jumping-off line of 31 July it was rather less than five miles to Passchendaele. It had taken the troops exactly ninety-nine days and three hours to get there.
Corporal H. C. Baker, 28th North-West Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
The buildings had been pounded and mixed with the earth, and the shell-exploded bodies were so thickly strewn that a fellow couldn’t step without stepping on corruption. Our opponents were fighting a rearguard action which resulted in a massacre for both sides. Our boys were falling like ninepins, but it was even worse for them. If they stood up to surrender they were mown down by their own machine-gun fire aimed from their rear at us; if they leapfrogged back they were caught in our barrage.
Fritzy opened up with his heavies and gave us a pretty good idea that there would shortly be a counter-attack. I got down into a shell-hole with my friend Tom, and Corporal Reid came crawling over and yelled at us, ‘We’ve got to keep spread out. Five fellows over there got bunched up in a cellar and Fritzy made a direct hit and killed the works. So spread out, or we’ll all get nappooed too!’ Since he made no move to spread out, and I was the boy of the bunch of three, I knew who was meant to do the spreading. I had just crawled away when a shell dropped behind me. Bits of Tom’s body came showering down on top of me.
They started to counter-attack. Our SOS flared up: our artillery thundered and sent a screening barrage over our heads; machine-guns and rifles blazed; the earth and the air quivered. Hades was let loose all over again. The bullets of a brigade machine-gun stationed directly behind us and twenty yards further down the slope were whistling so close to my ears that I couldn’t help ducking every time the line of fire came over my head. I could only fire my rifle in the interval before the gunner swung it back again. Our machine-gun fire was particularly vicious because not only did we have Lewis guns and brigade guns, but quite a few captured German ones.
Private R. Le Brun, No. 790913, 16th Canadian Machine Gun Co., Canadian Machine Gun Corps, 4th Canadian Division
The bodies of our men were piled up all over the place, including the body of Lieutenant Gauvereau, who had been killed by a shell the day before while he was on his way from another gun emplacement to ours. We’d buried him and I stuck a salvaged rifle on his grave, but his body had been blown up again and what was left of it was lying a few feet away. We were taking terrible casualties. By mid-day we had lost two machine-guns out of our section of four. By half-way through the afternoon we had lost two men of our own team of five.
Corporal H. C. Baker, 28th North-West Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
In dropped a corporal. ‘We’ve got to try to get the wounded out. Baker, you’re detailed for stretcher-bearer – follow me pronto.’ I was glad to go. I’d never experienced anything like the savagery of that assault. I was burning. My eyes, my nostrils, my throat, even deep in my lungs seemed to be on fire and, no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop shaking. Three stretchers were brought up and we loaded the wounded and set off, three carriers to a stretcher and each party twenty yards apart. We were getting along fairly well; then, just as we were passing a shallow ravine which led down to the swamp, an enemy battery opened up on us. The first shell made a direct hit on one stretcher. Few of us were left whole. We had four men killed out of twelve and two of the stretcher-bearers were now stretcher cases. That left me with a 200-pound Yankee, who’d been on one of the stretchers. The bones in his right foot had been smashed by machine-gun fire, but miraculously he had come to no further harm during the shelling.
We started off again, this time with his arm round my neck. This time we made it to a captured German trench with ‘funk-holes’ dug into the side. Our wounded had been packed into them to protect them from the shelling and the shrapnel flying all around. They started waving as we passed, calling to me to get them out and back to the aid post. I lowered my Yankee friend and went over and explained that I was on my own and couldn’t help. There was almost a chorus, and it was piteous. ‘For God’s sake, give us water then.’ One of my water bottles was empty. I unslung the other and poured a swig down the throats of one after the other. They were all in a bad way, and there was no chance of getting them out, for they were on the Passchendaele side of the morass and the shelling was too heavy for many stretcher-parties to get through.
The Germans had been pushed out of the village, but they were pouring shells into it. Eventually I got my Yank to the dressing-station. What a station! What a sight! It was a captured concrete pillbox and outside it a doctor’s orderly was crouching among the wounded. There were twenty or more men lying there, badly wounded, groaning and waiting to be carried in for attention. Some were already dead.
The orderly got up and said, ‘Get the hell out of here. No walking cases, only stretcher-cases here.’ He wasn’t impressed when I explained that the Yank had been a stretcher-case until he had been blown off the stretcher. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s no good. We’ve got more than we can handle.’ He pointed at the wounded lying around, ‘Most of these men have been put out here to die. Get your bloke to the supply dump. They’ll get him out from there. But move!’ We moved. The shells were beginning to fall too close for comfort. We got to the dump and, as I handed him over, the Yank said, ‘Thanks, comrade.’ I wished him the best of luck. I don’t know which of us was the most grateful to be rid of the other.
I made my way back over the shattered slope to the firing line. As I passed the aid-post I saw that a heavy shell had dropped where the wounded had been lying. There was only a huge hole and a few fragments of bodies to be seen. Then I crossed the sea of water and slime, dodging the explosions as best I could, and climbed up to Passchendaele.
Private R. Le Brun, No. 790913, 16th Canadian Machine Gun Co., Canadian Machine Gun Corps, 4th Canadian Division
They pushed the machine-guns right out in front. There was nothing between us and the Germans across the swamp. Three times during the night they shelled us heavily, and we had to keep on spraying bullets into the darkness to keep them from advancing. The night was alive with bullets. By morning, of our team of six, only my buddy Tombes and I were left. Then came the burst that got Tombes. It got him right in the head. His blood and his brains, pieces of skull and lumps of hair, spattered all over the front of my greatcoat and gasmask. I stood there trying to wipe the bits off. It was a terrible feeling to be the only one left.
Corporal H. C. Baker, 28th North-West Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
We were relieved at nightfall on the seventh. We were told to pick up a wounded man, deliver him to the dump and proceed to Ypres. The mud had sucked me almost lifeless. When we got back to the support trench I tried to find a fresh man to help us back as far as the dump. I went up to the trench and called down, ‘Hi there.’ There was no answer, but I could make out blurred figures below, so I slithered down in, thinking they were sleeping. I shall never forget what I found. Down that stretch of trench the boys were sitting in grotesque positions, and every one was dead. The trench was only shell-holes joined up, and it was open to overhead shrapnel fire from both sides.
We took a brief rest and hurried on as best we could to the dump. Our wounded man was too near the Beyond even to know that we were handing him over. Then we set out across the mud and corruption for Ypres. By heading in a general direction, sometimes by blasted roadway, sometimes by duckwalk, sometimes through mud and swamp, we reached the precincts of Ypres. A sentry directed us to a covered-in stall, and here a comrade was ladling out hot soup. I will never forget that bowl of soup. When I’ve forgotten every sumptuous meal I’ve ever had, I’ll still remember that bowl of good hot soup after seventy-two hours’ sleepless battle.
They guided us to bivouacs in the cemetery. At daybreak I took stock o
f my surroundings. I was looking for a not-too-rotten pool in which I could wash my face and hands and get some water for a shave. I found myself in what had been No Man’s Land in the First Battle of Ypres. Two years later all those churned-up remains were still lying there. Unless you walked blindfolded, you couldn’t have avoided seeing them. They were French and Belgians. They must have been elite corps, for pretty well all that was left of them were high-topped boots and bits of gold-braided uniforms and broken fancy-dress helmets.
A time was set for parade and roll-call. There weren’t too many of us left to answer our names. If there was no response when a name was called, the sergeant would shout out, ‘Anybody know anything about him?’ Sometimes someone replied. More often there was silence.
My impression was that we had won the ridge and lost the battalion….
They hadn’t quite won the ridge. But, with the help of the Anzacs on their right and the Royal Naval Division on their left, they had pushed well on to it. What mattered was that at last Passchendaele had been taken.
Another attack on 10 November secured the ridge itself and 156 days after the curtain-raiser of Messines, the survivors of the men who had fought their way up the salient were able to turn their backs from the terrible slough of the battlefield and look out across open land to the green fields of Belgium beyond.
Part 6
The Aftermath
Chapter 19
The Third Battle of Ypres was officially over. Five divisions had already been transferred to the Italian front; several more were on their way south to take part in the Battle of Cambrai. The interest of the strategists had been transferred elsewhere.
Since 1914 the defence of the salient had cost 430,000 British and Allied casualties, killed, wounded and missing – a quarter of a million in the last three months alone. 90,000 men were reported ‘missing’, and although rather more than half must be buried as ‘Unknown Soldiers’, 42,000 bodies were never recovered at all. Many were simply blown to pieces. Many still lie where they sank into the mud. As many Germans probably lie there with them, for their casualties at Ypres were roughly similar. It has never been possible to calculate the precise number of men who were killed during the Third Battle of Ypres. After the war the official estimates ranged from as few as 36,000 to as many as 150,000. The truth probably lies somewhere between the two. On both sides it had been one of the most costly campaigns in history, and although it had ended officially on 10 November, the toll of casualties, British and German, went on mounting: for the troops held the salient throughout the bitterly cold winter, and although there were no more major attacks, the fighting and shelling never really abated.
When the German Army summoned up the last of its strength and pushed forward on its great offensive in the spring of 1918, it was no longer possible to continue to hold the ridges. There was a strategic withdrawal. Passchendaele was given up. The troops fell back and the salient was reduced to a tight little circle which consisted of little but Ypres and its outskirts. It was smaller than ever before. It was precisely the size to which General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien had proposed to reduce it in 1915. He had been sacked for his pains. But no one remembered that. By 1918 that was a lifetime and some 200,000 lives ago.
Captain Martin Greener (on the left), who worked on the Hill 60 tunnels before the Battle of Messines.
Gunner Jason Addy, 4th Battalion, Tank Corps, of the crew of Delysia, which attacked at St Julien on 22 August.
Lance-Corporal (later Quartermaster-Sergeant) Joseph Pincombe (front row, fourth from left), who tried to deliver the rations to the 1st Battalion, Queen’s Westminster Rifles, when they were fighting for Glencorse Wood.
Above left: 2nd Lieutenant Jimmy Todd, 11th Battalion, Prince of Wales’ Own West Yorkshire Regiment, who was the only officer of the battalion to emerge unscathed from the Battle of Messines.
2nd Lieutenant Alfred Angel, 2/4th London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, who lost an eye at St Julien and was ever after known as “Nelson”.
Captain Alan Goring MC, 6th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, one of the vanguard who made the crossing of the Steenbeek possible.
Field Postcards crossed the Channel by the boat-load… and postcards from home travelled to the field.
2nd Lieutenant Paddy King, 2/5th East Lancashire Regiment, who was cut off from his battalion for two days in the first abortive attack on Passchendaele, 26 October.
Private Victor Fagence, 11th Battalion, Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment, who went over the top at the Battle of Messines.
Out of the line, postcards were on general sale. “France” to the Tommies meant anywhere on the Western Front.
Rifleman George Winterbourne, i st Battalion, Queen’s Westminster Rifles, who was captured in the fighting at Glencorse Wood.
Private Charles Miles, 10th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, who was a flyweight, and later a bantam-weight, boxer of great skill.
The aftermath of war: Charlie Miles and a legless friend in 1923.
Private W G. Bell MM (extreme right), 9th Battalion, Army Cyclist Corps, who did more labouring on working parties than cycling.
Private Frank Hodgson (back row, third from left), a stretcher-bearer attached to the forward aid post at Tyne Cot during the battle for Passchendaele.
Gunner Walter Lugg MM. On the first day of the battle (31 July) it took him eight hours to help his wounded friend a quarter of a mile back through the mud to the forward dressing-station.
Major George Horridge MC, 1/5th Lancashire Fusiliers, who was in support of one of the many fruitless attacks on the Frezenberg Ridge.
Private Harold Diffey, 15th (London Welsh) Royal Welch Fusiliers, who inadvertently captured a German prisoner, in a pillbox at Langemarck.
Rifleman Tom Cantlon, 21st Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, in hospital blues. He got lost with No. 3 Platoon on the way up to the Battle of Messines.
Quartermaster-Sergeant George Fisher, 1st Battalion, Hertfordshire Regiment, who on the first night of the battle delivered the rations to the battalion position, only to find that the battalion had ceased to exist.
Sergeant John Carmichael VC, 9th Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment, who won his Victoria Cross on Hill 60.
Corporal Nick Lee (on the left) and the crew of the tank Keep Smiling – later the crew of the aptly-named Revenge.
Unteroffizier Jeff Werner, the German captured by Nick Lee at Surbiton Villas.
C-in-C Field-Marshal Douglas Haig inspects the Signal Section of the 78th Winnipeg Grenadiers. Corporal Jim Pickard, who was at the taking of Passchendaele, is arrowed.
Gunner Bert Stokes, 13th Battery, New Zealand Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade, who took part in the supporting bombardment in the final push.
Colonel Roderick Macleod DSO, MC as a 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Field Artillery, who commanded C241 Battery for three months of the campaign.
Cyclist Jim Smith, who buried his friend Ernie Gays on Hill 60 and wrote to tell his mother.
Mrs Gays wrote back…
Rifleman Bill Worrell, the songster of the 12th Battalion, the Rifle Brigade.
2nd Lieutenant Jimmy Naylor, Royal Artillery, who went over the top as a forward observer at the Battle of Messines.
Private Bill Smith, 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun Company, who escaped from the slaughter on the Bellevue Ridge.
The songwriter Sivori Levey, who was a 2nd Lieutenant in the 11 th Battalion, Prince of Wales’ Own West Yorkshire Regiment.
The padres of the 34th Division. Seated cross-legged at the front is Stanley Hinchliffe, who went up to the line on the duckboards as one of his battalion.
A gun-team of the 16th Canadian Machine Gun Company; Private Reginald Le Brun is seated with the gun.
Reginald Le Brun (nearest camera) with his machine-gun team in the reserve line at Passchendaele.
Taking ammunition up the line.
Sister Jean Calder (in the centre) of No. 19 Casualty Clearing Station, with VADs and nurses, photographed with a Belgia
n woman and her baby.
Bibliography
The Supreme Command, 1914–1918, Lord Hankey (George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1961)
The Fifth Army, General Sir Hubert Gough GC, MC, KCB, KCVO(Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1931)
Haig, Duff Cooper (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1935)
Field-Marshal Earl Haig, Brigadier-General John Charteris CMG, DSO, MP (Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1929)
Goughie; Anthony Farrar-Hockley (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1975)
Four Years on the Western Front, Aubrey M. Bowes-Smith MM (Odhams Press Ltd., 1922)
De Oorlog Te Dickebusch En Omstreken 1911–1915, Pastor A. van Walleghem (Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, Societe d’emulation, 1964)
The Golden Horseshoe by Men of the 37th Division BEF (Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1919)
The Ypres Times, Volumes 1–6
The Unreturning Army, Huntly Gordon (Dent, 1967)
The Slaves of the War Lords, Henry Russell (Hutchinson, 1928)
History of the First World War, Liddell Hart (Pan Books Ltd., 1972)