The Battalion moved nearer their assembly areas to St. Hilaire-les-Cambrai, on the night of the 18th after Company Commanders had thoroughly explained to their men what was in store; and on the 19th those commanders, with the Intelligence Officer, Captain Vernon, went up to high ground overlooking the battlefield. It was a closer and more crumpled land than they had dealt with hitherto, its steep-sided valleys cut by a multitude of little streams running from nor’-west to south-east, with the interminable ruled line of the Bavai road edging the great Forest of Mormal which lay north of Landrecies. The wheel was swinging full circle, and men who had taken part in that age-ago retreat from Mons, amused themselves by trying to pick out familiar details in the landscape they had been hunted across four years before. But it was misty and the weather, faithful ally of the Germans to the last, was breaking again. Just as the Battalion moved off from St. Hilaire to their area on the railway line from Valenciennes to Le Cateau, rain began and continued till six next morning, making every condition for attack as vile as it could. They dug them shallow trenches in case of shell-fire, and sent down parties to reconnoitre the bridges over the Selle. Four bridges were “available,” i. e. existed in some shape, on or near the Battalion front, but no one had a good word to say for any of them.
There is a tale concerning the rivers here, which may be given (without guarantee) substantially as told “Rivers round Maubeuge? ‘Twas all rivers — the Aunelle and the Rhônelle and the Pronelle, an’ more, too; an’ our Intelligence Officer desirin’ to know the last word concernin’ each one of ‘em before we paddled it. Michael an’ me was for that duty. Michael was a runner, afraid o’ nothing, but no small liar, and him as fed as myself with reportin’ on these same dam’ rivers; and Jerry expendin’ the last of his small-arm stuff round and round the country. I forget which river ‘twas we were scouting, but he was ahead of me, the way he always was. Presently he comes capering back, ‘Home, please, Sergeant,’ says he. ‘That hill’s stinking with Jerries beyond.’ ‘But the river?’ says I. ‘Ah, come home,’ says Michael, ‘an I’ll learn ye the road to be a V.C.!’ So home we went to the Intelligence Officer, and ‘twas then I should have spoke the truth. But Michael was before me. I had no more than my mouth opened when he makes his report, which was my business, me being sergeant (did I tell ye?), to put in. But Michael was before me. He comes out with the width of the river, and its depth, and the nature of its bottom and the scenery, and all and all, the way you’d ha’ sworn he’d been a trout in it. When we was out of hearing, I told him he was a liar’ in respect to his river. ‘River,’ says he, ‘are ye after calling that a river? ‘Tis no bigger than a Dickiebush ditch,’ he says. ‘And anyway,’ says he, ‘the Battalion’ll rowl across it in the dark, the way it always does. Ye cannot get wetter than wet, even in the Micks!’ Then his conscience smote him, an’ when his company went down to this river in the dark, Michael comes capering alongside whishpering between his hands: ‘Boys!’ says he, ‘can ye swim, boys? I hope ye can all swim for, Saints be my witness, I never wint near the river. For aught I know it may be an arrum of the sea. Ah, lads, thry an’ learn to swim!’ he says. Then some one chases him off before the officer comes along; an’ we wint over Michael’s river the way he said we would. Ye can not get wetter than wet — even in the Micks.”
It was a quiet night, except for occasional bursts of machine-gun fire, but there was no shelling of the assembly area as the 2nd Grenadiers formed up on their right, with the 2nd Coldstream in reserve. Nos. 1 and 2 Companies (Captain A. W. L. Paget, and Lieutenant E. M. Harvey, M.C.) moved off first, No. 3 in support (Captain Bambridge), and No. 4 (2nd Lieutenant O. R. Baldwin) in reserve. The barrage opened with a percentage of demoralising flame-shells. There was very little artillery retaliation, and beyond getting rather wetter than the rain had already made them, the Battalion did not suffer, except from small-arm fire out of the dark. The first objective, a section of the Solesmes–Valenciennes road, was gained in an hour, with but eight casualties, mainly from our own “shorts” in the barrage, and several prisoners and machine-guns captured. The prisoners showed no wish to fight.
The companies had kept direction wonderfully well in the dark, and reached the second and last objective under increased machine-gun fire, but still without much artillery. The 3rd Guards Brigade on their left had been hung up once or twice, which kept No. 2 Company, the left leading company, and Nos. 3 and 4 (in support) busy at odd times forming defensive flanks against sniping. By half-past five, however, they were all in place, and set to dig in opposite the village of Vertain. Then dull day broke and with light came punishment. The enemy, in plain sight, opened on them with everything that they had in the neighbourhood, from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M. of the 20th. The two front companies were cut off as long as one could see, and a good deal of the stuff was delivered over open sights. It was extremely difficult to get the wounded away, owing to the continuous sniping. But, through providence, or the defect of enemy ammunition, or the depth of the slits the men had dug, casualties were very few. Battalion Headquarters and the ground where No. 4 Company lay up were most thoroughly drenched, though an officer of No. 3 Company, whose experience was large, described his men’s share as “about the worst and most accurate shelling I have been through.” They were, in most places, only a hundred yards away from a dug-in enemy bent on blessing them with every round left over in the retreat. During the night, which was calmer, our Artillery dealt with those mixed batteries and groups so well that, although no man could show a finger above his shelter in some of the company areas, the shelling next day was moderate. The forward posts were still unapproachable, but they sent out patrols from Nos. 1 and 2 Companies to “report on the River Harpies,” the next stream to the Selle, and to keep it under observation. This was an enterprise no commander would have dreamed of undertaking even three months ago. The enemy sniping went on. The 2nd Coldstream, who had been moved up to protect the right flank of the 2nd Grenadiers (the Sixty-first Division, being delayed some time over the clearing up and evacuation of Solesmes, was not yet abreast of them), were withdrawn to billets at St. Hilaire in the course of the afternoon; but word came that neither the Grenadiers nor the Irish need look to be relieved. It rained, too, and was freezing cold at night. Another expert in three years of miseries writes: “One of the worst places I have ever been in. Heavy rain all day and night. . . . More shelling if we were seen moving about. Heavy rain all day. . . . Soaked through and shivering with cold.” The Diary more temperately: “The men were never dry from the time they left their billets in St. Hilaire on the evening of the 20th, and there was no shelter whatever for any of the companies.” So they relieved them during the night of the 21st, front Companies 1 and 2 returning to the accommodation vacated by their supports, 3 and 4.
Battalion relief came when the 24th Battalion Royal Fusiliers (Second Division) took over from them and the Grenadiers and got into position for their attack the next morning. An early and obtrusive moon made it difficult to fetch away the front-posts, and though the leading company reached the Selle on its way back at a little after five, the full relief was not completed till half-past nine, when they had to get across-country to the main road and pick up the lorries that took them to “very good billets” at Carnières. Their own Details had seen to that; and they arrived somewhere in the early morning “beat and foot-sore,” but without a single casualty in relieving. Their losses for the whole affair up to the time of their relief were one officer (Captain and Adjutant J. B. Keenan ) wounded in the face by a piece of shell, the sole casualty at Battalion Headquarters; ten other ranks killed; forty-two wounded, of whom two afterwards died, and two missing — fifty-five in all.
The companies were officered as follows:
No. 1 Company
No. 2 Company
Capt. A. W. L. Paget, M.C.
Lieut. E. Harvey, M.C.
No. 3 Company
No. 4 Company
Capt. G. L. St. C. Bambridge.
2nd
Lieut. 0. R. Baldwin.
Battalion Headquarters
Major A. F. Gordon, M.C.
Capt. J. B. Keenan.
Capt. C. A. J. Vernon.
Cleaning up began the next day where fine weather in “most delightful billets” was cheered by the news that the Second Division’s attack on Vertain had been a great success. In those days they looked no further than their neighbours on either side.
Every battle, as had been pointed out, leaves its own impression. St. Python opened with a wild but exciting chase in the wet and dark, which, at first, seemed to lead straight into Germany. It ended, as it were, in the sudden rising of a curtain of grey, dank light that struck all the actors dumb and immobile for an enormously long and hungry stretch of time, during which they mostly stared at what they could see of the sky above them, while the air filled with dirt and clods, and single shots pecked and snarled round every stone of each man’s limited skyline; the whole ending in a blur of running water under starlight (that was when they recrossed the Selle River), and confused memories of freezing together in lumps in lorries, followed by a dazed day of “shell-madness,” when all ears and eyes were intolerably overburdened with echoes and pictures,. and men preferred to be left alone. But they were washed and cleaned and reclothed with all speed, and handed over to their company officers for the drill that chases off bad dreams. The regimental sergeant-major got at them, too, after their hair was cut, and the massed brigade drums played in the village square of Carnieres, and, ere the end of the month, inter-company football was in full swing.
A draft of ninety-one other ranks joined for duty on the 22nd October. Lieutenant-Colonel Baggallay. M.C., came back from leave and, in the absence of the Brigadier, assumed command of the Brigade, and Captain D. W. Gunston joined.
THE BREAK-UP
On the last day of October they moved from Carnieres to St. Hilaire and took over the 3rd Grenadiers’ billets in the factory there, all of which, house for house, officers and men, was precisely as before the attack on the 20th, ten days ago. But those ten days had borne the British armies on that front beyond Valenciennes in the north to within gun-shot of Le Quesnoy in the centre, and to the Sambre Canal, thirty miles away, in the south. Elsewhere, Lille had been evacuated, the lower half of western Flanders cleared, from the Dutch frontier to Tournai, while almost every hour brought up from one or other of the French, and American armies, on the Meuse and the Argonne, fresh tallies of abandoned stores and guns, and of prisoners gathered in rather than captured. Behind this welter, much as the glare of a mine reveals the facade of a falling town-hall, came word of the collapse of Bulgaria, Turkey, and Austria. The whole of the herd of the Hun Tribes were on the move, uneasy and afraid. It remained so to shatter the mass of their retiring forces in France that they should be in no case to continue any semblance of further war without complete destruction. Were they permitted to slink off unbroken, they might yet make stand behind some shorter line, or manufacture a semblance of a “face” before their own people that would later entail fresh waste and weariness on the world.1
The weather and the destruction they had left in their wake was, as on the Somme, aiding them now at every turn, in spite of all our roadmen and engineers could do. Our airmen took toll of them and their beasts as they retreated along the congested ways; but this was the hour when the delays, divided councils and specially the strikes of past years had to be paid for, and the giant bombing-planes that should have taught fear and decency far inside the German frontiers were not ready.
A straight drive from the west on to the German lateral communications promised the quickest return. It was laid in the hands of the First, Third, and Fifth Armies to send that attack home, and with the French and American pressure from the south, break up the machine past repair.
Men, to-day, say and believe that they knew it would be the last battle of the war, but, at the time, opinions varied; and the expectations of the rank and file were modest. The thing had gone on so long that it seemed the order of life; and, though the enemy everywhere fell back, yet he had done so once before, and over very much the same semi-liquid muck as we were floundering in that autumn’s end. “The better the news, the worse the chance of a knock,” argued the veterans, while the young hands sent out with high assurance, at draft-parades, that the war was on its last legs, discovered how the machine-gun-fenced rear of retirements was no route-march. (“There was them that came from Warley shouting, ye’ll understand; and there was them that came saying nothing at all, and liking it no more than that; but I do not remember any one of us looked to be out of it inside six months. No — not even when we was dancing into Maubeuge. We thought Jerry wanted to get his wind.”)
On the 4th November, one week before the end, twenty-six British divisions moved forward on a thirty-mile front from Oisy to north of Valenciennes, the whole strength of all their artillery behind them.
The Guards’ position had been slightly shifted. Instead of working south of Le Quesnoy, the Division was put in a little north of the town, on the banks of the river Rhônelle, between the Sixty-second Division on their right and the Forty-second on their left. The Battalion had marched from St. Hilaire, in the usual small fine rain, on the 2nd November to billets in Bermerain and bivouacs near by. It meant a ten-mile tramp of the pre-duckboard era, in the midst of mired horse- and lorry-transport, over country where the enemy had smashed every bridge and culvert, blocked all roads and pulling-out places with mine-craters, and sown houses, old trenches, and dug-outs with fanciful death-traps. The land was small-featured and full of little hills, so heavily hedged and orcharded that speculative battalions could be lost in it in twenty minutes. There were coveys, too, of French civils, rescued and evacuated out of the villages around, wandering against the stream of east-bound traffic. These forlorn little groups, all persuaded that the war was over and that they could return to their houses to-morrow, had to be shifted and chaperoned somehow through the chaos; but the patience and goodwill of our people were unending.
The wet day closed with a conference at Brigade Headquarters, but the enemy had thrown out our plan for action on that sector by thoughtlessly retiring on both flanks of the Division, as well as a little on the front of it, and final orders were not fixed till after midnight on the 3rd November.
The 1st and 2nd Guards Brigade were to attack, the 3rd in reserve. Of the 1st Brigade, the 2nd Coldstream would take the line as far as the first objective; the 2nd Grenadiers would then come through and carry on to the next line, the Irish Guards in support. The Brigade’s assembly area was across the Rhônelle River, east of the long and straggling village of Villers-Pol, on the Jenlain–Le Quesnoy road. Zero was fixed for 7.20. The Battalion marched from Bermerain, and met its first enemy shell as it was going under the Valenciennes railway embankment. What remained of the roads were badly congested with troops, and one gets the idea that the Staff work was casual. To begin with, the Battalion found the 3rd Grenadiers and the 1st Scots Guards between themselves and the 2nd Grenadiers, which was not calculated to soothe any C.O. desirous of keeping his appointment. Apparently they got through the Scots Guards; but when they reached the Rhônelle, its bridge being, of course, destroyed, and the R.E. working like beavers to mend it, they had to unship their Lewis-guns from the limbers, tell the limbers to come on when the bridge was usable, and pass the guns over by hand. While thus engaged the Scots Guards caught them up, went through them triumphantly, made exactly the same discovery that the Irish had done, and while they in turn were wrestling with their limbers, the Irish, who had completed their unshipping, went through them once more, and crossed the Rhônelle on the heels of the last man of the 3rd Grenadiers — ”one at a time, being assisted up the bank by German prisoners.” By the mercy of the Saints, who must have been kept busy all night, the shelling on the bridge and its approaches ceased while that amazing procession got over. They were shelled as they reformed on the top of the steep opposite bank, but “by marvellous good-luck no casualties
”; got into artillery formation; were shelled again, and this time hit, and long-range machine-gun fire met them over the next crest of ground. It was all ideal machine-gun landscape. The 2nd Grenadiers, whom they were supporting, had been held up by low fire from the village of Wagnies-le-Petit on their left, a little short of the first objective, which was the road running from Wagnies, south to Frasnoy. The Battalion dug in behind them where it was, and after an hour or so the enemy opened fire with one solitary, mad trench-mortar. Not more than a dozen rounds were sent over, and these, very probably, because the weapon happened to lie under their hands, and was used before being abandoned. And luck had it that this chance demonstration should kill Lieutenant A. L. Bain (“Andy” Bain),:who had joined for duty not a week ago. He was the last officer killed in the Battalion, and one of the best. Lieutenant F. S. L. Smith, M.C., also was wounded. They stayed in their scratch-holes till late in the afternoon, as the troops of the Forty-second Division on their left were held up too, but the 2nd Guards Brigade on their right gradually worked forward. Some of their divisional field-guns came up and shelled Wagnies-le-Petit into silence, and at half-past four orders arrived for the Battalion to go through the 2nd Grenadiers and continue at large into the dusk that was closing on the blind, hedge-screened country. There was no particular opposition beyond stray shells, but the boggy-banked Aunelle had to be crossed on stretchers, through thick undergrowth, in a steep valley. Everything after that seemed to be orchards, high hedges, and sunk and raised roads, varied with soft bits of cultivation, or hopelessly muddled-up cul-de-sacs of farm-tracks. The companies played blind-man’s buff among these obstacles in the pitch-dark, as they hunted alternately for each other and the troops on their flanks. There was “very heavy shelling” on the three most advanced companies as well as on Brigade Headquarters throughout the night. The men dug in where they were; and casualties, all told, came to about twenty. Very early on the 5th November the 3rd Guards Brigade passed through them and continued the advance. Preux-au-Sart, the village behind them, had been taken by the 2nd Brigade the evening and the night before, so the Battalion “came out of its slits” and went back to billet in its relieved and rejoicing streets, where “the inhabitants on coming out of their cellars in the morning were delighted to find British troops again, and showed the greatest cordiality.” If rumour be true, they also showed them how easily their Hun conquerors had been misled and hoodwinked in the matter of good vintages buried and set aside against this very day. “The men were very comfortable.”
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 907