1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  My billet was just outside the Menin Gate and around us were two other field artillery Brigade Headquarters, and one Belgian. The enemy were bombarding Ypres with huge 17-inch Howitzers and the shells were falling mostly on the Menin Gate. Both my horses in a stable across the road had been killed and the stable set on fire, and my Adjutant was somewhat worried and wanted to know whether we had better not shift. I told him to have everything packed and put into the wagon and to be ready to move at once.

  About 2 p.m. I heard that the Germans had taken St Julien and were pressing on to Wieltje. Just at that moment Owen called me on the telephone. He said that he had got a good view of the enemy on the Poelcapelle to St Julien road and had kept a heavy shrapnel fire on them until all his shells were expended. He also said that the enemy were now beyond his left rear and asked if he was to retire. I ordered him to move to his wagon lines to the other side of Ypres, as arranged. All the time these 17-inch shells had been causing havoc at the Menin Gate and our billet was being badly shaken by the explosions. The telephone room was an outbuilt room of glass used by the previous owner as a dentistry, and it was literally tumbling to pieces, so I ordered my Adjutant to move to the other side of Ypres and to wait at the Vlamertinghe crossroads until I joined him.

  Shortly afterwards it got very unhealthy and I then decided to leave the billet with the two telephone operators who had remained with me. In the street I saw a passing car and hailed it. It was a Staff Officer who was going back through Ypres to Poperinghe, so I got a lift and asked if I might sit alongside the driver, because I knew the best way through Ypres when it was being shelled. As we were passing along one of the streets I heard a shell coming straight for us, so I told the driver to stop. Sure enough, a 5.9-inch burst in the line of houses about two hundred yards ahead of us and blocked the street with debris. Our car was a Ford, and I asked the driver if he could drive over the debris. He said, ‘Yes,’ so I replied, ‘Drive like hell then, before another shell comes.’ He revved up the engine and that little car made for the pile of debris and we lurched and bumped and positively jumped over it! We got through safely.

  At the Asylum Road junction I met General Gay and told him that I had retired the 121st Battery to its wagon lines and just before leaving the Menin Gate billet had heard from Major Owen that the battery had arrived safely with the loss of only two horses killed by shrapnel on the Hooge to Ypres road just where it crosses the railway.

  It had been a day of close shaves. The Germans were on the move. St Mien had been captured. The guns were retreating. Every man was in the line. At nightfall the Canadians were ordered to retire from their hard-pressed front to a position further back and the Germans moved forward exultantly into the ground they had given up. But it was not over yet. Ypres and the shrunken salient around it still held out.

  Part 4

  The Desperate Days

  The green and grey and purple day is barred with clouds of dun,

  From Ypres city smouldering before the setting sun.

  Another hour will see it flower, lamentable sight,

  A bush of burning roses underneath the night.

  Charles Scott-Moncrieff

  Chapter 16

  Until news of the battle at Ypres arrived and the Germans’ infamous use of gas caused general outrage, the British public had been avidly following the progress of a sensational murder trial. George Smith was appearing at the Old Bailey on a charge of triple murder in the notorious case of the Brides in the Bath, and it had pushed even the war from the headlines of all but the most ponderous newspapers.

  Spring was well under way, the fine weather brought crowds of strollers into the parks and shoppers into the streets, and shipping companies were urging war-weary people who could afford it to book up now for recuperative sea voyages to Cape Town or Madeira. Only Egypt had been struck from their agendas of peacetime destinations.

  Harrods of Knightsbridge was preparing a special event to display the new spring fashions which, for one week only, would be sold at promotional prices. Recently, business in the fashion departments had been slow. It was not exactly considered unpatriotic to buy new clothes but unnecessary purchases were looked on as something of an indulgence and Harrods’ customers on the whole were shopping with care and with an eye to the practical. In tune with the mood of the moment the advertisements that publicised the new spring fashions featured practical garments – light coloured coats, severely tailored in artificial silk, but in an enticing range of fashionable colours, and plain well-cut blouses in fine crêpe-de-chine – and in all the tasteful window displays there was hardly a frill or a furbelow to be seen. As a further inducement to bring customers into the store the whole event was to have a patriotic theme. In the restaurant the Royal Welsh Ladies Choir would give afternoon concerts, conducted by Madame Clara Novello-Davies, accompanied by her son Ivor Novello at the piano, and weary shoppers enjoying afternoon tea would be encouraged to purchase programmes and copies of the songs in aid of Queen Alexandra’s Field Force Fund. There would also be collections for the Red Cross and, as usual, demonstrations of bandage-making and a cutting-out service for flannel bed jackets suitable for wounded soldiers and expert staff would be on hand to give advice on the selection of knitting-wool and patterns for garments for the troops. It was all nicely judged to appeal to the frivolous and the dutiful alike.

  When the call came for gas-masks Harrods had several samples made up within the hour and lost no time in replacing spring fashions in a window near the Knightsbridge entrance with a display of home-made gas-masks, showing step-by-step stages of production. Inside the store a special counter was hastily rigged up to sell the gauze, the cotton wool, and tape required to make them up according to War Office instructions and members of staff gave non-stop demonstrations to show the willing public how to go about it.

  A face piece (to cover mouth and nostrils), formed of an oblong pad of bleached absorbent cotton-wool about 51/4in. × 3in. × 3/4in., covered with three layers of bleached cotton gauze and fitted with a band, to fit round the head and keep the pad in position, consisting of a piece of 1/2in. cotton elastic 16in. long, attached to the narrow end of the face pad, so as to form a loop with the pad.

  These respirators should be sent in packages of not less than 100 to Chief Ordnance Office, Royal Army Clothing Department, Pimlico.

  The War Office appeal for half a million gas-masks had been published in the national press and all over the country there was a run on gauze and cotton wool as Red Cross working-parties, schools, and tens of thousands of indignant individuals applied themselves eagerly to the task of making rudimentary gas masks for ‘the boys at the front’. The government hoped to be able to send a hundred thousand home-made masks to France within a week. Until they got there the boys at the front would have to manage as best they could.

  Emergency measures had been quickly drawn up by the Director of Medical Services and sent out in priority signals to all units. Pending the arrival of gas-masks the troops were instructed to dampen any available piece of material – a handkerchief, a sock, a flannel body-belt – and tie it across mouth and nose until the gas passed over. They believed that a solution of bicarbonate of soda would be the most effective liquid to combat the fumes and Commanding Officers were instructed to obtain supplies locally and to have the solution made up and placed at intervals in buckets or biscuit tins along the trenches. In quiet sectors of the line this instruction was faithfully carried out. At Ypres, where the battle still raged and the ‘trenches’ were no more than scrapes in the wavering line, it was clearly impossible. Conceding this, the Director of Medical Services advised that, in an emergency, any liquid that was to hand would give some protection against gas fumes. The men in the line, correctly interpreting this suggestion in the personal terms it implied, felt that ‘to hand’ was a somewhat inappropriate choice of words. But whatever method they used to combat the gas the troops were told to hang on for dear life until the gas cloud passed over, to stand fast and
meet the enemy as he came on. It could be done – and the Canadians had proved it.

  Although it thinned and dissipated as it went, the gas had left its mark as it travelled. Grass turned yellow. Leaves shrivelled and died. Hens lay dead in abandoned farmyards. Birds fell from the trees, and there were dead rats everywhere. Even quite far beyond the site of the attack the bloated bodies of farm animals lay swelling in the sun. No one had time to bury them. And no one had much idea how to treat the survivors of the gas attack who were carried to the dressing stations and hospitals behind the salient.

  The distress of the gas victims was pitiful to see. By the time the lucky ones reached the Casualty Clearing Stations many hours after they had been gassed most had passed into the second stage. Their throats still burned; they were still coughing and gasping, incapable of speech, their chests distended and seared with agonising pain. But the retching and vomiting had passed. The yellow froth that foamed so copiously from the mouth and nostrils in the first few hours gave way to a bright viscous mucus streaked with blood from haemorrhages in the trachea, or reddish-brown where blood vessels had burst and seeped into the tissues of the lung. Now the men were exhausted and weak from lack of oxygen for the lungs had become so engorged with fluid that they swelled to twice their normal size. In the worst cases the skin turned reddish violet, and if pneumonia or pleurisy set in, as it so often did, there was small hope of recovery. Little by little men drowned in their own secretions. It was a horrible death and, try as they would, there was little doctors could do to prevent it.

  The doctors and medical orderlies in dressing stations and clearing stations, and in ambulance units run by civilians – the Quakers of the Friends Ambulance Unit, the faithful nuns in the convents – were all frantically over-worked, for men wounded in the fighting and by the incessant bombardments far outnumbered the gas casualties. Stretcher-bearers working under fire performed heroic feats but, even so, men who were wounded in the costly counter-attacks where no ground was gained (or where the troops were forced back) were all too often left to fall into the hands of the Germans if they were lucky, or simply to die if they were not. It was fortunate for Jim Keddie that he could fend for himself, but there were times on his long crawl back when he thought it was touch and go.

  L/cpl. J. D. Keddie.

  I kept going on and on in a perfect hail of bullets and shrapnel. At last I found an English gun battery. A doctor was there and he put me in a little shed on straw, took off my boot and cut off my sock and dressed the foot. He asked how far I had come and when I told him about three miles he said he did not know how I had got that length. He told me to sleep until he could find a stretcher. I must have slept for hours, but I was awakened by bursting shells, so I thought I’d better get out. But how? was the question. The battery fellows had gone, and now that my boot was off I had nothing to hold my foot together.

  There was a farm about two hundred yards away. I saw people moving around so I thought if I could get that length I should be all right. I noticed an old shovel nearby so I hopped over and got hold of it, but it was more difficult than I thought, because my foot started to bleed again, and the blood was dripping through the bandages. The ground was so rough I couldn’t hop without falling – and then I found I had a marsh to get over, which I knew was impossible. So here was a fine fix! I could neither go back nor forward, and shells were bursting all around, so I lay down.

  Then I saw two soldiers running towards me. They carried me up to the farm and laid me in the barn, gave me some army biscuits and cheese, and a bowl of milk. It was the best they had. I lay there for a while, when, all at once, a shell crashed through the building and killed one of the men billeted there, so they said they would have to try and get me out. There was a Dressing Station not far off, and they said they could take me over, but it was very dangerous owing to the shelling.* I said I would go. I was then carried on their shoulders, and laid on the floor beside a lot more and given an injection for lock-jaw. Later I was taken to a small place outside Ypres, and at daylight next morning to Ypres itself and on by motor from there to a place out of sound of guns and put into a school. Next day I was put on the ambulance train for Boulogne.

  Keddie was a fortunate soldier. Those who were more severely wounded or were less determined had a smaller chance, because, as the troops fell back and the fighting grew dangerously near, the Advanced Aid Posts, if they were to be of any use at all, also had to pack up and retire further and further away from the shifting line. Even the main Dressing Stations in Ypres itself were forced either to move away or be shelled out of existence. Most of them concentrated near Vlamertinghe, and others from as far back as Bailleul moved up to help them cope with the flood of casualties.

  But nowhere was safe from the bombarding shells of which the enemy seemed to have such an inexhaustible supply. His big guns roared and probed, targeted on Ypres and searching for British and Canadian batteries driven back to new positions.

  Sgnr. J. E. Sutton.

  We pulled back across the main road and went into action behind a wood. After being fired at by enemy guns, which we could see to our rear, we went back to the other side of Potijze Wood. In the wood was a chateau, deserted but undamaged. The occupants must have been heavy champagne drinkers as there were several walls in the grounds built of empty champagne bottles. A direct hit by an enemy shell threw glass fragments a considerable distance. We were hopelessly outgunned. I could count only eight field guns and two 4.7-inch guns in our vicinity. The wood was being shelled by over twenty-four enemy guns, mostly heavies. Some additional field guns moved in, but we were still out-gunned. The enemy were using 17-inch Howitzers to shell Ypres and the shells sounded almost like freight trains as they passed over. Looking back into the city you could see several houses disintegrate when a single shell exploded.

  Pte. W. Hay.

  We fell back and the chateau in Potijze Wood was our rendezvous. We had one battery of field guns there belonging to the Canadians, eighteen-pounders. And there was a farm ablaze, set alight by a German shell and inside the barn were two big wagons loaded with ammunition shells, and the farm was in flames, blazing. Well, there were two wounded artillerymen, Canadians, in the farm. We had stretcher-bearers (the bandsmen were made stretcher-bearers because they couldn’t fight so they were put on a much worse job. A stretcher-bearer is much worse than being in the line, carrying the wounded back under fire) – anyway there was two blokes, Edmondson and another fellow, both of them bandsmen, and they went over with the stretcher and brought these two artillerymen out. The place was blazing – any minute it could have gone up! So two of their gun limbers went in while the place was blazing and hooked up the ammunition wagons and pulled them out, and the two stretcher-bearers went up to the farmhouse and brought out a couple of artillerymen who were wounded. They got no medals for it. Later on you got medals for making a cup of tea for the captain – but not then!*

  Sgnr. J. E. Sutton.

  Behind our guns was the playhouse for the owner and his meal guests, servants’ quarters below with a panelled room above, reached by an outside stairway. There was some beautiful cut glass, but no liquor, also a large oil painting of drinking and wenching scenes. For about a week Macdonald and I slept in the upper room. The building had a thatched roof, which was hit by an incendiary shell. We got out with our belongings in a hurry. Next day Major McDougall said to me: ‘Sutton, I have cursed and damned every man in the Battery individually and collectively, and when I was foolish enough to go into a burning building to get a picture, a man from the 9th Battery came along to see I got out safely.’ I did not tell the Major that Macdonald had told me that he went back to get the picture but that the ‘old man’ beat him to it!

  Sutton and Macdonald relished the joke. There was not much else to laugh at, and the outlook was grim. In theory the guns were still restricted to firing three rounds of ammunition a day – in practice they had been firing as much as they could lay hands on. But the supplies of shells, so piti
fully inadequate to start with, were sinking at an alarming rate. The gunners had done what they could, and field guns firing at close range had achieved miracle after miracle in helping the infantry beat off the enemy. But heavy guns were scarce, many were obsolete, and heavy shells were scarcer still, so that even when they had been able to pinpoint new enemy positions, their efforts were of little avail. The artillery was outnumbered and out-gunned and in the shrinking salient round Ypres the German guns were clustered round three sides, firing at short range now that their field guns had moved forward to positions on the captured ground which they were labouring night and day to consolidate. And they were consolidating fast.

  The new German defences were makeshift, but they were strong and easily able, with the help of powerful artillery, to repel assault by infantry massed in numbers far greater than their own. They might have been smashed by concentrated shelling with high explosive, but there was no high explosive – only shrapnel shell, and the short sparse bombardments that preceded the counter-attacks were as likely to destroy thick wire and heavily sandbagged strong-points as a handful of gravel thrown at a brick wall. And still the counter-attacks went on. Still the ragged battalions were sent forward to wrest back the lost ground, and still they were being ripped apart in the attempt.

  The Germans had no lack of heavy guns and apparently no shortage of high-explosive ammunition. Day and night, and with remorseless energy, their big guns searched the salient. Firing from artillery charts on which targets had been accurately plotted from peacetime ordnance survey maps, they shelled every farm that might possibly be defended and every chateau that might be in use as Headquarters – they shelled woods where troops or guns might be concealed – they shelled roads and crossroads to catch transport on the move – they shelled indiscriminately, in the certain knowledge that somewhere in the crowded salient each shell would make its demoralising mark. And there was no means of retaliating.