1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  ‘One shell,’ they said. ‘They’ve got the range to an inch. Wouldn’t let us stop here!’ Well, when they heard that, the change in my men was laughable. It was a ‘post’ when we first arrived. Now they decided it was a ‘guard’, and on a guard they should be relieved at such and such a time after so many hours. However, I compromised by putting as many as possible into the trenches at either side and keeping only the sentries and myself at the barrier. In the little I’ve seen of fighting, the dangerous post is the safest – it’s the getting to and fro where the peril is – so I slept and ate and lived as close to my post as possible.

  Rain fell heavily all night, and the day following it rained shells as well! In the afternoon they got my poor old shelter. The sand and bits of bag covered me, my tea, the ‘McConachie’ ration, and my best pipe which I’d laid on the butt of my rifle while I was eating. I regret to say that it’s buried there yet! The weary vigil crept on till about half past three in the morning. Then the whole barrier seemed to lift and we were almost smothered with sand and dust and terrible fumes.

  You need an unnaturally callous nature to live under shell-fire. You can stand it for a while – especially if you are engaged in work that requires any concentration of thought, but the men whose minds were on nothing else really suffered. They ducked badly at even the furthest-off shell and looked very nerve-worn and jumpy. For the next two nights, just for a change, we suffered most from rifle fire and we were warned that our company was to make a charge to stop this. Lieutenant Peate asked me to go over the parapet and locate the wire and arrange for cutting a road.

  I noticed the grass was long, so that there was little risk once I got safely over the parapet. I got the men to lay sandbags to make steps, and then I just ran up them and jumped over. Well! If it had been arranged for a cinema film it couldn’t have been better timed. A shell burst just as I landed and blew me back against the parapet. I thought a giant had given me a thundering kick in the chest, and it was a while before I came round (afterwards I found I had splinters in my wrist, my head and my right boot). Lance-corporal Nelson came out and brought me in and later on when I was feeling better I went out and followed the wire right round. But we had no need to move after all, because the Germans were pushed back slightly on our left and the tables were turned a bit. We were relieved that night by the Ox and Bucks. I didn’t trouble to tell the corporal who relieved me all the trouble there had been. I just informed him, quite truthfully, that we had lost no men at the post!

  But there was a far worse ordeal in store for the battalions who were moving up to relieve them. The Germans had been biding their time. Knowing very well that a garrison was at its weakest during and just after a relief, they were waiting for this precise moment to make a determined effort to recover their lost ground. They reasoned that it could hardly fail, for they had a new weapon to sweep the British out of Hooge. It was their intention to roast them alive with liquid fire.

  They had had no difficulty in surmising when the relief would take place, and to judge when troops who had not had time to settle down and were unfamiliar with the ground would present far less opposition than soldiers who had been in the line and on the alert for days. Even so early in the war the Germans were far more technically advanced in the use of wireless and were easily able to overhear British plans and dispositions by tapping into their communications. They knew to the hour and the minute when the relief was due to take place, and they also knew that their adversaries of recent weeks would be replaced by inexperienced troops. Having laid their plans they settled down to wait. It was the night of 29 July and, as the relief marched up to take over the trenches, it was ominously quiet.

  2nd Lt. G. V. Carey, A Coy., 8th Bn., Rifle Brigade, 41 Brig., 14 Div.

  I remember having a strong presentiment as I plodded up to the line that night that I should never come back from it alive. (In the event I was the only officer in my company to survive the next twenty-four hours.) We had two or three miles to cover before we reached the line, with the delays inevitable to troops moving over strange ground in the dark, and the difficulty of getting into the broken-down trenches while the 7th Battalion was getting out of them was even greater. I remember feeling certain that the tramp of feet and the clatter of rifles must have given the show away. I need not have worried – we knew afterwards that the Boche learned from more reliable sources when a relief was to take place! There was very little shelling on the way up – for which we were duly thankful! – but the absence of snipers’ bullets as we filed up the communication trench from Zouave Wood was more surprising, and the silence after we got into the line became uncanny.

  About an hour after we were settled in and the last of the 7th Battalion had disappeared into the darkness I decided that a bomb or two lobbed over into the Boche trench running close to my own near the crater might disturb him if he were up to mischief. So I got one of the bombers to throw over a hand grenade which looked as if it carried about the right length. It exploded well. We waited. No reply. He sent over two more. ‘This ought to rouse them,’ we said. But again, no reply. There was something sinister about this. It was now about half an hour before dawn and the order for the usual morning ‘stand-to’ came through from the Company Commander. I started on the extreme right of my bit of the line to ensure that all my men were lining the trench with their swords fixed. Working down gradually I decided to go on along the stretch of trench which bent back from the German line almost in the form of a communication trench. There were servants and some odd men from my platoon in so-called ‘shelters’ along there, and I wanted to make sure that these people who are apt to be forgotten at ‘stand-to’ were all on the alert. Just as I was getting to the last of these there was a sudden hissing sound, and a bright crimson glare over the crater turned the whole scene red. As I looked I saw three or four distinct jets of flame, like a line of powerful fire-hoses spraying fire instead of water, shoot across my fire-trench. For some moments I was utterly unable to think. Then there was a terrific explosion and almost immediately afterwards one of my men with blood running down his face stumbled into me coming from the direction of the crater. Then every noise under Heaven broke out! There were trench mortars and bombs in our front trench, machine-guns firing, shrapnel falling over the communication trenches and over the open ground between us and the support line in Zouave Wood and high explosive shells all round the wood itself.

  It was impossible to get up the trench towards the crater, so I got out of the trench to try to get a better idea of the situation. The first thing I saw was men jumping over the edge of the crater in C Company’s trench and, deciding that they must be Boches, I told the few survivors of my platoon to open fire on them, which they promptly did. But by this time the Boches were in my bit of trench as well, and we saw that my handful of men couldn’t possibly get back into it, and it was a death-trap to stay where we were under a shrapnel barrage. MacAfee, our Company Commander, had rushed up for a hasty consultation, and he reluctantly gave the order for me to get the remnant of my platoon back to the support line. About a dozen men of 2 Platoon were all that I could find, and we started back over the open. (Those who had faced the flame attack were never seen again.)

  A retirement is a miserable business, but I have nothing but praise for the men in this one. There was nothing approaching a run, and every few yards they lay down and fired at any Boches we could see coming over into our line. There was a matter of four hundred yards of open ground to cover under a regular hail of machine-gun and shrapnel fire, and I’ve always marvelled how anyone got over it alive! As it was, most of my fellows were wounded during that half-hour’s retirement, if not before. Eventually I literally fell into the main communication trench about twenty yards ahead of our support line. It must have been then about half past four in the morning.

  Β Company was in support and their OC, Cavendish, when he learned that our front line was lost, suggested that we should there and then build a barricade in the communication
trench – for we still expected that the Boche would come on. So my small party set to, using sandbags from the side of the trench and it was rather ticklish work when it came to the upper part of the barricade, because the Boche was firing shrapnel very accurately and there were a lot of rifle and machine-gun bullets flying about.

  But the men in the support trenches behind us were having a worse time – they were being heavily bombarded. We continued to stand by our barricade. I borrowed a rifle and tried to do a bit of sniping and we could see the Boche throwing up the earth in our front line. It now looked as if he were going to stay there! About an hour and a half later Mac came back with the grievous news that Michael Scrimgeour (commanding 3 Platoon) had been killed while reorganising his men in the wood. He also began to fuss about my wound, and eventually gave me a direct order to go back to the dressing station. I had to go – and that was the last I saw of poor MacAfee. He was killed that afternoon leading his men in the counter-attack.

  The immediate small-scale counter-attacks were only partly successful. Despite the unexpectedness and horror of the attack the survivors rallied, and men of the 7th King’s Royal Rifle Corps, who had been attacked in their turn, charged back into the carnage, into the stench of oil and smoke and burnt flesh, and fought across the charred bodies of their comrades to wrench back the remnants of part of the trench-line they had lost on the fringes of the attack.

  By some miracle the Germans had stopped to consolidate and, at least for the moment, they made no attempt to press on. There was time to reorganise. Time to send for help.

  News of the disaster spread quickly.

  Major S. H. Cowan.

  30th July. On the way to 8th Brigade about 8 a.m., Hart and I were stopped. No traffic through Ypres – and why? Roads had to be kept clear for troops on their way to make a counterattack. But where? Hooge, he thought! The first thing was to impress on the sentry that being an officer of the Corps Staff (which was a lie!) I was not affected by the order. That was quickly accomplished. And now to think. Well, I knew that our Corps had shifted a little southward leaving one of Kitchener’s divisions to the 6th Corps who now embraced Hooge – and I had my own opinion of that Division.

  Arrived at 8th Brigade, and Hoskyns told me the truth and we had a swearing trio with Macready (Staff Captain). The facts were: we had been booted out, not only from the biggest hole in Belgium which cost Hoskyns four hundred good men and me six weeks of anxiety, but right off the top of the knoll we’d always had and which we had fortified on all sides, and right back into the edge of the wood itself! The stories were: an attack by liquid fire, etc. etc. But none of us know of a spray that can throw twenty yards and every bomber can do thirty. The inference is that the whole blessed lot were caught half asleep, fell into a panic and ran. A real bad show. And the worst of it was that at the bottom of our hearts we could not feel very much surprised. But I know that if the 8th Brigade had been left there it would not have happened.

  Later we had fine view of the bombardment for a counterattack – which we learnt later, failed. We were not a cheery party by any means.

  It was hardly fair. No troops on earth could have stood fast, engulfed in clouds of oily fumes, scorched by jets of searing flame. No measure of experience, no infinite amount of courage, no steadfastness of resolution could have prevailed against the unexpected horror of liquid fire. No soldiers could have advanced more gallantly when the order came to counter-attack – and in such circumstances no counter-attack could possibly have succeeded.

  The order for a general attack arrived in mid-morning from Divisional Headquarters, and the instructions were explicit. It was to start at 2.45 p.m. Fresh troops were already on their way to follow in support, but after a bombardment of forty-five minutes the 8th Rifle Brigade, now holding the edge of Zouave Wood, was to advance across the ground it had lost to retake Hooge. It was easy to understand the thinking of the Divisional Commander, for it was obvious that reinforcements rushed at top speed to the line could not possibly change places in the time available with the troops who had been stricken by the attack in the morning. It was equally plain to Brigadier Nugent, frantically trying to reorganise his shocked troops on the spot, that the 8th Battalion was a battalion no longer. Such men as were left were at the end of their strength, and apart from the survivors of a few ragged platoons, the ‘battalion’ now consisted of little more than one organised company. Nugent wired a strong protest to divisional HQ: ‘In my opinion situation precludes counter-attack by day. Counter-attack would be into a re-entrant and would not succeed in face of enfilade fire.’ His protest was overruled. It was essential to make a general attack as speedily as possible before the Germans tried to push on, or even the woods might be lost. The Brigadier was ordered to proceed.

  Angry and sick at heart, he issued the order, knowing full well that it was fore-doomed to failure, and knowing also, as he later wrote, that:

  The utilisation in the forefront of a spent battalion that, on top of the heavy fatigue of a relief, had been fighting throughout the remainder of the night, had obtained no rest, and had been without food and water since coming into the line was, to speak mildly, a serious error of judgement – for the quality of dash, so essential in such an operation, could hardly fail to be lacking.

  The ‘quality of dash’ was not entirely lacking, for the men went forward behind their officers in a way that astonished the Brigadier. But ‘dash’ was not enough. Most of them were cut down by machine-guns as they started across the open ground. The few who were left when the attack fizzled out were brought out of the line that night. Kitchener’s Army had been well and truly blooded. The total casualties were close to two and a half thousand, and the 41st Brigade alone had lost fifty-five officers and almost twelve hundred men. When the remnants limped out of the line at dusk the 43rd Brigade went in to take its place.

  The 10th Durhams had been resting for two days in a camp near Poperinghe.

  Cpl. W. F. Lowe.

  My time was mostly spent teaching the scouts and snipers sketching, and how and what to report, and how to develop their powers of observation. They quite enjoyed it (it certainly gave great satisfaction to the officers) and the lessons might have led to useful results – had the men not met so early with unfortunate ends. As it was, our class was interrupted on the 30th by a ‘stand-to’ and another exhausting, heavily laden, rush back to Ypres and up to the trenches.

  All night we endured heavy shelling, and the next day was just one long bombardment. I’d had difficulty in keeping men in their firing bays before, but never to such an extent as this day. As soon as a parapet is overturned they flock into the next, and then the next, until, of course, when a shell does reach them, the casualties are really excessive because they’re all crowded together. I can’t see why a German gunner would select a battered bay when whole ones are standing, yet you can’t get the men to remain after ‘she’s been blown in’.

  Crowding is bad. Lance-Corporal Nelson rushed into my section with the most awful expression of horror on his face I’ve ever seen in my life, and he shouted at me, ‘I’ve shot Lance-Corporal Fidler!’ Now, Lance-Corporal Fidler was his best friend! Nelson was wounded himself, and he was far too agitated to know what I was saying, or even to understand what he was saying himself. What had happened no one can tell but, if he did shoot them, it seems possible that he happened to be wounded just as he was loading his rifle, and the rifle went off and the bullet passed through Lance-Corporal Carling’s brain, then touched the wood or sandbag on top of the dug-out and entered Lance-Corporal Fidler’s arm, then his thigh, and then went into Private Jenning’s leg, and then into another man’s stomach!

  Again I pointed out the folly of crowding into so-called ‘shelter’. By now whole stretches of the trenches were levelled and deserted and any in our section that still had any appearance of shelter would soon have been crowded out, had I not stood at the worst end and forced back the men (and NCOs too!) of other regiments who tried to get in. We�
�d been reinforced (never mind by whom, I’d rather not say!) and the new regiment was all mixed up with ours. This is bad, very bad! However, by now my men were aroused and would let no one through. They could crowd in their own sections as they liked, but budge we wouldn’t!

  When we were relieved I was surprised to find I could hardly walk. I’d had no sleep and now that all the excitement was over I felt done up. I was warned to attend an inquiry into charges of ‘sleeping on duty’ made against several of our men. An officer had been down the trench and found no one awake. I cannot say whether the inquiry was held or not. Most of these men were wounded or killed in the afternoon – but I should have been delighted to attend. From my diary I could prove that the men had only been allowed twenty-two hours’ sleep in eight days. The Captain had aroused me myself at 4 a.m. and without a rifle or hat – and you should never take your equipment off in the trenches! I stood sleeping on my feet, my head resting on my arms folded on the parapet. When he woke me I had absolutely no idea where I was!

  Far more work would be done in such a restricted area by dividing the men into two ‘shifts’. The ‘off-shift’ should be left severely alone to make the best of what poor sleep they can get. The ‘on-shift’ would be fresh and alert for work or fighting. As it is, the wakened men are a nuisance, and a positive danger. The nervous start banging away without inquiry, the dazed wander into the way, and the rest ask absurd questions, which is natural when people are suddenly alarmed from a sound sleep. Six cool well-rested men are worth forty startled into action!

  They had stayed for almost a week in the battered line round Hooge, grimly digging in and sheltering as best they could from shell-fire that hardly stopped, for the Germans were alert and determined to thwart any ideas the British might entertain of renewing the attack. But the British Command had belatedly learned the lesson that hasty improvisation would not do and that only a well-organised and well-prepared assault could succeed in pushing the enemy out of Hooge and winning back ‘the biggest hole in Belgium’, but they had no intention of entrusting it to the inexperienced volunteers of Kitchener’s Army.