1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  They took the small hill at Loos just beyond the coal-pit, but they met with terrible machine-gun fire – so much so that the 44th Brigade were cut to ribbons. They couldn’t hold on to the hill and so they were ordered to retire to our side of the hill. But not many who went over the hill ever got back to our side of it. The machine-gun fire was just murder!

  I got all my information about the Battle of Loos from our boys after it was all over. I joined the survivors of the 7th Battalion Cameron Highlanders immediately after Loos. Soon after I got there, the next day I think, there was a mail came in. All the boys in my company were crowded round to see what there was for them and the Post Corporal was calling out the names and dishing out the letters and parcels. Half the names that were called out there was nobody to answer them. Then a voice would call out, ‘Ower the hill.’ Then one or two more, then another name – and there would be silence, then his chum would call out, ‘Ower the hill.’ That was all you could hear: ‘Ower the hill. Ower the hill. Ower the hill.’ If it was parcels they dished them out anyway and we new arrivals got a share of the parcels that were meant for the boys who’d got killed.

  Letters for men who were wounded were returned to the base and reached them, sooner or later, in hospital. Parcels were shared out among their comrades. Letters addressed to the men who had gone were stamped ‘Killed’ and returned to the senders. Sometimes, though seldom, such letters arrived at a soldier’s home address before the official telegram informing his next of kin that he was dead.

  Orderly room clerks as well as Post Corporals were kept busy, for a great tide of paper flowed out from every battalion in the days after the battle. The soldiers were all writing letters to worried families and sweethearts. ‘Dear Mum and Dad… Dear Ethel… Dear Sarah… Dear Aunt May…’, and, however bald and uninformative, they brought welcome reassurance to anxious friends at home. ‘We’ve been in a big fight, but I’ve come through… I am in the pink and hope you are the same. Hope this finds you as it leaves me.’ There were no words to express what they had experienced, no way of telling the relief of being alive. Some day they might have a tale to tell. Not now.

  Officers were dutifully applying themselves to the depressing task of writing to relatives of the men who had been killed. As the newly appointed Battalion Commander, David Pole was swamped with paperwork, but he had led C Company into the battle, and he felt that, like any Company Commander, he had a personal obligation to write to the families of the men who had not come back. A personal letter might ease the pain of the terse official telegram. ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Craven, It is my painful duty to tell you that your son, Sergeant Craven…’ It was indeed a painful duty. Later it would become routine. But there was one special letter that took priority: ‘Dear Mrs Warwick, You asked me to write if any mishap befell your husband and I must first hasten to assure you that, although the Colonel was wounded in our recent attack, I have every reason to believe that he is going on well and that you may confidently expect to have him home soon…’ It was 29 September. As Pole wrote the date at the top of his letter he must surely have been struck by the fact that it was just three weeks to the day since the Battalion had landed in France.

  Every surviving officer was writing difficult letters, but there were other matters to be attended to and some were pleasanter tasks for they were instructed to send in recommendations for gallantry awards. It was Arthur Agius’s impression that every one of his men had earned a reward but, since the authorities were unlikely to share this view and the allocation of medals would be limited, he confined himself to the most deserving.

  No. 1783 Private BUTE, WILFRED

  No. 1919 Private PEPPER, JOSEPH WILLIAM

  (Stretcher-Bearer)

  On the early morning of Sept. 25th when an enemy minenwerfer bomb exploded a battery of gas cylinders in the DUCKS BILL, these two men assisted to evacuate the casualties which were numerous and to clear the gas in the trench.

  The difficulties and danger of this operation were accentuated by the fact that it was still dark, the trench was full of escaped gas and gas appliances, the officer in charge of the gas and most of his personnel were gassed, and there were two full gas batteries adjacent. This is the first time that these men had experienced gas. The DUCKS BILL is a dangerous spot, 80 yards from the enemy lines and 100 from ours.

  Signed: Capt. A. J. Agius

  Senior officers were busily engaged in writing their reports and Brigadier-General Jelf, in command of the 73rd Brigade, took particular pains with his. He had taken over command of the Brigade on 26 September after its own Brigadier was killed. He was angry. And he was more than angry. He was incensed. It had come to his notice that the 24th Division, and his Brigade in particular, was being criticised by higher authority. He expressed himself frankly:

  No communication of any kind had been established with my Battalions either by wire or orderly, and I attribute this to the fact that all battalions and the Brigade Staff were quite ignorant of the rudiments of what to do in the trenches, how communications were established, the method of drawing rations, etc. They never had been in trenches in their lives before. And I can confidently assert, after many months of trench warfare, that it would have taxed to the uttermost the resources of any Regular battalions with plenty of experience behind them, to have kept themselves supplied, under similar conditions.

  The post-mortems and reappraisals had already begun and the thrusting of the two untried and imperfectly trained divisions into battle, even the very fact that they were employed as almost the only reserves, was already a sore point. Sir John French had recognised the value of bringing in fresh divisions whose attitudes had not yet been stultified by the stalemate of trench warfare, but it was for exactly this reason that he was reluctant to commit them until success was certain and a breakthrough assured. He had promised the Divisional Commanders as much, making it clear that all that would be required of them would be to pursue the advance, or more precisely, to pursue the enemy in his flight. It was not his intention that they should be thrown in to attempt to smash the enemy’s second line. It was his right and entitlement, indeed as Commander-in-Chief it was his duty to retain a proportion of troops as reserves, but under his own orders, and to release them only when, in his judgement and his judgement alone, it was the right moment to send them in. It had previously been arranged, with the concurrence of Sir Douglas Haig, that the reserves should be held a short distance behind the battle-front, for there was no certainty that they would be required. Everything hinged on success in the first stage of the battle, and as soon as news reached the Commander-in-Chief that the German line had been breached, that the troops were swarming forward and that they had captured Loos, he released his hold on the reserves and placed them at the disposal of Sir Douglas Haig. It was Haig’s orders that sent them into the attack, and he had issued them in good faith on the basis of the information he received and in the belief that British troops were already tackling the Germans’ second line. But the fortunes of war are fickle and the fog of war grows thicker as confused information travels along the chain of command and across the miles from the front, and, as often as not, by the time news reached Army Headquarters the situation had already changed.

  After the relish of a glorious beginning, matters had gone downhill. The self-satisfaction of the First Army Staff had received a severe jolt and the laurels which they believed they had justly earned were beginning to look slightly wilted in the backlash.

  The friction between the Commander-in-Chief and the ambitious commander of the First Army had been increasing over the months. Now Haig, affronted as much by the recent failure as he had been gratified by the initial success, settled in his own mind on whose shoulders the blame should be laid. In the course of a meeting on 28 September Sir John French informed him that he was withdrawing the 21st and 24th Divisions for further training. It was a private meeting and there is no record of what passed between them, although shortly afterwards Haig confided to his diary: ‘It
seems impossible to discuss military problems with an unreasoning brain of this kind. At any rate, no good result is to be expected from so doing.’ Next day Haig wrote a carefully considered letter to Lord Kitchener himself.

  Wednesday 29th September

  1st Army H.Q.

  Hinges

  My dear Lord Kitchener,

  You will doubtless recollect how earnestly I pressed you to ensure an adequate Reserve being close in rear of my attacking Divisions, and under my orders. It may interest you to know what happened. No Reserve was placed under me. My attack, as has been reported, was a complete success. The enemy had no troops in his second line, which some of my plucky fellows reached and entered without opposition. Prisoners state the enemy was so hard put to it for troops to stem our advance that the officers’ servants, fatigue-men, etc., in Lens were pushed forward to hold their 2nd Line to the east of Loos and Hill 70.

  The two Reserve Divisions (under C. in C.’s orders) were directed to join me as soon as the success of the First Army was known at GHQ. They came on as quick as they could, poor fellows, but only crossed our old trench line with their heads at 6 p.m. We had captured Loos 12 hours previously, and Reserves should have been at hand then. This, you will remember, I requested should be arranged by GHQ and Robertson quite concurred in my views and wished to put the Reserve Divisions under me, but was not allowed.

  The final result is that the enemy had been allowed time in which to bring up troops and to strengthen his second line, and probably to construct a third line in the direction in which we are heading, viz., Pont à Vendin.

  I have now been given some fresh Divisions, and am busy planning an attack to break the enemy’s second line. But the element of surprise has gone, and our task will be a difficult one.

  I think it right that you should know how the lessons which have been learnt in the war at such cost have been neglected. We were in a position to make this the turning point in the war, and I still hope we may do so, but naturally I feel annoyed at the lost opportunity.

  We were all very pleased to receive your kind telegram, and I am,

  yours very truly,

  D. Haig.

  Lord Kitchener was obliged to investigate Haig’s complaint and he wrote a kind and tactful letter to the Commander-in-Chief. It was marked ‘Private and Secret’ and written, as he told him, ‘with great reluctance’, but it was insistent. ‘Colleagues’ had put certain facts before him and he had no alternative but to ask the Commander-in-Chief for his side of the story. Sir John French replied in formal terms stating the facts from his own point of view, but writing privately he was more forthright. ‘It is all, of course absolutely false and stupid,’ he wrote, ‘and full explanations have been given.’ There was probably little doubt in his own mind as to who the mysterious ‘colleagues’ were. He was well aware that General Haig had the ear of influential friends in high places, including that of the king himself.

  Fresh troops from the Second Army in the north were already marching towards Loos. In a week’s time new attacks would be launched and the battle would drag on. But little was gained. Much later, and with hindsight, the Battle Nomenclature Committee decreed officially that the Battle of Loos ended with the failure of the joint Franco-British offensive on 8 October, but it was only on 4 November that Sir Douglas Haig was finally forced to inform the Commander-in-Chief that his efforts must be abandoned. By then many more lives had been lost. Between 25 September and 16 October alone there were more than fifty thousand casualties, and almost sixty thousand if the subsidiary attacks are included, and more than twenty-six thousand of the casualties were killed or missing. A few of the missing turned up later as prisoners of war, but more than half the casualties at Loos, at Piètre, at Bois Grenier and Hooge, had gone ‘ower the hill’.

  It was too early to count the cost. The full force of disappointment was yet to come and no one could deny that on 25 September the British Army had won its first real victory of the war. They had smashed through the German defences, they had advanced the line, and they were holding on. Surely it was only the beginning. The ground they had gained measured little over a mile but it was better than an advance of yards, it was infinitely better than retreat, and it looked most impressive on the maps that illustrated the glowing newspaper reports which were still being published days after the start of the battle.

  Sir Douglas Haig was the hero of the hour and the news of victory spread fast and far. Before long it reached Gallipoli and some senior officers hatched a plan to celebrate. At a certain hour a thunderous cheer would be raised all along the line. The front-line troops were taken with the idea and were quite willing to cooperate. Some introduced a further refinement and fearing that the Turks might not fully understand the reason for the celebration stuffed proclamations of the victory into empty bottles to be hurled at the enemy trenches when the time came.

  It was quite a performance. Up and down the line from Suvla to Cape Helles the sky above the trenches rang with cheering and a fusillade of bottles descended on the heads of the unsuspecting Turks. Assuming quite reasonably that they were about to be attacked the Turks replied with fusillades of bullets, thereby – as one officer remarked happily – ‘wasting thousands of rounds of ammunition’. Regrettably, there was some casualties. Nevertheless it was an event that was long remembered. Months later a wounded officer of the Royal Scots whiled away the long hours of convalescence by writing an epic that described it.

  With faces flushed and eyes like wine

  The men sat mute along the line,

  And some polemical design

  Was palpably in view.

  A flare soared sudden through the murk

  They turned unflinching towards the Turk,

  And shouted all they knew.

  A wilder din you will not meet,

  It hit the hills, it shocked the Fleet,

  And many a brave heart dropped a beat,

  To hear the hideous choir,

  While the pale Turk, with lips tight set,

  Peered out across the parapet,

  And opened rapid fire.

  Far down the lines the Faithful heard,

  And had no notion what occurred,

  But plied their triggers undeterred,

  By trifles such as that.

  From sea to sea the tumult spread

  Nor could a single man have said,

  What he was shouting at.

  And a despatch in pleasing wise,

  Spoke of a daring enterprise,

  ‘Against some enemy supplies’,

  Adding this tragic note:

  ‘The casualties of the force,

  Were sixty men extremely hoarse,

  And one severe sore throat.’

  Although a few men had paid the price of the celebration with their lives it possibly did something to raise morale – and the troops on Gallipoli sorely needed it.

  Cut off far from home, isolated on the peninsula, they were beginning to feel that they were a forgotten army. But they were not forgotten, for the situation in Gallipoli was very much on the minds of the men who were conducting the war and opinion was sharply divided.

  The sun still burned warm and bright in daytime but already the nights had turned cool and offshore there were stormy flurries that whipped the sea into a frenzy of raging waves that battered the beaches and presaged worse to come. Piers at Suvla and Anzac were swept away, small vessels were cast adrift and smashed against the rocks, and before long it would clearly be difficult, if not impossible, to land the stores that would be so urgently needed if the troops were to withstand the winter. Already they were in a bad way. Sickness was rife. Almost a thousand men were being evacuated every day and the vast majority were not wounded but sick – with dysentery, with blood poisoning from infected insect bites, with heart disease, skin disease, or simply with debilitation. In a very short time huge quantities of supplies would be required before the onset of the cold weather – warm clothing, thousands of tons of timber a
nd corrugated iron to build huts and shelters to shield the soldiers in the winter, as well as constant supplies of food and ammunition. If conditions worsened, how were the troops to be supplied? If reinforcements were sent, how were they to be landed? If (and some added ‘Perish the thought!’) it was decided to give up the peninsula and withdraw the troops, how were they to be safely evacuated? No one could come up with a satisfactory answer.

  All through the month of October controversy raged. Public opinion had been roused and there was much criticism of the Gallipoli campaign and, as the arguments continued, the fate and future of the Gallipoli operations swung in the balance. When the Dardanelles Committee met on 11 October two papers lay before them and each one was a bombshell. The first was the report of General Sir Frederick Stopford, now relieved of his command and back in England, who had hastened to present a report designed to defend his actions and disclaim responsibility for the debacle at Suvla Bay. It was a farrago of half-truths and downright lies and it implied harsh criticism of Sir Ian Hamilton’s conduct of operations, not only at Suvla but on the peninsula as a whole. It was viciously unfair, but it went unchallenged. Sir Ian Hamilton, who had not even seen it, was given no opportunity to reply, but Lord Kitchener had already made up his mind. Although he had appointed four Generals of the War Office staff to make further inquiries, and despite the fact that they had neutrally reported back that they felt unable to make any judgement ‘without much fuller information’, Kitchener informed the Government with all the weight of his authority that the Generals’ review had resulted in ‘considerable criticism of Sir Ian Hamilton’s leadership’. It had done no such thing, but this was not all. An Australian journalist, Mr Keith Murdoch (who was to become the father of Rupert Murdoch), had recently taken it upon himself to write a virulent letter to the Prime Minister of Australia, attacking the conduct of all the troops on the peninsula (with the exception of the Australians) and violently attacking Sir Ian Hamilton and the chief of his General Staff. He had shown this letter to Lloyd George and, at his suggestion, had sent a copy to the British Prime Minister. These documents now lay before the Dardanelles committee and they had a considerable influence on their deliberations.