Blood and Thunder (48 page)

Everywhere that Logie turned in his battalion, to his joy, there was Eton. Of the four officers in his company, three were OEs and one of those had been in Pop his first half. He had caught up with Henry Dundas and Charles Hambro of the 3rd Coldstream, a slightly younger cricketer. He had even spied his French master, Mr de Satge, passing him in his capacity as interpreter to the Welsh Guards.

Whilst the Guards eked out their last few weeks on the Somme there was plenty of time for the Etonian population to socialise. Oliver Lyttelton and Henry went for walks before breakfast. On the way back they would pretend they were still at school. They told themselves that the river was Boveney Weir
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and had mock conversations about colours, ‘You will be second choice for Sixpenny,
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'and about masters, ‘I hope to be up to Broader
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next half.' So it went on all the way back to headquarters. On one occasion Ralph went off to meet Logie for a picnic. They borrowed bicycles and went off to a wood that still had Germans lurking at the other end to laze about and talk Eton shop whilst on another day Ralph and Henry hitched a lift in a lorry to a nearby village and gorged themselves on omelettes and coffee at the house of an old French dame.

The 3rd Grenadier Guards had fashioned a little show for the entertainment of the rest of the division. Henry thought it was wonderful when they put it on for the 2nd Guards Brigade:

It is an amazing tribute to the Brigade that one can have an officer kissing an officer's servant (doing Cinderella) and the Sergeant Major – the greatest man in any battalion probably – flirting with a junior Corporal (an ugly sister) without the smallest diminishing of discipline. Magnificent really.

There were quieter ways to pass the time too. Henry had been reading a newly published memorial volume about Charles Lister and, largely due to General John, the brigade staff had begun producing a small newspaper entitled
The Daily Dump
. It carried, on his instructions, poems and such trench proverbs as ‘Many a muddle makes a medal', and amusing anecdotes about Guards characters. ‘Colonel Greer has returned from his visit to Boulogne where he went to consult a famous dental specialist,' it reported one morning. ‘In his hurry to get the thing done, he apparently went to the wrong dentist who extracted the wrong tooth. The Colonel we are glad to say looks none the worse for his trip.' Work also continued on Eric Greer and Henry's own newspaper project, although Henry proved rather lazy, claiming that the mud addled his brain. Their poems and sketches were about to come to fruition, however and appeared with regularity in the
Daily Graphic
.

Henry returned from leave in May 1917 to find the brigade preparing to move imminently. Summoned to see General John he was given rather a peculiar job. He was to find out the details of all of the Old Etonians in the brigade with their projected destination once the Guards moved from the Somme. Henry could not fathom what an earth for, but they would all find out soon enough.

Ralph too went on his first leave after almost nine months at the front. He came back refreshed, bringing everyone good tidings from Eton and with his mood much improved, but it was not to last. He went over to dinner with Logie a couple of days later and reported sulkily that he had been taken from his battalion. To his utter disgust he had been summoned on to the personal staff of General Feilding, commanding the division.

Whilst Ralph was furious, everyone else was unanimous in their approval. Having declared that ‘of course the whole ADC system was one long period of snobbery and intrigue and petticoats', Henry now did a complete U-turn when it meant his friend being removed from danger. Logie agreed. ‘I can't say what a relief it is for me to know that he is out of harm's way for the present.' In fact, he wished they would just send him home for the duration.

Although the Battle of Arras was over, the resumption of serious hostilities appeared to be creeping ever nearer. The Guards began their move north by way of a stop at Wardrecques near St Omer. On arrival they bivouacked in a pretty little field, but more importantly it was flat. Logie could almost see the wicket in place. Even more happily, it transpired that he was now within reach of his Aunt Muriel.

Muriel Thompson was quite a lady. With her brothers she shared some of the credit for founding the automobile racing club at Brooklands before the war and won the first women's race there in 1908 in her car ‘Pobble'. She wanted to follow one of Logie's uncles to war as an ambulance driver but as a woman she was unwelcome, so she had joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. After driving for the French and Belgians, in 1916 she became one of the first women to drive for the British Army, as women were finally permitted to participate in this aspect of the war effort. By 1917 she had risen to second in command of the Calais Convoy and was now conveniently placed to spend time with her beloved nephew when he could get away.

Of course, with a formation so heavily weighted towards Eton, 4 June could not pass unnoticed. Logie's thoughts were entirely with the school on this hallowed day. It was a warm sunny day. ‘Oh but it ought to be spent on Upper Club under the trees,' he lamented. ‘Can't you hear the pigeons in school yard; lunch at m'tutor's: mayonnaise, cutlets … wonderfully creamy pudding; more cricket, tea, absences, procession of boats … fireworks … Will it ever come again?' He could almost reach out and touch it, but France was a far cry from the banks of the Thames. ‘You know the longing … which hurts?' he wrote. ‘I sometimes feel it when I sit and think of the days when I could write KS after my name.'

General John's odd request for a catalogue of Etonians fell into place when a large contingent of OEs converged on St Omer on that breezy evening for a dinner to mark the special date. These 4 June dinners had become frequent the length and breadth of all fronts since 1915, with gatherings of Etonians getting together however they could, toasting the occasion and sending back a telegram to school; but this was by far the largest and most memorable meal during the war.

The band of the Coldstream Guards had set up at one end of the dining hall, which was dominated by a large chandelier decorated with ribbons of light Eton blue. Such exalted personages as Gough, the army commander, and the Earl of Cavan, commanding the corps beneath him that contained the Guards, sat at the top table. After the food there was a sing-song with typed prompts in Latin as well as a rousing rendition of ‘God Save the King'. Cavan shushed everyone down after the ‘National Anthem' and called Absence as if they were at school. No less than 206 Etonians answered their names, with 116 of them members of the Guards Division.

The singing took up again and the congregation gave a rousing rendition of the ‘Eton Boating Song', by which time some of those assembled had taken to standing on tables at the back. They were beginning to creak and groan. Cavan was determined to try to make a speech but naturally could not be heard by anyone that wasn't standing right under his nose. ‘This, however, did not prevent everyone from howling with applause whenever he seemed to get to the end of a sentence.'

At some point, someone, ‘probably an ex-Tug', wrote out the obligatory telegram to be sent back to the headmaster at Eton. He did it in Latin. One of the battalion commanders was called up to construe in front of the crowd. He failed dismally and was given a yellow ticket made out especially for the occasion. Gough, no less, was then called up and proved just as incapable and, as this was considered a far worse transgression, he was issued with a white slip
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.

The official proceedings were wrapped up by a rendition of ‘The Vale'
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, at which point the first table collapsed. ‘Pandemonium reigned.' Cavan tried to opt for a swift exit and sent a polite enquiry to Hubert Gough asking him if he was ready to take his leave. Gough sent an indignant reply back to say that he was busy. At that point the army commander was at the bottom of a scrum on the floor. ‘Whenever a group of people were seen a ram
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was spontaneously formed by others, and then at once became a vortex of legs and arms.' Logie watched Gough being hoisted around the room by a seething mass of brigadiers and junior ensigns. ‘Not very bad,' he remarked. One attendee said that the most vivid memory he had was of what he thought was a brigadier holding another man down by the throat and squeezing an orange into his victim's eye.

Henry managed to contain himself, sitting next to Ralph and opposite Logie. He wasn't one for drinking to excess anyway. They had bumped into a few contemporaries from other units but nobody that he was particularly desperate to see so he stuck to the usual crowd. He was disappointed with the lack of reverence shown for the occasion by some, the idea that Eton was nothing more than an excuse for an annual orgy, but he got over it. ‘Why shouldn't one enjoy oneself as one likes.' Gough and Cavan ran away soon after the mayhem began. General John and most of the brigadiers were hoisted before they too managed to scramble out, after which a mock battle began, the strongpoint being where the band had been until they too scarpered.

Pip Blacker had arrived late and sitting amongst strangers he enjoyed it less than the others. By midnight the room looked more like Ginchy than a dining room and the party began to wind down. He never could figure out whether or not the authorities were apathetic about the rowdy nature of the officers present or whether they looked at it and sympathised with 200 young men ‘most of whom had seen hell in the last twelve months' and let them get on with it.

The Daily Dump
reported that Captain Smith of the Coldstream Guards had arrived at Wardrecques in a motor car on 8 June. ‘His appearance was the signal for all Old Etonians to retire to their dugouts as it was confidently expected that the Captain was on his way round to collect a large sum of money for the damages incurred.' Happily though it transpired that he was merely there to report that there was a huge amount in the event's kitty that more than covered a complete renovation of the dining room. There was even a significant sum left over and this was to be sent to the Eton Memorial Fund. General John relaxed, promptly invited him to tea ‘and the room was still filled with a merry and enthusiastic party'.

Three days after the 4 June dinner at St Omer the summer, militarily speaking, started with a bang. The Germans had been holding on to Messines and the surrounding high ground ever since the 9th Lancers had been forced out of it in 1914. Now an Etonian general was leading the charge to take it back. Herbert Plumer was a practical man, popular amongst his men. He had planned for his army to make a limited, concentrated attack to capture the front of the Messines Ridge, but Haig had characteristically doubled his intentions by adding the back side of the ridge and a further advance that took them 3,000 yards from their starting point.

At 3.10 a.m. on 7 June the earth heaved and nineteen mines fulfilled their task, ripping the Belgian countryside apart in the largest man-made explosion yet seen. At the same time the artillery barrage roared into action. The infantry burst forward towards the traumatised Germans. The first objectives fell, including Messines itself. The enemy were in no frame of mind to repel Plumer's men. Just after 3 p.m. the British launched an assault on what had been deemed the final objectives of the day and by nightfall this had been seized from the Germans too. By 14 June they had cleaned up and completed their task in its entirety.

Plumer's assault on Messines was well planned and well executed but more importantly it was a testament to what could be achieved with a limited set of objectives, as opposed to flinging men at the enemy and trying to smash through the Germans. The Guards had remained at Wardrecques, lest they be required to help exploit the situation at Messines, but when it transpired that this would not be the case they began entraining for the Salient in mid June. The news was not received with any joy, for the Guards knew as well as any other regiment the miseries that that awful spot had to offer.

Their new home revolved around what had become the poisonous little village of Boesinghe where the whole area was low-lying and in part dissected by the Yser canal. Aside from the village, one of the other preferred targets of the German gunners was the chateau at Elverdinghe and its grounds. It just so happened that Henry and the rest of the brigade staff were about to follow numerous British units before them and make the building their home. The chateau looked sturdy enough from a distance, but in fact it had been much knocked about by shellfire. Sandbags were stacked up at the doors. Rain dripped through shell holes in the roof and the windows had been shattered. From the empty frames Henry and Oliver could see Pilckem Ridge in the distance, when torn-up sacks did not hang as shields to the elements. They took a bedroom on the first floor to share but almost immediately had to move downstairs where it was safer in the brigade office. Heavy artillery was wheeled amid the splintered trees behind the gardens, where men were ensconced under the walls and in makeshift dugouts, and it started firing from under their noses. The Germans paid them back with such ferocity that Oliver Lyttelton claimed that their teeth rattled in their heads.

On their right the Guards Division met Marc Noble's Welsh Division across the railway. Marc had been resident at Elverdinghe himself in the previous months but he and his outfit were now concentrating down into a smaller space to accommodate troops arriving for the summer offensive.

After the harrowing effect of Mametz Wood on the Somme, Marc's artillery brigade had been pulled out of the lines with the devastated Welsh infantry whom they supported so that they might all restore themselves before they were required to go back into action. It was a long process and they took part in no major offensives, aside from Marc and his guns providing support at Messines. The intervening twelve months had had a significant effect on him though, and although he had just turned 20, emotionally Marc had aged considerably.