Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1192 page)

THIRD YPRES AND THE BROEMBEEK

On August 1 Lieutenant the Hon. P. J. Ogilvy joined the Battalion and took over No. 1 Company from Acting Captain W. C. Mumford, who had been appointed Town Major of the busy and occasionally battered town of Elverdinghe; and Lieutenant E. Budd took over the 4th Company from Acting Captain H. F. d’A. S. Law, wounded.

On the 15th August, the eve of the Langemarck attack, they were put on one hour’s notice, which was withdrawn the next day, when six divisions (the Forty-eighth, Eleventh, Fifty-sixth, Eighth, Twentieth and Twenty-ninth) struck again along the line from the Menin road to our junction with the French in the north. The weather once more blinded our aeroplanes so that our artillery could not deal effectively with the counter-attacks; the pill-boxes held up our infantry, and though prisoners, guns, and a little ground round Langemarck were gained, the line of the Salient from St. Julien southwards stood as it had since the first. The Battalion was peacefully at bomb-practice on that day, and by some oversight a live bomb got mixed up with the dummies, and caused thirteen casualties, luckily none of them very serious, and the training went forward. As the crops were cut ground was gradually extended and every one was worked hard at practice attacks; for they understood that their lot would be cast in the Salient for some time.

On the 27th August medal ribbons were presented by the General of the 1st Brigade to those who had won honour in the Boesinghe battle, either by their coolheadedness in dealing with “surprise situations” or sheer valour in the face of death or self-devotion to a comrade; for there was every form of bravery to choose from. Lieutenant E. Budd received the bar to his Military Cross, and Sergeant (a/C.S.M.) P. Donohoe (No. 3056), No. 1910 Sergeant (a/C.S.M.) F. M’Cusker, No. 3224 Corporal E. M’Cullagh, No. 4278 Lance-Corporal J. Vanston, No. 7520 Private S. Nulty, No. 5279 Private J. Rochford (bar to Military Medal), No. 10171 Lance-Corporal S. McHale, Military Medal; No. 10161 Lance-Corporal W. Cooper, D.C.M.

The following N.C.O.’s and men were unable to be present on parade, but were awarded honours during the past month. No. 4512 Sergeant J. Balfe, No. 3146 Lance-Corporal F. Coyne, No. 4386 Sergeant Macdonald, No. 6078 Private J. Martin, Military Medal; No. 4884 Private D. O’Brien, Croix de Guerre.

On the last days of August they marched to Proven Siding and entrained for Elverdinghe and thence to Dulwich Camp, well known as being “somewhat exposed and liable to long-range shell-fire.” They were used at once by the greedy R.E.’s for burying cables and making artillery-tracks preparatory to the next move in the interminable Third Battle of Ypres.

From the 1st to the 4th September they, with the 1st Guards Brigade, were in support to the 3rd Guards Brigade which was in the line, and sent up about half their strength for carrying-parties every night. The line, swampy and overlooked by the high ground under Houthulst Forest to the north and north-east, consisted of posts in shell-holes — the shell-holes being improved only just sufficiently to make them “habitable.” The standard of comfort in the Salient at that time was lower than on the Somme, where men were dying, at least, dry. All posts were elaborately concealed from overhead observation, for the enemy aeroplanes roved over them, bombing and machine-gunning at large. Though the Battalion was lucky in its four days’ turn, it lost on the night of the 4th September 2nd Lieutenant G. P. Boyd and four men killed and twenty-three wounded. Some of the other battalions in support suffered severely from bombing raids, and all back-areas were regularly raked over so that the troops might be worried by loss of sleep.

From the 5th to the 8th they lay in Rugby Camp, in reserve to the 2nd Coldstream and 2nd Grenadiers of their own Brigade in the front line. Here they enjoyed a “fairly quiet time,” and had only to find a hundred men or so per night for forward-area work. Rugby, Dulwich and the other camps were all duly and regularly bombed, shelled and gassed, but that was accepted as part of the daily and nightly work.

On the 9th they were up at the front among the “just sufficiently habitable shell-holes” of the Green line beyond the Iron Cross Kortikaar–Cabaret road from the Ypres–Staden railway to the junction with the French. Their guides met them at Bois farm, fifteen hundred yards back, and since, once among the holes, all food sent up risked the life or mutilation of a man, they carried two days’ rations and picked up their water from a Decauville railway that ran to the terminus (daily bombed and bombarded) on the Wijden Drift road. While the last two companies (Nos. 2 and 4 ) were getting their tins at railhead, an hour and a half’s barrage was dropped on them and twenty-seven men were killed or wounded. Relief was delayed in consequence till one on the morning of the 10th, and, about an hour later, a wandering covey of eight Germans, who had lost their way in the dark, were rounded up by the forward platoons of No. 3 Company (2nd Lieutenant Corry, D.C.M.). It was a small brisk fight, and it came pleasantly after the barrage at railhead, and the shelling that befell them from three to half-past five. They were annoyed, too, by low-flying enemy aeroplanes who fired at the men in the posts but as a rule missed them. A deserter came in and patrols were sent out to see where the nearest enemy-post might be. One was located near the railway line in front of the right company. Exploration work of this sort in such a blind front as the enemy had arranged here, ends only too often in patrols losing their way as the eight Germans had done; and company officers do not like it.

On the 11th September, after some artillery work on our side, the enemy guns carried out a shoot on the pill-boxes occupied by the right (No. 1) company while their infantry were “unusually active,” probably because the Thirty-eighth Division on the Guards’ right was being relieved that night by the Twentieth. As a side-issue of the fight the Battalion on their left was attacked, which, so far as the Irish Guards were concerned, meant that the left company (No. 2) swiftly manufactured a fresh post on their left to improve communication with their neighbours, and prevent the enemy working round their flank through the remnants of a wood. In this work they had to disperse with rifle-fire several parties of the enemy who might have interfered with their arrangements, and Captain T. F. MacMahon was wounded. This bald record covers a long, tense night of alarms and fatigues, and fatigue-parties dropping like partridges where the barrage found them, to creep forward as soon as it was lifted; and, somewhere on the left, the crackle and blaze of an attack on a battalion which was entirely capable of taking care of itself.

Their relief on the night of the 13th by the 1st Scots Guards was “very much delayed.” Two detachments got lost, one through the guide being killed and the other “through the guide losing himself.” Yet it was a very dark, and, therefore, theoretically a safe, night, with very little shelling — proof of the utter uncertainty of every detail connected with war.

They had lost in that fortnight one officer (2nd Lieutenant Boyd) and fourteen men killed; one officer (Captain T. F. MacMahon) and seventy-eight other ranks wounded. For the rest of the month they were training in camps — Cariboo and Poll Hill — of which the former was not out of reach of shell-fire, and studied new methods of attack to combat the enemy’s new methods of defence in his protected and fortified shell-holes. These he now held in depth, one shell-hole post covering or flanking the next, so that men fought their way up a landscape of miniature redoubts, invisible to guns, almost invisible to aeroplanes, and much more expensive to reduce than the narrow-slotted pill-boxes.

On the 21st September their Brigadier-General Jeffreys saw the Battalion on parade, near Proven, and bade them farewell on his promotion to command the Nineteenth Division. He was succeeded in command of the 1st Brigade by General C. R. C. de Crespigny. On the 27th Lieut.-Colonel R. V. Pollok commanding the Battalion, who had been on leave, returned and took over from Captain A. F. L. Gordon acting in his absence. On the 29th Lieutenant B. Reford who had been Assistant-Adjutant took over No. 3 Company
vice
Captain T. F. MacMahon, wounded on the 11th, and 2nd Lieutenant T. S. V. Stoney joined for duty on the 25th.

Among the honours mentioned as awarded to the men that month for gallantry and devotion to duty was the D.C.M. to 5279 Private J. Rochford for “gallantry, devotion to duty and organizing ability” when employed as a stretcher-bearer with a working-party on September 3, the night when Lieutenant Boyd and twenty-eight men were killed or wounded by bombs. This, it may be noted, is that Rochford whose presence steadied, and whose jests diverted, whole platoons upon the Somme, and for whose health the men inquired first after the platoon or working-party had been shelled.

And while they trained, with the utter self-absorption of men concerned in the study of methods of taking man’s life, the Salient heaved and flamed day after day with German counter-attacks as our guns covered the adjustment and reinforcements and protection of artillery troops and material in preparation for the battle of September 20. As usual, the weather broke on the eve of it. Ten Divisions (Nineteenth, Thirty-ninth, Forty-first, Twenty-third, First and Second Australians, Ninth, Fifty-fifth, Fifty-eighth and Twentieth) attacked from near Hollebeke in the south to Langemarck in the north; pushed back the line on the whole length of their attack; gained one mile outwards along the desperate Menin road, established themselves in Polygon Wood, broke eleven counterattacks, took over 3000 prisoners and left as many enemy dead. It was followed up on the 26th September by another attack, on a six-mile front from south of the Menin road to north-east of St. Julien, in which six divisions (Thirty-ninth, Thirty-third, Fifth and Fourth Australians, Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth) once more moved our line forward along that frontage, in some places nearly half a mile. Our movement clashed, almost to the minute, with German counter-attacks by fresh divisions launched to recover the ground they had lost on the 20th September, and the fighting was none the lighter for that coincidence.

The 3rd October saw the weather break again just as fighting was resumed on a seven-mile front from the Menin road to the Ypres–Staden railway. Twelve divisions went in here (the Thirty-seventh, Fifth, Twenty-first, Seventh; First, Second and Third Australians; the New Zealand; Forty-eighth, Eleventh, Fourth and Twenty-ninth). Reutel, Nordemhock, and Broodseinde villages were taken, Abraham Heights gained, the Gravenstafel spur cleared by the New Zealanders; three fresh German divisions were caught by our guns almost in the act of forming up for attack, and 5000 prisoners were passed back. The enemy’s losses here were very satisfactory and mainly due to our gun-fire.

On the 5th October, then, so far as the Guards Division was concerned, the line of our working front ran through Poelcappelle and thence back to the Ypres–Staden railway at a point some thousand yards north of Langemarck. From that point it merged into the old line gained on the 20th of September which followed the Broembeek River at a short distance to the south of it, towards our junction with the French, and thence lost itself in the flooded areas beyond Noordschoote. No weight of attack had fallen on that sector of the front since September 20 when Langemarck had been captured, and the French line, with ours, advanced in the direction of Draibach and Houthulst Forest.

THE BROEMBEEK

It was decided to renew the attack, in combination with the French here, on the 9th October, from northwest of Langemarck across the Ypres–Staden railway down to a point in the line gained on the 4th October, east of Zonnebeke, on a front of six miles. The weather prepared itself in advance. Rain began punctually on the 7th, continued through the 8th, and made the going more than usually unspeakable. It affected the Guards Division principally, since their share of the work involved crossing the little valley of the Broembeek River which, should it continue to flood, offered every possible opportunity for holding up troops under fire, loss of direction (since men never move straight across bogs) and engulfment of material. The Broembeek was a stagnant ditch, from twenty to thirty feet wide and from two to five deep, edged with shell-holes and, in some parts, carrying vertical banks four or five feet deep. There was, mercifully, no wire in it, but night-patrols sent out the week before the battle of the 9th reported it could not be crossed without mats.

The 1st Brigade of the division, which lay in reserve while the 3rd Brigade held the front line, had trained for several days at Poll Hill Camp over ground “marked” to represent the ground that the Battalion would have to attack over. The certainty of being drenched to the skin on a raw October night as a preliminary to tumbling from shell-hole to shell-hole till dawn between invisible machine-guns and snipers was left to the imagination of the men.

On October 6th, “the details to be left out of the attack departed to join the Guards Division Reinforcement Battalion at Herzeele.” Men say that the withdrawal of these reprieved ones on the eve of action was as curious a sight as the arrival of a draft. (“For ye’ll understand, at that time o’ the war, men knew ‘twas only putting off what was bound to happen.”)

Then, in foul weather, the Battalion entrained for Elverdinghe with the 3rd Coldstream of their Brigade. The idea was that the 1st Brigade (De Crespigny’s) would attack parallel to the line of the Ypres–Staden railway on their right, about three hundred yards from it, the 2nd Brigade (Sergison-Brooke’s) on their left next against the French, with the 3rd Brigade (Seymour’s) in support. This last brigade had been very heavily used in making arrangements for the Division to cross the Broembeek, piling dumps and helping to haul guns into fresh positions through the mud. The furthest objective set, for the advance, was the edge of the Houthulst Forest, three thousand yards across semi-fluid country with no landmarks other than the line of smashed rail on their right, and whatever fortified houses, farms, pill-boxes and shell-holes they might encounter during their progress. When they had overcome all obstacles, they were instructed to dig in on the edge of the forest.