Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1227 page)

Losses had not yet been sorted out. The C.O. wished to withdraw what was left of his posts across the river — there were two still in Ney Copse — and not till he sent his reasons in writing was the sense of them admitted at Brigade Headquarters. Officer’s patrols were then told off to search Ney Copse, find out where the enemy’s new posts had been established, pick up what wounded they came across and cover the withdrawal of the posts there, while a new line was sited. In other words, the front had to fall back, and the patrols were to pick up the pieces. The bad luck of the affair cleaved, as it often does, to their subsequent efforts. By a series of errors and misapprehensions Ney Copse was not thoroughly searched and one platoon of No. 3 Company was left behind and reported as missing. By the time the patrols returned and the Battalion had started to dig in its new front line it was too light to send out another party. The enemy shelled vigorously with big stuff all the night of the 13th till three in the morning; stopped for an hour and then barraged the whole of our sector with high explosives till six. During this, Lieutenant Gibson, our liaison officer with the French, was wounded, and at some time or another in a lull in the infernal din, Sergeant M’Guinness and Corporal Power, survivors of No. 2 Company, which had been mopped up, worked their way home in safety through the enemy posts.

The morning of the 14th brought their brigadier who “seems to think that our patrol work was not well done,” and had no difficulty whatever in conveying his impression to his hearers. Major Ward went down the line suffering from fever. There were one or two who envied him his trouble, for, with a missing platoon in front — if indeed any of it survived — and a displeased brigadier in rear, life was not lovely, even though our guns were putting down barrages on what were delicately called our “discarded” posts. Out went another patrol that night under Lieutenant Bagot, with intent to reconnoitre “the river that wrought them all their woe.” They discovered what every one guessed — that the enemy was holding both river-crossings, stone bridge and duckboards, with machine-guns. The Battalion finished the day in respirators under heavy gas-shellings.

Then came a piece of pure drama. They had passed the 15th September in the usual discomfort while waiting to be relieved by the 1st Coldstream. Captain Redmond with his dislocated knee had gone down and Lieutenants FitzGerald and Lysaght had come up. The talk was all about the arrangements for wiring in their new line and the like, when at 4.30, after a few hours’ quiet, a terrific barrage fell on their front line followed by an SOS from somewhere away to the left. A few minutes later five SOS rockets rose on the right apparently in front of the 1st Scots Guards. Our guns on the Brigade front struck in, by request; the enemy plastered the landscape with H.E.; machine-guns along the whole sector helped with their barrages to which the enemy replied in kind, and with one searching crash we clamped a big-gun barrage on the far bank of the Broembeek, till it looked as if nothing there could live.

When things were at their loudest a wire came in from the Brigade to say that a Hun captured at St. Julien reported that a general advance of the enemy was timed for 6.30 that very morning! By five o’clock the hostile barrage seemed to have quieted down along our front, but the right of the Brigade sector seemed still to be at odds with some enemy; so the Brigadier kept our local barrage hard-on by way of distraction. And at half-past six, tired, very hungry, but otherwise in perfect order, turned up at Brigade Headquarters Sergeant Moyney with the remainder of No. 3 Company’s platoon which had been missing since the 12th. He had been left in command of an advanced shell-hole post in Ney Copse with orders neither to withdraw nor to let his men break into their iron ration. The Wurtembergers’ raid had cut off his little command altogether; and at the end of it he found a hostile machine-gun post well established between himself and the duckboard-bridge over the river. He had no desire to attract more attention than was necessary, and kept his men quiet. They had forty-eight hours’ rations and a bottle of water apiece; but the Sergeant was perfectly definite as to their leaving their iron ration intact. So they lay in their shell-hole in the wood and speculated on life and death, and paid special attention to the commands of their superior officer in the execution of his duty. The enemy knew they were somewhere about, but not their strength nor their precise position, and having his own troubles in other directions, it was not till the dawn of the 16th that he sent out a full company to roll them up. The Sergeant allowed them to get within twenty-five yards and then ordered his men to “jump out and attack.” It was quite a success. Their Lewis-gun came into action on their flank, and got off three drums into the brown of the host while the infantry expended four boxes of bombs at close quarters. “Sergeant Moyney then gave the order to charge through the Germans to the Broembeek.” It was done, and he sent his men across that foul water, bottomed here with curly barbed-wire coils while he covered their passage with his one rifle. They were bombed and machine-gunned as they floundered over to the swampy western bank; and it was here that Private Woodcock heard cries for help behind him, returned, waded into the water under bombs and bullets, fished out Private Hilley of No. 3 Company with a broken thigh and brought him safely away. The clamour of this fierce little running fight, the unmistakable crack and yells of the bombing and the sudden appearance of some of our men breaking out of the woods near the German machine-gun emplacement by the river, had given the impression to our front of something big in development. Hence the SOS which woke up the whole touchy line, and hence our final barrage which had the blind good luck to catch the enemy as they were lining up on the banks of the Broembeek preparatory, perhaps, to the advance the St. Julien prisoner had reported. Their losses were said to be heavy, but there was great joy in the Battalion over the return of the missing platoon, less several good men, for whom a patrol went out to look that night in case they might be lying up in shell-holes. But no more were found. (“‘Twas a bad mix-up first to last. We ought never to have been that side the dam’ river at that time at all. ‘Twas not fit for it yet. And there’s a lot to it that can’t be told. . . . And why did Moyney not let the men break into their ration? Because, in a tight place, if you do one thing against orders ye’ll do
annything
. An’ ‘twas a dam’ tight place that that Moyney man walked them out of.”)

They were relieved with only two casualties. The total losses of the tour had been — one officer missing (Lieutenant Manning), one (2nd Lieutenant Gibson ) wounded; one man wounded and missing; eighty missing; fifty-nine wounded and seventeen killed. And the worst of it was that they were all trained hands being finished for the next big affair!

Dulwich Camp where they lay for a few days was, like the others, well within bombing and long gun-range. They consoled themselves with an inspection of the drums and pipes on the 17th, and received several six-inch shells from a naval gun, an old acquaintance; but though one shell landed within a few yards of a bivouac of No. 2 Company there were no further casualties, and the next day the drums and pipes went over to Proven to take part in a competition arranged by the Twenty-ninth Division (De Lisle’s). They played beautifully — every one admitted that — but what chance had they of “marks for dress” against line battalions whose bands sported their full peace-time equipment — leopard skins, white buckskin gloves, and all? So the 8th Essex won De Lisle’s prize. But they bore no malice, for when, a few days later, a strayed officer and forty men of that battalion cast up at their camp (it was Putney for the moment) they entertained them all hospitably.

They settled down to the business of intensive training of the new drafts that were coming in — 2nd Lieutenant Murphy with ninety-six men one day, and 2nd Lieutenants Dame and Close the next with a hundred and forty-six, all to be put through three weeks of a scheme that included “consolidation of shell-holes” in addition to everything else, and meant six hours a day of the hardest repetition work. Sports and theatrical shows, such as the Coldstream Pierrots and their own rather Rabelaisian “Wild West Show,” filled in time till the close of September when they were at Herzeele, warned that they would be “for it” on or about the 11th of the next month, and that their attack would not be preceded by any artillery registration. This did not cheer them; for experience had shown that the chances of surprising the enemy on that sector were few and remote.

The last day of September saw the cadres filled. Three 2nd Lieutenants, Anderson, Faulkner, and O’Connor, and Lieutenant Levy arrived; and, last, Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. H. R. Alexander, who took over the command.

Rehearsals for the coming affair filled the next few days at Herzeele camp, and their final practice on the 4th before they moved over to Proven was passed as “entirely satisfactory.” Scaled against the tremendous events in progress round them, the Broembeek was no more than a minor action in a big action intended to clear a cloudy front ere the traitorous weather should make all work on the sector impossible, and, truly, by the time it was done, it cost the Division only two thousand casualties — say four battalions of a peace establishment.

The battle they knew would depend on the disposition of the little Broembeek. If that chose to flood it would be difficult to reach across its bogs and worse to cross; and, under any circumstances, mats and portable bridges (which meant men having to halt and bunch under fire) would be indispensable.

The existing line was to be held by the 3rd Guards Brigade till the 9th of October, when the attack would be put through by the 1st and 2nd Brigades on the right and left respectively. In brigade disposition this would lay the 2nd Irish Guards next to the French on their left, and the 1st Scots Guards on their right. The usual three objectives were set for the Division; making an advance in all of rather more than three thousand yards from the Broembeek to the edge of the Houthulst Forest; and equally, as usual, when the leading battalions had secured the first two objectives, the remaining battalions of each brigade would go through them and take the final one.

With the idea of concealing the attack, no preliminary work was undertaken, but on the morning of the 6th the light bridges and mats were issued, and the Battalion practised fixing and laying them over a piece of ground marked to represent the river. They moved from Putney Camp to the front line on the 7th, when Nos. 3 and 4 Companies relieved the 2nd Scots Guards who had been getting ready the mats and bridges for the real thing. The last day concerned itself with disposing the companies in the trenches so that they should be able to have a good look at the ground ahead while it was yet light. No one could pretend that the sweeping of the small-featured, ill-looking, and crowded landscape would be an easy job, and at the far end of the ominous perspectives lay the dull line of Houthulst Forest upon which rain shut down dismally as the day closed. The enemy made no signs beyond occasional shelling, in which Battalion Headquarters, a collection of three concrete block-houses, was hit once or twice with 5.9’s, but no harm followed.

At dusk Nos. 3 and 4 Companies laid out the tapes parallel to the Broembeek that were to make forming-up easier. For some reason connected with the psychology of war, this detail has always a depressing influence on men’s minds. An officer has observed that it reminded him of tennis-courts and girls playing on them at home. A man has explained that their white glimmer in the dusk suggests a road for ghosts, with reflections on the number of those who, after setting foot across on dead-line, may return for their rum-ration.

The rain gave over in the night and was followed by a good drying wind. Zero of the 9th October was 5.20 A.M. which gave light enough to see a few hundred yards. An intense eighteen-pounder barrage was our signal to get away. Four barrages went on together — the creeping, a standing one, a back-barrage of six-inch howitzers and 60-pounders, and a distant barrage of the same metal, not to count the thrashing machine-gun barrages. They moved and halted with the precision of stage machinery or, as a man said, like water-hoses at a conflagration. Our two leading companies (3 and 4) crossed the river without a hitch, met some small check for a few moments in Ney Wood where a nest of machine-guns had escaped the blasts of fire, and moved steadily behind the death-drum of the barrage to the first objective a thousand yards from their start. There the barrage hung like a wall from the French flank, across the north of Gruyterzaele Farm, over the Langemarck road and Koekuit, and up to Namur Crossing on the battered railway track, while the two leading companies set to work consolidating till it should roll back and the rear companies pass on behind it. The dreadful certainty of the job in itself masked all the details. One saw and realised nothing outside of one’s own immediate task, and the business of keeping distances between lines and supports became a sort of absurd preoccupation. Occasionally a runner passed, very intent on his errand, a free man, it seemed, who could go where he chose at what pace suited his personal need to live; or the variously wounded would lurch by among the shell-holes, but the general impression in the midst of the din was of concentrated work. The barrage held still for three quarters of an hour, and about half-past seven the 2nd Coldstream came up through our Nos. 3 and 4 Companies who were lying down, curiously unworried by casualties, to carry on the advance to the last objective which was timed to take place about eight. No. 3 Company was told to move up behind the Coldstream and dig in a couple of hundred yards behind Nos. 1 and 2 as a support to them, where they lay behind the second objective, in event of counterattacks. Unluckily a French gun on the left began to fire short, and that company had to be withdrawn with some speed, for a “seventy-five” that makes a mistake repeats it too often to be a pleasant neighbour. Battalion Headquarters came up as methodically as everything else, established themselves behind the first objective, strung their telephones, and settled down to the day’s work. So far as the Battalion was concerned they suffered no more henceforward than a few occasional shells that do not seem to have done any damage, and at six in the evening their two leading companies were withdrawn, with the leading companies of the 1st Scots Guards, and marched back to Dulwich Camp. The remaining two companies of the Scots Guards passed under the command of the C.O. of the Irish (Alexander), who had been slightly wounded in the course of the action. The four companies then were in direct support of the troops at the third objective waiting on for counter-attacks which never came.