Part 12 (1/2)

_Nov. 6th._

Next morning there was a thick mist till 10 A.M., and I took advantage of it to visit the trenches in detail. The left of the Ches.h.i.+res was within 40 yards of the enemy, who were hidden in the wood in front of them, so, there being no communication trenches, we had to be fairly careful hereabouts. But it was desperately difficult to make one's way about, what with the fallen trees and telephone wires, and little patches of open ground on the slopes, and long, wet, yellow gra.s.s and tangled heather in parts, not to mention the criss-cross of trenches, occupied and unoccupied, in all directions. Difficult enough to find one's way in daylight, it was infinitely worse in pitch darkness. No wonder that our reliefs had not been accomplished till nearly 3 o'clock that morning!

We were sh.e.l.led pretty heavily all the morning, and two of the sh.e.l.ls burst so close that they covered us with dirt. Two officers--Langdale and O'Kelly, of the West Ridings--had their legs broken by their dug-out being blown in upon them, and three Ches.h.i.+res were buried by an exploding sh.e.l.l and dug out dead. Another dozen were killed or wounded in their trenches, which were nothing like deep enough, and could not be further deepened because of the water which lay there only just below the ground. About twenty Ches.h.i.+res were moved back to escape the sh.e.l.l fire, and taken to a rather less-exposed place. At 4.30 the Bedfords reported a heavy attack on their front; but it was confined to rifle fire, and nothing serious happened there.

The remainder of the Bedfords, under Griffith, consisting of two strong companies, turned up at 6 P.M., and the West Ridings were taken away from me, so that my command was now reduced to two battalions, one rather strong (1100--just reinforced by a big fresh draft), and the other, Ches.h.i.+res, only about half that number.

On further consideration of the situation, I settled to make Brigade Headquarters at the Beukenhorst Chateau,[18] half a mile farther back, and started the R.E. and a strange fatigue party to dig a funk-hole for us in front of it in case it were badly sh.e.l.led; but I remember as a particular grievance that when the foreign fatigue party heard they were to go somewhere else, they went off, leaving their work half undone, and with our Brigade tools, though I had given them distinct orders to do neither of these things. But they were now out of my jurisdiction, so nothing could be done except to send them a message to return our tools--which they never did.

[Footnote 18: ”Stirling Castle” on our present maps.]

Moulton-Barrett turned up in the afternoon with a basket of cold food for us, and took St Andre away; it was not the least necessary for him to stay, as the dug-out was really only big enough for two, so Weatherby and I settled down for the night. We had wanted to move into the chateau at 7 P.M., but we could not. For it was not advisable as long as an attack was imminent; also, M. B. had not got our message of that morning saying we wanted him to clean up the chateau for us; and thirdly, the Bedford relief was taking place. So we settled to move next day instead.

But it was not very attractive living in the tiny dug-out. We had no servants, we had to prepare our own food and wash up afterwards; it was frightfully cramped, and we were always getting half-empty sardine-tins oozing over official doc.u.ments, and knives and forks lost in the mud and straw at the bottom, and bread-crumbs and fragments of bully beef and jam mixed up with our orders and papers; and it was not at all healthy going for a stroll as long as the sun was up because of the bullets and sh.e.l.ls fizzing about. Altogether, although it was no worse, except as regards size, than other dug-outs, it was not luxurious; and as for was.h.i.+ng, a little water in the bottom of a biscuit-tin was about all we could manage, whilst a shave was a matter of pain and difficulty.

_Nov. 7th._

We had now come under the 3rd Division (under General Wing temporarily--a very good and charming fellow, a gunner, who had taken over General Hubert Hamilton's command, the latter having been killed, I forgot to mention, some time previously), whilst the 9th Brigade had relieved the 6th Cavalry on the previous day. The Division, therefore, now consisted of the 7th, 15th, and 9th Brigades (the latter comprising the Northumberland Fusiliers, Royal Fusiliers, Lincolns, and Scots Fusiliers)--in that order from right to left. It looked, therefore, as if we ought to be soon relieved by the 8th Brigade and return to our own Division. Vain hope! We were not destined to be relieved for another fortnight.

There was a good deal of sh.e.l.ling of the 9th Brigade during the morning, but we personally had not many sh.e.l.ls into us, and were fairly quiet till past 2 o'clock.

Suddenly, about 3, a h.e.l.lish hostile fire broke out in the wood--not in our front, but close on our left. A hail of bullets whizzed over our heads, responded to by our fire trenches; and then, to our horror, we saw our Bedford supports, to our left front, retiring slowly, but in some confusion, on top of us--many of the men only half-dressed, and buckling on their kits as they moved. We jumped out of our dug-out, and with the a.s.sistance of their officers stopped and rallied them. They were certainly not running, and were in no sort of panic; but they all said that the word had been pa.s.sed from the right front that the Bedfords were to retire, so they had done so--half of them being asleep or feeding at the time the fire began.

We made them advance again, which they were more than willing to do, and then there was a cheer from the Bedfords in front. Upon which the supports p.r.i.c.ked up their ears, rallied to the sound, and charged forward like hounds rallying to the horn.

Violent firing and confused fighting and yelling in the wood for a s.p.a.ce, and some wounded began to come back. Then some Germans, both wounded and prisoners, in small batches, and at last the news that the Bedfords had completely repulsed the attack and taken about 25 prisoners, driving the enemy back with the bayonet at the run.

Who it was that started the order to retire we could never find out.

It certainly was not Milling, who was commanding in the front trench, nor was it any officer. Quite conceivably it may have been started by the enemy themselves.

What happened, as far as I could make out, was that the right centre of the Northumberland Fusiliers on our left had been pressed back and the Germans had poured through the opening. The right flank of the Northumberlands had sat tight, so the Bedfords in our front line had known nothing of the German success till they were fired at by the enemy in the wood on their left rear. I do not fancy, however, from what the prisoners told me, that the attack was a very strong one--not more, I expect, than three or four companies.

These belonged to the Frankfurt-am-Main Corps (VII.). I examined one prisoner, a regular ”Schwabe” from Heilbronn, a jolly man with a red beard, who told me that his company was commanded by a cavalry captain, who considered it beneath his dignity to charge with infantry, and remained snugly ensconced behind a wall whilst he shouted encouragement to his men.

The Bedfords retook three of the Northumberlands' trenches with them, but failed to retake one of their own--together with two machine-guns in it--that they had lost, although they tried hard, A Company (Milling's) making three bayonet charges. They behaved devilish well, in spite of heavy losses both in officers and men. Macready, their Adjutant, was shot through the liver (but recovered eventually); Allason (Major) was. .h.i.t twice--once through the shoulder, and again, on returning after getting his wound dressed, through the thigh; Davenport was shot through the left elbow (we looked after him in our dug-out); and two subalterns were killed, besides twenty-four men killed and fifty-three wounded. Of the Ches.h.i.+res, Pollok, Hodson, and Anderson (the latter a fine runner and very plucky chap) were killed, besides five men killed, nineteen wounded, and eight missing.

Altogether the losses were rather heavy. The men were particularly good to the wounded Germans; I remember especially one man, a black-bearded evil-looking scoundrel, who had been shot through the lungs, and rolled about in the mud at my feet, and him they looked after carefully. The last glimpse I caught of him was being helped to a stretcher by two of our own men, also wounded.

There was again no chance of our getting to the chateau to-night, so another basket of food arrived, and we fed with what comfort we could.

We worked all night at strengthening our lines, but the Germans had got up so close to our weakest salient that I was a bit anxious on the subject of a renewed attack by night.

_Nov. 8th._

A small reinforcement arrived at 7 A.M., in the shape of the Divisional Mounted Troops of the 3rd and 5th Divisions--about 250 men altogether, consisting of 70 of the 15th Hussars and 60 cyclists from the 3rd, and 50 of the 19th Hussars and 70 cyclists from the 5th Divisions, under Courage and Parsons respectively.

These were distributed in rear of our dug-out.

We had a fairly quiet day as far as we ourselves were concerned, but both Brigades on our flanks were heavily sh.e.l.led. The French on our right were attacking in force, but although they were being supported by their 16th Corps, I do not think there was much result about Klein Zillebeke.