Part 13 (2/2)
On the 19th General Wing arrived and told us that, after settling to relieve us to-day, the French had been unable to find the men and could not do it. This was a disappointment; but a later message arrived to say that the Worcesters, coming from the 5th Brigade, would arrive that afternoon and relieve both of our battalions, who by that time were reduced to 540 Bedfords and 220 Ches.h.i.+res altogether (the Bedfords having started with 1100 and the Ches.h.i.+res with 600 odd).
In the evening a battalion of Worcesters--from goodness knows where--turned up and announced that they were to relieve us. We had already, as above mentioned, heard that they were coming, and were ready for them; but it was funny that they should arrive for only twenty-four hours, for the French were going to occupy our trenches on the morrow.
Anyhow, by midnight or so the Bedfords and Ches.h.i.+res had cleared out, thankful to leave the horrible rabbit-warren where they had been stuck for nearly three wet, cold, and beastly weeks; and they retired to the wood and dug-outs close behind our chateau, so as to be in reserve in case of necessity.
_Nov. 20th._
But they were not wanted as such, and the following day was fairly quiet as far as trench fighting was concerned.
But not so for the staff. We were sitting in the housekeeper's room after breakfast working out our orders for the withdrawal that night, when there was a terrific bang just outside the chateau--nearer than ever before. We looked at each other, and would, I verily believe, have settled down again to our work, so accustomed were we to sh.e.l.ls of all sorts, had not Naylor, who had joined us two days before as temporary signal officer (_vice_ Cadell, gone sick with light typhoid at Hille eighteen days before), jumped up and run outside in order to see where it had gone. Being Divisional signal officer, he had not, perhaps, had quite so much experience of sh.e.l.ls as we had, and he wanted to get into closer touch. The example was infectious, and we also strolled out to see where the sh.e.l.l had fallen. Hardly had we got outside into the pa.s.sage, and halfway up the bas.e.m.e.nt steps into the fresh air, when there was a roar and an appalling crash which shook the building. The concussion made me stagger, and blew my cap off. St Andre's hat fizzed away into the bushes, and, surrounded by a cloud of red dust and stones and chips of bal.u.s.trades and hunks of wood and branches, we held on to anything we could. No damage to ourselves; but a glance down the pa.s.sage showed us that the sh.e.l.l, or most of it, had exploded in or just outside the kitchen, and blown that chamber, as well as the housekeeper's room, which we had just left, into absolute smithereens.
No time to look into further details; a hurried issue of orders, and we legged it for all we were worth across the open and into our funk-hole in the shrubbery 300 yards off, whilst the signal section and servants and orderlies made a bolt for the stables in the opposite direction.
But the Germans seem to have been satisfied with this little exhibition of ”hate,” and bombarded us no more--except casually, with shrapnel, as usual. We crept back to the chateau at intervals during the morning, and removed various possessions and chairs and tables to our dug-out, which was not a very luxurious abode, though dry and fairly deep. Poor Conway, Weatherby's servant, whom he had left behind, was the only casualty; his dead body was found, with both legs broken and an arm off, blown down a cellar pa.s.sage at the back. The next most serious casualty was Moulton-Barrett's new pair of breeches, arrived that morning from England, and driven full of holes like a sugar-sifter. Our late room was a ma.s.s of wreckage--half the outer wall and most of the inner one blown down, tables and chairs and things overturned and broken, and the floor knee-deep in plaster and rubbish. Of the kitchen there was still less; and nothing was to be rescued from the debris except one tin plate and one tin mustard-pot.
It would have taken days to clear it, for a good deal of the room above seemed to have fallen into it as well, and one could hardly get in at the door, so full was the place of plaster, wreckage, and stones, and hot-water pipes and bits of iron and twisted rails, and dust and earth and broken laths and rafters. Luckily the concussion put the fire out, or there might have been still more damage.
We spent our day somewhat uncomfortably in the dug-out, for there was a hard frost and very little room to turn round in, and though we had a brazier, its charcoal fumes in the confined s.p.a.ce nearly poisoned us. In the middle of the day three French officers turned up, and we made mutual arrangements for the taking over by them of this portion of the line, Milling (of the Bedfords) guiding one party and St Andre the other.
Food was rather a difficulty, for the mess servants had disappeared, and had last been seen hastening in the direction of Ypres--for which we cursed them loud and long. We did our best with small hunks of bully and odd bits of chocolate and a modic.u.m of tea and biscuits in our haversacks--for all the rest of our food had been buried by that infernal sh.e.l.l,--but it was neither comfortable nor filling; and, in truth, as the dark winter evening came on with only one or two candle-stumps between us, we were not as happy as we should otherwise have been.
Help was, however, at hand; for our servants, Inskip and Stairs, who we thought had ignominiously run away, suddenly turned up with heaps of food. They had gone all the way to our cook's waggon three miles the other side of Ypres for comestibles, and whilst we were d--ing their eyes for bolting, were trudging, heavily laden, along the road back to us--good youths.
It was a lengthy business getting the relief through. The French troops, due at 7.30 P.M., did not arrive till 9.15 P.M., and even then it was difficult to pilot a lot of troops, fresh to the ground, in pitch darkness, over sh.e.l.l-holes and wires and broken trees and stumps, and through mud and undergrowth and dead horses, &c., &c., into the trenches destined for them. The details had to be very carefully arranged indeed, and it was not till nearly 2 A.M. that we had got the French into the trenches, the Worcesters into reserve, and the Bedfords and Ches.h.i.+res on their way back to Ypres.
Then, with a sigh of some thankfulness apiece, we stumbled back in the darkness to the chateau, where we waited to collect the remains of the Signal Section and staff, and then moved off, mounted this time, down the Menin-Ypres road.
It was freezing very hard--as I think I remarked before--and the road was frightfully slippery. Trotting was almost out of the question, but I tried it on Squeaky for a few yards, on a dry broken bit. She pulled back on to the slippery part, slid up, and sat down heavily, whilst I fell gracefully off on to my shoulder. And she repeated the performance the other side of the town. Ypres, in the bright starlight, was still quite impressive, and the Cloth Hall was still almost intact. But there were many sh.e.l.l-holes about, and some of the houses were still smouldering. The town happened to be respited from sh.e.l.ls for the actual moment, but I believe that the very next day a heavy bombardment began again, and the Cloth Hall was destroyed till hardly the skeleton thereof was left.
_Nov. 21st._
We were due to billet in Locre, and there we arrived at about 7 A.M.
It was frightfully cold, but, after we had seen the two battalions billeted, the military policeman who had been told to turn up and show us to our billets was nowhere to be found, so we wandered on as far as the Convent, staggering and slipping on the snowy ice and blowing on our fingers as we went. The thermometer must have shown ten degrees of frost or more, but I only know that I was very glad to reach our little house at last (having pa.s.sed it already once half a mile before) and get in between the sheets of an ancient but respectably clean bed, covered by all the mackintoshes, blankets, and rugs I could get hold of.
The Ches.h.i.+res were billeted on the Mont Rouge close by, and the Bedfords near us, at the corner of the Westoutre road. They had all struggled over the fourteen miles or so that divided them from their trenches, but having arrived and their feet having swollen terribly during the long march, any number of them could not get their boots on again, and they went to hospital by twenties and thirties, hobbling along the road with their feet tied up in rags or socks, for they were deformed with rheumatism and swollen joints,[23] and would not fit any boot. The Ches.h.i.+res, as I expected, were much the worse of the two battalions, for their trenches had been very wet, and most of the men had sat with cold feet in water for many days; yet there was not a single case of pulmonary complaint amongst them, and hardly even a cough or a cold.
[Footnote 23: What would now be known as ”trench feet.”]
Here we stayed, at Locre, till the 25th, the men enjoying a most well-earned rest, and filling up with hot baths, warm clothes, socks, parcels from home, and comforts of all sorts. The Divisional Headquarters were in the Convent, a clean huge building which did very well for the purpose, and here we went almost daily, either on business or on a meal intent. The Ches.h.i.+res--only 230 of them left--were of no practical value, alas, with their bad feet; so they were sent in to 2nd Corps Headquarters (Sir H. S.-D.) at Bailleul, nominally to ”find” the Headquarters Guard, but in reality to convalesce.
On the 25th we--that is, Headquarters and the Bedfords, for that was all there was left of the 15th for the moment--moved to St Jan's Cappel, a nice little village only a few miles behind Locre. We lived in the Cure's (M. de Vos) house, clean and pleasant; and the Cure, who liked the good things of this world, brought his stout person to coffee every evening, and did not disdain to make the acquaintance of an occasional tot of British rum or whisky, except on Fridays.
Two days afterwards we were inspected both by Sir Horace and, half an hour later, by Sir John French, who were both pleased to say complimentary things of the Brigade. It did us good. The Bedfords again put me to confusion by calling out ”'Ear! 'ear!” at telling points of the speeches--curious folk,--the only battalion I ever heard do so. 587 men and 8 officers on parade, not one of the latter of whom, except the Quartermaster, had come out with the battalion.
Griffith was on leave, his place being taken by Major Mackenzie, V.C., who had just joined. All the other officers who had left Ireland with me in August were either killed, wounded, or sick.
We were under orders to go into the trenches again shortly, taking over from Maude,[24] now commanding the 14th Brigade; he also had the Dorsets and Norfolks, sc.r.a.ped up from various places, attached to him.
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