Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (85 page)

The British were not defending a continuous line; there were wide gaps where the Germans were able to infiltrate and gain ground, just as they had done on a much smaller scale at Mons. This was still predominantly a battalion battlefield, where many units fought independently. Most went into action already depleted by losses on the Aisne, reduced from a thousand men to six hundred or less. By November, their numbers would shrink far more grievously. Much of the British artillery was sited behind the line, on lower ground, and thus handicapped by the fact that its officers could not see the Germans over the skyline, and the guns were anyway very short of shells. More seriously, the BEF had little barbed wire. The keys to effective defence in twentieth-century warfare were obstacles covered by fire. Here, there were few obstacles, and thus the principal impediments to attackers were bullets or shells, and never enough of either.

The British christened a large plantation of Scots pine just north of the Menin road Polygon Wood, because of its shape on the map. In its midst, unexpectedly, was a Belgian cavalry riding school, where some exuberant young British officers put their horses over the jumps even as shells fell nearby. On 24 October it became the scene of a long, bitter series of dispersed actions, in which groups of men in tens, twenties, fifties fought Germans as and when they met them. Some British troops who kept firing until the enemy overran their positions then made the mistake of throwing down their arms and raising their hands, only to be bayoneted, not unreasonably. Amid such a slaughter, why should surrenders have been accepted on demand?

But the German assault now lost momentum, and the British strove to use the breathing space to retake lost ground. The 2nd Worcesters had just
been pulled back out of the line for rest. ‘Every man … was exhausted and unshaven,’ said one of them, Pte. John Cole, ‘and we were relieved to get back into reserve. But … we’d only just arrived when the words came that we were urgently needed to stop another German attack … We were absolutely fed up to the teeth.’ The Worcesters’ commanding officer was thirty-six-year-old Maj. Edward Hankey, who had taken over when his colonel was promoted. Now, Hankey led the battalion in a series of bayonet charges to regain Polygon Wood. These cost heavy losses in desperate scrums, but saved the British line. That night a Royal Engineer wrote: ‘what awful sights in the wood! The dead are lying in groups everywhere. Our brigade had charged through here three times during the day.’ One German unit lost 70 per cent of its fighting strength among the pines. The regiment that had led the enemy assault was reduced from fifty-seven officers and 2,629 men at dawn to six officers and 748 men at nightfall. There was plenty of bloodshed elsewhere also: on 20–21 October the Germans suffered huge losses further south, around Ploegstreet Wood.

On the 25th, Capt. Ottmar Rutz watched heavy artillery wreak havoc among British Guards battalions at Kruiseke, south-east of Ypres: ‘The effect was shocking; they could not withstand it. They leapt up out of their trenches with our machine-guns taking them in their sights. Now was the moment of revenge!’ Rutz reported the enemy throwing away weapons even before his own infantrymen launched their assault. The Germans sprang down into British trenches and took many prisoners among defenders who had hung on through the barrage. Alexander Johnston recorded that day: ‘The reason the Germans got into the 2nd Irish Rifles’ trenches is that the men were so tired they were all asleep.’ By the day’s end, that battalion had only four officers left alive. Counter-attacks during the night failed to restore the line. Next morning, more British troops abandoned their positions, which were promptly seized by dismounted German cavalrymen, many still wearing their spurs. The victors fell eagerly upon captured stores and especially cigarettes.

Throughout history, armies had been accustomed to fight battles that most often lasted a single day, occasionally two or three, but thereafter petered out. Now, however, the allies and Germans explored a terrible new universe of continuous engagement. They accustomed themselves to killing and being killed for weeks on end, with no more than a few hours’ interruption. The bombastic CO of the Gordon Highlanders urged his men to ensure that each accounted for forty Germans before New Year’s
Day. When the regiment’s Sgt. Arthur Robinson was dying of wounds on 24 October, he apologised for having failed to fulfil his quota.

Some who perished were teenagers in their first hours of battle; others were veterans. Among those who fell on the 26th was Pte. William Macpherson. A Leith man, he had served three years with the Royal Scots in South Africa, then a further eight as a Hampshire policeman before re-enlisting in the Scots Guards. The record describes him as ‘husband of Alice Macpherson, of 19 Windsor Road, Boscombe, Bournemouth’. Lt. John Brooke of the Gordons, thirty years old and a former Sandhurst sword of honour winner, won a VC before his death in the second of two attacks on German positions south-east of Ypres on the 29th. That day’s fighting around Gheluvelt reduced 1st Grenadiers to four officers and a hundred men.

The last days of October witnessed some of the most ferocious German attacks, and the most desperate British resistance. On Monday the 26th Douglas Haig wrote in his diary: ‘By 4 p.m. the bulk of the 7th Division had retired from the salient. Most units in disorder … I rode out about 3 p.m. to see what was going on, and was astounded at the terror-stricken men coming back. Still, there were some units in the division which stuck to their trenches.’ On the 29th, seven German divisions were committed to the attacks on Ypres. One officer, Capt. Obermann, had spent much of the previous night crawling across no man’s land, reconnoitring British positions on the Menin road. During an advance through fog early on the following morning, he was mortally wounded by machine-gun fire from a Scottish unit. Obermann died in the arms of his adjutant, becoming his battalion’s second commander to die in Flanders. One of Obermann’s corporals eventually led a dash to silence the British machine-gun, which was manned by a tough old veteran who kept shooting until the attackers overran his position and killed him. Thereafter the Germans, many of them volunteers from Munich, reported British troops abandoning their positions and running for the rear, where they encountered their dismayed corps commander. Haig deplored the fashion in which some units had been posted on forward slopes, in full view of the enemy, and paid the price.

But the day became a dreadful experience for the Germans also. Sun slowly dispersed the fog as they pushed forward, enabling British gunners to get a clear sight of them. One attacking officer’s eye was caught by farm ponds glistening in the brilliant light. He watched a succession of poplar trees totter and then collapse under shellfire: the natural beauties of the
countryside were being progressively obliterated. As the defenders’ bombardment intensified, many Germans sought cover. A Prussian officer demanded crossly, ‘Why aren’t the Bavarians getting forward? Why are they lying down out there?’ Reluctantly, the attackers rose and moved forward again, into renewed fire. ‘Off we went,’ wrote a German officer later, ‘but where to? For most of those involved it was to their deaths … only five men of my platoon are still alive … The British had dug themselves in well in a tobacco field on top of a broad hill and they fought desperately.’ German artillery repeatedly fired short, causing casualties in their own ranks. It is striking to notice that on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, German gunnery was often careless, causing heavy ‘friendly fire’ losses. That day of the 29th one Bavarian regiment lost 349 men killed, with numbers of wounded in proportion.

All armies, and especially the British, were morbidly sensitive to the supposed dishonour of losing a position. In the three weeks of Ypres, their line bulged and bent repeatedly amid successive attacks and counter-attacks. Ground was won, lost and retaken, sometimes several times in successive days. There was savage close-quarter fighting in which men used swords, bayonets, clubbed rifles, pistols. As in most subsequent battles of the twentieth century, units under bombardment often abandoned their positions in varying degrees of disorder. It was asking too much of even brave and disciplined troops to remain in trenches under a storm of shrapnel and high explosive that was killing and maiming comrades all around them. If staying in a given place promised certain death, rational men moved somewhere else, to the dismay of their generals. Lost trenches had to be recaptured – or not, as the case might be – in counter-attacks launched sometimes within minutes, more often within an hour or two, by which time the Germans had probably sited their own Maxims in them.

Some battalions showed themselves exceptionally staunch, while others became notorious for the readiness with which they fled. On 21 October Alexander Johnston observed contemptuously of the 2nd South Lancs: ‘They really are an awful lot … one cannot rely on them for anything, and today is the 4th time during the War that they have bolted.’ On the 29th, amid heavy shelling he wrote: ‘It was rather sad to learn that a few of the 1st Wilts and a lot of the 2nd South Lancs were found a little later, very out of breath and with no equipment on … 2 miles back nearly. The shelling of course was unpleasant but did not last long and I’m afraid it shows what
a state the nerves of the men have got into.’ The Bedfords, Northumberland Fusiliers and Cheshires were among other units deemed less than reliable.

Capt. Ernest Hamilton, an early chronicler of the BEF, wrote apologetically in the introduction to a book on the battle which he published in 1916: ‘It must be clearly understood that the mention from time to time of certain battalions as having been driven from their trenches does not in the smallest degree suggest inefficiency’ – a euphemism for cowardice – ‘on the part of such battalions. It is probable that every battalion in the British Force has at some time or another during the past twelve months been forced to abandon its trenches … owing to insupportable shellfire … It may happen that lost trenches may be retaken by a battalion which is inferior in all military essentials to the battalion that was driven out.’

British leadership was often poor above battalion level. Many men in the line were not merely frightened and exhausted, but also felt painfully isolated in their predicament. Alexander Johnston fumed: ‘I think it is just wicked the way certain members of the Brigade HQ never move out of the “dugout” all day for danger of meeting a stray bullet, and even duck and flinch when shells burst quite 200 yards away! while they send all sorts of messages that things have got to be done, and are sometimes rather ungenerous about poor fellows in front who are getting nearly all the hammering and all the discomfort. Even an occasional visit once every other day or so by someone in authority and just an occasional word of encouragement, I am sure would help these poor fellows to stick it out.’

Johnston added two days later: ‘I am sure the staff are not really in touch with the situation, and can have no true idea of the state of the men, nor do I think sufficient efforts are really made by the Brigadier to convince them or to open their eyes as to the true state of affairs. It cannot be their intention to break the men’s hearts as they are currently doing.’ This was an early manifestation of what would become a major issue of the war, once static warfare evolved. To exercise command effectively, senior officers needed to position themselves with their staffs at the hub of a network of telephone lines, necessarily some distance behind the front. But the price of doing so was to open a profound psychological as well as physical divide between their own circumstances and those of the men whom they commanded. Though some staff officers did not trouble to conceal their gratitude for escaping duty in the line, few generals were cowards. It was merely beyond their limited imagination to understand that soldiers
undergoing such a sustained nightmare as that of Ypres needed human contact and emotional support such as some senior officers, prisoners of decades of stiff military social convention, were entirely unaccustomed to provide. What is remarkable is not how many British units broke at various moments of First Ypres, but how many held their ground.

In the last days of October a new German force was formed, for the explicit purpose of achieving a breakthrough south of the town. It comprised six divisions under Gen. Max von Fabeck. But when Army Group Fabeck, as it was dubbed, first advanced to attack on 30 October, its infantrymen were dismayed by the feebleness of the preparatory bombardment. Falkenhayn’s guns were running desperately short of ammunition. Elsewhere along the Western Front, artillery was rationed to two or three rounds a day, to divert shells to the Ypres sector; but still there were not enough to deliver a heavy bombardment. The assault troops started the operation weary, after making a series of night marches to reach the front. Hollebeke was their first objective, and a senior officer issued a stern warning about the high command’s high expectations: ‘During recent days, several promising opportunities have been wasted because entire corps have allowed themselves to be held up by vastly inferior forces … attacks are not being pressed home with the utter disregard for danger that each attack demands which aims at a decisive result.’

On the morning of the 30th, 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers near Fromelles awoke to a breakfast of three biscuits apiece with a spoonful of jam, an issue of a tin of bully beef between four men, and a rum ration of a tablespoon and a half. Frank Richards’s company commander, whom the old soldier disliked but respected, walked the length of the trench with his sword in one hand, pistol in the other, repeating to each greatcoated section in turn on their firesteps that this would be a fight to the last man. The four hundred men of their sister battalion, 1st Royal Welch at Zandvoorde château, met the Germans with a storm of fire, and held up their advance until they were overrun, almost all killed or captured, around noon. The dismounted Household Cavalry in the neighbouring village were attacked after a ninety-minute preliminary barrage and driven back, leaving behind their dead, who included the Life Guards machine-gun officer, Lord Worsley. By mid-morning the Germans held the Zandvoorde ridge. A British battalion was lost attempting to retake the position; most of its men were taken prisoner, and only eighty-six survivors rallied at nightfall.