Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War (8 page)

The obvious strategy of carrying on with the advance beyond the first objective was not considered. The objective had been to take the high ground at the Messines Ridge and then to set up
defensive positions there.

The German Army would have been alarmed, if not dismayed, by its losses on that morning, and so rapidly responded with intense artillery fire. As the British troops had taken over the German
trenches, their positions were known precisely and the German artillery had little problem in finding the mark. The war diary, 9 June 1917, two days after the initial assault:

The casualties represent well over a quarter of the battalion. Almost 10 per cent had been killed or were missing. (Most of the ‘missing’ were likely to have been killed by shelling,
buried by the action or simply blown to pieces.) The proportion of killed to wounded was smaller than would have been expected from an assault against machine guns. At the Somme, in some battalions
twice as many men were killed as were wounded. This confirms that the casualties largely came from the shelling once the objective had been reached.

With a new temporary battalion commander (a captain taking a lieutenant-colonel’s job shows the extent of the casualties), on 10 June the battalion moved away from the front lines to the
relatively safe location of Scottish Lines. There were several rest locations for the troops around Poperinghe (Poperinge), about five miles (8km) due west of Ypres. They would have been
accommodated in wooden huts – very similar to the ones in the training camp at Rugeley – and much, much more comfortable than the trenches. There, Harry wrote letters to Jack and to
Kate, taking care, because of the censorship of the men’s letters, not to mention specific place names.

‘I am alright got buried and knocked about’ – Harry is probably describing his experience when a shell landed close to him. The earth would have been thrown up to bury him, and
he would certainly have felt the blast. Clearly, he had been doubly fortunate, for he was missed by the shrapnel and was able to escape from the burial.

The ‘worst than the Somme advance last July’ reference is curious, for Harry was plainly misinformed. The Somme had been a disaster for the 9th Battalion, York and Lancaster
Regiment. Second in line to go over the top on the infamous first day of the battle (after their sister battalion, the 8th, which suffered even higher casualties), the battalion was cut to pieces
by German machine-gun fire. One report claims that it suffered 432 all ranks killed on the morning of 1 July 1916, with total casualties, killed, wounded and missing, of almost 80 per cent of the
committed battalion strength of 25 officers and 736 other ranks (a further 10 per cent of every infantry unit involved were kept back from any major assault). Surely the survivors of that massacre
would not compare it with the recent action at Messines?

Harry’s reference to ‘scotch’ men in the battalion also has its origins in the Somme battle. After such heavy casualties, replacements were urgently needed. Some severely
depleted battalions were disbanded and their troops moved to other units to make up their strength. As part of that exercise, fifty-seven men of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers joined the
battalion; it may be that, quite sensibly, they were kept together in C Company.

As usual, Harry’s letter to Kate spares her some of the more alarming details that he had told Jack:

Altogether, the German death toll in the Messines Ridge battle was 25,000, the Allies’ 17,000. This time, at least, Harry wasn’t among the casualties. The battle was also a very rare
example in that war of a successful major assault in which the defenders suffered higher casualties than the attackers, Much of the credit for that belongs to Plumer, who had begun his military
career as an officer of the York and Lancaster Regiment; his infantry training, in a war in which so many senior British commanders were cavalrymen, gave him considerable understanding of the
ordinary foot soldier. The troops under his command appreciated his meticulous planning and his concern for their welfare, especially in seeking to minimize casualties among them, and nicknamed him
‘Daddy’ or ‘Old Plum’; at his funeral in 1932 some 30,000 of his former soldiers stood in the rain to honour him.

As a contrast, to end the chapter we have a letter from Jack the clergyman in Hull, to Kate, the midwife in Leeds, written on the day of the Battle of Messines, but naturally oblivious to the
carnage in Flanders. This is the only letter that has turned up to complete the loop of correspondents.

Note the salutation and ending, which are very formal for a brother writing to his younger sister, even in those days, and even allowing for the seven-year difference in their ages. As to
Kate’s reward for success in the examination, she passed with flying colours and received a wonderful vellum certificate and a glorious-sounding job title.

CHAPTER 5

THE SUMMER OF 1917

H
ARRY HAS CLEARED A MAJOR
hurdle, surviving the Battle of Messines more or less unscathed. That action was deemed successful, but among many other
casualties had resulted in the loss of his battalion commander, his company commander and six out of nine of his own section. The defenders, unusually for a major attack on the Western Front, lost
more troops than the attackers, the balance tipped by the 10,000 Germans estimated to have died when the mines were set off. Most of the Allies’ losses occurred after the
‘successful’ initial assault. Nevertheless, the enemy had been driven from the ridge, and the southern end of the Ypres Salient had been secured for the next major Allied attack, due to
kick off in July.