Lord Ernest Hamilton

“ Here again a farm-house bristling with machine-guns had to be rushed, and here again in the very moment of victory the leader fell dead.
These single company engagements were a special characteristic of the fighting at this period. Owing to our scarcity of men, it was seldom that an entire battalion could be spared for purposes of support, and single companies were consequently sent hither and thither to do the work of battalions—to fill gaps, strengthen weak spots, and even—as sometimes happened—to retake lost positions and drive back parties of the enemy which had broken through. ”

“ That awful gun fire, to which our batteries were no longer able to reply, coupled with the insufficient trenches, was too much for human endurance. Sir Charles Fergusson, the Divisional General, with an absolute disregard of personal danger, galloped about among the bursting shells exhorting the division to stand fast. An eye-witness said that his survival through the day was nothing short of a miracle. It was a day indeed when the entire Staff from end to end of the line worked with an indefatigable heroism which could not be surpassed. ”

“ To-day, generals commanding armies rather search for honour in the field of duty—duty accomplished, orders obeyed. These simple formulæ have always been the watchwords of the soldier-unit, whether that unit be a man, a platoon, a company or a regiment. Now, with the limitless increase in the size of armaments, a unit may well be an Army Corps, or even a combination of Army Corps, and the highest aim of the general officer commanding such a unit must be—as of old—fulfilment of duty, obedience to orders. ”

“ It is difficult to conceive of any more eloquent tribute to the astonishing performance of the thin little khaki ribbon, which had for a fortnight wound round Ypres, than the fact that this great force was found none too strong to hold one fourth of the front over which our handful of men had so far successfully resisted all the attempts of the enemy to break through. ”

“ There are no missing among those who pursue. In such circumstances, to the tired soldier-mind the pursuing enemy becomes in time invested with a species of invulnerability. At the end of fourteen days that enemy has assumed an altogether fictitious value for evil; it becomes a death-dealing engine, relentlessly sweeping up wounded and stragglers, and itself showing no scars; it inspires an all but superstitious dread. To such a frame of mind the sight of a few grey-clad figures stretched upon the ground and a few groups of grey-clad prisoners marching to the rear acts as a very salutary tonic. ”

“ The advance at first was slow and cautious. When an army has for fourteen days been systematically falling back before an enemy, the only casualties within its ken are its own. It may be assumed—and with every right—that there are also killed and wounded among the pursuing force. But they are never seen. Only khaki-clad figures fill the field ambulances; only khaki-clad figures are left behind in the hospitals, and in the cemeteries and roadside trenches. The ever-swelling roll of "missing" is all on one side. ”

“ In the meanwhile, the only force which stood in the way of the enemy was the 6th C.B., that is to say, three cavalry regiments, all considerably weakened by fighting. The gravity of the situation lay in the fact that if the Klein Zillebeke position went, there was nothing further to prevent the enemy marching straight into Ypres, only three miles distant, in which case the 1st A.C. and 7th Division would have been irretrievably cut off from their base and supplies, and the capture or annihilation of these three divisions would have inevitably followed. ”

“ A mole-hill stands out on a plain, but makes no show in the uplands. V.C.'s, it is true, were won; but for every one given a hundred were earned. Military honours are the fruit of recommendation; but when Generals, Colonels, Company Officers and Sergeants are no more, the deed must be its own record; there is none left to recommend.
The grandeur of the doings of those First Seven Divisions lies, it may well be, in their immunity from the play of a cheap flashlight—a flashlight which too often distorts the perspective, and so illuminates the wrong spot. ”

“ If it be true that casualties in killed and wounded are the barometer of a regiment's intrepidity, then they indeed register high in the scale, for they lost 9 officers and 400 men in that first night's fighting. In any event they rendered very valuable service in an acute emergency, and it is on record that in a hand to hand bayonet encounter with the Bavarians, they actually drove those noted warriors back. The odds, however, were altogether too great against the little British force, and on the morning of November 1st Messines passed into the hands of the enemy. ”

“ It is generally admitted by all our commanders at the front that the Frenchman as a fighter is unsurpassed, though his methods of fighting are not the same as ours; and, allowing for the fact that, in cases where the entire manhood of a nation fights, the average of individual excellence must obviously be lower than when only a select body of volunteers is engaged, for explanatory purposes with regard to the disposition of troops, one may safely reckon a French and British regiment as being of equal fighting value. ”

“ The Germans advanced out of the wood with great courage and with every appearance of meaning business, but the 7th Brigade and the 15th Sikhs, who had taken over from Conneau's cavalry the day before, managed to stand their ground, and in the end drove the enemy back with very heavy loss, though themselves suffering severely, the Sikhs, who fought superbly, alone losing 200 in officers and men.
The 8th Brigade was not so fortunate, the R. Irish Rifles, who were the right-hand battalion, being driven out of their trenches, which lay north of the La Bassée road on the east side of the village. ”

“ The attack took the form of a storm of shrapnel and high-explosives of so terrific a nature that by nine o'clock the Household Cavalry trenches had been literally blown to pieces, and the brigade was forced to retire slowly down the hill, keeping up a covering fire as it went. The retirement was effected in good order, but Lord Hugh Grosvenor's squadron of the 1st Life Guards, "C" Squadron of the 2nd Life Guards, and Lord Worsley's machine-gun section of the Blues did not succeed in withdrawing with the rest of the brigade, and their fate is still a matter of uncertainty. ”

“ On the same afternoon the 5th Division again suffered severely. The Cheshires were driven out of Violaines, and the Dorsets—terribly thinned though they had been by the fighting of the 13th—seeing them hard pressed, left their trenches and dashed up in support, but the odds were too heavy and both were driven back with loss. The Germans thereupon occupied Rue du Marais, a little village on the northern slope of the Givenchy ridge, but their advantage was short-lived, for they were promptly counter-attacked by the Manchesters and Worcesters and driven out again. ”

“ Such courage, however—though sufficiently sublime from the spectacular point of view—cannot fail to be expensive, and the losses among these gallant men were prodigious. It was afterwards said by a prisoner that they had been deceived by the silence in our trenches into thinking that the bombardment had cleared them, and so came on recklessly. However, in spite of their losses, by sheer intrepidity and weight of numbers, they succeeded in capturing all the front line trenches of the 1st Brigade, who were astride the Menin road between Veldhoek and Hooge. ”

“ The line of defence was ridiculously extended—extended indeed far beyond the recognized limits of effective resistance, and there were no reserves available with which to strengthen any threatened spot. Every fighting man was in the long, thin line that swept round in that uncomfortable curve from Bixschoote to Hollebeke. The 89th French Territorial Division was, it is true, in general reserve, at Poperinghe, but this division was composed entirely of untried troops who could in no sense claim to be comparable to the French regulars. ”

“ On the 17th—to the surprise of all—the Germans were seen advancing across the turnip field holding up their hands. It was to be assumed that they too had had enough of their water-logged trenches. The Northamptons, naturally gratified at this surrender, left the trench to meet them. When, however, the German officer saw how few men they had to deal with, he changed his mind and ordered his men to charge. The young lieutenant promptly shot the German officer and a sergeant with his revolver, but was himself immediately shot down, though, strange to say, not killed. ”

“ Hundreds fell out from absolute exhaustion. The worst cases were taken along in the transport wagons; the rest became stragglers, following along behind as best they were able. Some of the cavalry that saw them pass said that their eyes were fixed in a ghastly stare, and they stumbled along like blind men. At Leval the division split up, the 4th Brigade taking the road to Landrecies, and the 6th that to Maroilles. The 5th Brigade, which was doing rear-guard to the division, got no farther than Leval, where it prepared to put up a fight along the railway line ”

“ In reckoning up these successive retirements from the point of view of military failure or success, or from the, perhaps, more interesting point of view of the relative fighting merits of those who retired and those who advanced, it is well to realize, from the start, the tremendous disparity in numbers and freshness of the opposing forces. The British commanders had, throughout this defence of Ypres, to ring the changes, as between reserve and firing line, with battalions, and sometimes even with companies. The German commanders could afford to do it with Army Corps. ”

“ For a General voluntarily to relinquish ground already won is probably the supreme act of renunciation, at the same time it is obvious that three sides of a square are longer than the fourth side, and therefore require more men for their defence, and it is no exaggeration to say that between October 20th and 26th the Ypres salient bore a perilous resemblance to three sides of a square. ”

“ The desperate fighting of this period at and around Kruiseik will always be associated with the 20th Brigade. The other two brigades in the 7th Division were shifted about, as occasion required, to various points between Zonnebeke and Zandvoorde; but from October 19th to the 29th, the 20th Brigade operated at Kruiseik alone. The gradual annihilation of this splendid brigade—possibly the finest in the whole army—forms a story which is no less stirring than it is tragic. ”

“ The same fate overtook one company of the 2nd R. Scots in the same brigade. This company was practically wiped out and the battalion as a whole had some 400 casualties in killed and wounded. The whole division, in fact, suffered very severely in carrying out the retirement, the ground to the rear being very open and exposed, and the enemy's rifle and machine-gun fire incessant. The village of Audencourt had been heavily shelled all day and was a mass of blazing ruins, effectually barring any retirement by the high road, and forcing the retreating troops to take to the open country. ”

“ The day which followed, that is to say October 29th, was the first of the five days during which the Kaiser was present in person with his troops opposite Ypres. He had arrived with the avowed intention of stimulating the army to one supreme, irresistible effort which would carry all before it, and open the coveted road to Calais to the mass of troops now concentrated at Roulers and Menin. ”

“ The first infantry division to come into action in the Aisne valley was the 4th, under Gen. Snow, who—having crossed the Ourcq unopposed—arrived at Buzancy on the morning of the 12th and found the right of the 6th French Army bombarding the Germans, who were in occupation of the Mont de Paris, just south of Soissons. Snow at once chimed in with his own guns, and a tremendous artillery duel resulted, in which the Germans after a time threw up the sponge and made off across the Soissons bridge, which they destroyed behind them. ”

“ The constant prayer of every officer and man was for an infantry attack of some sort—German or British. The prayer was not answered. Their orders were to hold on at all costs till relieved. They were not relieved, so they held on. On the 24th, 25th and 26th the shells fell in or around their trenches at the rate of two per minute from dawn till dark. Their casualties from this shell-fire averaged 150 a day and the enemy's guns fired unchallenged and unmolested by our own artillery. ”