Cyril Falls

“ Fine as were the fighting qualities of the formations and units that took part in it, the most remarkable aspects which stand out when we look back upon it are the perfection of its organization and of the liaison between all arms. It represented a triumph of staff work. Every man in the huge force under his command was made to feel the guiding hand of the Commander of the Second Army, and of one of the most brilliant staff officers the war discovered. The troops entered upon it with high heart. The capture of the Vimy Ridge had seemed of good augury for the year's campaign. ”

“ As one Commanding Officer writes: "The U.V.F. officers and N.C.O.'s kept the men in order till we straightened out into the regular army formation." The enthusiasm of the men of those days of 1914 is something that no officer who served with them can ever forget; something perhaps, also, that none but those officers who began their training in the first six months of the war ever witnessed. There is a slow-burning flame in the Ulster blood that keeps her sons, once raised to the passion of great endeavour, at a high and steady pitch of resolution. ”

“ As in almost every action of the war, the stoutest-hearted German was the German behind the machine-gun. The artillerymen, with shell hailing upon their positions, were more anxious to withdraw their batteries than to support their infantry, but the machine-gunners lived up to their reputation. As the new waves swept on, dipping now on the right brigade front into the marshy bed of the Steenebeek, guns came into action directly the barrage was past at L'Enfer Wood, Earl Farm, Skip Point, and Scott Farm. ”

“ General Harington's car stopped at every door, and the cheerful young staff officers, who knew every communication trench on the Army front, who drank with company commanders in their front-line dug-outs before coming back to tea with a Brigadier, or with General Nugent at his Headquarters, formed a very real link between the Higher Command and the troops. The private soldier knew the Army Commander and his eyeglass as he knew no Corps Commander under whom he fought. His personality was a real accretion of strength. The difficulties at Ypres were infinitely greater than at Messines ”

“ All thought of cutting a way through was out of the question, so thick were the enemy to rear. The end came at 4 p.m. A German tank came down the main road, firing into the trench in enfilade. At the same moment a whole battalion advanced from the front. There were about a hundred men only alive, many of them wounded. There was no course open but surrender. As the prisoners were marched back toward St. Quentin they had the grim satisfaction of seeing the column of transport they had annihilated still strewn in indescribable confusion about the road. ”

“ There were cases of weakness in the days that followed among troops of the 36th Division, as among other troops. But their achievements must be measured by the standard of their cruel and heart-breaking task. With that as gauge, these achievements, viewed as a whole, stand out in their magnificence, a shining monument to the spirit of the race that bred them.
The 21st Entrenching Battalion, interposed on the left of the 108th Brigade to find touch with the troops of the 30th Division, had not succeeded in its object. ”

“ The intense bombardments with trench artillery were but one weapon in this campaign. Another, as autumn drew on and supplies of ammunition came more freely to hand, was the shelling of approaches and, above all, the railway terminus in Messines, by night. But the principal weapon in this minor offensive was the raiding party. So long as men who took part in the war are alive, the subject of raids is like to crop up whenever two or three are met together. ”

“ If we can employ a word so inhuman as machine to describe a corporation of men that was intensely alive, that had a soul of its own, we may say that it was a machine that worked smoothly because it was weak in none of its parts. And we must not forget, as men are prone to forget, that, if some parts bore a weight heavier than others, each was of equal importance in the working of the machine. This record has been mainly concerned with the fighting arms and, of these, to by far the greatest extent with the infantry. ”

“ The devastated area, on the other hand, had not been fought upon. It represented the ground evacuated by the enemy in his retreat to the Hindenburg Line. It had, however, been cleared of civilians and scientifically demolished to make it as difficult and comfortless as possible for our troops. All houses had been blown up by explosives, bridges destroyed, fruit-trees cut down or gashed to death. Yet it was far from being as dreadful or as ugly as the battle-field. The ground was unbroken and covered with good grass or crop run to seed. ”

“ Horrors were not new, nor did the sight of dead bodies affect men overmuch, but there was one vision upon one of these tracks, the mangled remains of a complete party of artillery carriers, six men and twelve horses, which burnt itself upon the brains of those that saw it. ”

“ At the head of the [149] platoon columns to move up the trenches was to be not a bomber, but a Lewis gunner. A Lewis gun could be used by a man of large physique—and of these the Ulster Division still possessed plenty, if not such numbers as a year back—with a sling over the left shoulder, the gun resting above the right hip. It was heavy and clumsy, but its tremendous moral effect in such broad trenches as those of the Hindenburg System can readily be imagined. It was to be the spear-head of the attack along each line of trenches. ”

“ Every formation had its schools—G.H.Q., the Army, the Corps, the Division, the Brigade. There were infantry schools, artillery schools, and trench-mortar schools; machine-gun schools, Lewis-gun schools, bombing schools, gas schools; schools which taught horse-mastership, shoe-making, brick-laying, carpentry, sanitation, butchery, cooking. For a weak Division, schools became a nightmare. Divisional commanders had to protest that they had either to man their trenches inadequately, or refuse vacancies allotted. ”

“ In February practically all work of other natures ceased, so that men might be put to that of wiring. The intense frost had converted the Belgian inundations into solid ice! They were no obstacle to the enemy, who for some weeks was suspected of the preparation of an offensive. Certainly his artillery had become very aggressive, carrying out heavy bombardments of our trenches and batteries, and shelling camps in rear. The country was literally sown with wire, "Plug Street Wood" being such a tangle that it has always been a mystery to those who saw it how the Germans passed through it in 1918. ”

“ It may at least be said that, while the work of the artillery could not have been excelled, the whole scheme of its employment had not reached anything approaching the science of the following year. Artillerymen of the higher ranks were to some extent carried away by the weight of metal for the first time at their disposal, and carried away other arms by their new enthusiasm. The heavy gunners believed and proclaimed that no life could endure their fire, and that the battle would resolve itself into an advance by the infantry to take over shattered and undefended trenches. ”

“ This outpost line, manned by a third of the infantry force of each Division, was not to retire and was not to be reinforced. The first shock of the attack swept this third away. It was defence in detail, not defence in depth, and in detail it was defeated. Defence in depth may be defined as successive lines of organized defence, upon which the defenders can fall back in succession, always finding some fresh troops on the new position, so that the line becomes gradually stronger as it falls back, until at last is reached the line upon which the real defence is to be made. ”

“ The individual Briton is at least as brave as the individual of any other race; but men in the mass are not naturally heroic. It is discipline, training, pride in a unit or a formation, and, above all, in such crises as these, leadership alone which can instil into men who have undergone the strain these men had undergone, the courage to stand firm in the plight wherein they found themselves. ”

“ But gradually, through letters, through the recitals of wounded friends, men began to form some conception of the realities of modern war, as fought against a race which, for courage, endurance, and resource, ranked with the most formidable warrior peoples of the world's history. The gas attack in the Salient was evidence, if any were still needed, of the temper of the new Germany. ”

“ It is as just as it is inevitable. It is not only upon the infantry that all hinges; it is mainly by a record of the infantry's movements that the story of battles is told. Not alone the other fighting arms, Artillery, Engineers, Signals, Pioneers, Machine-Gunners, but Medical and Supply Services also were animated by the same high spirit of devotion. ”

“ Severe loss and disorganization are caused to transport piqueted in the open or bringing up rations and munitions. A spot undisturbed at one minute becomes the centre-point of a hellish tornado at the next.
April the 16th, while the men of the 108th Brigade, wearied out and dazed by shell-fire, snatched what rest they could, was the occasion of furious fighting at Wytschaete. The village was lost in the morning, and retaken by a magnificent counter-attack of those veritable paladins of modern war, the Highland Brigade of the 9th Division. ”

“ Two hours later a raid was carried out in this sector by a party sent up by the 13th Rifles. The men, now at a pitch of excitement and enthusiasm that rendered them resistless opponents in hand-to-hand fighting, swarmed into the battered German trenches, shooting right and left, and bombing dug-outs. They returned with one German officer and twelve other ranks as prisoners, the first captured by the 36th Division. ”

“ With regard to the infantry itself, the most interesting feature of the Battle of Messines was the triumph of the platoon. Each platoon had now a Lewis-gun section and a section of rifle grenadiers. It was converted thereby into a little self-sufficing force, an army in miniature, with every weapon necessary for the carrying out of the minor operations likely to confront it in such an assault. Some of the platoon leaders displayed in this battle a high order of tactical skill. ”

“ As for dug-outs, there were none. Little wooden-framed shelves in the parapet, a few "baby elephants"—arched steel shelters, which, if covered thickly enough with sandbags, afforded protection against the shells of field guns—served for the troops in line, while further back, for battalion headquarters and forts, there were ruined farms, which often had good cellars, and in the frame-work of which concrete structures could be hidden. It was hard for troops used to the Somme chalk to accustom their minds to the spongy nature of this soil. ”

“ Religious feeling inspired the men of Ulster in those days of training, and remained with them in the days of war. The General commanding the 4th Division, to which the 36th was attached for instruction after its arrival in France, spoke of his astonishment at finding so many Ulstermen reading their Bibles. The writer of this book can bear witness from personal [17] observation that it was not uncommon to find a man sitting on the fire-step of a front-line trench, reading one of the small copies of the New Testament which were issued to the troops by the people at home. ”

“ Among those good dumb soldiers, the transport animals, the casualties were the highest ever suffered by the Division. The pack mules, the use of which was even more necessary than at Messines, but infinitely less favoured by the terrain, were pushed forward too soon, and came under heavy machine-gun fire. Many were killed, and a far greater number had to be destroyed, though a few survived their wounds, and, like gallant veterans, bore their scars till the war was over. The loss among artillery horses was also very great. ”

“ An average of one gun to every German battery in action was destroyed by our fire, according to the evidence of captured artillerymen. The loss in horses alone constituted a severe blow. As to the counter-attack, which was made in the afternoon with the 7th and probably regiments of the 24th Divisions, it was launched late, and met the full weight of our barrage. With its failure the High Command appears to have decided, wisely no doubt, to abandon the struggle, and made all haste to get every gun left to it east of the Canal d'Ypres. ”

“ The best deep dug-outs the Division had ever known, with thirty feet of cover, were dug in the chalk under the instruction of the Field Companies, now no mean experts in such work. Here, too, what were known from their shape as "champagne" dug-outs were constructed, on a pattern invented by that artist in trench warfare, the enemy. In these the team of a single machine-gun could shelter from the heaviest bombardment, and bring its gun into action in the time it took two men to run up a ladder. ”