Edmund Dane

“ Forward and up the southern slopes of the ridge these masses, fortified by the Imperial order, swarmed in numbers that appeared to be countless, for to the eye even 100,000 men looks a multitude innumerable. The British gunners, pushing their guns forward daringly for greater effect, lashed them with a storm of shrapnel; the thin line in the British trenches shot them until the rifles were red hot. ”

“ The Bavarians attacking from the south-east were still in column of route. An officer rode in their midst on horseback. Finding that they were close to the British line the charge was sounded. The mass came on in the closest formation. One minute they had uttered a cheer, the next a score or more of machine guns opened upon them. As though struck by lightning, the mass went down as it seemed, together. It changed into a writhing rampart of dead and wounded. Along it men still unhit, could be seen digging themselves in for sheer life, and even using corpses as a shelter. ”

“ Not only the British army, however, but the French and the Belgian armies had unshaken confidence in their leaders, and with good reason. In time the entrenched front became completely organised, a system of settled communications linked up by telephone wires in every direction. The French trenches formed a seemingly endless labyrinth. In Flanders along the Yser rats, driven out of their usual haunts and starving in the desolated country, took up their abode with the men in the dug-outs, and became domesticated and friendly. ”

“ My opinion of the German officers has changed. An adjutant shouted to us from a trench far to the rear to cut down a hedge which was in front of us. Bullets were whistling round from in front and from behind. The gentleman himself, of course, remained behind.
Still in the trenches. Shells and shrapnel burst without ceasing. In the evening a cup of rice and one-third of an apple per man. Let us hope peace will soon come. Such a war is really too awful. The English shoot like mad. If no reinforcements come up, especially heavy artillery, we shall have a poor look-out. ”

“ In the manœuvre they exposed the vulnerable point of their line, its right flank, to the powerful onset, which General Joffre, who had foreseen the situation, at once launched against it.
Defeated on the Marne, the Germans lost the military initiative—the power to decide upon their movements and to compel the enemy to conform to them. To the soldier the initiative is the practical embodiment of military superiority. It is the first great step to victory. In every war the struggle has been to seize and to hold it. ”

“ Besides, in the face of modern arms traditional tactics are out of date. They survive only in popular tradition, and in the criticism based upon it.
The only way on the Allied side at once to secure and eventually and fully to reap the advantages won at the Battle of the Marne was to complete and to solidify the military envelopment which would render the whole of this gigantic force of invaders for all the purposes of the invasion impotent. It was plain, too, that the immediate purpose of the Germans was now to straighten out their front across France. ”

“ Nobody will venture to say that, having such a superiority in numbers at their command, and occupying besides a strongly fortified line of front, enabling them further to economise their strength in one direction while they threw it with greater weight in another, the Germans were not fully warranted in thinking that the success of their scheme was assured, and that if it was assured, the French having shot their bolt in the Battle of the Marne, and shot it in vain, there was an end to all intents of the struggle on the West. ”

“ The road has been broken and battered by the passing of countless military wagons, trodden down by marching feet, it has become a furrow, the plough of war has been over it. On either side gaunt trees lift up gaunt boughs; their branches look like skeleton fingers pointing to the sky, and they look like grim sentinels; the water is half frozen in the dykes. ”

“ Almost every village of any size possesses buildings of historic or architectural interest. The old church of Dixmude was one of the finest buildings of its kind in the countryside, and so also was the Hôtel de Ville. What remains of these buildings would not be worth the while to cart away as old bricks.
As a machine of pure destruction the Kaiser's army is unique. I doubt whether any other army in the history of the world has had the knack of laying waste a whole country so completely. They wipe out everything.
These towns and villages play no part in the defence of the Yser. ”

“ Quite apart from the fact that the Belgian Army, reduced by the casualties and the hardships of their heroic campaign, were no longer sufficient in numbers properly to garrison that great fortress, their withdrawal served a purpose more valuable even than its defence. Many no doubt are much more readily impressed by the evacuation for the time of a great fortified city than by what they consider a mere military scheme, the value of which is a matter of opinion. ”

“ As it was, by the employment of the British troops to extend the left wing of the Allied line, this strategical scheme of the enemy was nipped in its first stages. Not only that, but it enabled the Allied generals completely to turn the tables. In place of enveloping the Allied armies as they had proposed, the Germans found themselves enveloped. To escape from this situation, which they well knew meant carrying on the War East and West with inevitably divided forces, a condition which eliminated their main chance of victory, they were forced to fight the first battle of Ypres. ”

“ Against the part of the German line they were told off to attack the guns had not done the work thoroughly. The enemy's mass of entanglements here followed a dip in the ground; and the shells had mostly missed.
Let it here be said that an accident of this kind is always liable to happen. It does not of necessity imply remissness on the part of the gunners, and involve blame. Difficulties like this will crop up in carrying out the best scheme of tactics. Indeed no great battle has ever yet been fought in which the unexpected has not been encountered, and had on the instant to be provided for. ”

“ Shells crashed upon it from minute to minute in thousands; the guns went at it at top speed. The wall of sandbags was tumbled and breached in all directions. Amid the spurting fires and the acrid smoke the bodies, or fragments of the bodies of men were hurled into the air. Some of these ghastly fragments were even blown into the British trenches. Back to the British trenches also wafted the sickly fumes of lyddite and cresolite. Shells whistled past only a few feet above the heads of the British infantry. The storm of shrapnel chopped the enemy's entanglements to pieces. ”

“ The Germans had never fought with greater determination. Their defeat arose from the attempt to ride rough-shod over this apparently feeble line of defence by sheer weight of numbers. The British fought not merely with skill, but with the skill of masters. The Germans, confident in their seemingly crushing strength, fought without patience, and with the clumsiness of amateurs. ”

“ The attack from the north-east was also a failure. Whether it was the fate of the Bavarians or not, the heart went out of it. At the beginning it was violent, but it utterly petered out.
These crushing repulses were again followed by a renewal of the British onset. It was directed against the village or rather the group of houses on the ridge known as the Moulin de Pietre. Through a sweeping "curtain" of German fire the British infantry stormed the enemy's trenches with grenade and bayonet. Nothing could stand against their tenacity. They held on to their new positions until nightfall. ”

“ But the butcher of ancient glories has come; the blind Teutonic cataclysm has fallen upon unarmed and tranquil Ypres, and the portentous life is now extinct. There remains nothing but the gigantic ruins, isolated walls, the corpses of monuments which preserve a sublime expression of disdainful power. ”

“ We watched by turns while the others sat in the water, and, leaning against the trenches, tried to sleep. A terrible picture faced us. Dixmude was in flames, and the whole sky was blood-red. The enemy's shells exploded with such a report that we thought our ears would burst, and the light was so strong that you could read a paper by it. Dealing death and destruction, the shower of lead sped through the night air over our heads. ”

“ Those troops also were expert riflemen. Though standing on the defence under such conditions the Germans ought, like the Belgians at the outset of the war, to have inflicted far heavier losses than they themselves sustained, in fact, owing to the sweeping energy of the attack, their losses were out of all proportion the heavier. Through the defeat at Meteren and the drive of the Allied cavalry towards the Lys, their right flank had been turned, and the result was that they had been "bunched up" by the British in the tangled industrial district to the west of Lille. ”

“ It is manifest now that the Germans had believed that by weight of numbers they could prevail over the difficulties, and the chances those difficulties gave of holding this sector with a comparatively small force, but that had merely involved them in enormous losses, a risk inseparable from their tactics.
Having now realised their mistake, they attempted to throw an immense wedge of troops against the two miles of British line between Wytscheate and Messines. Here again, however, they found themselves anticipated. The front was no longer held merely by a single rank of cavalry. ”

“ When, at daybreak, their intention became evident, General Moussy, in command of the reinforcement sent the previous day from the 9th French Army Corps, tried to anticipate it by a counter-attack. He pushed forward to the south-east of Gheluvelt. There, however, in face of the great strength of the enemy he was brought to a standstill. Along the great road from Menin the Germans advanced in a mass of enormous depth, which was in truth a human battering ram. By this means they meant to smash through into Ypres despite any resistance that could be offered, and despite any losses. ”

“ These troops of the 2nd British Army Corps had been fighting almost day and night since October 11, that is up to this time for twelve days, and it had been impossible to afford them any relief.
Along this sector of the front the 2nd and 3rd Corps of the British Army were opposed to eight corps of Germans. That immense superiority in numbers enabled the enemy to keep up an unbroken succession of assaults by a system of reliefs. Costly in life to the enemy though such tactics were, he was evidently convinced that under this strain the British must inevitably break. ”

“ As one man fell another stepped into his place. Their losses were enormous, but the mass kept its formation and its momentum. At three places despite the desperate resistance of the British they broke the line, and penetrated into the woods. There, however, the British reserves, brought up for the counter-attack, fell upon them. In a bayonet fight with a brigade of Irishmen, the Guards met not only their equals, but their superiors. Those who held together were driven back, enfiladed by the fire of machine guns. ”

“ There the only lines along which attacks in great strength could be thrown were roads running into Ypres like spokes into the hub of a wheel, but the farther in any one of these attacking columns moved, the more were its flanks exposed. The precaution against flank attack, advance in echelon, was made by the character of this woodland belt out of the question. We have seen that, appreciating these capabilities of defence, the British Commander-in-Chief had crushed a gigantic onset. ”

“ The leading regiments of the 25th, the Lincolns and the Berkshires, cleared the space to the enemy's trenches with a rush. The German entanglements here had been chopped by the shells into mere litter. To reach the wreckage of the wall of sandbags was a matter of seconds. The enemy's trenches proved to be full of dead and dying. Such survivors as there were, paralysed with fright, surrendered. ”

“ The present day gunner does not trust to the eye. He uses his gun with mathematical precision. This system the French artillerists had reduced to an exact science. At a given time these guns opened at the same instant, and on a preconcerted plan swept the position with a squall of fire. In this tornado everything, entanglements and obstructions, were cut to pieces; trenches crumbled; concrete redoubts were split into ruins. Amid the hurricane of lead nothing could live. Having swept the position the guns drew a curtain of fire behind it while the infantry advanced to the attack. ”

“ Disposed along a line from Bixschoote through Langemarck on the north of Ypres, the troops of the British 1st Army Corps were attacked by the whole strength of the army of General von Fabeck. The resistance opposed to these enormous odds was heroic. Time and again the attacks made in mass formation were beaten back. Upon the Prussian commanders the frightful losses suffered by their troops, who fell not man by man, but by ranks and companies, appeared to make no impression. A combined infantry and artillery attack drove the French cavalry across the Ypres and Nieuport canal. ”