Various

“ It is hard to tell it, and not all can be told yet because of the enemy. The Guards had their full share of the fighting, and of the difficult ground, with strong forces against them. They knew that would be so before they went into battle, and yet they did not ask for better things but awaited the hour of attack with strong, gallant hearts, quite sure of their courage, proud of their name, full of trust in their officers, eager to give a smashing blow at the enemy. ”

“ Stooping under the heavy weights as they struggle on through the dark, they will bless in army fashion a smooth and dry surface underfoot and a sound high parapet which protects them from the casual German shells which are searching for them, or the intermittent whistle of the long-range bullet humming on its errand in the dusk. ”

“ It is a black day for the German armies and for the German women who do not know yet what it means to them. During last night the Canadians gained the last point, called Hill 145, on the Vimy Ridge, where the Germans held out in a pocket with machine guns, and this morning the whole of that high ridge, which dominates the plains to Douai, is in our hands, so that there is removed from our path the great barrier for which the French and ourselves have fought through bloody years. Yesterday, before daylight and afterwards, I saw this ridge of Vimy all on fire with the light of great gunfire. ”

“ They had not gone more than 200 yards before they came under the enfilade fire of massed machine guns in trenches not previously observed. The noise of this fire was so loud and savage that, although hundreds of guns were firing, not a shot could be heard. It was just the stabbing staccato hammering of the German Maxims. Men fell, but the lines were not broken. ”

“ The ruins of old buildings are so familiar that they do not at first dominate the mind. Far more arresting are the remnants of the pitiful little homes, where there is no dignity, but a pathos which cries aloud. Ypres was like a city destroyed by an earthquake ”

“ Many officers and men had fallen. To go farther would be absolute death. The troops on the right had been utterly held up. The Guards were “up in the air” with an exposed flank, open to all the fire that was flung upon them from the enemy’s lines. The temptation to go farther was great. The German infantry was on the run. They were dragging their guns away. There was a great panic among the men who had been hiding in trenches. But the German machine gunners kept to their posts to safeguard a rout, and the Guards had gone far enough through their scourging bullets. ”

“ When we reached the German trench, which we did under a cloud of smoke, we found nothing but a pack of beings dazed with terror. In a jiffy we were over their parapet and the real work began; a kind of madness comes over you as you stab with your bayonet and hear the shriek of the poor devil suddenly cease as the steel goes through him and you know he’s ‘gone west.’ The beggars did not show much fight, most having retired into their second line of trenches when we began to occupy their first to make it41 our new line of attack. ”

“ I went down to the outer ramparts of Arras. The suburb of Blangy seemed already in our hands. On the higher ground beyond our men were fighting forward. I saw two waves of infantry advancing against the enemy’s trenches, preceded by our barrage of field guns. They went in a slow, leisurely way, not hurried, though the enemy’s shrapnel was searching for them. “Grand fellows,” said an officer lying next to me on the wet slope. “Oh, topping!” Fifteen minutes afterwards groups of men came back. They were British wounded and German prisoners. ”

“ The Germans defended themselves to the death. They bombed our men, who attacked them with the bayonet, served their machine guns until they were killed, and would only surrender when our men were on top of them. It was a very bloody hour or more. By that time the Irish Guards had joined the others. All the Guards were together, and together they passed the trenches, swinging left inevitably under the machine-gun fire which poured upon them from their right, but going steadily deeper into the enemy country until they were 2,000 yards from their starting place. ”

“ It was on the face of it a somewhat desperate enterprise which lay immediately in front of the British general. If the enemy were still retreating he could not afford to slacken his pursuit, while, on the other hand, if the enemy were merely making a feint of resistance, then, at all hazards, the stream must be forced and the rearguard driven in. The German infantry could be seen streaming up the roads on the farther bank of the river, but there were no signs of what their next disposition might be. ”

“ The 11th Brigade, which was more to the north, had only a constant shell-fire to endure, but the 12th, pushing forward through Bucy-le-long, found itself in front of a line of woods from which there swept a heavy machine-gun and rifle-fire. The advance was headed by the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers, supported by the 2nd Inniskilling Fusiliers. It was across open ground and under heavy fire, but it was admirably carried out. In places where the machine-guns had got the exact range the stricken Fusiliers lay dead or wounded with accurate intervals, like a firing-line on a field-day. ”

“ Our troops attacked on a wide front between Lens and St. Quentin, including the Vimy Ridge, that great, grim hill which dominates the plain of Douai and the coalfields of Lens and the German positions around Arras. In spite of bad fortune in weather at the beginning of the day, so bad that there was no visibility for the airmen, and our men had to struggle forward in a heavy rainstorm, the first attacks have been successful, and the enemy has lost much ground, falling back in retreat to strong rearguard lines, where he is now fighting desperately. ”

“ The First Battle Squadron was the first to engage at 11,000 yards, closing the enemy slowly to 9,000 (which is very short range indeed, and would allow the Germans to use their 6-in. guns) . The light was very bad. The Germans were shrouded in haze; their destroyers sent up thick clouds of coal smoke, which obscured an35 atmosphere already choked with the fumes of bursting shells, and the smoke from the numerous fires in the ships engaged. From the van of the Battle Fleet never more than five German ships could be seen, and from the rear never more than twelve. ”

“ The hour for attack was 5.30. Officers were looking at their wrist watches as on a day in July last year. The earth lightened. A few minutes before 5.30 the guns almost ceased fire, so that there was a strange and solemn hush. We waited, and pulses beat faster than the second-hands. “They’re away,” said a voice by my side. The bombardment broke out again with new and enormous effects of fire and sound. The enemy was shelling Arras heavily, and black shrapnel and high explosive came over from his lines, but our gunfire was twenty times as great. ”

“ Messengers or stretcher-bearers with their burdens can move backwards or forwards even by day along the well-built hollow, and all those who pass are protected both from the arrow that flieth by night and the terror which walketh in the noonday. ”

“ The British constantly strove to close, but were eluded by the enemy, who utilised destroyer attacks to cover his retreat. But, difficult though it was to shoot with accuracy, Sir J. Jellicoe reports that in this phase of the battle the enemy ships were repeatedly hit, and one at least was seen to sink.
The Marlborough, in the First Battle Squadron, specially distinguished herself, firing seven salvoes (if with all her guns about 70 13·5-in. shell) at a battleship of the Kaiser class; at 6.54 she was so unlucky as to be hit by a torpedo fired from a German light cruiser, which she sank. ”

“ Meanwhile the men of the River Clyde tried to make their bridge of boats by sweeping the lighters into position and mooring them between the ship and the shore. They were killed as they worked, but others took their places; the bridge was made, and some of the Munsters dashed along it from the ship and fell in heaps as they ran. As a second company followed, the moorings of the lighters broke or were shot; the men leaped into the water, and were drowned or killed, or reached the beach and were killed, or fell wounded there, and lay under fire, getting wound after wound till they died ”

“ It takes them; they disappear for a while and return changed to their very souls, for the Trade lives in a world without precedents, of which no generation has had any previous experience—a world still being made and enlarged daily. It creates and settles its own problems as it goes along, and if it cannot help itself no one else can. ”

“ Succeeding crossing parties were exterminated, and pontoons drifted away, but a footing was secured. The dust served us well. The crew of one boat which lost its way during the barrage were untouched, but they did not make the bank in time. Directly the air cleared a machine-gun was opened on them, and the rowers were shot down, and the pontoon drifted back ashore. A sergeant called to volunteers to get the wounded out of the boat, and a party of twelve men went over the river bank. Every man of them, as well as the crew of the pontoons, were killed. ”

“ It will be for us the most hallowed spot on earth, for it holds our bravest dust, and it is the proof and record of a new spirit. In the past when we have thought of Ypres we have thought of the British flag preserved there, which Clare’s Regiment, fighting for France, captured at the Battle of Ramillies. ”

“ More brave men jumped aboard the lighters to remake the bridge; they were swept away or shot to pieces. The average life on those boats was some three minutes long, but they remade the bridge, and the third46 company of the Munsters doubled down to death along it under a storm of shrapnel which scarcely a man survived. The big guns in Asia were now shelling the River Clyde, and the hell of rapid fire never paused. More men tried to land, headed by Brigadier-General Napier, who was instantly killed, with nearly all his followers. ”

“ Each tiny20 scrawl on the surface of such a map represents the labours of hundreds of men, extended over many nights. Second and third lines grew apace, so that a sudden attack of the enemy would still leave trenches to be held and would reduce the German bite to mere nibbles at the forward trench. The communication trenches are driven true and straight from well in the rear, and up these the ration parties toil in safety night after night under their burdens of food, water, ammunition, and R.E. material to feed the front line. ”

“ The Invincible engaged the enemy’s flagship, the Scharnhorst, and the Inflexible the Gneisenau,8 the fight being a running one, and the range varying from about eight to nine miles. Before long the German flagship took fire, lost one of her funnels, and slackened her firing. “The effect of our fire,” writes Admiral Sturdee, “became more and more apparent in consequence of smoke from fires, and also escaping steam. At times a shell would cause a large hole to appear in her side, through which could be seen a dull red glow of flame.” Yet the German kept grimly on with her work. ”

“ The last fighting before Baghdad is likely to become historic on account of the splendid gallantry of our troops in the crossing of the Diala River. After the action at Lajj the Turkish rearguard fell back on Diala, destroying the bridge which crosses the stream at its junction with the Tigris. We pushed on in pursuit on the left bank, sending cavalry and two columns of infantry to work round on the right bank, and to enter Baghdad from the west. Speed in following up was essential, and the column attacking Diala was faced with another crossing in which the element of surprise was eliminated. ”

“ Five picket-boats, each towing five boats or launches full of men, steamed alongside the River Clyde and went ahead when she grounded. She took the ground rather to the right of the little beach, some 400 yards from the ruins of Sedd-el-Bahr Castle, before the Turks had opened fire; but almost as she grounded, when the picket-boats with their tows were ahead of her, only 20 or 30 yards from the beach, every rifle and machine gun in the castle, the town above it, and in the curved, low, strongly trenched hill along the bay, began a murderous fire upon ship and boats. ”

“ Her twelve machine guns fired back, killing any Turk who showed; but nothing could be done to support the few survivors of the landing, who now lay under cover of the sandbank on the other side of the beach. It was almost certain death to try to leave the ship, but all through the day men leaped from her (with leave or without it) to bring water or succour to the wounded on the boats or beach. A hundred brave men gave their lives thus; every man there earned the Cross that day. ”

“ Beatty’s eastward turn compelled the enemy to turn, and enabled the British Battle Fleet, if it desired, to move in behind the High Sea Fleet and cut it off from its bases. To reinforce Beatty in these critical moments, Hood steamed in fast with his three battle-cruisers, and swung magnificently into position at the head of Beatty’s line. There he received a terrific fire from the enemy, 8,000 yards away, and a few minutes later the Invincible, his flagship,34 was struck by the combined salvoes of the German Fleet and she sank. ”