by Bill Lamin
Part of a Lewis-gun section of the York and Lancaster Regiment (although not the 9th Battalion). The number one is cleaning the receiver ready to accept the magazine; in the background, the number two is loading rounds into one of the circular drum magazines.
The principle parts of the Lewis light machine gun, from a contemporary encyclopedia. Harry spent all his active service as a member of a Lewis-gun section. In one of his letters, Harry asks Jack to send him ‘a small book on the Lewis Gun’.
Harry’s letter to Kate on the same day makes no mention of the Lewis-gun section, nor of anything else that might have been considered dangerous.
2nd June 1917
Dear Kate,
I received your letter. I am pleased to hear you are going on alright they all seem to be getting on all right at home which is something to be thankful for. The weather here is lovely and we have had a fine time this last fortnight. We are still out of the trenches but we might go back anytime. Jack has wrote me telling me he has had to leave his lodging and go to the vicarage – I hope he gets on all right. Write soon and let me know how you are getting on. Jack has sent me some sardines and chicken paste which is all right here and it works the bread and butter down. I am glad Connie is going on alright at school I don’t think it will do her any harm. They tell me Willie and Connie keep very good friends which I am glad to hear.
With best love from
Harry
Note the difference between what he tells his brother and what he writes to Kate. ‘We have had a very rough time lately,’ as against ‘we have had a fine time this last fortnight’.
Here we also have Harry’s first mention of the food at the front. It has been estimated that the soldiers’ bread would have taken a full eight days between baking and reaching the front line; no surprise, then, that it took some ‘working down.’ I think, too, that Harry is saying that the extra victuals from home are welcome. Perhaps, very politely, he is also hoping to prompt another package, this time from sister Kate.
An embroidered card Harry sent to Connie after she had started school.
Connie, who is seven years old by this time, is at school. That must be a milestone. With the cerebral palsy, and the resulting difficulty in walking, it would have been a major achievement. From Mill Street in Ilkeston she would probably have gone to Chaucer Street School, as did Willie once he was old enough. Coincidentally, Willie’s wife, Nancy (my mother), was to teach there many years later.
By the first week in June Harry has been with C Company, 9th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment, for around three weeks. From the battalion’s war diary we can work out that he spent three or four days in the front line and a similar time in support. He would have experienced shelling and a gas attack, both of which caused casualties. Significantly, he would have repeatedly practised the routine for an assault on the training-ground area at Boescheppe, behind the lines, which had been set up using flags to mimic the enemy’s positions on a part of the Messines Ridge, a small rise in the ground known as Mount Sorrel.
A British trench map from 1917, showing a part of the Ypres Salient, with German trenches and wire entanglements marked.
By then, he had seen what shelling could do, as the war diary for 12 May records: ‘D’s Company Headquarters dugout had been blown in about 5.30 a.m. 2Lt [Second Lieutenant] Bunce S.H. was wounded & 2Lt Proctor M. & 2Lt Breingen S.K. were killed.’ (The war diary only records the names of officers; casualties among other ranks are recorded just by their number.) Following that, when in the reserve line, a 5.9-inch shell blew in the battalion orderly room and ‘records and papers were destroyed’. Any men hurt? Nothing is recorded.
The war diary goes on to log the total casualties for that tour in the front line: ‘Officers 1 wounded, 2 killed. O.R. [other ranks] 4 killed, 24 wounded.’ This was rather different from working in a lace factory.
Also noted is the fact that for five days of that month, May, ‘The Bn [battalion] practised offensive for MT SORREL system on a flag course situated in the BOESCHEPE training area.’ From this and other indicators, the men of the 9th York and Lancasters would have known that they were to be involved in serious warfare in the very near future. Harry would be going ‘over the top’ for the first time. That prospect must have been chilling.
CHAPTER 4
MESSINES RIDGE
THE FIRST WEEK OF JUNE 1917 was a significant one on the Flanders battlefields.
The Messines–Wytschaete (Mesen–Wijtschate) Ridge is nothing particularly special on the ground. Visit it today and there is simply a slightly higher area, largely covered in trees, which extends from Messines in the south, to Zillebeke in the north.
Some of the names given to the hills during the campaign there illustrate the reality of the ‘high’ ground west and south-west of Ypres. ‘Hill 60’ and ‘Hill 62’ rise 60 metres and 62 metres (66 and 68 yards) above sea level respectively. The plain stretching towards Ypres, then occupied by the Allies, lies at between 50 and 55 metres (55 and 60 yards) above sea level. The flatness of the Flanders landscape means, however, that even the smallest rise dominates the surrounding country.
In 1917, the German Army occupied the whole ridge, forming a minor salient into the Allies’ territories. It became an important objective for the next offensive. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British armies on the Western Front, gave the task of taking the ridge to General Sir Herbert Plumer, commanding the Second Army in the Ypres Salient. His planning and preparation, which lasted for months (hence the model of the ridge used for training during Harry’s time at Rugeley), were meticulous. The most significant element was the siting of huge explosive mines deep underneath the German positions. Sappers (Royal Engineers), for once given a job true to their title, became tunnellers. (The word ‘sapper’ derives from the tunnels and other earthworks which, in earlier centuries, were dug under fortifications to ‘sap’ their strength during a siege.) Men who were miners in civilian life were drafted in to dig tunnels under no man’s land to reach a point beneath the German front line on the ridge. The whole undertaking spanned more than a year, but on completion the sappers had planted a total of almost five hundred tons of high explosive in twenty-one mines across the six miles or so of the ridge.
The tunnelling was hazardous. There was always the possibility of collapse. Moreover, the Germans knew that the British were working underground, with the result that both sides were tunnelling and counter-tunnelling at the same time and each maintained listening posts, trying to detect the enemy’s activities. There were occasions when one side would break into the other’s tunnel, and in the darkness hand-to-hand fighting would often follow.
Eventually, by the end of May, all was in place on the ground, ready for the assault. The troops had been carefully trained. As we have seen, Harry’s battalion spent five days practising on the Boescheppe training ground where their objective, Mount Sorrel, had been simulated with an arrangement of flags. Harry would already have gained an overview of the whole ridge from the mock-up at the Cannock Chase training area before he even crossed the Channel.
General Plumer (later Field Marshal Viscount Plumer of Messines) – his intelligence, detailed planning and care for his men belied his almost comical looks. (From a painting after a portrait by William Orpen.)
The orders for the operation would have been passed down from General Plumer, via his staff, to the different levels of command. On receipt of these, Lieutenant-Colonel Bowes-Wilson, commanding the 9th York and Lancasters, prepared written orders for his officers. (These may be seen at the National Archives at Kew, as may the battalion war diary.)
Responsibility for the operation was, for once in that war, in the correct hands. General Plumer, a skilful commander who did everything he could in the circumstances to minimize casualties among his soldiers, and who was in consequence liked and admired by them, appreciated the problems that his troops would encounter and made sure that they were dealt with as effectively as possi
ble. He learned from the use of mines in the initial British assault at the Battle of the Somme, almost a year earlier. On that occasion, there had been a ten-minute pause between the firing of the explosive charges and the signal to attack. That gave the defenders time to recover their composure, man their positions and take control of no man’s land. At Messines, by contrast, there was to be only a minute’s gap between the blast and the start of the assault.
During the first few days of June, Harry’s battalion moved towards the launch point for the coming offensive. Still they were vulnerable, as the war diary records: ‘There were two casualties on the way to camp owing to enemy shelling back areas with gas shells.’ Then, ‘On the evening of 6th Bn moved to assembly positions previous to the attack.’ The diary adds, ‘There were no casualties whilst the Bn was assembling.’
For ten days and ten nights up to 6 June 1917, the lives of Harry and the other members of C Company had been dominated by the sight and sounds of the continuous artillery bombardment of the German defensive positions (approximately 1 shell every 2 seconds, incessantly for 240 hours).
By now, the eve of the attack, the battalion was in the line, waiting in the forward trenches for the order to advance across no man’s land on to the German trenches. Each soldier had with him his full battle kit, steel helmet, personal weapon, respirator, food, water, ammunition – everything he would need had to be carried. Harry, as a member of 12 Platoon’s Machine-Gun Section, would also be carrying extra magazines for the Lewis gun, greatly increasing the total load he would have to take into action. We can see from the squad photograph taken at Rugeley that he was not a large man. (A full list of what the attacking troops from the 9th York and Lancasters had to carry is given here.)
The forward trenches were deep, with a firing step on the side facing the enemy. Dug into the trench walls were small bolt holes, which were all the soldiers had for shelter from the elements and the enemy’s shelling. Sleep would have been impossible. The bombardment was intense and continuous. The soldiers would have hoped that it would do its job in softening up, or even destroying, the German defences. Veterans of the Somme, the previous year, would have known that this was a vain hope. Both the 9th York and Lancasters and its sister battalion in 70 Brigade, the 8th, had been heavily involved on the first day of that battle, suffering appalling casualties.
Harry had been in Flanders for only three weeks. During that time he had already spent three days in the front line, followed by four days in immediate reserve. He was now about to go into action for the first time.
There is no doubt that by now everyone would have known perfectly well what was about to happen. A combination of training exercises and rumour would have alerted the ordinary infantryman to the fact that a big ‘push’ was in the offing, while the commencement of the artillery bombardment days earlier would have confirmed that it was imminent. Many were just anxious to ‘get it over with’ – however horrifically it might eventually turn out. The Germans in that sector would also have been well aware of imminent action. The continuous bombardment sent a message that an attack was a certainty.
As it happened, during the night of the 6/7 June, the German front-line troops in the defensive positions on the Messines Ridge were relieved. The replacement body of troops moved in and once they were in position the relieved unit would move out, back to the reserve areas. At 3.10 a.m. on 7 June, however, both sets of troops were in the German positions.
In the sector of the British line occupied by Harry’s company, the cry was ‘No bloody rum!’ For the British troops, there was always an issue of rum before they went over the top. In the chilly pre-dawn, a good swig of rum helped with the chill as well as the courage. Perhaps it got lost on its way up the line, or maybe their big earthenware carboy was broken. For whatever reason, C Company missed out on its rum ration that day.
At 2.50 a.m., still dark, the order came that the troops were to lie down. Of course, this would have been rehearsed, occasioning rumours and speculation among the men, but not many would have known the real reason for the ‘lying-down drill’.
At 3.10 a.m. precisely, nineteen mines, totalling 450 tons of high explosive, were electrically detonated beneath the German positions on the Messines–Wytschaete Ridge. The biggest ever man-made explosion to date ripped the top from the ridge, killing or entombing thousands of German soldiers.
Well over a year in preparation, of the twenty-one mines laid only nineteen detonated that morning. One had been discovered and neutralized by the Germans, and the other either failed to detonate or was not needed on the day, and in time their whereabouts was forgotten. (On 17 July 1955 a lightning strike set off one of the missing mines. The only casualty: a cow, and an aggrieved Belgian farmer suddenly confronted with a new, massive, crater on his land. The twenty-first mine, the one the Germans discovered, is said to have been found, but not removed.)
The British had used remotely fired mines on the Western Front before, and so the strategy was understood, but they had certainly never used them on this scale. In his briefing to his general staff before the battle, Plumer had remarked: ‘Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography.’ In fact, they did both.
The explosion was incredible. One eyewitness, the war correspondent Philip Gibbs, writing in the Morning Chronicle, described the massive detonation:
The most diabolical splendour I have ever seen. Out of the dark ridges of Messines and Wytschaete and the ill-famed Hill 60, there gushed out and up enormous volumes of scarlet flame from the exploding mines and of earth and smoke all lighted by the flame spilling over into mountains of fierce colour, so that all the countryside was illuminated with red light. While some of us stood watching, aghast and spellbound by this burning horror, the ground trembled and surged violently to and fro. Truly the earth quaked . . .
What must it have been like for the assault troops in the front line? Would part of the lying-down drill have included ordering the soldiers to cover their ears? Harry makes no mention of the blast in his letters. Perhaps he was deafened by the preceding bombardment. Maybe the troops had been ordered not to mention it in letters. Maybe he just didn’t find it that astonishing; after all, he hadn’t been at the front long enough to establish what was ‘normal’.
A map of British dispositions for the attack shows that Harry’s company was in trenches around two hundred yards from two of the underground mines. One has to wonder whether many of the troops were deafened, although by now they were well used to the sound of the artillery barrage. Yet this was something unprecedented – the noise of the combined explosions was so great that in England the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, forewarned of the time of the attack, had himself woken at his Surrey home ten minutes before zero hour so that he could listen for the blast. Official sources confirm that Lloyd George did indeed hear the distant rumble of sound, and even felt the tremors of the shock wave. The newspapers reported that people in the south-east of England were woken by it; some reports even claimed that the shock wave travelled as far as Dublin. That Harry does not mention hearing it means nothing, however. He wasn’t a man for detail – or for causing unnecessary anxiety among his people at home.
Almost immediately after the explosion, officers blew their whistles and the front-line troops left their trenches and started to advance towards the German positions. Harry’s company was the third wave over, following on 200 yards behind the first wave of men, and tasked with supporting the main attack.
The equipment list for each soldier, set out in the orders for the battalion, brings home the challenge that faced these men as the whistles sounded, even before they came under enemy fire:
All Officers will be dressed and equipped the same as the men; sticks are not to be carried [this was to prevent the enemy identifying officers and directing snipers to fire on them].
Fighting Order for all ranks:-
(a) Clothing, Arms and Entrenching Tool, as issued.
(b) Equ
ipment as issued with the exception of the pack. Haversacks are to be worn on the back, except for Lewis Gunners, Rifle Bombers and carrying parties, who will wear it at the side.
(c) Box Respirators and P.H. Helmets [‘small box respirator’ or ‘SBR’ and ‘phenate hexamine helmet’, types of gas mask].
(d) Iron Rations, unexpended portion of the day’s rations, Mess tin and cover.
(e) 120 rounds S.A.A. [small-arms ammunition] except Bombers, Signallers, Runners, Lewis Gunners and Rifle Bombers who carry 50 rounds. Carrying Parties, 50 rounds S.A.A.
(f) Every man (except bombing sections) two Mills Bombs [hand grenades] one in each top pocket. These Bombs will be collected into dumps as soon as the Objective has been gained.
(g) Moppers Up and Carrying Parties will not carry flares, nor will carrying parties carry (f).
(h) Three sandbags per man for Moppers Up only.
(i) Water Bottle, full.
(j) Mopping Up parties will carry one ‘P’ Bomb [phosphorus grenade; i.e. a smoke bomb] in addition to two Mills Bombs.
(k) Bombing Sections will carry:-
(1) Bayonet Men 6 Mills Bombs.
(2) Remainder of Section, 12 Mills Bombs per man.
(l) Bombing Sections of Mopping Up Parties will carry 10 Mills Bombs and 1 ‘P’ Bomb per man.
