Blood and Thunder

by Alexandra J Churchill

  The following morning they rumbled from the mist into the battle, the infantry proceeding in long queues behind them. Marcus’ division attacked north-east across the Hindenburg Line towards Cambrai, their objectives La Vacquerie and beyond that the high ground known as Welsh Ridge. Marcus and his men were to stay in reserve until this had been accomplished and then seize the crossings of the St Quentin Canal in between Marcoing and Masnières further on with the aid of sixteen tanks.

  Up and down the line Byng’s men advanced as many as 4 miles in a few hours. The Germans had been on alert but the surprise was a success. When Marcus’ brigade went into Masnières the population had no idea what was going on. The men were surprised to see such normality. Women had been wheeling perambulators in the streets before German artillery fire came crashing towards them and the brigade interpreter ran back and forth attempting to get civilians evacuated.

  But for all of the Third Army’s success, key objectives still sat in German hands. That night the 11th King’s Royal Rifles were ordered up to push on and take Crèvecoeur, further along the canal, with twelve tanks. Their lonely attack commenced in the middle of the following afternoon. Marcus and his men were enfiladed from Rumilly to the north-west and from the high ground north of the canal, so that in spite of several efforts to force a passage during the day, little progress was made. Byng had tried to push on but continued attempts failed. Late on 21 November a halt was ordered and consolidation began. Marcus had to settle for digging in to the south of Crèvecoeur.

  Haig was insistent that the attack be followed up but of course the element of surprise was gone. The Germans had now had time to regroup and organise. To the north of Marcus and his battalion, Byng’s men had failed to take the hugely significant ridge in front of Cambrai itself, on which Bourlon Wood sat. Haig had warned Byng about seizing it swiftly but he had not taken heed and now it was to become fiercely contested.

  Shortly after he had penned his thoughtful letter to Henry Dundas, General John had left the 2nd Guards Brigade. Promoted, Ponsonby had taken over 40th Division who were now suddenly called upon to throw themselves into the fray for General Byng by relieving the battered 62nd Division who had been having a torrid time in the environs of Bourlon Wood.

  General John’s men struggled towards the imposing heights that included the wood, fighting their way through traffic. Arriving after dark on 22 November they had no chance to properly reconnoitre their objective and Ponsonby was forced to hurriedly cobble together a plan of attack to take Bourlon itself and the wood. The petrol for their accompanying tanks only just arrived in time and smoke shells that were to have masked their assault were lost somewhere on the deteriorating roads to the rear when the men burst forwards.

  In truth 40th Division had little to no idea what they had launched themselves at, especially as far as the wood was concerned. Artillery shells sent oaks and firs splintering in all directions. The noise was deafening and men struggled to clamber over aspens and hazel. Thankfully enemy resistance was much less determined than expected. They got to the northern edge of the trees but had to dig in because the advance on either side had not kept pace. As for the village, some battalions had been all but destroyed. General John’s men were scattered throughout the area, some of them isolated inside Bourlon itself. The position that night was shaky.

  Under the circumstances, his men were acquitting themselves well, but the general was ordered to push on and wrench the village out of German hands. In addition, he ordered the wood consolidated, as there were numerous enemy troops hiding amongst the ruins of the trees. Communications were beginning to break down in the chaos. General John had actually managed to get the assault on Bourlon delayed until more tank support could arrive, but his new orders could not get through because German shells had smashed crucial wires and one of his brigadiers commenced the attack on 24 November as planned. Ponsonby was not even aware that his men had got into Bourlon and been forced back to the southern outskirts of the village until 8 p.m. that night, at which point he hurriedly made reserves available to the units concerned.

  Inside the wood a bitter, relentless struggle had been going on all day. General John’s exhausted men beat off numerous counter-attacks as they gallantly tried to hold on to the ground they had taken. Trees continued to crash down around their ears and amongst the wrecked greenery gas lingered ominously. They were rapidly losing their lines of communication back to Ponsonby and in the early evening they had sent out a distress call. One determined counter-attack from the enemy and they would most likely be flung from Bourlon Wood altogether.

  Five more Etonians had already fallen in General Byng’s localised offensive at Cambrai, but now Ponsonby’s former men and the rest of the Guards Division had been ordered south, indicating that the number of OE casualties was about to increase drastically.

  The Guards had been resting for three weeks after their exertions at Poelcappelle when orders suddenly arrived on 9 November for them to move south. It was an arduous journey and Henry Dundas, heading towards his first experience of battle as a company commander, was amongst those starting to feel the physical strain.

  They had no idea where they were going or what for. Whilst Marcus de Paravicini fought for Crèvecoeur the Guards were being ferried painfully slowly towards the front in buses. Henry sat throughout 22 November to the south-west of Cambrai, struggling to recuperate from the journey in appalling weather with little shelter, cheered only by an unexpected reunion with one of his Eton friends waiting with the cavalry to exploit a break in the German line.

  Whilst General John threw his men at Bourlon and the wood on 23 November, in command of the Guards, General Feilding was told that it was extremely unlikely that his men would have to relieve any division presently in the line. His staff ran back and forth, baffled by contradictory orders. Then came the inevitable: an order to relieve 51st Division in the line fighting immediately next to General John’s men. Once his staff officers had spent much of the day running about looking for them, the Guards struggled up to the front in the dark, without a clue as to their surroundings. The 51st Division had pushed forward towards a village by the name of Fontaine-Notre-Dame, which sat to the south-east of Bourlon Wood, but much like Bourlon it had become bitterly contested and had changed hands several times. When the Guards arrived the troops there had no clue that they were to be relieved and were completely unready.

  On 25 November, Feilding was informed that his men would attack at the earliest opportunity. He was livid. This would require attacking from a salient into another salient towards a village as yet untouched by artillery fire; it was tantamount to suicide. He demanded a conference with the corps commander and outlined his objections. He was told they would have to wait for General Byng to arrive and give his verdict.

  Byng told him, in effect, to get on with it. On 27 November the Guards Division would attack Fontaine-Notre-Dame and try to prise it from German hands. Feilding went racing back to his headquarters with less than twenty-four hours to mastermind his attack. The only complete brigade he had that was fresh and unused was the 2nd, including Henry Dundas and the 1st Scots Guards, and he hurriedly sent out his orders.

  The men had been lying out in the open as the snow fell the previous night and were wet through as they struggled forward. They were finally in place at 1 a.m., just a few hours before the attack was to commence. The front held by the Guards Division was some 5,000 yards, more than twice as long as that which they had successfully attacked at Pilckem Ridge, and they had less men available. It was not a testament to the leadership of the British Army. Desperate to obtain the high ground they did not realise that, having failed to seize these objectives when bolstered by the element of surprise, they were now attempting to achieve the same result with a small attack by hurried troops when the Germans, freshly reinforced, were fully aware that they would be coming.

  Battalions of Grenadiers and Coldstream Guards were to assault Fontaine itself, but Henry and his Scotsmen were t
o take up a place on a sunken road leading south away from the village in order to provide protection for them. The Grenadiers ran straight into heavy machine-gun fire and saw their officers cut down in droves. Likewise the Coldstream were being decimated but by 7.15 a.m. the village was largely in British hands.

  A company of Scots Guards was meanwhile attempting to come up to meet them along the sunken road in a miserable drizzle. Two OEs, Colonel MacKenzie and Arthur Kinnaird, whose father had lifted the FA Cup as part of the same side as Marcus de Paravicinis, had edged up in a snowstorm the night before to try to get some understanding of the situation. Unfortunately the road proved not to be quite so ‘sunken’ as they thought in some places and sloped uphill, giving the Germans in Fontaine a clear field of fire to scythe them down as they attempted to approach the village.

  As they crawled towards Fontaine, Kinnaird’s men were subjected to murderous machine-gun fire. Arthur was hit in the leg. As he attempted to turn around on the floor to try to escape he was hit again, this time in the back. One of his sergeants, a Glasgow policeman named Thomas McAulay, dragged him 400 yards to safety, fighting off two enemy soldiers as he went and clambering back up after being floored twice by concussion from nearby bursting shells. Attempts to get up to Fontaine cost his company all its officers and half its men. Only McAulay was left to lead them in beating off a German counter-attack. For his actions that day MacKenzie nominated Thomas McAulay for the Victoria Cross, which he was duly awarded. Despite McAulay’s efforts, Arthur Kennard could not be saved and died in a nearby dugout. He was 32 years old.3

  Henry Dundas would consistently refer to the affair as the ‘Fontaine Massacre’. For all their efforts, the Guards were doomed to fail, just as Feilding had predicted. They simply did not have enough men to hold the village and, in the face of mounting counter-attacks, they were overrun and forced to withdraw to their starting line. By 29 November, when the division was withdrawn, they had chalked up over 1,000 casualties, including nearly forty officers. Waiting for them to the rear was a thank-you note from General John for their efforts. His own division had been battered before they too were finally pulled out of Bourlon Wood and the nearby village.

  To all intents and purposes, the British attack on this sector was now over. They were expecting some sort of counter-attack in return, but little did they know that the Germans were planning a brutal, large-scale assault, battering both sides of the British salient that had formed in an attempt to cut it off.

  As darkness fell on 29 November Marcus de Paravicini and the 11th King’s Royal Rifles trudged up to relieve another battalion in the line near La Vacquerie. At 7 a.m. a magnificent din opened up to their right as the enemy came barrelling towards the British positions further south. The German counter-attack rolled like a breaking wave towards the battalion. The division next to them had been broken and men streamed back towards Gonnelieu. Marcus and his men were next. The artillery arrived first, cascading down all over the British front and severing communication lines. The Germans used high explosive, gas and smoke to screen their advance. Then came dozens of aeroplanes, almost skimming the ground they flew so low, unleashing torrents of machine-gun fire into panicking troops. Emerging out of the smoke at 8 a.m. came the infantry, breaking into the battalion’s ranks from in front and behind, rifles trained on the fleeing British soldiers.

  Marcus fled his battalion headquarters on his hands and knees with nothing but a revolver for protection. One of his riflemen followed close behind. They had made it some 20 yards when a low-flying enemy aeroplane came bearing down on them and opened fire. The rifleman screamed out in pain as he was hit in the leg. He looked up just in time to see Marcus’ revolver shot out of his hand. He watched as the young major scrambled on a few more yards and threw himself into a shellhole. The King’s Royal Rifles had been overrun. They had no choice but to fall back as lines and lines of German infantry descended upon them. Men with machine guns perched up on Welsh Ridge attempted to pin the enemy down but they too were overwhelmed. They removed parts from their guns and abandoned them.

  Rifleman Field languished on the ground until the Germans rounded him up with other prisoners. Rumours abounded as to the fate of the young major. Field never saw him again and the only other account was from an unknown rifleman who claimed he had seen Marcus de Paravicini running from a support trench when he was shot down by a low-flying aeroplane. Marcus’ family were still hounding everyone from the War Office to the Netherlands Legation in 1919, but the 22-year-old was never seen or heard from again4.

  The situation at the end of the day was critical. Marcus’ division was without reserves or any artillery support. The German attack had advanced as far as 3 miles in places. Men of the Sherwood Foresters had been sent to help plug gaps and the 11th King’s Royal Rifles cowered in the Hindenburg Line. It was imperative that men be found from somewhere to try to counter-attack. Eyes began to turn to the exhausted Guards Division, still catching their breath after their ‘massacre’ at Fontaine-Notre-Dame.

  Even before the Germans had launched their infantry assault on Marcus de Paravicini and his battalion, a telegram arrived at Guards Division HQ to say that the Germans were assaulting with great force and that they ought to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. They had barely finished breakfast. They couldn’t believe it was possible. It wasn’t until the isolated khaki figures appearing, running over the hill, turned into a mob that the gravity of the situation began to sink in. Shells started to drop closer and closer to the camp.

  Two hours later three brigades of Guards were stumbling about the front amidst conflicting orders whilst men streamed the other way, fleeing the onslaught. The 3rd Guards Brigade had been ordered to take back Gonnelieu. They advanced across the open ground and flung themselves bodily at the German defenders. Along with the arrival of tanks, the Guards action at Gonnelieu was instrumental in grinding the impetus out of the German counter-attack.

  No less than twenty-four Etonians fell during the operations around Cambrai in the closing months of 1917. For OEs the year had seen mounting casualties, with name after name being read out in the chapel at school. Nobody understood this better than Patrick Shaw-Stewart.

  He arrived home from Gallipoli completely spent. During 1915 he had lost Julian Grenfell and his brother Billy, as well as Charles Lister. His loneliness was compounded by being sent to Salonika to act as a liaison officer with the French Army. He was not at all impressed with the lack of activity on this front, especially when his own battalion, the Hood, had been sent into the thick of things on the Western Front. It gave him plenty of time to mourn his ever-decreasing circle of friends.

  Having stuck at it for several months, Patrick became determined to escape Salonika and made more than one attempt. Sadly, as an intelligence officer he proved too intelligent and they didn’t want to let him go. There he sat on his quiet front pushing pins into maps and stewing about his wasted energy. ‘Nothing,’ he told Julian and Billy Grenfell’s mother, ‘can conceal from me the fact that I am superfluous here.’

  The best promise he could extract was that he could join a battalion in the east, not his own in France. ‘Being killed in France … in the Hood with my old friends is one thing: being killed chillily on the Struma after being pitchforked into God knows what Welsh Fusiliers or East Lancashire Regiment is quite another,’ he sulked. Finally, having returned home sick at the beginning of 1917, Patrick managed to manipulate his way to France, arriving there in April. He even managed to convince the military authorities that he was fit for service, but not anywhere in the east where the climate would rekindle his supposed health issues.

  In the aftermath of Cambrai the whole of the frost-covered Welsh Ridge had been put in the hands of the Royal Naval Division. There was no end in sight. The British Army was exhausted, depleted and depressed as 1917 came to a close. It felt to Patrick like death came daily. ‘I wonder if this war has been especially hard on my friends,’ he had speculated as early as 1915, as Charles
Lister lay dying. ‘John Manners … [George Fletcher], the other Fletcher, Julian and Billy.’ The list went on, taking friends and academic rivals. Only acquaintances that he cared little for seemed able to escape the grim reaper.

  Many believed that the dead had gone to a better place but Patrick didn’t have such faith. He needed evidence and he had seen none. He was lonely and depressed, but he still displayed a doggedness about seeing the war through, albeit with none of the exuberance that had accompanied the first volunteers, him included, as they dived into uniform. ‘We had lost most of our old illusions,’ wrote his friend Ronald Knox, who shared his pain as far as their Eton and Balliol friends were concerned. ‘The time had not yet come when we were to draw our breath and then sigh it out again in relief at the tidings of victory.’

  When Raymond Asquith fell on the Somme in 1916 Patrick was crushed:

  It makes me more inclined than anything that has happened yet to take off my boots and go to bed. When people like Julian died, you felt at least that they had enjoyed war, but Raymond! That graceful, elegant cynic, who spent his time before the war pulling Guardsmen’s legs, to be killed in action in the Grenadiers, it is so utterly incongruous … that it was seems to make it almost the blackest thing yet – and for me personally there seems to be no man left now whom I care a brass button for, or he for me, except darling Edward.

  Then came the final blow. Darling Edward, Edward Horner, fell on 21 November at Cambrai with the 18th Hussars. ‘I suppose it’s the same for everyone,’ Patrick surmised glumly, but it didn’t make it any easier. ‘Every time I remember that nearly all my friends are dead, I take some form of imaginary morphia, and promise myself work, or love, or letters, or fall back on the comforting reflection that I may soon be dead myself. Wonderfully cheery that.’