On November 1, Admiral Craddock’s squadron, consisting of the Monmouth, the Good Hope, and two small vessels, was engaged by a superior squadron under Admiral von Spee at Coronel off the coast of Chile. The result was a British defeat, the two cruisers being sunk by gun-fire with all hands. This disaster was dramatically revenged, as within six weeks, upon December 8, a special cruiser-squadron dispatched from England under Admiral Sturdee entirely destroyed the fleet of Von Spee in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The British Fleet was considerably stronger, and little credit can be claimed save for the admirable strategy which enabled Sturdee to find the enemy in that vast waste of waters as promptly and directly as if the meeting had been by appointment.
There were no other outstanding naval events in 1914 save a raid upon Cuxhaven by aeroplanes, escorted by light cruisers, which probably did little harm as the weather was misty. This occurred upon Christmas Day 1914. It had been preceded by an attack by German cruisers on December 16 upon West Hartlepool, Scarborough, and Whitby. As the two latter towns were open watering-places, and as numerous civilians were the victims of the raid, it was recognised from this time onwards that the German Navy was as little trammelled by international law or by the feelings of humanity as the German Army had shown itself to be in France, Belgium, and Russia.
The general movement of the French armies has been touched upon in recording the experiences of the British, for after their glorious victory at the Marne and the hold-up at the Aisne, it was at Ypres that the real fighting was done, the rest of the long line down to the Swiss frontier playing a subsidiary part. The Russians, however, had experienced both extremities of fortune, for their victory at Lemberg over the Austrians upon September 2 was of a very glorious character, while their defeat by the Germans at Tannenberg in East Prussia was no less decisive.
All the events of the outset of the war were inglorious for Austria, who received rapidly the punishment which she deserved for her wanton disturbance of the world’s peace. Apart from the blows which she received from Russia, she was severely defeated by the Serbians on August 17, and her invading army was driven out of the country which she had wronged. At the end of the year she had lost the whole of Galicia to the Russians, who in turn had been pushed out of East Prussia by the German armies under Von Hindenburg. An invasion of Poland by the Germans was held up after very severe fighting, failing to reach Warsaw, which was its objective.
These were the main incidents of the world’s war during the months which have been under review. As those months passed the terrific nature of the task which they had undertaken became more and more clear to the British, but further reflection had confirmed them in their opinion that the alternative course of abandoning their friends and breaking their pledge to Belgium was an absolutely unthinkable one, so that however great the trials and sacrifices in blood and treasure, they were not further embittered by the reflection that they could possibly a have been avoided. Very greatly were they cheered in that dark hour by the splendid, whole-hearted help from India, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, help which was even more valuable from a moral than from a material standpoint. With this brief synopsis we will now return to those operations which are the proper subject of this volume.
* * *
XI. THE WINTER LULL OF 1914
Increase of the Army — Formation of the Fifth Corps — The visit of the King — Third Division at Petit Bois — The fight at Givenchy — Heavy losses of the Indians — Fine advance of Manchesters — Advance of the First Division — Singular scenes at Christmas
THE winter lull may be said to have extended from the great combats at Ypres of the middle of November to the opening of the spring campaign in March 1915; but we will only follow it here up to the end of the year. It was a period of alternate rest and discomfort for the troops with an ever-present salt of danger. For days they found themselves billeted with some approach to comfort in the farmhouses and villages of Flanders, but such brief intervals of peace were broken by the routine of the trenches, when, in mud or water with a clay cutting before their faces and another at their backs, they waited through the long hours, listening to the crack of the sniper’s rifle, or the crash of the bursting shell, with an indifference which bordered upon thankfulness for anything that would break the drab monotony of their task. It was a scene of warfare which was new to military experience. The vast plain of battle lay in front of the observer as a flat and lonely wilderness, dotted with ruined houses from which no homely wreath of smoke rose into the wintry air. Here and there was an untidy litter of wire; here and there also a clump of bleak and tattered woodland; but nowhere was there any sign of man. And yet from the elevation of an aeroplane it might be seen that the population of a large city was lurking upon that motionless waste. Everywhere the airman would have distinguished the thin brown slits of the advance trenches, the broader ditches of the supports and the long zigzags of the communications, and he would have detected that they were stuffed with men — grey men and khaki, in every weird garment that ingenuity could suggest for dryness and for warmth — all cowering within their shelters with the ever-present double design of screening themselves and of attacking their enemy. As the German pressure became less, and as more regiments of the Territorials began to arrive, taking some of the work from their comrades of the Regulars, it was possible to mitigate something of the discomforts of warfare, to ensure that no regiments should be left for too long a period in the trenches, and even to arrange for week-end visits to England for a certain number of officers and men. The streets of London got a glimpse of rugged, war-hardened faces, and of uniforms caked with the brown mud of Flanders, or supplemented by strange Robinson Crusoe goat-skins from the trenches, which brought home to the least imaginative the nature and the nearness of the struggle.
Before noting those occasional spasms of activity — epileptic, sometimes, in their sudden intensity — which broke out from the German trenches, it may be well to take some note of the general development of those preparations which meant so much for the future. The Army was growing steadily in strength. Not only were the old regiments reinforced by fresh drafts, but two new divisions of Regulars were brought over before the end of January. These formed the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Divisions under Generals Snow and Bulfin, two officers who had won a name in the first phase of the war. The two Divisions together formed the Fifth Army Corps under General Plumer, the officer who had worked so hard for the relief of Mafeking in 1900. The Divisions, composed of splendid troops who needed some hardening after tropical service, were constituted as follows, the list including territorial battalions attached, but excluding the artillery as well as the four original regular units in each brigade:
FIFTH ARMY CORPS — GENERAL PLUMER.
27th Division — General Snow.
80th Brigade — General Fortescue.
Princess Pat. Canadians.
4th Rifle Brigade.
3rd King’s Royal Rifles.
4th King’s Royal Rifles.
2nd Shrop. Light Infantry.
8lst Brigade — General MacFarlane.
9th Royal Scots (T.F.).
2nd Cameron Highlanders.
lst Argyll and Sutherlands.
1st Royal Scots.
2nd Gloucesters.
9th Argyll and Sutherlands (T.F.)
82nd Brigade — General Longley.
1st Leinsters.
2nd Royal Irish Fusiliers.
2nd Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry.
1st Royal Irish.
1st Cambridge (T.F.).
Army Troops, 6th Cheshires.
28th Division — General Bulfin.
83rd Brigade — General Boyle.
2nd E. Yorkshire.
1st King’s Own York. Light Infantry.
1st Yorks. and Lancasters.
2nd Royal Lancasters.
3rd Monmouths (T.F.).
6th Royal Lancasters (T.F.).
84th Brigade — General Winter.
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br /> 2nd Northumberland Fusiliers.
1st Suffolks.
1st Welsh.
2nd Cheshires.
12th London Rangers (T.F.).
1st Monmouths (T.F.).
85th Brigade — General Chapman.
2nd East Kent.
2nd East Surrey.
3rd Middlesex.
3rd Royal Fusiliers.
8th Middlesex (T.F.).
Besides this new Fifth Army Corps, there had been a constant dribble of other territorial units to the front, where they were incorporated with various regular brigades. The London Scottish, which had done so well, was honoured by admission to the 1st Brigade of Guards. The Artists’ Rifles, 28th London, had the unique distinction of being set aside as an officers’ training corps, from which officers were actually drawn at the rate of a hundred a month. The Honourable Artillery Company, brigaded with the 7th Brigade, was among the first to arrive. Conspicuous among the newcomers were the London Rifle Brigade, the 4th Suffolk, the Liverpool Scottish, the 5th and 6th Cheshires, the 1st Herts, the 2nd Monmouthshires, Queen Victoria Rifles, and Queen’s Westminsters. These were among the earlier arrivals, though it seems invidious to mention names where the spirit of all was equally good. Among the yeomanry, many had already seen considerable service — notably the North and South Irish Horse, who had served from the beginning, the Northumberland Hussars, the North Somersets, the Oxford Hussars, and the Essex Yeomanry. Most of the troops named above shared the discomfort of the winter campaign before the great arrival of the new armies from England in the spring. There can be no better earned bar upon a medal than that which stands for this great effort of endurance against nature and man combined.
To take events in their order: beyond numerous gallant affairs of outposts, there was no incident of importance until the evening of November 23, when the Germans, who had seemed stunned for a week or so, showed signs of returning animation. On this day, some eight hundred yards of trench held by Indian troops in the neighbourhood of Armentières were made untenable by the German artillery, especially by the Minenwerfer — small mortars which threw enormous bombs by an ingenious arrangement whereby the actual shell never entered the bore but was on the end of a rod outside the muzzle. Some of these terrible missiles, which came through the air as slowly as a punted football, were 200 lbs. in weight and shattering in their effects. There was an advance of the 112th Regiment of the Fourteenth German Corps, and the empty trenches were strongly occupied by them — so strongly that the first attempt to retake them was unsuccessful in the face of the rifle and machine-gun fire of the defenders. A second more powerful counter-attack was organised by General Anderson of the Meerut Division, and this time the Germans were swept out of their position and the line re-established. The fighting lasted all night, and the Ghurkas with their formidable knives proved to be invaluable for such close work, while a party of Engineers with hand-bombs did great execution — a strange combination of the Asiatic with the most primitive of weapons and the scientific European with the most recent. It was a substantial victory as such affairs go, for the British were left with a hundred prisoners, including three officers, three machine-guns, and two mortars.
The first week of December was rendered memorable by a visit of the King to the Army. King George reviewed a great number of his devoted soldiers, who showed by their fervent enthusiasm that one need not be an autocratic Warlord in order to command the fierce loyalty of the legions. After this pleasant interlude there followed a succession of those smaller exploits which seem so slight in any chronicle, and yet collectively do so much to sustain the spirit of the Army. Now this dashing officer, now that, attempted some deed upon the German line, and never failed to find men to follow him to death. On November 24 it was Lieutenant Impey, with a handful of 2nd Lincolns; on November 25, Lieutenants Ford and Morris with a few Welsh Fusiliers and sappers; on November 26, Sir Edward Hulse with some Scots Guards; on the same day. Lieutenant Durham with men of the 2nd Rifle Brigade — in each case trenches were temporarily won, the enemy was damaged, and a spirit of adventure encouraged in the trenches. Sometimes such a venture ended in the death of the leader, as in the case of Captain the Honourable H. L. Bruce of the Royal Scots. Such men died as the old knights did who rode out betwixt the lines of marshalled armies, loved by their friends and admired by their foes.
December 9 was the date of two small actions. In the first the 1st Lincolns of the 9th Brigade, which had been commanded by Douglas Smith since the wounding of General Shaw, made an attack upon the wood at Wytschaete which is called Le Petit Bois. The advance was not successful, the three officers who led it being all wounded, and forty-four men being hit. The attempt was renewed upon a larger scale five days later. The other action was an attack by the enemy upon some of the trenches of the Third Corps. This Corps, though it had not come in for the more dramatic scenes of the campaign, had done splendid and essential work in covering a line of fourteen miles or so against incessant attacks of the Germans, who never were able to gain any solid advantage. On this occasion the impact fell upon Gordon’s 19th Brigade, especially upon the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the 1st Middlesex. It was driven back with heavy loss.
On December 14 the second and more sustained effort was made to get possession of the Petit Bois at Wytschaete, which had been attacked by the Lincolns upon the 9th. D’Urbal’s Eighth French Army was co-operating upon the left. The British attack was conducted by Haldane’s Third Division, and the actual advance was carried out, after a considerable artillery preparation from the batteries of two Corps, by Bowes’ 8th Brigade, with the 2nd Royal Scots and the 1st Gordons in the lead. At 7:45 the guns were turned upon the big wood beyond Petit Bois, through which the supports might be advancing, and at the same hour the two regiments named swarmed forward, the Lowlanders on the left and the Highlanders on the right. The Royal Scots, under Major Duncan, carried Petit Bois with a rush, taking fifty prisoners and two machine-guns, while the Germans fled out at the other end of the wood. The Scots at once entrenched themselves and got their own machine guns into position. The Gordons, under Major Baird, advanced with splendid dash and gained some ground, but found the position such that they could not entrench upon it, so they were forced to fall back eventually to their original position. Both they and the 4th Middlesex, who supported them, lost considerably in the affair. The total casualties in the Petit Bois action came to over four hundred, with seventeen officers, figures which were considerably swollen by the losses of the Suffolks and Irish Rifles, who continued to hold the captured position in the face of continued bombing. The French in the north had no particular success and lost 600 men. The importance of such operations is not to be measured, however, by the amount of ground won, but by the necessity of beating up the enemies’ quarters, keeping them pinned to their positions, and preventing them from feeling that they could at their own sweet wills detach any reinforcements they chose to thicken their line upon the Eastern frontier, where our Russian Allies were so insistently pressing.
On the morning of December 19 an attack was made upon the German lines in the Festubert region by Willcocks’ Indian Corps, the Meerut Division, under General Anderson, attacking upon the left, and the Lahore, under General Watkis, upon the right. The object of the movement was to co-operate with the French in an advance which they had planned. The Meerut attack was successful at first, but was driven back by a counter-attack, and some hundreds of Indian infantry were killed, wounded, or taken. In the case of the Lahore attack the storming party consisted of the 1st Highland Light Infantry and the 4th Ghurkas. Both of these units belong to the Sirhind Brigade, but they were joined in the enterprise by the 59th Scinde Rifles of the Jullundur Brigade. These latter troops had a long night march before reaching the scene of the operations, when they found themselves upon the right of the attack and within two hundred and fifty yards of the German trenches. Judging the operations from the standard reached at a later date, the whole arrangement seems to ha
ve been extraordinarily primitive. The artillery preparation for a frontal attack upon a strong German line of trenches lasted exactly four minutes, being rather a call to arms than a bombardment. The troops rushed most gallantly forward into the dark of a cold wet winter morning, with no guide save the rippling flashes of the rifles and machine-guns in front of them. Many were so sore-footed and weary that they could not break into the double. Some of the Indians were overtaken from behind by a line of British supports, which caused considerable confusion. An officer of Indians has left it on record that twice running he had a revolver clapped to his head by a British officer. All of the battalions advanced with a frontage of two companies in columns of platoons. Both the Ghurkas and Highlanders reached the trench in the face of a murderous fire. The left of the 59th, consisting of Punjabi Mahomedans, also reached the trench. The right, who were Sikhs, made an equally gallant advance, but were knee-deep in a wet beetroot field and under terrific machine-gun fire. Their gallant leader, Captain Scale, was struck down. as was every Indian officer, but a handful of the survivors, under a Sikh Jemadar, got into a German sap, which they held for twenty-four hours, taking a number of prisoners.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 1132
