Tommies: The British Army in the Trenches

by Rosie Serdiville

  This doomed attempt to take Menin signalled the end of mobile warfare. With overwhelming numbers the Germans tightened the ring around Ypres and sought to squeeze out the BEF. The race was over. It was now a fight for bare survival. ‘The armies were at grips. Aeroplane reconnaissance now took the place of cavalry and revealed the fact that enemy reinforcements were arriving in vast numbers behind a screen of cyclists and the ubiquitous Uhlans. In the face of overwhelming numbers, and in view of the weakness of our infantry, our role as cavalry ended about this time. It was no longer possible to push forward cavalry patrols beyond the line of infantry, especially as the latter were now pinned down to the defensive and needed an unrestricted field of fire.’

  The Noodles were cavalry no more. ‘From this time our role was to be a general reserve for the sorely tried infantry, to be ready at any moment to dash up and fling ourselves into any gap that appeared dangerous. It was not a pleasant task, involving, as it did, many weary hours of waiting under shellfire. Frequently we would receive orders to fill a gap some miles away, but would find on arrival that it was already filled. Nothing can be more trying than prolonged waiting under arms.’

  On 22 October, with the crisis of the battle drawing near, the Hussars were roused from their weary billets in filthy dark with rain in torrents and no lights allowed. ‘Hooge Chateau was our destination. We stood-to for the remainder of the night, and in the morning were ordered right forward to the trenches; here we made the acquaintance of “Black Marias” [German shells] for the first time. They would come over in groups of four and burst with a villainous roar and clouds of yellow smoke, most unpleasant to meet as we ran, as best we could in our heavy equipment, across a sodden turnip field to the assistance of the infantry.’

  The footsloggers had been having a very rough time indeed. ‘We found them in position in the garden of a chateau, and were immediately told to prepare it for attack. The coolness of the infantry was admirable. They had been under constant fire for several days, were ragged, unkempt and grimy, short of rations and ammunition; but not a man appeared to be weary of the fight. Above the appalling din could be heard the clear, concise orders of the officers, no less ragged than their men, but undaunted and equal to any emergency.’ After a day’s fighting the Noodles were withdrawn to Hooge Chateau, filthy, exhausted ‘but with a feeling of mild elation at having been “blooded,” at having proved ourselves equal to the occasion – a feeling akin to that of the anxious cricketer who has successfully broken his duck’s egg.’

  Fate would deny them any rest. No sooner had they laid aside their arms than they were needed. Once again the Noodles mounted and rode towards Klein-Zillebeke where another break-in threatened. ‘Trenches were begun, roads barricaded, and houses – by this time deserted – were prepared for defence. Just as it seemed we were to be at work all night, we were relieved.’ It was back to Hooge but ‘on entering the grounds we were greeted by a burst of shrapnel right at the head of the column. This caused a momentary stampede among the horses … luckily there were no casualties.’

  German pressure was beginning to tell. The embattled line was showing signs of imminent rupture:

  Under increasing pressure the infantry had been forced to give ground, and it was just at that moment when the gap was ominously widening that the regiment, waiting in reserve, was called on to assist. There was a hurried rush across the miry fields, and through a wood filled with dead and wounded, to the trenches where the remnants of several regiments were collected. Here we remained for several hours under very heavy rifle and shell fire, unable to retaliate very effectively, owing to the poorness of the field of fire. But these gallant riflemen stuck to it, their crisp, sharp fire orders never seeming to falter. Then came the crowning incident of the day. A line of Scots Guards suddenly rose to the order ‘Come on, the Scots Guards!’ echoed by Major Sidney’s ‘Come on, Northumberland Hussars!’ and together Guards and Hussars charged against a swaying mass of grey figures and finally drove them over the hill.

  Wounded at side of the road at the battle of Menin Road. (Frank Hurley, State Library of New South Wales, via Wikimedia Commons)

  On 24 October, arguably the most serious crisis developed as 2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshires, were inexorably pushed back, allowing the enemy to infiltrate Polygon Wood, which the Noodles had so stoutly defended the day before. Once again the cavalry, mounted infantry now, cantered up the shell-scarred line of the Menin Road, arrow straight from Ypres. ‘A hurried gallop … and an advance in open order across the usual sticky turnip field brought us to the forefront of the battle. Too far in fact, for raking fire from a machine gun played havoc in the ranks, and was responsible for most of the casualties – Major Sidney, Captain Kennard and Lieutenant Clayton, amongst others being wounded while several men were killed. Soon, the yeomanry were lying down and maintaining a steady fire. There was no reserve. Each did the work of ten.’

  The scarred wood wasn’t lost, though it was a close-run thing. By mid-morning, British counter-attacks, supported by French cavalry, threw the Germans just about out. ‘A battalion of Welsh Fusiliers now advanced to reinforce the line, a battalion no more than three hundred strong and officered by the Colonel, adjutant and three subalterns, of whom two were barely ‘off-parade’ [i.e. newly commissioned]. At this period of the battle such a battalion was relatively strong [so terrible the rate of attrition] … In the early afternoon the enemy attacked the junction of the 20th and 21st Infantry Brigades just east of Gheluvelt, and again the position seemed desperate.’

  This time it was the Grenadier Guards who charged and won the day though, like every respite in the salient, casualties were high. ‘We were relieved and returned to Hooge, not a few horses, alas, with empty saddles … our troubles were not over, however, for we were shelled all night and sleep was well nigh impossible.’ For the Noodles a day of much-needed rest followed the fighting for Polygon Wood. Along the line, pressure never slackened. ‘The odds against us we learned were at least eight to one with no reserves to fall back on. Some idea of the desperate nature of the fighting may be gathered from the fact that the Welsh regiment with whom we had been associated the previous day, were now reduced to fifty men with no officers. But here the marvellous discipline of the regular army asserted itself and those magnificent men fought under the command of a lance-corporal.’

  For two days, there was a brief respite as both sides drew breath, ‘the artillery fire of the Germans, though still unpleasantly persistent, was rather less intense and pointed to a reorganisation of the enemy for further attacks.’ This was ominous, the lull before the storm. Some good news was to be had, the BEF’s 1st Division had accomplished prodigious slaughter by Langemarck, ‘piles of German dead and captured’. Cynicism would soon creep into Tommy’s reading of the daily news but not yet; ‘at that time we greedily swallowed such stories without the customary grain of salt, and perhaps it was as well that we did so.’

  On 29 October, the storm over the salient burst once more, ‘the fight continuing with the greatest intensity for six days, perhaps the six most critical days of the war’. The line to the east rested on an axis Gheluvelt–Zanvoorde; 21 Brigade had the right and 20 Brigade the left with 22nd in reserve. The next German wave struck the vulnerable hinge between 1st Division and 20 Brigade. The Guards were forced to give ground till desperate counter-attacks succeeded in winning it back. Pressure then swelled on the right where the vital crossroads junction on the ridge was taken. The Noodles ‘cooperated in the counter-attack on the left and was heavily engaged all day. At nightfall our line, though slightly pressed back, still included Gheluvelt and Zanvoorde. The attacks of the enemy were renewed on the 30th, and overwhelming numbers and superiority of artillery fire had their inevitable result. The cavalry on our right were forced to withdraw, thereby exposing our flank, and a murderous enfilade fire from field-batteries annihilated the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who died practically to a man.’

  Raw courage could not ultimately contest
this incessant storm of German steel. Sustained attacks down the Menin Road bludgeoned a breach into Gheluvelt. Overall, it appeared as though the battle was now lost: ‘transport came hurrying down the road in confusion; the heavier guns, at this time mainly 4.7’s [shells] were being hurriedly withdrawn. Field batteries were hastily limbered up by exhausted gunners and galloped across fields, and as hastily unlimbered and wheeled around into action again. Here was a scene of indescribable confusion and dismay, heightened by the pitiable stream of wounded men who plodded painfully to the rear, unbroken, however, in spirit, as their shouts of “give them hell, boys” showed.’

  It seemed the line could not possibly hold, as thin and taut as a drum string, with the wailing crescendo of German shells pounding like a demonic curse. The 20th Brigade, dreadfully thinned, nearer a battalion at best, struggled forward and again restored the line. As the enemy faltered, the British ‘performed prodigious feats of valour with the bayonet, attacking time after time with incomparable spirit, finally driving an enemy at least six times their strength headlong before them into the night’. For the moment at least, the Germans had had enough. Although 1 November was a relatively quiet day, the following day, the British learnt that Kaiser Wilhelm was to tour the German positions and add fresh heart to their faltering offensive.

  ‘Once again, under the fiercest attacks the 1st Division was obliged to give ground … all available reserves failed to stem the enemy advance’. This final time it seemed as though weight of numbers must win through, ‘once again the regiment was hurried forward into immediate reserve. The shelling was very heavy, heavier perhaps than ever before. But the 7th Division held firm, and attack after attack was hurled back without appreciable loss of ground.’

  Like a spring tide, successive breakers of German attacks threatened to sweep aside the thinned and exhausted lines but Tommy, bloodied, battered, begrimed and exhausted, somehow held. To all intents the battle was virtually over and the BEF had come through. The price had been high.

  Winter

  After the cauldron of Ypres, the Noodles were rotated out of the line and rested for two weeks, a generous furlough by later standards: ‘The enemy had been driven from Meteren but a few weeks before, the inhabitants told us; a German, in fact, had been killed nearby. But the place, like Bailleul, had hardly suffered, though it had been stripped of course, of the necessities of life, so much so that “les Allemands ont tout, tout, tout pris”’.

  At last the mounted infantry were issued with bayonets and there was some patrolling towards Ploegsteert. Fresh attacks were being launched against the salient though the battle was rapidly running out of steam. Winter was approaching; ‘the weather about this time took a change for the worse. Days of incessant rain were followed by snow and sleet – Flanders at its worst. How bad that can be only a seasoned campaigner knows.’

  The regiment moved again, this time finding themselves stuck between Armentières and Laventie. It was not a region likely to commend itself to the Northumbrians, more used to the rugged topography of their native shore: ‘The ground is absolutely flat, unspeakably dreary and featureless. The soil is heavy clay and under the lightest rain becomes a morass. It seems to rain most days in winter, and there is often a mist of deadly coldness. To strike water even in summer it is seldom necessary to dig more than a few feet; in winter it lies on the surface.’

  Nor was this bleak picture enlivened by the inhabitants. ‘In these farms dwelt farmers of prodigious age, who tilled the ground in the absence of the young men, and some emaciated stock.’ The war was in its relative infancy, the Western Front had yet to sink into the routine of trenches, month in, month out, regardless of season. That vast hinterland of supply which would spread out behind the lines into a network of biblical proportions did not exist. ‘At this early stage no flaring announcement of English beer met the eye of the tired warrior trudging from the trench to his comfortless barn. Any luxuries beyond the bare rations were hard to come by, except in parcels from home. There were no canteens, hence a perpetual shortage of tobacco and cigarettes and of most extras that make life worth living even in war. There were no Divisional concert parties, no cinemas and, at first, no baths.’

  As the Noodles were in general reserve, their duties were varied but universally unedifying, the minutiae of war. After the dash and drama of Ypres, they guarded bridges and crossroads, practised the perfect management of horse-lines. ‘The orderly room staffs discovered that a war of attrition means an endless war of forms and paper, and were probably busier than anyone else. Meanwhile rumours of spies again revived. Patrols were everywhere on the alert, and were ordered to acquaint themselves with the physiognomy of every inhabitant …’

  This was not an idle fear as Nurse Katherine Luard recorded in her diary:

  Saturday, November 28th 1914. – A sergeant of the 10th Hussars told me he was in a house with some supposed Belgian refugees. He noticed that when a little bell near the ceiling rang one of them always dashed upstairs. He put a man upstairs to trace this bell and intercept the Belgian. It was connected with the little trap-door of a pigeon-house. When a pigeon came in with a message, this door rang the bell and they went up and got the message. They didn’t reckon on having British in the house. They were shot next morning.

  For the yeomanry their brief war of movement was over. As the year drew to a close ‘Christmas came and went, with its football matches and the informal armistice of the trenches; but in a few days the guns were barking as merrily as ever’. From now on they would live and fight from the trenches. As water was seldom more than 2 or 3 feet below the surface, even in comparatively dry seasons, the trenches were in most places a compromise:

  ‘A narrow, shallow ditch supplied the trench proper, above it to front and back were piled sandbags, usually in higgledy-piggledy manner … even if they were well laid the Boche gunner could be trusted to see that they did not long remain so. Rough traverses there were, very necessary when the Boche sniper commanded the flanks with enfilade fire.’ Beyond the parapet lay the wire, still in thin belts at this early stage ‘and continually preyed on by enemy trench mortars and shells’. Life within was far from agreeable: ‘Before the days of revetting wire and frames, of iron and timber, even of duckboards, the painfully constructed trench was at the mercy of the weather. A heavy shower even in the heat of summer would reduce the interior to a quagmire. In the height of winter, conditions were unspeakable. An endless winding ditch, filled with glutinous mud of extraordinary tenacity, led past the support trench to the firing line proper – a rather wide, deeper ditch and consequently with the greater depth of water, not infrequently waist high. There the infantry would pass their tour of duty, harassed by enemy snipers, who seemed inevitably to command the weakest points of the system, and to a shell-fire to which their own batteries, for very lack of ammunition, were unable to respond.’

  This was no life for a cavalryman.

  CHAPTER 2

  STALEMATE

  1915

  IF YOU TRAVEL TO YPRES TODAY, you will find a beautiful Flemish city of fine avenues, dominated by the grand and lofty bulk of the cloth hall, steep, red-tiled gables, surrounded by a mighty ring of Vauban walls, designed in the late 17th century with a view to keeping the English out. If you were unaware of the history of the place you could easily be forgiven for thinking the town largely unchanged over several centuries. In fact all that you behold is rebuilt, stone upon precious stone. So thorough, so unrelenting, so massive was the destruction wrought by German shells that the whole was virtually obliterated. Churchill wanted the shattered wreck left in 1918 as a fossilised memorial. The locals disagreed. Before the autumn of 1914, few in Britain had heard of the place. The names of nearly 55,000 British and Commonwealth dead, graves unknown, carved lovingly into the sepulchre of the Menin Gate, offer eloquent and silent testimony.

  The Salient

  Imagine a saucer and the city of Ypres in the depression, around a thin, barely noticeable ring of higher grou
nd to the east and south, like a gentle rim. That is the Ypres salient. He who holds the rim dominates the saucer. By 1915, it was the Germans. The British position was horribly exposed. Wet, low-lying Flanders (‘Flooded Land’) proved an uncomfortable and ungracious host. By the end of the first battle of Ypres, the Germans held not just the high ground to the east, ending in the village of Passchendaele, but also Hill 60, two miles southwest of the ruined city and the Wytschaete–Messines ridge further south.

  Field Marshal Lord Plumer at the unveiling of the Menin Gate memorial, 1927. (University of Victoria Libraries, Canada, via Wikimeadia Commons)

  Most historians date trench warfare proper from September 1915 as the retreating Germans began to dig in along the Chemin des Dames Ridge. From that point on the line swiftly began to solidify, from the North Sea to the Swiss border – 475 miles. By the end of 1915 estimates suggested each mile of front was amplified twenty times by the maze of trenches behind it. As the war ground on the scale increased. By 1918 the whole troglodyte network extended for some 25,000 miles.

  Digging in the heavy ground of Flanders got no deeper than a couple of feet before encountering the water table. Unable to dig, Tommy built a system of sandbag redoubts. The Germans referred to these as box trenches, their white zigzag scars running across the wet plain, a comfortingly easy target for their gunners. Their artillery would batter what was left of the carefully wrought system of water defences that held the hungry sea at bay, ratcheting up the misery quotient.