by E. W. Hermon
28th September 1915 – bivouac at ‘Smelly Farm’
If you send me such nice letters I shall have to send you a present once a week. Lass darling, in the midst of all this awful death & destruction a letter like your 157 with your thanks for the coat just makes life bearable.
The fighting here these last three days & nights has been desperate & many a splendid officer who I knew so well only a few days ago I shall never see again. Our Div. has done grandly & the only fly is that tho’ right up among it we haven’t been actually engaged, tho’ last night I was sent for as had things been as we hoped I expect we should have seen enough fighting by this morning to have lasted a lifetime.
Please send me my thick undies. The cold last night was bitter & we are still out under a haystack. Rained like Hades all night. However I am very well & enjoying life so far as is possible under the circumstances.
There is no doubt we have given the old Boche something to think about these last few days & took nine guns & several Maxims from him. Poor old Goochie, it’s terrible losing him but one can’t moralize one must just be callous or one couldn’t go on. I hope to go up to Loos today & try & catch a few Huns in the cellars there. It’s too cold to write much more.
THAT SAME DAY Major Hermon received a signal ordering him to clear Loos of war material – shells, rifles, bombs, etc. He took with him Lieutenant MacKinnon and a party of six men on the hazardous mission into Loos – which was still partly under German control.
On 30 September, Robert received a second signal:
Following have been detailed to meet you at 6 p.m. tonight at eastern end of MAROC at G33.d.s.o aaa 8 G.S. wagons and pairs under an officer from 47th Div. Train aaa 3 pairs of horses with harness to bring back 3 limbered wagons G.S. and one team of 4 horses with harness to bring back loaded limbered toolcart RE and one pair of horses with harness to bring back one empty wagon from 47th Div. Arty aaa. These horses and wagons are not to be used beyond LES BREBIS on return journey.
THE SQUADRON RODE to Maroc and then marched into Loos to continue the removal of war material. The War Diary records: ‘No casualties’. During this time Robert wrote to his wife using field postcards, crossing out the lines ‘I have been admitted into hospital, sick, wounded, I am being sent down to the base’, leaving only the phrases as below. If anything personal was added these cards would be destroyed by the censors at the Field Post Office.
30th September 1915 – field postcard
I am quite well.
I have received your letter dated 159.
Letter follows at first opportunity.
Robert. 30.9.15 – 9 a.m.
2nd October 1915 – bivouac at Gosnay
My Darling,
I will try now and give you as good a description of the events of the last ten days as I can as my time for writing up to now has been meagre in the extreme. We are snatching a day or two’s rest now & are welcoming it after a rather strenuous time.
The bombardment commenced on Tuesday the 21st Sept and continued for the rest of the week, day & night incessantly, until Saturday morning. At about 5.30 a.m. on Saturday we loosed off the gas & it went rolling away opposite us over the German lines, & was, opposite our front, very successful but in some parts of the line it came back instead of going forward & was far more hindrance than help.
About half an hour later the assault began and our infantry leaped out of their trenches & rushed across, swept over the German front line & on to the second. I learnt from prisoners that they had expected the attack & had been standing to arms all night. In the morning the wind not being right for the gas, the attack was delayed for some time after daylight and thinking that we were not going to attack they went back to their second line, took off their equipment and began breakfast – it was just at this time that our attack was launched.
At 10.15 a.m. I took over the first batch of prisoners consisting of 1 officer and 10 men & after that they came in thick and fast, as I was collecting them from three Divisions, until by Monday night I had handled 33 officers and just over 1,600 men. I kept these & sent them off to railhead under escort of two troops of ‘tins’ who were detailed for the purpose. It is these prisoners who are referred to in the enclosed D.M. [Daily Mail] account. The 500 already entrained I sent off from L21d, on Sat night & the 750 on Sunday morning.
We were all naturally very tired at getting a job of this sort, which tho’ useful & necessary was far from being what we wanted. However, I was sent for & told that I was to prepare at once to be ready to be employed in my true role,9 I was dragged out of bed for this & returned highly excited, but unfortunately things didn’t eventuate & it fell through. The next time I was sent for I was detailed as per enclosed telegram of 28th.
I had a motor placed at my disposal & came back to camp, stuffed my pockets with food & taking with me two of my best ‘toughs’ I went to H.Q., picked up my other officers & we started off to Loos in the car. We went through the Marocs & then across the open where we had made some very rough bridges across ours & the German trenches & half way to Loos we thought it advisable to leave the car & walk. It was now about 9 p.m. & we walked on to Loos. It wasn’t very pleasant. A modern battlefield is not pleasant I can assure [you]. The dead of both sides were lying very thick on the ground.
Loos itself is at present very close to the German line, & it is a place on which they concentrate a good deal of their heavy artillery & in fact all their artillery have a blow at it when there is nothing else to do. Buchan had been in Loos all day & had got three guns & a Maxim out in the street already & so we got them hitched to the limbers we had brought with us & sent them off. Buchan was wet to the skin & completely worn out & so I sent him home in the car. Meanwhile Mac & his troop had arrived to help me.
The first thing I did was to scout about among the houses for a really good cellar where we could be reasonably safe. You would have laughed if you could have seen me creeping down the steps with a revolver in one hand and my electric torch in the other but the late occupants had left & we had great fun going through their equipment & getting ‘souvenirs’. We then left our kit there & proceeded on our duty. There were two guns in a chalk pit in M 6-A on the Lens road about 300 yds from the then German front line & close to Hill 70. I am glad to say we got them both out and ran them by hand down the road to Loos where two limbers were waiting, hooked them in and sent them off. All these guns are on view today near here, for the men of the Div. to go & see. By this time we were all pretty beat so we retired to our cellar to sleep. There were three feather beds in one of the cellars & Mac & I slept in one, the old Baron who most gallantly came with us on the other, & two men on the third – the rest of Mac’s men being in the other cellar & two on sentry.
In the morning we got up & the men began nosing around & soon found a shop & some women. They made us coffee & we had some breakfast in the rooms upstairs. We had just finished when a huge shell came into the house wrecked two rooms & covered the remains of our meal with so much brickdust & mortar that it quite spoilt the butter we had got which was an awful blow. Incidentally it smashed one of my men’s rifles to pieces. We then split up into parties and began to search the town for guns & amm & stores of all sorts.
The town is just about the same size as Cuckfield10 with what remains of the church in a big square in the centre. Throughout the previous night & all through the day shells were arriving at the most alarming rate, twice the previous night I had escaped by the skin of my teeth – one shell passed only a few feet over my head & completely demolished the house on the other side of the street, & we were all covered with falling bits of bricks & mortar. The shells are bad enough in the open but when ever you are out in the street & you have the houses falling all around you it is absolute hell. Loos is about the most unhealthy spot you can imagine just at present. I don’t mind admitting I was terrified.
We spent the whole day going round collecting things & then went & laid low till dark & waited for the wagons & horses to come & ta
ke the stuff away. What with shells & stumbling over dead Germans we were getting a bit worn out. Then just before the wagons came the Boche succeeded in putting a ‘Jack Johnson’ right in the middle of the road & the only road we could use. It made a crater 8 feet deep and 20 feet across & as it was between two houses it was impossible to get a wagon across. I was by then completely worn out & so when the wagons came I sent them back & we all walked back to our camp.
On the 29th we had the house brought down on us three times during the day with very heavy shells & the poor women who I told you made us coffee had nine rooms in their house when we arrived and when we left they had only half a kitchen left & a cellar. One shell that hit our house brought a big four-post feather bed out of the upstairs room & put it in the dining room only to be shortly covered up by the rest of the upstairs storeys coming down on top of it.
OK! there was sufficient excitement in Loos to last a lifetime. We evacuated over 80 women & kids running in ages from 87 to 3 & all the women are out now I am glad to say. When we arrived they begged & cried to be allowed to remain in their homes, but our friends, after losing seven out of their nine rooms, said they would go. If it wasn’t so unutterably sad it would have been ludicrous if you could have seen me at dead of night, with the aid of a small boy of Bob’s size pushing a pram full of ‘lares and penates’11 through thick mud, with old Pongo cursing a poor old donkey with twice as much in the cart as he could pull, who was stuck in the mud at one of the bridges over the trenches.
Five or six old women all shouting directions & making enough noise to get us all shelled like Hades. Then another old girl upset her pram and all the lares went into the mud & then they had got cows tied on behind their carts. My darling old girl when you have seen scenes such as I have seen these last few days it makes one’s blood boil to think one belongs to a nation amongst whose population there exist male beings, I can’t call them men, who could come & yet do not come.
Never as long as I live will I employ a man married or single who was of military age & who didn’t come, when he could. The very thought of Pike makes me so angry I can hardly sit still when one sees men wounded, lying on the ground in mud so deep they can hardly keep from suffocating. The Govt simply crying for motor ambulance drivers & repairers. Talking of ambulances the Ford cars were practically the only ones that could cope with the mud & get to Loos to evacuate the wounded. They are magnificent.
I have seen some cavalry lately & have had the shock of my life when I realized that compared with my squadron they were awful. The very best of our regiments have been here & I was ashamed that my men should see the Cavalry that I have always held up to them as an ideal. Their horses look awful.
You ask if the ‘excitements’ make me feel shaky. Well to start with I didn’t mind them a bit & tho’ not liking I didn’t feel them so much, but the man who says he likes shells is a damned liar. Well of course my first 24 hours in Loos was beastly. I had to meet a man there to show me where the guns were. He was in such a state of nerves that I had to send him back, he had certainly had a bad day there & there was every excuse, then I had another fellow with me who was too awful too & he kept on explaining to me all the time that it wasn’t that he was really a funk, but that it was his nerves. I must say that at the end of the time I was myself feeling pretty much the same. I simply hated the idea of going near the beastly place again & when I had to go on the 30th I disliked it very much.
However this time I only had my own men & officers to deal with & whether it was that or because I had so much to do I don’t know, but I never felt a qualm the whole evening. I was very frightened about myself as I didn’t at all relish the idea of my nerve not standing the strain & was simply delighted when I found my fears to be groundless so far.
There is no doubt that you don’t know what is in a man till you try him & one of the most unpromising of my pupils at the Bomb School, from appearances only, died most gallantly trying to rally some men under very heavy fire, on Saturday. He was the poorest thing to look at, sort of mediocre village school master.
Our farm was certainly well within range of the German guns & a man was killed while we were there while the horses of a battery were watering at our trough & one or two other men camped close to us. I am afraid old dear that you poor women who sit at home have a bad time. The waiting and anxiety are worse than the up & doing. Yes, please send me the air bed & I will try it.
With regard to the prisoners, there were some very fine men among them, they were well clothed, & well fed, & many brought bread, brown sort of wholemeal bread which I tasted & it wasn’t half bad. Two boys said they were only 16 but the tales of them being in rags & starving is the greatest rot & one store in Loos was simply piled with the very best food you ever saw. Tinned salmon, very good fresh vegetables, tea, coffee & everything you can think of. There wasn’t what you would call an old man among them. The German officers weren’t Hunnish a bit & I talked to some but not much. I talked to the men most. I had one or two very good interpreters.
Mac is without doubt the best boy I have & is one of the very best subalterns I ever met. Old Steve is certainly the next best & is a very good officer. Pongo, conscientious to the bone, but oh so slow & has not the initiative of a sausage. Can’t do anything without having to ask one a thousand questions & always got yards of excuses for every little thing that goes wrong but he is doing alright & is a great tryer but he is too old to be a subaltern & hasn’t the knowledge to be anything else. Tulloch12 will be really good, he has great initiative and plenty of self-confidence.
I wrote & asked for Tulloch & [Major] James worked it alright for me. I had a splendid letter from old Bet today, really top-hole. What do you think of the enclosed drawing done by a French officer on the Div. Staff, just from memory as he has only seen me about four or five times & then only in the office. I’ve nearly written myself silly dearie.
My love to you all,
Ever your Robert.
4th October 1915 – Chartreuse, near Gosnay
We have had it bitter cold & wet today & tho’ we have been in a house it hasn’t seemed much warmer than outside. It is on these sort of days that one longs for home & the whole thing to be over & done with beyond words.
I must say that I have very great hope of this winter. I think that by April & May they will be in a very different position & I shouldn’t even now be surprised to see the whole thing collapse. I think the Russians will soon begin to bother them like anything now & if winter catches them where they are, Napoleon’s retreat will be nothing to it. Everything is in our favour – time especially, & it is now merely a question of waiting on for the final bump.
I am afraid this is an awful ‘pessim’ tonight dearie mine but I want comforting tonight more than I have done before & I should so love to be home with you that I hardly dare let myself think of it.
Best love my dear,
Ever your Robert.
1 Their fifth child was due in November.
2 German Zeppelins had again attacked London on 7 and 8 September, causing a huge fire in the City of London and damage in Holborn and Bloomsbury. Anti-aircraft barrages and searchlights were subsequently deployed around the capital.
3 The woodland garden in West Sussex laid out by Sir Leonard Loder in 1889, renowned for its rhododendrons and azaleas, and wild wallabies that were introduced to the park over a hundred years ago.
4 Sergeant Kock was a South African NCO in K.E.H. of Boer descent
5 Guy Hermon-Hodge, his cousin, son of Baron Wyfold, later Lord Wyfold.
6 General Barter, the GOC, congratulated them on ‘the excellent way in which the entrenching work called for from your squadron has been carried out. The C.R.E. reports upon the work & methods as exceptionally good – please inform all ranks.’
7 The fur coat.
8 Vio was his sister-in-law.
9 As divisional cavalry.
10 In Sussex.
11 ‘Household goods’, roughly translated from the L
atin.
12 Lieutenant H. M. Tulloch.
A VISIT FROM THE KING
DURING OCTOBER THE French continued to gain ground in the Champagne area, with the British and French holding the front at Loos after a German counter-attack on the 8th – reported by Robert as ‘very heavy gunning’ in his letter of that date. ‘C’ Squadron were now in reserve after their exertions in support of the Loos attack. For the next few weeks they shuttled between a bivouac at Gosnay, and billets in Chartreuse, Haillicourt and Noeux-les-Mines.
5th October 1915 – Chartreuse, near Gosnay
My darling old girl,
Dearie, our old friend Freddie Wing1 has been killed, he was standing behind a wall with his A.D.C. & an absolute chance shell came through the wall & killed them both.
I have just got your 164. Loos as you say showed one quite enough & it is most amusing, every single soul you meet who has been in there says he hopes he will never go there again & that it was quite as bad as Ypres at its worst.
The cold has been beastly & even last night in a house it was bitter. I will let you know about the marmalade as soon as we have tried it.
There is no doubt old dear that once one has started this game it does make it hard to come home to all one’s comforts & dear ones and then to start all over again because thank God one forgets out here that one has belongings of any sort at times. One couldn’t carry on, I don’t think, if one lets oneself think too much. However, if things quieten down for the winter later on perhaps I may be able to come home for a bit, & if Benjamin has arrived it will be too lovely – but I shall hate leaving it all again. Darling mine you must arrange to send a wire with the announcement to The Times as we get the papers here before we get wires or letters so that is the quickest way I could hear.
