BEF Campaign on the Aisne 1914

by Jerry Murland

  Corporal John Lucy reached the railway bridge at 3.30pm with the rest of C Company of the Royal Irish Rifles, just as the German shell fire increased:

  ‘We were making for the railway bridge east of Vailly, which at that moment was being recrossed by an English regiment retiring out of action from the northern side of the river … As we approached the bridge we saw that it was completely wrecked; a tangled mass of ironwork, most of which was submerged, with a dead horse held against it by the current, and only a line of single planks, which sagged in the middle, as a means of getting over.’113

  Lucy felt the whole business of getting over the river was, ‘a nasty proposition’, remarking angrily that a shrapnel bullet had penetrated his haversack and torn into a folded towel inside. Reforming, his unit followed the 1st Battalion Wiltshire Regiment (1/Wilts) – which had crossed before – up towards the St Précord spur and as the battalion moved steadily uphill and came within range of the enemy the casualties began to accumulate, ‘a good many men were knocked out, but we did not miss them in the excitement’. The German riflemen, thought Lucy, were generally rotten shots:

  ‘Their rifles cracked sharply now, and the whistle and whine of bullets passing wide changed to the startling bangs of bullets just missing one. The near rattle of machine guns sent our hearts thumping … Our own shells were bursting a short distance ahead, just beyond the crest line clearly visible to us. This line marked the near edge of a large plateau, and as we made it in a last rush we found this plateau edge forming a small continuous cliff of chalk giving good protection from bullets and fair cover from shell fire.’114

  24-year-old Lieutenant Gerald Lowry was a platoon commander in C Company of the Irish Rifles and despite his diary account being inaccurate in places, he recalled:

  ‘We had a splendid fight that day, taking the hill and the wood on its summit before evening. The position was at the Maison Rouge Farm … our flank here swung round into a wood, and we lined a bank fronting a stubble field which led upward at a gentle slope.’115

  The Irish Rifles had established themselves on the left of the Wiltshires and as the remainder of 7 Brigade crossed the river, 8 Brigade fell back to the southern edge of the Jouy spur. Fortunately for the BEF the line was now relatively stable, there was no German counter attack and the British guns on the heights at Chassemy finally managed to get into action. 130/Battery fired some 200 rounds at enemy infantry on the Ostel spur and 48/Heavy Battery did have some success in silencing machine gun positions near Folemprise Farm, although it was probably this battery which fired on D Company of the Royal Irish Rifles after their advance in the afternoon. However, other artillery units such as XL Brigade on the Brenelle plateau and XLII Brigade, east of Chassemy, failed to come into action all day.

  The 600 or so rifles which 5 Cavalry Brigade could have mustered were never called into action. The two pages of the 12/Lancers regimental history devoted to the fighting on the Aisne merely mentions that after being, ‘pushed across at Vailly’, they were, ‘unable to debouch and had a most unpleasant return passage across the two canal bridges’. Quite why they were not deployed to shore up the line is anyone’s guess – the Official History rather lamely explains they were not required as the situation had improved, but at least they were kept in reserve with the Greys until the situation above Vailly had been stabilized. The 20/Hussars on the other hand did an immediate turnabout on reaching the village after being told they were not needed. John Darling again:

  ‘Once more we had to face the ordeal of leading over [the bridge] in single file under heavy shell fire. By now the Boche had got the range pretty well, and it became an unpleasant manoeuvre, especially for the last squadron, B. The marvel is that we did not lose more men. The total casualties in the regiment were only ten.’116

  One suspects that the infantry battalions of the 3rd Division which had been engaged that day above Vailly would have been only too glad to report ten casualties.

  The fighting on the 14th was concluded with an unsuccessful night attack on the British line at 10.00pm, an attack which Alexander Johnston was made aware of by the rifle and machine-gun fire which resounded, ‘all along the line for some time’. Although Johnston, who had been commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment in 1903, was on the staff of 7 Brigade, many of the comments he makes in his diary reflect his infantry pedigree and background and one suspects he would preferred to have been on the firing line rather than within the relative safety of brigade headquarters. He was clearly concerned about the outcome of this attack, writing, ‘it was a nasty situation as one cannot tell in the dark what strength we are up against’.

  Overall it had been a frustratingly difficult day, a day which had begun in anticipation of a general advance and for the 3rd Division one which almost ended in disaster. As the rattling of rifle fire died away in the darkness the line held by the division traced a rough semi-circle around Vailly. The position was hardly secure; the gap between the 3rd and 2nd Divisions was only covered by outposts and there was still uncertainty as to the intentions of the German Army. Johnstone’s diary entry for 14 September merely stated what most of his contemporaries were thinking, ‘this is no rearguard action we are fighting now but I should say is part of a big attempt by the Germans to hold the line of the Aisne’.

  Dawn on 15 September was again wet and cold and for the Royal Irish Rifles – established a little to the south of La Rouge Maison Farm – the morning began with a scouting patrol of D Company under the command of Lieutenant Charles Dawes. Lieutenant Colonel Wilkinson Bird was anxious to discover the exact whereabouts of the enemy and it wasn’t long before Dawes’ patrol found them just below the crest. A sharp fire fight ensued during which one man was killed and Dawes and another wounded before they retired under fire. Not content with the outcome, and still unsure as to whether the enemy had retired or not, Bird ordered A and C Companies to advance. Gerald Lowry was with them:

  ‘There was practically no cover, and the ground was hard and bare, so we proceeded by short rushes. The Germans were, however, waiting for us, and when we got to within a few hundred yards of their line they opened a perfect hail of machine-gun and rifle fire and shrapnel – a veritable tornado of flying, shrieking metal, well directed. Part of the company on our left got into the first line of German trenches, but was ultimately compelled to retire, as it was obvious that not only were the Germans dug in, but were in full force. Captain Bowen-Colhurst, who commanded this reconnaissance, was badly wounded in the assault, whilst two officers117 were killed and half the men killed or wounded; the machine-gun and shrapnel played havoc amongst us as we were getting back across the open valley.’118

  The Lincolns, we are told, returned to Vailly and after spending the night of 14 September in the village square, ‘marched to the top of the hill again and were kept in support the whole of the day, and at dusk lay alongside the road’. This was presumably the minor road which still runs northeast from Vailly towards La Rouge Maison Farm.

  It was now clear that the Germans were no longer retiring and any notion that they were purely on the defensive was dispelled by another attack on the British line at 5.00pm, an attack the Irish Rifles’ war diary tells us, ‘ceased about 9.15pm’.119 The battalion war diary does not record the casualties sustained between 14 and 15 September but during the eight days following their arrival on the spur the battalion lost 3 officers and 44 other ranks killed and 12 officers wounded along with 226 other ranks. It was a similar story with the other battalions, over the two days they had been in action the Royal Fusiliers lost 5 officers and nearly 200 other ranks killed, wounded or missing and the Northumberland Fusiliers had 3 officers killed and 9 wounded together with 5 other ranks killed and over 85 wounded. The Royal Scots Fusiliers, who had been brought up to support 9 Brigade, lost 8 killed, 67 wounded and recorded 90 of their men as missing.

  Casualties from the fighting on the spurs above Vailly were brought down to the advanced dressing station established by 8/Field Amb
ulance in the twelfth century church which bordered the village square. Lieutenant Henry Robinson’s diary provides a detailed and rather distressing account of his stay in the village:

  ‘We went northward through the main street of Vailly, in which many of the houses were burning, and up to the Brigadier’s office (sic) at the north end of the town. Here we found an empty house which we broke into, and after establishing the men in the shelter of a very high bank, we went to sleep in the house. This would have been about 2 or 3 am on September 15th. Soon after dawn we were roused by firing, and found bullets were coming through the walls of the house we were in, so we beat a hasty retreat, and took over a dressing station in the church and in some neighbouring buildings.’120

  The village had suffered a good deal from German shelling but fortunately it was only the lower end of the town near the river which bore the brunt of this so far, the northern end, which included the church, was still under the lee of the steep, high ground of the Ostel spur behind. It wasn’t until after 15 September that the church and the square were shelled. Robinson was the medical officer with responsibility for the casualties brought to the church:

  ‘I, more or less, took charge of the church, though others used to come and assist whenever they had a spare moment … The scene in that church was one which defies all description. It was a large church for the size of the town, and the whole of the floor space was covered with mattresses; we even had to place them on the altar steps. Wounded men, covered in mud and blood were everywhere, and space was so precious that we could not even keep gangways through the rows of mattresses. To get to our patients we had to step over others. Many of the wounds were very serious, and my bottle of morphia was in constant request, in fact it was soon empty and I got a fresh stock from a chemist in the town … During the three nights I spent in Vailly I slept altogether about five hours. Fresh batches of wounded were coming in all hours of the day and night, and the work was absolutely incessant.’121

  As with the casualties at Bucy-le-Long, it was not until nightfall each evening that the wounded could be moved across the pontoon bridge and onto the ambulance trains waiting to transport them to Braine. Parties of stretcher bearers from 7/and 8/Field Ambulance were sent across the river each evening and all those wounded who were able to be moved were carried or assisted to walk down through the town and over the river. The Germans of course were well aware of this nocturnal evacuation and shelled the bridge on average every twenty minutes; this led to a deadly game of chance as the bearers waited for the interval between each shell to traverse the bridge. ‘But if one happened to be going down with wounded to the bridge and no shell had come for a good many minutes’, wrote Robinson, ‘there was always a chance of catching one just as the bearers got to the bridge’.

  Many of the casualties were the result of German shell fire which subjected the troops to some quite horrific injuries, some of which Henry Robinson and his doctor colleagues knew instinctively to be fatal. In the early months of the war the absence of the clear-cut triage process which was adopted later by casualty clearing stations, often placed medical officers working in forward dressing stations such as Vailly with difficult professional dilemmas:

  ‘A soldier was taken into Dr Lancry’s house suffering from a horrible wound of the abdomen. A piece of his abdominal wall about as big as a pudding plate had been shot clean away, and one could see two or three broken ribs, a large piece of his liver, large intestine, small intestine, and omentum122 in the cavity. Although men have recovered many times in this war from wounds which apparently must have been fatal, in this case it was indisputable that recovery was totally out of the question. I advised that the man should be given a poisonous dose of morphia at once; I was overruled, and the man lingered on for two or three days occupying a bed which had better have been given to somebody less seriously wounded.’123

  Whereas Robinson makes the point that no doctor is justified in deliberately killing a patient, he felt in those circumstances that the man, who was unconscious the entire time, could have been treated in what he terms as a more humane and defensible manner.

  On 17 September, two of the hard-worked trio of medical officers were relieved and Robinson and his colleague Lieutenant Greenfield were sent back to Braine, to be followed shortly afterwards by Major Raymond Foster. Over the course of the brief period that Robinson had been at Vailly, nearly 500 wounded officers and men had been successfully evacuated: 11 officers and 238 other ranks on the night of 15 September and another 6 officers and 241 other ranks the following night. Under the circumstances the medics had every right to feel proud of their efforts.

  Chapter 8

  The Right Flank – 2nd Division

  His death salute was the artillery thunder, Praise be to God for such an Englishman.

  Edward Tennant – written in memory of Percy Wyndham.

  We left the bulk of Fielding’s 4 (Guards) Brigade south of the river on the night of 13 September leaving 5 Infantry Brigade, including 2/Connaught Rangers, in position on the north bank. The Connaughts subsequently moved up to La Cour de Soupir Farm arriving at 5.50am on 14 September, more of which later. GHQ operational orders for 14 September – issued at 6.00pm the previous evening – anticipated a general advance on the right flank over the Chemin des Dames with the advanced units of the BEF occupying a line from Laon in the east to Suzy, some 6 miles to the west. 2nd Division orders for the morning of the 14th were for 6 Infantry Brigade and the guns of XXXIV Brigade to form the advance guard under the command of Brigadier General Richard Davies and cross the Aisne at Pont-Arcy at 5.00am to press forward through the 5 Brigade outpost line which had been established north of Moussy. The Guards Brigade was to cross by the same pontoon bridge at 7.00am together with the XXXVI Brigade batteries and advance through Soupir village and up the Soupir spur, followed by the remainder of the division. Like so many plans it looked good on paper and at one point in the day it appeared as though it might just succeed.

  Despite being at the bridge on time, the four battalions of 6 Brigade did not complete their crossing until 8.00am, the narrow pontoon bridge put across by 5/Field Company only just able to cope with the large number of troops and artillery batteries. Commanding a section of the 71/Battery guns was Lieutenant Arthur Griffith, who was relieved to find there was no shelling during the crossing, ‘owing, no doubt, to the thick mist’, he thought. The last men of 1/Royal Berks were clear of the bridge by 5.00 am and advancing up the valley towards Braye-en-Laonnois with two companies of 1/KRRC on each flank. No doubt Lieutenant Colonel Edward Northey, commanding the KRRC, felt a little uneasy about splitting his battalion but complying with orders, detailed B and C Companies under Captain Frank Willan to the right with instructions to maintain contact with 5 Brigade and A and D Companies under Major Edward Armitage to the left of La Bovette Wood to get in touch with the Guards. The Braye valley also hosts the l’Oise à l’Aisne Canal, this waterway – running north-south through the centre of the 6 Brigade advance – cuts into the main ridge of the Chemin des Dames just south of Braye and effectively bisects the valley. Lieutenant Alan Hanbury-Sparrow had a clear picture of the ground as he advanced with the Berkshires towards La Metz Farm:

  ‘Immediately on our west hand lies the Oise-Aisne Canal crossed by a small bridge at the large Ferme de Metz, and this is to be our right boundary. Beyond it is the country road running north and south, along which a few refugees are hastening. After a cannonade of some duration we move down towards this bridge, and see for the first time shells exploding in enormous clouds of black smoke – eleven inch, as we afterwards learn. As we approach, a young woman dragging a child by each hand rushes out of the farm and with terrified countenance scurries down the road.’124

  At around 9.00am the forward company of the Berkshires had reached a line running eastwest of Le Moulin Brulé – about halfway between Moussy and Braye – when their advance was checked by heavy shell and rifle fire from both the Chemin des Dames ridge and the wooded are
as on the sides of the valley.125 The delay in responding to the enemy fire suggests that the brigade had been, to some extent, taken aback by its intensity and while the 1st Battalion King’s Liverpool Regiment (1/King’s) was brought forward on the Berkshires’ right, the XXXIV Brigade guns were hurriedly brought into action on the southern slopes of the Moussy spur. Thus reinforced, the 6 Brigade attack was launched at 10.30am with 1/King’s on the east side of the canal and the Berkshires on the western side, flanked by the KRRC on the edges of the two spurs bordering the valley.

  The attack was badly organized and hurriedly launched before the troops on the Moussy spur had time to get into position; the Berkshires advancing up the valley soon outstripped the King’s who in turn found themselves ahead of the KRRC flank companies. Hanbury-Sparrow’s account is almost breathless with tension as he describes his platoon’s forward movement:

  ‘Advance then with a rush! Down! Again! Down! Still no sight of the enemy, still this fire. You are on the crest of a small billow of ground. Fifty yards ahead the canal, bordered by leafy trees, turns left handed and crosses your front. Advance by section rushes to the canal. Get on, Corporal, damn you! You are on the edge of the canal, concealed by its border of trees. The Germans are no longer firing at you. In fact their infantry seem to have ceased fire altogether. For the first time since the advance started you are able to look around undistracted by acute fear.’126

  The sector given to the King’s was from the canal to the top of the Moussy spur, Lieutenant William Synge in B Company remembered the attack was, ‘arranged on the map’ and the, ‘factor of time prevented a systematic reconnaissance of the position’. Synge and his company were tasked with taking les Grelines Farm which lay in the valley below the final slope up to the Chemin des Dames: