They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  The first night we took the rations up was the night of the fourteenth. In normal times the rations included things like bacon and bread, beans, a ration of cigarettes and tobacco and, of course, the post – all the letters and parcels that had arrived for the Tommies since they’d gone into the line. But at Passchendaele that wasn’t possible. We packed the sandbags with tins of bully-beef and tins of ration stew, and biscuits and sometimes a tin of jam for each platoon. There was water in two-gallon petrol tins and whatever happened, you didn’t forget the rum. The transport men loaded the sandbags on to the pack animals and then the Captain Quartermaster called the roll. ‘A Company?’ ‘Here, sir.’ ‘B Company?’ ‘C Company?’ ‘D Company?’ ‘Here, sir.’

  We set off with the Transport Officer taking the lead at the head of the convoy. It was raining, and we all had capes over our uniforms and gas respirators at the ready.

  We were just turning on to the road when a shell came right down on the cobbles of the road and knocked half a dozen of us flying. One horse was completely knocked out. When we picked ourselves up it was lying spreadeagled all over the road, and the rations it was carrying had gone too. But it had shielded us from the blast, so we reformed the convoy and made for a fascine track on the right that led to Zillebeke through the flooded area where the gun batteries were sited. Going through them, the shrapnel and high explosives were falling so fast that you could hardly hear yourself speak. They were mainly salvoes of high shrapnel shells which burst on impact with the ground and sent shrapnel all over the area, covering it like an umbrella. You could hear the swish of the fragments splashing into the water beyond the track. When we got past the guns the track came to an end.

  We had a terrible time trying to find our way to Zillebeke. We knew we had to get there because the track ran from there up to Sanctuary Wood, but it was almost impossible. We spent about two hours going here and going there and getting into wrong positions and having to come back again. We had about half a dozen horses that were very badly wounded indeed, and the Transport Officer was very concerned, because horses are highly valued. It cost ten pounds for a horse, only a shilling a day for a man. He said, ‘The horses are tired and a lot of them are wounded and we must get them back for treatment if we possibly can, so we’ll dump the rations, and Pin-combe and Reuter will stay here and sit on them until dawn. Will you do that?’ So the Company Quartermaster Sergeant and myself said, ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Very well,’ said the Major, ‘and when it gets light you’ll be able to find the battalion and distribute the rations in your own time as you find things.’ Then they went off. ‘Goodnight,’ said the Major, ‘and the best of good fortune to you both.’

  We sat or lay on the dump all night, with a grandstand view of the shooting match on either side. When the morning broke I went across a bit of a rise in the country and there you could see Sanctuary Wood, quite near. There was no foliage there and from the back we could see the men just sitting about in broken trenches and shell-holes, some of them having a smoke, and we very soon got the rations brought forward and left them with the Orderly Corporal and his party to distribute them to the four companies. The men were all very quiet and calm. They were resting because they were going to make the attack on Glencorse Wood the following dawn.

  The 1st Queen’s Westminsters were to take part in the attack to clear Glencorse Wood and carry on to Polygon. This time it was up to the 56th Division to succeed where things had gone so badly wrong for the 18th and the 30th sixteen days previously. There had already been some attempts to clear Glencorse, none of them successful. D Company was to be in the forefront of the attack, leaving two companies in reserve, and one company further back in support. And they were part of a strong force of London regiments. Rifleman George Winterbourne, aged twenty but a veteran of several battles, was just as pleased not to be going across in the first wave. D Company of the 1st Queen’s Westminsters were to be moppers-up, taking care of trouble-spots after the first and second waves had gone on, and consolidating and straightening the line. The line had already been moved slightly forward, for the jumping-off point was Jargon Trench, the place from which Jeff Werner had started off in the counter-attack on 31 July and walked straight into the sights of Nick Lee’s machine-gun. Jargon Trench lay half-way up the rise between Surbiton Villas and Glencorse Wood, and it was now in the possession of the British.

  Rifleman G. E. Winterbourne, No. 551237, 1st Btn., Queen’s Westminster Rifles

  We crept up the night before just after dark, but Jargon Trench was so broken up by shell-fire from previous attacks that we lay out in shell-holes at the back, and what a night that was! When the dawn came, the first wave went over and we could see what had been doing the damage. There was a pillbox in front, and I don’t know what guns they had in it but they were covering a vast front, and as soon as you appeared they had you. We watched these London Rifle Brigade chaps going for it and dropping all over the place, but they bombed and they bombed, and eventually the machine-guns stopped and about a hundred Germans came out. They sent them back towards our lines and our infantry moved off, so it was time for us to go.

  We got up and moved on, over this broken-up Jargon Trench and on up the slope. Beyond the trench it was soft going, but it seemed to be perfectly good ground – as good as any ground was around there at that time. All of a sudden I put one foot down and the next moment I was through the earth and in a bog up to my armpits. Well, our blokes were moving on so fast they didn’t see what had happened. I was there absolutely on my own and sinking deeper and deeper, because the more I struggled, trying to get one leg up to get myself out, the deeper I went in. Fortunately the next wave came up and two runners of the 2nd London Fusiliers saw me and stopped. They got on either side and held out their rifles and that gave me some purchase to get out. There was no good shouting for help because there was so much racket going on and shells bursting all around that no one would have heard you. But I was lucky. My goodness, I was lucky! And I realised it a little later on. The two chaps who’d rescued me had to get on with the attack, so they left me and I hurried on to catch up with my lot.

  They were held up, and we hadn’t even got into the wood yet. We were going through all this awful ground that was just lakes of shell-holes filled up with water, with Jerry trenchboards here and there. In a lull in the shelling we heard cries, and there was a poor chap about fifty or sixty yards away. He was absolutely up to his arms in it, and he’d been there for four days and nights – ever since the last attack – and he was still alive, clinging on to the root of a tree in the side of this shell-hole full of liquid mud. Lieutenant Whitby took three men over to see if they could get him out. But they couldn’t get any purchase on the ground because it was all soggy round about. The more they pulled, the more they sank in themselves. Eventually, from somewhere or other, they got a rope, got it under his armpits and were just fixing up a derrick to see if they could hoist him out of it when we had to move on, because there was trouble up in front. All we could do was leave a man behind to look after him. It was another twenty-four hours before he was rescued.

  A mile behind, Joe Pincombe was coming up the Menin Road with the rations.

  Corporal J. Pincombe, No. 40045, 1st Btn., Queen’s Westminster Rifles

  We had to go through Ypres and up the Menin Road, because the battalion was in Glencorse Wood. The Menin Road was the artery of the battlefield. It was an extraordinary panorama, half frightening, half exciting. Everywhere, as far as you could see, there were spurts of earth from shells bursting and bursts of shrapnel and high explosive and men looking like ants in the distance. But as we got nearer we could see that they were stretcher-bearers coming through the mud to bring the wounded out. They were up to their knees in it, wallowing in it, struggling up carrying their stretchers to the field dressing-stations at the roadside. We could see doctors and orderlies outside, working in their shirtsleeves, even in the rain, and everywhere, all over the road and shoved to the side, were broken wagons, gun ca
rriages and dead horses. You couldn’t speak, the gunfire was so terrific, but you don’t really hear the explosions individually – you just see them going off like geysers shooting up in the air. As far as you could see in front of you and to either side, there was nothing but mud, mud, mud for miles and just a few stumps of trees here and there and all hell let loose all around you. It was the first time I’d been out in the field when a battle was going on, and it was absolutely awe-inspiring.

  Just as we passed Hellfire Corner we came on a young chap. Just about eighteen, I should think. He was staggering all over the road. Didn’t know where he was, didn’t know what he was doing, just walking back. I called to him, ‘Chummy!’ He didn’t answer and I could see he was absolutely dazed and very disturbed. I also knew that we’d passed a Provost Marshal just a few yards behind. He was there to pick up deserters or spies or any strangers who shouldn’t be there when there was an attack going on. And I realised that if this chap carried on on his own and was taken up by the police, it could be very serious for him. So I grabbed hold of him and said, ‘You come with me.’ He didn’t know what he was doing and it was obvious that he was shellshocked. We walked behind the limber, and as soon as I saw one of these stretcher-bearers near by, because they were knocking about all over the road, I said to him, ‘Now here, take this chap and look after him. Take him to the dressing-station there.’ That made it official, so I knew the lad would be all right. He was from one of the battalions righting in Glencorse and he must have turned and run. I don’t know how he’d got that far. But I was pleased that I’d got hold of him, because I’d been in the line myself and, also, I used to write battalion orders on the Somme and almost every week there were men shot. The orders were to be read out to the troops, to stiffen them up. That’s why they shoot the men not just to take their lives, but as an example to stiffen the troops.

  I handed the lad over to the RAMC Sergeant, and I knew he’d be all right, so we pressed on to Hooge and got up to the high ground to the dump they’d made in front of Glencorse Wood. The Provost Sergeant was waiting there, a great man, we knew him as ‘Bunny’, and he was there all on his own. Just when we got up to him a runner arrived from Battalion Headquarters in the field. He was carrying a message which said that owing to the severity of the position in Glencorse Wood the reserves had had to go in and no men could be spared to collect the rations. If the situation improved, they might be able to send a party later. So we dumped the rations and turned and went back to get the rations ready for tomorrow. As we went back down the Menin Road the stretcher-bearers were still carrying and fetching the wounded from the field.

  Things were bad in Glencorse, and most of the next day’s rations would not be required, for the infantry were falling like corn before a sickle, and by nightfall those who survived would have been pushed back to where they started. All except George Winterbourne, long split up from the rest of his Company, for in the first chaotic hours of the attack a few men had actually managed to get through the wood and out of the other side; but although Polygon Wood lay tantalisingly in front of them across the open ground, they were in trouble.

  Rifleman G. E. Winterbourne, No. 551237, 1st Btn., Queen’s Westminster Rifles

  We came out the other side of the wood and we were walking across this open ground near Polygon when, in the confusion, I suddenly found I was alone. I thought, ‘Where is everybody?’ I couldn’t see a soul and I dived for the first bit of depressed ground I could see, which was a shell-hole. I had a look around very cautiously, and the shells were falling all about. Machine-guns were firing from straight in front and I noticed that they were firing in bursts. There must have been a bloke lying in front of me. I didn’t notice him at all until he suddenly got up and dashed past me for another shell-hole. He never got there. They got him first. I thought to myself, ‘I must time this bloke on the machine-gun.’ So as soon as his burst finished I got up and dived for another shell-hole, and I made it. The minute I hit it, there was a great stream of machine-gun fire over my head, but he missed me.

  In the shell-hole there were about a dozen other people, a couple of 2nd London officers and a wounded RB sergeant and two or three 2nd Londoners. We stayed there for quite some time and didn’t know what to do, because we knew we were right out in front of the line. There didn’t seem to be another soul around. The two officers went into consultation and it so happened that they had a pigeon. We sent a message back saying that we were completely isolated and that the prospect of holding this position all day seemed hopeless. But no help came. We held out for about an hour and then German infantry-bombers started coming up closer and closer and throwing bombs. The officers muttered away to each other and eventually one of them said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, chaps, but it looks as if we’re going to have to pack it in. You’ll have to prepare to surrender. Now, first of all, has anybody here got a map?’

  A couple of the lads did have maps, so they pulled them out and we scrabbled little holes in the side of the shell-hole and buried them. The officers got rid of some of the things they had, and then they told us to take off our equipment and put down our rifles, then we stood up in the shell-hole and put our hands up. We picked up the wounded sergeant and we all walked across to the Jerries. They took us back to their lines and put us in a dug-out. After a bit they walked us further back, and then they put us on one of their limbers and took us away.

  The limber that took George Winterbourne back behind the German lines to Courtrai was one of a long convoy of British prisoners, the only Allied troops who would pass over the Passchendaele Ridge that day, or for some months to come. They passed through Passchendaele itself about three o’clock in the afternoon, and at just about the same time a large staff-car swept through the gates of the chateau where Sir Douglas Haig had his headquarters and drew up, with an important flurry of gravel, in front of the imposing door. It carried an important passenger, General Sir William Robertson, and he was the bearer of a very particular and personal message from Lloyd George to his Commander-in-Chief. The purpose of his visit was to smooth over troubled waters and it took all his tact to do so, for so far as the Field-Marshal was concerned, Lloyd George had well and truly put his foot in it, and Haig was in high dudgeon.

  At yet another conference held recently in London – and an international one at that – at which the advisability of switching troops and guns from France to the Italian front was canvassed and yet again deliberated, a vital question arose. What progress, if any was there likely to be on the Flanders front? It was 7 August, just a week after the big push, and although the communiques had stressed the objectives gained and had slid over the fact that most of the originally-planned objectives had not been gained, it was all too clear that the first phase of the battle had been, at best, a semi-success and, consequently, a semi-failure. Was it early days to make such a judgement? Lloyd George did not appear to think so. ‘I am afraid’, he remarked, ‘that we have put our money on the wrong horse. It would have been better to have reinforced the Italians.’

  The remark had come to Haig’s ears, and in order to smooth his ruffled feelings, Lloyd George had asked General Sir William Robertson to give Haig a personal message from him and, in a friendly way, to express Lloyd George’s wholehearted confidence in his Commander-in-Chief. Haig was only slightly mollified:

  In reply, I told Robertson to thank the Prime Minister for his message, but what I want is tangible support. Men, guns, aeroplanes. It is ridiculous to talk about supporting me ‘wholeheartedly’ when men, guns, rails, etc., are going in quantities to Egypt for the Palestine expedition; guns to the Italians, to Mesopotamia and to Russia. Robertson agreed and said he was entirely opposed to any Italian venture.

  Perhaps he was, for in the War Cabinet opinion was still split, and Lloyd George was in a quandary. As Colonel Hankey noted in his diary, ‘The PM is obviously puzzled, as his predecessor was, how far the Government is justified in interfering with a military operation.’

  This was the c
rux of the matter, and the real reason why Sir William Robertson had come to see Haig was to report back on Haig’s next objective. In other words the Prime Minister wanted to know exactly what was going on in Flanders. Sir Douglas Haig was in the happy position of being able to give him good news, based on the earliest reports of the day’s fighting.

  The 56th Division, as early as 9.45 that morning, had passed through Glencorse Wood and were going towards Polygon!

  They were. But several hours had already passed since the soldiers who made that breakthrough had been either pushed right back out of the wood almost to their starting line; or, like George Winterbourne, were at this moment the object of curious scrutiny as they rattled on open limbers through the villages of German-occupied Belgium, towards Courtrai and the prisoner-of-war cage.

  Langemarck had been taken. It had. But the original battle-plan had intended that Langemarck should have been attacked and captured on 2 or 3 August, almost two weeks before.

  On the Frezenberg Ridge the troops of the 16th Division had got to Bony Farm and Beck House. They had. They had attacked across the field of dead bodies which had lain there since the disastrous attack two weeks previously, but Beck and Borry remained impregnable. The 16th retired in a rout, leaving a dreadful second crop of dead and wounded to lie among the decomposing casualties of a fortnight before.

  The troops were advancing across the fields beyond Stjulien and some had got as far as Winnipeg Farm on the Zonnebeke-Langemarck Road. Some had. The rest had died or drowned in the attempt.

  Major Macleod’s was one of the batteries which had fired the covering barrage for the attack – that ‘creeping’ barrage which had to creep so much more slowly now. It normally travelled forward 100 yards every four minutes, which was the time in which, in ‘normal’ conditions, the infantry was expected to cover the ground. But, other than in the military sense, the troops were not covering ‘ground’ any more. The barrage had been slowed down and the guns would now extend their range by 100 yards every six minutes to give the infantry a chance to catch up. It still wasn’t enough. As the attack started, Macleod went to his forward observation post and watched it through binoculars.