1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  Early in the afternoon the Liverpool Scottish marched out of camp on their way to the line. The field cookers had gone ahead and McFie had arranged for them to halt on the far side of Ypres to give the men a hot meal while they waited for darkness to cover the last mile of their progress to the front. He had been on the go since early morning, riding with his wagons to the dump near the transport line, checking long lists in the Lieutenant-Quartermaster’s office, drawing supplies, seeing that they were speedily stowed in the wagons and properly sorted out when they returned. By the time Y Company had breakfasted the stores had been set out at intervals along one side of the field. McFie had detailed extra men to help and two of them stood by each pile to hand out the goods, while Y Company paraded to receive them in a long crocodile, moving along the field, a platoon at a time. As one man remarked when he got to the end, they were loaded like blooming Christmas trees’. Every man was issued with two extra bandoliers of ammunition to be slung cross-wise across each shoulder, two empty sandbags, a waterproof sheet and a day’s extra ration in addition to his iron ration to be stuffed into his haversack. The trench-stores had been seen to. There were hand-grenades to issue to the company bombers, wire-cutters to distribute, and shovels to be carried up to the front by one unlucky platoon. It all took a long time. Then there were overcoats to be rolled and stowed on a wagon, and packs to be dumped, for Y Company was to go into action in ‘light order’. At last it was finished, dinners were served, and Y Company was ready to go.

  They lined up on the road to take their place in the battalion, and McFie went to stand at the fence to wave them off. They were in high spirits. Even before they got well into their stride mouth organs had been produced and some of them were singing as they went by. They broke off to wave and shout as they passed the quartermaster. ‘We’ll bring you a souvenir, QM. What’ll it be?’ ‘We’ll bring you back a Hun or two to cook for breakfast!’ ‘Keep the cookers going. Quarters, we’ll be back soon’, then, Are we down-hearted?’ and the obligatory answering roar – ‘NO!’ It may have been bravado but they gave every indication of being glad to go. Marching at the head of the column, smiling as he returned the Quartermaster’s salute, Bryden McKinnell was to all appearances as happy as his men. There was no time now, on the eve of the battle, to brood on the thought he had recently confided to his diary: ‘Will I see next Wednesday at 10 p.m.?’ It was Tuesday evening and at ten o’clock, as darkness began to deepen, they moved into trenches in front of Y wood. The ‘special job’ was to recapture the Bellewaerde Ridge. It was an important objective in itself but the attack had a secondary purpose which, in the view of the Commander-in-Chief, was of the utmost importance – to divert the attention of the Germans from an important assault on Givenchy in the First Army sector some thirty miles to the south. The attack on Bellewaerde was referred to as ‘a minor operation’.

  The British front line now lay across the longest arm of the Y-shaped copse north of the Menin Road and ran across open ground to bisect the wood that lay immediately south of the Ypres-Roulers railway. It was a long time since any trains had run along that track for the town of Roulers a dozen miles away was well behind the enemy lines* and there the railway was busily working for the enemy. Roulers was an important junction and from it the lines led south into France, north into Holland and linked up through Brussels with lines that ran to the heart of Germany. But if Roulers was an ace in the German hand, in the salient the Bellewaerde Ridge was a trump card.

  A month had wrought many changes. Chateau Wood, the lake, the farm, the ridge itself that Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry had fought so hard to hold, were now part of the German defence system. Their front line now ran along the farther edge of Y Wood to the top of Railway Wood. It was linked by a web of communication trenches to two other fortified trench-lines, one midway up the slope, the other on the crest of the ridge itself. Even Hooge Chateau was in the hands of the Germans – if it could still be called a chateau now that only two walls were left standing. A stone’s throw from it, no more than fifty yards away, the British held on to the chateau stables and to the pulverised brick heaps that were the ruins of Hooge village. But they only just held them, for here the line looped out across the Menin Road and swept back in a deep semi-circle across the fields to Zouave Wood, and round again to Birr Crossroads. It was a nasty kink in the line for, as the British trenches ran back, so the German line ran forward, curving across the lower slopes of the ridge with all the advantage of high ground behind them. The task of the 3rd Division was to straighten the line and capture it. Between and beyond the two small woods that marked the limits of the attack, the slopes were entirely open with little dead ground and no cover. Captain McKinnell had been right in surmising that it would be a difficult job.

  But hopes were high. This time a good deal of thought had been given to the possibility of a breakdown in communications, and lines as far back as brigade headquarters had been laid in triplicate. Eight rows of jumping-off trenches were prepared, so that consecutive waves could move speedily into action, but they were dug, unavoidably, in full view of the enemy, and the enemy had conveyed his displeasure by shelling them by day as fast as the working-parties had dug them by night. They were still discernible as shallow tracings on the ground, but they offered little shelter to the assaulting troops as they waited uncomfortably for morning. The attack was timed for dawn.

  The barrage started just before three o’clock and, for once, it was a good one with sufficient high-explosive shells to wreak havoc on the German trenches, and the noise of the shells flying close overhead, the boom of explosions not far ahead, was a distinct comfort to the men, crouching tense and sleepless, waiting for the guns to lift, for the first light of dawn above the Bellewaerde Ridge, for the sound of the whistles that would send them over the top. Seasoned soldiers though they were, after four months in France, not a single man of the 3rd Division had gone over the top before. Excitement hung so thick in the air that it might have been cut with a knife.

  At zero hour the first wave went over the top and took the German front line with ease.

  The bombardment had done its work. The German wire was shattered. The enemy was in disarray. The barrage had lifted from the first German line to start thundering on the next, and the second wave was waiting to go. When the signal came they were to rush forward to follow the first wave, now in the front enemy trench, and to pass through them and over it to attack the next one. When the signal came the 1st Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment went forward with the Liverpool Scottish to do the job. Captain Bryden McKinnell led Y Company across the open ground, through the skeleton trees on the edge of Y Wood, and started up the slope past the communication trenches where a few cowering German soldiers had been cut off by the barrage. They should have halted there, close to the second enemy line, waiting for the barrage to lift before they tackled it. But things had gone wrong. The 7th Brigade, in reserve behind the 9th, were only intended to go forward if they were absolutely required to help. No signal was given but excitement, like panic, easily spreads. A few men started it, carried away by the thrill of the moment, and, seeing the Liverpool Scots and the Lincolns rush on and disappear into the smoke, they leapt forward and ran after them, cheering and yelling and desperate to get into the fight. After that there was no stopping it, and soon the whole 7th Brigade was on the move, running like the wind to catch up. They leapt across the first wave in the captured German trench and caught up with the second, waiting beyond it for the barrage to lift. And they carried them forward by sheer impetus, breaking into their spread-out ranks so that companies, platoons, even sections were split up. Now they were all running – and they ran into their own barrage. In the confusion of smoke and dust, the Artillery Officers observing the bombardment had no means of knowing that the shells were falling on their own troops. When the barrage finally lifted the survivors of the carnage advanced and took the second trench. But it was the death-knell of the attack – so promising in its beginnin
g – that might have won them back the Bellewaerde Ridge.

  Even the first wave, reorganising in their newly captured line, was so confused by the sudden appearance of the third wave passing through them that they too had advanced soon and joined in the melee. The result was total confusion. A small group of Royal Scots Fusiliers managed to reach the final objective on the top of the ridge, but under fire from their own artillery they could not possibly hold it for long. All along the line small groups of men were fighting the enemy with bombs and bayonets, but by half past nine the survivors were forced to fall back to the first captured line of German trenches. They had been beaten by their own artillery, by their own bravery and, tragically, by their own blind enthusiasm.

  The German guns were bombarding furiously to prevent reinforcements getting up, and U Company was ordered forward from the trenches across the Menin Road.

  Sgt. A. Rule.

  We crossed the Menin Road under a steady hail of machine-gun bullets. In our old front line we were up to the knees in liquid mud and all but trampling on the dead and wounded on the floor of the trench. The badly wounded – poor devils! – moaned agonisingly at the slightest touch as we squeezed past, and we were sniped at continually when we mounted the firestep to avoid treading on them. Our attack had disturbed a hornets’ nest for, in addition to the deadly hail of bullets, whizz-bangs were bursting on the parapet every few yards and shrapnel fairly sang about our ears. Some of the attacking troops were now falling back in disorder, and we received instructions to move forward on Y Wood in order to provide a stiffening effect and help to allay panic. Our line of advance was a partly dug communication trench running towards our objective and it was unhappily chosen, because we became a concentrated target for whizz-bangs and its bottle-neck entrance from our own front line gave unlimited sport to the German gunners. I remember vividly pausing there under cover for a moment, while a brace of whizz-bangs crashed just ahead, and then hurdling the parapet with a desperate rush and just missing the next salvo. Two men following me hesitated just a fraction too long and mistimed their jump. A whizz-bang caught them fair and square. Littered as it was with dead and wounded, the trench was even more congested with two streams of men moving in opposite directions.

  By this time our casualties were fairly heavy and the two platoon commanders who led us in had both been wounded, but our NCOs carried on. Of course, the Germans counterattacked but they were beaten off, mainly by the heroic efforts of our solitary machine-gun team, and it stayed in action when, by the law of averages, it should have been blown sky high! Salvo after salvo rained down and, although many of us were buried more than once, we escaped without much harm because our soft crumbly parapet seemed to smother the shell-burst. But often we had to lie low, clinging on grimly, and praying that the next one would miss us.

  Sandy Gunn was U Company’s hero of the day. Sandy had left his native Caithness two years ago to enrol as a medical student at Aberdeen University. He was now a lance-corporal and although he was no athlete and was not even officially a company runner, he had run like the furies across the dangerous shell-swept ground to take messages back and forward. It was a dangerous job and a man had to move fast and take his chance, but even on his last trip when the Germans had recovered and were spraying machine-gun fire in every direction from the trenches up the hill, Sandy spared a thought for his thirsty comrades and, although it slowed him down considerably, he brought back a gallon can of water to slake their thirst. Later, although they were pleased that Sandy had been Mentioned in Dispatches, there wasn’t a single man who didn’t firmly believe that he deserved at least a DCM.*

  The new line was consolidated – and at least it had been advanced a short way. They had paid a heavy price for it in this ‘minor operation’. The attack on Givenchy had been equally expensive and only partially successful but, like the men who had fought at Bellewaerde, no one among the survivors doubted that they were still on the winning side.

  The rest of the 8th Brigade moved up to join U Company in the trenches beyond Y wood to take over the captured line and the remnants of the 9th and 7th Brigades were relieved late in the evening. The Quartermaster had been waiting for many hours for Y Company to come back.

  CQMSR. S. McFie.

  Towards evening we packed up rations for the trenches and set out for a place on the other side of Ypres where we expected to be able to hand them over to our men. Outside the town, shells were dropping rather uncomfortably near the road, but we reached the chateau used for a dressing station, which was our destination, without accident. There we waited, and as we waited men of ours stumbled haltingly down the road to have their wounds dressed. We did not believe their stories! Only one officer, possibly two, was left. So-and-so is killed, so-and-so wounded. The total strength of the battalion could not be more than ninety, and so on.

  After a time, orders came that the Regiment would be relieved and that rations were therefore not needed, but that the camp was to be pitched at once in readiness for the return of the men. We hurried back and found the shelters and tents all pitched and set to work to prepare a good reception for the boys. A friend at home had sent me about thirty fine boxes of delightful biscuits, so I put them in the tents, a box for every five men. We set out the letters and parcels, candles, food, and prepared tea and pea soup on the cookers. Of my own company a hundred and thirty men had gone to the trenches and I was ready to feast them all when they came back.

  At last we heard the distant sound of pipes and after a while there passed through our gate a handful of men in tattered uniforms, their faces blackened and unshaved, their clothes stained red with blood, or yellow with the fumes of lyddite. I shouted for Y Company. One man came forward! It was heart breaking.

  Gradually others tottered in, some wounded, all in the last stages of exhaustion, and when at last I went to lie down at about 5.30 a.m., I had only twenty-five of my hundred and thirty who had gone out thirty-six hours before.

  I fancy there was a great deal of bungling. At drill an attack can be practised in an hour that in real warfare should take two days, and I fear that in their eagerness our men rushed forward much too far and much too quickly. It is terrible! The Regiment is practically wiped out.

  The whole of the 3rd Division had suffered badly. The 9th Brigade alone had lost seventy-three of their ninety-six officers, and more than two thousand of three and a half thousand men. The Commanding Officers of four Battalions were wounded, and another had been killed.* The total casualties of the 3rd Division, killed, wounded and missing, were more than three and a half thousand.

  The exhausted survivors sank thankfully into bivouacs to sleep, and far out in the line U Company held on to the trenches captured the previous day. They cleaned up as best they could. They carried out the wounded, and munched on iron rations in lieu of a hot meal. They posted sentries every few yards and the rest settled down to snatch what sleep they could in the few remaining hours of the night. Presently the gun-fire tailed away. The night was almost quiet, but there was a rustle of movement in front. Reinforced by fresh troops the Germans had crept back down the hill, and the clink of shovels and a stealthy stirring in the dark told that they were working through the night to strengthen their battered line. Out in front, where the ground was littered with the silent dead, Bryden McKinnell’s body was lying among the scattered bodies of his men. They had been killed before ten o’clock in the morning.

  Chapter 27

  Scott McFie passed a miserable day. A few more men had straggled in, but there was not much to do. The survivors slept. There was tea on tap all day, and bully-beef sandwiches for any who woke up, but it was almost evening before they roused and began to stumble bleary-eyed out of bivouacs. A meal had been prepared, and the stew had been simmering since dinner time. McFie stood beside the boiler as it was dished out with hefty hunks of bread, and with so many absent there was more than enough to go round. There was good strong tea to wash it down, and afterwards he saw to it that the men had a rat
ion of rum and walked round with the Sergeant as he measured it out, murmuring the suggestion that he might be generous. And he lingered to chat with the men. They were eager to talk and the Quartermaster marvelled at their spirit. When the camp had settled down for the night, he retired to his own office-tent and, weary though he was, wrote a letter to his father.

  They told tales of the greatest heroism and tales of unutterable horror. Excepting the mistake of great haste, our men did nobly – but the gains are not very great, and the cost is terrible. They are queer chaps. You would imagine that our camp is plunged in gloom. Not a bit of it! After a good sleep and a good meal the men at once recovered their spirits and they are peacocking about in German helmets, taken with their own hands, and proudly showing their souvenirs, and showing off the rents in their clothing and recounting how they bayoneted Huns, or how they had narrow escapes. Of course this disaster has brought much work to me. Will you please tell Cyril Dennis that his biscuits arrived safely, Jenny that her parcel came and is now in the process of consumption, and Charlie that I received his letter in the tent in which I am writing at 11 p.m.! And now to bed in my other tent – the rough and ready blanket one.

  The ‘rough and ready’ blanket bivouac was exactly the same as the men’s but McFie was perfectly happy with it. He was never a man to pull rank, and certainly not in the present circumstances. The blankets, and packs and overcoats had been retrieved and next day when the hospital returns came in and the first rough casualty list was made up, he and his storemen would begin drawing up an inventory of unclaimed possessions. There was a large quantity and it was the Company Quartermaster’s responsibility to sort them out, to return those that were the Army’s to battalion stores, to go through the packs of the dead and the missing and, in due course, when all hope of news had been given up, to see that their personal effects were sent home. It was a dispiriting task which McFie was not looking forward to, and when he woke to another glorious day, even the fine weather did little to cheer him.