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With daylight the artillery observation officers began to communicate with headquarters. Our men, they said, had advanced 1,000 yards on the right, and were digging in near a factory (Rohart) on the bank of the Cojeul, and the 14th Division on their right seemed to have reached its objectives. About 300 yards over the crest of the spur was a trench known as Tool, and this seemed to be occupied by the enemy.

Soon after this the 169th Brigade reported that the London Rifle Brigade were holding a pit near the factory and a trench about the same place; the 2nd London Regt. had a footing in Tool Trench. The latter position is doubtful, but the 2nd Londons were well forward.

Cavalry Farm, near and to the right of the original line, was still held by the enemy, and about 10 o’clock the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, after a short bombardment by the Stokes mortars, rushed and secured the farm. They found a number of dugouts, which they bombed, and secured 22 prisoners. The farm was connected with Tool Trench, and they proceeded to bomb their way up it. It would appear, therefore, that the 2nd London Regt. held a small section of this trench farther to the north, if any at all.

We must now follow the 167th Brigade on the left. The two attacking battalions had been met with even worse machine-gun fire than the 169th Brigade. There was no news of them for a long time. It is clear that neither the 1st London Regt. nor the 7th Middlesex ever held any of Tool Trench, but a few gallant parties did undoubtedly overrun Tool, and, crossing a sunken road known as Stirrup Lane, reached Lanyard Trench, quite a short distance from the men of the London Rifle Brigade, who had lodged themselves in the pit near Rohart Factory. They were, however, not in sufficient numbers to join hands with the London Rifle Brigade, or some small groups of the 2nd London, who were also in advanced shell-holes, and about 8 o’clock in the evening were forced to surrender. (A small party was seen marching east without arms.) The remaining 1st London and 7th Middlesex men lay out in shell-holes in front of Tool Trench.

Soon after the Queen Victoria’s Rifles had captured Cavalry Farm and started to bomb up Tool Trench, with the forward artillery and trench mortars helping them, the 3rd Division on the left of the 56th declared that their men were in the northern end of Tool. They asked that the artillery should be lifted off the trench, as they were going to bomb down towards the Queen Victoria’s Rifles. But it appears that they were very soon driven out, as by 3 p.m. the 3rd Division were definitely reported to be in touch with the 7th Middlesex in the original line.

Meanwhile the 14th Division, on the right, which had made good progress at the start, had been violently counter-attacked, and at 11.50 a.m. reported that they had been driven back to their original line.

Brig.-Gen. Coke, of the 169th Brigade, now found his men in a queer position. The troops on either flank of his brigade were back in the line they had started from; he ascertained that none of his brigade were north of the Arras-Cambrai road, and so he held a long tongue in the valley of the Cojeul open to attack from the high ground on either side of it.

4. The Battles of Arras 1917.

Much movement by the enemy was observed during the afternoon; reinforcements were assembling in Tool and the sunken road behind it. About 10 o’clock in the evening the Germans started a fierce bombardment of the tongue of land held by the London Rifle Brigades and 2nd London Regts., and, after an hour of ceaseless fire, counter-attacked and drove the troops back to their original lines.

Gen. Hull then ordered them to hold their original line and reorganise, but before the orders could reach them these two fine battalions had attacked again and reoccupied all the positions they had gained in the morning with the exception of Cavalry Farm. But they were in a bad situation. With the enemy holding the Cambrai road in force, the only communication with the advanced troops was down the bottom of the valley, a place of much water and mud. Brig.-Gen. Coke therefore withdrew his men just before sunrise. They brought with them, however, a German officer and 15 men who had surrendered in the neighbourhood of Cavalry Farm.

It had been a day of very hard fighting, and the gain on the whole of the sixteen miles of front attacked was Fresnoy, which had been taken by the Canadians, and a portion of the Hindenburg Line, east of Bullecourt, captured by the Australians. The enemy had been terribly frightened by the successful start of the battles of Arras. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were putting into effect their new system of holding the front in depth, but thin in the forward zones, with many machine guns, and strong supports for immediate counter-attack. It seemed as though their system had broken down at the first test, and, as the Russians were no longer a menace to them, they poured reinforcements across Germany. But, as we know, this continuation of the offensive was with the object of helping our Allies by holding troops and guns which might otherwise have been used against them.

The 167th and 169th Brigades held the line for one day more, and were relieved by the 168th on the 5th May. The latter brigade also took over a stretch of extra line to the north.

The enemy was exceedingly quiet and our patrols very active. If any indication is wanted of the high moral of the 56th Division, it can be found in this patrol work. After an action of this kind, when the two brigades lost just on a thousand men, really audacious reconnoitring deserves the highest praise. Again and again attempts were made by patrols to enter Tool Trench, only to find the enemy alert. Cavalry Farm, on the right, and the copse, on the left, were both entered and found unoccupied; but the exact position of the enemy in Tool Trench was ascertained.

Meanwhile the heavy artillery kept up a steady fire on Tool Trench, causing large numbers of Germans to run over the open and seek safer ground. And troops worked hard on our trenches, which were greatly improved.

At 8.30 p.m. on the 11th May the 4th London Regt. on the right and the London Scottish on the left attacked Cavalry Farm and the trench on the far side of it, and Tool Trench.

A practice barrage on the previous day had drawn heavy fire in a few minutes, and it had been decided not to have a barrage, but to keep the heavy artillery firing steadily to the last minute. The enemy, who held the line in full strength, were taken by surprise. Only Cavalry Farm was visible from our line, and the 4th London Regt. swept into this place with no difficulty. But the right of the enemy line was able to put up a fight, and the left company of the London Scottish suffered somewhat severely. Except for this one point, the trench was vacated by its garrison in a wild scramble. They could not, however, escape the Lewis gunners and brigade machine-gunners, who did some good execution. Quite a lot of the enemy were killed in the trench and a round dozen taken prisoner—they were of the 128th Infantry Regt. and the 5th Grenadier Regt. Eight machine guns were also found.

Tool Trench was only a part of the enemy line which ran up the hill on the east of Monchy. To the south of the copse it was Tool and to the north it was Hook. The very northern end of Tool and all of Hook remained in the hands of the enemy. A block was made by filling in about forty yards of the trench and the new line was consolidated.

The new line had been much damaged by our fire, but it was soon reconstructed, and two communication trenches were dug to the old line. Meanwhile the trench mortars kept up a steady bombardment of Hook Trench, and snipers picked off the enemy as he attempted to seek the safer shell-holes in the open.

During the next few days several deserters from the 5th Grenadier Regt. came in, and they, in common with other prisoners, persisted in stating that the enemy was contemplating a retirement. Patrols, however, always found Lanyard Trench and Hook fully garrisoned. The 167th Brigade had taken over the line from the 168th, and the 8th Middlesex attempted to rush both Lanyard and Hook; this was not done in force, but was more in the nature of a surprise by strong patrols. They found the enemy too alert.

On the 19th something in the nature of an attack in force was carried out. The 8th Middlesex made a night attack, in conjunction with the 29th Division, on Hook Trench and the support line behind it. The Middlesex men gained the junction of Hook and Tool, but were very “bunched”; the 187th Brigade on the left made no progress at all. It is probable that the Middlesex were more to the left than they imagined, as they were heavily bombed from both flanks, and eventually forced to withdraw.

On the 20th May the weary troops of the 56th Division were relieved by the 37th Division.

In these actions and in the battle on the 3rd May the objectives were shallow and the enemy fully prepared to resist, with large reinforcements of men and guns in the field. The enemy barrage was considered the heaviest that had, as yet, been encountered. The positions attacked were well sited and frequently masked, and there was also the complication of night assaults at short notice. Brig.-Gen. Freeth, in an interesting report of the battle on the 3rd, says:

“… Owing to the darkness it was extremely difficult for the assaulting troops to keep direction or the correct distances between waves. The tendency was for rear waves to push forward too fast for fear of losing touch with the wave in front of them. Consequently, by the time the leading wave was approaching Tool Trench, all the rear waves had telescoped into it. Even if Tool Trench had been taken, much delay would have been caused in extricating and moving forward waves allotted to the further objectives.”

Anyone who has taken part in a night attack will appreciate these difficulties. If it goes well it is very well, but if not the confusion is appalling.

The casualties from the 29th April to 21st May were 79 officers and 2,022 other ranks.

The general situation was that on the 5th May the French had delivered their attack on the Chemin-des-Dames and achieved their object, but on the whole the French offensive was disappointing. On the British front, however, 19,500 prisoners and 257 guns had been captured, and the situation round Arras greatly improved. The spring offensive was at an end.

But fighting did not cease round Arras and over the width of the sixty square miles of regained country. The Messines attack in the north was in course of preparation, and the orders to the Fifth, Third, and First Armies were to continue operations, with the forces left to them, with the object of keeping the enemy in doubt as to whether the offensive would be continued. Objectives, of a limited nature, were to be selected, and importance given to such actions by combining with them feint attacks. They were successful in their object, but there was bitter with the sweet, as Sir Douglas Haig writes:

“These measures seem to have had considerable success, if any weight may be attached to the enemy’s reports concerning them. They involved, however, the disadvantage that I frequently found myself unable to deny the German accounts of the bloody repulse of extensive British attacks which, in fact, never took place.”

The attack on Messines was launched on the 7th June, and was a complete success. With the first crash of our concentrated artillery nineteen mines were exploded, and our troops swept forward all along the line. By the evening 7,200 prisoners, 67 guns, 94 trench mortars, and 294 machine-guns had been captured.

The 56th Division indulged in a little well-earned rest. We read of sports and horse shows in the vicinity of Habarcq, of concerts given by the “Bow Bells” concert party (formed in 1916 at Souastre), and diaries have the welcome entries “troops resting” as the only event of the day. But this was not for long. Battalions were soon back in the line, though much reduced in strength. For the first time we find, in spite of reinforcements, that the average strength of battalions fell to just over eight hundred.

The 169th Brigade lost Capt. Newnham, who went to the New Zealand Division as G.S.O.2. He instituted a form of official diary which is a delight to read—concise, but with occasional reflections of a dry, humorous nature. Capt. Carden Roe, from the 29th Division, took his place as Brigade Major.

During the 9th, 10th, and 11th of June the division relieved the 61st Division in the line. The position was the same—Tool Trench from the copse, on the left, to Cavalry Farm, but it was extended to Wancourt Tower on the right.

The front now held measured 2,700 yards. Wancourt Tower was on the summit of the high spur which runs parallel to the Cojeul River on the south bank. The line can, then, be visualised stretching across the valley, with right and left flanks of the division on the high ground on either side of the river. From the right good observation was obtained over the enemy lines on the left of the divisional front, and from the copse, on the left of the line, similar observation could be had over the enemy on the right.

The 3rd Division was on the left of the 56th, and on the 14th June, at 7.30 a.m., the former launched an attack on Hook Trench. The attack was a complete success; the division came level with the 56th and captured 175 prisoners.

The right of the 56th Division was held by the Queen’s Westminster Rifles, and a few minutes after five o’clock in the evening sentries noticed enemy movement behind a wood (Bois du Vert) which was opposite the 3rd Division and on the left flank of the 56th. Careful watching revealed the massing of troops. A warning was sent over the telephone. The 76th Brigade, immediately on the left of the 56th Division, was informed, as was the artillery.

Killing human beings is not dear to the heart of Englishmen. Green troops would stand violent shelling, merely looking a bit tense about the face, but although they saw their comrades fall, shattered to pieces, or badly wounded, they would sometimes show a great disinclination to fire on Germans walking in the open behind the enemy lines. It seemed as though the idea was that the particular German in question was not trying to injure them—he might have been carrying a plank or a bag of rations—and so they would watch him and no one would attempt to shoot unless there was an old soldier with them. This frame of mind, however, did not last long.

But the evening of the 14th June was an occasion for glee. The Hun was going to attack and all was ready for him. At 5.30 the grey waves left the enemy trenches, and at once a storm of artillery, machine-gun, and rifle fire met them. The Queen’s Westminster Rifles, of course, could not fire, but they watched the action with great joy, and kept Brigade and Divisional Headquarters informed of every enemy move. The attack was smashed up and, thanks to the Queen’s Westminster Rifles, the enemy was chased out of sight by the artillery.

After this costly lesson the Germans tried a night attack on the 16th at 2.30 a.m. This time they succeeded in entering two posts, but the 3rd Division drove them out and the men of the 56th inflicted heavy casualties from the flank.

Nothing more was done in this line beyond some skirmishing round a post. The division was relieved on the 4th July and moved to the Le Cauroy area.

* * * * * * *

We have said very little about the Divisional Artillery, but to follow them too closely in these engagements would lead to confusion. They supported the 56th Division during the battle of Arras—in the original scheme—and when the division moved on the 20th April the artillery remained where it was. Brig.-Gen. Elkington writes:

“The 56th Divisional Artillery remained in the line in this sector, under different C.R.A.s and covering different divisions, and were not under my command again until the end of May, as I remained with the 56th Division and commanded the artillery covering them. All the divisional artilleries became much mixed up, and very few of the C.R.A.s had their own artillery under their own command....

On the 24th May the division moved to the Habarcq area, and remained there until the 9th June. I established the R.A. Headquarters at Beaumetz, so as to keep in touch with our artillery, who were still in the line. At the end of May I got four days’ leave and went to Paris with Hawkes, Jorgensen, and Robinson, and we were joined there by Cols. Groves and Lemon. We all had an excellent time, and enjoyed it immensely.... On the 5th July the 56th Divisional Artillery returned to my command, and we started to march to the Ypres area, and arrived at Oudezeele on the 13th July 1917. This was a very clean and comfortable village, and all ranks were well billeted. We remained there until the 28th July, a very pleasant and well-earned rest for both officers and men, beautiful weather, and many sports were organised for officers and men. Several fatigue parties had to be furnished to assist the heavy artillery in the supply of ammunition, and these had very hard work and some casualties. During the later part our trench mortar batteries, under Capt. Robinson, went into the line with the Guards Division, and had rather a strenuous time doing excellent work. On the 9th July I went home on ten days’ leave, and I got married on the 12th July....”

At one period of the war it was thought that the artillery had a “soft” time, but as the war progressed it was seen that the zone which included the lighter guns included also conditions which rendered the comfort of artillerymen scarcely more enviable than that of the infantry. We shall soon be able to throw a little more light on the work of this very gallant arm of the Service.

CHAPTER V
YPRES

On the 2nd July a rearrangement of the front had placed the 56th Division in the VII Corps, and they remained at Le Cauroy under the orders of that Corps until the 23rd July, when they moved to Eperlecques, near St. Omer, and came under the Fifth Army.

But the division lost Gen. Hull. It was absolutely necessary that he should undergo a surgical operation, and the matter could not be postponed any longer, so he went back to England. He was looked upon as a friend as much as a commander, his striking personality had impressed itself on all ranks, and his tall figure was recognised from afar and welcomed whenever he visited the line or billets. The men saw in him a fearless commander who knew his business. We are indebted to Major Newnham for the following anecdote:

“After the 1st July show (1916), the 169th Brigade held the trenches in front of Fouquevillers. The trenches, though on top of a hill, were dreadful. My diary records ‘all C.T.s thigh-deep in mud.’ Gen. Hull doubted our statement, so on Sunday, the 9th July, when he came to Brigade Headquarters, I showed him the state of things. We went up the main C.T., and gradually the slime rose, first ankle, then knee, then thigh-deep. At length, where the C.T. ran in a hollow, I said, ‘Now we get to a really deep bit, sir!’ He said, ‘Well, I’m damned if I’m going through it—I’m getting out!’ And we went over the top, though in full view from a large part of the Boche positions, and walked back in the open, too!”

And the General was enthusiastic in praise of his division.

“We were a happy family,” he says. And “what pleased me as much as their fighting qualities was their good temper and cheerfulness under all circumstances,” and the circumstances were at times appallingly severe. He was himself always cheerful, though his pet dog, an Irish greyhound named Roy, has been described as “a miserable hound.” He encouraged his staff to play “bridge” whenever their work permitted, as a means of taking their minds off the war. All work and no play would have made even a G.S.O.1 a dull boy, and relaxation was not easy to find. He commanded the 4th Battalion Middlesex Regt. at Mons, and was given command of the 10th Brigade on the 17th November 1914. When he first entered the army in 1887, he joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and was transferred to the Middlesex Regt. in 1912. We are sorry to say that the “miserable hound,” Roy, who had been with the General since January 1916, cut a tendon and had to be destroyed in Belgium, although he survived the war.

Gen. Hull was not, however, lost to the division, as he returned later. Meanwhile Gen. W. Douglas Smith was given command.

Troops were being massed for the big offensive at Ypres, and the Fifth Army Staff, under Sir Hubert Gough, had been moved to take command of the greater part of the salient. Sir Herbert Plumer was still there, but on the southern side, and with a reduced army.

* * * * * * *

In July 1917 England reached the summit of her military power in France. There were 52 divisions from the Motherland, 4 from Canada, 5 from Australia, 1 from New Zealand. One might, therefore, expect a year of great results. And so it was, though not perhaps obviously apparent.

Writing of the year as a whole, Sir Douglas Haig says:

“The general conditions of the struggle this year have been very different from those contemplated at the conference of the Allied Commanders held in November 1916. The great general and simultaneous offensive then agreed on did not materialise. Russia, though some of her leaders made a fine effort at one period, not only failed to give the help expected of her, but even failed to prevent the enemy from transferring some forty divisions from her front in exchange for tired ones used up in the Western theatre, or from replacing losses in his divisions on this side by drafts of fresh and well-trained men drawn from divisions in the East.

The combined French and British offensive in the spring was launched before Italy could be ready; and the splendid effort made by Italy at a later period was, unfortunately, followed by developments which resulted in a weakening of the Allied forces in this theatre before the conclusion of our offensive.

In these circumstances the task of the British and French armies has been a far heavier one throughout the year than was originally anticipated, and the enemy’s means of meeting our attack have been far greater than either he or we could have expected.”

It was a year of disappointment, but was not a year without achievement. We had failed against the Turk at Gaza, but had succeeded at Baghdad; the French spring offensive had not succeeded, and our own could only be described as a steadying blow at the Germans; Kerensky came on the scene in Russia in May, and no doubt did his best, but discipline had gone, and the offensive of Brussiloff and Korniloff, though it succeeded at first, was well in hand, so far as the Central Powers were concerned, in July. The East was the weak spot in our calculations, with Russia going to ruin and dragging Rumania with her. It was as well that Britain was at the crest of the power wave.

After all, battles have a further object than the mere killing of men. For quite a long while after the commencement of the war the Germans talked boastfully of their “will.” The will to victory was going to crush the moral of their enemies. But although the Russian revolution caused great rejoicing, although the German High Command claimed a long list of victories, it seemed that German moral was somehow flagging, and their enemy’s will to victory was as determined as ever.

Ludendorff admits that in the summer of 1917 the position of the Central Powers was better than that of the Entente, but that there were other causes for “our spiritual decline.” He says that Field-Marshal Hindenburg wrote to the Emperor on the 27th June that “our greatest anxiety at this moment, however, is the decline of the national spirit. It must be revived or we shall lose the war.” There were speeches in the Reichstag containing the despairing cry that it was impossible to win the war. On the 7th July Hindenburg and Ludendorff met members of the Reichstag to discuss “our defensive attitude throughout the first half of 1917, the various failures near Arras, in the Wytschæte salient, and in Galicia, where we had not as yet attacked, the absence up to date of any decisive result from the submarine war, and our serious situation as regards food and raw materials....” And finally, on the 25th July, General Ludendorff wrote that “it is certain that the Independent Social Democrats are carrying on an agitation in the army which is in the highest degree detrimental to discipline.”

And the allies of Germany were giving her a great deal of trouble.

One can only ask what created this frame of mind? Even a Social Democrat must have the ground prepared before his doctrines can germinate and flourish; it must be fertilised with dissatisfaction and watered with despair. The German and Austrian nations were as one in their desire for war in August 1914, and so strong that they had little difficulty in winning the Turkish and Bulgarian nations to their cause. Then surely we may answer the question by saying that it was the guns of the Allied artillery and the rifles of the Allied infantry that caused the “will” to falter, even when the position seemed most favourable to the War Lord and his advisers. It was a slow process, but a sure one.

One must admit disappointment to France and Britain, as the leaders of the countries allied against the Central Powers, but we cannot see the justice of the German contention that their own position was good. In considering the events of this war, it is not easy to appreciate the mind of a man who says “the military situation was good, but the condition of the country behind the army was bad.” Country and army surely hang together. The Germans never looked upon war as a clash of armies alone, but sought by every means in their power, by oppression, by slavery, by terror, to bend the non-combatant population to their will. It is a logical view. This war, at least, was waged by country against country, by nation against nation, and as a nation Germany was cracking, and her allies with her.

This was the state of affairs when the Battles of Ypres, 1917, after an artillery preparation which had been growing in volume for a month, opened with a stupendous crash on the 31st July—an official date.

From the very first the Second and Fifth British Armies, and the First French Army on the left, met with the fiercest resistance. The left of the Fifth Army and the First French Army gained the greatest success—the right of the Fifth Army and the Second Army did little more than capture the enemy first line of defence. Whatever the condition of the German people, the German Army seemed as strong as ever. And yet it was being nursed.

The system with which the Germans started the war was not one based on consideration for lives. Verdun and the Somme had shaken the very foundations of that system, and, if the German Army was still strong and good, German Commanders had already expressed anxiety as to the future conduct of their troops. Loss of lives and loss of moral had been responsible for a new method of defence. The front line was to be held by few men and many machine guns, and retirement before strong enemy fire was advocated. The position was to be regained by means of rapid counter-attack. Instead of holding a “line,” a zone was held. Defence in depth was the policy.

This loosened method of defence lessened the wastage of troops from artillery fire, and in addition the system of “pill-boxes” was instituted. These small reinforced concrete forts could withstand a direct hit of all but the heaviest shell, and were admirably adapted for the defence of a place like Flanders, where dugouts were almost an impossibility. In fact, the new German pamphlet, “The Defensive Battle,” was a distinct departure from the old “Cannon Fodder” point of view. If the Reichstag was openly saying that the war could not be won, the High Command of the Army was wondering if it would stand many more blows.

Men who fought at Ypres will say that they noticed no loss of moral in the enemy, and with this we agree; we only wish to insist that there were indications which had not escaped the eyes of the German Command. As to the hard, heart-breaking fighting of the Battles of Ypres, 1917, it is only just to the gallant French and British troops to point out once more the many advantages that lay with their enemies.

For over two years the Germans had held their semicircle round the east of Ypres. The positions they occupied, though only the summits of insignificant-looking “rises,” not even worthy of the name of “hills,” overlooked the whole of the French and British assembly area. Not a move escaped their observers, who knew every inch of the ground. What a place to prepare for an attack!

Books of reference will give the 31st July as the opening date of the 1917 Battles of Ypres. It is false. The 31st is the date of the assault—the battles started with the first indications of the British intention to attack. Every new trench, every trace of new digging, every new track taped out, every building, every hamlet, every wood was bombarded by the enemy with guns and aeroplanes, which became extremely active at this period. As the concentration of troops increased, all attempts at concealment were abandoned, and camps were pitched in the open. The whole area was a “target,” and was well described by a gunner who remarked, “Every time a coconut!” Observation, on the other hand, was denied to us.

All this, bad in itself, the troops were able to face. But the enemy had another advantage, being on the defensive, and that was the condition of the ground over which the attackers had to advance.

There is no place on the whole of the Western Front which can be compared to this stretch of Flanders. If an infantryman or an artilleryman attempted to give an adequate account of the conditions, and the horrors which they occasioned, he would not be believed. We will, therefore, give the words of the Higher Command, with the one criticism that they are not strong enough. Sir Douglas Haig wrote: