We were due for relief a few days later and the incoming battery staff were by no means pleased to see the pockmarks or so many shell holes round the position. In fact, I believe they shifted soon after.
One of the trees behind the cookhouse had been cut in half by a 5·9 dud, and we spent some blasphemous hours after dark trying to pull the remains down with drag-ropes.
Here is a final snapshot, relating to a spy scare. These were endemic on this front and a farmer had only to plough with a white horse one day and a black one the next, to be suspected of conveying information to the enemy.
In our case the major spotted a mysterious light shining (contrary to regulations) directly towards the German trenches from somewhere in the back area.
Clearly a signal to the enemy! One of our gunnery lieutenants fixed its position by means of a No.4 director and with the coming of daylight tracked the culprit down.
It was the brigade major at H.Q. who had omitted to draw the orderly-room blind.
BRIEF LEAVE, THEN BACK TO THE LICE AND HORROR
It was a relief to get out of the line and be back at rest for a few precious days and we made the most of it.
I took the opportunity to pay a hasty visit to the ancient town of Béthune, with its winding streets and curious Flemish-style houses, with their carved door-posts and ornate half-timbered upper storeys.
I also explored the lovely old church of St. Vaast[1] and gazed admiringly at the curious belfry in the market-square, with its square tower and wooden campanile, although both were looking somewhat dilapidated, as the town was within range of the enemy’s long-distance guns.
Here I had quite a shopping spree, purchasing innumerable souvenirs, crucifixes made of brass cartridge cases, lucky charms and the like, all of which fell into the German hands at St. Quentin within a twelve-month.
I also indulged in the inevitable orgy of eggs and chips, washed down with black coffee, with a chaser of Grenadine to wash away its vile taste, for it was composed of roasted acorns and sawdust.
LOUSY
Then back to the battery, thumbing a lift on a passing Army Service lorry and so to my snug little bivouac in the straw of an adjoining barn, infested with the lice of a thousand previous tenants.
Oh, those lice, it was simply impossible to get rid of them. According to an army legend, whenever we marched to a delousing station for a bath and a change of underclothing, the sagacious insects waited for us outside and rejoined the column when we emerged.
At one stage of the war we were issued with a nauseous compound which was reputed to be certain death to all creeping things, but it stank so ill that its use made one almost unable to live with oneself.
Actually, I think the lice rather liked it but I may be prejudiced.
INTENSE ACTIVITY
At the beginning of July the battery started its cross-country trek through the back areas to the Nieuport[2] sector, where a certain liveliness had been reported during the past few weeks.
Apparently we were relieving a Belgian Corps in anticipation of a Bosche attack, for there were rumours of Bosche concentrations across the Yser, which at this point formed a sort of liquid No-Man’s-Land.
We arrived at the outskirts of Furnes[3] in glorious summer weather and found everywhere signs of intense activity.
Guns of all calibres were discreetly hidden under camouflage in all sorts of unlikely places; they poked their grim muzzles from the shelter of every copse or sand dune, and there were ammunition dumps everywhere.
That same evening the right section moved into action, taking over from a Belgian detachment.
We found their pieces were so small that we were unable to get our guns inside the pits and so had to erect a temporary sandbag emplacement to protect us from splinters.
An English-speaking corporal warned us that it was not wise to fire more than a few ranging shots. Otherwise, he said ingenuously, the Bosche would be sure to retaliate. HOW RIGHT HE WAS!
Here we first heard rumours of a new phase of counter-battery work known as the shell-storm, although which side was the first to perpetrate the enormity I never learned.
It seemed to be confined to the Nieuport sector, and constituted the Bosche’s evening “hate”.
This is how it worked. Several times during each night every enemy gun on the front, whatever its calibre, would concentrate on a selected British battery and for a few hectic minutes would pour on the doomed position a veritable tornado of rapid fire.
DESOLATION
The effect had to be seen to be believed. In the twinkling of an eye the entire line of emplacements, with its guns, dug-outs, ammunition dumps and personnel, would be simply blotted out of existence.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the storm of high explosives, mixed with shrapnel, gas and incendiary shells, would cease.
Ensuing daylight would reveal a pitiful chaos of dismantled guns and exploded ammunition, with here and there a few grim shreds of mortality.
In due course, our own batteries would select a similar target behind the German lines, no doubt with the same result. “A” Battery took part in many of these episodes but was fortunate in escaping retaliation.
Others were not so lucky and I remember gazing horror-stricken at the remnants of one position out on the dunes that had simply been blasted out of the ground.
SOMETHING BREWING
In the meantime our first position was coming in for a lot of enemy attention and we were beginning to have casualties.
There was evidently something brewing and the infantry on either side seemed very nervous. It was a common thing to see SOS rockets going up all at once, both British and German from right along the line, until there was quite a fireworks display.
On the 17th of July we stood by for two hours in expectation of a raid and then worked out a scheme of harassing fire to prevent the Hun massing for an attack.
We kept this up all night and apparently smashed up the raid, for a few days later we pulled out after nightfall in pitch darkness and through a barrage of splinters along the bank of the Yser canal.
CHOKING FUMES
We were heading for a new position on the extreme left flank among the sand dunes on the coast, and here we again found ourselves in trouble. The road by Maison Carré was being heavily shelled and we trotted past at half-minute intervals.
On our left flank, about a hundred yards away a huge ammunition dump had suffered a direct hit and was going up in smoke, the exploding shells whirring over our heads like monstrous fire-crackers. The air reeked with the fumes of burnt cordite and as we stumbled through the acrid fog we were almost choked.
To add to the confusion, a shell burst in front of the leading team, wounding two drivers and a soon after another detonated under the muzzle of my own gun, damaging the recoil slides, but this we did not find out until later, when we were firing our first ranging shot and the piece jammed at full recoil, necessitating a long and hazardous journey to the Ordnance repair depot.
However, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We reached our new position without further incident, ran our guns into the pits and collapsed thankfully for a few hours sleep before stand-to at daybreak.
DEATH STALKS ON A LOVELY SUMMER’S DAY
Our new battery position was on a deceptively peaceful little oasis of greenery skirting the coastal sand-dunes a little north of Ooste Dunkerque.
Beyond a few small shell-holes which pitted the sward in our immediate vicinity there was little sign of enemy activity, and in the glorious summer weather we began to look forward to another artillery idyll such as we had enjoyed at La Bassée.
We ought to have known better. A glance at the belt of sand between ourselves and the grey, foam-capped waters of the Channel might have given us sufficient warning, for it was stained and scorched by the incessant bursting of H.E., gas and incendiary shells. And one could not pick up a handful of its gritty particles without finding a shell splinter amongst the pebbles.
Still, it was pleasant to look seaward, where one could often make out a long, black line of a convoy escorted by a couple of fussy destroyers, for all the world like a flock of sheep being chivvied by a pair of sheep dogs.
Somehow they seemed an impalpable link with the white cliffs of Dover, just over the edge of the horizon.
NIGHT AND DAY
Our first intimation that all was not as it might be came when we were visited by the colonel, who brought urgent orders that we were to reinforce and strengthen the position with the utmost speed, working night and day.
From what we could make out, there was no proper trench system in front of us; only a few scattered redoubts and machine-gun posts on the edge of the River Yser.
In fact, we were so close to the line that we could hear an occasional spent bullet whimpering past our ears.
Then, to add to our tribulations, we were spotted by a raiding Fokker fighter and thereafter sprayed with 5·9s and whizzbangs at unexpected intervals both night and day.
Those whizzbangs were the very devil, for they swooped upon one without the slightest warning, like a cloud of demented hornets, deluging the entire area with a rain of red-hot splinters.
I remember an occasion when one burst between two gunners of “B” sub. just as they were bringing a dixie of bully-beef stew from the cook-house. As they had flung themselves upon their faces they were unhurt, but the dixie was riddled with holes and there was no stew for the detachment that day.
UNDERGROUND COOKS
The cook-house was located on the battery’s left flank, in a tiny copse we soon designated Whizzbang Wood, for the enemy gunners seemed to have a particular spite against it.
Here the cooks lived a haunted and troglodyte existence, burrowing ever deeper and deeper after each successive bombardment.
They could rarely be persuaded to emerge into the light of day (small blame to them for that) and by some sort of miracle managed to cook for the whole battery in a sort of burrow not much larger than a fox earth, some ten feet underground.
July 24th proved to be one of our worst days. Until then our casualties had been relatively light and infrequent but on this lovely summer day, while the entire battery was at work strengthening gun-pit walls and roofs, the Bosche suddenly began to sweep the whole position with whizzbangs, which had a calibre of 3·2 inches, about the same as our own 18 pounders.
One of these burst in the middle of a group of telephonists, who were erecting a control post.
“It mauled them all horribly (records the battery diary) and hardly one had less than half a dozen wounds. Holden and Bonnell killed and Berry died of wounds later. Isherwood (died), Bowler (died), Sgt. Gabbutt and Gnr. Mabbut severely wounded (the latter died). Bdr. Tennant and Gnrs. Corr and Taylor less severely wounded. Brown killed and Bdr. Morgan wounded on returning from taking the casualties to ADS[4]. A most unlucky day and it has tried the battery a good deal …”
GUN ACCOMPANIMENT
This stark and sombre incident brings yet another grim picture to my mind’s eye. This was the subsequent sad procession to the tiny military cemetery near Coxyde[5] …
It is sunset and the gathering shadows are accentuated by a boding glare in the western sky, heralding a coming storm.
A silent group of khaki-clad figures in steel helmets, with box respirators at the alert position, stand with bowed heads before a row of blanket-swathed bodies by the side of a shallow trench, one half of which has already been filled.
On the farther side of the trench stands a Church of England padre, prayer-book in hand, his words of valediction charged with emotion.
Sometimes the responses are drowned by the incessant thunder of the guns and an occasional heavy shell rumbles overhead, to burst with a thunderous roar somewhere in the back areas. Already the eastern horizon is being criss-crossed by the gleaming arcs of the Verey lights and the staccato challenge of opposing machine-guns reverberates across No-Man’s-Land.
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the souls of our dear brethren here departed … earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”
A PART OF HISTORY
The last solemn words are uttered, the silent figures laid reverently side by aide in the trench are sprinkled with a few handfuls of Flanders soil and all is over.
The comrades, with whom only a few hours before we had exchanged jests and good-humoured badinage, have been committed to their last resting-place and have become part of history, part of the eternal tragedy of youth’s idealism sacrificed at the altar of racial and political hatred.
COXYDE MILITARY CEMETARY
[1] The 1547 church was destroyed in WW I and rebuilt 1924-7 in neo-Byzantine style (cf. Westminster Cathedral) http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89glise_Saint-Vaast_de_B%C3%A9thune
[2] Nieuport (Nieuwpoort) is in Belgian Flanders, where the river Yser flows into the North Sea
[3] Furnes (Veurne) is a small town 5 miles from Nieuport. It was the headquarters of King Albert and his staff.
[4] Advanced Dressing Station
[5] Coxyde (Koksijde) http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery=8600&mode=1