A final snapshot of the Nieuport front: I quote the Battery diary for 1st August:
“Rain started last night and finished up in a thunderstorm this morning. The men woke up to find themselves sleeping in water, with their change of clothing, blankets, coats, everything soaked … Gun platforms under water and we had to keep up the firing day and night.”
In fact, the entire position was flooded to a depth of about three feet and for the next few days we lived and had our being under appalling conditions.
We were being shelled incessantly all the time, with a large percentage of gas shells, and we kept up retaliatory fire night and day.
As the water was level with the gun axles, the piece, with its 42-inch recoil, sent a tidal wave completely over the detachment at every discharge, soaking us to the skin.
Consequently we went into action stripped to the waist and during the long spells of night firing were chilled to the very bone.
Owing to the presence of phosgene gas, which was not so volatile as mustard gas and lingered in the vicinity for hours, we did much of our firing wearing respirators. In fact, on more than one occasion I actually slept in mine.
When I say “slept” I am perhaps guilty of some exaggeration. As our dugouts were under water we managed with some ingenuity to construct temporary bunks. These consisted of sheets of corrugated iron raised on sandbags a few inches above the surrounding inundation.
We quickly found that corrugated iron has certain disadvantages in comparison with a feather-bed, particularly when a restless movement might precipitate one into three feet of icy-cold water, and for this reason our slumbers were light.
UNFRIENDLY PEASANTS
But all things unpleasant or otherwise must come to an end and towards the end of August the Battery pulled out for a period of rest and recuperation at the wagon line established beneath the whirling arms of a Flemish windmill outside St. ldesbalde[1].
This quaint old structure interested me profoundly, but unfortunately its proprietor was not too friendly, even after I had informed him that my name was Miller (which I translated as “Mouliniere” in my barbarous French), and he regarded my advances with sullen suspicion. As a result, I was unable to examine the creaking wooden mechanism.
This unfriendly attitude on the part of the natives was made evident on many occasions and sometimes gave rise to painful incidents.
When one halts at a farm-stead after a long day’s trek behind the lines and finds that the winding gear of the well has been dismantled and that even a drink of water must be paid for, one can scarcely blame the troops for showing their resentment in no uncertain manner.
But to the French peasants we were just a necessary evil, neither more nor less.
TO YPRES AND THAT GHASTLY SALIENT
Friday, October 6th and once again we are on trek … this time towards Ypres[2] and the Salient, where the third Battle of Ypres has been raging under indescribable conditions since July 31st.
THE SALIENT, that insatiable Moloch[3], which between that date and the end of December was to devour no fewer than 448,614 British troops in killed and wounded, including “normal wastage”, whatever that may mean.
THE SALIENT, where the ghastly evidences of the casualties of three great battles were churned up time and time again by successive barrages.
THE SALIENT, where German divisions were sent to serve as a punitive measure, when they showed signs of restiveness under the stress of war.
Of course, we did not know this at the time; we had just had a pep talk from the major (who was probably as much in ignorance as the rest of us), and were given to understand that it was going to be our privilege to take part in the last decisive action of the war, which would split the Bosche front from top to bottom and drive him into the sea.
Everything had been laid on … field guns were massed almost wheel to wheel and there were enough heavies to reduce the German back areas into heaps of rubble … masses of tanks were lurking in hiding in every conceivable spot where they could take cover, waiting for the inevitable break-through … there were two cavalry divisions champing at the bit and just pining for the day when they could pour through the gap and fan out behind the enemy lines, waging destruction with lance and sword upon the demoralised infantry. OF SUCH STUFF WERE GHQ PIPE-DREAMS MADE.
SOON TO KNOW
Even I, in my innocence, thought that tanks and cavalry made a curious combination and I even wondered why these lumbering armoured monsters should have to wait so coyly behind the lines when they might have gone in front to break the resistance of the enemy.
But I found out the reason later, when from one forlorn and shell-swept battery position near Zonnebeke[4] I counted the derelict remains of no fewer than fourteen Mark IV tanks that had been bogged down and suffered direct hits.
No wonder it was called the tank graveyard.
But already some inkling of what was really in store for us had begun to circulate. We had been relieved at Nieuport by the 42nd Division, our own first line, newly returned from Gallipoli and the Middle East, who had already had their baptism of fire in the Ypres Salient, on the Frezenberg Ridge[5].
They had some hair-raising tales to tell of mud and slaughter and, although we were sufficiently seasoned to make allowances for rumour and exaggeration, there seemed little doubt that we were not going to march through the Menin Gate[6] on a picnic.
[1] Saint-Idesbalde is a small hamlet east of Dunkirk
[2] Ypres (Ieper) is a Belgian municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. The allied salient that surrounded it was the site of five battles during WW I, the third of which was Passchendaele.
[3] Moloch was a god of the Phœnicians to whom children were sacrificed by burning
[4] Zonnebeke is a municipality located in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the villages of Beselare, Geluveld, Passendale, Zandvoorde and Zonnebeke proper. It is now the site of the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917.
[5] Battle of Frezenberg (8th-13th May 1915), part of the Second Battle of Ypres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Ypres#Battle_of_Frezenberg_.288.E2.80.9313_May.29
[6] The Menin Gate (Menenpoort) is the main eastern gate of Ypres. The carved limestone lions adorning the original gate were damaged by shellfire, and were donated to the Australian War Memorial by the Mayor of Ypres in 1936. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menin_Gate
Remembering the First World War 