Our first day’s trek in the back areas ended at 1 a.m., when we reached a farm near Ghyvelde[1].
Here, while the drivers made some attempt to groom and curry-comb their wet and steaming horses, picketed on lines where they were over their fetlocks in glutinous mud, we gunners sluiced down guns and ammunition wagons on a gun-park equally insalubrious.
I, as gun-layer, cleaned and oiled the breach mechanism and checked the gun-sights, before flinging myself down in my wet clothes on a bundle of straw in a leaky barn infested with rats and various insect abominations.
I was dog-tired and only awoke once, when one of these long-tailed vermin scuttled across my face. But I was used to that.
NOT IMPRESSED
At seven we were off again, still in the pouring rain, and during that day we passed through the 1st French Army area to Esquelbecq[2]. This gave us an opportunity to see for ourselves the sort of discipline maintained by our allies, and I am bound to say that we were not greatly impressed.
Naturally, we were most interested in their field artillery, for the little French 75mm gun had acquired a great reputation.
But gunners and drivers struck us as anything but efficient; in fact, both they and their equipment were, to use an expressive Army phrase, just “scruffy”.
This was particularly noticeable when we passed a battery on the move with guns and limbers loaded with impediments until the entire turn out resembled a gypsy migration rather than a fighting unit.
Even the horses’ bits were red with rust and by comparison the burnished steelwork of our own harness gleamed like silver.
FROM NOAH’S ARK
But if their equipment was far from what it might have been, their animals resembled a cavalcade that had just emerged from Noah’s Ark.
There were horses of all shapes and sizes, together with mules and even donkeys, all harnessed together without any apparent regard as to size or breed.
One gun team consisted of one heavy draft and two light draft horses, two Andalusian mules and one nondescript animal which might have been a donkey or even a very large St. Bernard dog.
Their coats were shaggy and caked with mud and they moved slowly and despondently, obviously unkempt and ill-fed.
They were followed by a battalion of Senegalese infantry, who slouched along with their great-coats buttoned back from the knees of their baggy white trousers. They were gloomy and out of step and it did not need an expert to judge that their morale was pretty low.
We were not to know, of course, that, following the French General Nivelle’s[3] abortive offensive in April, when his troops sustained heavy losses, several Colonial divisions and the French 120th Infantry Regiment had mutinied and that the men’s discipline was still dangerously relaxed.
HOPELESS OFFENSIVE
Indeed, Sir Douglas Haig, our own commander-in-chief, gave this as one reason for continuing the hopeless offensive in which British soldiers, their rifles clogged with mud which engulfed them up to their knees, were flung, again and again, against a defensive system skilfully organised in depth.
Realising the folly of attempting to dig trenches, the German high command constructed hundreds of concrete emplacements which we called “pill-boxes”, with walls and roofs of tremendous thickness, at every strategic point.
These were manned by highly-trained machine-gun teams, some of whom were actually induced, by the offer of higher pay and better rations, to allow themselves to be chained to their weapon, so that there could be no question of surrender.
Suffice it to say at the moment that even our French allies, thankful as they were for the respite we gave them, were amazed that the slaughter should have been allowed to go on so long, and General Foch openly referred to the whole campaign as Haig’s “duck-march” through Flanders.
THE SPEARHEAD
It was on ground like this that the 66th East Lancashire Division, of which we were part, was selected to be the spearhead of an attack designed to extend the line to the outskirts of Passchendaele.
Zero hour was 5.30 a.m. on October 9th and to give the men time to reach the jumping-off tapes and get a few hours’ rest before going over the top they were assembled at a rendezvous 2½ miles behind the line at 7 p.m., the night before.
At dusk the troops began their forward march through the ruins of Ypres. It was raining hard and they were already soaked to the skin, while, being equipped in full battle order, with water-bottle and haversack, an extra fifty-cartridge bandolier over the right shoulder and a Mills bomb in each aide pocket, they were carrying altogether over 60 lb. of clothing, weapons and equipment.
MAZE OF CRATERS
Immediately after passing through the Menin Gate they ran into difficulties. The duck-board tracks which they were supposed to follow had been heavily plastered with enemy shells and were shattered to pieces every few yards, while such as remained were covered with slime and submerged in foul water.
Soon they found themselves wandering in pitch darkness through a maze of shell-craters brimming with water, this last often covered with old sour mustard gas or even worse abominations.
Many of the men toppled into these and had to be hauled out by comrades extending rifle butts. So nauseating was the experience that men often vomited after being extricated.
Worse still, they ran into an area of liquid mud, where they sank to their waists, realising grimly the truth of Napoleon’s remark that besides water, air, earth and fire, God had created another element … mud.
By the time they reached the front line, dawn was already beginning to break, the offensive had begun, whereupon without a pause they fixed bayonets and kept on towards the enemy …
[1] Ghyvelde is a French border town near Dunkirk.
[2] Esquelbecq is a village near the Belgian frontier, 24 kilometres north of Hazebrouck and the same distance south of Dunkirk. There is now a CWGC cemetery, opened in April 1918. http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery=2600&mode=1
[3] Robert Georges Nivelle (1856 -1924) was promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the French armies on the Western Front in December 1916 and replaced in May 1917. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nivelle
Remembering the First World War 