KIXUM’S CUNNING BECAME JOKE IN NIGHTMARE OF MUD

If our infantry, assembling for the attack on Passchendaele, found themselves bogged down in the all-pervading mud, we of the Field Artillery were in no better plight.

In the late afternoon of October 7 we arrived in pouring rain at very muddy wagon-lines at Vlamertinge[1], with flooded tents and bivouacs for quarters. We were so weary that some of the drivers were almost asleep in their saddles, but nevertheless horses had to be groomed, fed and watered and guns cleaned before we could turn in ourselves.

This mud was to be a long drawn-out nightmare during the ensuring three months, and it was pitiful to see how the condition of our animals deteriorated.

Sleek and glossy from their long period of comparative inaction at Nieuport, they quickly became thin and nervous, with staring eyes and drooping heads.

I have actually seen a double line of horses standing in mud more than a foot In depth, whilst their drivers worked with brush and curry-comb, sitting on their backs.

DANGEROUS COMPANY

At Vlamertinge the horse -lines followed the usual pattern. Two lengths of picketing-line were pegged down about a yard apart and to these a double row of horses were tethered, with heads facing inwards.

This enabled drivers and picquets to pass down the middle, adjust nose-bags at feeding-time, and during the night fasten the straps and buckles of rugs and blankets, which had a trick of coming loose and slipping over the animal IS haunches.

Speaking of nose-bags brings to my mind one horse in particular, which bore the sinister name of “Kixum”.

Horses are temperamental creatures, like sergeant-majors and at times have to be handled with care and understanding. They acquire all sorts of eccentricities and bad habits and this can make them very dangerous company, especially to strangers.

AN ALTERNATIVE

“Kixum”, alas, was no exception. Hardship and constant exposure had spoiled his temper and made him vicious, but he soon found that lashing-out at all and sundry within reach of his flying hooves merely brought retaliation in kind.

So he devised a cunning alternative. When the trumpet-call announced feeding time and his nose-bag fixed, he would lie in wait with head down until an unsuspecting line orderly passed by.

Then he would suddenly raise his head and bring the wet and muddy nose-bag weighing about half a hundredweight, with a terrific clout across his victim’s ear. It was a wallop Jack Dempsey might have envied and it never failed to be a knockout.

INNOCENTS LURED

After we had tumbled to this little idiosyncrasy, we always kept a wary eye on master “Kixum”, but it soon became a standing joke to lure some innocent visitor, preferably from another battery, to take a walk down the lines to where this equine battering-ram was lying in wait.

Believe me, it left a lasting impression.

At the wagon-lines near Zillebeke[2] we had another horse, “Storm King”, who regularly went lame whenever he was detailed to go up the line with a pack-saddle loaded with ammunition and rations. He fooled us for quite a while, until we found that he was not always lame on the same loot.

PITIABLE SIGHTS

Horses are particularly nervous under shell-fire and can become positively mad with terror. Even when under control, their trembling limbs, rolling eyes and twitching ears render them pitiable objects.

Unfortunately, at such times they are prone to stand fast and refuse to budge, which can mean disaster unless they can be speedily goaded into action again. Then spur and whip must be used without mercy and for this reason there were few artillery horses whose flanks were not scarred and slashed with the cruel rowel after they had been on active service.

I once saw a driver sponging the blood from his horse’s side after one such incident, and there were tears in his eyes. Yet it was all part of the grim pattern of war, and would probably be repeated at the next emergency.

WE MOVE OFF

I could say a great deal more about the strange relationship that existed between a driver and his horses on the Western Front, but meanwhile German machine guns are waiting for our infantry on the crest of Passchendaele Ridge. The war must go on.

[1] Vlamertinge is a village in the Belgian province of West Flanders 3 miles west of the town of Ypres. It is now the site of a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery: http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery=14800&mode=1

[2] Located in or close to Zillebeke are the Hill 62 Memorial and the Sanctuary Wood Museum Hill 62, as well as the Sanctuary Wood and the Zillebeke Churchyard Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemeteries.

HAIG’S ‘DUCK MARCH THROUGH FLANDERS’

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 1^st 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 9^th 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

My Comrades

I carried depressing memories from Nieuport for it was here that I lost one of my best pals. He was killed whilst taking some of our wounded down to the dressing-station and I attended his funeral in the tiny military cemetery near Coxyde.

He was a quiet well-educated lad who hailed from Lancaster, and we had a love of literature in common.

I wrote a detailed account of the circumstances of his death to his parents and then, having a shrewd suspicion that it might be censored at the battery office I sent a duplicate copy in a green envelope, these being a special Army issue that were only censored at the base.

As I suspected, only the last got through, but I had the satisfaction of learning later how much comfort it had been to poor Bill’s parents. He was an only son.

Then there was Gunner Bell, better known as Ding-dong. He was a walking wounded case and I went down to the dressing station with him myself.

It was in a cellar near Suicide Corner and I shook hands with him and wished him luck with his ”blighty”. When we met a year later in Brighton he was in hospital with an artificial leg and I was acting as gunnery instructor in the Artillery cadet school. He came from Somerset and a decent, good-humoured fellow he was.

“FOR LUCK”

And there was Corporal Norman, killed by a shell-splinter which went clean through a steel mirror he carried in his breast pocket. He was a reserved but kindly chap who had recently joined us from the trench-mortar batteries.

I carried that mirror about with me for luck all through the rest of the campaign, which goes to show how superstitious one can get, living under constant strain.

I could recall so many more, but what was the use? The astonishing thing was, not the stark, unheroic courage, the patient endurance, the calm resignation to whatever fate held in store, but the sense of fatality that seemed to lie beneath it all.

As though we, the youth of the early 20^th century, were offering ourselves as a sort of sacrifice for the mistakes and follies of the civilization which bore us, as though we were working out a penance for the sins of our fathers and that such a holocaust was the only way in which we could satisfy an outraged Creator.

I can think of no other explanation.

APPALLING CONDITIONS

A final snapshot of the Nieuport front: I quote the Battery diary for 1^st 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 6^th 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 31^st.

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 42^nd 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 (8^th-13^th 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

A Greater Danger To Our Friends Than The Enemy!

Altogether, during the period I acted as gun-layer on the Western Front, I fired some 20,000 shells into the enemy lines.

I am not so naive as to imagine that all this weight of high explosive could have burst on the front line trenches without killing or maiming quite a number of youngsters of my own age and the sombre thought often weighs on my conscience, even today.

Yet, during the whole period, I was only involved in one personal incident (concerning which I prefer not to speak), in which I knew I had actually inflicted bodily harm, perhaps killed, a human being, and he was a man old enough to be my father.

He emerged from a shell-hole, probably with the intention of surrendering, but how was I to know that?

SOUVENIRS

Of course, I did not escape scot-free myself, I still carry the scar of a bullet wound in my left arm, the marks of half a dozen shell splinters in my right leg, a slight dose of phosgene gas at Passchendaele[1] left me subject to severe gastric attacks and I am permanently deaf in my left ear owing to the concussion of incessant gun-fire.

Curiously enough, it was the ear farthest away from the gun that felt the violence of the impact; almost as if one received a terrific blow on that side of the head every time the piece fired.

On first going into action we had been issued with rubber ear-plugs, but these were quickly lost or discarded. In turning out to support an infantry SOS call, one had other things than ear-plugs to think about.

Everything considered, however, I think I was extremely lucky and I often used to recall with a wry smile the words of the old sweat with one arm who greeted me at the Blackburn Artillery barracks:

“Ay, son thee take a good look at that. Afore tha’s finished, tha’ll think aw’m dommed lucky.”

He could have been so right.

ESCAPES

Actually, I consider that there were three different occasions when I ought to have been killed but just wasn’t through some inscrutable quirk of providence.

Once when my gun sustained a direct hit and the blast blew me clean out of the gun-pit; once when I was sitting target for a line of advancing German shock troops and once when a 15 in. shell buried itself in the ground under my feet and failed to explode.

Yes, I think I have been “dommed lucky” myself. I have had a shell-splinter deflected by a bunch of keys in my pocket; I have had my box respirator carried away by another and the front of my tunic slashed open by yet a third; I have had the heel of my boot cut away with a fragment of shell case and my tin hat dented by a huge piece of falling debris and here I am to tell the tale nigh fifty years later.

“Dommed lucky.” I’ll say I was.

INCESSANT

Many of the 20,000 rounds I lobbed across No-Man’s Land were expended while we were on the Nieuport front. What with the incessant shell-storms, when we blazed away as fast as we could load, fire, and eject the empty cartridge cases, and the nightly SOS rockets, blazing eerily, red over green over yellow, all along the tortured front line, our lives seemed spent in one constant reverberation of ear-splitting sound; no wonder I have had a permanent singing in my ears ever since.

To add to our tribulations, about this time we began to receive a lot of defective American ammunition, chiefly shrapnel.

In point of fact, shrapnel was very little use in the eternal mud of Flanders, or anywhere else for that matter.

Trench warfare required high explosive and plenty of it and spraying the enemy lines with shrapnel bullets was about as effective as flinging a handful of peas.

Actually, I believe it was Lord Kitchener who insisted on the artillery carrying 50 per cent of shrapnel. He was still living in the days of the Boer War.

The only time such shells became effective was when the Bosche delivered a mass attack in close formation and that was only in the very early stages of the war.

UNPOPULAR

But defective shrapnel ammunition could be the very devil. Each shell contained 190 lead pellets as big as marbles, detonated by a time fuse at the base, the idea being to set it so that it burst just over the heads of attacking troops.

But these infernal Yankee efforts, as often as not, burst as soon as they left the gun muzzle and sprayed the ground in front with a barrage of lead. And as at Nieuport there was another RFA battery immediately in front of us, we soon became exceedingly unpopular.

In fact, the battery commander insisted, with some feeling, that his men were in greater danger from us than from the enemy, a fact we could well appreciate.

And when one of his gunners, hit in the knee by a stray shrapnel bullet, insisted on the stretcher-bearers carrying him to our position, so that he could shake hands with the man who had given him such a comfortable “blighty”, it was obvious something would have to be done about it.

PAINFUL DUTY

We had just been issued with some patent night-lights which worked from a dry battery in the gun pit and which had to be connected every night with a long length of wire.

This was continually being cut by splinters and it was my painful duty, as gun-layer, to crawl out and repair it, often when the battery was blazing away upon some SOS line.

I have spent more than one blasphemous half-hour groping in the dark after loose ends of wire, with one ear cocked for the curious whine of a premature, which would have meant for me a sudden and sticky end, for our aiming posts to which the lights were fixed were immediately in front of the gun muzzles.

HEROES WHO BLAZED THE TRAIL FOR ‘THE FEW’

It seems likely that the arrival of British troops on the Nieuport front and particularly the 66th Division’s take-over from the French and Belgian forces on this sector was regarded by the Bosche as the preliminary to an attack across the flooded Yser river.

No doubt his suspicions were intensified by certain mysterious manoœuvres on the part of the 4th East Lancashires, who were brigaded with the division.

For some obscure reason they were placed under the orders of the Royal Engineers, ostensibly to construct a pontoon bridge over the Yser Canal. They also spent one memorable night under heavy fire, crossing its inky waters in a number of curious coracles known as Berthon Boats.

These monstrosities, as soon as they had been loaded with equipment, invariably capsized, precipitating their cursing occupants into the icy depths.

It was all very frustrating and only made sense to the brass-hats at GHQ, for the projected attack was never launched.

AERIAL DOG FIGHTS

But in consequence there was a sudden outbreak of activity behind the German lines, both on the ground and in the air, where both aides fought desperately to obtain the mastery.

Almost every morning, as we stood-to, we could see, outlined against the roseate flush of dawn, a dozen fighter planes engaged in a bitter dog-fight.

How we admired the courage of our gallant airmen in their rickety little machines, some little larger than kites.

These feeble bi-planes and tri-planes from both sides of the line – SPAD, Nieuport, Albatros, Sopwith and Fokker Fighters represented the eyes of the opposed forces and it was essential to the other side that they should be destroyed.

Sometimes whole squadrons would become locked in combat: on one occasion the famous German “ace” Richthoven swept across our front with his notorious “flying circus,” all painted a sinister red, inviting our own airmen to a “free-for-all”, of which they were quick to avail themselves.

The result was a sight for the gods; I have never seen such aerobatics either before or since.

Backward and forward loops, the “falling leaf”, the spin, the upward and downward dives; nothing carne amiss; all seemed to be inspired with a sheer contempt for death, and all the while their frenzied activities were punctuated by the staccato rattle of machine-guns.

I have seen as many as four hurtling down in flames together; I have seen one plane deliberately ram another, so that the two fell to earth together with wings inter-locked, and I have seen men, their clothes ignited by burning petrol, leap from the wrecked machines and crash to the ground like blazing torches.

Make no mistake about it, those early Royal Flying Corps men were worthy of the high tradition that led to our victory in the Battle of Britain of the Second World War. In such bitter fighting as this they set the pattern for a succeeding generation.

[1] The Battle of Passchendaele was one of the major battles of the First World War, taking place between July and November 1917. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele

Blasphemous Hours

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 17^th 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

Last Scramble

Spoil Bank, and here we pause a moment to regain our breath and prepare for the last mad scramble for the subterranean safety of the half -finished sap.

We listened grimly as a spray of machine-gun bullets comes whining through the blackness and patters against the sand-bagged revetment. Then, as the burst ceases I lick my lips.

“Come on, lads,” and away we go, bent two-double and feeling that every German spotter in the entire sector has his eye on us. We tumble head-over-heels into the sap just as a 4·5 inch section salvo explodes overhead with a terrific “crump”, showering us with fragments of broken brick and debris. WE HAD MADE IT.

The sap is a sort of miniature tunnel some 3 feet wide by 4 feet high, its sides and roof shored up with props and short lengths of planking.

The leading man crawls forward to the working face and begins to scratch at the sandy soil with his entrenching tool. The soil is shovelled into an empty sandbag which, when full, is passed between his legs to the next in line and so in relays to the entrance, where it is used to augment the parapet of the ruined trench.

Occasionally the man in front is relieved and the human chain shuffles forward a few feet, while the relieved toiler squeezes his way backwards to the tail of the procession.

At 4 a.m. a halt is called. We must get back to Orchard Road before daybreak, when the infantry stand-to. So there is a second hasty evacuation, this time accelerated by a staccato burst from a sniper’s post in the enemy front line.

When we emerge, still unscathed, into the comparative safety of Orchard Road, I find a neat round hole drilled through my entrenching tool, just a souvenir from the Bosche.

The subsequent history of this forward observation post was one of disaster. While ranging on the German front line, with a safety margin of barely fifty yards, the F.O.O. almost succeeded in annihilating himself and his own battery. A little later an observer must have spotted the sunlight glinting on the lens of his periscope, for Jerry began to beat a devil’s tattoo about their ears with trench-mortar bombs, wrecking their observation post and sending them scurrying to safety, fortunately with no casualties.

SPORADIC SHELLING – AND WE TRACK DOWN A ‘SPY’

Early in the morning of May 1st the Bosche started shelling our advanced section and kept it up steadily until the afternoon, the detachments being ordered to withdraw to the canal bank. The enemy fire appeared to be directed by a plane which passed repeatedly overhead.

Soon fires were blazing merrily in both gun-pits, number 5 having most of its ammunition exploded. The gun was badly damaged and presented a sorry sight, with the whole badly charred and the handspike burnt off.

This episode proved to be the first of many. Obviously our sand-bagging and realigning activities had not gone unobserved.

For some time, however, Jerry contented himself with a few bracketing shots on both the main battery position and the section for registration purposes.

Then, on June 20^th he again shelled the section, dropping an assortment of about 100 5·9s and 4·2s.

Our heavies retaliated and seemed to be successful in stopping them temporarily, but they always seemed to start again as soon as the gunners ventured back.

Finally the spotting plane was driven off by two of our Sopwith fighters and after that all was peace, at least for the rest of the day.

BOSCHE RAID

On the following morning it was the battery’s turn, although the Bosche appeared to be firing without observation, for all he succeeded in doing was to demolish a couple of trees just behind the position.

Two days later both battery and section were shelled, observation being apparently from a balloon, but again there were no casualties and little damage.

All this artillery activity coincided with a certain liveliness in the trenches and on June 25^th, after a tremendous barrage of “minnies” in the Givenchy sector, the Bosche raided and occupied Red Dragon crater. There was sporadic shelling of the battery and gunner Hanmer was wounded.

By way of finale, on the 28^th Bosche started shelling the battery in real earnest, thereby postponing a visit of inspection by the C.R.A., who, seeing that the battery was apparently going up in smoke, wisely decided that there were other positions healthier and less preoccupied in the area.

According to the battery diary, “the detachments cleared to the right, where they spent an enjoyable day, chiefly in slumber.”

TREETOP EYRIE

I have in my possession, however, a worn and tattered field service notebook which gives the lie to this assertion, as least so far as I was concerned.

As a matter of fact, having removed dial sight, telescope sight and rocking bar sight from my own gun and seen that No. 2 had dismantled and removed the breach-block, I spent the rest of the day perched on the branch of a tree on the right flank, from which point of vantage I had a clear view of the position and could record the effect of every round.

Each burst was duly jotted down in my notebook and also passed on to a signaller located at the foot of the tree, who in turn phoned the information through to the battery office.

Altogether I recorded 122 rounds all bursting within a plus minus bracket of 200 yards, with eleven direct hits and only a very small percentage of “duds”.

Pretty shooting, when one considers that it was probably at a range of three or four miles!

I could have stayed in my eyrie longer but at that moment a shell splinter came whining through the air and embedded itself in the branch a few inches from where I was sitting and I decided to accept the hint. After all, I was not up there under orders and I had no wish for a posthumous decoration.

MY “RUBAIYAT”

Perhaps my sentiments were best expressed in a poem I wrote during the subsequent Passchendaele offensive, which I entitled: “Rubaiyat of Corporal Miller”. Here is a brief extract:

At times I like to think it’s all a joke.

Not that its laughter makes you want to choke;

A week or two at most you keep a pal,

Then Bang … the poor devil’s gone in smoke.

You mustn’t worry when you see him fall,

Most likely it’s his fault for being tall,

Just recollect you’ve got it coming, too

And that’ll be the biggest joke of all.

He’s gone the road so many men have trod,

He’s dead, and just another useless clod,

So square your back, and when it comes your turn

Take it and say: “Well, that’s the lot, thank God.”

And some day, when the muster roll is read

If you don’t answer, being likely dead;

They’ll send your old tin hat down to the base

And maybe fill it with a thicker head.

A Most Ungodly Assignment in No-Man’s-Land

Following the SOS incident related in my last article, I was for some time in disgrace, a fact which entailed unpleasant consequences. Among them was the fact that, whenever a particularly unhealthy fatigue was in the offing, I invariably found myself in charge of the party.

One of these still sticks in my mind. Our F.O.O. (Forward Observation Officer to you) had selected a certain exceptionally deep shell-hole in No-Man’s-Land for an advanced post, in order to do some fancy shooting on a nest of Bosche snipers.

An excellent idea, you might think, until you realised that someone was going to have to dig an underground sap a matter of some thirty yards in advance of our front line; that the approach was along a most unhealthy trench system, leading from Orchard Road via Death or Glory Trench to Spoil Bank; and that the somebody was going to be you among other unfortunates.

Furthermore, Spoil Bank was a deserted and badly-battered trench on a slope overlooked by enemy spotters and was constantly being ‘plastered by “minnies”. (This was an endearing diminutive we had for the German Minenwerfer, a sort of super trench-mortar bomb about the size of a tombstone, which came wobbling menacingly through the air to detonate on impact like a miniature vo1cano.) In addition, the slope was constantly swept by machine-gun fire.

GLOOMY FOREBODINGS

Altogether, a most ungodly assignment and it was with gloomy forebodings that we contacted the R.E. sapper who was to supervise our labours.

He was waiting for us in a support trench in Cuinchy[1] Cemetery, an eerie spot where fancy vaults had been converted into dug-outs and where some sardonic infantry man had stuck a couple of human skulls on the parade post for luck. We took it as a grim commentary on our ultimate fate.

Passing along the shell-pitted bank of La Bassée canal, where a couple of men from the East Lancs. Regiment were “fishing” with Mills bombs, the shock of the explosion being sufficient to stun every fish in its vicinity, we made our way along the duck-boards until we reached the ruins of the brewery, which had part of its chimney still standing.

Here we entered the Givenchy trench system proper and soon made our way to Orchard Road, where we had to stand by until it became dark.

CHILLY ATMOSPHERE

We were not popular with the infantry, who always regard artillerymen in the trenches as birds of evil omen.

Indeed, the very sight of a bandolier was greeted with a scowl, as an indication that Brigade H.Q. were making preparations for another “strafe,” which would inevitably mean heavy artillery retaliation, casualties, and subsequent fatigues to repair wrecked emplacements.

So that when we commandeered an infantry dug-out in order to make a brew of tea over a few sticks of charcoal, there was something of a chilly atmosphere, until our involuntary huts learned that we were headed for Spoil Bank, after which they became quite cheerful.

Probably they assumed we were not likely to live long enough to cause them much trouble.

At nightfall we were on our way once more …

It is a thankless business stumbling along a strange trench in the dark, occasionally coming into collision with a sentry crouched on the fire-step, with the imminent risk of a playful prod from his bayonet, or hearing a hoarse voice from somewhere under one’s feet imploring us to “put out that ‑‑‑‑ flashlight.”

Overhead the velvety night sky is powdered with stars, eclipsed from time to time by the lazy incandescent arc of a Verey[2] light, which enables one to see the tense faces of the remainder of the party, listening to the distant crunch of a bursting shell or the sibilant whisper of a machine-gun bullet passing over-head.

“Be with the guns boys, this is an artillery war.” What ruddy fool invented that slogan, I wonder. He ought to be here now, toting an entrenching tool and a couple of pit-props …

[1] Cuinchy is a village midway between Béthune and La Bassée, the site of several Commonwealth cemeteries: http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery=2000098&mode=1

[2] The most common type of flare gun is a Very (sometimes spelled Verey) which was named after Edward Wilson Very (1847–1910), an American naval officer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_gun

The Sleepless Major Leaves Me Stripeless

We found the battery snugly ensconced in a series of four gun-pits overshadowed by tall trees by the side of a narrow road.

On the left, our flank was protected by La Bassée canal, while on the right and a little nearer the support trenches was “C” Battery of our Brigade, not so well placed in the middle of a swamp.

In spite of much sporadic shelling, which included incendiary and gas, there were quite a lot of waterfowl breeding here-abouts, including wild duck, coots, and moorhens.

I recall seeing a fond mother coot followed by her family, consisting of half a dozen tiny, fluffy balls of black down, paddling serenely between splashes made by two bursts from a 5·9 inch section salvo from behind the German lines, and apparently not in the least perturbed.

AN ABOMINATION

The canal, on the other hand, was an abomination of desolation, its stagnant waters choked with rusted barbed wire or littered with all sorts of abandoned impedimenta, the aftermath of battle; amid which a wrecked barge mouldered on the slimy bottom or a smashed bridge reared its twisted girders against the gloomy skyline.

There were four guns on the main position and another two in an advanced section. The gun-pits were in effect sand-bagged emplacements roofed over with heavy logs, these last intended to explode a H.E. shell before it penetrated into the pit, where as many as 300 rounds of ammunition might have been stacked in racks on each side of the pits.

As the whole position was under constant observation not only from the interminable line of captive balloons stretching along the line of the front as far as the eye could see, each glinting in the sun like a sinister unwinking eye, but also from “spotter” planes, which swooped so low that they almost grazed the tree tops, we were under strict orders to move about as little as possible in the hours of daylight.

In addition, camouflage nets were hung over the front of the pits when the guns were not in action and every day fresh grass was scattered over the scorched, withered herbage in front of the gun muzzles, to efface traces of blast.

NIGHT LIFE

But at night we were busy enough for the edict had gone forth from Battery Office that the whole position had to be improved, gun-pits reinforced with new sandbags and where they were out of alignment, brought into position!

Rumour had it that the Divisional C.R.A. was coming to inspect us and that he liked to see all gun muzzles in perfect dressing, like soldiers on parade.

This entailed heavy fatigues with depleted detachments and some “grousing” particularly among the old sweats, who thought they ought to be allowed to take things easy on such a quiet front.

Not that life was always so peaceful. On Sunday, April 1^st, the Battery diary tersely records: “the Bosche a great deal more active. Knocked about Fenton’s Folly (our observation post) with Minnies and put 4·2s including gas shells round Sapper’s House, knocking down part of the adjoining wall.”

This entailed retaliatory fire, which in turn set the enemy lines buzzing like a swarm of bees.

Machine guns began their staccato rattle across the waste of No-Man’s-Land and soon SOS flares were lighting up the night sky, red over green over yellow, like aerial traffic lights crying out for artillery support.

It was quite a regular thing to have three or four such alarms in a single night.

CRYPTIC MESSAGES

Nor was this our only bugbear. We had, if I remember right, five SOS lines, all carefully calibrated and divided into arcs of fire, all with line, range, angle of sight, and fuses set according to whether the code word was “Canal Right, Canal Centre, Canal Left, Defend Givenchy, or Defend Dragon.” (Dragon incidentally being a mine crater which changed hands with monotonous regularity whenever we or the Bosche decided upon a raid.) so that we could switch over to the danger spot almost on the instant.

Unfortunately our Battery Office was in a direct line about half a mile in rear of the position and as the major (according to a blasphemous theory held by “B” sub-gun detachment) suffered from chronic insomnia he whiled away the midnight hours phoning through to the battery such cryptic messages as, “No. 1 gun test Canal Centre” or “No. 4 gun test Defend Givenchy”.

This meant that the gun in question had to fire a single round on that particular SOS line, the detachment dashing out of their dug-out into the adjoining gun-pit, often half-naked and in pouring rain, while the major, seated in comfort over his supper, timed their reactions with his stop-watch.

Woe betide the NCO in charge of a team of laggards; a stern reprimand was his sure and certain portion on the morrow.

RAPID FIRE

It was this amiable habit which landed me into my first spot of bother. In the early hours of the morning, after my detachment bad just crept into “kip” after a particularly heavy fatigue, the telephonist passed along the order: “No. 2 gun test Canal Left.” It was really more than flesh and blood could stand.

“All right, lads, stay put,” I said. “This is my show,” and, stumbling out into the darkness, I groped my way into the gun-pit, where the gun, with a shell already in the breech, was laid on “Defend Dragon”.

By the light of a pocket torch I spun round the range drum to extreme elevation and then sent a shell whizzing merrily somewhere into the German back areas, chuckling to myself as I thought of the major and his stop-watch recording one of the fastest tests in the history of ballistics.

But alas, as I turned to leave, a second torch flashed in my face and there stood the Battery Officer, who ought to have been sleeping peacefully in his bunk, coming to supervise the whole proceedings.

I draw a veil over the harrowing sequel, except to recall that I lost my stripes one day and got them back the day after, Gun-layer NCO’s were scarce in those days.

Disheartening

It was at Locon that we first made our acquaintance with French beer. I can think of no sight more depressing than that of a healthy British “Tommy” seated in an estaminet[1], gloomily absorbing pint after pint of that thin, sour beverage in the pious hope that he might attain to a reasonable state of intoxication before it made him sick.

But of course he never did. Even if he mixed his drinks with vin blanc or vin rouge, he only succeeded in making himself frightfully ill. And to add insult to injury, at an adjoining table a couple of the “natives” would have attained to a state of heavenly intoxication after a couple of drinks.

It was all most disheartening.

We rejoined our unit only to learn that the battery was already in the line, having reinforced the 119^th Battery instead of relieving them as originally planned. “Apparently (to use the words of the official diary) they think the Bosche may attack”.

For the same reason all the gunnery NCO’s rode up to the guns on the following day in charge of the first-line wagons loaded with ammunition.

On our way up we had our first baptism of fire when a section salvo of 5·9s dropped in Beuvry[2] as we passed through, demolishing several cottages.

Against orders we went through the village at a canter, narrowly escaping a disaster of our own making when one of the limbers flew open depositing several 18-pounder H.E. shells under the hoofs of the following wagon team. By some miracle, however, not a single one went off.

Speaking of cantering on horseback, I often wondered what bright genius at the War Office designed the field equipment of an artilleryman. The only horses he ever rode must have been wooden ones.

Everything we had to carry – haversack, water-bottle, hood respirator, bandolier with 50 rounds of ammunition and tin hat – were all slung alternately from our shoulders, so that the whole of our impedimenta dangled loosely all around us.

No wonder one harassed driver of “B” sub-section on the occasion of our first trek in Field Service Marching Order remarked with appropriate profanity that he “felt like a ruddy Christmas tree”.

When trotting one jangled like a travelling tinker, whilst at regular intervals a lumpy water-bottle or a map-case or a respirator inserted itself between one’s seat and the saddle with painful persistence.

LIKE HOME

The countryside in the back areas of the La Bassée sector was very like that of our own Lancashire. There were coal mines in the vicinity, at Annequin[3], and land subsidences had made “Flashes” and marshy patches such as one finds in the neighbourhood of Wigan. Had it not been for the long-straight roads, with their interminable avenues of poplars we might well have been at home.

Although the entire district was subjected to promiscuous shelling, we were surprised to see with that fatalistic pertinacity the local Iandowners and small farmers clung to their tiny holdings. It was a common enough sight to see a couple of women in their heavy wooden sabots stolidly hoeing in one field while a few hundred yards away shells would be bursting like miniature volcanoes.

Uncanny, bizarre yet typical of the adaptability of human nature.

[1] Estaminet (m): a small café or tavern, a Flanders dialect word, probably from the Walloon for ‘cowshed’

[2] Beuvry is a suburb of Béthune, awarded the Croix de Guerre for its heroism during World War I

[3] Annequin is a large farming (and ex-mining) village situated some 4 miles east of Béthune