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.

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

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

Intensive Course

But that was the end of our hopes for an early posting over-seas. We returned to Colchester in ignominy and were subjected to an intensive course of training by a certain Lieutenant Carter, who was specially seconded to the battery for that purpose.

He was a martinet, with the eye of a basilisk and a staccato voice that crackled across the parade ground like a machine-gun, but he knew his job and soon we began to know ours.

Day after day we were subjected to the same routine, battery gun drill, followed by interminable gun-laying practice, until by the end of the year I found myself proudly wearing my first stripe, with a first-class gun-layer’s badge surmounting it. At last I could really call myself an artilleryman.

As an NCO I had had to pass through the riding school and to learn something about handling horses, but somehow I was never very happy at the tail-end of a charger: I think my memories of that maverick “Red Tape”, who could kick with all four feet at once and bite at the same time, had something to do with my diffidence.

WE SAIL FOR FRANCE – AND GET 0UR BAPTISM OF FIRE

While home on my embarkation leave I went up to my den in the attic one night and made it solemn holocaust of all my youthful scribblings, including thousands of lines of my epic “The Universe”.

Looking back on the incident after a lapse of almost fifty years, I realise there was something symbolic in the gesture. It was a case of “Goodbye to all that”, for even then some instinct told me the world I had known as a youth would never be the same again. Maybe an odd tear or two dropped upon the pile of charred ash in the grate but I went through with the ritual to the bitter end.

Also, in conformity with another grim wartime custom, I had my photograph taken. Not that it had any real significance, of course: we all meant to come back after our brief trip across the Channel … but still, one never could tell. Perhaps it was as well to know one’s portrait was hanging in the hall, behind the aspidistra … just in case.

IN QUARANTINE

The Battery left Colchester on two trains on Friday, March 2^nd, 1917, and embarked for Le Havre at Southampton in the early hours of the following morning. But alas “B” Sub-section, to which I belonged, was detained at the last minute in quarantine.

One of our drivers had contracted something infectious and the authorities kept us kicking our heels in isolation for another fortnight just in case someone else had been bitten by the same bug.

We were loud in our lamentations, for it was by no means certain that we should rejoin our own unit once we had landed over there.

However, all’s well that ends well and on March 21^st we caught up with the Battery at a tiny French village called Locon[1] not far from Béthune.

It had been a long, wearisome journey in cattle trucks, appropriately stencilled “Chevaux 8 ou Hommes 40“, to drive home to our minds the relative value of a man and a horse, as seen through the eyes of the authorities.

[1] Locon is situated some 5 miles north of Béthune, an important railway junction and hospital site, holding the 33^rd Casualty Station until December 1917

Fighting Drunk

Saturday night, and some of the boys are rolling in on late pass from East Grinstead. One, a great raw-boned gunner is fighting drunk. He seizes the huge carving knife with which the hut orderly sub-divides our daily bread ration and prowls round the line of trestle and board beds defying any mother’s son to meet him in mortal combat.

After ten minutes pandemonium his challenge is accepted by a stocky little driver who in stature might have reached to his shoulder.

The driver hops nimbly out of bed in his shirt, drives his fist solidly into the challengers stomach and doubles him up like a jack-knife. The gleaning weapon sails high in the air and is retrieved by an onlooker, the injured man is pushed, none too gently into bed and once more peace is restored. Thank goodness Saturday only comes once a week.

If I found Forest Row somewhat demoralizing, let me hasten to add that all my memories of Colchester, the fine old garrison town in which the division completed its training were happy ones.

It was here, I think, that the Battery really found its soul. One of the highlights of our stay was when we finally got rid of the ancient Boer War 15 pounders and were equipped with guns of which we could really be proud – brand new 18-pounders with fixed ammunition, spring buffers, traversing, and trail spade gear.

For accuracy, I don’t think there has ever been a field gun to touch it: at a range of 2,500 yards it was possible to drop every round of a salve inside an area half the size of a bowling green.

In fact, I recall one occasion at La Bassée[1] when we put down a barrage inside a bracket of 12½ yards. We had to, to avoid dropping a few shorts into our own trenches.

The 18-pounder Q.F.[2] (Mark IV) had only one fault, as we were to find out later; its recoil of 42 inches was far too long. This made it unstable on hard ground, and the piece under stress was apt to jam in the slides at full recoil, whereas the French 75 mm recoiled a mere 12 inches and was as steady as a rock. But for accuracy, give me the 18-pounder every time.

British 18-Pounder Field Gun

It was at Larkhill[3] on Salisbury Plain where we had our first taste of our gun’s little eccentricities. This was during our first firing course, in which, I grieve to say, we did not do too well.

Out on the range one day we had just had the order, “Halt, action front”, followed by ”Right section ranging”, our own gun being number “2” I was number 3 (gun-layer) on the detachment and was busy adjusting the periscope dial sight when number 2 (who operated the range drum) gave me a nudge.

“Hey,” he muttered, “Owd Broncho’s watchin’ us. ”

Needless to say, General Brounker, G.O.C., R.A., and heaven knows what else besides, was the General Staff Officer who had to decide if we were fit for active service. He had dismounted from his charger and, surrounded by a galaxy of brass hats, was heading in our direction, an irascible man with a flowing white moustache and a brick-red complexion that spoke volumes concerning the parlous state of his liver.

To our horror he took up a position about ten yards behind the gun, binoculars at the ready, and surveyed us with his eagle eye. We would sooner have encountered the Kaiser.

However, orders were coming down the line and had to be carried out: “Aiming point, tree on right flank, all guns 25 degrees right, angle of eight, one degree elevation. Number 1 gun, 2,300 yards, number 2 gun, 2,300 yards, at 10 second interval, fire.

“Set,” called out the range-finder. “Ready,” I snapped, and with my hand on the firing lever, awaited the order to fire. Out of the corner of my eye I could see our sergeant knelt behind the hand-spike, his right hand raised in the air and peering over his shoulder the sinister hawk-face of the General.

There was a terrific crash as number 1 gun fired and I could hear the sergeant counting every second at intervals that seemed like minutes. Then his arm dropped and he shouted “Fire.”

What happened after that I shall never know.

Somehow we had managed to set the trail spade, intended to dig into the ground with the shock of the discharge, upon the only protruding rock on Salisbury Plain. So that, instead of burying itself, it flew back a dozen yards, and swung round viciously through an angle of 180 degrees, bowling over the detachment, half the General’s staff and sundry innocent bystanders.

The great man, however, with more speed than one would have given him credit for, had hopped nimbly out of danger and from a safe distance was discharging a volley of epithets that made a battery sound tame in comparison.

Sometimes in my dreams I still see that furious face and invariably I wake up in a cold sweat.

 

[1] La Bassée was a front-line village in the extreme northeast of France, close to the sea and the Belgian border. It was the site of a battle in 1914, part of the ‘Race to the Sea’

[2] The standard ‘quick firing’ (QF) British field gun of the World War I era, 84mm calibre

[3] Larkhill was an artillery school one mile north of Stonehenge (still in use)