Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1164 page)

The trench-war was solidifying itself; for the Diary of that same day notes that the enemy “shelled the trenches and the two howitzer-guns which were in position below.” Ours was an army, then, which could count and place every gun that it owned. As many as three howitzer batteries per division had accompanied the Expeditionary Force, and more were being sent from home.

The night of the 19th was very wet. They were relieved by the 3rd Coldstream, and went into billets at Soupir, “having been in the trenches for five days.” There was an alarm in the afternoon, and the machine-guns and 100 men of No. 1 Company were sent to help the Coldstream in the trenches, whilst the rest of the Battalion marched at 6 P.M. to be ready to assist the 2nd Grenadiers on the left of Cour de Soupir farm. Only “the machine-guns,” however, came into action, and the Battalion returned to its billets at 10 P.M.

Much the same sort of thing occurred on the 20th — a furious fusillade from the trenches, the despatch of reinforcements up a “muddy lane,” not yet turned into a communication-trench, to help the 3rd Coldstream, while Nos. 2 and 4 Companies went out to reinforce the Oxfordshire Light Infantry and to hold the road at the back of it “in case of a retirement,” and the rest of the Battalion with the machine-guns stayed as a reserve in Soupir market-square. But beyond shrapnel bursting over the village and the wounding of two men by stray machine-gun bullets, there were no special incidents. Major G. Madden this day had to return to England, ill.

On the 21st the Battalion relieved the 2nd Grenadiers on the left at Soupir farm at 3.30 A.M. — the safest hour, as experience was to prove, for reliefs. Nos. 2 and 3 Companies were in trenches, and Nos. 1 and 4 about 300 yards in the rear, with the Headquarters in one of the caves, which are a feature of the country. The word “dug-out” had not yet been invented. The nearest approach to it is a reference in a private letter to “a shelter-recess in the side of the trench to protect one from shrapnel.” The Diary marks that the “usual alarms occurred at 6.30 when the patrol went out and the enemy fired a good deal of shrapnel without effect.” Soupir, like many French villages, was full of carefully planted spies of singular audacity. One was found in an officer’s room. He had appeared from a cellar, alleging that he was an invalid, but as the Gunners’ telephone-wires near the cellar had been cut and our movements had been reported to the enemy with great regularity, his explanation was not accepted, nor were his days long in that land.

Patrols, too, were elastic affairs. One of them, under Lieutenant R. H. Ferguson, went out on the night of the 21st, came on the enemy’s trenches half a mile out, lay down to listen to the conversation there, were all but cut off by a wandering section of snipers, and returned to their lines unmolested, after the lieutenant had shot the leading pursuer with his revolver.

On the 22nd September the Battalion — both entrenched and in reserve in the caves behind — experienced four hours’ high-explosive howitzer fire, which “except for the effect on the nerves did very little damage.” (They had yet to learn what continuous noise could do to break men’s nerve.) This was followed by a heavy fusillade, varied by star-shells, rockets, and searchlights, which lasted intermittently throughout the night. The rocket-display was new to the men. Searchlights, we know, they had seen before.

On the 23rd a telephone-line between Battalion Headquarters and the advanced trenches was installed (for the first time). Nos. 2 and 3 Companies relieved Nos. 1 and 4 in the trenches, and a man bringing back a message from No. 4 Company was killed by a sniper. The Battalion was relieved by the 3rd Coldstream in the evening and returned to its billets in the barns and lofts of Soupir village, where next day (September 24 ) the Diary observes they spent “a quiet morning. The men got washed and shaved, and company officers were able to get at their companies. There are so many new officers who do not know their men that any rest day should be made use of in this manner.” They relieved the 3rd Coldstream again that evening, and “digging operations to improve existing trenches and make communication-trenches were at once begun.” (Here is the first direct reference in the Diary to communication-trenches, as such.)

Snipers were active all through the 25th September. The trenches were heavily shelled in the afternoon, and “one man was hit in the leg while going to fetch water.” They returned to Soupir in the evening and spent the 26th standing to, in anticipation of enemy attacks which did not develop into anything more than an artillery duel, and in digging trenches for the defence of Soupir village. This work, however, had to be stopped owing to heavy shell-fire brought to bear on the working-parties — presumably through information from the many spies — and after a wearing day relieved the 3rd Coldstream in the trenches at night. The Diary gives no hint of the tremendous strain of those twenty-four hours’ “reliefs” from being shelled in a trench to being shelled in a village, nor of the inadequacy of our artillery as it strove to cope with the German guns, nor of the rasping irritation caused by the knowledge that every disposition made was reported almost at once to the enemy.

On September 27 — a Sunday — the enemy’s bands were heard playing up and down the trenches. Some attempt was made by a British battalion on the right to move out a patrol covered by the fire of No. 2 Company, but the enemy shells and machine-guns smothered every movement.

On the 28th September (their day in billets) stakes were cut out of the woods behind Soupir, while the Pioneers collected what wire they could lay hands on, as “the Battalion was ordered to construct wire entanglements in front of their trenches to-night.” The entanglements were made of two or three strands, at the most, of agricultural wire picked up where they could find it. They heard heavy fighting throughout the night on their right — ”probably the First Division.” Both sides by now were feeling the strain of trench-work, for which neither had made preparations, and the result was an increasing tension manifesting itself in wild outbursts of musketry and artillery and camp rumour of massed attacks and breaks-through.

On the 30th September, F.-M. Lord Roberts’s birthday, a congratulatory telegram was sent to him; and “a great quantity of material was collected out of which huts for the men could be built.” These were frail affairs of straw and twig, half dug in, half built out, of the nearest banks, or placed under the lee of any available shelter. The very fabric of them has long since been overlaid with strata of fresh wreckage and the twig roofs and sides are rotted black under the grass or ploughed in.

The month closes with the note that, as it was a very bright moonlight night, the Battalion’s usual relief of the Coldstream was “carried out up the communication-trenches.” Some men still recall that first clumsy trench-relief.

October 1 was spent in perfecting communication-trenches and shelters, and “the Brigadier came up in the morning and was taken round the trenches.” Two officers were sent to Chavonne to meet the 5th Brigade — one to bring the Worcesters to the Battalion’s trenches, the other to show the Connaught Rangers their billets in Soupir. The 3rd Coldstream marched out of Soupir and took up the line to the left of the 2nd Grenadiers near Vailly, and next day, 2nd October, No. 1 Company of the Irish Guards dug a connecting-trench between those two. Otherwise, for the moment, life was smooth.

It may be noted for the instruction of generations to come that some of the Reservists grumbled at orders not to talk or smoke in the trenches, as that drew fire; and that a newly appointed platoon-officer, when he had admonished them officially, fell them out and informed them unofficially that, were there any more trouble, he would, after the C.O. had dealt with the offenders, take them on for three rounds “boxing in public.” Peace and goodwill returned at once.

On the 3rd October, a platoon was despatched to help the Royal Engineers in the construction of a road across a new bridge they had put up between Soupir and Chavonne. The Battalion relieved the 3rd Coldstream in its new position three-quarters of a mile east of Vailly, and next day “quietly improved trenches and head-cover,” which latter is mentioned for the first time. It was all casual timber picked up off the country-side.

On the 5th October a patrol explored through the wood, in front of the right trenches, but found only dead Germans to the number of thirty and many half buried, as well as five British soldiers killed in some lost affair of a fortnight before. Private O’Shaughnessy, No. 1 Company, was shot dead by a sniper when on observation-post at the end of this wood. He had only arrived that morning with a draft of one hundred men, under Lieutenant Gore-Langton, and had asked to be allowed to go out on this duty. In the afternoon three shells burst on the road near Battalion Headquarters, and fatally wounded Lieutenant G. Brooke, who was on his way to Soupir to take over the transport from Lieutenant E. J. Gough. He was sent in to Braisne, where he died on the 7th October. The Diary notes “he would not have been found so soon had not the shells broken the telephone-wire to Headquarters. A message was coming through at the time and when communication was stopped the Signalling Sergeant sent two men to repair the wire and they found him.” He was brought in to the A.D.S. at Vailly-sur-Aisne by his own men, who made the R.A.M.C. stretcher-bearers walk behind as they would allow none but themselves to carry him. They bade him farewell before they returned to their trenches, and went out openly weeping. When he was sent to Braisne that evening, after being dressed, his own men again got an ambulance across the pontoon-bridge, which had been hitherto reckoned impassable, for his convenience. His last words to them were that they were to “play the game” and not to revenge his death on the Hun.

On the afternoon of the 6th October, which was cold and misty, the Germans pushed a patrol through the wood and our standing-patrol went out and discovered one German under-officer of the 64th (Imperial Jager Guards) dead, and the rifle of another man.

The enemy sent out no more patrols. Men had grown to be cunning among the timber, and noticed every tree they moved under. When the Coldstream relieved the Battalion that night, one of our patrols found a felled tree had been carefully placed across their homeward path by some unknown hand — it might have been the late Jager under-officer — who had expected to attack the patrol while it was climbing over the obstacle.

On the 7th the Battalion rested in Soupir all day, and on the 8th Lieutenant G. Brooke’s body was brought in from Braisne and buried in Soupir cemetery.

The 9th was a quiet day except for an hour’s shelling, and a good deal of cheering from the German trenches in the evening, evidently in honour of the fall of Antwerp. It annoyed our men for the reason that they could not retaliate. Our guns had not a round to throw away.

THE MOVE TOWARD THE SEA

The opposing lines had been locked now for close upon a month and, as defences elaborated themselves, all hope of breaking-through vanished. Both sides then opened that mutually outflanking movement towards the west which did not end till it reached the sea. Held up along their main front, the Germans struck at the Flanders plain, the Allies striving to meet the movement and envelop their right flank as it extended. A British force had been sent to Antwerp; the Seventh Division and the Third Cavalry Division had been landed at Zeebrugge on the 7th October with the idea of helping either the Antwerp force or co-operating with the Allied Armies as circumstances dictated. Meantime, the main British force was being held in the trenches of the Aisne a hundred and twenty miles away; and it seemed good to all concerned that these two bodies of British troops should be consolidated, both for purposes of offence, command and, by no means least, supply, on the Flanders flank covering the Channel.

There were obvious dangers in moving so many men from high ground across a broad river under the enemy’s eye. It could only be effected at night with all precautions, but as the western pressure developed and was accentuated by the fall of Antwerp, the advantage of the transfer outweighed all risk. Our cavalry moved on the 3rd October by road for Flanders, and a few days later the infantry began to entrain for St. Omer. The Second Corps was the first to leave, the Third Corps followed, and the First was the last.

Orders came to the Battalion on Sunday, October 11, to be prepared to move at short notice, and new clothes were issued to the men, but they did not hand over their trenches to the French till the 13th October, when they marched to Perles in the evening and entrained on the 14th at Fismes a little after noon, reaching Hazebrouck
via
(the route is worth recording) Mareuil-sur-Ourcq, Ormoy, St. Denis, outside Paris, Epluches, Creil, Amiens (10.15 P.M.), Abbeville (3.15 A.M.), Etaples, Boulogne, Calais and St. Omer, every stone of which last six was to be as familiar to them as their own hearths for years to come.

At 5 P.M. on the 15th the Battalion went into billets at Hazebrouck. It was a sharp change from the soft wooded bluffs and clean chalky hills above the Aisne, to the slow ditch-like streams and crowded farming landscape of Flanders. At Hazebrouck they lay till the morning of the 17th, when they marched to Boeschepe, attended church parade on Sunday the 18th, and marched to untouched Ypres
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St. Kokebeele, Reninghelst and Vlamertinghe on the 20th with the Brigade, some divisional troops and the 41st Battery, R.F.A. The Brigade halted at Ypres a few hours, seeing and being impressed by the beauty of the Cloth Hall and the crowded market-place. The 2nd Coldstream and the 2nd Battalion Grenadiers being eventually sent forward, the remainder of the Brigade billeted in St. Jean, then described impersonally as “a small village about one and a half kilometres east of Ypres.” They halted at the edge of the city for dinner, and the men got out their melodeons and danced jigs on the flawless pavé. Much firing was heard all day, and “the 2nd Coldstream came into action about 4 P.M. and remained in the trenches all night.”