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THE STRUGGLE IN 
 FLANDERS 
 
 On the Western Front, 1917 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILIP GIBBS 
 
 Authyr of ''The Way to Victory,'' ''The Battles of 
 the Somme," "The Soul of the War,'' etc. 
 
 NEW ^S^ YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
<? 
 
 Copyright, 1918, 1919, 
 By George H. Dorcm Company 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 / 
 
 ^ V 
 APR 16 1919 '': - • 
 
 ©CI.A525150 
 
AUTHOR'S NEW PREFACE 
 
 When this book was first produced last year under the 
 title of From Bapaume to Passchendaele, there was 
 no great encouragement for English and American people 
 to read it. The German armies had gathered in frightful 
 strength on the Western Front, and in two months, after 
 March 21st, 19 18, the British had retreated from nearly 
 all the ground which they had won, since July 15th, 1916, 
 by immense efforts and a terrible sacrifice of life. On that 
 dark day of March the enemy hurled his full weight 
 against the British lines, and attacked with 114 divisions 
 to 48 British divisions, that is to say, with 800,000 bayonets 
 against a little more than 300,000. Their assault took place 
 at a time when the British armies were weaker than they 
 had been during previous years, owing to the withdrawal 
 of some of their divisions from Flanders to Italy to 
 strengthen the Italian front after the great reverse there, 
 and owing also to the enormous losses of the British in the 
 battles recorded in this volume of daily dispatches from 
 the Western Front. In the beginning of March, Field- 
 Marshal Sir Douglas Haig had not received new drafts of 
 men sufficient, or anything like sufficient, in numbers to fill 
 up the gaps made by the losses in the previous year's fight- 
 ing. Those losses amounted to the awful total in casualties 
 of 800,000 men. Yet weakened as the British Army was 
 at the very time when the German menace drew near, be- 
 cause the collapse in Russia enabled the enemy to bring over 
 to the West most of his fighting divisions, who had been 
 serving in the East, Sir Douglas Haig yielded to the earnest 
 pressure of the French to take over a longer line. The 
 
vi , AUTHOR'S NEW PREFACE 
 
 French armies, who had fought through the early years 
 with glorious valour, had called their youngest boys to 
 the colours, but in a spirit of anguish which made them 
 deeply anxious to avoid that last sacrifice of youth. They 
 were also eager to release some of their oldest classes, the 
 fathers of families who had left their homes in August and 
 September of 19 14, and in the years that followed, but 
 whose age called for rest after long hardships in the war 
 zone. For that reason they asked the British to take over 
 a longer line, and it was not in our hearts to refuse them. 
 Writing frankly and with profound admiration for the 
 spirit of France, it may also be added that the French 
 nation and her politicians did not fully realise the strain 
 upon England's manhood. French critics permitted them- 
 selves to say and write that England was not "pulling her 
 weight,'* and had not enough soldiers in the fields of France. 
 They forgot the enormous numbers of men absorbed by 
 the British Navy and the Mercantile Marine, who kept the 
 freedom of the seas in spite of the roving submarines, so 
 that the world saw the miracle of America's monster army 
 transported across the Atlantic with barely the loss of a 
 ship, and the unfailing traffic of food and munitions. They 
 forgot, also, these French critics, that England, by the work 
 of her miners and munition workers, supplied France, and 
 Italy, and other Allied countries, with millions of tons of 
 coal and thousands of millions of shells, and of all material 
 of war, without which their armies would have had to lay 
 down their arms. Lastly, they forgot, in their criticism of 
 the British armies on the Western Front, that England 
 had many other campaigns which drained her manhood, in 
 Egypt, in Mesopotamia, and in other countries. The French 
 people were a little ungenerous to us in estimating our 
 share in the burden of the war, and though I hate to say 
 so, because I have a great love for France, it is honest and 
 fair to write these words, so that the honour of our race 
 should be upheld in history, according to the measure of 
 her sacrifice and effort. 
 
AUTHOR'S NEW PREFACE vii 
 
 Our troops took over the longer line North and South 
 of bt. Quentin when the enemy was massing vast forces 
 agamst them, and in spite of the desperate valour of their 
 defence and rear-guard actions, they were forced into a 
 retreat to the outskirts of Amiens and later to the fields 
 around Ypres, Bailleul and MerviUe. This volume of dis- 
 patches deals therefore with the capture of ground which 
 was afterward lost. But the narrative may be read now 
 without the same agony of spirit as when first published 
 because by later victories, which hurled the enemy back to 
 utter defeat, the valour and sacrifice of the earlier fighting 
 were not altogether in vain. 
 
 Here in this book is some record, in daily detail, of one 
 of the most stupendous demonstrations of human couraee 
 ever made in the history of the world. Looking back now 
 upon the Battles of Flanders, it seems to me, and to all men 
 who were on that ground, amazing that our men could have 
 sufifered what they were called upon to suffer, with such 
 grim and gallant patience, with such unfailing courage and 
 without revolt. They were ghastly battles of human 
 slaughter in which our men and the enemy's were piled high 
 I hey were fought in ground where men stuck up to their 
 armpits in mud, and were drowned in bogs. I think that 
 after the rains began the battles ought to have been cancelled 
 from the plans of the Allied Command, and that such battles 
 in such ground ought never to have been fought at all That 
 IS only my personal opinion, and an audacious one, but it 
 IS strong and passionate because of all those glorious boys 
 of ours who fell in that frightful and disastrous fighting 
 If there is any justification of them it is that the enemy's 
 losses were also enormous and that those casualties inflicted 
 upon him caused him to use up his last reserves for his 
 final offensive so that when that failed, in the summer of 
 1918, all was lost for Germany. However that may be 
 and that verdict will be given in history written after our 
 generation, one glory shines through all the black episodes 
 narrated in this book, and that is the heroic quality of the 
 
viii AUTHOR'S NEW PREFACE 
 
 private soldier and regimental officer, who, obeying orders, 
 flung themselves into that mud of Flanders, and fought to 
 the death. It is to the memory of those men that I dedi- 
 cate this book, written on the days of their sacrifice, to 
 the noise of the guns as they advanced. 
 
 March, 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ii 
 
 PART I 
 
 RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I A New Year or War 39 
 
 II An Attack Near Le Transloy 44 
 
 III The Abandonment of Grandcotirt 48 
 
 IV The Gordons in the Butte De Warlencouht . . 50 
 
 V The Battle of Boom Ra.vine 54 
 
 VI The Enemy Withdraws 56 
 
 Vn Our Entry Into Gommecouet 58 
 
 Vni Why the Enemy Withdrew 63 
 
 IX The Australians Enter Bapaume 69 
 
 X The Rescue of Peronne 76 
 
 PART n 
 
 ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 
 
 I The Mazing of No Man's Land 82 
 
 II The Letter of the Law ......... 85 
 
 III The Abandoned Country ...,,, ^ . 89 
 
 IV The Cure of Voyennes 93 
 
 V The Chateau of Liancourt ..,..♦... 97 
 VI The Old Women of Tincourt 102 
 
 VII The Agony of War 105 
 
 VIII Cavalry IN Action „._ . 109 
 
 V 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 PART m 
 
 THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Arras and the Vimy Ridge 113 
 
 II Londoners through the German Lines .... 124 
 
 III The Struggle Round Monchy 127 
 
 IV The Other Side of Vimy 137 
 
 V The Way to Lens . 143 
 
 VI The Slaughter at Lagnicourt 155 
 
 VII The Terrors of the Scarpe 157 
 
 Vni The Background of Battle 166 
 
 IX How THE Scots Took Guemappe 171 
 
 X The Oppy Line 174 
 
 XI The Battle of May 3 176 
 
 Xn Fields of Gold 184 
 
 PART IV 
 
 the battle of messines 
 
 I Wytschaete and Messines 188 
 
 II The Spirit of Victory 196 
 
 III After the Earthquake 202 
 
 IV The Effect of the Blow 211 
 
 V Looking Backward 216 
 
 VI The Australians at Messines 220 
 
 VII A Battle in a Thunder-storm 224 
 
 VIII The Tragedy at Lombartzyde 228 
 
 IX The Struggle for Hell Wood 233 
 
CONTENTS vii 
 PART V 
 
 THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 
 
 CHAPTES PAGE 
 
 I Breaking the Salient 238 
 
 II From Pilkem Ridge to Hollebeke 245 
 
 III The Beginning of the Rains 251 
 
 rV Pill-Boxes and Machine-Guns 256 
 
 V The Song of the Cockchafers 268 
 
 VI Woods of Ill-Fame 274 
 
 VII The Battle of Langemarck 279 
 
 VIII Capture of Hill Seventy * 283 
 
 IX Londoners in Glencorse Wood 293 
 
 X Somersets at Langemarck 298 
 
 XI The Irish in the Swamps 304 
 
 XII The Way through Glencorse Wood 309 
 
 XIII The Slaughter-House of Lens 315 
 
 XIV The Agony of Armentieres 325 
 
 XV The Battle of Menin Road 331 
 
 XVI The Way to Passchendaele 354 
 
 XVII The Battle of Polygon Wood 359 
 
 XVIII Abraham Heights and Beyond 371 
 
 XIX Scenes of Battle 386 
 
 XX The Slough of Despond 396 
 
 XXI The Assaults on Passchendaele 407 
 
 XXII Round Poelcappelle 413 
 
 XXIII The Canadla.ns Come North 428 
 
 XXIV London Men and Artists 447 
 
 XXV The Capture of Passchendaele 451 
 
MAPS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Near LeTransloy January 27, 1917 451/ 
 
 SoissoNS TO Arras. The Line on March 18, 1917 ] . . . yi. 
 
 TheLineBeyond Arras April II, 1917 ....... 134 
 
 Line on April 23, 1917 158 
 
 Line before the Battle of Messines 189 
 
 Panorama of the Country Before Ypres 240 
 
 The Line Around Lens, August 15, 1917 286 
 
 The Line Before Ypres September 27, 191 7 360 
 
 Flanders Front after the Capture of Passchendaele . .452 
 
 The Retreat from the Somme 462 
 
 uc 
 
FROM BAPAUME TO 
 PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 191 7. ... I suppose that a century hence men and women 
 will think of that date as one of the world's black years 
 flinging its shadow forward to the future until gradually 
 new generations escape from its dark spell. To us now, 
 only a few months away from that year, above all to those 
 of us who have seen something of the fighting which 
 crowded every month of it except the last, the colour of 
 19 1 7 is not black but red, because a river of blood flowed 
 through its changing seasons and there was a great carnage 
 of men. It was a year of unending battle on the Western 
 Front, which matters most to us because of all our youth 
 there. It was a year of monstrous and desperate conflict. 
 Looking back upon it, remembering all its days of attack 
 and counter-attack, all the roads of war crowded with 
 troops and transport, all the battlefields upon which our 
 armies moved under fire, the coming back of the prisoners 
 by hundreds and thousands, the long trails of the wounded, 
 the activity, the traffic, the roar and welter and fury of 
 the year, one has a curious physical sensatio'n of breath- 
 lessness and heart-beat because of the burden of so many 
 memories. The heroism of men, the suffering of individ- 
 uals, their personal adventures, their deaths or escape from 
 death, are swallowed up in this wild drama of battle so that 
 at times it seems impersonal and inhuman like some cosmic 
 struggle in which man is but an atom of the world's con- 
 vulsion. To me, and perhaps to others like me, who look 
 
 II 
 
12 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 on at all this from the outside edge of it, going into its fire 
 and fury at times only to look again, closer, into the heart 
 of it, staring at its scenes not as men who belong to them 
 but as witnesses to give evidence at the bar of history — for 
 if we are not that we are nothing — and to chronicle the 
 things that have happened on those fields, this sense of im- 
 personal forces is strong. We see all this in the mass. We 
 see its movement as a tide watched from the bank and not 
 from the point of view of a swimmer breasting each wave 
 or going down in it. Regimental officers and men know 
 more of the ground in which they live for a while before 
 they go forward over the shell-craters to some barren slope 
 where machine-guns are hidden below the clods of soil, or 
 a line of concrete blockhouses heaped up with timber and 
 sandbags on one of the ridges. They know with a par- 
 ticular intimacy the smallest landmarks there — ^the forked 
 branch among some riven trees that are called a "wood,'* a 
 dead body that lies outside their wire, the muzzle of a 
 broken gun that pokes out of the slime, a hummock of earth 
 that is a German strong point. They know the stench of 
 these places. They know the filth of them, in their dug- 
 outs and in their trenches, in their senses and in their souls. 
 I and a few others have a view less intimate, and on a wider 
 scale. We go to see how our men live in these places, but 
 do not stay with them. We go from one battle to another 
 as doctors from one case to another, feeling the pulse of it, 
 watching its symptoms, diagnosing the prospects of life or 
 death, recording its history, as observers and not as the pa- 
 tients of war, though we take a few of its risks, and its 
 tragedy darkens our spirit sometimes, and the sight of all 
 this struggle of men, the thought of all this slaughter and 
 sacrifice of youth, becomes at times intolerable and agoniz- 
 ing. This broad view of war is almost as wearing to the 
 spirit, though without the physical strain, as the closer view 
 which soldiers have. The wounded man who comes down 
 to the dressing-station after his fight sees only the men 
 around him at the time, and it is a personal adventure of 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 pain limited to his own suffering, and relieved by the joy 
 of his escape. But we see the many wounded who stream 
 down month after month from the battlefields — for three 
 and a half years I have watched the tide of wounded flowing 
 back, so many blind men, so many cripples, so many gassed 
 and stricken men — and there is something staggering in the 
 actual sight of the vastness and the unceasing drift of this 
 wreckage of war. So we have seen the fighting in the year 
 1 91 7 in the whole sweep of its bloody pageant; and the 
 rapidity with which one battle followed another after an 
 April day in Arras, the continued fury of gun-fire and in- 
 fantry assaults, and the long heroic effort of our men to 
 smash the enemy's strength before the year should end, 
 left us, as chroniclers of this twelve months' strife, over- 
 whelmed by the number of its historic episodes and by its 
 human sacrifice. 
 
 The year began with the German retreat from the Somme 
 battlefields. It was a withdrawal for strategical reasons — 
 the shortening of the enemy's line and the saving of his 
 man-power — but also a retreat because it was forced upon 
 the enemy by the greatness of his losses in the Somme fight- 
 ing. He would not have left the Bapaume Ridge and, all 
 his elaborate defences down to Peronne and Roye unless 
 we had so smashed his divisions by incessant gun-fire and 
 infantry assaults that he was bound to economize his power 
 for adventures elsewhere. On the ground from which he 
 drew back, more hurriedly than he desired because we fol- 
 lowed quickly on his heels to Bapaume, he left some of his 
 dead. Many of his dead. Below Loupart Wood I saw hun- 
 dreds of them, strewn about their broken batteries, and 
 lying in heaps of obscene flesh in the wild chaos of earth 
 which had been their trenches. On one plot of earth a 
 few hundred yards in length there were 800 dead, and over 
 all this battlefield one had to pick one's way to avoid tread- 
 ing on the bits and bodies of men. From the mud, arms 
 stretched out like those of men who had been drowned in 
 bogs. Boots and legs were uncovered in the muck-heaps, 
 
/ 
 
 14. FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 and faces with eyeless sockets on which flies settled, clay- 
 coloured faces with broken jaws, or without noses or scalps, 
 stared up at the sky or lay half buried in the mud. I fell 
 once and clutched a bit of earth and found that I had grasped 
 a German hand. It belonged to a body in field-grey stuck ' 
 into the side of a bank on the edge of all this filthy sham- 
 bles. ... In the retreat the enemy laid waste the country 
 behind him. I have described in this book the completeness 
 of that destruction and its uncanny effect upon our senses 
 as we travelled over the old No Man's Land through hedges 
 of barbed wire and across the enemy's trenches into his 
 abandoned strongholds like Gommecourt and Serre, and then 
 into open country where German troops had lived beyond 
 our gun-fire in French villages still inhabited by civilians. It 
 was like wandering through a plague-stricken land aban- 
 doned after some fiendish orgy, of men drunk with the 
 spirit of destruction. Every cottage in villages for miles 
 around had been gutted by explosion. Every church in 
 those villages had been blown up. The orchards had been 
 cut down and some of the graves ransacked for their lead. 
 There had been no mercy for historic little towns like 
 Bapaume and Peronne, and in Bapaume the one building 
 that stood when we entered — the square tower of the Town 
 Hall — was hurled up a week later when a slow fuse burnt 
 to its end, and only a hole in the ground shows where it had 
 been. The enemy left these slow-working fuses in many 
 places, and ^'booby-traps" to blow a man to bits or blind 
 him for life if he touched a harmless-looking stick or 
 opened the lid of a box, or stumbled over an old boot. One 
 of the dirty tricks of war. 
 
 We followed the enemy quickly to Bapaume northwards 
 towards Queant, but with only small patrols farther east, 
 where he retired in easy stages with rear-guards of machine- 
 gunners to his Hindenburg line behind St Quentin. The 
 absence of large numbers of British soldiers in this aban- 
 doned country scared one. Supposing the enemy were to 
 come back in force? It was difficult to know his where- 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 abouts. We were afraid of running our cars into his out- 
 posts. "Can you tell me where our front line is," asked a 
 friend of mine to a sergeant leaning against a ruined wall 
 and chatting to a private who stood next to him. The ser- 
 geant removed his cigarette from his mouth and with just 
 the glint of a smile in his eyes said, "Well, sir, I am the front 
 line." It was almost like that for a week or two. I went 
 down roads where there was no sign of a trench or a patrol 
 and knew that the enemy was very close. One felt lonely. 
 Sir Douglas Haig did not waste his men in a futile pursuit 
 of the enemy. He wanted them elsewhere, and decided that 
 the Germans would not return over the roads they had de- 
 stroyed by mine-craters to the villages they had laid waste. 
 He was concentrating masses of men around Arras for the 
 battles which had been planned in the autumn of 'i6. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief has explained in one of his dis- 
 patches how the general plan of campaign for the spring 
 offensive was modified because of the German retreat which 
 relieved us of another battle of the Ancre. It was read- 
 justed also, as he has written, in order to meet the wishes 
 of the French Command, so that the attack on the Messines 
 Ridge, to be followed by operations against the Flanders 
 ridges towards the coast, had to be made secondary to the 
 actions around Arras and the Scarpe. They were intended 
 to hold a number of German divisions while the French 
 undertook their own great offensive in the Champagne under 
 the supreme command of General Nivelle. In the Arras 
 battles our troops were to do the "team work" for the 
 French, and if the combined operations did not produce de- 
 cisive results the British Armies might then be transferred 
 to Flanders, according to the original plan. It was a handi- 
 cap to our own strategical ideas, and was certain to weaken 
 our divisions without increasing our prestige before they 
 could be sent to Flanders for the most important assaults 
 on our length of front. In loyalty to our Allies it was de- 
 cided to subordinate our own plan to theirs, and this agree- 
 ment was carried out utterly. By bad luck the Italians were 
 
16 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 not ready to strike at the same time, and the Russian revo- 
 lution had already begun to relieve the enemy of his Eastern 
 menace, so that the Anglo-French offensive did not have 
 the prospect of decisive victory which might have come if 
 the German armies had been pressed on all fronts. 
 
 Our regimental officers and men knew nothing of all 
 this high strategy, nothing of the international difficulties 
 which confronted our High Command. They knew only 
 that they had to attack strong and difficult positions and 
 that the imrnediate success depended upon their own leader- 
 ship and the courage and training of their men. They were 
 sure of that and hoped for a victory which would break the 
 German spirit. They devoted themselves to the technical 
 details of their work, and only in subconscious thought pon- 
 dered over the powers that lie behind the preparations of 
 battle and decide the fate of fighting men. The scenes in 
 Arras and on the roads that lead to Arras are not to be for- 
 gotten by men who lived through them. Below ground as 
 well as above ground thousands of soldiers worked night 
 and day for weeks before the hour of attack. Above ground 
 they were getting many guns into position, making roads, 
 laying cables, building huts and camps, hurrying up vast 
 stores of material. Below ground they were boring tunnels 
 and making them habitable for many battalions, with ven- 
 tilation shafts and electric light. All the city of Arras has 
 an underground system of vaults and passages dug out in 
 the time of the Spanish Netherlands when the houses of the 
 citizens were built of stone quarried from the ground on 
 which they stood. These subterranean passages were deep- 
 ened and lengthened until they went a mile or more beyond 
 Arras to the edge of the German front lines. The old 
 vaults where the merchants kept their stores were propped 
 up and cleaned out, and in this underground world thou- 
 sands of our men lived for several days before the battle 
 waiting for "zero" hour on April 9, when they would come 
 up into the light and see the shell-fire which was now ex- 
 ploding above them, unloosing boulders of chalky rock about 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 them and shaking the bowels of the earth. The enemy knew 
 of our preparations and of this hfe in Arras, and during 
 the week before the battle he flung many shells into the city, 
 smashing houses already stricken, "strafing" the station 
 and the barracks, the squares and courtyards, and the roads 
 that led in and out. During the progress of the battle I 
 went many times into the broken heart of Arras while the 
 bodies of men and horses lay about where transport columns 
 had gone galloping by under fire and while the shrill whine 
 of high velocities was followed by the crash of shells among 
 the ruins. In the town and below it there were always 
 crowds of men during the weeks of fighting outside. I 
 went through the tunnels when long columns of soldiers in 
 single file moved slowly forward to another day's battle 
 in the fields beyond, and when another column came back, 
 wounded and bloody after their morning's fight. 
 
 The wounded and the imwounded passed each other in 
 these dimly lighted corridors. Their steel hats clinked to- 
 gether. Their bodies touched. Wafts of stale air laden 
 with a sickly stench came out of the vaults. Faint whiffs 
 of poison-gas filtered through the soil above and made men 
 vomit. For the most time the men were silent as they 
 passed each other, but now and then a wounded man would 
 say, ''Oh, Christ!" or "Mind my arm, mate," and an un- 
 wounded man would pass some remark to the man ahead. 
 In vaults dug into the sides of the passages were groups 
 of tunnellers and other men half screened by blanket cur- 
 tains. Their rifles were propped against the quarried rocks. 
 They sat on ammtmition boxes and played cards to the light 
 of candles stuck in bottles, which made their shadows flicker 
 fantastically on the walls. They took no interest in the 
 procession beyond their blankets — the walking wounded and 
 the troops going up. Some of them slept on the stone floors 
 with their heads covered by their overcoats and made pil- 
 lows of their gas-masks. Under some old houses of Arras 
 were women and children — about 700 of them — among our 
 soldiers. They were the people who had lived underground 
 
18 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 since the beginning of the war and would not leave. Only- 
 four of them went away when they were told of the coming 
 battle and its dangers. "We will stay," they said with a 
 certain pride because they had seen so much war. A few 
 women were wounded and one or two killed. Later, after 
 the first day's battle, in spite of some high velocities from 
 long-range guns, the streets and squares were filled with sol- 
 diers, and Arras was tumultuous with the movement of men 
 and horses and mules and wagons. The streets seethed with 
 Scottish soldiers muddy as they came straight out of battle, 
 bloody as they walked in wounded. Many battaHons of 
 Jocks came into the squares, and their pipers came to play to 
 them. I watched the Gordons' pipers march up and down in 
 stately ritual, and their colonel, who stood next to me, looked 
 at them with a proud light in his eyes as the tune of "High- 
 land Laddie" swelled up to the gables and filled the open 
 frontages of the gutted houses. Snowflakes fell lightly on 
 the steel hats of the Scots in the square, and mud was 
 splashed to the khaki aprons over their kilts — no browner 
 than their hard lean faces — as a battery rumbled across the 
 cobbled place and the drivers turned in their saddles to grin 
 at the fine swagger of the pipers and the triumph of the big 
 drumsticks. An old woman danced a jig to the pipes, hold- 
 ing her skirt above her skinny legs. She tripped up to a 
 group of Scottish officers and spoke quick shrill words to 
 them. "What does the old witch say," asked a laughing 
 Gordon. She had something particular to say. In 1870 
 she had heard the pipes in Arras. They were played by 
 prisoners from South Germany, and as a young girl she 
 had danced to them. . . . There was a casualty clearing- 
 station in Arras, in a deep high vault like the crypt of a 
 cathedral. The way into it was down a long tunnelled pass- 
 age, and during the battle thousands of men came here to 
 have their wounds dressed. They formed up in queues wait- 
 ing their turn and moved slowly down the tunnelled way, 
 weary, silent, patient. Outside lay some of the bad cases 
 until the stretcher-bearers carried them down, and other? 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 sat on the side of the road or lay at full length there, dog- 
 weary after their long walk from the battlefields. BHnd 
 boys were led forward by their comrades, and men with all 
 their heads and faces swathed about. They were not out 
 of danger even yet, for the enemy hated to leave Arras as a 
 health resort, but it was sanctuary for men who had been 
 in hell fire up by Monchy. 
 
 The first day of the Arras battle was our victory. We 
 struck the enemy a heavy blow, and the capture of the Vimy 
 Ridge by the Canadians and the Highland Division was as 
 wonderful as the great thrust by English and Scottish bat- 
 talions along the valley of the Scarpe across the Arras — 
 Cambrai road. By April 14 we had captured 13,000 pris- 
 oners and over 200 guns. But it was hard fighting after 
 the first few hours of the 9th, and the operations that fol- 
 lowed on both sides of the Scarpe were costly to us. The 
 London men of the 56th Division, and the old county 
 troops of the 3rd and 12th and 37th, and the Scots of the 
 15th suffered in heroic fighting against strong and fresh re- 
 serves of the enemy who were massed rapidly to check 
 them and made fierce, repeated counter-attacks against the 
 village of Roeux and its chemical works, north of the Scarpe, 
 and against Monchy-le-Preux and Guemappe, south of the 
 river. Again and again these counter-attacks were beaten 
 back with most bloody losses to the enemy, but our own 
 men suffered each time until they were weary beyond 
 words. I saw the cavalry ride forward towards Monchy, 
 where they came under great fire, and I saw the body of 
 their General carried back to Tilloy. It was a day of tragic 
 memory. 
 
 At this time, as Sir Douglas Haig has recorded, the bat- 
 tle of Arras might have ended. But the French offensive 
 was about to begin, and it was important that the full pres- 
 sure of the British attacks should be maintained in order to 
 assist our Allies. A renewal of the assault was therefore 
 ordered, and after a week's postponement to gather together 
 new supplies, to change the divisions, and complete the ar- 
 
20 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 tillery dispositions, fighting was resumed on a big scale on 
 April 23. It was on a front of about nine miles, from 
 Croisilles to Gavrelle. Important ground was taken west 
 of Cherisy and east of Monchy, where our troops seized 
 Infantry Hill, but the violent counter-attacks of the enemy 
 in great strength prevented the gain of all our objectives 
 on that day, and once more put our troops to a severe 
 ordeal. Roeux and Gavrelle on the north of the Scarpe, 
 Guemappe on the south, were the focal points of this strug- 
 gle and the scene of the bitterest fighting in and out of the 
 villages. On April 23 and 24 the enemy made eight sepa- 
 rate counter-attacks against Gavrelle, and each was shat- 
 tered by our artillery and machine-gun fire. On April 28 
 there was another great day of battle when the Canadians 
 had fierce hand-to-hand fighting in the village of Arleux, 
 and English troops made progress towards Oppy over Green- 
 land Hill and beyond Monchy. Gavrelle was attacked seven 
 times more by the enemy, who fell again in large numbers. 
 The night attack of May 3 was unlucky in many of its 
 episodes because some of our men lost their way in the 
 darkness and had the enemy behind them as well as in front 
 of them, and suffered under heavy artillery and machine- 
 gun fire. It was "team work" for the French, and many 
 of our sons fell that day not knowing that their blood was 
 the price of loyalty to our Allies and part payment of the 
 debt we owe to France for all her valour in this war. On 
 May 3 the battle front was extended on a line of sixteen 
 miles, and while the 3rd and ist Armies attacked from 
 Fontaine-lez-Croisilles to Fresnoy, the 5th Army stormed 
 the Hindenburg line near Bullecourt. The Australians car- 
 ried a stretch of this Hindenburg line. Cherisy fell into the 
 hands of East county battalions, Rceux was entered again by 
 English troops, and in Fresnoy, north of Oppy, the Cana- 
 dians fought masses of Germans assembled for counter- 
 attack and swept them out of the village. Heavy counter- 
 attacks developed later, so that our men had to fall back 
 from Cherisy and Roeux — Fresnoy was abandoned later — 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 but the rest of the ground was held. During this month's 
 fighting twenty-three German divisions had been withdrawn 
 exhausted from the Hne, and we had captured 19,500 pris- 
 oners, 257 guns including 98 heavies, 464 machine-guns, 
 22^ trench mortars, and a great quantity of war material. 
 We advanced our line five miles on a front of over twenty 
 miles, including the Vimy Ridge, which had always men- 
 aced our positions. Above all, we had drawn upon the 
 enemy's strength so that the French armies were relieved of 
 that amount of resistance to their offensive against the 
 Chemin des Dames. That was the idea behind it all, and it 
 succeeded, though the cost was not light. The battle of 
 Arras petered out into small engagements and nagging fight- 
 ing when on June 7 the battle of Messines began. 
 
 It was a model battle, and the whole operation was as- 
 tonishing in the thoroughness of its preparations through 
 every detail of organization, in the training of its method of 
 attack, in generalship and staff work, and in its Intelligence 
 department. The 2nd Army had long held this part of the 
 Ypres salient, and knew the enemy's country as well as its 
 own. The observers on Kemmel Hill, which looked across 
 to Wytschaete Ridge, had watched es^ery movement in the 
 enemy's lines, and every sign of new defensive work. Aero- 
 plane photographs, stacks of them, revealed many secrets 
 of the enemy's life on this high ground which gave him 
 observation of all our roads and villages in the flat country 
 between Dickebusch and Ypres. A relief map on a big 
 scale was built up in a field behind our lines, and the assault 
 troops and their oflicers walked round it and studied in 
 miniature the woods and slopes, strong points and trenches, 
 which they would have to attack. For eighteen months 
 past Australian and Canadian miners had been at work 
 below ground boring deep under the enemy's positions and 
 laying charges for the explosion of twenty- four mines. All 
 that time the enemy, aware of his danger, had been counter- 
 mining, and at Hill 60 there was constant underground 
 fighting for more than ten months when men met each other 
 
22 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 in the converging galleries and fought in their darkness. As 
 Sir Douglas Haig has written, at the time of our offensive 
 the enemy was known to be driving a gallery which would 
 have broken into the tunnel leading into the Hill 60 mines. 
 By careful listening it was judged that if our attack took 
 place on the date arranged, the enemy's gallery would just 
 fail to reach us. So he was allowed to proceed. Eight 
 thousand yards of gallery had been bored, and there were 
 nineteen mines ready charged with over a million pounds of 
 explosives. I saw those nineteen mines go up. The earth 
 rocked with a great shudder, and the sky was filled with 
 flame. It was the signal of our bombardment to break out in 
 a deafening tumult of guns after a quietude in which I 
 heard only the snarl of enemy gas-shells and the shunting 
 and whistling of our railway engines down below there in 
 the darkness as though this battlefield were Clapham Junc- 
 tion. Round about the salient a network of railways had 
 been built with great speed under the very eyes of the enemy, 
 and though he had shelled our tracks and engines he could 
 never stop the work of those engineers who laboured with 
 fine courage and industry so that the guns might not lack 
 for shells nor the men for supplies on the day of attack. 
 The battle of Wytschaete and Messines was a fine victory 
 for us, breaking the evil spell of the Ypres salient in which 
 our men had sat down so long under direct observation of 
 the enemy on that ridge above them. Kemmel Hill, which 
 had been under fire in our lines for three years, became a 
 health resort for Australian boys whose turn to fight had 
 not yet come, and they sat on top of the old observation- 
 post where men had hidden below ground to watch through 
 a slit in the earth, staring through field-glasses at the sweep 
 of fire from Oostaverne to Pilkem, and eating sweets, and 
 putting wild flowers in their slouch hats. Dickebusch lost 
 its horror. The road to Vierstraat was no longer bracketed 
 by German shells, and there was no further need of camou- 
 flage screens along other roads where notice-boards said: 
 Drive slowly — dust draws fire. On the morning of battle 
 
INTRODUCTION gS 
 
 after the capture of the ridge an Irish brigadier sat outside 
 his dug-out on a kitchen chair before a deal table, where his 
 maps were spread. "It's good to take the fresh air," he said. 
 "Yesterday I had to keep below ground." All that made a 
 difference on the right of the salient, but Ypres was still 
 "a hot shop," as the men say, and the roads out of Ypres — 
 the Lille road and the Menin road — were as abominable as 
 ever, and worse than ever when at the end of July the battles 
 of Flanders began. 
 
 The Wytschaete — Messines Ridge is the eastern spur of 
 that long range of "abrupt isolated hills," to use the words 
 of Sir Douglas Haig, which divides the valleys of the Lys 
 and the Yser, and links up with the ridges stretching north- 
 eastwards to the Ypres — Menin road, and then northwards 
 to Passchendaele and Staden. One of the objects of our 
 campaign in 19 17 was to gain the high ground to Passchen- 
 daele and beyond. A mere glance at a rehef map is enough 
 to show the formidable nature of the positions held by the 
 enemy on those slopes which dominated our low ground. 
 When one went across the Yser Canal along the Menin 
 road, or towards the Pilkem Ridge, those slopes seemed like 
 a wall of cHffs barring the way of our armies, however 
 strongly our tide of men might dash against them. The 
 plan to take them by assault needed enormous courage and 
 high faith in the mind of any man who bore the burden 
 of command, and his faith and courage depended utterly on 
 the valour of the men who were to carry out his plan 
 against those frowning hills. The men did not fail our 
 High Command, and for three and a half months those 
 troops of ours fought with a heroic resolution never sur- 
 passed by any soldiers in the world, and hardly equalled, 
 perhaps, in all the history of war, against terrible gun-fire 
 and innumerable machine-guns, in storms and swamps, in 
 I bodily misery because of the mud and wet, in mental suffer- 
 I ing because of the long strain on their nerve and strength, 
 I with severe casualties because of the enemy's fierce re- 
 \ sistance, but with such passionate and self-sacrificing cour- 
 
24 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 age that the greatest obstacles were overcome, and the enemy 
 was beaten back from one line of defence to another with 
 large captures of prisoners and guns until, in the middle of 
 November, the crest of Passchendaele was gained. 
 
 Before the first day of the battle the 5th Army, with the 
 I St French Army on its left, below the flooded ground of 
 St.-Jansbeek, crossed the Yser Canal and seized 3000 yards 
 of the enemy's trench system. During that night the pioneer 
 battalion of the Guards, working under fierce fire, built 
 seventeen bridges across the canal for the passage of our 
 troops on the day of assault. On that day, July 31, at 3.50 
 in the morning, battle was engaged on a front of fifteen 
 miles from Boesinghe to the River Lys, where the 2nd Army 
 was making a holding attack on our right wing. The Ger- 
 man front-line system of defence was taken everywhere. 
 Our troops captured the Pilkem Ridge on the left, Veloren- 
 hoek, the Frezenberg Redoubt, the Pommern Redoubt, and 
 St-Julien north of the Ypres— Roulers railway, and were 
 fighting forward against fierce resistance on both sides of 
 the Ypres— Menin road. They stormed through Sanctuary 
 Wood and captured Stirling Castle, Hooge, and the Belle- 
 waerde Ridge, and by the end of the day had gained the 
 crest of Westhoek Ridge. On the 2nd Army front the New- 
 Zealanders carried the village of La Basseville after close 
 fighting, which lasted fifty minutes, and English troops on 
 their left captured Hollebeke and difficult ground north of 
 the Ypres — Comines Canal. Over 6000 prisoners, includ- 
 ing 133 officers, surrendered to us that day. 
 
 It was in the afternoon of the first day that the luck of 
 the weather was decided against us and there began those 
 heavy rain-storms which drenched the battlefields in August 
 and made them dreadful for men and beasts. All this part 
 of Flanders is intersected by small streams or *'beeks," fil- 
 tering through the valleys between the ridges, and our ar- 
 tillery-fire had already caused them to form ponds and 
 swamps by destroying their channels so that they slopped 
 over the low-lying ground. The rains enlarged this area of 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 flood, and so saturated the clayey soil that it became a vast 
 bog with deep overbrimming pits where thousands of shell- 
 craters had pierced the earth. Tracks made of wooden slabs 
 fastened together were the only roads by which men and 
 pack-mules could cross this quagmire, and each of these 
 ways became taped out by the enemy's artillery, and very 
 perilous. They were slippery under moist mud, and men 
 and mules fell into the bogs on either side, and sometimes 
 drowned in them. At night in the darkness and the storms 
 it was hard to find the tracks and difficult to keep to them, 
 and long columns of troops staggered and stumbled forward 
 with mud up to their knees if they lost direction, and mud 
 up to their necks if they fell into the shell-holes. It was 
 over such ground as this, in such intolerable conditions, that 
 our men fought and won their way across the chain of 
 ridges which led to Passchendaele. I saw some of the 
 haunting scenes of this struggle and went over the ground 
 across the Pilkem Ridge, and along the Ypres — Menin road 
 to Westhoek Ridge, and up past Hooge to the bogs of Glen- 
 corse Wood and Inverness Copse, and beyond the Yser 
 Canal to St. -Jean and Wieltje, where every day for months 
 our gunners went on firing, and every day the enemy "an- 
 swered back'' with scattered and destructive fire, searching 
 for our batteries and for the bodies of our men. The broken 
 skeleton of Ypres was always in the foreground or the 
 background of this scene of war, and every day it changed 
 in different atmospheric phases and different hours of light 
 so that it was never the same in its tragic beauty. Some- 
 times it was filled with gloom and shadows, and the tattered 
 masonry of the Cloth Hall, lopped off at the top, stood black 
 as granite above its desolate boulder-strewn square. Some- 
 times when storm-clouds were blown wildly across the sky 
 and the sunlight struck through them, Ypres would be all 
 white and glamorous, like a ghost city in a vision of the 
 world's end. At times there was a warm glow upon its rain- 
 washed walls, and they shone like burnished metal. Or 
 they were wrapped about with a thick mist stabbed through 
 
26 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 by flashes of red fire from heavy guns, revealing in a mo- 
 ment's glare the sharp edges of the fallen stonework, the 
 red ruins of the prison and asylum, the huddle of shell- 
 pierced roofs, and that broken tower which stands as a 
 memorial of what once was the splendour of Ypres. A mili- 
 tary policeman standing outside the city gave an order to 
 all going in : "Gas-masks and steel hats to be worn,'* and 
 at that moment when one fumbled at the string of one's 
 gas-bag and fastened the strap of a steel hat beneath one's 
 chin, the menace of war crept close and the evil of it 
 touched one's senses. It was very evil beyond the Lille 
 gate and the Menin gate, where new shell-holes mingled 
 with old ones, and men walked along the way of death. 
 The spirit of that evil lurked about the banks of the Yser 
 Canal with its long fringe of blasted trees, white and livid, 
 with a leprous look when the sunlight touched their stumps. 
 The water of the canal was but a foul slime stained with 
 gobs of colour. The wreckage of bridges and barges lay 
 in it. In its banks were unexploded shells and deep gashes 
 where the bursts had torn the earth down, and innumer- 
 able craters. The Yser Canal holds in a ghostly way the 
 horror of this war. Yet it is worse beyond. Out through 
 the Menin gate the view of the salient widens, and every 
 yard of the way is bleeding with the memory of British 
 soldiers who walked and fought and died here since the 
 autumn of '14. How many of them we can hardly guess 
 or know. The white crosses of their graves are scattered 
 about the shell-churned fields and the rubbish-heaps of 
 brick, though many were never buried, and many were taken 
 back by stretcher-bearers who risked their lives to bring in 
 these bodies. There is no house where the White Chateau 
 used to be. There is no grange by the Moated Grange 
 where men crept out at night, crawling on their stomachs 
 when the flares went up. Hundreds of thousands of men 
 have gone up to Hell-fire Corner, some of them with a cold 
 sweat in the palms of their hands and brave faces and an 
 act of sacrifice in their hearts. It was the way to Hooge. 
 
INTRODUCTION jjY 
 
 It was a comer of the hell that was here always under 
 German guns and German eyes from the ridge beyond 
 They had high ground all around us, as the country goes 
 up from Observatory Ridge and Sanctuary Wood and 
 Bellewaerde to the Westhoek Ridge and the high plateau 
 of Potygon Wood. No men of ours could move in the 
 daylight without being seen. The Menin road was always 
 under fire. Every bit of broken barn, every dug-out S 
 trench, was a mark for the enemy's artillery. During the 
 
 fone r f T^ '" *" ^"-"""^ ^'^ ^*i» i" *e dfngeJ 
 tTon ;f?°"^ ?' '"r^ '°'' '""'^'^ °f ^^' direct obser;a- 
 lon after our first advance. But he was still trying to find 
 he old places and hurled over big shells in a wld scat- 
 tered way. They flung up black fountains of earth with 
 frightful violence. Everywhere there were shell-holes so 
 deep that a cart and horse would find room in them. One 
 looked into these gulfs with beastly sensations-with a kind 
 of ammal fear at the thought of what would happen to a 
 man if he stood m the way of such an explosion There 
 was a sense of old black brooding evil about all this coun! 
 try, and ^vorst of all in remembrance were the mine-craters 
 
 sLTuT: ''t'f ^'° *^'' P'*' ^" P^'^d with stinking 
 sand-bags on which fungus grew, and thought of friends 
 of mine who once lived here, with the enemy a few yards 
 away from them with mines and saps creeping dole to 
 them before another upheaval of the earth, widi corpses 
 and bits of bodies rotting half buried where they sat al- 
 ways wet, always lousy, in continual danger of death The 
 mines went up and men fought for new craters over new 
 rh,n K ,f "d-^=^&^ «"ted down after rain, and ma- 
 
 chine-gun bullets swept through the gaps, and men sank 
 deeper ,„to this filth and corruption. The place is aban- 
 doned now but the foulness of it stayed, with a lake of 
 shme m which bodies floated, and the same old stench rose 
 trom Its caverns and craters. Bellewaerde Lake, to the 
 north of Hooge, is not what it used to be when gentlemen 
 ot Ypres came out here to shoot wild-fowl or walk through 
 
28 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Chateau Wood around the White Chateau of Hooge with a 
 dog and a gun. There are still stumps of trees, shot and 
 mangled by three years of fire, but no more wood than 
 that, and the lake is a cesspool into which the corruption ^ 
 of death has flowed. Its water is stained with patches of 
 red and yellow and green slime, and shapeless things float 
 in it. Beyond is the open ground which goes up to West- 
 hoek Ridge above Nonne Boschen and Glencorse Wood, 
 for which our men fought on the first day of battle and 
 afterwards in many weeks of desperate struggle. The Aus- 
 tralians took possession of this country for a time and had 
 to stay and hold it after the excitement of advance. They 
 came winding along the tracks in single file through this 
 newly captured ground, carrying their lengths of duck- 
 board and ammunition boxes with just a grim glance to- 
 wards places where shells burst with monstrous whoofs. 
 "A hot spot," said one of these boys, crouching with his 
 mates in a bit of battered trench outside a German pill-box 
 surrounded by dead bodies. Our guns were firing from 
 many batteries, and flights of shells rushed through the 
 air from the heavies a long way back and from the field- 
 guns forward. It was the field-guns which hurt one's 
 ears most with their sharp hammer-strokes. Now and again 
 a little procession passed to which all other men gave way. 
 It was a stretcher-party carrying a wounded man shoulder 
 high. There is something noble and steady about these 
 bearers, and when I see them I always think of Greek heroes 
 carried back on their shields. There was a vapour of poison 
 gas about these fields, not strong enough to kill, but mak- 
 ing one's eyes and skin smart. The Australians did not 
 seem to notice it. Perhaps the stench of dead horses over- 
 whelmed their nostrils. It was strong and foul. The car- 
 casses of these poor beasts lay about as they had been hit 
 by shrapnel or shell splinters, and down one track came a 
 living horse less lucky than these, bleeding badly from its 
 wounds and ambling slowly with drooping head and glazed 
 eyes. Worse smells than of dead horse crept up from the 
 
INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 battered trenches and dug-outs, where Glencorse Wood goes 
 down to Inverness Copse. It was the dreadful odour of 
 dead men. It rose in gusts and waves and eddies over all 
 this ground, for the battlefield was strewn with dead. I 
 saw many German bodies in the fields of the Somme, and 
 on the way out from Arras, and on the Vimy Ridge, but 
 never in such groups as lay about the pill-boxes and the 
 shell-craters of the salient. Everywhere they lay half bur- 
 ied in the turmoil of earth, or stark above ground with- 
 out any cover to hide them. They lay with their heads flung 
 back into water-filled craters or with their legs dangling 
 in deep pools. They were blown into shapeless masses of 
 raw flesh by our artillery. Heads and legs and arms all 
 coated in clay lay without bodies far from where the men 
 of whom they had been part were killed. God knows what 
 agonies were suffered before death by men shut up in those 
 German blockhouses, like Fitzclarence Farm, and Herent- 
 hage Chateau, and Clapham Junction, which I passed on 
 the way up. Some of the garrisons had not stayed in the 
 blockhouses until our troops had reached them. Perhaps 
 the concussion of our drum-fire was worse inside those 
 concrete walls than outside. Perhaps the men had rushed 
 out hoping to surrender before our troops were on them, 
 or with despairing courage had brought their machine- 
 guns into the open to kill our first waves before their own 
 death. Whatever their motive had been, many of these 
 men had come out, and they lay in heaps, mangled by 
 shell-fire that came across the fields to them in a deep belt 
 of high explosives. Here under the sky they lay, a fright- 
 ful witness against modern civilization, a bloody challenge 
 to any gospel of love which men profess to believe. Over 
 Nonne Boschen and Inverness Copse, and Polygon Wood 
 beyond, and the long claw-like hook of the Passchendaele 
 Ridge, the sky was clear at times and the water-pools re- 
 flected its light. But these places had no touch of loveH- 
 ness because of the light. Once in history meek-eyed 
 women walked in Nonne Boschen, which was Nun's Wood, 
 
30 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 and in Inverness Copse, as we call it, maids went with their 
 mates in the glades. Now they are places haunted by 
 ghastly memories, and there rises f i^Dm them a miasma 
 which sickens one's soul. Yet bright above the evil of 
 them and clean above their filth there is the memory of that 
 youth of ours who came here through fire and flame and 
 fell here, so that the soil is sacred as their field of honour. 
 In the first phase of the battle of Flanders the new sys- 
 tem of German defence was formidable. It was that ^'elas- 
 tic system" by which Hindenburg hoped to relieve his men 
 from the destructive fire of our artillery by holding his 
 front line thinly in concrete blockhouses and organized shell- 
 craters with enfilade positions for machine-gun fire, keep- 
 ing his local reserves at quick striking distance for counter- 
 attack. Our first waves of men flowed past and between 
 these blockhouses in their struggle to attain their objectives, 
 and were swept by cross-fire as they went forward, so that 
 they were thinned out by the time they had reached the 
 line of their advance. The succeeding waves were some- 
 times checked by German machine-gunners still holding 
 out in undamaged shelters, and our troops in the new front 
 line, weak and exhausted after hours of fighting, found 
 themselves exposed to fierce counter-attacks in front while 
 groups of the enemy were still behind them. For several 
 weeks there were episodes of this kind, when our men had to 
 give ground, though the line of advance seldom ebbed back 
 to its starting line, and some progress was made however 
 great the difficulties. Still the "pill-box" trouble was a seri- 
 ous menace, costly in life, and new methods of attack had to 
 be devised during the progress of fighting when the area of 
 the 2nd Army was extended on our left so that the 5th 
 Army was relieved of some of its broad battle front. Our 
 heavy howitzers concentrated on every blockhouse that 
 could be located by aeroplane photographs or direct ob- 
 servation, with such storms of explosive that if they were 
 not destroyed the garrisons of machine-gunners inside were 
 killed or stupefied by concussion. Our method of attack in 
 
INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 depth, as at Wytschaete and Messines — ^battalions advanc- 
 ing in close support of each other, so that the final objec- 
 tive was held by fresh troops to meet the inevitable counter- 
 attacks — succeeded in a most striking way, in spite of the 
 fearful condition of the ground. The enemy changed his 
 new method of defence to meet this new method of attack. 
 He went back to strongly held lines with support troops 
 close forward, and had to pay the penalty by heavier losses 
 under our artillery. The abominable weather and state of 
 ground were his best lines of defence, and in August and 
 October he had astounding luck. 
 
 Through all these battles our men were magnificent — 
 not demi-gods, nor saints with a passion for martyrdom, 
 nor heroes of melodrama facing death with breezy non- 
 chalance while they read sweet letters from blue-eyed girls, 
 but grim in attack and stubborn in defence, getting on with 
 the job — a damned ugly job — as far as the spirit could 
 pull the body and control the nerves. They were indus- 
 trious as ants on this great muck-heap of the battlefield. 
 Transport drivers, engineers, signallers, and pioneers la- 
 boured for victory as hard as infantry and gunners, and 
 worked, for the most part, in evil places where there was 
 always a chance of being torn to rags. The gunners, with 
 their wheels sunk to the axles, served their batteries until 
 they were haggard and worn, and they had little sleep and 
 less comfort, and no hour of safety from infernal fire. 
 They were wet from one week to another. They stood 
 to the tags of their boots in mud. They had many 
 of their guns smashed to spokes and splinters. They 
 were lucky if lightly wounded. But their barrage-fire rolled 
 ahead of the infantry at every attack and they shattered 
 the enemy's divisions. The stretcher-bearers seemed to 
 give no thought to their own lives in the rescue of the 
 wounded; and down behind the lines — not always beyond 
 range of gun-fire — doctors and hospital orderlies and nurses 
 worked in the dressing-stations with the same dogged in- 
 dustry and courage as men who carried up duck-boards to 
 
32 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the line, drove teams of pack-mules up tracks under fire, 
 or unloaded shells from trains that went puffing to the edge 
 of the battlefields. It was all part of the business of war. 
 Wounded men who came back from battle were dealt with 
 as so many cases of damaged goods, to be packed off speed- 
 ily to make way for others. There was no time for senti- 
 ment — and no need of it. I used to go sometimes to an old 
 mill-house on days of battle. During the Flanders fighting 
 thousands of wounded men came to this place as a first 
 stage on their journey to base hospitals. The lightly 
 wounded used to sit in a long low tent beside the mill, 
 round red-hot braziers, waiting in turn to have their wounds 
 dressed. These crowds of men were of many battalions and 
 of all types of English, Scottish, and Irish troops, with 
 smaller bodies of Australians, New-Zealanders, Canadians, 
 South-Africans, Newfoundlanders. They were clotted with 
 mud and blood, and numb and stiff until the warmth of 
 the braziers unfroze them. They sat silent as a rule, with 
 their steel hats tilted forward, but there was hardly a groan 
 from them, and never a whimper, nor any curse against the 
 fate that had hit them. If I questioned them they answered 
 with a stark simplicity of truth about the things they had 
 seen and done, with often a queer glint of humour — grim 
 enough, God knows, but humour still — in their tale of es- 
 cape from death. Always after a talk with them I came 
 away with a deep belief that the courage, honesty, and hu- 
 manity of these boys were a world higher than the Philoso- 
 phy of their intellectual leaders, and I hated the thought 
 that we have been brought to such a pass by the infamy of 
 an enemy caste, and by the low ideals of Europe which 
 have been our own law of life, that all this splendid youth, 
 thinking straight, seeing straight, acting straight, without 
 selfish motives, with clean hearts and fine bodies, should be 
 flung into the furnace of war and scorched by its fires, 
 and maimed, and blinded, and smashed. Only by the dire 
 need of defence against the enemies of the world's liberty 
 can such a sacrifice be justified, and that is our plea before 
 
INTRODUCTION 33 
 
 the great Judge of Truth. Such thoughts haunt one if one 
 has any conscience, but when I went among the troops on 
 the roads or in their camps, and heard their laughter after 
 battle or before it, and saw the courage of men refusing 
 to be beaten down by the vilest conditions or heavy losses, 
 and was a witness of their pride in the achievements of 
 their own battalions, I wondered sometimes whether the 
 sufferings of these men were not so pitiful as I had thought. 
 Their vitality helps them through many hardships. Their 
 interest in life is so great that until death comes close it 
 does not touch them — not many of them — with its coldness. 
 In their comradeship they find a compensation for discom- 
 fort, and their keenness to win the rewards of skill and 
 pluck is so high that they take great risks sometimes as 
 a kind of sport, as Arctic explorers or big game hunters will 
 face danger and endure great bodily suffering for their own 
 sake. Those men are natural soldiers, though all our men 
 are not like that. There are some even who like war, though 
 very few. But most of them would jeer at any kind of pity 
 for them, because they do not pity themselves, except in 
 most dreadful moments which they put away from their 
 minds if they escape. They scorn pity, yet they hate worse 
 still, with a most deadly hatred, all the talk about "our 
 cheerful men." For they know that however cheerful they 
 may be it is not because of a jolly life or lack of fear. 
 They loathe shell-fire and machine-gun fire. They know 
 what it is "to have the wind up." They have seen what 
 a battlefield looks like before it has been cleared of its dead. 
 It is not for non-combatants to call them "cheerful." Be- 
 cause non-combatants do not understand and never will, not 
 from now until the ending of the world. "Not so much 
 of your cheerfulness," they say, and "Cut it out about the 
 brave boys in the trenches." So it is difficult to describe 
 them, or to give any idea of what goes on in their minds, 
 for they belong to another world than the world of peace 
 that we knew, and there is no code which can decipher their 
 secret, nor any means of self-expression on their lips. 
 
S4 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 In this book the messages which I wrote from day to day 
 are reprinted with only one alteration — though some are 
 left out. For reasons of space (there is a limit to the 
 length of a book) I have not included any narrative of 
 the Cambrai battles, and thought it best to end this book 
 with the gain of Passchendaele. The alteration is one which 
 makes me very glad. I have been allowed to give the names 
 of the battalions, which I could not do during the progress 
 of the fighting because the enemy wanted to know our 
 Order of Battle. For the first time, therefore, the world 
 will know the regiments who fought without fame in the 
 dismal anonymity of this war, with such Spartan courage, 
 up to that high crest of Passchendaele which was their goal, 
 beyond the bogs and the beeks where masses of men strug- 
 gled and fell. There is no criticism in this book, no judg- 
 ment of actions or men, no detailed summing up of success 
 and failure. That is not within my liberty or duty as a 
 correspondent with the Armies in the Field. The Com- 
 mander-in-Chief himself has summarized the definite gains 
 of the campaign in Flanders: 
 
 * 'Notwithstanding the many difiEculties, much has been 
 achieved. Our captures in Flanders since the commence- 
 ment of operations at the end of July amount to 20,065 
 prisoners, 74 guns, 941 machine-guns, and 131 trench- 
 mortars. It is certain that the enemy's losses greatly ex- 
 ceeded ours. Most important of all, our new and hastily 
 trained armies have shown once again that they are capable 
 of meeting and beating the enemy's best troops, even under 
 conditions which required the greatest endurance, deter- 
 mination, and heroism to overcome. The total number of 
 prisoners taken in 191 7, between the opening of the spring 
 offensive on April 9 and the conclusion of the Flanders 
 offensive, not including those captured in the battle of Cam- 
 brai, was 57,696, including 1290 officers. During the same 
 period we captured also 109 heavy guns, 560 trench-mortars 
 and 1976 machine-guns." 
 
INTRODUCTION 35 
 
 These are great gains in men and material, and the cap- 
 ture of the ridges has given us strong defensive positions 
 which should be of high value to us in the new year of 
 warfare calling to our men, unless the world's agony is 
 healed by the coming of Peace. 
 
 [/ am indebted to Mr. Robert Donald, editor of the 
 Daily Chronicle, for permission to republish the articles 
 which I have written for that newspaper as a war corre- 
 spondent with the British Army in the Field. My letters 
 from the Front also appeared in the Daily Telegraph and 
 a number of Provincial , American, and Colonial papers, 
 and I am grateful for the honour of serving the great public 
 of their readers.'] 
 
FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
PART I 
 RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 
 
 I 
 
 A New Year of War 
 
 New Year's Eve, 1916 
 Last New Year's Eve — the end of a year which had been 
 full of menace for our fighting men, because, at the be- 
 ginning, our lines had no great power of guns behind them, 
 and full of hopes that had been unfilled, in spite of all their 
 courage and all their sacrifice — an artillery officer up in the 
 Ypres salient waited for the tick of midnight by his wrist- 
 watch (it gave a glow-worm light in the darkness), and 
 then shouted the word 'Tire !" . . . One gun spoke, and then 
 for a few seconds there was silence. Over in the German 
 line the flares went up and down, and it was very quiet in 
 the enemy trenches, where, perhaps, the sentries wondered 
 at that solitary gun. Then the artillery officer gave the 
 word of command again. This time the battery fired nine 
 rounds. A little while there was silence again, followed by 
 another solitary shot, and then by six rounds. So did the 
 artillery in the Ypres salient salute the birth of the New 
 Year, born in war, coming to our soldiers and our race 
 with many days of battle, with new and stern demands for 
 the lives and blood of men. 
 
 To-night it is another New Year's Eve, and the year is 
 coming to us with the same demands and the same promises, 
 and the only difference between our hopes upon this night 
 and that of a year ago is that by the struggle and endeavour 
 of those past twelve months the ending is nearer in sight and 
 
 39 
 
40 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the promise very near — very near as we hope and believe — 
 its fulfilment. The guns will speak again to-night, saluting 
 by the same kind of sullen salvo the first day of the last year 
 of war. The last year, if we have luck. It is raining now, 
 a soft rain swept gustily across the fields by a wind so mild 
 after all our wild weather that it seems to have the breath 
 of spring in it. For a little while yesterday this mildness, 
 and the sunlight lying over the battlefields, and a strange, 
 rare inactivity of artillery, gave one just for one second of 
 a day-dream a sense that Peace had already come and that 
 the victory had been won. It was queer. I stood looking 
 upon Neuville-St.-Vaast and the Vimy Ridge. Our trenches 
 and the enemy's wound along the slopes in wavy lines of 
 white chalk. There to my right was the Labyrinth and in 
 a hollow the ruins of Souchez. When I had first come to 
 these battlefields they were strewn with dead — French dead 
 — after fighting frightful and ferocious in intensity. Unex- 
 ploded shells lay everywhere, and the litter of great ruin, 
 and storms of shells were bursting upon the Vimy Ridge. 
 
 The last time I went to these battlefields the high ridge 
 of Vimy was still aflame, and British troops were attacking 
 the mine-craters there. Yesterday all the scene was quiet, 
 and bright sunlight gleamed upon the broken roofs of Neu- 
 ville, and the white trenches seemed abandoned. The wet 
 earth and leaves about me in a ruined farmyard had the 
 moist scent of early spring. A man was wandering up a 
 road where six months ago he would have been killed be- 
 fore he had gone a hundred yards. Lord! It looked like 
 peace again! ... It was only a false mirage. There was 
 no peace. Presently a battery began to fire. I saw the 
 shells bursting over the enemy's position. Now and again 
 there was the sullen crump of a German * 'heavy." And 
 though the trenches seemed deserted on either side they 
 were held as usual by men waiting and watching with ma- 
 chine-guns and hand-grenades and trench-mortars. There 
 is no peace! 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 41 
 
 It was enormously quiet at times in Arras. The footsteps 
 of my companion were startling as they clumped over the 
 broken pavement of the square, and voices — women's voices 
 — coming up from some hole in the earth sounded high and 
 clear, carrying far, in an unearthly way, in this great awful 
 loneliness of empty houses, broken churches, ruined banks 
 and shops and restaurants, and mansions cloistered once in 
 flower gardens behind high white walls. I went towards 
 the women's voices as men in darkness go towards any glim- 
 mer of Hght, for warmth of soul as well as of body. 
 
 A woman came up a flight of stone steps from a vaulted 
 cellar and stared at me, and said, "Good day. Do you look 
 for anything?" 
 
 I said, "1 look only into your cellar. It is strange to find 
 you living here. All alone — ^perhaps." 
 
 "It is no longer strange to me. I have been here, as you 
 say, alone, all through the war, since the day of the first 
 bombardment. That was on October 6, 1914. Before then 
 I was not alone. I was married. But my husband was 
 killed over there — you see the place where the shell fell. 
 Since then I am alone." 
 
 For two years and two months she and other women of 
 Arras — one came now to stand by her side and nod at her 
 tale — have lived below ground, coming up for light and air 
 when there is a spell of such silence as I had listened to, and 
 going down to the dark vaults when a German "crump" 
 smashes through another roof, or when German gas steals 
 through the streets with the foul breath of death. 
 
 I asked her about the Kaiser's offer of peace. What did 
 she think of that? I wondered what her answer would be — 
 this woman imprisoned in darkness, hiding under daily 
 bombardments, alone in the abomination of desolation. It 
 was strange how quickly she was caught on fire by a sudden 
 passion. All the tranquillity of her face changed, and there 
 were burning sparks in her eyes. She was like a woman of 
 the Revolution, and her laughter, for she began her answer 
 with a laugh, was shrill and fierce. 
 
42 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 "Peace! William offers peace, you say? Bah! It is 
 nothing but humbug [la blague]. It is a trap which he sets 
 at our feet to catch us. It is a lie." 
 
 She grasped my arm, and with her other hand pointed to 
 the ruins over the way, to the chaos of old houses, once very 
 stately and noble, where her friends lived before the fires 
 of hell came. 
 
 "The Germans did that to us. They are doing it now. 
 But it is not enough. What they have done to Arras they 
 want to do to France — to smash the nation to the dust, to 
 break the spirit of our race as they have broken all things 
 here. They wish to deceive us to our further ruin. There 
 will be no peace until Germany herself is laid in ashes, and 
 her cities destroyed like Arras is destroyed, and her women 
 left alone, with only the ghosts of their dead husbands, as 
 I live here alone in my cellar. Peace ! Je m'en fiche de ga !" 
 
 There was a queer light in her eyes for a moment, in the 
 eyes of this woman of Arras who saw down a vista of two 
 years and two months all the fire and death that had been 
 hurled into this city around her, and the bodies of little 
 children in the streets, and her dead husband lying there 
 on the cobble-stones, where now there was a great hole in 
 the roadway piercing through to the vaults. 
 
 I met other women of Arras. Two of them were young, 
 daintily dressed as though for the boulevards of Paris, and 
 they walked, swinging little handbags, down a street where 
 at any moment a shell might come to tear them to pieces 
 and make rags of them. Another was a buxom woman with 
 a boy and girl holding her hands. The boy had been born 
 to the sound of shell-fire. The girl was eight years old, 
 but she now learns the history of France, not only out of 
 school books, but out of this life in the midst of war. 
 
 "They are frightened — the Httle ones?" I asked. A soli- 
 tary gun boomed and shook the loose stones of a ruined 
 house. The woman smiled and shrugged her shoulders. 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 43 
 
 "They are used to it all. Peace will seem strange to 
 them." 
 
 ''Will there ever be peace ?'T asked. 
 
 The woman of Arras looked for a moment like the one 
 I had spoken to on the steps of the cellar. Then she smiled, 
 in a way that made me feel cold, for it was the smile of a 
 woman who sees a vengeance for the wreckage of her life. 
 
 "There is no peace at Verdun," she said. "Our soldiers 
 have done well there." 
 
 I said good day to her and went through the ruins again 
 and out of the city, and stood watching an artillery duel 
 up towards Souchez. The stabs of flame from our bat- 
 teries were like red sparks in the deepening mist. They 
 were like the fire in the eyes of the women who lived in 
 cellars away back there in Arras, with a smouldering pas- 
 sion in the gloom and coldness of their lives. 
 * * * * 
 
 In many French villages the pipes are playing the New 
 Year in, and their notes are full of triumph, but with a cry 
 in them for those who have gone away with the old year, 
 lying asleep on the battlefields — so many brave Scots — like 
 "the flowers o' the forest" and last year's leaves. I heard 
 the pipes to-day in one old barn, where a feast was on, not 
 far from where the guns were shooting through the mist 
 with a round or two at odd moments, and though I had had 
 one good meal, I had to eat another, even to the Christmas 
 plum pudding, just to show there was no ill-feeling. 
 
 It was the pudding that threatened to do me down. 
 
 But it was good to sit among these splendid Seaforths 
 and their feast, all packed together shoulder to shoulder, and 
 back to back, under high old beams that grew in French 
 forests five centuries ago. They were the transport men, 
 who get the risks but not the glory. Every man here had 
 ridden, night after night, up to the lines of death, under 
 shell-fire and machine-gun fire, up by Longueval and Ba- 
 zentin, carrying food for men and guns at their own risk 
 of life. Every night now they go up again with more food 
 
44 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 for men and guns through places where there are now shell- 
 craters in the roads, and the reek of poison gas. 
 
 The young transport officer by my side (who once went 
 scouting in Delville Wood when the devil had it all his own 
 way there) raised his glass of beer (the jug from which it 
 had been poured stood a yard high in front of me) and 
 wished "Good luck" to his men in the New Year of war, 
 and bade them "wire in" to the feast before them. So in 
 other Scottish billets the first of the New Year was 
 kept, and to-night there is sword-dancing by kilted men as 
 nimble as Nijinski, in their stockinged feet, and old songs 
 of Scotland which are blown down the wind of France, in 
 this strange nightmare of a war where men from all the 
 Empire are crowded along the fighting-lines waiting for the 
 bloody battles that will come, as sure as fate, while the New 
 
 Year is still young. 
 
 ^ * * * 
 
 The queerest music I have heard in this, war zone was 
 three days ago, when I was walking down a city street. 
 The city was dead, killed by storms of high explosives. 
 The street was of shuttered houses, scarred by shell-fire, 
 deserted by all their people, who had fled two years ago. 
 I walked down this desolation, so quiet, so dead, where there 
 was no sound of guns, that it was like walking in Pompeii 
 when the lava was cooled. Suddenly there was the sound of 
 a voice singing loud and clear with birdlike trills, as tri- 
 umphant as a lark's song to the dawn. It was a woman's 
 voice singing behind the shutters of a shelled city! . . . 
 
 Some English officer was there with his gramophone. 
 
 2 
 
 An Attack Near Le Transloy 
 
 January 28, 191 7 
 The "show" (as our men call it) near Le Transloy yes- 
 terday was more than a raid — those daily in-and-out dashes 
 
 I 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 
 
 45 
 
 which are doing most deadly work along our line. It was an 
 attack for the definite purpose of gaining an important bit 
 of ground on the slope which goes down to the ruined vil- 
 lage and of driving the enemy out of some strong points. 
 The interest of it, involving the capture of six officers and 
 352 men of picked regiments, is the way in which we caught 
 the enemy utterly by surprise and the rapid, easy way in 
 which the whole operation was done. A touch which seems 
 fantastic came at the end of the adventure when these young 
 Germans, still breathless with amazement of their capture, 
 were bundled into omnibuses which had been brought up 
 near the lines to wait for them — the old London omnibuses 
 
 CROUNl? A30y£ r30M£TJZ£S 
 
 o i ? 3 * s- Mjjes 
 
 llcrs 
 
 which used to go "all the way to the Bank — Bank — Bank !" 
 in the days before the world began to crack — and taken to 
 their camp on our side of the battlefields. 
 
 It was a grim, cold morning — piercingly cold, with a 
 wind cutting like a knife across the snowfields. Not a 
 morning when men might be expected to go out into the 
 nakedness of No Man's Land. It was a morning when 
 these German officers and men of the 119th and 121st Regi- 
 ments, the Wiirtembergers of Konigin Olga, were glad to 
 
46 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 stay down in the warmth of their dug-outs, cooking coffee 
 on the little stove with which each man of these favoured 
 troops was provided, to the great envy of Bavarians on their 
 right, who go on shorter rations and fewer comforts. They 
 had some good dug-outs in and near the Sunken Road — 
 which runs up from Morval to Le Transloy, and strikes 
 through a little salient in front of our lines — till yesterday 
 morning. The trenches on either side of the Sunken Road 
 were not happy places for Wiirtembergers. For months 
 past our guns had been pounding them so that they were 
 mostly battered down, and only held here and there by lit- 
 tle groups of men who dug themselves in. There was no 
 wire in front of them, and here during the wet weather, 
 and now during the great frost, the German troops (as we 
 know from the prisoners to-day) suffered badly from 
 trench-feet and stomach troubles, and in spite of their moral 
 (they were all stout-hearted men) from what the French 
 call the "cafard," and we call the "hump." 
 
 Yesterday morning one or two shivering wretches stood 
 sentry in the German line trying to gain shelter from the 
 knife-blade of the wind. All others were below ground 
 round the "fug" of their braziers. They believed the British 
 over the way were just as quiet in the good work of keeping 
 warm. That was their mistake. In our trenches the men 
 were quiet, but busy, and above ground instead of below. 
 They were waiting for a signal from the guns, and had their 
 bayonets fixed and bombs slung about them, and iron ra- 
 tions hung to their belts. A rum ration was served round, 
 and the men drank it, and felt the glow of it, so that the 
 white waste of No Man's Land did not look so cold and 
 menacing. They were men of the Border Regiment and the 
 Inniskillings of the 29th Division. Suddenly, at about half- 
 past five, there was a terrific crash of guns, and at the same 
 moment the men scrambled up into the open and with their 
 bayonets low went out into No Man's Land, each man's 
 footsteps making a trail in the snow. I think it took about 
 four minutes, that passage of the lonely ground which was 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 47 
 
 a hundred yards or so between the lines, all pock-marked 
 with shell holes, and hard as iron after the freezing of the 
 quagmire. There was no preliminary bombardment. As 
 soon as the guns went off the men went, with the line of 
 shells not far in front of them. They found no men above 
 ground when they pierced the German line. It was curious 
 and uncanny — the utter lifelessness of the place they came 
 to capture. Good, too, for men attacking, for men who 
 always listen for the quick rush of bullets, which is the 
 ugliest sound in war. Not a single machine-gun spat at 
 them. They knew quickly that they had surprised the 
 enemy utterly. They found the dug-outs and called down 
 the challenge and heard it answered. The Wiirtembergers 
 came up dazed with the effect of the capture, hardly be- 
 lieving it, as men in a dream. One of the officers ex- 
 plained : "We thought it was just a morning strafe. We 
 kept down in the dug-outs till it was over. We had no idea 
 of an attack. How did you get here so quickly?" 
 
 They were abashed. They said they would have put up a 
 fight if they had had any kind of chance. But they were 
 trapped. They could do nothing but surrender with the 
 best grace possible. On the right, from two isolated bits of 
 trench, there came a burst of rifle-fire. A few Germans 
 there had time to recover from the stunning blow of the 
 first surprise and fought pluckily till overpowered. The 
 Borders and the Inniskillings went on farther than the ob- 
 jective given to them, to a point 500 yards away from the 
 German first line, and established themselves there. From 
 neighbouring ground, through the white haze over the 
 snowfields, red lights went up with the SOS signal, and 
 presently the German gunners got busy. But the prisoners 
 were bundled back to the omnibuses, and the men took pos- 
 session of the dug-outs. Proper organization was difficult 
 above ground. It was too hard to dig. From the farthest 
 point, later in the day, the men were withdrawn to the 
 ground given to them for their objectives and German at- 
 tempts to organize counter-attacks were smashed by our 
 
48 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 artillery, because we have absolute observation of their 
 movements from the higher ground won by great fighting 
 in the Somme battles. To-day there was much gunning in 
 all the neighbourhood of the fight, and the roar of guns 
 rolled over the desolate fields of snow, the wide lonely waste 
 which makes one's soul shiver to look at it as I stared at 
 the scene of war, to-day and yesterday, in the teeth of the 
 wind. 
 
 3 
 
 The Abandonment of Grandcourt 
 
 February 8 
 That the troops of our Naval Division (the 63rd) should 
 have been able to walk into Grandcourt yesterday and take 
 the place after its abandonment by the enemy (except for a 
 few men left behind to keep up appearances as long as pos- 
 sible, poor wretches) is a proof that the German High Com- 
 mand prefers, at this point of the struggle, to save casual- 
 ties rather than to hold bad ground at any cost. It is a new 
 phase, worthy of notice. A year ago he would not let his 
 pride do this. Less than a year ago, when we took ground 
 from him by a sudden assault, he would come back with a 
 frightful counter-blow, and there would be a long and bloody 
 struggle, as at the Bluff and St.-Eloi, over trenches taken 
 and retaken. Combles was the first place from which he 
 crept away without a fight. Grandcourt is the second place, 
 abandoned for the same reason — because it was caught in 
 the pincers of our forward movements. It lies low on the 
 south side of the Ancre, below Miraumont, and it became 
 a place of misery to German troops after the capture of 
 Beaucourt and Beaumont-Hamel, on the other side of the 
 river — still worse when on Sunday last our men advanced 
 north of Beaucourt, capturing a couple of hundred prisoners 
 and consolidating on a line of ground dominating Grand- 
 
 I 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 49 
 
 court, on the north-west. It was probably then that the 
 enemy decided to withdraw to a stronger and higher posi- 
 tion south of Miraumont and Pys, which he has been dig- 
 ging and defending with rapid industry in spite of the hard 
 frost, which doubles the labour of the spade. Fear, which 
 is a great General, makes him a hard digger, and he will 
 burrow underground while our men are scraping the snow 
 away on our side of the line. A few men, as I have said, 
 were left behind to make a show. They were seen moving 
 about in the neighbourhood of a German trench barring the 
 way to Grandcourt on the south-west. It was some time be- 
 fore our patrols, creeping out over the snow, saw that this 
 half-mile of line was empty of men, and that the enemy had 
 gone back to some place unknown. On Tuesday our troops 
 moved into this position, watched by those few men, left as 
 scarecrows, who are now our prisoners, and who saw the 
 English soldiers get up out of their ditches and shell-craters 
 and cross the snowfield in open order with a steady trudge, 
 their bayonets glittering, and then drop down into the bat- 
 tered trench in which there was nothing but the litter of 
 former habitation and some dead bodies. Yesterday it was 
 decided to push on to Grandcourt. Observing officers could 
 see the snow on the broken roofs and ruined walls of that 
 village, where bits of brick and woodwork still stand after 
 heavy bombardment. They could not see whether the place 
 was still held. Only actual contact would show whether 
 those quiet rooms would be noisy with the chatter of 
 machine-gun fire if our men went in. A sinister spot — 
 with an evil-sounding name to soldiers of the Somme, 
 because here for many months the enemy had massed his 
 guns which fired down to Contalmaison and flung high ex- 
 plosives over the country below the Pozieres Ridge. 
 
 It was in the afternoon that the entry was made beneath 
 a great barrage of our shells advancing beyond the infantry 
 and through a heavy fire from the enemy's guns, which 
 did not check the advance of our men. A few German 
 soldiers were taken in rear-guard posts. They came out 
 
50 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 of shell-craters with their hands up, and were sent back to 
 our lines. There was no fighting in the ruins of the village. 
 Grandcourt was ours, with its deep dug-outs littered with 
 German clothes and stored with rations of German sol- 
 diers, which our own men enjoyed as a change of diet, 
 while they took cover from the enemy's shell-fire over his 
 old home. 
 
 Last night in the light of a full moon, curiously red so that 
 the snow was faintly flushed, two more attacks were made 
 and two more positions taken, north and south-east of 
 Grandcourt. On the north side of the Ancre Baillescourt 
 Farm was seized, and in its neighbourhood eighty soldiers 
 and one officer were made prisoner. They belonged to the 
 same corps as those I saw last Sunday, and were recruited 
 from the Hamburg- Altona district; all stout fellows, well 
 nourished and well clothed. They had not expected the 
 attack, not so soon, anyhow, and were caught in dug-outs 
 by the ruined farmhouse, which some months ago was a 
 good landmark with its white walls and barns still stand- 
 ing. Now it is but a litter of beams and broken plaster, 
 like all houses along the line of battle. 
 
 4 
 The Gordons in the Butte de Warlencourt 
 
 February 9 
 The frost lasts. Even in times of peace I suppose it would 
 be remembered years hence because of its intensity of cold 
 and continuance. Here on the Western Front it will be 
 remembered by men who live, now very young, and then 
 with hair as white as the snow which now lies in No Man's 
 Land, because of its unforgettable pictures in sunlight and 
 moonlight, its fantastic cruelties of coldness and discomfort, 
 and its grim effect upon the adventures of war when tlie 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 51 
 
 patrols go out by night and British soldiers crawl across 
 snow-filled shell-holes. 
 
 There was a queer episode of Canadian history— only 
 a few days old — which began when a sprightly young Da- 
 dos (he's the fellow that gets all the chaff from the Divi- 
 sional Follies) startled a respectable old lady behind the 
 counter of a milliner's shop in a French village by demand- 
 ing loo ladies' "nighties" ("chemises de nuit" he called 
 them) of the largest size. The village heard the story of 
 this shopping expedition, listened to the old lady's shrill 
 cackle of laughter, and wondered what joke was on among 
 the Canadian troops. It was one of those jokes which be- 
 long to the humours of this war, mixed with blood and 
 death. Up in the Canadian trenches there were shouts of 
 hoarse laughter, as over their khaki a hundred brawny 
 young Canadians put on the night-dresses. They had been 
 tied up with blue ribbon. The old moon, so watchful there 
 in the steel-blue sky, had never looked down upon a stranger 
 scene than these white-robed soldiers who went out into 
 No Man's Land, with rifles and bombs. Some of the night- 
 dresses,^ so clean and dainty as they had come out of^he 
 milliner's shop, were stained red before the end of the ad- 
 venture. And Germans in their dug-outs caught a glimpse 
 of these fantastic figures before death came quickly, or a 
 shout of surrender. The Pierrots went back with some ' 
 prisoners in the moonlight, and Canadian staff ofBcers 
 chuckled with laughter along telephone wires when the tale 
 was told. 
 
 Some of the prisoners who are taken do nothing' but 
 weep for the first few days after capture. "The prisoners 
 are young," reports the Intelligence ofificer about the latest 
 batch, "and have wept copiously since their capture." The 
 men I have seen myself during the past few days had a 
 look of misery in their eyes. They hate these midnight 
 raids of ours, coming suddenly upon them night after 
 night through the white glimmer of the snowfields. They 
 nave taken dogs into the trenches now to give a quicker 
 
52 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 and surer warning than young sentries, who are afraid to 
 cry out when they see white figures moving, because they 
 think they see them always, when shadows stir in the moon- 
 hght across the snow. Our men during recent nights have 
 heard these dogs giving short, sharp barks. One of them 
 came out into No Man's Land and sniffed about some black 
 things lying quiet under the cover of snow. No alarm was 
 given when some friends of mine went out to make an at- 
 tack some nights ago, and it was lucky for them, for if they 
 had been discovered too soon all their plans would have 
 been spoilt, and white smocks would not have saved them. 
 They were the 8/ioth Gordons of the 15th Division. 
 Some of my readers will remember the crowd, for I have 
 described my meetings with them up and down the roads of 
 war. It is they who arranged the details of the night's 
 adventure, and because it is typical of the things that happen 
 — of the Terror that comes in the night — it is worth tell- 
 ing. The Highlanders, when they took up their attacking 
 line, were dressed in white smocks covering their kilts, and 
 in steel helmets painted white. Their black arms and feet 
 were like the smudges on the snow. They lay very quiet, 
 visible on the left, from the Butte de Warlencourt, that 
 old high mound in the Somme battlefields which was once 
 the burial-place of a prehistoric man and is now the tomb 
 of young soldiers in the Durham Light Infantry who fought 
 and died there. The moon was bright on the snow about 
 them, but a misty vapour was on the grotmd. Each man 
 had been warned not to cough or sneeze. Their rifles were 
 loaded, and with bayonets fixed, so that there should be no 
 rattle of arms or clicks of bolts. They were in two parties, 
 and their orders were to overthrow the advanced German 
 posts which were known to be in front of the Butte, and 
 to form a ring of posts round the position attacked while 
 its dug-outs were being dealt with. A heavy barrage was 
 fired suddenly up and down the German lines, so as to be- 
 wilder the enemy as to the point of attack, and the Gordons 
 in their white smocks rose up and advanced. Two shots 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 53 
 
 rang out from one of the German posts. No more than 
 that. The two waves of men went on. Those on the right 
 flank had trouble in crossing the ground. Several of them 
 fell mto deep shell-craters frozen hard. A machine-gun 
 was fired on the left, but was then silenced by our shell- 
 fire. The men inclined a little to the left, and came round 
 on the west side of the position, where there was a small 
 quarry. On their way they surprised an enemy post and 
 took six prisoners. 
 
 A little way farther on they came across a trench-mortar, 
 a dug-out, and two terror-stricken men. An officer put a 
 Stokes bomb down the mortar and blew it up. The men 
 were taken, and the dug-out was destroyed. Then the Gor- 
 dons went on to the Butte de Wariencourt. Underneath 
 It were the dug-outs of a German company, snow-capped 
 and hidden. The Scots went round like wolves hunting 
 for the way down. There were four ways down, and three 
 of them were found low down about four yards apart Men 
 were talking down there excitedly. Their German speech 
 was loud and there was the note of terror in it. 
 
 "Come out!" shouted the Gordons several times; but at 
 one entrance only one man came out, and at another only 
 one, and at the third twelve men, who were taken prisoners. 
 The others would not surrender. Some bombs and a Stokes 
 shell were thrown down the doorways, and suddenly this 
 nest of dug-outs was seen to collapse, and black smoke 
 came up from the pit, melting the edges of the snow. Down 
 below the voices went on, rising to high cries of terror, 
 ihen flames appeared, shedding a red glare over No Man's 
 Land. 
 
 On the left the Gordons had been held up by machine- 
 gun fire and rifle-fire, which came across to them from a 
 trench to which they were advancing. At the west side 
 ot the trench, in a wired enclosure, the machine-gun was 
 troublesome. Some of the white smocks fell. An attempt 
 was made to rush it, but failed. Afterwards the gun and 
 the team were knocked out by a shell. A group of Germans 
 
54 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 came out of the trench and started bombing, until a Stokes 
 bomb scattered them. Then the Gordons went down and 
 brought out some prisoners, and blew up a dug-out. 
 
 It was time to go back, for the German barrage had 
 begun; but the Gordons were able to get home without 
 many casualties. Nearly two hours afterwards a loud ex- 
 plosion was heard across the way, as though a bomb store 
 had blown up. The sky was red over there by the flare of 
 a fire. ... In the dug-outs of the Butte de Warlencourt a 
 whole company of Germans was being burnt alive. 
 
 5 
 The Battle of Boom Ravine 
 
 February 15 
 On the way to Miraumont there was a deep gully called 
 Boom Ravine, and here on February 17 there was fierce 
 fighting by the Royal Fusiliers, the Northamptons, and the 
 Middlesex men of the 29th Division. 
 
 In difficulty, in grim human courage, in all its drama of 
 fog, and darkness, and shell-fire, and death, it seems to me 
 to hold most of what this war means to individual men — 
 all that can be asked of them in such hours. 
 
 The thaw had just set in and the ground was soppy, which 
 was bad luck. In spite of the thaw, it was horribly, damply 
 cold, but the men had been given a good meal before form- 
 ing up for the attack, and officers brought up the rum ra- 
 tion in bottles, so that the men could attack with some 
 warmth in them. In the utter darkness, unable to make any 
 glimmer of light lest the enemy should see, the brigades 
 tried to get into line. Two companies lost themselves, and 
 were lost, but got into touch again in time. It was all 
 black and beastly. A great fire of high explosives burst 
 over our assembly lines. The darkness was lit up by the 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 55 
 
 red flashes of these bursting shells. Men fell, wounded and 
 dead The Royal Fusiliers were specially tried, and their 
 brigadier wondered whether they would have the spirit to 
 get up and attack when the hour arrived. But when the 
 moment came the survivors rose and went forward, and 
 fought through to the last goal. They were the first to 
 get to Grandcourt Trench, which lay between them and 
 the Boom Ravine. The wire was not cut, and there was 
 a hammering of machine-guns and the swish of machine- 
 gun bullets. This battalion had already lost all its officers, 
 who had gone forward gallantly, leading their men and 
 meeting the bullets first. A sergeant-major took command, 
 shouted to his men to keep steady, and found a gap through 
 the wire. They forced their way through, passed Grand- 
 court Trench, and, with other men, dropped into Boom 
 Ravine. 
 
 That place is a sunken road, almost parallel with Grand- 
 court Trench, and with South Miraumont Trench beyond. 
 Before war came — even last summer, indeed — it was like a 
 Devonshire lane, with steep shelving banks, thirty to forty 
 feet high, and trees growing on either side, with overhang- 
 ing roots. It was not like a Devonshire lane when our 
 men scrambled and fell down its banks. It was a ravine 
 of death. Our shell-fire had smashed down all the trees, 
 and their tall trunks lay at the bottom of the gulley, and 
 their branches were flung about. The banks had been 
 opened out by shell-craters, and several of the German dug- 
 outs built into the sides of them were upheaved or choked. 
 Dead bodies or human fragments lay among the branches 
 and broken woodwork. A shell of ours had entered one 
 dug-out and blown six dead men out of its doorway. They 
 sprawled there at the entrance. Inside were six other dead. 
 From dug-outs not blown up or choked came groups of 
 German soldiers, pallid and nerve-broken, who gave them- 
 selves up quickly enough. One man was talkative. He said 
 in perfect English that he had been coachman to an Eng- 
 lish earl, and he cursed our artillery, and said that if he 
 
56 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 could get at our blinking gunners he would wring their 
 blighted necks — or words to that effect. 
 
 But the battle was not over yet. While Boom Ravine 
 was being cleared of its living inhabitants by the Royal 
 Fusiliers other waves were coming up ; or, rather, not waves, 
 but odd groups of men, dodging over the shell-craters, and 
 hunting as they went for German snipers, who lay in their 
 holes firing until they were pinned by bayonet-points. Their 
 bodies He there now, curled up. Some of them pretended 
 to be dead when our men came near. One of them lay 
 still, with his face in the moist earth. "See that that man 
 is properly dead," said an officer, and a soldier with him 
 pricked the man. He sprang up with a scream and ran hard 
 away — to our lines. Six prisoners came trudging back 
 from the Ravine, with a slightly wounded man as an escort. 
 On the way back they found themselves very lonely with 
 him, and passed some rifles lying in their way. They seized 
 the rifles and became fighting men again, until a little Welsh 
 oflicer of the South Wales Borderers met them, and killed 
 every one of them with a revolver. 
 
 6 
 
 The Enemy Withdraws 
 
 February i8 
 The enemy is steadily withdrawing his troops from many 
 positions between Hebuterne and the ground south-west of 
 Bapaume, and our patrols are pushing forward into aban- 
 doned country, which they have penetrated in some places 
 for nearly three miles beyond our former line. They are 
 already north-west of Serre, south of Irles, above Mirau- 
 mont, Petit-Miraumont and Pys, which are now in our 
 hands without a battle. We have gained a number of Ger- 
 man strongholds which we expected to win only by heavy 
 
 I 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 57 
 
 fighting, and the enemy has yielded to our pressure, the 
 ceaseless pressure of men and guns, by escaping to a new 
 line of defence along the Bapaume Ridge. This is the 
 most notable movement which has taken place in the war 
 since the autumn of the first year. The German retire- 
 ment in the battle of the Marne was forced upon them 
 only by actual defeat on the ground. This is a strategical 
 retreat, revealing a new phase of weakness in their de- 
 fensive conditions. It has not come to our Generals as 
 a surprise. After the battle of Boom Ravine, there were 
 several signs that the enemy contemplated a withdrawal 
 from the two Miraumonts, and our recent capture of Bailies- 
 court Farm and the ground on the north of the Ancre seri- 
 ously menaced Serre. Yesterday morning, through a heavy 
 grey mist, fires were seen burning along the German front 
 line. For several days the enemy's field-batteries had been 
 firing an abnormal amount of ammunition, and it seemed 
 likely that they were getting rid of their supplies in the 
 forward dumps before withdrawing their guns. Patrols 
 sent out had a queer, uncanny experience. It was very quiet 
 in the mist, almost alarmingly quiet. They pushed in after 
 the enemy. Not a sound, not a shot came from Serre. . . . 
 These reports were sent back, and more patrols were sent 
 forward in various directions. They pushed on, picking up 
 a few prisoners here and there who were sniping from shell- 
 holes and serving solitary machine-guns. These men con- 
 fessed that they had been left behind with orders to keep 
 firing and to make a show so that we might believe the 
 ground was still strongly held. Farther on the right the 
 same thing was happening. Patrols went out and sent back 
 messages saying that no enemy was ahead. They went into 
 Miraumont, and in the centre of the main road a mine blew 
 up with a loud explosion; but by great good luck none of 
 our men were hurt. At the end of the street six Germans 
 were seen among the ruins. They were fired at and dis- 
 appeared. Miraumont was taken without another shot than 
 this, and with it Little Miraumont, next door. 
 
58 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Last night our troops advanced towards Warlencourt and 
 south of Irles, and they took possession of the famous 
 Butte, that high mound above the bones of some prehistoric 
 man, for which there had been so much bloody fighting 
 in the autumn and the first month of this year. From the 
 direction of Bapaume the noise of heavy explosions was 
 heard, as though ammunition dumps were being blown up, 
 and for the first time perhaps since the German retreat from 
 the Marne the enemy was destroying his own material of 
 war on his way back. 
 
 Our Entry into Gommecourt 
 
 February 28 
 Last night the German troops abandoned Gommecourt and 
 Pusieux and our men followed the first patrols, who had 
 felt forward and took possession of the salient which keeps 
 to the line of the park surrounding the famous old chateau. 
 This entry into Gommecourt without a fight was most 
 sensational. It was here on July i of 191 6 that waves of 
 London men of the 56th Division assaulted an almost im- 
 pregnable position, and by the highest valour and sacrifice 
 broke and held its lines until forced back by massed gun- 
 fire which threatened them with annihilation. Many of our 
 dead lay there, and the place will be haunted for ever by 
 the memory of their loss and great endurance. At last the 
 gates were open. The enemy's troops had stolen away in 
 the dusk, leaving nothing behind but the refuse of trench 
 life and the litter of trench tools. In order to keep the 
 way open for their withdrawal, strong posts of Germans 
 with machine-guns held out in a wedge just south of 
 Rossignol Wood and in Biez Wood, which is west of 
 Bucquoy. These rear-guard posts, numbering an officer 
 or two and anything between thirty to sixty men with ma- 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 59 
 
 chine-guns, and telephones keeping them in touch with the 
 main army, were chosen for their tried courage and intel- 
 Hgence, and stayed behind with orders to hold on to the 
 last possible moment. 
 
 All the tricks of war are being used to check and kill 
 our patrols. In addition to trip-wires attached to explo- 
 sives, German helmets have been left about with bombs con- 
 cealed in them so as to explode on being touched, and there 
 are other devices of this kind which are ingenious and 
 devihsh. The enemy's snipers and machine-gunners give 
 our men greater trouble, but are being routed out from 
 their hiding-places. There were a lot of them in the ruins 
 of Pusieux, but last night, after sharp fighting and a grim 
 man-hunt among the broken brickwork, the enemy was de- 
 stroyed in this village, and our line now runs well beyond 
 it to Gommecourt, on the left and down to Irles on the 
 right. The enemy has destroyed Irles church tower, as he 
 has destroyed the church of Achiet-le-Petit, and the famous 
 clock tower of Bapaume, on which we tried to read the 
 time from the high ground westward during the battles of 
 the Somme. This is to get rid of observation which might 
 be useful to us in our advance. 
 
 Heavy shell-fire has been concentrated by enemy batteries 
 on the village of Irles, and he is also barraging with high 
 explosives upon Serre, Miraumont, Grandcourt, and other 
 places from which he has withdrawn. It is probable that 
 he is using up his reserves of ammunition in the dumps 
 along the line of his retirement. Many of his heavy guns 
 still remain on railway mountings behind Bapaume — we are 
 now less than a mile from that town — and they are doing 
 double duty by quick firing. The latest village to fall into 
 our hands is Thilloy, north of Ligny-Thilloy, and just south 
 of Bapaume, and the enemy is now retiring to Loupart 
 Wood, Achiet-le-Petit, and Bucquoy, strongly defended for 
 the time being by a thick belt of wire. 
 
 It is enormously interesting to speculate upon this new 
 plan of the German High Command. It is a plan forced 
 
60 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 upon him by steady pressure of our attacks, which thrust 
 him into bad ground, where the condition of his troops 
 was hideous, but, beyond all, by the fear that our fighting 
 power in the spring might break his arrnies if they stayed 
 on their old line. Now he is executing with skill, aided by 
 great luck — for the foggy weather is his luck — a manoeu- 
 vre designed to shorten his line, thereby increasing his 
 offensive and defensive man-power, and to withdraw in 
 the way that he intends to make it difficult for pursuit, and 
 so to gain time to fall back upon new and stronger lines 
 of defence. 
 
 5t» ^ 5|£ ^ 
 
 It is difficult to describe the feelings of our men who go 
 forward to these villages and capture them, and settle down 
 in them for a day or two, unless you have gazed at those 
 places for months through narrow slits in underground 
 chambers, and know that it would be easier to go from life 
 to eternity than cross over the enemy's wire into those' 
 strongholds while they are inhabited by men with machine- 
 guns. 
 
 You cannot imagine the thrill of walking one day into 
 Gommecourt, or Miraumont, or Irles, without resistance, 
 and seeing in close detail the way of life led by the men 
 who have* been doing their best to kill you. There is some- 
 thing uncanny in handling the things they handled, in sit- 
 ting at the tables where they took their meals, in walking 
 about the ruins which our guns made above them. I had 
 this thrill when I walked through Gommecourt — Gomme- 
 court the terrible, and the graveyard of so many brave 
 London boys who fell here on July i — and up through 
 Gommecourt Park, with its rows of riven trees, to a point 
 beyond, and to a far outpost where a group of soldiers 
 attached to the Sherwood Foresters of the 46th Division, 
 full of spirit and gaiety, in spite of the deadly menace 
 about them, had dragged up a heavy trench-mortar and its 
 monstrous winged shells, which they were firing into a 
 copse 500 yards away where Fritz was holding out. So 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 61 
 
 through the snow I went into Gommecourt down a road 
 pitted with recent shell-holes, and with a young Sherwood 
 Forester who said, "It's best to be quick along this track. 
 It ain't a health resort." 
 
 It was not a pretty place at all, and there were nasty 
 noises about it, as shells went singing overhead, but there 
 was a sinister sense of romance, a look of white and naked 
 tragedy in snow-covered Gommecourt. Our guns had 
 played hell with the place, though we could not capture it 
 on July I. Thousands of shells, even millions, had flung 
 it into ruin — the famous chateau, the church, the great 
 barns, the school-house, and all the buildings here. Not a 
 tree in what had once been a noble park remained unmuti- 
 lated. On the day before the Germans left a Stokes mortar 
 battery of ours fired iioo shells into Gommecourt in a quar- 
 ter of an hour, 
 
 "No wonder old Fritz left in a hurry," said the young 
 officer who had achieved this record. He chuckled at the 
 thought of it, and as he went through Gommecourt with 
 me pointed out with pride the "top-hole" effect of all our 
 gun-fire. To him, as a gunner, all this destruction was a 
 good sight. He stopped in front of a hole big enough to 
 bury a country cottage, and said, "That was done by old 
 Charley's 9.45 trench-mortar. Some hole, what?" 
 
 "Looks as if some German officer had had to walk home," 
 said the trench-mortar officer, who was a humorous fellow, 
 as he glanced at a shattered motor-car. 
 
 So many of the young officers of ours are humorous fel- 
 lows, and I am bound to say that I never met a merrier 
 party than a little lot I found at a spot called Pigeon Wood, 
 far beyond Gommecourt, where the enemy flings shells most 
 of the day and night, so that it is a litter of broken twigs 
 and branches. 
 
 A sergeant-major took me up there and introduced me 
 to his officers. 
 
 "This is the real Street of Adventure," he said, "though 
 it's a long way from Fleet Street" — which I thought was 
 
p^' 
 
 62 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 pretty good for a sergeant-major met in a casual way on 
 a field of battle. It appeared that there was to be a trench- 
 mortar "stunt" in half an hour or so, and he y^anted me 
 to see "the fun." Through the driving snow we went into 
 the bit of wood, trampling over the broken twigs and step- 
 ping aside from shell-holes, and because of the nasty noises 
 about — I hear no music in the song of the shell — I was glad 
 when the sergeant-major went down the entrance of a dug- 
 out and called out for the officer. 
 
 It was one of the deep German dug-outs thirty or forty 
 feet down, and very dark on the way. In the room below, 
 nicely panelled, were the merry grigs I had come to meet, 
 and in less than a minute they had made me welcome, and 
 in less than five I was sitting on a German chair at a Ger- 
 man table, drinking German soda-water out of German 
 glasses, with a party of English boys 500 yards from the 
 German outposts over the way. 
 
 They told me how they had brought their trench-mortar 
 up. It was an absolute record, and they were as proud and 
 pleased as schoolboys who have won a game. They roared 
 with laughter at the story of the senior officer chased by 
 two Boches, and roared again when the captain sent round 
 to the "chemist's shop" next door for some more soda- 
 water and a bottle of whisky. Tl^ey had found thousands 
 of bottles of soda-water, and thousands of bombs and other 
 things left behind in a hurry, including a complete change 
 of woman's clothing, now being worn by one of our Tom- 
 mies badly in need of clean linen. 
 
 "This dug-out is all right," said one of the younger offi- 
 cers, "but you come and see mine. It's absolutely priceless." 
 
 It was one of the best specimens of German architecture 
 I have ever seen on a battlefield. It was not only panelled 
 but papered. It was furnished elegantly with a washhand- 
 stand and a gilded mirror and German coloured prints — • 
 and not all our shells could touch it, because of its depth 
 below the ground. ... I saw the trench-mortar "stunt," 
 which flung up volcanoes in the German ground by Kite 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 63 
 
 Copse, and stood out in the snow with a party of men who 
 had nothing between them and the enemy but a narrov/, 
 stretch of shell-broken earth, and went away from the wood 
 just as the enemy began shelling it again, and sat down 
 under the bank with one of the officers when the enemy 
 ''bracketed" the road back with whiz-bangs, and stopped 
 on the way to take a cup of tea in another dug-out, and to 
 make friends with other men who were following up th.^ 
 enemy, and moving into German apartments for a night or 
 so, before they go farther on, with that keen and spirited 
 courage which is the only good thing in this war. They 
 are mostly boys — I am a Rip Van Winkle to them — and 
 with the heart of boyhood they take deadly risks lightly 
 and make a good joke of a bad business, and are very 
 frightened sometimes and make a joke of that, and are 
 great soldiers though they were never meant for the trade. 
 The enemy is falling back still, but these boys of ours are 
 catching him up, and are quick in pursuit, in spite of the 
 foul ground and the foul weather and the barrage of his 
 guns. 
 
 8 
 
 Why the Enemy Withdrew 
 
 March 3 
 The weather is still favourable to the enemy in his plan of 
 withdrawal. Yesterday there was over all the battlefields 
 such a solid fog, after a night of frost which condensed the 
 earth's moisture, that one could not see fifty yards ahead. 
 Our airmen, if they had thought it worth while mounting, 
 would have stared down into this white mist and seen noth- 
 ing else. Our gunners had to fire "off the map" at a time 
 when direct observation would have been most valuable. 
 I do not remember to have seen anything so uncanny on 
 this front as the effect of our men moving in this heavy 
 
64 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 wet darkness like legions of shadows looming up in a grey- 
 way, and then blotted out. The fog clung to them, dripped 
 from the rims of their steel helmets, made their breath like 
 steam. The shaggy coats of horses and mules plastered 
 with heavy streaks of mud were all damp with little beads 
 of moisture as white as hoar-frost. 
 
 Nothing so far in this German movement has been sensa- 
 tional except the fact itself. Fantastic stories about gas- 
 shells, battles, and great slaughter in the capture of the 
 enemy's positions are merely conjured up by people who 
 know nothing of the truth. 
 
 The truth is simple and stark. The enemy decided to 
 withdraw, and made his plans to withdraw with careful 
 thought for detail in order to frustrate any preparations 
 we might have made to deal him the famous knock-out 
 blow and in order to save his man-power, not only by escap- 
 ing this great slaughter which was drawing near upon him 
 as the weeks passed, but by shortening his line and so lib- 
 erating a number of divisions for offensive and defensive 
 purposes. He timed this strategical withdrawal well. He 
 made use of the hard frost for the movement of men and 
 guns and material, and withdrew the last men from his 
 strongholds on the old line just as the thaw set in, so that 
 the ground lapsed into quagmire more fearful than before 
 the days of the long frost, and pursuit for our men and 
 our guns and our material was doubly difficult. He de- 
 stroyed what he could not take away, and left very little 
 behind. He fired many of his dug-outs, and left only a few 
 snipers and a few machine-gunners in shell-holes and strong 
 posts to hold up our patrols while the next body of rear- 
 guard outposts fell back behind the barbed wire in front 
 of the series of diagonal trench lines which defend the way 
 to Bapaume. In Gommecourt our troops found only one 
 living man, and he was half dead and quite blind. He had 
 been wounded twenty-four hours previously by a bomb 
 from one of our scouts and had crawled back into a dug- 
 out. It is astounding, but, I believe, quite true, that he knew, 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 65 
 
 nothing about the abandonment of Gommecourt, even when 
 
 it had been achieved. He would not believe it when our 
 
 men told him. He had lain in his earth-hole wondering at 
 
 the silence, believing himself deaf as well as blind, except 
 
 that he could hear the crash of shells. He was frightened 
 
 because he could hear no movement of his fellow-soldiers. 
 
 The German scheme is undoubtedly to delay our advance 
 
 as much as possible and at the cheapest price to himself, 
 
 so that much time may have elapsed (while his submarines 
 
 are still at work, and his diplomats, and his propaganda) 
 
 before we come up to him with all our weight of men and 
 
 metal upon the real lines to which he is falling back. By 
 
 belts of barbed wire between the lines of retirement, down 
 
 past Loupart Wood, and then past Grevillers and Achiet, 
 
 and outside Bapaume, as well as by strong bodies of picked 
 
 troops holding on to these positions until the last moment 
 
 before death or capture or escape, and by massing guns 
 
 eastward of Bapaume in order to impede our pursuit by 
 
 long-range fire from his "heavies," and to hold the pivot 
 
 while his troops swing back in this slow and gradual way, 
 
 he hopes to make things easy for himself and damnably 
 
 difficult for us. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 March 12 
 Loupart Wood, a high belt of trees, thick and black 
 against the sky, is the storm-centre of the battle line on this 
 part of the front. Our guns were busy with it, flinging 
 shells into its network of naked branches. The shell-bursts 
 were white against its blackness, and the chalky soil in front 
 of it was tossed up in spraying fountains. From the ene- 
 my's side high explosives were dropping over Miraumont, 
 and Irles was being heavily bombed. It was like a day in 
 the first battles of the Somme, and brought back to me old 
 memories of frightfulness. Behind me were the Somme 
 battlefields, one vast landscape of the abomination of deso- 
 lation strewn still with the litter of great conflict, with 
 thousands of unexploded shells lying squat in mud, and 
 
66 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 hideously tormented out of all semblance of earth's sweet 
 beauty by millions of shell-holes and the yawning chasms of 
 mine-craters, and the chaos of innumerable trenches dug 
 deep and then smashed by the fury of heavy guns. That 
 is an old picture which I have described, or failed to de- 
 scribe, a score of times when over this mangled earth, yard 
 by yard, from one ruin to another, from one copse of broken 
 woodland to another group of black gallows which were 
 trees, our men went fighting, so that here is the graveyard 
 of gallant youth, and the Field of Honour which is saci^ed 
 to the soul of our race. It was the old picture, but into 
 it came to-day as yesterday new men of ours who are car- 
 rying on the tale to whatever ending it may have. They 
 came through mud and in mud and with mud. The heavy 
 horses of the gunners and transport men were all whitened 
 with wet chalk to the ears. Mules were ridiculous, like 
 amphibious creatures who had come up out of the slime to 
 stare with wicked eyes at what men are doing with the 
 earth's surface. Eight-inch guns were wallowing in bogs 
 from which their shiny snouts thrust up, belching forth 
 flame. Over the wide, white, barren stretch of hell which 
 we call the battlefield their monstrous shells went howling 
 after the full-throated roars which clouted one's ear-drums 
 like blows from a hammer. And between the guns, and 
 in front of the guns, and past the guns went our march- 
 ing men, our mud men, with wet steel helmets, with gobs of 
 mud on their faces, with clods of mud growing monstrously 
 upon their boots at every step. 
 
 A grim old war, fantastic in its contrasts and in its 
 stage properties! Once when I heard the chimes of mid- 
 night in Covent Garden and stood drinking at a coffee-stall 
 by Paul's Church I never guessed I should find such a place 
 of wayside refreshment, such a house on wheels, in the mid- 
 dle of Armageddon. But there it was to-day, a coffee-stall 
 bang in the middle of the battlefield, and there, asking for 
 a ''mug o' thick," stood a crowd of English soldiers, worse 
 scarecrows than the night birds of the London slums and 
 
' RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 67 
 
 more in need of warmth for body and soul. Not far away, 
 well under shell-fire, was a London omnibus, and as a mate 
 in evil days, a Tank. 
 
 The rain came down in a thick drizzle. Loupart Wood 
 disappeared like a ghost picture. Irles was blotted out. 
 Our eight-inch shells went howling out of a cotton-wool 
 mist. Our men went marching with their steel hats down 
 against the beat of the rain. It was a wintry scene again — 
 but on the moist air there was a faint scent not of winter— 
 a smell of wet earth sweeter than the acnd stench of the 
 battlefields. It was the breath of spring coming with its 
 promise of life. And with its promise of death. 
 
 y^ "^ Tff, yf. 
 
 The enemy is still holding out in Achiet-le-Petit and 
 Eucquoy, though I believe his residence there is not for 
 long. From what I saw to-day watching our bombardment 
 of the line to which he has retreated, it seems certain that 
 he will be compelled to leave in a hurry, just as he left 
 Loupart Wood the night before last. 
 
 As I went over the battlefields to-day it was made visible 
 to me that the enemy has suffered most devilish torments 
 in the ground from which he is now retreating. All north 
 of Courcelette, up by Miraumont and Pys, and below Lou- 
 part Wood, this wild chaos — all so upturned by shell-fire 
 that one's gorge rises at the sight of such obscene mangling 
 of our mother earth — is strewn with bodies of dead Ger- 
 man soldiers. They lie grey wet lumps of death over a 
 great stretch of ground, many of them half buried by their 
 comrades or by high explosives. Most of them are stark 
 above the soil with their eye-sockets to the sky. I stood 
 to-day in a ravine to which the Regina Trench leads be- 
 tween Pys and Miraumont, and not any morbid vision of 
 an absinthe-maddened dream of hell could be more fearful 
 than what I stared at standing there, with the rain beating 
 on me across the battlefield, and the roar of guns on every 
 side, and the long rushing whistles of heavy shells in flight 
 over Loupart Wood. The place was a shambles of German 
 
68 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 troops. They had had machine-gun emplacements here, 
 and deep dug-outs under cover of earth-banks. But our 
 guns had found them out and poured fire upon them. All 
 this garrison had been killed and cut to pieces before or 
 after death. Their bodies or their fragments lay in every 
 shape and shapelessness of death, in puddles of broken 
 trenches or on the edge of deep ponds in shell-craters. The 
 water was vivid green about them, or red as blood, with the 
 colour of high-explosive gases. Mask-like faces, with holes 
 for eyes, seemed to stare back at me as I stared at them, 
 not with any curiosity in this sight of death — for it is not 
 new to me — but counting their numbers and reckoning the 
 sum of all these things who a little time ago were living men. 
 Some of our dead lay among them, but out of 850 lying 
 hereabouts, 700 were German soldiers. 
 
 Our gun-fire, continued to-day as yesterday, leaves noth- 
 ing alive or whole when it is concentrated on a place like 
 this, deliberate in smashing it. Here it had flung up ma- 
 chine-gun emplacements and made rubbish-heaps of their 
 casemates and guns. It had broken hundreds of rifles into 
 matchwood, and flung up the kit of men from deep dug- 
 outs, littering earth with their pouches and helmets and 
 bits of clothing. Where I stood was only one patch of 
 ground on a wide battlefield. It is all Hke that, though else- 
 where the dead are not so thickly clustered. For miles it is 
 all pitted with ten- feet craters intermingling and leaving 
 not a yard of earth untouched. It is one great obscenity, 
 killing for all time the legend of war's glory and romance. 
 Over it to-day went a brave man on his mission. He was 
 not a soldier, though he had a steel hat on his head and a 
 khaki uniform. He was a padre who, with a fellow-officer 
 and a few men, is following up the fighting men, burying 
 those who fall, our own and the enemy's. He collects their 
 identity discs and marks their graves. For weeks he has 
 done this, and, though he is sickened, he goes on with a 
 grim zeal, searching out the new dead, directing the dig- 
 ging of new graves, covering up Germans who lie so thick. 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 69 
 
 He waved his hand to me as he went up to Loupart Wood, 
 and I saluted him as a man of fine enthusiasm and good 
 courage in the abomination of desolation which is our 
 battle-ground. 
 
 The secret of the German retreat is here on this ground. 
 To save themselves from another such shambles they are 
 falling back to new lines, where they hope to be safer from 
 our massed artillery. But as I saw to-day our gun-fire is 
 following them closely and forcing them back at a harder 
 pace, and killing them as they go. The horror of war is 
 still close at their heels, and will never end till the war ends, 
 though that may be long, O Lord ! from now. 
 
 9 
 
 The Australians Enter Bapaume 
 
 March 17 
 To-day quite early in the morning our Australian troops 
 entered Bapaume. Achiet-le-Petit and Biefvillers also fell 
 into our hands and the enemy is in retreat across the plains 
 below the Bapaume Ridge. 
 
 I had the honour of going into Bapaume myself this 
 morning, and the luck to come out again, and now, sitting 
 down to tell the history of this day — one of the great days 
 in this war — I feel something of the old thrill that came 
 to all of us when the enemy fell back from the Marne and 
 retreated to the Aisne. 
 
 Bapaume is ours after a short, sharp fight with its last 
 rear-guard post. I don't know how much this will mean 
 to people at home, to whom the town is just a name, fa- 
 miliar only because of its repetition in dispatches. To us 
 out here it means enormous things — above all, the comple- 
 tion or result of a great series of battles, in which many of 
 our best gave their lives so that our troops could attain 
 
70 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the ridge across which they went to-day, and hold the town 
 which is the gateway to the plains beyond. For this the 
 Canadians fought through Courcelette, where many of their 
 poor bodies lie even now in the broken ground. For this 
 the Australians struggled with most grim heroism on the 
 high plateau of Pozieres, which bears upon every yard of 
 its soil the signs of the most frightful strife that man- 
 kind has known in all the history of warfare. For an- 
 other stage on the road to Bapaume London regiments went 
 up to Eaucourt-l'Abbaye, and the Gordons stormed the 
 white mound of the Butte de Warlencourt. For the cap- 
 ture of Bapaume our patrols with machine-guns and trench- 
 mortars, and our gunners with their batteries, have pushed 
 on through the day and night during recent weeks, gaining 
 La Barque and Ligny and Thilloy, not sleeping night after 
 night, not resting, so that beards have grown on young 
 chins, and the eyes of these men look glazed and dead 
 except for the fire that lights up in them when there is 
 another bit of work to do. For this, thousands of British 
 soldiers have laboured like ants — it is all like a monstrous 
 ant-heap in commotion — carrying up material of war, build- 
 ing roads over quagmires, laying down railroads under 
 shell-fire, plugging up shell-craters with bricks and stone 
 so that the horse transport can follow, and the guns get 
 forward and the way be made smooth for the fall of 
 Bapaume. ... So Bapaume is ours. Years ago, and 
 months ago, and weeks ago, I have travelled the road to- 
 wards Bapaume from Amiens to Albert, from that city of 
 the Falling Virgin, past the vast mine-crater of La Boisselle 
 up to Pozieres and beyond, and always I and comrades 
 of mine have glanced sideways and smiled grimly at the 
 milestones which said so many kilometres to Bapaume — and 
 yet a world of strife to go. Now those stones will not stare 
 up at us with irony. There is no longer a point on the 
 road where one has to halt lest one should die. To-day 
 I walked past the milestones — ten, seven, four, three, one — 
 and then into Bapaume, and did not die, though to tell the 
 
Line on July 1, 1916 
 « " March 1, 1917 
 « « Ma/rch 18, 1917 
 
 • ••• • 
 
72 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 truth death missed me only by a yard or two. I have had 
 many strange and memorable walks in war, but none more 
 wonderful than this, for really it was a strange way this 
 road to Bapaume, with all the tragedy and all the courage 
 of this warfare, and all the ugly spirit of it on every side. 
 I walked through the highway of our greatest battles up 
 from Pozieres, past Courcelette, with Martinpuich to the 
 right, past the ruins of Destremont Farm, and into the ruins 
 of Le Sars. Thence the road struck straight towards 
 Bapaume, with the grey pyramid of the Butte de Warlen- 
 court on one side and the frightful turmoil of Warlencourt 
 village on the other. I did not walk alone along this way 
 through the litter of many battles, through its muck and 
 stench and corruption under a fair blue sky, with wisps 
 of white cloud above and the glitter of spring sunshine over 
 all the white leprous landscape of these fields. Australian 
 soldiers were going the same way — towards Bapaume. 
 Some of them wore sprigs of shamrock in their buttonholes, 
 and I remembered it was St. Patrick's Day. Some of them 
 were gunners, and some were pioneers, and some were Gen- 
 erals and high officers, and they had the look of victory 
 upon them and were talking cheerily about the great news 
 of the day. It was in the neighbourhood of a haunted- 
 looking place called "La Coupe-gueule," which means Cut- 
 throat, once I imagine a farmstead or estaminet, that the 
 road became the scene of very recent warfare — a few hours 
 old or a few minutes. One is very quick to read how old 
 the signs are by the look of the earth, by smells and sounds, 
 by little, sure, alarming signs. Dead horses lay about — 
 newly dead. Shell-craters with clean sides pock-marked 
 the earth ten feet deep. Aeroplanes had crashed down, one 
 of them a few minutes ago. A car came along and I saw 
 a young pilot lying back wounded, with another officer 
 smoking a cigarette, grave-eyed and pallid. Pools of red 
 mud were on either side of the road, or in the middle of it. 
 Everywhere in neighbouring ground hidden batteries were 
 firing ceaselessly, the long sixty-pounders making sharp 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 73 
 
 reports that stunned one's ears, the field-guns firing rapidly 
 with sharp knocks. Up in the blue sky there was other 
 gunning. Flights of our aeroplanes were up singing with 
 a loud, deep, humming music as of monstrous bees. Our 
 "Archies" were strafing a German plane, venturesome over 
 our country. High up in the blue was the rattle of machine- 
 gun fire. Down from Bapaume came a procession of 
 stretcher-bearers with wounded comrades shoulder high, 
 borne like heroes, slowly and with unconscious dignity, 
 by these tall men in steel helmets. The enemy had ruined 
 the road in several places with enormous craters, to stop 
 our progress. They were twenty yards across, and very 
 deep, and fearful pitfalls in the dark. Past the ruins of 
 La Barque, past the ruins of Ligny-Thilloy and Thilloy, 
 went the road to Bapaume. Behind me now on the left was 
 Loupart Wood, the storm-centre of strife when I went up 
 to it a few days ago, and Grevillers beside it, smashed to 
 death, and then presently and quite suddenly I came into 
 sight of Bapaume. It was only a few hundred yards away, 
 and I could see every detail of its streets and houses. A 
 street along the Bapaume road went straight into the town, 
 and then went sharply at right angles, so that all the length 
 of Bapaume lay in front of me. The sun was upon it, 
 shining very bright and clear upon its houses. It was a 
 sun-picture of destruction. Bapaume was still standing, 
 but broken and burnt. 
 
 In the middle of Bapaume stood the remnant of the old 
 clock-tower, a tower of brown brick, like the houses about 
 it, but broken off at the top, only two-thirds of its former 
 height, and without the clock which used to tell us the time 
 miles away when we gazed through telescopes from distant 
 observation-posts, when we still had miles to go on the 
 way to Bapaume. On the right of the old tower the town 
 was burning, not in flames when I entered, but with volumes 
 of white smoke issuing slowly from a row of red villas 
 already gutted by fires lighted before the Germans left. 
 
 A Colonel came riding out of Bapaume. He was carry- 
 
74 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 ing a big German beer-jug, and showed me his trophy, lean- 
 ing down over his saddle to let me read the words : 
 Zum Feldgrauen Hilfe 
 
 "Is it pretty easy to get into Bapaume?" I asked. 
 
 ^'Barring the heavy stuff," he said. 'They're putting 
 over shells at the rate of two or three a minute." 
 
 They were, and it was not pleasant, this walk into 
 Bapaume, though very interesting. 
 
 It was when I came to an old farmhouse and inn — the 
 shell of a place — on the left of the road (Duhamel-Equar- 
 riseur, Telephone No. 30) that I knew the full menace of 
 this hour was above and about. The enemy was firing a 
 great number of shells into Bapaume. They came towards 
 us with that rushing, howling noise which gives one a great 
 fear of instant death, and burst with crashes among the 
 neighbouring houses. They were high explosives, but 
 shrapnel was bursting high, with thunder-claps, which left 
 behind greenish clouds and scattered bullets down I went 
 through the outer defences of Bapaume, walking with a 
 General who was on his way to the town, and who pointed 
 out the strength of the place. Lord ! It was still horribly 
 strong, and would have cost us many lives to take by 
 assault. Three belts of wire, very thick, stood solid and 
 strong, in a wide curve all round the town. The enemy 
 had dug trenches quite recently, so that the earth was fresh 
 and brown, and dug them well and perfectly. Only here 
 and there had they been broken by our shell-fire, though 
 some of the dug-outs had been blown in. 
 
 Just outside Bapaume, on the south-east side, is an old 
 citadel built centuries ago and now overgrown with fir- 
 trees which would have given a great field of fire to Ger- 
 man machine-gunners, and I went afterwards into snipers' 
 posts, and stood at the entrance of tunnels and bomb-proof 
 shelters, not going down or touching any of the litter about 
 because of the danger lurking there in dark entries and in 
 innocent-looking wires and implements.. There was a great 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 75 
 
 litter everywhere, for the German soldiers had left behind 
 large numbers of long-handled bombs and thousands of 
 cartridges, and many tools and implements. 
 
 Before getting into Bapaume I crossed the railway line 
 from Arras, through Biefvillers, which was now on fire. 
 They had torn up the rails here, but there was still the 
 track, and the signal-boxes and signs in German. 
 
 Im Bahnhof 
 Nur 10 Km. 
 
 That is to say, the speed of trains was to be only lo kilo- 
 metres an hour into the station. 
 
 Another signboard directed the way for "Vieh" and 
 "Pferde" (cattle and horses), and everywhere there were 
 notice-boards to trenches and dug-outs: 
 
 Nach I Stellung 
 Fiir zwei Offizieren 
 
 As I entered Bapaume I noticed first, if my memory 
 serves, the Hotel de Commerce, with '*garage" painted on 
 a shell-broken wall, and immediately facing me an old 
 wooden house with a shoot for flour. Many of the houses 
 had collapsed as though built of cards, with all their roofs 
 level with the ground. Others were cut in half, showing 
 all their rooms and landings, and others were gutted in 
 ways familiar to EngHsh people after Zeppelin raids. 
 Higher up on the right, as I have said, rows of red-brick 
 villas were burnt out, and smoke was rising in steady vol- 
 umes from this quarter of the town. The church, a white 
 stone building, was also smouldering. There were no Ger- 
 mans in the town, unless men are still hiding there. The 
 only living inhabitant was a little kitten which ran across 
 the square and was captured by our patrols, who now have 
 it as a pet. 
 
 There were other men living early in the morning, but 
 they are now dead. It was a company of German machine- 
 gunners who held out as the last rear-guard. They fired 
 
76 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 heavily at our men, but were quickly overpowered. The 
 first message that came back from the entering troops was 
 laconic : 
 
 ''While entering Bapaume we came across a party the 
 whole of which was accounted for. The mopping-up of 
 Bapaume is now complete." 
 
 I did not stay very long in the town. It was not a health 
 resort. High explosives were crumpling every part of the 
 town, and the buildings were falling. Pip-squeaks were 
 flung about horribly, and when I came out with the Gen- 
 eral and another officer a flush of them came yelling at us 
 and burst very close, flinging up the ground only a few 
 yards away. The roadway of ''pave" had been hurled up 
 in huge chumps of stone, and shrapnel was again breaking 
 to the right of us. 1 struck across country eastwards to 
 see the promised land, and on the way to the near ridge 
 turned and stared back at Bapaume in the glow of the sun- 
 set. Ours at last! 
 
 The fires were still burning in the other villages, and it 
 was such a scene of war as I saw first when Dixmude was 
 a flaming torch and Pervyse was alight in the beginning of 
 the world-conflict. ... At about half-past nine that night 
 the enemy fired several quick rounds from his field-batteries. 
 Then there was a strange silence, unbroken by any shell-fire. 
 The Germans had fired their last shot in the battles of the 
 Somme. 
 
 lO 
 
 The Rescue of Peronne 
 
 March i8 
 To-day at 7 a.m. a battalion of the Royal Warwicks of the 
 48th Division entered Peronne. 
 
 Standing alone that statement would be sensational 
 enough. The French fought for Peronne desperately 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 7T 
 
 through more than two years of war, and now it is the 
 luck of the British troops to enter it, as yesterday we en- 
 tered Bapaume, after a short action with the enemy's rear- 
 guards. But the news does not stand alone. The whole of 
 the old German line south of Arras, strong as one vast 
 fortress, built by the labour of millions of men, dug and 
 tunnelled and cemented and timbered, with thousands of 
 machine-gun redoubts, with an immense maze of trenches, 
 protected by forests of barbed wire, had slipped away as 
 though by a landslide, and the enemy is in rapid retreat 
 to new lines some miles away. As he goes he is laying 
 fire and waste to the countryside. North-east of Bapaume, 
 into which I went yesterday with our troops, and west of 
 Peronne, scores of villages are burning. One of them, 
 larger than a village, the town of Athies, is a flaming torch 
 visible for miles around. Others are smouldering ruins, 
 from which volumes of smoke are rolling up into the clear 
 blue sky. Of all this great tract of France, which the enemy 
 has been forced to abandon to avoid the menace of com- 
 bined attack, there is no beauty left, and no homesteads, nor 
 farms, but only black ruins and devastation everywhere. 
 The enemy is adopting the full cruelty of war's malignancy. 
 He has fouled the wells in his wake, so that if our soldiers* 
 horses should drink there they will die. Over the water- 
 ways he has burnt his bridges. Cross-roads have been 
 mined, opening up enormous craters like those I saw yes- 
 terday outside Bapaume. High-explosive traps have been 
 placed in the way of our patrols, to scatter them in frag- 
 ments if they lack caution. 
 
 It is impossible to give our exact line at the present mo- 
 ment. We have no exact line. Village after village has 
 fallen into our hands since midday yesterday. Our cavalry 
 patrols are over the hills and far away. Our infantry 
 patrols are pushing forward unto new territory, so that 
 only aeroplanes know the exact whereabouts. As one 
 aviator has reported : 
 
78 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 "Our men are lighting fires and taking their dinners at 
 places off the map. They are going into pubs which have 
 been burnt out to find beer which is not there." 
 
 North and east of Bapaume our patrols have gone beyond 
 the villages of Rocquenes, Bancourt, Favreuil, and Sa- 
 pignies. Intelligence officers riding out on bicycles to these 
 places were scared to find themselves so lonely, and be- 
 lieved that the enemy must be close at hand. But the enemy 
 was still farther off. Our cavalry, working up past Logeast 
 Wood, penetrated east of Acheit-le-Grand and turned the 
 German line of Behagnies — Ytres. 
 
 Much farther south, in the neighbourhood of Nesle, 
 French and British cavalry patrols came into touch to-day, 
 and one of our aviators reports that he saw French civilians 
 waving flags and cheering them. 
 
 The Germans have a cavalry screen behind their rear- 
 guards. They were seen yesterday north of Bapaume and 
 southwards beyond Roye. And some of them were chased 
 by a British airman at a place called Ennemain. He 
 swooped low like an albatross, and brought a man off his 
 horse by a machine-gun bullet. Others stampeded from this 
 terrible bird. 
 
 This morning our troops were through Eterpigny be- 
 yond Barleux, and found the villages of Misery and Mar- 
 chelepot. There was some fighting last night and this 
 morning in the neighbourhood of Peronne. The enemy had 
 snipers and machine-gunners about, and kept some of their 
 batteries back until the last possible moment, flinging 5-9's 
 and smaller shells over our side of the lines, and firing 
 heavily until about ten o'clock. Then the gun-fire ceased, 
 and there was not a shot. His guns were going back along 
 the dark roads, his rear-guards moved away, leaving behind 
 them their great defensive works of the Bapaume Ridge, 
 and burning villages. 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 79 
 
 March 19 
 Refusing to give battle, the enemy has retired still farther 
 over open country east of Bapaume, and our cavalry patrols 
 are in touch with his mounted rear-guards. The exact lo- 
 cation is vague, as the movement continues, and our cavalry 
 is in small units, moving cautiously between a large num- 
 ber of burning villages, which are everywhere alight. Small 
 parties of the enemy were encountered last night in the open 
 near Ytres and Berthincourt, and some snipers in an omni- 
 bus opened fire upon a cavalry patrol, and were scattered by 
 an aeroplane which swooped low, sweeping them with 
 machine-gun bullets. 
 
 South of the Somme our cavalry got in touch with Ger- 
 man cavalry at Rouy and with German cyclists at Potte. 
 All the bridges have been destroyed to cover the enemy's 
 retreat, as at Rouy and Breuil, and all the wells have been 
 filled with filth and rubbish. 
 
 It is a most extraordinary experience to follow up 
 through this abandoned country from which the enemy has 
 fled, as I have found to-day in tramping through the dis- 
 trict of Peronne and into that deserted and destroyed town. 
 A few weeks ago I went a journey to the new lines we 
 had taken over from the French south of the Somme. Then 
 it was under the full blast of shell-fire, and not a day passed 
 without the enemy flinging high explosives into the ruined 
 villages of Herbecourt, Estrees, Flaucourt, and Biaches. 
 From Mont-St.-Quentin, on the flank of Peronne, he had 
 the observation of all our ground, so that it was horrible 
 to see that hill staring down on one, and by daylight in the 
 open country one moved always under the menace of death. 
 To-day that menace had gone. The evil spell had lifted, and 
 we moved freely in the sight of Mont-St.-Quentin, unafraid 
 and with a strange sense of safety. He had gone from there 
 yesterday morning, and, at the same time, had crept away 
 from the trenches at Biaches, and across his wooded bridges 
 to Peronne, and out of this town to the open country, hurry- 
 ing through the night to escape from our pursuit. 
 
80 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 I went down into Biaches, a wild chaos of trenches and 
 dug-outs and ruin, and passed through the front Hne held 
 by our troops until about 6.30 yesterday morning, and went 
 with difficulty through the German barbed wire still uncut, 
 so that we were tangled and caught in it. Then I passed 
 into the old German lines, and went across the wooden 
 causeway built by them over the marshes down to the bank 
 of the Somme. On the other side of the river loop I saw 
 for the first time Peronne, taken by the enemy in the autumn 
 of 1 9 14, and fought for furiously by the French, who re- 
 gained it for a while and lost it again. It was dead quiet 
 over there. No shell burst over it, but a little smoke rolled 
 above its houses. From that distance, the broad river's 
 width, it did not look much destroyed. It was only after- 
 wards that I saw how much. Several wooden bridges 
 spanned the Somme, and I tried two of these to get across, 
 but there were great gaps which I could not jump. Before 
 leaving the enemy had broken them and tried to hide the 
 damage from the view of our airmen by putting up straw 
 screens. All the trees in the marshes had been slashed by 
 our shell-fire. Empty barrels floated in the water with 
 broken boats, and the old barge, called Notre Dame 
 d'Amiens, was blown in half. Snipers' posts had been 
 built, outfacing our lines, and German ammunition and 
 bombs and coiled wire and a great litter of timber lay about. 
 
 I managed at last to get into Peronne by a wide curve 
 through the Faubourg de Paris, over the piled stones of a 
 broken bridge with planks across the gaps put there by our 
 soldiers so that the enemy could be followed in pursuit He 
 had been careful to check us as long as possible, though it 
 was not very long, for an hour after his going the Royal 
 Warwicks and some Londoners marched unto the Grande 
 Place. Down the Faubourg de Paris all the trees had been 
 cut down, so that they had crashed across the street, making 
 a great barricade. Before going, firebrands had been at 
 work, setting alight all the houses not already smashed by 
 shell-fire. They were burning, when I passed them, so 
 
RETREAT FROM THE SOMME 81 
 
 fiercely that the hot breath of the flames was upon my face. 
 Even now it was possible to see that Peronne had once been 
 a little town of old-world dignity and charm. Frontages of 
 some of these gutted houses were richly carved in Renais- 
 sance style, among them being the ruins of the Palais de 
 Justice and the Hotel de Ville and the Maison Municipale. 
 Here and there along the Rue St.-Fursy and in the Grande 
 Place was an old French mansion built before the Revolu- 
 tion, now just a skeleton of broken brickwork and timber. 
 Though many houses were still standing enough to see they 
 were houses, there was hardly one that had escaped the 
 wrath of war. It was pitiful to see here and there old signs, 
 showing the life of the town in peace, such as the "Librairie 
 Nouvelle," the "Teinturerie Parisienne" belonging to Mme. 
 Poitevineau, the Notary's house, full of legal books and 
 papers scattered on a charred floor beneath a gaping roof, 
 a shop for "articles de chasse" kept by one Monsieur 
 Bourdin. Those signboards, reminding one of Peronne be- 
 fore the war, were side by side with other signboards show- 
 ing the way of German life until 6.30 yesterday morning. 
 At the entrance to the town is a notice : "Durchgang bei 
 Tage streng Verboten." 
 
 Most houses are labelled, "Keller fiir 60 Mann." At the 
 entrance to a dug-out below the town hall is the notice, 
 "Verwundete und Kranke" (For wounded and sick). The 
 only inhabitants of the Grande Place were a big black cat, 
 looking sick and sorry for itself, and a dummy figure 
 dressed as a French Zouave, sprawling below the pedestal 
 of a statue to Catherine de Poix, heroine of the siege of 
 1870. The statue had been taken away, like that of Faid- 
 herbe in the square of Bapaume. On top of the pedestal 
 had been laid the dummy figure in French uniform, but 
 our soldiers removed it. Peronne was a dead town, like 
 Ypres, like Bapaume, like all those villages in the wake of 
 the German retreat. Over its old fortifications, built by 
 Vauban, and over its marshes wild duck are flying. 
 
PART II 
 ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 
 
 I 
 
 The Making of No Man's Land 
 
 March 21 
 For several days now I have been going with our advancing 
 troops into towns, villages, and country abandoned by the 
 enemy in his retreat. It has been a strange adventure, fan- 
 tastic as a dream, yet with the tragedy of reality. The 
 fantasy is in crossing over No Man's Land into the Ger- 
 man lines, getting through his wire, and passing through 
 trenches inhabited by his soldiers until a day or two ago, 
 travelling over roads and fields down which his guns and 
 transport went, and going into streets and houses in which 
 there are signs of his recent occupation. He has ruined 
 all his roads, opening vast craters in them, and broken all 
 his bridges, but our men have been wonderfully quick in 
 making a way over these gaps, and this morning I mo- 
 tored over the German trenches at Roye, zigzagging over 
 this maze of ditches and dug-outs by bridges of planks be- 
 fore getting to the roads behind his line. 
 
 After passing the area of shell-fire on our side and his, 
 the field of shell-craters, the smashed barns and houses and 
 churches, the tattered tree-trunks, the wide belts of barbed 
 wire, one comes to country where grass grows again, and 
 vs^here the fields are smooth and rolling, and where the 
 woods will be clothed with foliage when spring comes to 
 the world again — country strange and beautiful to a man 
 
 82 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 83 
 
 like myself, who has been wandering through all the filth 
 and frightfulness of the Somme battlefields. German 
 sentry-boxes still stand at the cross-roads. German notice- 
 boards stare at one from cottage walls, or where the vil- 
 lages begin. Thousands of coils of barbed wire lie about 
 in heaps, for the enemy relied a great deal upon this means 
 of defence, and in many places are piles of shells which he 
 has not removed. Gun-pits and machine-gun emplacements, 
 screens to hide his roads from view, observation-posts built 
 in tall trees, remain as signs of his military life a mile or 
 two back from his front lines, but behind the trenches are 
 the towns and villages in which he had his rest billets, and 
 it is in these places that one sees the spirit and temper of the 
 men whom w^e are fighting. The enemy has spared nothing 
 on the way of his retreat. He has destroyed every village 
 in his abandonment with a systematic and detailed destruc- 
 tion. Not only in Bapaume and in Peronne has he blown 
 up, or burnt, all the houses which were untouched by shell- 
 fire, but in scores of villages he has laid waste the cottages 
 of the peasants, and all their farms and all their orchards. 
 At Rethonvillers this morning, to name only one village out 
 of many, I saw how each house was marked with a white 
 cross before it was gutted with fire. The Cross of Christ 
 was used to mark the work of the Devil. 
 
 In Bapaume and Peronne, in Roye and Nesle and Lian- 
 court, and all these places over a wide area, German soldiers 
 not only blew out the fronts of houses, but with picks and 
 axes smashed mirrors and furniture and picture-frames. 
 As a friend of mine said, a cheap-jack would not give four- 
 pence for anything left in Peronne, and that is true, also, 
 of Bapaume. There is nothing but filth in those two towns; 
 family portraits have been kicked into the gutters. I saw 
 a picture of three children in Bapaume, and it was smeared 
 with filth in the writing of a dirty word. The black bon- 
 nets of old women who once lived in those houses lie about 
 the rubbish-heaps, and by some strange, pitiful freak are 
 almost the only signs left of the inhabitants who lived here 
 
84 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 before the Germans wrecked their houses. The enemy has 
 left nothing that would be good for dwelling or for food. 
 Into the wells he has pitched filth so that the people may not 
 drink. 
 
 But that is not the greatest tragedy I have seen. The 
 ruins of houses are bad to see when done deliberately, even 
 when shell-fire has spared them in the war zone. But worse 
 than that is the ruin of women and children and living 
 flesh. I saw that ruin to-day in Roye and Nesle. I was 
 at first rejoiced to see how the first inhabitants were lib- 
 erated after being so long in hostile lines. I approached 
 them with a queer sense of excitement, eager to speak with 
 them, but instantly when I saw those women and children 
 in the streets, and staring at me out of windows, I was 
 struck with a chill of horror. The women's faces were dead 
 faces, sallow and mask-like, and branded with the memory 
 of great agonies. The children were white and thin — so 
 thin that their cheek-bones protruded. Hunger and fear 
 had been with them too long. 
 
 The Mayor of Nesle told me that after the first entry 
 of the Germans on August 29, 1914, and after the first bru- 
 talities, the soldiers had behaved well, generally speaking. 
 They were well disciplined, and lived on good terms with 
 the people, as far as possible. Probably he tells the truth 
 fairly, and I believe him. But the women with whom I spoke 
 were passionate and hysterical, and told me other stories. 
 I believe them too. Because these women, who are French, 
 had to live with the men who were killing their husbands 
 and brothers, and that is a great horror. They had to sub- 
 mit to the daily moods of men who were sometimes sulky 
 and sometimes drunk. The officers were often drunk. 
 They had to see their children go hungry, for though the 
 Germans gave them potatoes, sometimes they took away 
 the hens, so that there were no eggs, and the cows, so that 
 there was no milk, and the children suffered and were thin. 
 On October 5, 19 14, the Kaiser came to Nesle with an escort 
 of five motor-cars, and the soldiers lined the square and 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 85 
 
 cheered him; but the women and children stared and were 
 silent, and hated those white-haired men with the spiked 
 hats. During the battles of the Somme many wounded 
 passed through the town, and others came with awful stories 
 of slaughter and fierce words against the English. Once 
 twenty men of the 173rd Regiment came in. They were 
 half mad, weeping and cursing, and said they were the sole 
 survivors of their regiment. 
 
 Then, quite recently, there came the rumour of a German 
 retreat. On Thursday, March 15, the German commandant 
 sent for the Mayor and announced the news. He gave 
 orders for all the inhabitants to leave their houses at 6.30, 
 and to assemble in the streets, while certain houses and 
 streets indicated were to be destroyed. The German com- 
 mandant, whose name was Herwaardt, said he greatly 
 regretted this necessity. The work was to be carried out 
 by his Oberlieutenant Baarth. The people wept at the de- 
 struction of their homes, though the houses in the centre 
 of Nesle were spared. But they were comforted by the 
 promise of liberation. For a week previously the enemy 
 had been withdrawing his stores. The garrison consisted 
 of about 800 to 1000 men of the 38th Regiment of Chas- 
 seurs and Cyclists. The gunners were the last to leave, and 
 went away at midnight with the rear-guard of infantry. 
 By half-past seven in the morning there was not a German 
 soldier left in Nesle, and at half-past nine a British patrol 
 entered, and the women and children surrounded our men, 
 laughing and weeping. To-day they were being fed by 
 British soldiers, and were waiting round the field-kitchens 
 with wistful eyes. 
 
 The Letter of the Law 
 
 March 23 
 On both sides cavalry patrols are scouting in the woods and 
 villages, and for a few days at least the situation has been 
 
86 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 extraordinarily like those early days of the war in October 
 of 1 914, when our cavalry was operating in Flanders, feel- 
 ing forward cautiously to test the enemy's strength. For 
 the first time since those days German Uhlans have again 
 been seen on the Western Front. They have been seen mov- 
 ing about the woods and on the skyline. 
 
 Little parties of them are in hiding behind the broken 
 walls of villages destroyed in the German retreat. Now 
 and again they bump into our advanced posts and then bolt 
 away, not seeking a fight. These are the manoeuvres of 
 open warfare not seen on our Front since the trenches closed 
 us in. Our calvary patrols are working in the same way. 
 Yesterday one of them encountered some of the enemy 
 on the road to vSt.-Quentin and very close to that town, 
 where fires are still burning. Our mounted men were 
 suddenly called to a halt by a sharp fusillade of rifle and 
 machine-gun bullets. The enemy this time was unmounted 
 and entrenched, and after reconnoitring this position our 
 patrol galloped back. 
 
 It is difficult to know always the exact whereabouts of 
 the enemy's advanced posts, as they were scattered about 
 the countryside without any definite trench line, so that 
 officers of corps and divisional staffs who are going out to 
 examine the He of the land, with a secret hope of finding an 
 adventure on the way, are taking out revolvers, which have 
 long been idle. I found a young staff officer to-day fasten- 
 ing his holster to his belt before starting out on his morn- 
 ing's expedition, and he slapped it and laughed, and said, 
 ^'I haven't done this for over two years. It is quite like 
 old times." It brings back reminiscences to me also of old 
 days, when with two comrades I moved about the roads of 
 war ignorant of the enemy's position and narrowly escaping 
 his advance-guards. But, after all, it is no joke, and I 
 should hate to get into the middle of an enemy patrol some- 
 where in this country of burnt and abandoned villages, 
 through which I have been wandering with tired eyes in 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 87 
 
 the sight of all this destruction, so wanton, so brutal, and so 
 ruthless. 
 
 For th€ enemy has adopted the letter of the law in that 
 code of cruelty which governs war, and I can think of 
 nothing more damnable than the horror which came to some 
 hundreds of poor souls, mostly women and children and old 
 stricken men in the village of Rouy-le-Petit above the 
 Somme. 
 
 Many of them had been driven into this hamlet from 
 neighbouring villages, which the Germans set on fire. Hud- 
 dled in the streets of Rouy, they saw the smoke and flames 
 rising from their homesteads, and they were terrorized and 
 crushed. Presently the last German rear-guard went out 
 from Rouy, not cheering and singing as they came in 
 August of 1 91 4, but silent and grim, conscience-stricken 
 also, it seemed, so the French people have told me, because 
 of the law which made them do the things they had done. 
 They had been friendly with the villagers before tliey 
 smashed their houses, and had been good to the children 
 before breaking their bedsteads and making them homeless. 
 They said again and again in self-excuse, ''It is war; it is 
 the order of our high officers! We are bound to do it." 
 
 The German guns rumbled through the street of Rouy, 
 and went away with gunners and cyclists and infantry. 
 Night came, and all the noise of distant artillery died down, 
 and there was hardly the sound of a shot over all the 
 country where for nearly three years there has been the 
 ceaseless fire of artillery. Early next morning a British 
 patrol entered the village, and the people crowded round, 
 clasping the soldiers' hands and thanking God for deliver- 
 ance, and telling of their hunger, which was near starving- 
 point. Then the worst happened. Suddenly shells began 
 to fall over the village, crashing through the roofs and 
 flinging up the ground in the roadway. They were Ger- 
 man shells fired by the German gunners who had left only 
 a few hours before. They were not meant to kill the 
 civilians who had been gathered at Rouy, all the women and 
 
88 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 children and old, weak men. They were meant to kill the 
 British patrols, and so were lawful as an act of war. But 
 one could not be done without the other, and there were 
 civilians who were wounded in Rouy-le-Petit that day. 
 Weeping and wailing, they rushed down into the cellars 
 and took refuge there, while flights of shells followed and 
 tore holes in rooms and walls, and filled the village with 
 smoke and splinters. And that is the lawfulness of war 
 and the horror of war. 
 
 When the enemy left he blew up all the cross-roads and 
 made many mine-craters along the way of his retreat. They 
 have scarcely checked us at all, and a tribute of praise is 
 due to our infantry and our labour battalions, who have 
 been repairing those roads with quick, untiring industry. 
 To-day I have met with much traffic of war, French as well 
 as British traffic, the men in blue marching by the men in 
 brown through country where both armies meet. The 
 French soldiers were marching with their bands and col- 
 ours through the ruined villages, and I never saw more 
 splendid men even in the early days of the war, when 
 the great armies of France went forward with a kind of 
 religious passion and flung back the Germans from the 
 Marne. Our own men had no bands and no colours. 
 There was not the same sense of drama as they passed, 
 but these clean-shaven boys of ours, hardened by foul 
 weather, by frost, and rain-storms, and blizzard, go forward 
 into the great waste, which the enemy had left behind him, 
 in their usual matter-of-fact way, whistling a tune or two, 
 passing a whimsical word along the line, settling down to 
 any old job that comes in a day's work, and finding as much 
 comfort as they can at the end of a long day's march on 
 the lee side of a shell-broken wall. 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 89 
 
 3 
 
 The Abandoned Country 
 
 March 24 
 After long days of tiring adventure in the wake of the 
 German rear-guards, following through places only just 
 evacuated, and tramping through the great ruin they have 
 left behind them, I have tried to give some idea of the 
 tragic drama of it all, the uncanny quietude of the aban- 
 doned country, the frightful wreckage of towns and villages 
 destroyed, not by shell-fire, but by picks and axes and fire- 
 brands, the deep mine-craters blown under roads, the broken 
 bridges across the Somme, the crowds of starved civilians 
 surrounding our patrols in market squares where they had 
 been herded while their homes were in flames around them, 
 the little bodies of British troops advancing through barbed- 
 wire entanglements into fortress positions like Bapaume 
 and Peronne, and our cavalry patrols feeling their way 
 forward into unknown country where the enemy's rear- 
 guards are in hiding. 
 
 That, in a few lines, is the historical picture of this 
 strange new phase of warfare in which we have been push- 
 ing forward during the past two weeks. But through it 
 all, to me, an onlooker of these things, there has been one 
 special theme of interest. It is the revelation of the Ger- 
 man way of life behind his lines— these abundant lines— 
 his military methods of defence and observation and or- 
 ganization, and the domestic arrangements by which he has 
 tried to make himself comfortable in the field of war. 
 Along every step of the way by which he has retreated 
 there are relics which show us exactly how our enemies 
 lived and fought when they were hidden from us across 
 No Man's Land, and their philosophy of life in war. All 
 that is worth a little study. 
 
 Everywhere— outside Bapaume and Peronne and Chaul- 
 
90 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 nes, and all those deserted places near the front lines — one 
 ugly thing stares one in the face : German barbed wire. It 
 is heavier, stronger stuff than ours or the French, with 
 great cross-pieces of iron, and he has used amazing quan- 
 tities of it in deep wide belts in three lines of defence be- 
 fore his trench systems, and in all sorts of odd places, by 
 bridges and roads and villages even far behind the trenches, 
 to prevent any sudden rush of hostile infantry or to tear 
 our cavalry to pieces should we break his lines and get 
 through. His trenches were deeply dug, and along the 
 whole line from which he has now retreated they are pro- 
 vided with great concreted and timbered dug-outs leading 
 into an elaborate system of tunnelled galleries perfectly 
 proof from shell-fire, and similar to those which I have de- 
 scribed often enough in the Somme battlefields. As a 
 builder of dug-outs the German soldier has no equal. But 
 in addition to these trench systems he made behind his lines 
 a series of strong posts cunningly concealed and command- 
 ing a wide field of fire with dominating observation over 
 our side of the country. 
 
 I found such a place quite by accident yesterday. My 
 car broke down by a little wood near Roye looking across 
 to Damery and Bouchoir, and the woody, wired fields which 
 till a week ago were No Man's Land. When I strolled into 
 the wood I suddenly looked down an enormous sand-pit 
 covering an acre or so, and saw that it was a concealed 
 fortress of extraordinary strength and organization — an 
 underground citadel for a garrison of at least 3000 men 
 perfectly screened by the wood above. Into the sand-banks 
 on every side of the vast pit were built hundreds of cham- 
 bers leading deeper down into a maze of tunnels which 
 ran right round the central arena. Before leaving the 
 enemy had busied himself with an elaborate packing up, 
 and had taken away most of his movable property, but the 
 "fixtures" still remained, and a litter of mattresses stuffed 
 with shavings, empty wine-bottles, candles which had burnt 
 down on the last night in the old home, old socks and old 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 91 
 
 boots and old clothes no longer good for active service, 
 and just the usual relics which people leave behind when 
 they change houses. 
 
 The officers' quarters' were all timbered and panelled and 
 papered, with glass windows and fancy curtains. They 
 were furnished with bedsteads looted from French houses, 
 and with mirrors, cabinets, washhand-stands, marble-top 
 tables, and easy chairs. The cross-beams of the roofs were 
 painted with allegorical devices and with legends such as 
 "Gott mitt uns," 'Turchtlos und treu," ''In Treue fest." 
 
 Each room had an enamelled or iron stove, so that the 
 place must have been snug and warm, and I noticed in sev- 
 eral of them empty cages from which singing birds had 
 flown when German officers opened the doors before their 
 their own flitting. 
 
 The men's quarters were hardly less comfortable, and the 
 whole place was organized as a self-contained garrison, with 
 carpenters' shops and blacksmiths' sheds, and a quartermas- 
 ter's stores still crowded with bombs and aerial torpedoes — 
 thousands of them, which the enemy had left behind in his 
 hurry — and kitchens with great stoves and boilers, and a 
 Red Cross establishment for first aid, and concrete bath- 
 houses with shower-baths and cigar-racks for officers, who 
 smoke before and after bathing. Outside the artillery offi- 
 cers' headquarters was a board painted in white letters, 
 with the following couplet : 
 
 Schnell und gut ist unser Schuss 
 Deutscher Artilleristen Gruss. 
 
 (Quick and good is our shooting 
 Of the German gunners' greeting.) 
 
 Shell-craters in the open arena showed the French gun- 
 ners had returned the greeting, and that the garrison of 
 this citadel had done well to arrange their Hfe mainly as a 
 subterranean existence. But at times when the French guns 
 
92 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 were quiet and when the French sun was shining they had 
 built alfresco corners with garden seats and tables, round 
 which enormous stacks of wine-bottles were littered, show- 
 ing, as I have seen in all these abandoned places, the enor- 
 mous quantity of drink consumed by German officers in 
 their lighter moments. 
 
 This citadel in the wood is only one out of similar strong 
 points all along the lines now abandoned by the enemy. 
 Peronne, with Mont-St.-Quentin on its flank, and with the 
 Somme winding around it, and with forests of barbed wire 
 in the marshes below it, could be called impregnable if any 
 place may defy great armies. It was wonderfully fortified 
 with great industry and great skill for over two years, and 
 walking into these places now, marvelling at their strength, 
 I can only ask one question, which certainly the enemy will 
 find it hard to answer. Why has he abandoned such for- 
 midable strongholds? It seems to me that there is only 
 one answer. It is because they had to go and not because 
 they wanted to go. It was because they have no longer the 
 strength to hold their old line against the growing gun- 
 power and the growing man-power of the British Armies, 
 and have been compelled to attempt a new strategy which 
 will save their reserves and shorten their line. 
 
 Behind the lines the German officers and men lived com- 
 fortably in French billets, and organized amusements for 
 battalions in rest. At Bapaume they had a little theatre 
 with painted scenery. Two of the wings were among the 
 few things left in the rubbish-heaps of that poor destroyed 
 town, burnt and sacked by the Germans before they left, 
 and when I went in there with our troops some Australian 
 soldiers propped them up against the walls of a gutted 
 house and inscribed upon them in white chalk the name 
 "Maison de la Co-ee," inviting their comrades to walk up 
 and see the finest show on earth. In Nesle the Germans 
 turned the Cafe de Commerce into their casino, and played 
 military bands, whose music did not cheer the hearts of 
 wan women whose children were starving 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 9S 
 
 Strange fellows! Who knows what to make of them? 
 The French people just liberated from their rule, which was 
 a reign of terror in the severity of its official regulations, 
 contradict themselves in expressing their white-hot hatred 
 of the German character and their liking for the individual 
 soldiers who were quartered on them. 
 
 "They were kind to the children . . . but they burnt our 
 houses." — ''Karl was a nice boy. He cried when he went 
 away. . . . But he helped to smash up the neighbours' fur- 
 niture with an axe." — 'The lieutenant was a good fellow 
 . . . but he carried out the orders of destruction." 
 
 A woman told me, with a quivering rage in her voice, 
 that a German officer rode his horse into her room one day. 
 Another woman showed me the cut down her hand and 
 arm which she had received from a German soldier who 
 tried to force his way into her house at night. Other stories 
 have been told me by women white with passion. . . . Yet 
 it is clear that, on the whole, the Germans behaved in a 
 kindly, disciplined way until those last nights, when they 
 laid waste so many villages and all that was in them. 
 
 4 
 
 The CvRt of Voyennes 
 
 March 25 
 In the village of Voyennes, not far from Ham, and one of 
 the few hamlets not utterly destroyed, because the people 
 of the district were herded here while their own houses were 
 being burnt, I went into the ruins of the church. It was 
 easy to see how the flames had licked about its old stones, 
 scorching them red, and how the high oak roof had come 
 blazing down before the walls and pillars had given way. 
 Everything had been licked down by flame except one figure 
 
94 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 on an encalcined fragment of wall. Only one hand of the 
 Christ there had been burned, and the body hanging on 
 the Cross was unscathed, like so many of those Calvaries 
 which I have seen in shell-fired places. 
 
 But this place had not been touched by shell-fire, for it 
 had been far beyond the range of French or British guns ; 
 it had been destroyed wilfully. The village around had 
 been spared because of the large number of people driven 
 into it from the neighbouring countryside, and when I 
 called upon the priest who lives opposite the ruin of the 
 church, where he served God and the people of his little 
 parish, I heard the story of its burning. 
 
 It was a queer thing to me to sit to-day in that room of 
 the French presbytery talking to the old Cure. Just a week 
 before, on Sunday, at the very hour of my visit, which was 
 at midday, that old church outside the window had be- 
 come a blazing torch, and this priest, who loved it, had 
 wept tears as hot as its flames, and in his heart was the 
 fire of a great agony. He sat before me, a tall old man 
 of the aristocratic type, with a finely chiselled face, but 
 thin and gaunt, and as sallow as though he had been raised 
 from the dead. If I could put down his words as he spoke 
 them to me with passion in his clear, vivid French, with 
 gestures of those transparent hands which gave a deeper 
 meaning to his words, it would be a great story, revealing 
 the agony of the French people behind the German lines. 
 For the story of this village of Voyennes is just that of all 
 the villages on the enemy's side of the barbed wire. 
 
 Here in a few little streets about an old church were the 
 bodily suffering, the spiritual torture, the patient courage, 
 the fight against despair, the brooding but hidden fears, 
 which have been the life over a great tract of France since 
 August 1 9 14. "For a year," said M. le Cure Caron, "my 
 people here have had not a morsel of meat and not a drop 
 of wine, and only bad water in which the Germans put their 
 filth. They gave us bread which was disgusting, and bad 
 haricots and potatoes, and potatoes and haricots, and not 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 95 
 
 enough even, so that the children became wan and the 
 women weak. The American people sent us some food- 
 stuffs, but the Germans took the best of them, and in any 
 case we were always hungry. But those things do not mat- 
 ter, those physical things. It was the suffering of the spirit 
 that mattered, and, monsieur, we suffered mentally so much 
 that it almost destroyed our intelligence, it almost made us 
 silly, so that even now we can hardly think or reason, for 
 you will understand what it meant to us French people. 
 We were slaves after the Germans came in and settled 
 down upon us, and said, *Wa are at home; all here is ours.' 
 They ordered our men to work, and punished them with 
 prison for any slight fault. They were the masters of our 
 women, they put our young girls among their soldiers, they 
 set themselves out deliberately at first to crush our spirit, 
 to beat us by terror, to subdue us to their will by an iron 
 rule. They failed, and the> were astonished. *We cannot 
 understand you people,' they said , 'you are so proud, your 
 women are so proud.' And that was true, sir. Some 
 women, not worthy of the name of French women, were 
 weak — it was inevitable, alas ! — but for the most part they 
 raised their heads and said, *We are French, we will never 
 give in to you, not after one year, nor two years, nor three 
 years, nor four years.' 
 
 "The Germans asked constantly, 'When do you think the 
 war will end ?' We answered, 'Perhaps in five years, but 
 in the end we will smash you,' and this made them very 
 angry, so our people went about with their heads up, scorn- 
 ful, refusing to complain against any severity or any hard- 
 ship. 
 
 "Secretly among ourselves it was different. We could 
 get no news for months except lies. We knew nothing of 
 what was happening. Starvation crept closer upon us. We 
 were surrounded by the fires of hell. As you see, we are m 
 the outer section of the great Somme battle line, and very 
 close to it. For fifty hours at a time the roar of guns swept 
 
96 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 round us week after week, and month after month, and the 
 sky blazed around us. We were afraid of the temper of 
 the German officers after the defeat on the Marne, and after 
 the battles of the Somme Germany was like a wounded 
 tiger, fierce, desperate, cruel. Secretly, though our people 
 kept brave faces, they feared what would happen if the 
 Germans were forced to retreat. At last that happened, 
 and after all we had endured the days of terror were hard 
 to bear. From all the villages around, one by one, people 
 were driven out, young women and men as old as sixty 
 were taken away to work for Germany, and an orderly de- 
 struction began, which ended with the cutting down of our 
 orchards and ruin everywhere. The Commandant before 
 that was a good man and a gentleman, afraid of God and 
 his conscience. He said, 'I do not approve of these things. 
 The world will have a right to call us barbarians.' He 
 asked for forgiveness because he had to obey orders, and 
 I gave it him. An order came to take away all the bells 
 of the churches and all the metal-work. I had already 
 put my church bells in a loft, and I showed them to him, 
 and said, There they are.' He was very sorry. This man 
 was the only good German officer I have met, and it was 
 because he had been fifteen years in America and had 
 married an American wife and escaped from the spell of 
 his country's philosophy. Then he went away. Last Sun- 
 day, a week ago, at this very hour when the people were 
 all in their houses under strict orders, and already the 
 country was on fire with burning villages, a group of sol- 
 diers came outside there with cans of petroleum, which 
 they put into the church. Then they set fire to it, and 
 watched my church burn in a great bonfire. At this very 
 hour a week ago I watched it bum. . . . That night the 
 Germans went away through Voyennes, and early in the 
 morning, up in my attic, looking through a pair of glasses 
 I saw four horsemen ride in. They were English soldiers, 
 and our people rushed out to them. " Soon afterwards 
 came some Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the Colonel gave me 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 97 
 
 the news of the outer world to which we now belong after 
 our years of ,solat>on and misery. Our agony hadided 
 . . . Ihe Germans know they were beaten, monsieur- a 
 Commandant of Ham said, 'We are lost.' Xfter the bkt 
 ties of the Somme the men groaned and wept when they 
 were sent off to the Front. <God,' they cried, 'the horror 
 of the French and English gun-fire; O Chri t, save uT-' 
 Dunng the battles of the Somme the wounded'oured 
 
 S n't', ruf".^- °' "''''' ^ '^^y- ^"'5 H^™ was one great 
 hospital of bleedmg flesh. The German soldiers have bad 
 
 as weTt^rv^el "tT r°' '*' ^"' '""^'^ P^°P'^ -^ ^^^^-i 
 wit^ th. ,?^ ^'™^'' °'^"" '^^''^^^d to their men 
 
 with their usual brutality. I have seen them beat the sol- 
 diers about the head while those men stood at attention 
 not danng to say a word, but as soon as the officers are oS 
 of the way, the men say, 'We will cut those fellows' throats 
 
 The Chateau of Liancourt 
 
 n,„ K,r A^ ij- March 28 
 
 Uay by day our soldiers push farther forward across the 
 country which the Germans have laid waste, so that even 
 when peace comes there will be no dwelling-places where 
 there were once fine chateaux of France, and thrivingTtb 
 towns and hamlets clustering about old farmstead!, and 
 E ir'' ""^ ^u^ °/'^^"^'' ""^''^ f°'- i»'Ie« there was 
 
 fr^ in^ rr '" '^' ^P"'' "^ "^"y ""*""«' ^"d ruddy 
 trmt in all the autumns of the past. 
 
 These men of ours take all this desolation in a matter-of- 
 
98 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 fact way, as they take everything in this war, and pass al- 
 most without thought scenes more than usually fantastic 
 in piled ruins, and it is only by some such phrase or two as 
 ''Did you ever see the like?" or 'They've made a pretty 
 mess of that !" that they express their astonishment in this 
 wide belt of death which the enemy has left along his 
 tracks. Secretly I think some of them are stirred with a 
 sense of the sinister drama of it all, and are a little stag- 
 gered by a ruthlessness of war beyond even their own 
 earlier experience, which covers the battle of the Somme. 
 All this is something new, something which seems unnec- 
 essary, something more devilish, and our men go poking 
 about among the burnt houses and into the German under- 
 ground defences searching among the rubbish and examin- 
 ing the relics of the old life there, as though to discover 
 the secret of the men who have gone away, the secret of 
 *'01d Fritz," their enemy. 
 
 Sometimes they find messages written to them by the 
 enemy in good English, but with dark meanings. In one 
 German dug-out the other day an officer of ours found 
 a note scribbled on the table. 
 
 "We are going away, Tommy dear, and leave some 
 empty bottles of Rhein wine. It is the best wine in the 
 world. Take care it is not the best for you." 
 
 "When are they coming?" was another note. "Enlist 
 at once. Tommy my boy." 
 
 But those things do not explain. It is difficult to find any 
 clue to the character of these German soldiers, who have 
 left behind them proofs of wonderful labour and skill, and 
 proofs of great sentiment and religious piety, and proots 
 of an ordered cruelty worse than anything seen in France 
 since barbarous days. How can one explain? 
 
 Yesterday I went to a village called Liancourt. There is 
 a big chateau there. Even now at a little distance it seems 
 a place of old romance, with a strong, round tower and 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 99 
 
 high peaked roofs, and great wings of dark old brick. In 
 such a place Henri IV lived. It was centuries old when 
 the Revolution made its heraldic shields meaningless, but 
 until a year or two ago its walls were still hung with 
 tapestries, and its halls were filled with Empire furniture, 
 and its great vaulted cellars with wine. When the Ger- 
 mans came they made it a hospital for their wounded — 
 their Red Cross is still painted on one of the sloping 
 roofs — and though it was far behind their lines, surrounded 
 it with barbed wire which is now red with rust, and built 
 enormous dug-outs in its grounds in case French guns 
 should ever come near. When the Germans went a few 
 days ago they left but an empty shell. They stripped 
 the walls of panelling and tapestry, they took all the 
 clocks and pictures and furniture and carpets, and I 
 wandered yesterday through scores of rooms empty of 
 everything so that my footsteps echoed in them. The 
 Chateau of Liancourt had been looted from attic to cellar. 
 But quite close to the chateau the Germans have left the 
 bodies of many of their soldiers, as all over this country, 
 by roadsides and in fields, there are the graves of German 
 dead. Here there was one of their cemeteries, strongly 
 walled with heavy blocks of stone, each grave with its big 
 wooden headpiece, with a stone chapel built for the burial 
 service, and with a "Denkmal," or monument, in the centre 
 of all these dead. It was a memorial put up by Hessian 
 troops in July 191 5 to the honour of men taken on the field 
 of honour. 
 
 In this graveyard one sees the deep respect paid by the 
 Germans to the dead — French dead as well as German 
 dead. . . . But just a hundred yards away is another 
 graveyard. It is the cemetery of the little church in the 
 grounds of the chateau, and is full of vaults and tombs 
 where lay the dust of French citizens, men, women, and 
 children, who died before the horror of this war. 
 
 The vaults had been opened by pickaxes. The tomb- 
 stones were split across and graves exposed. Into these 
 
100 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 little houses of the dead — a young girl had lain in one of 
 them — rubbish had been flung. From one vault the cof- 
 fin had been taken away. . . . The church had been a little 
 gem, with a tall, pointed spire. Not by shell-fire, but by 
 an explosive charge placed there the day before the Ger- 
 mans went away the spire had been flung down and one 
 end of the church blown clean away. The face of its clock 
 lay upon the rubbish-heap. The sanctuary had been opened 
 and the reliquaries smashed. The statues of the saints 
 had been overturned, and the vestments of the priest 
 trampled and torn. 
 
 I went into the village of Cremery not far away. Here 
 also the graves had been opened in the churchyard, and in 
 the church the relics of saints had been looted — sl queer 
 kind of loot for German homes — and in the sacristy fine 
 old books of prayer and music lay tattered on the floor. 
 
 I went again yesterday to the great area of destroyed 
 villages which the enemy left behind him on his retreat to 
 St.-Quentin, and from Holnon Wood, which our cavalry 
 were the first to enter a few weeks ago, looked across the 
 open country between our outposts and that old city whose 
 cathedral rises as a grey mass above the last ridge, so near 
 and so clear when the sunlight falls upon it that our men 
 can see the tracery of the windows. It still stands un- 
 broken and beautiful, though houses have been destroyed 
 around it to clear the enemy's field of fire. German officers 
 use its towers as observation-posts, and can see every 
 movement of our men in the fields below. 
 
 "They snipe us with five-point-nines," said a young of- 
 ficer, smoking a cigarette, with his back to a broken wall 
 in a heap of ruins. "They scatter 'em about on the off- 
 chance of hitting some one, and you never can tell where 
 they are likely to drop." 
 
 Some of them came whirring across to the Holnon 
 Wood and down into the village of Francilly as I stood 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 101 
 
 looking across to Savy Wood, but not close enough to 
 hurt any one. It is the queerest thing to be in this part of 
 our Front. Go a little too far down a road, mistake one 
 village for another — and it is quite easy, for they all look 
 alike in ruin — and if you are an absent-minded man you 
 can get into the enemy's lines without realizing your 
 danger. Yesterday only occasional shell-bursts and short 
 spasms of machine-gun fire from the edge of Savy Wood 
 came to prove that here masses of men are watching out 
 to kill each other. Pigeons cooed in the woods. The 
 ground at my feet was spangled with anemones, and the 
 sunlight chased shadows across the fields of spring below 
 the city, where soon the streets may be noisy with battle. 
 Our men, living amidst ruin this side of St.-Quentin, have 
 settled down to this life of open warfare as though they 
 had known nothing else. Whether the tragedy of it all 
 sinks into them I do not know, but they whistle music-hall 
 tunes in the vast rubbish-heaps which were once old cha- 
 teaux of France, and sleep and stack their rifles in ancient 
 crypts among the cofiins of French aristocrats who died 
 before, or just a little after, the French Revolution, and 
 find shelter from wind and rain in poor little sacristies 
 filled with statues of saints adjoining churches wrecked 
 by explosive charges before the German soldiers went 
 their way. 
 
 One sees the strangest contrasts of life and death in all 
 this countryside, as when yesterday I came across a High- 
 lander playing his pipes in a wild and merry way on an 
 avalanche of old red bricks which once formed part of the 
 mansion of Caulaincourt, with many terraces lined with 
 white statues of Greek goddesses now lying maimed and 
 mutilated among the great rubbish-heaps. 
 
 By the roadside on my way I saw some English soldiers 
 resting, and close to them was a marble tablet stuck up in 
 a heap of earth. I read the words carved on the stone, 
 and it told me that here was the heart of Anne- Josephine 
 
102 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Barandier, Marquise de Caulaincourt, who died in Paris 
 on January 17, 1830. 
 
 Poor dead heart of Madame la Marquise! In a vault 
 near by all the tablets of her family had been smashed, 
 and the coffins laid bare, but there was no little niche to 
 show where the lady's heart had been. 
 
 Outside in the churchyard there was a great tomb to the 
 memory of the French soldiers who fell in 1871, and next 
 to them the graves of German soldiers killed in this war, 
 and a wooden cross to Second Lieutenant Nixon, of the 
 Royal Flying Corps, killed here behind the German lines 
 on July 19, 191 5. 
 
 The Old Women of Tincourt 
 
 March 29 
 One scene on the roadside of war will remain sharp in my 
 memory among all these scenes in the wilderness which the 
 Germans have made behind them, through which I have 
 been passing. It is because of the courage of old women 
 who sat there on the way. 
 
 It was beyond Peronne, and through the open country 
 where our cavalry patrols are working, and in the village 
 of Tincourt. Up beyond Lagnicourt the guns yesterday 
 were firing heavily, and sharp gusts of wind blew forward 
 the noise of a greater and farther bombardment, deep and 
 low. Quite close, the village of Roisel, taken by our troops 
 the day before, was still smouldering, and all around for 
 miles was the long black trail of war with hundreds of vil- 
 lages and farmsteads laid low by fire and dynamite before 
 the Germans left them in retreat. But in Tincourt only 
 the outer streets and the neighbouring, separate buildings 
 had been destroyed. The main part of the village was still 
 standing, though the enemy had shelled it a little the day 
 before. When I came into it I saw that it was one of the 
 few places left by the Germans, because it was a concen- 
 
ON THE TRAn. OF THE ENEMY 103 
 
 tration camp of civilians driven in from other villages 
 while they were being smashed. 
 
 The people were gathered about the roadway, about two 
 hundred of them, sitting or standing among piles of 
 bundles, like refugees in the old days of the war. There 
 were many old, old women among them in black dresses 
 and bonnets, and a group of young girls, of fifteen or so, 
 and small boys and children in arms. They were looking 
 down the road anxiously, and I found that they were wait- 
 ing for British lorries and ambulances to take them away' 
 to safer country, beyond the reach of German shell-fire. 
 They were people who had just been liberated from hostile 
 rule. The grey tide of the German army had swept back 
 from them, and they found themselves once again free 
 people of France, with news of France, and of the world 
 on the other side of the trenches and the wire i^^hich for 
 two years and a half had shut them in with the enemy. 
 
 I spoke with the old women, these brave old grand- 
 mothers who were sitting homeless and houseless on their 
 bundles in the midst of a ruined, countryside, within reach 
 of the guns. They were not weeping but smiling. They 
 were not afraid but scornful of the perils through which 
 they had passed. 
 
 They were thin because they had stinted for their grand- 
 children, and they had suffered great misery, but they held 
 their old grey heads high, and said, "For our sons' sake we 
 endured all things." 
 
 They are the grandmothers of the babes who know noth- 
 ing of all this war, and one day will be told, and the 
 mothers of men who have fought and died, and who fight 
 and die with supreme self-sacrifice in the shambles of this 
 war. They are women worthy of hero sons, themselves 
 heroic. They were not passionate against the enemy, only 
 contemptuous of him, and of his rule of them. They liked 
 some of the German soldiers and made no accusations of 
 individual brutality, but cursed the spirit which had laid 
 waste their villages, and destroyed their houses and 
 
104 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 orchards, and taken away their young girls and all men 
 to the age of fifty. They spoke with the dispassionate 
 eloquence of people who have been in earthquakes and ship- 
 wrecks and tornadoes. German cruelty was natural, in- 
 evitable, and unarguable, and the soldiers who had done 
 these things were the slaves of the fate which ordained 
 their acts. 
 
 "I was taken to Roisel from my own village farther 
 back," said one old lady. 'They burnt my house and my 
 neighbours' houses and drove us forward. Roisel was all 
 in flames when we passed through. The fires came out of 
 the houses, and the heat of them scorched us. Then we 
 came to Tincourt, and yesterday they shelled us. The lit- 
 tle ones were afraid. Our young girls were weeping and 
 full of terror. 
 
 "You will understand that it is hard to see one's village 
 destroyed, and to see one's sisters taken away, and not to 
 know what is to happen next. For us old women it was not 
 so bad. We are too old to weep, having wept too much. 
 We thought of our sons who have died for France. We 
 showed ourjscorn for the enemy by hiding our fear." 
 
 "They know they are beaten," said the old ladies. "They 
 ask always for peace. They are afraid of the punishment 
 which God holds in store for them for all this wickedness." 
 
 "Yes," said one of the old women, "they will be 
 punished. What we have suffered they will suffer. All 
 this" — she thrust up a skinny hand towards the ruined land 
 behind her — "must be paid for." 
 
 "It is William who will pay," said another old woman, 
 "with his head." 
 
 It was like the talk of the Greek Fates, the three old 
 women who held the thread and spun the thread and 
 snipped the thread — this talk of the old women of Tin- 
 court, so passionless, so hard, so fair, so certain. But I 
 marvelled at their courage, sitting there on their bundles. 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 105 
 
 after tramping away from their blazing homesteads, wait- 
 ing for British lorries to take them away from a place 
 which, even then, was registered by German guns, with 
 the young girls, and the babies who were born under hos- 
 tile rule. 
 
 7 
 The Agony of War 
 
 March 31 
 I AM moved to write again of the old men and women and 
 of the young women and children who have been liberated 
 by our advance, because I have just been among these peo- 
 ple again, seeing their tears, hearing their pitiful tales, 
 touched by hands which plucked my sleeve so that I should 
 listen to another story of outrage and misery. 
 
 All they told me, and all I have seen, builds up into a 
 great tragedy. These young girls, who wept before me, 
 shaken by the terror of their remembrance, these old brave 
 men, who cried like children, these old women who did 
 not weep but spoke with strange, smiling eyes as to life's 
 great ironies, revealed to me in a fuller way the enormous 
 agony of life behind the German lines now shifted back a 
 little so that these people have escaped. It is an agony 
 which includes the German soldiers, themselves enslaved, 
 wretched, disillusionized men, under the great doom which 
 has killed so many of their brothers, ordered to do the 
 things many of them loathe to do, brutal by order even 
 when they have gentle instincts, doing kind things by 
 stealth, afraid of punishment for charity, stricken both by 
 fear and hunger. 
 
 "Why do you go?" they were asked by one of the women 
 who have been speaking to me. 
 
 ''Because we hope to escape the new British attacks," 
 they answered. "The English gun-fire smashed us to death 
 on the Somme. The officers know we cannot stand that 
 horror a second time." 
 
 They spoke as men horribly afraid. 
 
106 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 **I was the bailiff of Mme. la Marquise de Caulaincourt," 
 said an elderly man, taking off his peaked cap to show me 
 a coronet on the badge. "When the Germans came first to 
 our village they seized all the tools, and all the farm-carts, 
 and all the harvesting, and then they forced us all to work 
 for them, the men at three sous an hour, the women at two 
 sous an hour, and prison for any who refused to work. 
 From the chateau they sent back the tapestries, the pic- 
 tures, and anything which pleased this Commandant or 
 that, until there was nothing left. Then in the last days 
 they burnt the chateau to the ground and all the village 
 and all the orchards." 
 
 "It was the same always," said a woman. "There were 
 processions of carts covered with linen, and underneath 
 the linen was the furniture stolen from good houses." 
 
 "Fourteen days ago," said an old man who had tears in 
 his eyes as he spoke, "I passed the night in the cemetery 
 of Vraignes. There were one thousand and fifteen of us 
 people from neighbouring villages, some in the church and 
 some in the cemetery. They searched us there and took all 
 our money. Some of the women were stripped and 
 searched. In the cemetery it was a cold night and dark, 
 but all around the sky was flaming with the fire of 
 our villages — ^rauilly, Bouvincourt, Marteville, Trefgon, 
 Monchy, Bernes, Hancourt, and many more. The people 
 with me wept and cried out loud to see their dear places 
 burning and all this hell. Terrible explosions came to our 
 ears. There were mines everywhere under the roads. Then 
 Vraignes was set on fire and burnt around us, and we were 
 stricken with a great terror. Next day the English came 
 when the last Uhlans had left. *The English !' we shouted, 
 and ran forward to meet them, stumbling, with outstretched 
 hands. Soon shells began to fall in Vraignes. The enemy 
 was firing upon us, and some of the shells fell very close 
 to a barn quite full of women and children. 'Come away,' 
 said your English soldiers, and we fled farther." 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 107 
 
 Russian prisoners were brought to work behind the 
 lines, and some French prisoners. They were so badly fed 
 that they were too weak to work. 
 
 "Poor devils!" said a young Frenchwoman. "It made 
 my heart ache to see them." 
 
 She watched a French prisoner one day through her 
 window. He was so faint that he staggered and dropped 
 his pick. A German sentry knocked him down with a 
 violent blow on the ear. The young Frenchwoman opened 
 the window, and the blood rushed to her head. 
 
 "Sale bete !" she cried to the German sentry. 
 
 He spoke French and understood, and came under the 
 window. 
 
 " 'Sale bete' ? . . . For those words you shall go to 
 prison, madame." 
 
 She repeated the words, and called him a monster, and 
 at last the man spoke in a shamed way and said : 
 
 "Que voulez-vous? C'est la guerre. C'est cruelle, la 
 guerre !" 
 
 This man had kinder comrades. Pitying the Russian 
 prisoners, they gave them stealthily a little brandy and 
 cigarettes, and some who were caught did two hours' ex- 
 tra drill each day for a fortnight. 
 
 "My three sisters were taken away when the Germans 
 left," said a young girl. She spoke her sisters' names, 
 Yvonne, Juliette, and Madeleine, and said they were eight- 
 een and twenty-two and twenty-seven, and then, turning 
 away from me, wept very bitterly. 
 
 "They are my daughters," said a middle-aged woman. 
 "When they were taken away I went a little mad. My 
 pretty girls ! And all our neighbours' daughters have gone, 
 up from sixteen years of age, and all the men-folk up to 
 fifty. They have gone to slavery, and for the girls it is a 
 great peril. How can they escape?" 
 
 How can one write of these things? For the women it 
 was always worst. Many of them had surpassing courage, 
 but some were weak and some were bad. The bad women 
 
108 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 preyed on the others in a way so vile that it seems incred- 
 ible. There was no distinction of class or sex in the forced 
 labour of the harvest-fields, and delicate women of good 
 families were forced to labour on the soil with girls strong 
 and used to this toil. There were many who died of weak- 
 ness and pneumonia and under-feeding. 
 
 "Are you not afraid of being called barbarians for ever?" 
 asked a woman of a German officer who had not been 
 brutal, but, like others, had tried to soften the hardships 
 of the people. 
 
 "Madame," he said very gravely, "we act under the or- 
 ders of people greater than ourselves, and we are bound 
 to obey, because otherwise we should be shot. But we hate 
 the cruelty of war, and we hate those who have made it. 
 One day we will make them pay for the vile things we have 
 had to do." 
 
 What strange little dramas, what tragic stories I have 
 heard in these recent days! I have told the tale of one 
 old priest. Here is the tale of another, as he told it to me 
 in the midst of ruin. 
 
 He is the Abbe Barbe, of Muille, near Ham. In the 
 neighbourhood was an enemy, too, a Frenchman, who was 
 once a Christian brother, and now, unfrocked, a drunkard 
 and a debauchee. He accused the abbe of having a tele- 
 phone in his cellar from which he sent messages to Paris 
 about German military secrets. One night there came a 
 bang at the door of the abbe's study. Five soldiers en- 
 tered with fixed bayonets and arrested the old priest. He 
 was taken to the fortress of Ham and put into a dark cell 
 with one small iron grating and a plank bed. Here he was 
 interrogated by a German officer, who told him of the 
 grave accusation against him. 
 
 "Search my cellars," said the abbe. "If there is a tele- 
 phone there, shoot me as a spy. If not, set me free, after 
 your court martial." 
 
 There was no court martial. After four days in the 
 darkness the abbe was taken away by German soldiers and 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 109 
 
 set down, not at Muille, but at Voyennes, ten kilometres or 
 so away, and forbidden to go back to his village or his 
 church. He went back a few days ago, when the Germans 
 left. When he went into his house he found that it had 
 been sacked. All the rare old books in his library had been 
 burnt. There was nothing left to him. 
 
 "Sir," said a sister of charity, *'these people whom you 
 see here were brave but tortured in spirit and in body. Be- 
 yond the German lines they have lived in continual fear 
 and servitude. The tales which they have told us must 
 make the good God weep at the wickedness of his creatures. 
 There will be a special place in hell, perhaps, for the Em- 
 peror William and his gang of bandits." 
 
 She spoke the words as a pious aspiration, this little pale 
 woman with meek and kindly eyes, in her nunis dresa 
 
 8 
 
 Cavalry in Action 
 
 April 2 
 Our troops ha^e advanced smce yesterday on to a line of 
 high ground overlooking St.-Quentin and sweeping in a 
 curve round the wood of Holnon, which is the last strong 
 point between us and the trenches immediately before the 
 cathedral city. This morning our outposts were in Bihu- 
 court and Villecholles, and advancing to Maissemy, thereby 
 holding all the roads except one on the western side of the 
 Hindenburg-Siegfried line between Peronne and St.- 
 Quentin. Our enemy is shelling the villages from which 
 he has lately retired with lone-range guns, and we are now 
 drawing very close to his new line of trenches and fixed 
 positions. 
 
 Northwards of Peronne and cast of Bapaume our troops 
 have taken Doignies, above the forest of Havrincourt, and 
 hold Neuville and Ruyaulcourt to the south of it, so that 
 this great wood is encircled like that of Holnon; and the 
 
110 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 enemy must escape quickly from the shelter of the trees or 
 be trapped there. 
 
 Northwards again, above Bapaume, we have made to-day 
 a heavy and successful attack south-east of Croisilles, where 
 a few days ago there was sharp fighting and several Ger- 
 man counter-attacks, because the position threatens that 
 sector of the Hindenburg line which is immediately behind 
 the village striking down at an angle south-eastwards in 
 front of Queant, from which we are three miles distant. 
 Two small villages below Croisilles, named Longatte and 
 Ecoust-St.-Mien, have also fallen to us. 
 
 Our attack to-day was preceded by great gun-fire, and 
 the enemy has defended himself with desperate courage, 
 acting upon Hindenburg' s orders that the position must be 
 held at all costs. We have brought back over a hundred 
 prisoners, and have inflicted great losses upon the garrison. 
 
 One of the most interesting and extraordinary features 
 in all the fighting east of Bapaume has been the work of 
 our cavalry squadrons in reconnaissance and attack. I con- 
 fess that, after two and a half years of trench warfare, I 
 was utterly sceptical of the value of mounted troops, in 
 spite of the little stunt (as they called i.) south of High 
 Wood, after we took the Bazentins and Longueval in July 
 of last year, when the Royal Dragoons and Deccan Horse 
 rode out and brought back prisoners. Conditions have 
 changed since then by a great transformation scene, owing 
 to the enemy's abandonment of his old fortress positions 
 on the Somme under our frightful onslaught of gun-fire. 
 The country into which we have now gone is beyond the 
 great wide bfelt of shell-craters, which made the battlefields 
 of the Somme a wild quagmire of deep pits and ponds. The 
 roads between the ruined villages are wonderfully smooth 
 and good where they have not been mined, and the fields 
 are as nature and French husbandry left them after last 
 year's harvest. Then there has been a glorious absence of 
 heavy shell-fire while the enemy has been drawing back his 
 guns to emplacements behind the Hindenburg line ; and this 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE ENEMY 111 
 
 to cavalry, as well as to infantry, makes all the difference 
 between heaven and hell. So the cavalry has had its chance 
 again after the old far-off days when they rode up the 
 Mont des Cats and chased Uhlans through Meteren, and 
 scouted along the Messines Ridge in the autumn of 1914. 
 There have been no great sensational episodes, no shock 
 of lance against lance in dense masses, no cutting up of 
 rear-guards nor slashing into a routed army, but there 
 has been a great deal of good scouting work during the 
 past three weeks. Eight villages have been taken by the 
 Canadian cavalry under General Seely, and they have cap- 
 tured a number of prisoners and machine-guns. They have 
 liked their hunting. I have seen the Indian cavalry riding 
 across the fields with their lances high, and it was a great 
 sight, and as strange as an Arabian Nights tale in this 
 land of France, to see those streams of brown-bearded men, 
 as handsome as fairy-book princes, with the wind blowing 
 their khaki turbans. 
 
 Night after night our cavalry have gone out In patrols, 
 the leader ahead and alone; two men following; behind 
 them a small body keeping in touch. They ride silently 
 like shadows, with no clatter of stirrup or chink of bit. 
 They find the gaps in the enemy's wire, creep close ^j his 
 infantry outposts, ride very deftly into the charred ruins 
 of abandoned villages, and come back with their news of 
 the enemy's whereabouts. A week ago one of their patrols 
 went into the Forest of Holnon, which is still held by the 
 enemy, and listened to Germans talking. Our men were 
 undiscovered. They took the villages by sweeping round 
 on both sides in a great gallop, with their lances down, and 
 the enemy fled at the first sight of them. 
 
 When the cavalry charged at Equancourt, a body of 
 British infantry, who had come on to the ground six hours 
 earlier than they need have done, in order (as they said) 
 not to miss the show, cheered them on with the wildest en- 
 thusiasm. 
 
 "Look at those beggars," shouted one man as the cavalry 
 
112 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 swept past; "that's the way to take a village. No blighted 
 bombs for them, and hell for leather all the way !" 
 
 It, was a difficult operation, this taking of Equancourt, 
 and was carried out in the best cavalry style according to 
 the old traditions. The village and a little wood in the 
 front of it were held by Germans with machine-guns, and 
 another village to the right named Sorel was defended in 
 the same way, and commanded the field of fire before 
 Equancourt. The cavalry had two spurs of ground in front 
 of them divided by two narrow gullies, or re-entrants. One 
 gully ran straight to the village of Equancourt, but was di- 
 rectly in front of the German machine-gun emplacements. 
 The other gully was to the right, and it was through this 
 that the cavalry rode, sweeping round in a curve to Equan- 
 court. Before their charge of two parties, a third party 
 was posted on the left on rising ground, and swept the 
 wood below Equancourt with machine-gun fire, and a 
 smaller body of cavalry to the right occupied the attention 
 of the enemy in Sorel in the same way. Then the two 
 attacking parties were launched, and rode hard at a pace 
 of twenty-three miles an hour. 
 
 The enemy did not stand. After a few bursts of ma- 
 chine-gun fire, which only hit a few of our mounted men, 
 they fled behind the shelter of a railway embankment be- 
 yond the village, and most of them escaped. 
 
 All this is an interlude between greater and grimmer 
 things. We have not yet come to the period of real open 
 warfare, but have only passed over a wide belt of No 
 Man's Land: and the fantasy of cavalry skirmishes and 
 wandering Germans and civilians greeting us with out- 
 stretched hands from ruined villages will soon be closed 
 by the wire and walls of the Hindenburg line, where once 
 again the old fortress and siege warfare will begin, unless 
 we have the luck to turn it or break through before the 
 Siegfried divisions have finished their fortifications. 
 
PART III 
 THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 
 
 Arras and the Vimy Ridge 
 
 April 9 
 To-day at dawn our armies began a battle which, if Fate 
 has any kindness for the world, may be the beginning of 
 the last great battles of the war. Our troops attacked on a 
 wide front including the Vimy Ridge — that grim hill whiph 
 dominates the plain of Douai and the coalfields of Lens — 
 and the German positions around Arras. In spite of bad 
 fortune in the weather at the beginning of the day, so bad 
 that there was no visibility for the airmen, and our men 
 had to struggle forward in a heavy rain-storm, the first 
 attacks have been successful, and the enemy has lost much 
 ground, falling back in retreat to strong rear-guard lines 
 where he is now fighting desperately. 
 
 The line of our attack covers a front of some twelve 
 miles southwards from Givenchy-en-Gohelle, and is a 
 sledge-hammer blow threatening to break the northern end 
 of the Hindenburg line, already menaced round St.-Quentin. 
 As soon as the enemy was forced to retreat from the 
 country east of Bapaume and Peronne, in order to escape a 
 decisive blow on that line, he hurried up divisions and 
 guns northwards to counter our attack there, while he pre- 
 pared a new line of defence known as the Wotan line, as 
 the southern part of the Hindenburg line, which joins it, 
 is known as the Siegfried position, after two great heroes 
 of old German mythology. He hoped to escape there be- 
 
 "3 
 
114 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 fore our new attack was ready, but we have been too quick 
 for him, and his own plans were frustrated. So to-day be- 
 gan another titanic conflict which the world will hold its 
 breath to watch, because of all that hangs upon it. 
 
 I have seen the fury of this beginning, and all the sky 
 on fire with it, the most tragic and frightful sight that men 
 have ever seen, with an infernal splendour beyond words 
 to tell. The bombardment which went before the infantry 
 assault lasted for several days, and reached a great height 
 yesterday, when coming from the south I saw it for the 
 first time. I went up in darkness long before l-ight broke 
 to-day to watch the opening of the battle. It was very cold, 
 with a sharp wind blowing from the south-east and rain- 
 squalls. The roads were quiet until I drew near to Arras, 
 and then onwards there was the traffic of marching men 
 going up to the fighting-lines, and of their transport col- 
 umns, and of many ambulances. In darkness there were 
 hundreds of little red lights, the glow of cigarette ends. 
 Every now and then one of the men would strike a match, 
 holding it in the hollow of his hands and bending his head 
 to it, so that his face was illumined — one of our English 
 faces, clear-cut and strong. The wind blew sparks from 
 cigarette ends like fireflies. Outside one camp a battalion 
 was marching away, a regiment of shadow-forms, and on 
 the bank above them the band was playing them out with 
 fifes and drums, such a merry little tune, so whimsical and 
 yet so sad also in the heart of it, as it came trilling out of 
 darkness. On each side of me as I passed by men were 
 deeply massed, and they were whistling and singing and 
 calling out to each other. Away before them were the 
 fires of death, to which they were going very steadily, 
 with a tune on their lips, carrying their rifles and shovels 
 and iron rations, while the rain played a tattoo on their 
 steel hats. 
 
 I went to a place a little outside Arras on the west side. 
 It was not quite dark, because there was a kind of suf- 
 fused light from the hidden moon, so that I could see the 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 115 
 
 black mass of the cathedral city, the storm-centre of this 
 battle, and away behind me to the left the tall, broken 
 towers of Mont-St-Eloi, white and ghostly looking, across 
 to the Vimy Ridge. The bombardment was now in full 
 blast. It was a beautiful and devilish thing, and the beauty 
 of it and not the evil of it put a spell upon one's senses. All 
 our batteries, too many to count, were firing, and thou- 
 sands of gun-flashes were winking and blinking from the 
 hollows and hiding-places, and all their shells were rush- 
 ing through the sky as though flocks of great birds were 
 in flight, and all were bursting over German positions, with 
 long flames which rent the darkness and waved sword- 
 blades of quivering light along the ridges. The earth 
 opened, and pools of red fire gushed out. Star-shells burst 
 magnificently, pouring down golden rain. Mines exploded 
 east and west of Arras, and in a wide sweep from Vimy 
 Ridge to Blangy southwards, and voluminous clouds, all 
 bright with a glory of infernal fire, rolled up to the sky. 
 The wind blew strongly across, beating back the noise of 
 guns, but the air was all filled with the deep roar and the 
 slamming knocks of single heavies and the drum-fire of 
 field-guns. 
 
 The first attack was at 5.30. Officers were looking at 
 their wrist-watches as on a day in July last year. The 
 earth lightened. In rank grass, looking white and old, 
 scrubs of barbed wire were black on it. A few minutes be- 
 fore 5.30 the guns almost ceased fire, so that there was a 
 strange, solemn hush. We waited, and pulses beat faster 
 than second-hands. "They're away," said a voice by my 
 side. The bombardment broke out again with new and 
 enormous effects of fire and sound. The enemy was shell- 
 ing Arras heavily, and black shrapnel and high explosives 
 came over from his lines. But our gun-fire was twenty 
 times as great. Around the whole sweep of his lines green 
 lights rose. They were signals of distress, and his men 
 were calling for help. It was dawn now, but clouded and 
 storm-swept. A few airmen came out with the wind tear- 
 
116 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 ing at their wings, but they could see nothing in the mist 
 and driven rain. I went down to the outer ramparts of 
 Arras. The eastern suburb of Blangy was already in our 
 hands. On the higher ground beyond our men were fight- 
 ing forward. I saw two waves of infantry advancing 
 against the enemy's trenches, preceded by our barrage of 
 field-guns. They went in a slow, leisurely way, not hurried, 
 though the enemy's shrapnel was searching for them. 
 
 "Grand fellows," said an officer lying next to me on 
 the wet slope. "Oh, topping!" 
 
 Fifteen minutes afterwards groups of men came back. 
 They were British wounded and German prisoners. They 
 were met on the roadside by medical officers, who patched 
 them up there and then before they were taken to the field- 
 hospitals in ambulances. From these men, hit by shrapnel 
 and machine-gun bullets, I heard the first news of progress. 
 They were bloody and exhausted, but claimed success, 
 
 "We did fine," said one of them. "We were through 
 the fourth lines before I was knocked out." 
 
 "Not many Germans in the first trenches," said another, 
 "and no real trenches either, after our shelling. We had 
 knocked their dug-outs out, and their dead were lying thick, 
 and living ones put their hands up." 
 
 There were Tanks in action. Some of the men had seen 
 them crawling forward over the open country, and then had 
 lost sight of them. In the night the enemy had with- 
 drawn all but his rear-guard posts to the trenches farther 
 back, where he resisted fiercely with incessant machine-gun 
 fire. The enemy's trench system south of Arras was 
 enormously strong, but our bombardment had pounded it, 
 and our men went through to the reserve support trench, 
 and then on to the chain of posts in front of the Hangest 
 Trench, which was strongly held, and after heavy fighting 
 with bombs and bayonets to the Observatory Ridge, from 
 which for two years and a half the enemy has looked down, 
 directing the fire of his batteries against the French and 
 British positions. Our storm troops in this part of the 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 117 
 
 line were all men of the old English county regiments — 
 Norfolks, Suffolks, Essex, Berkshires, Sussex, Middlesex, 
 Queen's, Buffs, and Royal West Kents of the 12th Divi- 
 sion. There was fierce fighting in Tilloy, to the south of 
 Arras, by the Suffolks, Shropshire Light Infantry, and 
 Royal Welsh Fusiliers of the 3rd Division, and afterwards 
 they were held up by machine-gun fire from two formidable 
 positions called the "Harp" and 'Telegraph Hill," the 
 former being a fortress of trenches shaped like an Irish 
 harp, the latter rising to a high mound. These were taken 
 by English troops and the Scots of the 15th Division, with 
 the help of Tanks, which advanced upon them in their 
 leisurely way, climbed up banks and over parapets, sitting 
 for a while to rest and then waddling forward again, shak- 
 ing machine-gun bullets from steel flanks, and pouring 
 deadly fire into the enemy's positions, and so mastering 
 the ground. 
 
 North of the Scarpe (north-east of Arras) the whole 
 system of trenches was taken; and north again, along the 
 Vimy Ridge, the Canadians and Highlanders of the 51st 
 Division achieved a heroic success by gaining this high 
 dominating ground, which w^as the scene of some of the 
 fiercest French battles in the first part of the war, and which 
 is a great w^all defending Douai. It was reckoned up to 
 noon to-day that over 3000 prisoners had been taken. They 
 are streaming down to prisoners' camps, and to our men 
 who pass them on the roads they are the best proofs of a 
 victorious day. 
 
 Those of us who knew what would happen to-day — the 
 beginning of another series of battles greater perhaps than 
 the struggle of the Somme — found ourselves yesterday filled 
 with a tense, restless emotion. Some of us smiled with a 
 kind of tragic irony, because it was Easter Sunday. In 
 little villages behind the battle lines the bells of French 
 churches were ringing glady because the Lord had risen; 
 and on the altar steps priests were reciting the old words 
 
118 FROM BAPAmiE TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 of faith, "Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum ! Alleluia !" The 
 earth was glad yesterday. For the first time this year the 
 sun had a touch of warmth in it — though patches of snow 
 still stayed white under the shelter of the banks — and the 
 sky was blue, and the light glinted on wet tree-trunks and 
 in the furrows of the new-ploughed earth. As I went up 
 the road to the battle lines I passed a battalion of our men 
 — ^the men who are fighting to-day — standing in a hollow 
 square with bowed heads, while the chaplain conducted the 
 Easter service. It was Easter Sunday, but no truce of God. 
 I went to a field outside Arras, and looked into the ruins 
 of the cathedral city. The cathedral itself stood clear in 
 the sunlight, with a deep black shadow where its roof and 
 aisles had been. Beyond was a ragged pinnacle of stone — 
 the once glorious town hall and a French barracks — and 
 all the broken streets going out to the Cambrai road. It 
 was hell in Arras, though Easter Sunday. The enemy was 
 flinging high explosives into the city, and clouds of shrap- 
 nel burst above, black and green. All around the country, 
 too, his shells were exploding in a scattered, aimless way. 
 and from our side there was a heavy bombardment all 
 along the Vimy Ridge, above Neuville-St.-Vaast, and sweep- 
 ing round above St.-Nicholas and Blangy, two suburbs of 
 Arras, and then south-west of the city on the ridge above 
 the road to Cambrai. It was one continuous roar of death, 
 and all the batteries were firing steadily. I watched our 
 shells burst, and some of them were monstrous, raising 
 great lingering clouds above the German lines. 
 
 There was one figure in this landscape of war who made 
 some ofiicers about me laugh. He was a French plough- 
 man who upholds the tradition of war. Zola saw him in 
 1870, and I have seen him on the edge of the other bat- 
 tlefields; and here he was again driving a pair of sturdy 
 horses and his plough across the sloping field — not a fur- 
 long away from the town where the German shells were 
 raising rosy clouds of brick-dust. So he gave praise to the 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 119 
 
 Lord on Easter morning, and prepared the harvests which 
 shall be gathered after the war. 
 
 All behind the front of battle was a great traffic, and all 
 that modern warfare means in the organization and prepa- 
 ration of an enormous operation was here in movement. I 
 had just come from our outpost lines down south from the 
 silence of that great desert which the enemy has left in the 
 wake of his retreat, east of Bapaume and Peronne, and 
 from that open warfare with village fighting, where small 
 bodies of our infantry and cavalry have been clearing the 
 countryside of rear-guard posts. Here, round about Ar- 
 ras, was the concentration for the old form of battle at- 
 tack upon entrenched positions, fortified hills and strong 
 natural fortresses, defended by massed guns as before the 
 battles of the Somme. For miles on the way to the front 
 were great camps, great stores, and restless activity every- 
 where. Supply columns of food for men and guns moved 
 forward in an endless tide. Transport mules passed in 
 long trails. Field-batteries went up to add to the mass of 
 metal ready to pour fire upon the German lines. It was 
 a vast circus of the world's great war, and everything that 
 belongs to the machinery of killing streamed on and on. 
 Columns of ambulances for the rescue, and not for that 
 other side of the business, came in procession, followed 
 by an army of stretcher-bearers, more than I have ever 
 seen before, marching cheerily as though in a pageant. In 
 some of the ambulances were Army nurses, and men march- 
 ing on the roads waved their hands to them, and they 
 laughed and waved back. In the fields by the roadsides 
 men were resting, lying on the wet earth, between two 
 spells of a long march or encamped in rest, the same kind 
 of men whom I saw on July i of last year, some of them 
 the same men — our boys, clean-shaven, grey-eyed, so 
 young-looking, so splendid to see. Some of them sat be- 
 tween their stacked rifles writing letters home. And the 
 tide of traffic passed them and flowed on to the edge of 
 the battlefields, where to-day they are fighting. 
 
120 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 April io 
 The enemy has lost already nearly 10,000 prisoners and 
 more than half a himdred guns, and in dead and wounded 
 his losses are great. He is in retreat south of the Vimy 
 Ridge to defensive lines farther back, and as he goes our 
 guns are smashing him along the roads. During the night 
 the Canadians gained the last point, called Hill 145, on the 
 Vimy Ridge, where the Germans held out in a pocket with 
 machine-guns, and this morning the whole of that high 
 ridge, which dominates the plains to Douai, is in our hands, 
 so that there is removed from our path the high barrier for 
 which the French and ourselves have fought through bloody 
 years. Yesterday before daylight and afterwards I saw 
 this ridge of Vimy all on fire with the light of great gim- 
 fire. The enemy was there in strength, and his guns were 
 answering ours with a heavy barrage of high explosives. 
 This morning the scene was changed as by a miracle. Snow 
 was falling, blown gustily across the battlefields, and 
 powdering the capes and helmets of our men as they rode 
 or marched forward to the front. But presently sunlight 
 broke through the storm-clouds and flooded all the country- 
 side by Neuville-St.-Vaast and Thelus and La Folic Farm, 
 up to the crest of the ridge, where the Canadians and High- 
 landers of the 51st Division had just fought their way 
 with such high valour. Our batteries were firing front 
 many hiding-places, revealed by short, sharp flashes of 
 light, but few answering shells came back, and the ridge 
 itself, patched with snowdrift, was quiet as any hill of 
 peace. It was astounding to think that not a single Ger- 
 man stayed up there out of all those who had held it yester- 
 day, unless some poor wounded devils still cower in the 
 deep tunnels which pierce the hill-side. It was almost un- 
 believable to me, who have known the evil of this high 
 ridge month after month and year after year, and the 
 deadly menace which lurked about its lower slopes. Yet I 
 saw proof below, where all Germans who had been there 
 at dawn yesterday, thousands of them, were down in our 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 121 
 
 lines, drawn up in battalions, marshalling themselves, grin- 
 ning at the fate which had come to them and spared their 
 lives. 
 
 The Canadian attack yesterday was astoundingly success- 
 ful, and carried out by high-spirited men, the victors of 
 Courcelette in the battles of the Somme, who had before the 
 advance an utter and joyous confidence of victory. On their 
 right were the Highland Brigades of the 51st Division who 
 fought at Beaumont-Hamel, and who shared the honour 
 of that day with the Canadians, taking as many prisoners 
 and gaining a great part of the ridge. They went away 
 at dawn, through the mud and rain which made scarecrows 
 of them. They followed close and warily to the barrage 
 of our guns, the most stupendous line of fire ever seen, and 
 by 6.30 they had taken their first objectives, which included 
 the whole front-line system of German trenches above 
 Neuville-St.-Vaast, by La Folic Farm and La Folic Wood, 
 and up by Thelus, where they met with fierce resistance. 
 The German garrisons were for the most part in long, deep 
 tunnels, pierced through the hill as assembly ditches. There 
 were hundreds of them in Prinz Arnault Tunnel, and hun- 
 dreds more in Great Volker Tunnel, but as the Canadians 
 and Scots surged up to them with wave after wave of 
 bayonets German soldiers streamed out and came running 
 forward with hands up. They were eager to surrender, 
 and their great desire was to get down from Vimy Ridge 
 and the barrage of their own guns. That barrage fell 
 heavily and fiercely upon the Turco Trench, but too late to 
 do much damage to our men, who had already gone be- 
 yond it. The Canadian casualties on the morning of at- 
 tack were not heavy in comparison with the expected losses, 
 though, God knows, heavy enough, but the German prison- 
 ers were glad to pay for the gift of life by carrying our 
 wounded back. The eagerness of these men was pitiful, 
 and now and then grotesque. At least the Canadian escorts 
 found good laughing matter in the enormous numbers of 
 men they had to guard and in the way the prisoners them- 
 
1^2 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 selves directed the latest comers to barbed-wire enclosures, 
 and with deep satisfaction acted as masters of the cere- 
 mony to their own captivity. I have never seen such cheer- 
 ful prisoners, although for the most part they were with- 
 out overcoats and in a cold blizzard of snow. They were 
 joking with each other, and in high good humour, because 
 life with all its hardships was dear to them, and they had 
 the luck of life. They were of all sizes and ages and types. 
 I saw elderly, whiskered men with big spectacles, belong- 
 ing to the professor tribe, and young lads who ought to 
 have been in German high schools. Some of their faces 
 looked very wizened and small beneath their great shrapnel 
 helmets. Many of them looked ill and starved, but others 
 were tall, stout, hefty fellows, who should have made good 
 fighting men if they had any stomach for the job. There 
 were many officers standing apart. Canadians took over 
 two hundred of them, among whom were several forward 
 observing officers, very bad tempered with their luck, be- 
 cause the men had not told them they were going to bolt 
 and had left them in front positions. All officers were 
 disconcerted because of the cheerfulness of the men at be- 
 ing taken. I talked with a few of them. They told me of 
 the horrors of living under our bombardment. Some of 
 them had been without food for four days, because our 
 gun-fire had boxed them in. 
 
 "When do you think the war will end?" I asked one of 
 them. 
 
 "When the English are in Berlin," he answered, and I 
 think he meant that that would be a long time. 
 
 Another officer said, "In two months," and gave no rea- 
 son for his certainty. 
 
 "What about America?" I asked one of them. He 
 shrugged his shoulders, and said, "It is bad for us, very 
 bad ; but, after all, America can't send an army across the 
 ocean." 
 
 At this statement Canadian soldiers standing around 
 laughed loudly, and said, "Don't you believe it, old sport. 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 123 
 
 We have come along to fight you, and the Yankees will do 
 the same." 
 
 By three o'clock in the afternoon the Canadians and 
 the Highland Brigades had gained the whole of the ridge 
 except the high strong post on the left of Hill 145, cap- 
 tured during the night. Our gun-fire had helped them by 
 breaking down all the wire, even round Heroes' Wood and 
 Count's Wood, where it was very thick and strong. Thelus 
 was wiped utterly off the map. This morning Canadian 
 patrols pushed in a snow-storm through Farbus Wood, and 
 established outposts on the railway embankment. Some of 
 the bravest work was done by forward observing officers, 
 who climbed to the top of Vimy Ridge as soon as it was 
 captured, and through the heavy fire barrages reported 
 back to the artillery all the movements seen by them in 
 the country below. 
 
 In spite of the wild day, our flying men were riding the 
 storm and signalling to the gunners who were rushing up 
 their field-guns. ''Our 60-pounders," said a Canadian Of- 
 ficer, ''had the day of their lives." They found many 
 targets. There were trains moving in Vimy village and 
 they hit them. There were troops massing on sloping 
 ground and they were shattered. There were guns and 
 limber on the move, and men and horses were killed." 
 
 Above all the prisoners taken yesterday by the English, 
 Scottish, and Canadian troops the enemy's losses were 
 frightful, and the scenes behind his lines must have been 
 hideous in slaughter and terror. On the right of Arras 
 there was hard and costly fighting in Blangy and Tilloy 
 and onwards to Feuchy. On this side the Germans fought 
 most fiercely, and the Shropshires, Suffolks, Royal Fusi- 
 liers, and Welsh Fusiliers of the 3rd Division were held up 
 near Feuchy Chapel and other strong points until our gun- 
 fire knocked out these works and made way for them. 
 Fifty-four guns were taken here on the east side of Arras, 
 and to-day the pursuit of the beaten enemy continues. 
 
1«4 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Londoners Through the German Lines 
 
 The Londoners' attack at dawn was one of the splendid 
 episodes of the battle. They went through the German 
 lines in long waves, and streamed forward like a living tide, 
 very quick and very far, taking a thousand prisoners on 
 their way through Neuville-Vitasse and Mercatel. Later 
 in the day they were held up in their right flank by enfilade 
 fire, as the troops on their right were in difficulties against 
 uncut wire and machine-guns, and from that time onwards 
 the London men of the 56th Division had perilous hours 
 and hard, costly fighting. They were forced to extend 
 beyond their line on the left to join up the gap between 
 themselves and the troops to their north, and to work down 
 with bombing parties on the right to gain ground in which 
 the Germans were holding out desperately and inflicting 
 many casualties on our men. In the centre the 56th Divi- 
 sion was ordered to attack fortified villages from which 
 machine-gun bullets swept the ground and where our as- 
 sault was checked by stout belts of wire with unbroken 
 strands. It was in those hours on April 9 and 10 that many 
 young London men showed the highest qualities of spirit, 
 risking death, and worse than death, with most desperate 
 gallantry. 
 
 A young subaltern of the Middlesex Regiment saw those 
 wire traps in the centre of Neuville-Vitasse, and led the 
 way to them with a party of bombers and Lewis-gunners, 
 smashed them up, and jumped on the machine-guns be- 
 yond. It opened the gate to all the other Londoners — 
 Kensingtons, Rangers, and London Scottish — who swept 
 through this village and beyond. Many officers fell, but 
 there was always some one to take command and lead the 
 men — a sergeant with a cool head, a second lieutenant with 
 a flame in his eyes. 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 125 
 
 It was a boy of nineteen who took command of one com- 
 pany of the Middlesex Regiment when he was the only one 
 to lead. He had never been under fire before, and had never 
 seen all this blood and horror. He was a slip of a fellow, 
 who had been spelling out fairy-tales ten years ago, which 
 is not far back in history. Now, he led a company of 
 fighting men, who followed him as a great captain all 
 through that day's battle, and from one German line to 
 another, and from one village to another, until all the 
 ground had been gained according to the first plan. This 
 gallant boy was afterwards reported missing, and his com- 
 rades believe that he was killed. 
 
 It was a battle of second lieutenants of London, owing 
 to the heavy casualties of commanding officers. One of 
 them was wounded in the head early in the day, but led his 
 men until hours later he fell and fainted. Another yoimg 
 offiicer went out with three men in the darkness, when the 
 infantry was held up by serious obstacles, and under heavy 
 fire brought back information which saved many lives and 
 enabled the whole line to advance. 
 
 There was a second lieutenant of the London Rangers 
 who behaved with a quick decision and daring which seemed 
 inspired by something more than sound judgment. The 
 enemy was holding out in a trench and sweeping men down 
 with that death-rattle of bullets which is the worst thing 
 in all this fighting. In front of them was imcut wire, 
 which is always a trap for men. Our London lieutenant 
 did not go straight ahead. He flung his platoon round to 
 the flank, smashed through the wire here, and sprang at 
 the German gun-team with a revolver in one hand and a 
 bomb in the other. The whole team was destroyed except 
 one man, who fell wounded, and above those dead bodies 
 the second lieutenant waved his revolver to his men and 
 said, ''Let's get on." 
 
 The London men went on for nine days, which is like 
 ninety years on such a battlefield. They went on until 
 they were checked and held by the enemy, who had time to 
 
126 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 rush up strong reserves and bring up new weight of guns. 
 But they smashed through the Cojeul Switch and broke the 
 Hindenburg line at Heninel. 
 
 Shell-fire increased hour by hour. From many hidden 
 places machine-guns poured bullets across the ground. Ger- 
 man snipers lay out in shell-holes picking off our men. This 
 sniping was intolerable, and a second lieutenant and 
 sergeant crawled out into No Man's Land to deal with it. 
 They dragged three snipers out of one hole, and searched 
 others and helped to check this hidden fire. One London 
 rifleman went forward to kill a machine-gun with its hide- 
 ous tat-tat-tat. It was a bolder thing than St. George's at- 
 tack on the dragon, which was a harmless beast compared 
 with this spitfire devil. The rifleman armed himself with 
 a Lewis gun, carried at his hip, and fired so coolly that he 
 scattered the German team and captured the gun. 
 
 All through those nine days, and afterwards in a second 
 spell worse than those, the London men lived under great 
 fire, those that had the luck to live, and though their 
 nerves were all frayed with the strain of it, and they suf- 
 fered great agonies and great losses, they never lost courage 
 and kept their pride — ^London Pride. 
 
 One medical officer's orderly never tired of searching for 
 stricken men, and seemed to have some magic about him, 
 with shells bursting everywhere round about his steps and 
 bullets spitting on each side of him. He organized stretcher- 
 bearer parties, gave some of his own magic to them, and 
 saved many lives. A captain of the R.A.M.C. went out 
 under heavy fire and dressed the wounds of men lying their 
 in agony and brought them back alive. A London private 
 remained out looking after the wounded in an exposed 
 place, and in his spare time saved other men attacked by 
 small parties of Germans, by killing nine of them and tak- 
 ing one man prisoner. Another second lieutenant, one of 
 those boys who have poured out the blood of youth upon 
 these battlefields, took two Vickers guns with their teams 
 through two barrages — only those who have seen a barrage 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 127 
 
 can know the meaning of that — and by great skill and cun- 
 ning brought his men through without a single casualty, so 
 that the infantry followed with high hearts. 
 
 Out of a burning billet and out of an exploding ammuni- 
 tion dump, a transport driver brought out some charges 
 urgently needed for the battle. A man who entered a cage 
 of tigers to draw their teeth would not want greater nerve 
 than this. 
 
 When the blinds were drawn across the windows of many 
 little London houses, when dusk crept into Piccadilly Circus 
 and shadows darkened down the Strand, when the great 
 old soul of London slept a while in the night, these boys 
 who had gone out from her streets were fighting, and are 
 fighting still, in the greatest battle of the world, and as 
 they lie awake in a ditch, or wounded in a shell-hole, their 
 spirit travels home again, through the old swirl of traffic, 
 to quiet houses where already, perhaps, there is the scent 
 of may-blossom. 
 
 The Struggle Round Monchy 
 
 April ii 
 This morning our men advanced upon the villages of 
 Monchy-le-Preux and La Bergere, on each side of the Cam- 
 brai road, beyond the ruins of Tilloy-les-Moffiaines, and oc- 
 cupied them after heavy fighting. British cavalry were first 
 into Monchy, riding through a storm of shrapnel, and 
 heavily bombarded in the village so that many of their 
 horses were killed and many men wounded. 
 
 I saw the whole picture of this fighting to-day, and all 
 the spirit and drama of it. It was a wonderful scene, not 
 without terror, and our men passed through it alert and 
 watchful to the menace about them. Going out beyond Ar- 
 ras through suburbs which were in German hands tmtil 
 Monday last — ^they had scribbled their names and regi- 
 ments on broken walls of strafed houses, and men of Eng- 
 lish battalions who captured them had scrawled their own 
 
128 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 names above these other signatures — I came to the Ger- 
 man barbed wine which had protected the enemy's lines, 
 and then into three systems of trenches which had been the 
 objectives of our men on the morning when the battle of 
 Arras began. Here was Hangest Trench, in which the 
 enemy had made his chief resistance, and Holt Redoubt 
 and Horn Redoubt, where his machine-guns had checked 
 us, and a high point on the road to Tilloy, to which a Tank 
 had crawled after a lone journey out of Arras to sweep this 
 place with machine-gun fire, so that our men could get on 
 to the village. It is no wonder that the Germans lost 
 this ground, and that those who remained alive in their 
 dug-outs surrendered quickly, as soon as our men were 
 about them. The effect of our bombardment was ghastly. 
 It had ploughed all this country with great shell-craters, 
 torn fields of barbed v^ire to a few tattered strands, and 
 smashed in all the trenches to shapeless ditches. 
 
 Tilloy still had parts of houses standing, bits of white 
 wall having no relation to the wild rubbish-heaps around. 
 The Germans had torn up the rails to make barricades, and 
 had used farm carts, ploughs, and brick-heaps as cover. 
 But they could have given no protection when the sky 
 rained fire and thunderbolts. Dead bodies lay about in 
 every shape and shapelessness of death. I passed into 
 Devil's Wood — well named, because here there had been 
 helHsh torture of men — and so on to Observatory Ridge 
 and ground from which, not far away, I looked into 
 Monchy and across the battlefields where our men were 
 fighting then. The enemy was firing heavy shells. They 
 fell-ihick about Monchy village and on the other side of 
 the Cambrai road, roaring horribly as they came and fling- 
 ing up volumes of black earth and mud. The enemy's gun- 
 ners were scattering other shells about, but in an aimless 
 way, so that they found no real target, though they were 
 frightening, especially when some of these crumps spattered 
 one with mud. 
 
 Flights of British aeroplanes were on the wing, and Ger- 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 129 
 
 man aeroplanes tried to fight their way over our lines. I 
 saw several with the swish of machine-gun bullets and the 
 high whining shells of British "Archies" about them. I 
 have never before seen so great a conflict in the skies. It 
 was a battle up there, and as far as I could see we gained 
 a mastery over the enemy's machines, though some of them 
 were very bold. 
 
 On the earth it was open warfare of the old kind, for we 
 were beyond the trenches and our men were moving across 
 the fields without cover. Some of our machine-gunners 
 were serving their weapons from shell-holes, and the only 
 protection of the headquarters staff of the cavalry was a 
 shallow ditch in the centre of the battlefield sheltered by a 
 few planks, quite useless against shell-fire, but keeping off 
 the snow, which fell in heavy wet flakes. There the officers 
 sat in the ditch, shoulder to shoulder, studying their maps 
 and directing the action while reports were called down the 
 funnel of a chimney by an officer who had been out on 
 reconnaissance. 
 
 "It is villainously unhealthy round here,*' said this of- 
 ficer, who spoke to me after he had given his news to the 
 cavalry general He looked across to Monchy, and said, 
 "Old Fritz is putting up a stiff fight." At that moment a 
 German crump fell close, and we did not continue the con- 
 versation. 
 
 "Across the battlefield came stretcher-bearers, carrying the 
 wounded shoulder high, and the lightly wounded men 
 walked back from Monchy and Guemappe very slowly, 
 with that dragging gait which is bad to see. I spoke to a 
 wounded officer and asked him how things were going. 
 
 "Pretty hot," he said, and then shivered and said, "but 
 now I feel cold as ice." 
 
 Snow fell all through the afternoon, covering the litter 
 of battle and the bodies of all^our dead boys, giving a 
 white beauty even to the ugly ruins of Tilloy and chang- 
 ing the Devil's Wood by enchantment to a kind of dream- 
 picture. Through this driving snow our guns fired cease- 
 
130 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAKLE 
 
 lessly, and I saw all their flashes through the storm, and 
 their din was enormous. Away in front of me stretched 
 the road to Cambrai, the high road of our advance. It 
 seemed so easy to walk down there — but if I had gone 
 farther I should not have come back. 
 
 In a hundred years not all the details of this battle will 
 be told, for to each man in all the thousands who are 
 fighting there is a great adventure, and they are filled with 
 sensations stronger than drink can give, so that it wil/. 
 seem a wild dream — a dream red as flame and white as 
 snow. 
 
 For this amazing battle, which is bringing to us tides of 
 prisoners and many batteries of guns, is being fought on 
 spring days heavy with snow, as grim as sternest winter 
 except when in odd half -hours the sun breaks through 
 the storm-clouds and gives a magic beauty to all this white- 
 ness of the battlefields and to trees furred with bars of 
 ermine and to all the lace work of twigs ready for green 
 birth. Now as I write there is no sun, but a darkness 
 through which heavy flakes are falling. Our soldiers are 
 fighting through it to the east of Arras, and their steel 
 helmets and tunics and leather jerkins are all white as the 
 country through which they are forcing back the enemy. 
 
 While the battle was raging on the Vimy heights Eng- 
 lish and Scottish troops of the 15th, 12th, and 3rd Divi- 
 sions were fighting equally fiercely, with more trouble to 
 meet round about Arras. Beyond the facts I have already 
 written there are others that must be recorded quickly, 
 before quick history runs away from them. 
 
 Some day a man must give a great picture of the night 
 in Arras before the battle, and I know one man who could 
 do so — a great hunter of wild beasts, with a monocle that 
 quells the human soul and a very "parfit gentil knight," 
 whose pen is as pointed as his lance. He spent the night 
 in a tunnel of Arras before getting into a sap in No Man's 
 Land before the dawn, where he was with a "movie man," 
 an official photographer (both as gallant as you will find 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 131 
 
 in the Army), and a machine-gunner ready for action. 
 Thousands of other men spent the night before the battle 
 'n the great tunnels, centuries old, that run out of Arras 
 to the country beyond, by Blangy and St.-Sauveur. The 
 enemy poured shells into the city, which I watched that 
 night before the dawn from the ramparts outside, but in 
 the morning they came up from those subterranean gal- 
 leries and for a little while no more shells fell in Arras, for 
 the German gunners were busy with other work, and were 
 in haste to get away. The fighting was very fierce round 
 Blangy, the suburb of Arras, where the enemy was in the 
 broken ruins of the houses and behind garden walls 
 strongly barricaded with piled sand-bags. But our men 
 smashed their way through and on. Troops of those old 
 English regiments were checked a while at strong German 
 works known as the Horn, Holt, Hamel, and Hangest 
 positions, and at another strong point called the Church 
 Work. It was at these places that the Tanks did well on 
 a day when they had hard going because of slime and 
 mud, and after a journey of over three miles from their 
 starting-point knocked out the German machine-guns, and 
 so let the infantry get on. Higher north at a point known 
 as Railway Triangle, east-south-east of Arras, where rail- 
 way lines join, Gordons, Argylls, Seaforths, and Camerons 
 of the 15th Division were held back by machine-gun fire. 
 The enemy's works had not been destroyed by our bom- 
 bardment, and our barrage had swept ahead of the troops. 
 News of the trouble was sent back, and presently back 
 crept the barrage of our shell-fire, coming perilously close 
 to the Scottish troops, but not too close. With marvel- 
 lous accuracy the gunners found the target of the Triangle 
 and swept it with shell-fire so that its defences were de- 
 stroyed. The Scots surged forward, over the chaos of 
 broken timber and barricades, and struggled forward again 
 to their goal, which brought them to Feuchy Well, and 
 to-day much farther. A Tank helped them at Feuchy 
 Chapel, cheered by the Scots as it came into action scorn- 
 
132 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 ing machine-gun bullets. The Harp was another strong 
 point of the enemy's which caused difficulty to King's Own 
 Liverpools, the Shropshire Light Infantry, Royal Fusiliers, 
 East Yorks, Scottish Fusiliers, and Royal Scots, as I have 
 already told, on the first day of battle, and another Tank 
 came up, in its queer, slow way, and the gallant men inside 
 served their guns like a Dreadnought, and so ended the 
 business on that oval-shaped stronghold. 
 
 So English and Scottish troops pressed on and gathered 
 up thousands of prisoners. "So tame," said one of our men, 
 "that they ate out of our hands." So ready to surrender 
 that a brigadier and his staff who were captured with them 
 were angry and ashamed of men taken in great numbers 
 without a single wounded man among them. Fifty- four 
 gims were captured on this eastern side of Arras, and six 
 were howitzers, and two of these big beasts were taken 
 by cavalry working with the troops. Some of the gun- 
 ners had never left their pits after our bombardment be- 
 came intense four days before, and were suffering from 
 hunger and thirst. Trench-mortars and machine-guns lay 
 everywhere about, in scores, smashed, buried, flung about 
 by the ferocity of our shell-fire. German officers wearing 
 Iron Crosses wept when they surrendered. It was their 
 day of unbelievable tragedy. A queer thing happened to 
 some German transport men. They were sent out from 
 Douai to Fampoux. They did not know they were going 
 into the battle zone. They drove along until suddenly 
 they saw British soldiers swarming about them. Six hours 
 after their start from Douai they were eating bully-beef on 
 our side of the lines, and while they munched could not 
 believe their own senses. Our troops treated them with the 
 greatest good humour, throwing chocolates and cigarettes 
 into their enclosures and crowding round to speak to men 
 who knew the English tongue. There seemed no kind of 
 hatred between these men. There was none after the battle 
 had been fought, for in our British way we cannot harbour 
 hate for beaten enemies when the individuals are there, 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 13S 
 
 broken and In our hands. Yet a little farther away th« 
 fighting was fierce, and there was no mercy on either side. 
 
 April 12 
 
 In spite of the enemy's hard resistance and the abom- 
 inable weather conditions which cause our troops great 
 hardships, we are making steady progress towards the Ger- 
 man defensive positions along the Hindenburg line. 
 
 North of Vimy Ridge this morning his lines were pierced 
 by a new attack, delivered with great force above Givenchy ; 
 and south of the village of Wancourt, below Monchy-le- 
 Preux, we have seized an important little hill-top. 
 
 Monchy itself is securely in our hands this morning, 
 after repeated counter-attacks yesterday and last night 
 In my last dispatch I described in the briefest way how I 
 went up towards Monchy yesterday across the crowded bat- 
 tlefield and looked into that village, where fierce fighting 
 was in progress. Then the village was still standing, hardly 
 in ruins, so that I saw roofs still on the houses and im- 
 broken walls, and the white chateau only a little scarred by 
 shell-fire. Now it has been almost destroyed by the enemy's 
 guns, and our men held it only by the most resolute cour- 
 age. It is a small place that village, but yesterday, perched 
 high beyond Orange Hill, it was the storm-centre of all 
 this world-conflict, and the battle of Arras paused till it 
 was taken. The story of the fight for it should live in his- 
 tory, and is full of strange and tragic drama. 
 
 Our cavalry — the loth Hussars, the Essex Yeomanry, 
 and the Blues — helped in the capture of this high village, 
 behaving with the greatest acts of sacrifice to the ideals of 
 duty. I saw them going up over Observation Ridge, and 
 before they reached that point; the dash of splendid bodies 
 of men riding at the gallop in a snow-storm which had cov- 
 ered them with white mantles and crowned their steel hats. 
 Afterwards I saw some of these men being carried back 
 wounded over the battlefield, and the dead body of their 
 general, on a stretcher, taken by a small party of troopers 
 
134 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 through the ruins of another village to his resting-place. 
 Many gallant horses lay dead, and those which came back 
 were caked with mud, and walked with drooping heads, 
 
 
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 dries 0^^"^^J^%i&9a:ttf^ CrfeT^ 
 
 exhausted in every limb. The bodies of dead boys lay all 
 over these fields. 
 
 But the cavalry rode into Monchy and captured the north 
 side of the village, and the enemy fled from them. It is an 
 astounding thing that two withered old Frenchwomen 
 stayed in this village all through this fighting. When our 
 troopers rode in these women came running forward, fright- 
 
 i 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 185 
 
 ened and crying "Camarades," as though in face of the 
 enemy. When our men surroimded them they were full 
 of joy, and held up their withered old faces to be kissed 
 by the troopers, who leaned over their saddles to give 
 this greeting. Yet the battle was not over, and the shell- 
 fire was most intense afterwards. 
 
 The women told strange stories of German officers bil- 
 leted in their houses. After the battle of Arras began on 
 Monday these officers were very nervous ; but, although the 
 sound of gun-fire swept nearer they did not believe that 
 the English troops would get near Monchy for some days. 
 Late on Wednesday night, after preparing for the defence 
 of the village, they went to bed as usual, looking exhausted 
 and nerve-racked, and told the women to wake them at six 
 o'clock. They were awakened by another kind of knock- 
 ing at the door. English and Scottish soldiers were firing 
 outside the village, and the German officers escaped in such 
 a hurry that they had no time to pull down the battalion 
 flag outside their gate, and our men captured it as a 
 trophy. 
 
 The attack on Monchy was made by English and Scottish 
 troops — the Scots of the 15th Division — who fought very 
 fiercely to clear the enemy out of Railway Triangle, where 
 they were held up for three hours. Afterwards they fought 
 on to Feuchy Redoubt, where they found that the whole of 
 the German garrison had been buried by our bombardment, 
 so that none escaped alive. At Feuchy Weir they captured 
 a German electrical company, a captain and thirteen men, 
 who were unarmed. The enemy shelled Feuchy village after 
 our troops had passed through and gone far forward, where 
 they dug in for the night under heavy shelling. Here they 
 stayed all day on Tuesday close by a deep square pit, where 
 four eight-inch howitzers had been abandoned to our 
 cavalry. 
 
 Meanwhile English troops of the 37th Division — War- 
 wicks and Bedfords, East and West Lancashire battalions, 
 and the Yorks and Lanes — were advancing on the right 
 
136 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 and linking up for the attack on Monchy in conjunction 
 with the Jocks. On the left bodies of cavalry assembled 
 for a combined attack with Hotchkiss and machine guns; 
 and at about five o'clock yesterday morning they swept upon 
 the village. The cavalry went full split at a hard pace un- 
 der heavy shrapnel-fire, and streamed into the village on 
 the north side. They saw few Germans, for as they went 
 in the enemy retreated to the southern side, hoping to escape 
 by that way. Here they found themselves cut off by our 
 infantry, the English battalions mixed up with Scots before 
 the fight was over. It was hard fighting. The enemy had 
 many machine-guns, and defended himself from windows 
 and roofs of houses, firing down upon our men as they 
 swarmed into the village streets, and fought their way into 
 farmyards and courtyards. It was a house-to-house hunt, 
 and about two hundred prisoners were taken, though some 
 of the garrison escaped to the trench in the valley below, 
 where they had machine-gun redoubts. At about eight 
 o'clock yesterday morning, twenty Scots and a small party 
 of English went forward from Monchy with a Tank which 
 had crawled up over heavy ground and shell-craters, and 
 now trained its guns upon bodies of Germans moving over 
 the ridge beyond. By this time English troops had a num- 
 ber of machine-guns in position for the defence of the vil- 
 lage against any counter-attacks that might come. Some 
 of our men had already explored the dug-outs and found 
 them splendid for shelter under shell-fire. Under the 
 chateau was a subterranean system furnished luxuriously 
 and provided with electric light. Half an hour after the 
 capture of the village some English and Scottish officers 
 were drinking German beer out of German mugs. 
 
 The peace of Monchy did not last long. At nine o'clock 
 the enemy shelled the place fiercely, and for a long time, 
 with 5.9 guns, as I saw myself at midday from Observation 
 Ridge, which was also under fire. 
 
 German airmen, flying above, watched our cavalry and 
 infantry, and directed fire upon them. They were terrible 
 
 i 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 137 
 
 hours to endure, but our men held out nobly; and when 
 the enemy made his counter-attacks in the afternoon and 
 evening, advancing in waves with a most determined spirit, 
 they were hosed with machine-gun bullets and fell like grass 
 before the scythe. Our i8-pounders also poured shell into 
 them. This morning our men are in advance of the village, 
 and the enemy has retreated from the trench below. The 
 night was dreadful for men and beasts. Snow fell heavily, 
 and was blown into deep drifts by wind as cold as ice. 
 Wounded horses fell and died, and men lay in a white 
 bed of snow in an agony of cold, while shells burst round 
 them. As gallant as the fighting men were the supply col- 
 umns, who sent up carriers through blizzard and shell-fire. 
 At four o'clock in the morning a rum ration was served out, 
 "And thank God for it," said one of our officers lying out 
 there in a shell-hole with a shattered arm. Strange and 
 ironical as it seems, the post came up also at this hour, and 
 men in the middle of the battlefield, suffering the worst 
 agonies of war, had letters from home which in darkness 
 they could not read. 
 
 That scene of war this morning might have been in Rus- 
 sia in midwinter, instead of in France in spring-time. Snow 
 was thick over the fields, four foot deep where it had 
 drifted against the banks. Tents and huts behind the lines 
 were covered with snow roofs, and as I went through 
 Arras this poor, stricken city was all white. Stones and 
 fallen masonry which have poured down from great build- 
 ings of mediaeval times were overlaid with snow — until, by 
 midday, it was all turned to water. Then our Army moved 
 through rivers of mud, and all our splendid horses were 
 pitiful to see. 
 
 4 
 
 The Other Side of Vimy 
 
 April 13 
 The enemy's Headquarters Staff is clearly troubled by the 
 successes gained by our troops during these first days of the 
 
138 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 battle of Arras, and all attempts to repair the damage to his 
 defensive positions upon which his future safety depends 
 have been feeble and irresolute. It is certain that he de- 
 sired to make a heavy counter-attack upon the northern 
 edge of the Vimy Ridge. Prisoners taken yesterday all 
 believed that this would be done without delay. The 5th 
 Grenadiers of the Prussian Guards Reserve were hurriedly 
 brought up to relieve or support the Bavarian troops, who 
 had suffered frightfully, and massed in a wood, called the 
 Bois d'Hirondelle, or Swallows' Wood, in order to steal 
 through another little wood called Bois-en-Hache to a hill 
 known by us as the Pimple, and so on to recapture Hill 145, 
 taken by the Canadians on Monday night after heavy and 
 costly fighting. This scheme broke down utterly. Swal- 
 lows' Wood was heavily bombed by our aeroplanes, so that 
 the massed Prussians had an ugly time there, and yester- 
 day morning Canadian troops made a sudden assault upon 
 the Pimple, which is a knoll slightly lower than Hill 145, 
 to its right, and gained it in spite of fierce machine-gun fire 
 from the garrison, who defended themselves stubbornly 
 until they were killed or captured. At the same time Bois- 
 en-Hache, which stands on rising ground across the little 
 valley of the River Souchez, was attacked with great cour- 
 age by the 24th Division, and the enemy driven out. 
 
 It was difficult work for our infantry and gunners. The 
 ground was a bog of shell-craters and mud, and there was a 
 blizzard of snowflakes. The attack was made with a kind 
 of instinct, backed with luck. Our men stumbled forward 
 in a wake of snow-squalls and shells, fell into shell-holes, 
 climbed out again, and by some skill of their own kept 
 their bombs and rifles dry. Machine-gun bullets whipped 
 the ground about them. Some fell and were buried in snow- 
 drifts; others went on and reached their goal, and in a 
 white blizzard routed out the enemy and his machine-guns. 
 It was an hour or two later that German officers, direct- 
 ing operations at a distance and preparing a counter-attack 
 on the Vimy Ridge, heard that the Pimple and Bois-en- 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 139 
 
 Hache had both gone — the only places which gave observa- 
 tion on the south side of Vimy and made effective any at- 
 tack. Their curses must have been deep and full when 
 that message came over the telephone wires. They ordered 
 their batteries to fire continuously on those two places, but 
 they remain ours, and our troops have endured intense 
 barrage-fire without losing ground. Now we have full and 
 absolute observation over Vimy Ridge to the enemy's side 
 of the country reversing all the past history of this position, 
 and we are making full and deadly use of it. The epemy 
 still clings to Vimy village on the other side of the slopes, 
 and to the line of railway on the eastern side of Farbus, but 
 it is an insecure tenure, and our guns are making life hide- 
 ous for the German soldiers in those places, and in the vil- 
 lages farther back in the direction of Douai, and along the 
 road which he is using for his transport. In the village 
 of Bailleul down there are a number of batteries which the 
 enemy has vainly endeavoured to withdraw. We are smoth- 
 ering them with shell-fire, and he will find it difficult to get 
 them away, though he can ill afford the loss of more guns. 
 The enemy has been in great trouble to move his guns away 
 rapidly enough owing to the dearth of transport horses. 
 Even before the battle of Arras began the German batteries 
 had to borrow horses from each other because there were 
 not enough for all, and some of his guns have been aban- 
 doned because of that lack. He cannot claim that he has 
 left us only broken and useless guns. 
 
 When the Scottish and South African troops of the 9th 
 Division m.ade the great attack on Monday last the South- 
 Africans were led forward by their colonels, and took the 
 first German line without a single casualty. Afterwards 
 they fought against wicked machine-gun fire, but, sweeping 
 all before them, and gathering in hundreds of prisoners, they 
 seized a number of guns, including several 5.9 howitzers. 
 A vast amount of ammunition lay about in dumps, and our 
 men turned the guns about, and are using them against the 
 enemy. To South-Africans who fought in Delville Wood — 
 
140 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 I have told the story of this tragic epic in the battle of the 
 Somme — this is a triumph that pays back a little for old 
 memories under German gun-fire. Their revenge is sweet 
 and frightful, and they call the captured guns, those mon- 
 strous five-point-nines, their trench-mortar battery. 
 
 During this fighting our airmen have flown with extraor- 
 dinary valour, and have done great work. They flew in 
 snow-storms, as I saw them and marvelled, on the east side 
 of Arras, and circled round for hours taking photographs 
 of the enemy's positions and spotting his batteries so accu- 
 rately, in spite of weather which half blinded them, that 
 the German gunners who are now our prisoners say that 
 they were terrorized by being made targets for our fire. 
 
 Farther south yesterday and to-day we have made new 
 breaches in the Hindenburg line by the capture of Wan- 
 court and Heninel, villages south of Monchy. The fighting 
 here has been most severe, and our men of the 14th and 
 56th Divisions — London Rangers, Kensingtons, Middlesex, 
 London Scottish, and King's Royal Rifles — lying out on 
 open slopes in deep snow and under icy gales at night, 
 swept by machine-gun barrages from Guemappe and with 
 the sky above them flashing with shrapnel bursts and high 
 explosives, have had to endure a terrible ordeal. They 
 have done so with a noble spirit, and young wounded men 
 to whom I spoke yesterday, in the great crypt to which 
 they had crawled down from the battlefield, all spoke of 
 their experience as though they would go through as much 
 again in order to ensure success, without bragging, with a 
 full sense of the frightful hours, but with unbroken spirit. 
 
 *T am not out here to make a career," said a Canadian; 
 "I am out to finish an ugly job." 
 
 It is to end this filthy war quickly that our men are fight- 
 ing so grimly and with such deadly resolution. So the 
 Londoners have fought their way into Wancourt and He- 
 ninel, and there were great uncut belts of wire before them 
 — the new wire of the Hindenburg line — and trenches and 
 strong points from which machine-guns gushed out waves 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 141 
 
 of bullets. One of the strong points hereabouts is called 
 the Egg, because of its oval hummock, which was hard to 
 hatch and crack, but as one of our officers said to-day, the 
 ^SS gave forth two hundred prisoners. 
 
 In the fighting for the two villages the Londoners were 
 held up by those great stretches of wire before them and 
 were menaced most evilly by the enfilade fire of machine- 
 guns from Guemappe and a high point south. Two Tanks 
 came to the rescue, and did most daring things. 
 
 "Romped up," said an officer, though I have not seen 
 Tanks romping. 
 
 Anyhow, they came up in their elephantine way, getting 
 the most out of their engines and most skilfully guided by 
 their young officers and crews, who were out on a great 
 and perilous adventure. Climbing over rough ground, 
 cleaving through snow-drifts and mud-banks with their 
 steel flanks, thrusting their blunt noses above old trenches 
 and sand-bag barricades, they made straight for the great 
 hedges of barbed wire, and drove straight through, leav- 
 ing broad lanes of broken strands. One cruised into Wan- 
 court, followed from a distance by the shouts and cheers 
 of the infantry. It wandered up and down the village like 
 a bear on the prowl for something good to eat. It found 
 human food and trampled upon machine-gun redoubts, fir- 
 ing into German hiding-places. The second Tank struck 
 a zigzag course for Heninel, and in that village swept down 
 numbers of German soldiers, so that they fled from this 
 black monster against which bombs and rifles were of no 
 avail. For forty hours those two Tanks— let me be fair 
 to the men inside and say those officers and crews — did 
 not rest, but went about on their hunting trail, breaking 
 down wire and searching out German strong points, so 
 that the way would be easier for our infantry. 
 
 Even then our men had no easy fighting. The enemy 
 defended themselves stubbornly in places. Their snipers 
 and bombers and machine-gunners did not yield at the first 
 sight of the bayonets. While some of our troops bombed 
 
142 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 their way down trenches towards Wancourt, others worked 
 up from the south, and at last both parties met exultantly 
 behind this section of the Hindenburg line, greeting each 
 other with cheers. Nearly two hundred prisoners were 
 taken hereabout, all Silesian mechanics, like those I met at 
 Loos in September 191 5 — rather miserable men, with no 
 heart in the war, because, as Poles, it is none of their 
 making. 
 
 It is true to say — utterly true — that all the prisoners we 
 have taken this week, Prussians, Bavarians, Hamburgers, 
 have lost all spirit for this fighting, hate it, loathe it as a 
 deviHsh fate from which they have luckily escaped at last 
 with life. Not one prisoner has said now that Germany 
 will win on land. Their best hope is that the submarine 
 campaign will force an early settlement. Their pockets are 
 stuffed with letters from wives, sisters, and parents telling 
 of starvation at home. It is not good literature for the 
 spirit of an army. The prisoners themselves come to us 
 starving. It is not because their rations in the trenches are 
 insufficient. They are on short commons, but have enough 
 for bodily strength. It is because our bombardment pre- 
 vented all suppHes from reaching them for three or four 
 days. In one prisoners' enclosure, when our escort brought 
 food, the men fought with each other like wild beasts, 
 ravenous, and had to be separated by force and threats. 
 The officers in charge of these prisoners' camps are over- 
 whelmed by the masses of men. In one of them, where 
 4000 were gathered, they broke the barriers. A captain and 
 subaltern of ours were alone to deal with this situation ; but 
 their own non-commissioned officers helped to restore order. 
 
 The position of the enemy now is full of uncertainty for 
 him. It is possible that he will try to avoid any disaster 
 by falling back farther to the Drocourt — Queant line, and 
 by slipping away farther north. The Hindenburg line is 
 pierced, but he has established a series of switch-lines which 
 will enable him to stand until our guns are ready again to 
 make those positions untenable. The weather so far is 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 143 
 
 in his favour, except that his troops are suffering as much 
 as ours from cold and wet. 
 
 5 
 
 The Way to Lens 
 
 April 14 
 The capture of the Vimy Ridge by heroic assault of the 
 Canadians and Scots, and their endurance in holding it un- 
 der the enemy's heavy fire, have been followed swiftly by 
 good results. Our troops have pushed forward to-day 
 through Lievin, the long and straggling suburb of Lens, 
 clearing street after street of German machine-gunners 
 and rear-guard posts, and our patrols are on the outskirts 
 of Lens itself, the great mining town, which is famous 
 in France as the capital and centre of her northern mine- 
 fields. 
 
 The retaking of this city of mine-shafts and pit-heads, 
 electrical power stations, and great hive of mining activity, 
 where a population of something like 40,000 people lived 
 in rows of red-brick cottages, under a forest of high chim- 
 neys and moimtainous slag-heaps, would cause a thrill 
 through all France, and be one of the greatest achievements 
 of the war — a tremendous feat of arms for the British 
 troops. I looked into the city to-day, down its silent and 
 deserted streets, and I saw a body of our men working 
 forward to get closer to it. They attacked the little wooded 
 hill called the Bois de Riaumont, just to the south of the 
 city, and with great cunning and courage encircled its lower 
 slopes, and made their way into the street of houses be- 
 hind the line of trees which is the southern way towards 
 Lens. From the western side, up through Lievin, the other 
 troops were advancing cautiously. The enemy was still 
 there in machine-gun redoubts, which will be very trouble- 
 some to our men. But they are only rear-guards, for the 
 main body of the enemy has already retreated. When the 
 
144* FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Canadians swept over the Vimy Ridge, capturing thousands 
 of prisoners, and when yesterday our 24th Division and 
 Canadian troops seized the Bois-en-Hache and the Pimple, 
 two small ridges or knolls below Hill 145, at the northern 
 end of the Vimy Ridge, the enemy saw that his last chance 
 of successful coimter-attack was foiled, and at once he was 
 seized with fear and prepared for instant retreat in wild 
 confusion. Lens and Lievin had been stacked with his guns. 
 Both towns had been fortified in a most formidable way, 
 and were strongholds of massed artillery. It is certain that 
 the enemy had at least 150 guns in that great network of 
 mines and pit-heads. But they were all threatened by an 
 advance down the northern slopes of Vimy, and the Ca- 
 nadians were not likely to stay inactive after their great 
 triumph. They were also threatened by the British advance 
 from the Loos battlefields by way of that great pair of black 
 slag-hills called the Double Crassier, famous in this war for 
 close, long, and bloody fighting, where since September 
 of 191 5 our men have been only a few yards away from 
 their enemy, and where I saw them last a month or two ago 
 through a chink of wall in a ruined house. German staff 
 officers knew their peril yesterday, and before. From 
 prisoners we know that wild scenes took place in Lens, 
 frantic efforts being made to get away the guns and the 
 stores, to defend the line of retreat by the blowing up of 
 roads, to carry out the orders for complete destruction by 
 firing charges down the mine-shafts, flooding the great 
 mine-galleries so that French property of enormous value 
 should not be left to France, and withdrawing large bodies 
 of troops down the roads under the fire of our long-range 
 guns. Up to dawn yesterday the enemy in Lens hoped that 
 the British pursuit would be held back by the German rear- 
 guards in Vimy and Petit- Vimy villages. But that hope 
 was flung from them when the Canadians swept down the 
 ridge and chased the enemy out of those places on the 
 lower slopes towards Douai. 
 
 To-day, as I went towards Lens over Notre-Dame-de- 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 145 
 
 Lorette and the valley beyond, I met a number of those men 
 coming back after their victorious fighting. Amongst them_ 
 were Nova-Scotians and young lumbermen and fishermen 
 from the Far West. They came in single file, in a long 
 procession through a wood — the Bois de Bouvigny — where 
 once, two years ago, young Frenchmen fought with heroic 
 fury and died in thousands to gain this ground, so that even 
 now all this hill is strewn with their relics. 
 
 The boys of Nova Scotia came slowly, dragging one foot 
 after another in sheer exhaustion, stumbling over loose 
 stones and bits of sand-bags and strands of old wire. They 
 were caked with clay from head to foot. Even their faces 
 had masks of clay, and they were spent and done. But 
 through that whitish mud their eyes were steel-blue and 
 struck fire like steel when they told me of the good victory 
 they had shared in, and of the enemy's flight before them — 
 all this without a touch of brag, with a fine and sweet sim- 
 plicity, with a manly frankness. They have suffered tragic 
 hardships in those five days since the battle of Arras be- 
 gan, but there was no wail in them. When they first 
 emerged from the tunnels on the morning of the great 
 attack they had been swept by machine-gun fire, but by 
 good luck escaped heavy casualties, though many fell. 
 
 *'Our losses were not nearly so high as we expected," said 
 one lad, "but it was pretty bad all the same. Old Heine 
 had an ugly habit of keeping one hand on his machine-gun 
 till we were fifty paces from him, and then holding up the 
 other hand and shouting 'Mercy ! Mercy !' I don't call that 
 a good way of surrendering." 
 
 The enemy surrendered in hundreds on that day, as I 
 have already described, and the worst came afterwards for 
 the Canadians. The enemy's barrage was heavy, but even 
 that was not the worst. It was difficult to get food up, more 
 difficult to get water. I met lads who had been without 
 a drop for three days. One of them, a fine, hefty fellow, 
 strong as a sapling, could hardly speak to me above a whis- 
 per. All of them had swollen tongues and licked their dry 
 
14S FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 lips in a parched way. Some of them had been lucky 
 enough to find French wine in the German dug-outs. Then 
 a wild snow-storm came. "I thought I should die," said one 
 man, *'when for hours I had to carry wounded through the 
 snow over ground knee-deep in mud and all slippery. All 
 my wounded were terribly heavy." 
 
 But, in spite of all this, those brave, weary men went 
 down the Vimy slopes at dawn yesterday with the same 
 high, grim spirit to clear "Old Heine," as they call him, out 
 of Vimy and Little Vimy villages. 
 
 "They didn't wait for us," said a young Canadian officer. 
 "One would think that the war would be over in a month 
 by the way they ran yesterday." 
 
 "Old Heine was scared out of his wits," said another 
 lad. "He ran screaming from us. In a dug-out I found 
 two Germans too scared even to run. They just sat and 
 trembled like poor, cowed beasts. But there was one fellow 
 we took who got over his fright quick, and spoke in a big 
 way. He had been a waiter and spoke good English. 
 
 " When will the war end ?' we asked. 
 
 " 'Germany will fight five years,' he said, *and then we 
 will win.' 
 
 " 'Don't you believe it, old sport,' said we, 'you're done 
 in now, and it's only the mopping up we have to do.' " 
 
 Down in the Bois-en-Hache one of our English soldiers 
 of the 24th Division on the Canadians' left had a grim ad- 
 venture, which he describes as "a bit of orl rite." His way 
 was barred by a burly German, but not for long. After 
 a tussle our lad took him inside, and there found the dead 
 body of a German officer lying by the side of the table, 
 which was all spread for breakfast. It was our English 
 lad who ate the breakfast, keeping one eye vigilant on his 
 living prisoner and not worrying about the dead one. 
 
 There was another soldier of ours, one of the Leinsters, 
 also of the 24th Division, who ate his breakfast in Angres, 
 but he was in jovial company. He came across a German 
 at the entrance and fought with him, but in a friendly 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 147 
 
 kind of way. After knocking each other about they came 
 to an understanding, and sat down together in a dug-out 
 to a meal of German sausage, cheese, black bread, and 
 French wine. They found a great deal of human nature 
 in common, and were seen coming out later arm in arm, 
 and in this way the Irishman brought back his prisoner. 
 
 The colonel of the Leinsters told another queer tale of 
 an Irishman in the outskirts of Lens. The colonel saw him 
 after the battle of Bois-en-Hache, which was a terrible 
 affair and a fine feat of arms in the mud and snow, bring- 
 ing back a German horse under machine-gun fire and 
 shrapnel He was guiding this poor lean beast over fright- 
 ful ground, round the edge of monstrous shell-craters, 
 through broken strands of barbed wire, and across trenches 
 and parapets. "What are you doing with that poor brute?" 
 asked the commanding officer. "Sure, sir," said the Irish- 
 man, "Fm bringing the horse back for Father Malone to 
 ride." The horse was in the last stages of starvation, and 
 the padre weighs nineteen stone, according to the popular 
 estimate of the men, who adore him, and that is part of 
 the story's himiour, though the Irish soldier was very seri- 
 ous. It is a tribute, anyhow, to the affection of the men 
 for this Irish padre — a laughing giant of a man — who is 
 always out in No Man's Land when there are any of his lads 
 out there, going as far as the German barbed wire to give 
 the last rites to dying men. To-day, when I called on the 
 Leinster battalion, he was away burying the poor boys who 
 lie in the mud of the battlefield. There is no humour in 
 that side of war, though Irish soldiers, and English soldiers 
 too, refuse to be beaten by the foulest conditions until the 
 last strength is out of them. In addition to the ordeal of 
 battle they are enduring now a weather so abominable, when 
 it is in the fields of battle, that men fight for days wet to 
 the skin, lie out at night frozen stiff, and struggle after the 
 enemy up to the knees in mud. So it was in this little battle 
 of Bois-en-Hache, an historic episode in the battle of Arras, 
 because it broke the enemy's last hope of a counter-attack 
 
148 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 against Vimy Ridge. Through the Winding blizzard of 
 snow, the EngHsh and Irish troops attacked this hill above 
 the River Souchez, and had to cross through a quagmire, 
 so that numbers of them stuck up to the waist and could 
 go neither forward nor backward, while they were swept 
 by machine-gun and rifle fire. From that other hill, called 
 the Pimple, to their right, which was not yet taken by the 
 Canadians, one man came back wounded over that abom- 
 inable ground under rifle-fire which spat bullets about him. 
 He stumbled into shell-holes and crawled out again, and 
 just as he reached the trench, fell dead across the parapet. 
 Nearly all our men were hit in the head and body, none in 
 the legs. That was because they were knee-deep in mud. 
 Our men came back from this fighting like figures of clay, 
 and so stiff at the joints that they can hardly walk, and 
 with voices gone so that they speak in whispers. 
 
 All over this lower slope of the Vimy Ridge is a litter 
 of enormous destruction caused by our gun-fire. German 
 guns and limbers, machine-guns and trench-mortars lie in 
 fragments and in heaps in infernal chaos of earth, which 
 is the graveyard of many German dead. The first hint 
 that the Germans were in retreat from Lievin, near Lens, 
 was given by the strange adventure of two of our airmen. 
 They had to make a forced landing near Lens, and one of 
 them was wounded in the leg. Our observing officers 
 watching through glasses expected them to be made pris- 
 oners, but they were seen afterwards smoking cigarettes 
 and slapping themselves to keep warm. It now turns out 
 that the German soldiers did not wait to take them, and 
 finding one man wounded left the other to look after him. 
 The next sign that the enemy was about to go was when 
 the fires and explosions went up in Lievin and Lens, and 
 when he began to shell his own front lines outside those 
 places. All through the night the sky was aflame with these 
 fires, and this morning I saw that the enemy was making 
 a merry little hell in Lens and all its suburbs and dependent 
 villages. I had no need to guess the reason of all this. On 
 
 I 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 149 
 
 the way I had met two young Alsatian prisoners just cap- 
 tured. They had been left with orders and charges to blow 
 up mine-shafts, but had been caught before they had done 
 so. They had no heart in the job anyhow, being of Alsace, 
 and with their comrades had already petitioned to fight on 
 the Eastern instead of the Western Front. They described 
 the panic that reigned in Lens, and the fearful haste to 
 destroy and get away. For hours to-day I watched that 
 destruction while our troops were working forward through 
 Lievin to get the better of the nests of machine-gun redoubts 
 at the entrance to Lens, from which intense fire still came. 
 I had an astounding view of all this work in Lens, and 
 it was as beautiful as a dream-picture and weird as a night- 
 mare. The snows had melted, and the wind had turned 
 south, and the sun was pouring down tmder a blue sky 
 across which white fleece sailed. Below, outspread, was a 
 wide panorama of battle, from Loos to Vimy, the great 
 panorama of French mining country, with all its slag-hills 
 casting black shadows across the sun-swept plain, and thou- 
 sands of miners' cottages, "corons" as they are called, all 
 bright and red as the light poured upon them, all arranged 
 in straight rows and oblong blocks of streets in separate 
 townships. Not one of these houses was without shell-holes 
 and broken walls, for the war has swept round them and 
 over them for two years and more, but they looked strangely 
 new and complete. Between them and beyond them and all 
 about them tall chimneys stood and enormous steel girders 
 and gantries of pit-head and power stations. To the left 
 of Lens the tower of the main waterworks was crowned 
 with a white dome like a Grecian temple, and to the right 
 was Lens Church, behind a hill where I saw our men 
 fighting. It was like looking at war in Bolton or Wigan, 
 but more beautiful than those towns of ours, because the 
 walls were not black and there was a bright, fine light over 
 all this mining country. The Double Grassier on the edge 
 of the Loos battlefields was to the left of where I stood, 
 curiously white and chalky as the sun flung its rays upon 
 
150 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 those two close hillocks. Moving forward towards Lens 
 I looked straight down the streets of that city. If a cat 
 had moved across one of those roads I should have seen 
 it. If Germans had come out of any of those houses I 
 should have seen them. But nothing moved up the streets 
 or down them. All those straight streets were empty. It 
 looked as if those thousands of red houses were uninhabited. 
 But all the time I watched enormous explosions rose in 
 Lens and Lievin, sending up volumes of curly smoke. The 
 enemy was destroying the city and its priceless mining 
 works. As the mines exploded it looked as if the earth 
 had opened among all this maze of works and cottages, 
 letting forth turbulent clouds of fire and smoke. It was 
 mostly smoke with a stab of flame in the heart of it. Some 
 of these thick, rising clouds were richly coloured with the 
 red dust of cottages, but others were of absolute black, 
 spreading out in mushroom shape monstrously. 
 
 The explosions continued all the morning and afternoon, 
 and after seeing those Alsatian prisoners I could imagine 
 the German pioneers under the same orders going about 
 with charges in the cellars of the houses and deep down 
 in the mine-shafts and galleries setting their fuses and 
 touching them off from a safe distance. It was dirty work. 
 Meanwhile, our men advancing from Lievin, and through 
 it, were having a hard and costly task to rout out the 
 machine-gun emplacements, especially in two terrible strong 
 redoubts known to us as Crook and Crazy Redoubts, de- 
 fending the western side of Lens. But though these were 
 strong, fortified positions, there were machine-guns in many 
 other places among all those groups of miners' cottages. 
 
 I ought to explain that each group or collection of streets 
 in the square blocks is called a "cite." In the northern 
 part of Lens there are the Cite St.-Pierre, the Cite St.- 
 Edouard, the Cite St. -Laurent, the Cite Ste.-Auguste, and 
 the Cite Ste.-Elisabeth. Westward there are the Cite Jeanne- 
 d'Arc and the Cite St. -Theodore. South there are the Cite 
 du Moulin and the Cite de Riaumont. Each one of these 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 151 
 
 places had its own separate defences of barbed wire and 
 sand-bag barricades, and each a nest of machine-guns. It 
 is clear that when these guns were served by rear-guard 
 posts, ordered to hold on to the last, a quick advance through 
 Lens would have been at great and needless sacrifice of life. 
 When our men were checked a while by the terrible sweep 
 of bullets in the northern and western cites our artillery 
 opened heavy fire and poured in shells, which I watched 
 from ground below Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. I had walked 
 on from that ridge and was looking into Lens when I saw 
 a movement of men below an embankment to the right of 
 the small hill in the south of the city called Bois de Riau- 
 mont. Between the embankment and the hill was a sunken 
 road leading just below the hill to a long straight street 
 of ruined houses lined with an avenue of dead trees. There 
 were belts of wire fixed down the hill-side from the wood 
 on the crest. This ground, swept by sunlight, was the scene 
 of a grim little drama which I watched with intense interest. 
 At first I thought our men were about to make a direct 
 assault upon the hill-side. They came swarming across the 
 open ground in small groups widely scattered, but in two 
 distinct waves. For a while they took cover under the 
 embankment, while other groups crept up to them; then, 
 after half an hour or so, they advanced again, half-left, 
 at the double, led by an officer well in advance of all his men. 
 They crossed the sunken road and went up the slope on 
 the south side of the hill; but, instead of pressing up to 
 the crest, suddenly disappeared into the long, straight street 
 fringed with trees. No sooner had they gone down that 
 sinister street than the enemy flung a barrage right along 
 the embankment where they had first assembled. If they 
 had still been there it would have been a tragic business, 
 and I felt joyful that they had not waited longer. Other 
 men crept up from the ground below where I stood, steered 
 an erratic course, took cover in old German trenches, and 
 then made short, sharp rushes till they dropped also into 
 the sinister street. Later in the afternoon the enemy bar- 
 
152 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 raged his old line of trenches with heavy crumps — which 
 is a way he has when he leaves a place — and presently shells 
 began to fall unpleasantly near to where I stood, getting 
 closer as time passed. I found it wise to shift three times, 
 but on scaling the high ridge of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette 
 again I lingered to look at the great picture of war out- 
 spread below — that long seven-mile stretch of miners' vil- 
 lages crowding densely up to Lens — the great outbursts of 
 red and black smoke between the slag-heaps and chimneys 
 away to the battlefield of Loos, across which sunlight and 
 shadows chased in long bars — and our shell-fire heavy 
 around Lens church and far beyond where enemy's troops 
 and transport were hurrying in retreat. Overhead there 
 was the loud droning of many aeroplanes and flights of 
 invisible shells, shrill-voiced as they travelled with fright- 
 ful speed. 
 
 Later 
 
 The weather has changed again since yesterday, and there 
 is no blue in the sky to-day and no sunshine, but cold rain- 
 storms, cloaking all the line of battle in shrouds of mist. 
 Fires are still burning in Lens, the grey smoke is drifting 
 across the mine-fields, and every hour there are big ex- 
 plosions, showing that the German pioneers are still busy 
 destroying all the wealth of machinery in the city and blow- 
 ing up the roads before leaving. New prisoners describe 
 all this frankly enough. Down one mine-shaft they flung 
 20,000 hand-grenades. They have enormous stores of ex- 
 plosives of every kind for this purpose, because this min- 
 ing district was crammed with German stores. They had 
 to leave Lievin in such haste that they could neither carry 
 away this ammunition nor destroy all of it, and vast quan- 
 tities of bombs, trench-mortars and shells have fallen into 
 our hands. 
 
 Yesterday the English and Irish troops who had taken 
 Bois-en-Hache with such fine courage, in spite of the most 
 severe conditions of weather and ground, worked farther 
 forward through Lievin. Explosions from concealed 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 153 
 
 charges burst around them, and machine-gun fire from 
 many redoubts swept down the long, straight streets of 
 miners' cottages ; but they worked their way up under cover, 
 rushed several of the concrete emplacements, and took 
 heroic risks with a most grim spirit. During the evening 
 the enemy recovered from his first panic and sent support- 
 ing troops back into Lens to hold the line of trenches and 
 machine-gun forts on the western side in order to delay our 
 advance on to Lens until he has had more time to make 
 ready his positions in the Drocourt-Queant line, the Wotan 
 end of the Hindenburg hne, upon which we are forcing him 
 to withdraw. It makes a difference to a number of poor 
 souls expecting deliverance. According to prisoners there 
 are about 2000 people, mostly women, old men, and chil- 
 dren, living in the district of Lens, and waiting to break 
 their way through to our side of the lines. 
 
 I set out to find them this morning, as there were re- 
 ported rumours that they had escaped through Lievin. But 
 this is untrue. Owing to the German rally they are still 
 hemmed in by the enemy's machine-gun redoubts, and I am 
 told that they are down in the cellars of a neighbouring vil- 
 lage, taking cover from the shell-fire which we are pouring 
 on the hostile strong points located in their cites. 
 
 Meanwhile our guns are finding human targets for 
 slaughter. The sufferings of our men are great, their 
 courage is tested by fire; but the fate of the enemy's sol- 
 diers is atrocious beyond all imaginings. I have seen with 
 my own eyes the effect of our gun-fire during the last fort- 
 night, and it is annihilating. Owing to our destruction and 
 capture of many batteries and the necessity of the German 
 retreat to save further disaster, the enemy's infantry have 
 been in desperate plight and have suffered torture. We 
 have smashed their trenches, broken their telephone wires, 
 imprisoned them in barrages through which no food can 
 come. In captured letters and memoranda we find cries for 
 rescue, pitiful in their despair. Here is a message from the 
 3rd Battalion, 51st Infantry Regiment: 
 
164 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 "Since the telephone connexion is so inadequate it be- 
 comes doubly necessary to call on the artillery by light 
 signals. These are only of use if attended to. FaiHng 
 to get artillery reply to the enemy's fire I sent up red star- 
 shells. The artillery took no notice. The artillery should 
 be bound to reply to such signals. 
 
 "For our infantry, which since the Somme battles has 
 been on the defensive, it is, from the point of view of moral, 
 of importance to count on artillery support with certainty. 
 The infantry that comes to regard itself morally as a target 
 for the hostile artillery must in the long run give way." 
 
 Here is an extract from a memorandum sent by a Ger- 
 man machine-gunner : 
 
 "The relief of this detachment is earnestly requested. 
 We have already spent seven days in the greatest tumult. 
 One section of trench after another gets blown in. The 
 detachment, which now consists of three men, has eaten 
 nothing since yesterday morning. To-morrow what re- 
 mains of the front trenches will probably be shattered. If 
 the position were not so frightfully serious, I would not 
 have written this report." 
 
 Yesterday I spent half an hour with one of our own 
 batteries of 6o-pounders, those long-nosed beasts which 
 have a range of five miles and have helped in this great 
 slaughter of the enemy. The commanding officer, once a 
 judge-advocate of Johannesburg, was a man whose joviality 
 covered a grim, resolute spirit. 
 
 "My beauties," he said, "fired looo high-velocity shells 
 at Old Fritz before breakfast on Monday morning. We 
 did some very pretty work on the German lines." 
 
 I saw his store of shells — monstrous brutes — in spite of 
 all this expenditure; and listened to details of destruction 
 in a wooden hut, provided with a piano — made by a Paris 
 firm and captured recently in a German dug-out. 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 155 
 
 *T)on't your gunners get worn out?'* I asked. 
 
 He laughed and said, "They stick it till all's blue, night 
 and day. What they hate are fatigues and carrying up 
 the shells for other batteries. They'll work till they drop, 
 serving their own guns." 
 
 He looked over to Lens and said, "We'll soon have old 
 Fritz out of that." I think they were some of his shells 
 that I saw bursting behind the Bois de Riaumont. 
 
 All through this battle our airmen have been untiring, 
 too. Two of our men, a pilot and an observer, were at- 
 tacked by a squadron of twenty-eight hostile machines, and 
 the pilot was grievously wounded. He was badly hit in 
 the leg, and one of his eyes hung only by a thread. But, 
 with a supreme act of courage, he kept control of his 
 machine and landed safely. He was dying when he was 
 helped on to a stretcher and brought home to camp; but 
 he made his report very clearly and calmly until he was 
 overcome by the last faintness of death. 
 
 Our men have still most bloody fighting before them. 
 The enemy is still in great strength. We shall have to 
 mourn most tragic and fearful losses. But the tide of 
 battle seems to be setting in our favour, and beating back 
 against the walls of the German armies, who must hear the 
 approach of it with forebodings, because the barriers they 
 built have broken and there are no impregnable ramparts 
 behind. 
 
 6 
 
 The Slaughter at Lagnicourt 
 
 April i6 
 What happened at Lagnicourt yesterday is one of the 
 bloodiest episodes in all this long tale of slaughter. At 
 4.30, before daybreak, the enemy made a very heavy at- 
 tack upon our lines, where we are far beyond the old system 
 of trenches and for a time in real open warfare of the 
 
156 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 old style, which I, for one, never believed would come 
 again. The enemy's lines were protected with a new belt of 
 barbed wire, without which he can never stay on any kind 
 of ground ; but it was this which proved his undoing. His 
 massed attack against Australian troops had a brief success. 
 Battalions of Prussian Guards, charging in waves, broke 
 through our forward posts, and drove a deep wedge into 
 our positions. Here they stayed for a time, doing what 
 damage they could, searching round for prisoners, and 
 waiting, perhaps, for reserves to renew and strengthen the 
 impetus of their attack. But the Australian staff officers 
 were swift in preparing and delivering the counter-blow, 
 which fell upon the enemy at 7.30. Companies of Aus- 
 tralians swept forward, and with irresistible spirit flung 
 themselves upon the Prussians, forcing them to retreat. 
 They fell back in an oblique line from their way of ad- 
 vance, forced deliberately that way by the pressure and 
 direction of the Australian attack. At the same time our 
 batteries opened fire upon them with shrapnel as they ran, 
 more and more panic-stricken, towards their old lines. The 
 greatest disaster befell them, for they found themselves cut 
 off by their own wire, those great broad belts of sharp 
 spiked strands which they had planted to bar us off. 
 
 What happened then was just appalling slaughter. The 
 Australian infantry used their rifles as never rifles have 
 been used since the first weeks of the war, when our old 
 regulars of the first expeditionary force lay down at Le 
 Cateau on the way of their retreat and fired into the advanc- 
 ing tide of Germans, so that they fell in lines. 
 
 Yesterday, in that early hour of the morning, the Aus- 
 tralian riflemen fired into the same kind of target of massed 
 men, not far away, so that each shot found the mark. The 
 Prussians struggled frantically to tear a way through the 
 wire, to climb over it, crawl under it. They cursed and 
 screamed, ran up and down like rats in a trap, until they 
 fell dead. They fell so that dead bodies were piled upon 
 dead bodies in long lines of mortality before and in the 
 
 I 
 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 157 
 
 midst of that spiked wire. They fell and hung across its 
 strands. The cries of the wounded, long tragic wails, rose 
 high above the roar of rifle-fire and the bursting of shrapnel. 
 And the Australian soldiers, quiet and grim, shot on and on 
 till each man had fired a hundred rounds, till more than 
 fifteen hundred German corpses lay on the field at Lagni- 
 court. Large numbers of prisoners were taken, wounded 
 and unwounded, and five Prussian regiments have been 
 identified. The Prussian Guard has always suffered from 
 British troops as by some dire fatality. At Ypres, at Con- 
 talmaison, in several of the Somme battles, they were cut 
 to pieces. But this massacre at Lagnicourt is the worst 
 episode in their history, and it will be remembered by the 
 German people as a black and fearful thing. 
 
 7 
 
 The Terrors of the Scarpe 
 
 April 23 
 The battle of Arras has entered into its second phase — that 
 is to say, into a struggle harder than the first days of the 
 battle on April 9, when by a surprise, following great prepa- 
 rations, we gained great successes all along the line. 
 
 This morning, shortly before five o'clock, English, Welsh, 
 and Scottish troops made new and strong assaults east of 
 Arras upon the German line between Gavrelle, Guemappe, 
 and Fontaine-lez-Croisilles, which is the last switch-line on 
 this part of the Front between us and the main Hinden- 
 burg line. It has been hard fighting everywhere, for the 
 enemy was no longer uncertain of the place where we should 
 attack him. As soon as the battle of Arras started it was 
 clear to him that we should deliver our next blow when 
 we had moved forward our guns upon this "Oppy" line, as 
 we call it, which protects the Hindenburg positions north 
 and south of Vitry-en-Artois. His troops were told to 
 
158 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 expect our attack at any moment, and to hold on at all 
 costs of life. To meet our strength the enemy brought up 
 many new batteries, which he placed in front of the Hin- 
 
 denburg line, and close 
 behind the Oppy line, 
 and massed large num- 
 bers of machine-guns 
 in the villages, trenches, 
 and emplacements, 
 from which he could 
 sweep our line of ad- 
 vance by direct and en- 
 filade fire. These ma- 
 chine-guns were thick 
 in the ruins of Rceux, 
 just north of the River 
 Scarpe; in Pelves, just 
 south of it, in two 
 small woods called Bois 
 du Sart and Bois du 
 Vert, immediately fac- 
 ing Monchy, on the 
 slope of the hill ; and in 
 and about the village 
 of Guemappe, which 
 we had assaulted and 
 entered twice before. 
 Many German snipers, 
 men of good marks- 
 ma n s h i p and tried 
 courage, were placed 
 all about in shell-holes 
 with orders to pick off our officers and men, and the 
 enemy's gunners had registered all our positions so that 
 they were ready to drop down a heavy barrage directly 
 our men made a sign of attacking. For some days after 
 the second day of the battle of Arras they had fired a great 
 
 Line on April 23, 1917 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 159 
 
 many shells along and behind our front lines in order to 
 shake the nerve of our troops, and had poured fire into 
 Monchy-on-the-Hill after its capture by our cavalry and 
 infantry during those deadly hours of fighting already de- 
 scribed. It was only to be expected that this second phase 
 of the battle of Arras should be extremely hard. For our 
 men it is a battle to the death. Fighting is in progress at 
 all the points attained by our troops, and there is an ebb 
 and flow of men — ^beaten back for a while by intensity of 
 fire, but attacking again and getting forward. It is certain 
 that Gavrelle is ours (thus breaking the Oppy line north 
 of the River Scarpe) ; that our men are beyond Guemappe, 
 on the south of the Scarpe, though the enemy is still fight- 
 ing at this hour of the afternoon in or about that village; 
 and that on the extreme right of the attack the enemy has 
 suffered disaster north of Croisilles, and has lost large num- 
 bers of men in killed and prisoners. 
 
 At the outset of the attack the enemy showed himself 
 ready to meet it with a fierce resistance. Last night was 
 terribly cold, and our troops lying out in shell-holes or in 
 shallow trenches dug a day or two ago, suffered from this 
 exposure. The Scottish troops of the 15th Division on the 
 south of the Scarpe had fought in the first days' battles of 
 Arras, and, with English troops of the 37th, had gone for- 
 ward to Monchy and into the storm-centre of the German 
 fire. Some of the men I met to-day had been buried by 
 German crumps, and had been dug out again, and as they 
 lay waiting for the hour of attack shells fell about them and 
 the sky was aflame with flashes of our bombs. The men 
 craved for something hot to drink. "I would have given 
 all the money I have for a cup of tea," said one of them. 
 But they nibbled dry biscuits and waited for the dawn, and 
 hoped they would not be too numb when the light came 
 to get up and walk. The light came very pale over the 
 earth, and with it the signal to attack. Our bombardment 
 had been steady all through the night, and then broke into 
 hurricane fire. As soon as our men left the trenches our 
 
160 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 gunners laid down a barrage in front of them, and made 
 a moving wall of shells ahead of them — a frightful thing 
 to follow, but the safest if the men did not go too quick or 
 fail to distinguish between the line of German shells and our 
 own. It was not easy to distinguish, for our men had 
 hardly risen from the shell-holes and ditches before the 
 enemy's barrage started, and all the ground about them was 
 vomiting up fountains of mud and shell-splinters. At the 
 same time there came above all the noise of shell-fire a 
 furnace-blast of machine-guns. Machine-gunners in Roeux 
 and Pelves, in the two small woods in front of Monchy, 
 and in the ground about Guemappe were slashing all the 
 slopes and roads below Monchy-on-the-Hill. 
 
 *'It was the most awful machine-gun fire I have heard," 
 said a young Gordon this morning, as he came back with 
 a bullet in his hip. 'The beggars were ready for us, and 
 made it very hot. But we folk went on, those of us who 
 weren't hit quickly, and made an attack on the village of 
 Guemappe." 
 
 "The enemy dropped his barrage on to us mighty quick," 
 said a Worcestershire lad, "but we managed, most of us, 
 to get past his crumps. It took a lot of dodging in shell- 
 holes, and the worst was his machine-gun fire, which was 
 terrific." 
 
 Below Monchy the enemy was in trenches defended by 
 enfilade fire from redoubts along the Cambrai road, and 
 when our English troops swept down on them the Germans 
 ran at once up their own slope to the cover of a wood called 
 Bois du Sart. Only one officer and two men remained, 
 and they were taken prisoner, and I saw them being marched 
 back under escort. The officer was a young Bavarian with- 
 out a hat; he bore himself very jauntily, though his face 
 was white and he was covered with dirt. 
 
 The Worcesters and Hampshires of the 29th Division, 
 farther north and just south of the Scarpe, were held up for 
 some time by the intensity of the machine-gun fire, and 
 before getting on had to wait the arrival of a Tank which 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 161 
 
 was crawling up by way of the lone copse. They were then 
 fighting heavily about Shrapnel-and-Bayonet Trench, and 
 afterwards made their way forward again under heavy fire, 
 and passed a number of German snipers lying in shell-holes 
 to right and left of them. They were swept by machine- 
 gun fire and heavily counter-attacked. 
 
 To the north of the River Scarpe our progress was 
 quicker, and Scottish battalions of the 15th Division made 
 their advance towards Roeux by way of a fortified farm 
 and chemical works, in which machine-guns were hid- 
 den. Round about here the enemy lost very heavily. In 
 trying to escape from the ruins of the farm many of them 
 were killed and lay in a row to the left of the place. In 
 the chemical works those who had not escaped before our 
 men were upon them surrendered at once. The attack and 
 capture of Gavrelle, which broke the Oppy line, was the 
 best thing done on the left of the attack. This is important 
 ground for future operations. 
 
 Guemappe, to the south of the river, is the scene of the 
 most severe attacks and counter-attacks; and it is clear that 
 the enemy sets a great price on this heap of bricks, because 
 of its position on the Cambrai road. Before this morning 
 it has been the scene of fierce encounters; and to-day the 
 3rd Bavarian Division (which has taken the place of the 
 1 8th Division, at whom they had jeered for losing so many 
 prisoners in recent battles) is at close quarters with our 
 men; and round about the village there is deadly hand-to- 
 hand fighting. The trenches here are full of Germans, and 
 the enemy has sent up supports. 
 
 The 10 1 St Pomeranian Regiment, belonging to the 35th 
 Reserve Division, surrendered in solid masses to our men 
 in the neighbourhood of Fontaine-lez-Croisilles. For sev- 
 eral days they had suffered under our bombardment, and 
 it so shook their nerve that as soon as our troops advanced 
 they came out of their dug-outs in the support trenches — 
 the front line was not held at all — and gave themselves to 
 our men in blocks of 500 without any attempt to fight. On 
 
162 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 this ground between the Cojeul and Sensee rivers, where 
 our advance was on a curved line following the shape of 
 the rising ground, we took at least 1200 prisoners and a 
 battery of field-guns. 
 
 It is fortunate — in counting the high price of the battle — 
 that many of our wounded are only lightly touched by 
 shrapnel and machine-gun bullets. I saw these walking 
 wounded coming back; tired, brave men, who bore their 
 pain with most stoic endurance, so that there was hardly 
 a groan to be heard among them. Now and again overhead 
 was the shrill whine of an approaching shell, "Whistling 
 Percy" by name, but they paid no heed after their great 
 escape from the far greater peril. They formed up in a 
 long queue outside the dressing-station, where doctors 
 waited for them, and where there was a hot drink to be 
 had. They were covered with mud, and were too weary 
 and spent to talk. That long line of silent, wounded men 
 will always remain in my memory. 
 
 Outside in the sunlight, waiting their turn to enter the 
 dressing-station, some of the men lay down on the bank in 
 queer, distorted attitudes very like death, and slept there. 
 Others came hobbling with each arm round the neck of the 
 stretcher-bearers, or led forward blind, gropingly. It was 
 the whimper of these blind boys and the agony on their 
 faces which was most tragic in all this tragedy, those and 
 the men smashed about the face and head so that only 
 their eyes stared through white masks. Near by were Ger- 
 man prisoners standing against the sunlit wall, pale, sick, 
 and hungry-looking men, utterly dejected. A German aero- 
 plane flew overhead on the way behind our lines, shot at 
 all the way by our anti-aircraft guns, but very bold. Our 
 kite-balloons, white as snow-clouds in the blue sky, stared 
 over the battlefield where our men are still fighting in the 
 midst of great shell-fire. 
 
 April 25 
 
 This battle which is still in progress east of Arras is de- 
 veloping rather like the early days of the Somme battles, 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 163 
 
 when our men fought stubbornly to gain or regain a few 
 hundred yards of trenches in which the enemy resisted 
 under the cover of great gun-fire, and to which he sent up 
 strong bodies of supporting troops to drive our men out 
 by counter-attacks. In the ground east of Monchy, be- 
 tween the Scarpe and the Sensee rivers, the situation is 
 exactly like that, and, as I said yesterday, the line of battle 
 has ebbed to and fro in an astounding way, British and 
 German troops fighting forwards and backwards over 
 the same ground with alternating success. 
 
 An attack made by Scottish troops of the 15th Division 
 yesterday afternoon, and by English troops of the 29th at 
 3.30 this morning, re-established our line on this side of 
 the two woods called Bois du Vert and Bois du Sart, and 
 on the farther side of Guemappe. Parties of British troops 
 who had been cut off and were believed to be in the hands 
 of the enemy were recovered yesterday, having held out in 
 a most gallant way in isolated positions. Among them 
 were some of the Argylls and men of the Middlesex Regi- 
 ment. Our barrage preceding an infantry attack actually 
 swept over them, and they gave themselves up for lost, but 
 escaped from the British shells and the German shells which 
 burst all round them and seemed in competition for their 
 lives. 
 
 A similar case happened with a party of Worcester men 
 recovered last night. They were cut off in a small copse, 
 and lay quiet there for several days, surrounded by the 
 enemy. They had their iron rations with them, and lived 
 on these until they were gone. They were then starving 
 and suffering great agony from lack of water. But still 
 they would not surrender, and last night were rewarded 
 for their endurance by seeing the enemy retire before the 
 advancing waves of English troops. 
 
 The enemy is suffering big losses, but is replacing them 
 each time by fresh battalions. The Fourth Division of 
 the Prussian Guards has now been brought up against us, 
 among several other new divisions. They continue to show 
 
164 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 determination to hold us back from a nearer approach to 
 the Hindenburg Hne in spite of the frightful casualties 
 already suffered. There have been no fewer than eight 
 counter-attacks already upon the village of Gavrelle, and 
 not one of them has reached our men, but they have been 
 broken and dispersed. 
 
 In the first counter-attack upon our line opposite Monchy, 
 between 2000 and 3000 Germans left the Bois du Vert, but 
 after many hundreds had fallen retired to reorganize. The 
 second attack was in greater numbers and rolled back our 
 line for a time, but has now been forced to retire to its 
 old position in the woods, which we keep continually under 
 intense fire, so that much slaughter must be there. 
 
 Our guns never cease their labouring night and day, and 
 are shelling the enemy's infantry positions, batteries, lines 
 of communication, rail-heads, and cross-roads, so that no 
 troops may move except under the menace of death or 
 mutilation. Nevertheless, faced by great peril to his main 
 defensive lines, the enemy is massing troops rapidly for 
 battle on even a bigger scale. Our own men are passing 
 through fiery ordeals with that courage which is now known 
 to the whole world, so that I need not labour to describe 
 it — a patient courage in great hardships, self-sacrifice in 
 the midst of great perils, sane and unbroken in spite of 
 horrors upon which the imagination dare not dwell. 
 
 From the colonel of the Worcesters of the 29th Division 
 I heard to-day a narrative which would surely make the 
 angels weep, but though just out of the infernal ordeal he 
 told it calmly, and his hand only trembled slightly as he 
 pointed on his trench-map to positions which his men had 
 taken and where they had most suffered. His story deals 
 with only a small section of the battle front, and all the 
 fighting which he directed had for its object certain trenches 
 which would mean nothing if I gave their names. (They 
 were Strong and Windmill Trench.) 
 
 His battalion headquarters were in a dug-out actually 
 in the front trench line from which his men attacked, and 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 165 
 
 it was lucky, for after the troops had gone forward the 
 enemy ^s barrage fell behind them and destroyed the ground. 
 The colonel, with his adjutant, his sergeant-major, and his 
 servant, shared this battle headquarters with the command- 
 ing officer and staff of the Hampshires, but not for long. 
 Heavy German crumps were smashing round them, and 
 the enemy's barrage-fire swept up and down searching for 
 human life. The colonel of the Hampshires was wounded, 
 and two of his officers were killed. The colonel of the 
 Worcesters, who was left to record this history, could tell 
 very little of what was happening to his men there in the 
 battle less than a thousand yards away. A wounded ser- 
 geant came back and said that the left company was hold- 
 ing out against German counter-attacks. Later two young 
 officers came back to Pick-and-Shrapnel Trench with a 
 party of men and said they had been ordered to retire 
 by a strange captain. The colonel rallied the men, and 
 they went back and retook Windmill Trench near by. Mes- 
 sages came down that men were half mad for lack of wa- 
 ter. The colonel sent up water by a carrying-party, but 
 he believes that they delivered it to the enemy, who had 
 crept up through the darkness which had now fallen. All 
 through the day on each side of this Worcestershire colonel 
 great bodies of troops were fighting forward under intense 
 shell-fire. He saw the enemy's massed counter-attacks 
 slashed by our shrapnel and machine-gun fire, and our field- 
 batteries galloping to forward positions, but he could see 
 nothing of his own men after they had once gone forward 
 down the sloping ground. His runners were killed or fell 
 senseless from shell-shock. He himself was buried by a 
 shell and dug out again by his sergeant-major. In the 
 night he was left quite alone, surrounded by dead. 
 
 That is one experience in the great battle, and thousands 
 of our men endured and are enduring dreadful things in 
 the fierce fighting and under intense fire. Once out of it, 
 they are calm and self-controlled, as I saw many of them 
 to-day just as they had been relieved, and the strongest 
 
166 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 expression they use is, "It is very hot, sir," or "I didn't 
 think I should come back." 
 
 The wounded are marvellous. The lightly woimded have 
 a long way to walk, hobbling for miles down unsafe roads. 
 Many of them walked back through Monchy when it was 
 a flaming torch. Weary and dazed they came to the casu- 
 alty clearing-station, not even now beyond the range of 
 shell-fire, so that men who have escaped from the battle- 
 fields, waiting to have their wounds dressed^ hear the old 
 shrill whistle of the approaching menace, but do not care. 
 It is only by such courage that our men can gain any 
 ground from the enemy, and it is such courage that beats 
 back all those heavy counter-attacks which the enemy is 
 now hurling against us up by Gavrelle and by Monchy-on- 
 the-Hill. 
 
 8 
 
 The Background of Battle 
 
 April 30 
 There has been but little time lately to describe the scene 
 of war or to chronicle the small human episodes of this 
 great battle between Lens and St.-Quentin, with its storm- 
 centre at Arras, where men are fighting in mass, killing in 
 mass, dying in mass. Some day one of our soldiers now 
 fighting — some young man with a gift of words — will write 
 for all time the story of all this: the beauty and the ugli- 
 ness and the agony of it, the colour and the smell and the 
 movement of it, with intimate and passionate remembrance. 
 It is a memorable battle-picture in modern history, and in 
 the mass of hundreds of thousands of men, obedient to 
 the high command, which uses them as parts of the great 
 war machine, is the individual with his own separate expe- 
 rience and initiative, with his sense of humour and his 
 suffering, and his courage and his fear. 
 
 The scene of battle has changed during these last few 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 167 
 
 days because spring has come at last, and warm sunshine. 
 It has made a tremendous difference to the look of things, 
 and to the sense of things. A week ago our men were 
 marching through rain and sleet, through wild quagmire of 
 old battlefields which stretch away behind our new front 
 lines, through miles of shell-craters and dead woods and 
 destroyed villages. They fought wet and fought cold, and 
 their craving was for hot drink. Yesterday, after a few 
 days of warmth, our troops on the march were powdered 
 white with dust, and they fought hot and fought thirsty, 
 and the wounded cried for water to cool their burning 
 throats. Men going up to the lines in lorries stared out 
 through masks of dust which made them look like pier rots. 
 Their steel helmets, upon which rain pattered a week ago, 
 were like millers' hats. More frightful now, even than 
 in the worst days of winter, is the way up to the Front. 
 In all that broad stretch of desolation we have left behind 
 us the shell-craters which were full of water, red water and 
 green water, are now dried up, and are hard, deep pits, 
 scooped out of powdered earth, from which all vitality has 
 gone, so that spring brings no life to it. I thought perhaps 
 some of these shell-slashed woods would put out new shoots 
 when spring came, and watched them curiously for any sign 
 of rebirth, but there is no sign, and their poor, mutilated 
 limbs, their broken and tattered trunks, stand naked tmder 
 the blue sky. Everything is dead with a white, ghastly look 
 in the brilliant sunshine except where here and there in the 
 litter of timber and brickwork which marks the site of a 
 French village, a little bush is in bud, or flowers blossom in 
 a scrap-heap which was once a garden. All this is the back- 
 ground of our present battle, and through this vast stretch 
 of barren country our battalions move slowly forward to 
 take their part in the battle when their turn comes, resting a 
 night or two among the ruins where other men who work 
 always behind the lines, road-mending, wiring, on supply 
 columns, at ammunition dumps, in casualty clearing-stations 
 and rail-heads, have made their billets on the lee side of 
 
168 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 broken walls or in holes dug deep by the enemy and re- 
 ported safe for use. Dead horses lie on the roadsides or 
 in shell-craters. I passed a row of these poor beasts as 
 though all had fallen down and died together in a last 
 comradeship. Dead Germans, or bits of dead Germans, lie 
 in old trenches, and these fields are the graveyards of 
 Youth. 
 
 Farther forward the earth is green again in strips. The 
 bombardment has not yet torn it and pitted it, and the shell- 
 craters are scarcer and their sloping sides are fresh. One 
 gets to know the date of a crater, and its freshness is a 
 warning sign that the enemy's guns dislike this patch of 
 ground and anything that may live there. So it is that one 
 gets close to the present fighting, and now under this first 
 sunshine of the year there is a strange and terrible beauty 
 in the battle-picture. 
 
 I watched our shelling of the Hindenburg line at Queant 
 from the ground by Lagnicourt, where the Australians 
 slaughtered the enemy in the recent counter-attack. White 
 as fleecy clouds in the sky was the smoke of our shrapnel 
 bursts, and there was the glinting and flashing of shells 
 above the enemy's trench, which wound like a tape on the 
 slope of the rising ground above the village of Queant, and 
 through the fringe of trees below. A storm of shells broke 
 over Bullecourt to the left, and the enemy was answering 
 back with 5-9's, searching the valley which runs down from 
 Noreuil, as I watched it while it was under fire. The Ger- 
 mans were barraging the crest of the hill, with their univer- 
 sal-shell bursting high with black oily clouds. One of our 
 aeroplanes had fallen, and the enemy's guiiners in the Hin- 
 denburg line tried to destroy it by long-range sniping. Our 
 own guns were firing steadily, so that the sky was filled with 
 invisible flights of shells, and always there came down the 
 humming song of our aeroplanes, and their wings were 
 dazzHng and diaphanous as they were caught by the sun's 
 rays. That is the picture one sees now along any part of 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 169 
 
 our line, but the adventure of the men inside the smoke- 
 drifts is more human in its aspect. 
 
 It was a queer scene when the AustraHans went into Lag- 
 nicourt. Some Germans were still hiding in their dug-outs, 
 and the Australian troops searched for them with fixed 
 bayonets. In some of these hiding-places they found great 
 stores of German beer, and it was a good find for men 
 thirsty and glad of a smoke. So this mopping-up battalion, 
 as it is called, mopped up the beer, which was very light 
 and refreshing, and, with fat cigars between their teeth, a 
 bottle of beer in one hand and a bayonet ready in the other, 
 continued their hunt for prisoners. During the fighting 
 hereabouts 200 German soldiers came across under the white 
 flag as a sign of surrender, but they were seen by their own 
 machine-gunners, who shot them down without mercy. So 
 one gets comedy and tragedy hand-in-hand here, and, in- 
 deed, the whole tale of this fighting on the way to Queant 
 is a mixture of gruesome horror and fantastic mirth, which 
 makes men laugh grimly when telling the tale of it. 
 
 I went about three days ago over the battlefield with a 
 young Australian officer, a gallant man and a quick walker, 
 who was the first to get news of the enemy's attack. He 
 was at headquarters, awake but sleepy, in the small hours of 
 morning. 
 
 Presently the telephone bell tinkled. "Hallo," said the 
 Australian officer and yawned. A small voice spoke : "The 
 enemy has broken through. He has got to Lagnicourt." 
 
 "What's that ?" said the officer at the 'phone. It seemed 
 a silly joke at such an hour. The message was repeated, 
 and my friend was very wide awake, and what happened 
 afterwards was very rapid. 
 
 The Australian Gunner-General gave orders to stop up 
 the gaps in the German wire through which the enemy had 
 come. They were closed by shell-fire. The attacking col- 
 umn, having failed in time to destroy the field-guns, tried 
 to escape, but found their retreat cut off. Three thousand 
 of them suffered appalling casualties, and I saw some of 
 
170 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 their dead bodies lying on the ground three days ago, 
 though most have now been buried. 
 
 On another part of the Hne held by the English troops a 
 queer bird was captured the other day. It was a blue bird 
 in the form of a German officer wearing a gay uniform, 
 with a big cloak and spurs, brought down by one of our 
 airmen. He seemed sleepy when caught, and yawned po- 
 litely behind a closed hand, and explained the cause of his 
 unfortunate appearance behind our lines. It appears that 
 the commanding officer of his air squadron at Cambrai went 
 on leave, and his officers and other friends consoled them- 
 selves by drinking good red wine. In the morning, after 
 a late night, they decided to go out on reconnaissance; 
 and the officer in the sky-blue cloak agreed that he also 
 would make a flight, and so perform his duty to the Father- 
 land. A pilot took him up ; but, instead of making a recon- 
 naissance, he fell fast asleep and saw nothing of a British 
 aeroplane swooping upon him from a high cloud. A bullet 
 in the petrol-tank drove down the German machine, and the 
 officer in the sky-blue cloak stepped out, saluted, surren-, 
 dered, and a little later fell asleep again. 
 
 An air prisoner is always more noticeable than the batches 
 of infantry who come back to our lines after one of our at- 
 tacks, but there was something unusual in the sight of sev- 
 enty-three Germans led by a young English soldier from the 
 zone of fire in this latest fighting. Our man was a young 
 private of Suffolks, chubby-faced and small in body, though 
 of a high spirit. 
 
 "What are you doing with those men ?" asked an officer. 
 "Why isn't there a proper escort?" 
 
 "They are my prisoners," said the boy; "they have just 
 surrendered to me, and I'm taking them back to our camp." 
 
 During attacks near Monchy one of our young officers 
 was lying in a shell-hole with a thin line of men, mostly 
 wounded. Presently a Tank crawled up, and a voice spoke 
 from it : "That's a hot spot of yours. You had better come 
 inside for a bit." 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 171 
 
 "How shall I get in?" said the young infantry officer. 
 
 A voice from the Tank said : "Come round to this side." 
 The young officer climbed in through a hole, and said 
 "Thanks very much" to the Tank officer, who drove him 
 close to the enemy's line, enabled him to see the position, and 
 then brought him back to his shell-hole. 
 
 These things are happening on the field of battle, and 
 there are many of our officers and men who have such fan- 
 tastic experiences, and tell them as though they were normal 
 adventures of life. 
 
 9 
 
 How THE Scots Took Guemappe 
 
 May I 
 Birds are singing their spring songs on this May Day in the 
 woods very close to where men are fighting, and the fields 
 on the edge of the shell-crater country are yellow with cow- 
 slips, so that war seems more hateful than ever, when the 
 earth is so good, and all the colour and scent of it. But the 
 work of war goes on whatever the weather. To-day, as well 
 as yesterday, the enemy's chief targets were Arleux, cap- 
 tured by the Canadians, and Guemappe, which fell to Scot- 
 tish troops, both of which places he has tried to take back 
 by repeated and violent counter-attacks. He is still in a 
 trench on the east side of Guemappe, running down to a bit 
 of ruin called Cavalry Farm, where there has been close 
 fighting for several days since the great battle on April 23, 
 when Guemappe was taken by the Scots of the 15th Divi- 
 sion. 
 
 That battle round Guemappe is a great episode in the his- 
 tory of the Scottish troops in France. It was fighting which 
 lasted for nearly a week after the hour of attack in the first 
 daylight of April 2^. At that hour long waves of the Sea- 
 forths. Black Watch, and Camerons left the trenches they 
 had dug under shell-fire, and went forward towards Gue- 
 
172 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 mappe. They were faced at once by blasts of machine-gun 
 fire, and although our artillery barrage crashed across the 
 field some of the German strong points were still held in 
 force. At one, about which I know most, there was a gap 
 between the Seaforths and Camerons owing to the feeble 
 light of the dawn, in which men could only dimly see, but 
 this was filled up by some companies of the Black Watch. 
 For nearly three hours the Scots were held up by the fire of 
 German machine-guns and artillery, and suffered many cas- 
 ualties, but they fought on, each little group of men acting 
 with separate initiative, and it is to their honour as soldiers 
 that they destroyed every machine-gun post in front of them. 
 One sergeant of the Black Watch fought his way down a 
 bit of trench alone and knocked out the gun-crew so that 
 the line could advance. Two hundred prisoners were taken 
 in that first forward sweep, when the Seaforths advanced in 
 long lines and went through and beyond the village of 
 Guemappe with loud shouts and cheers. They were checked 
 again by machine-gun fire from many different directions, 
 and immediately from the ruin called Cavalry Farm ahead 
 of them. This was afterwards cleared, and many Germans 
 lie dead there. Then between eleven and twelve in the 
 morning the enemy developed his first counter-attack. He 
 massed masses of men in the valley below Guemappe, flung 
 a storm of shells on to the village, and then sent forward 
 his troops to work round the spur on which the Highland- 
 ers held their line. It was then that the Camerons and 
 Black Watch showed their fierce and stubborn fighting spirit. 
 They tore rents in the lines of advancing Bavarians with 
 Lewis-gun and rifle-grenade fire, and the enemy's losses 
 were great, so that the supporting troops passed over lines 
 of dead comrades. But the attack was pressed by strong 
 bodies of men, and the thin lines of the Scots, exhausted by 
 long hours of fighting, were forced to swing back. 
 
 We now know that first reports were wrong, when it was 
 said that the enemy retook Guemappe for a time. He never 
 set foot in it again, though the Scottish line fell back. Little 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 173 
 
 groups of Highland officers and men refused to retreat. 
 Some of them held the cemetery and defended it against all 
 attacks. A captain of the Black Watch with seventy men 
 remained in the north of the village for four hours, though 
 they had no protection on either flank. One officer and 
 twelve men of the Camerons at another spot refused to leave 
 during the retirement, and were found still holding out when 
 their comrades renewed their attack and regained the 
 ground. Another officer of the Camerons lost all the men 
 of his machine-gun team, but brought up the gun himself 
 and worked it with another officer already wounded. After- 
 wards, to save ammunition, he sniped the enemy with their 
 own rifles which they had dropped on the field. Later the 
 village of Guemappe was isolated, for our artillery bom- 
 bardment prevented all approach by the enemy. Then an- 
 other brigade of Scots streamed round by the north of the 
 village, and the whole line of Highland troops swept back 
 the enemy. By that time the Bavarian troops had no more 
 fight in them, and knew they were beaten. They retired in 
 great disorder, leaving great numbers of dead and wounded. 
 
 For a day and a half the Scots were able to rest a little, 
 though always under shell-fire; but afterwards there was 
 fierce patrol fighting round Cavalry Farm and in outposts 
 near by. The enemy's fire was intense, and he commanded 
 this position ' from the high ground to the north, but small 
 parties of Scots held on doggedly outside the ruins of the 
 farm until, after five days, they were withdrawn. 
 
 I have told all this briefly; but, even so, I hope it may 
 reveal a little of the stubborn courage with which those 
 men refused to give way, and when forced back for a few 
 hours after great losses, regained the ground they had cap- 
 tured with a spirit which belongs to the history of their 
 fighting clans. 
 
174 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 lo 
 
 Xhe Oppy Line 
 
 May 2 
 There have been no strong infantry attacks along our 
 front to-day, none of any kind as far as I know. It has 
 been a day for the guns alone, and as my ears could bear 
 witness, and every nerve in my body, they have made the 
 most of it under the blue sky. All our batteries were hard 
 at work, heavy howitzers with broad blunt snouts, long- 
 muzzled long-ranged 6o-pounders, and farther forward, on 
 the landscape of the battlefield, field-guns drumming out 
 salvos with staccato knocks above the full deep blasts of the 
 monsters behind them. 
 
 Somehow in this bright sunlight, flooding all the country- 
 side with a golden haze and painting the fields with vivid 
 colour — yellow where the new shell-holes had dug deep pits, 
 red-brown where it had lain quiet since the war, emerald- 
 green where strips of grass grew between the plots of barbed 
 wire and a tangle of old trenches — on such a day as this, 
 with a light wind driving fleecy clouds through the sky, 
 and wild flowers likeJittle stars at one's feet, and larks sing- 
 ing with a high ecstasy, war and blood and death seemed 
 abominably out of place. Yet they were there all three, 
 round about Oppy and Gavrelle, and on the ground below 
 Bailleul, thrust before one's eyes, rising to one's nostrils, 
 making hideous noises about one. It would have been so 
 much better in such a May as this to stroll on the way to 
 Oppy, in this first sunshine of the year, without a thought 
 of what men might be watching. But when, standing on 
 the crest above, I showed half my body above a bit of earth, 
 an officer who lives below the earth said, "It's better to 
 keep down. The blighters can see us all right." 
 
 And to stroll into Oppy one must have many machine- 
 guns with one, and be preceded by a storm of heavy shells, 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 175 
 
 making a steel wall before one. One day soon, I suppose, 
 our men will go in again like that, to find a litter of men's 
 bodies, some living men trembling in cellars, and another 
 little bit of hell. We were making a hell of it to-day for 
 any young Germans there. Our guns made good target 
 practice of it, flinging up rosy clouds of dust from its ruins 
 of red brick. But one house still stands in Oppy Wood. It 
 is a big white chateau, which is clearly visible with empty 
 windows and broken roofs through a thin fringe of dead 
 trees. A sinister ghostly place, even at broad noonday, and 
 no man alive would sit alone there in its big salon unless he 
 had gone mad with shell-shock, for that white house is 
 another target for guns, and while I watched our shells 
 crashed through the trees about it. 
 
 Below Oppy, where our men fought a few days ago, is 
 Gavrelle, which is ours, above Greenland Hill, where there 
 is a broken village among the trees, from which we can 
 look down across the River Scarpe. To the left of Oppy 
 is Arleux-en-Gohelle, recently captured by Canadians, who 
 fought through its streets, and to the southern side of it is 
 the ruin of a sugar factory, 500 yards or so from the out- 
 skirts of Bailleul, an old grey place, with broken walls and 
 roofs, and a railway station with a deep embankment. These 
 places were targets for the German guns, especially Arleux 
 and Bailleul railway station, and heavy crumps came whin- 
 ing and then crashing, and flinging up clouds of black smoke 
 — as black and as big as the evil genii that came from the 
 bottle and played the devil. 
 
 The enemy's guns were very active to-day, as our com- 
 munique would say. But one of our forward observing 
 officers, a young man in a dusty ditch, with a telescope and 
 a telephone, and a steel hat which is only a faith cure for 
 heavy shell-fire, was chuckling over this morning's business. 
 
 "It was very funny," he said. *The Boche started coun- 
 ter-battery work, but we answered back too quick, and 
 knocked out one of his batteries smack in the eye. That 
 group has kept quiet since then." 
 
176 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 He pointed to some broken things lying about the field 
 outside Oppy, and said : "The aeroplanes have been drop- 
 ping about a good deal. There has been some very hot work 
 in this part of the sky." The sky above us then was full of 
 the throb and hum of aeroplanes, and to the tune of them 
 birds went on singing, but other birds, invisible, sang louder 
 than the larks, with high, shrill, whistling cries which make 
 one feel cold and crouch low if they sing too close over- 
 head. So the battle of guns went on, and troops, marching 
 over dusty ground pock-marked with shell-craters, all white 
 and barren, between belts of rusty wire, paid no heed to 
 bursting crumps, and in the new-made craters or in old 
 trenches, or in special hoks just dug for shelter, sat down 
 out of the wind and cooked their food, and slept so much 
 like other bodies who will never wake, that once or twice I 
 thought they were dead, these single figures sprawling in the 
 dust, with sand-bags for their pillows. Away on the sky- 
 line were a few dim towers faintly pencilled against the 
 golden haze, and one taller than the others standing apart. 
 
 "Douai," said a gunner officer. Yes ; it was Douai, old in 
 history and full of ancient buildings, which hold many 
 memories of faith and scholarship and peace. The tall, lone 
 tower which I saw was the great belfry of Douai. It seemed 
 very far away, with the German lines on this side of it ; but 
 I remember how I used to see the clock-tower of Bapaume 
 (no longer standing, alas!) as far and dim as this, so that 
 it seemed as though we should never fight our way to it. 
 But one day I walked into Bapaume with the Australian 
 troops, who had entered it that morning. And so one day 
 we may walk into Douai, if luck is with us. 
 
 II 
 
 The Battle of May 3 
 
 May 3 
 Another day of close, fierce, difficult fighting is now in 
 progress, having begun early this morning in the darkness 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 177 
 
 and going on down a long front in hot sunshine and dust 
 and the smoke of innumerable shells. 
 
 Among the battalions engaged were the Royal Scots, East 
 Yorks, Shropshire Light Infantry, the Norfolks, Suffolks, 
 East Kents and West Kents, Royal Fusiliers, East Surreys, 
 Worcesters, Hampshires, King's Own Scottish Borderers, 
 East Lanes and South Lanes, Gloucesters, Argylls, Sea- 
 forths and Black Watch, and the Middlesex and London 
 Regiments. They belonged to the 3rd, 12th, 37th, 29th, 
 17th, 15th, and 56th Divisions. 
 
 At many points our troops have succeeded in getting 
 forward in spite of great resistance from fresh German 
 legiments and intense artillery-fire. The most important 
 gains of the day are in the direction of the village of 
 Cherisy, where ground has been won by English battaHons, 
 and round Bullecourt by the Australians with Devons and 
 Gordons on their left. 
 
 This thrusts the enemy by Fontaine-lez-Croisilles, where 
 he is still holding out, into a narrow pointed sahent, which 
 should be utterly untenable. The way to Cherisy was taken 
 rapidly by men of the West Kents and East Surreys of the 
 1 8th Division without any serious check, although there 
 was savage machine-gun fire. At Fontaine-lez-Croisilles 
 our men found it very difficult to get forward owing to the 
 strength of the enemy's defences south of the wood, and an 
 abominable barrage of heavy shell-fire. They bombed their 
 way down 600 yards of trench, and established themselves 
 round Fontaine Wood on the north-west side of the village. 
 
 Farther north fighting carried our line out from Gue- 
 mappe towards St.-Rohart Factory, just above Vis-en-Ar- 
 tois, but signal rockets sent up here by our men may only 
 come from advanced posts ahead of the main line. 
 
 South of the Scarpe, between Monchy and those two 
 woods of ill repute, the Bois du Vert and Bois du Sart, the 
 battle has been similar to other struggles over the same 
 ground, where the enemy stares across to our lines from 
 good cover and has every inch of earth registered by his 
 
178 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 guns, with a clear field of fire for his machine-guns, of 
 which he has got numbers in enfilade positions. English 
 and Scottish battalions attacked here this morning, and 
 would not give way under the terrific fire, but fought for- 
 ward in small bodies until they gained the line on the crest 
 of Infantry Hill and 300 yards short of the two woods, 
 now linked together by the Germans with belts of wire and 
 well-dug trenches. 
 
 North of the River Scarpe there is great fighting round 
 Roeux, Gavrelle, and Oppy by the Household Battalion, Sea- 
 forths, Royal Irish Fusiliers, Warwicks, South African 
 Scottish of the 4th, 9th, and 6th Divisions, and other Eng- 
 lish and Scottish battalions. 
 
 Gavrelle has already been the scene of many attacks and 
 counter-attacks. It was here that in the fighting last month 
 the enemy advanced time after time in close waves, only to 
 be scythed down by our machine-guns, so that heaps of 
 those field-grey dead He out there on the barren land. To- 
 day those dead were joined by many comrades. When our 
 men advanced they were met by masses of Germans, and 
 once more the line of battle had an ebb and flow, and both 
 sides passed over the dead and wounded in assault and re- 
 tirement. Four times an old windmill beyond the village 
 changed hands. Four times the Germans who had dislodged 
 our men were cut to pieces and thrust out. Men are fight- 
 ing here as though these bits of brick and wood are worth a 
 king's ransom or a world's empire, and in a way they are 
 worth that, for the windmill of Gavrelle is one point which 
 will decide a battle or a series of battles upon which the 
 fate of two Empires is at stake. So it happens in this war 
 that a dust-heap like that other windmill at Pozieres in the 
 crisis of the Somme battles becomes for hours or days the 
 prize of victory or the symbol of defeat. 
 
 In Oppy, above Gavrelle, which I described yesterday as 
 I saw it in the golden haze, the Germans there, whom I 
 could not see, have been very busy. They knew this attack 
 was coming ; it was clear that it must come to them, and at 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 170 
 
 night they worked hard to protect themselves, fear being 
 their taskmaster. They made machine-gun emplacements 
 not only in pits and trenches, but in branches of many 
 trees, and wired themselves in with many twisted strands. 
 The Second Guards Reserve, newly brought up, held the 
 village and wood and the white chateau, with its empty v\^in- 
 dows and broken roofs, and kept below the ground when 
 our gun-fire stormed above them. So when our men at- 
 tacked in that pale darkness of a May night they foimd 
 themselves at once in a hail of machine-gun bullets, and later 
 under shell-fire, which made a fury about them. They 
 penetrated into Oppy Wood, but owing to the massed Ger- 
 man troops, who counter-attacked fiercely, they did not go 
 far into the wood or lose themselves in such a death-trap. 
 They were withdrawn to the outskirts of Oppy, so that our 
 guns could get at the enemy and drive him below ground 
 again. 
 
 Northwards we stormed and won long trenches running 
 up from Oppy to Arleux, and most necessary for further 
 progress, linking up with the Canadians, who made a great 
 and successful attack upon the village of Fresnoy, just 
 south of Acheville. 
 
 That was certainly a very gallant feat in face of many 
 difficulties of ground and most savage fire. They completely 
 surrounded the village and caught its garrison in a trap 
 from which they had no escape. After brief fighting with 
 bombs and bayonets the survivors surrendered, to the num- 
 ber of eight officers and about 200 men belonging to the 
 Fifteenth Reserve Division of Prussians. What made them 
 sick and sorry men is that two of their battalions had just 
 arrived in high spirits, having troops in front of them who 
 were weak, they had been told, and they were ordered to at- 
 tack Arleux this morning. The Canadians attacked first, 
 and by six o'clock these Prussians were sadder and wiser 
 men. The prisoners escaped our shell-fire, but v/ere nearly 
 done to death behind our lines by their own guns. I saw this 
 incident this morning. They had been put in an enclosure, 
 
180 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 next to a Canadian field dressing-station flying the Red 
 Cross, when suddenly the enemy's guns began to shell the 
 area with five-point-nines. They burst again and again 
 during half an hour with tremendous crashes and smoke- 
 clouds. 
 
 "If those Germans are still there," said a Canadian, ''there 
 won't be much left of them." 
 
 When the shelling eased off I went towards their place 
 but found it empty. As soon as the shelling started their 
 guards hurried them away to safety farther back behind 
 the lines, and the Canadian wounded were diverted to an- 
 other route. One of these Prussian officers was shown his 
 old lines captured on April 9, and he asked what regiment 
 had done such gallant work. "The Canadians did it," he 
 was told, "and the same fellows that captured Fresnoy this 
 morning." The Prussian officer could hardly believe it, but 
 when he was convinced of its truth he complimented the 
 Canadian troops who had fought so hard and so far. They 
 were proud young officers, and when I spoke to one or two 
 they would not admit that they had been mastered in this 
 war. They seem to have an unbounded faith in Hinden- 
 burg's genius, and in the effects of submarine warfare. 
 
 I found no such spirit among the non-commissioned of- 
 ficers and men. They spoke as men under an evil spell, 
 hating the war, but seeing no end to it. "Neither side will 
 win," said one of them, "but who will stop it? The papers 
 write about the conditions of peace, but one party says one 
 thing and one party says another, and we don't know what 
 to believe." 
 
 I asked them about the Russian revolution, and whether 
 it had any influence in the German trenches, but they seemed 
 to have heard of it only as a vague, far-off event, not af- 
 fecting their own lives and ideas. They were more in- 
 terested about their food, and said their bread ration had 
 been reduced by one-third. Behind the lines the scene of 
 war to-day was on white, dusty plains under the glare of 
 the Sim, where men waiting to go into battle slept beside 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 181 
 
 their arms, where mules kicked and rolled beside heavy bat- 
 teries and transport. Guns were thundering close, and 
 hostile shells were bursting among the tents and kinema 
 pavilions, and a band was playing. No sane man would be- 
 lieve it unless he saw it with his own eyes and heard it 
 with his own ears, for it was all fantastic as a nightmare of 
 war, with wounded men hobbling back from the bloody 
 strife and wending their way through the old trenches, in 
 which other men sat polishing rifles, or whistling in tune 
 with the band. 
 
 May 21 
 Before darkness, when the shadows were lengthening 
 across the fields and the glow of the evening sun was warm 
 on the white walls of the French cottages, I went into an 
 old village to meet some men who have just come out of 
 the fires of hate. They were the East Kents of the 12th 
 Division, whom I met last, months ago now, during the bat- 
 tle of the Somme, where they had hard fighting and tragic 
 losses. In the twilight and dusk and darkness I heard their 
 tales of battle — the things these men had done just a little 
 while ago before coming down to this village of peace — 
 tales of frightful hours, of life in the midst of death, of 
 English valour put to the most bloody and cruel tests. 
 
 Men of Kent and boys of Kent. There was one boy with 
 black eyes sitting with his tunic off on the window-sill above 
 a terraced porch who seemed too young to be one of the 
 King's officers, and is no more than nineteen, but ninety in 
 the experience of life and death. He told me how he was 
 sent up with some signallers to keep touch with his com- 
 pany, who had gone forward in the attack at Monchy in the 
 darkness before daybreak on the morning of May 3. He 
 lost his way, as other men did, because of the darkness, 
 and found his men being hit by machine-gun bullets. He 
 put them into shell-holes, and worked from one hole to 
 the other, dodging the heavy crumps which flung the earth 
 up about them, and the more deadly sweep of bullets. When 
 
182 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the first glimmer of dawn came he met a man of his com- 
 pany bringing down two prisoners, and heard that the ob- 
 jective had been taken. It seemed good news and good evi- 
 dence. The young officer pushed on with what men were 
 with him, and presently saw a body of men ahead of him. 
 Our fellows, he thought, and signalled to them. He thought 
 it queer that they didn't answer his signals, but waved their 
 caps in reply. He thought it more queer that they were 
 wearing overcoats, and he was sure his company had gone 
 forward without coats. But if those were not his men, 
 where were they? That was where they ought to be, or 
 farther forward. He went forward a little way, uneasy 
 and doubtful, until all doubts were solved. Those men wav- 
 ing caps to him, beckoning him forward, were Germans. 
 The enemy had got behind our men, who were cut off. It 
 was a narrow escape for this boy of nineteen, and he had 
 others before he got back with a few men, sniped all the 
 way by the enemy on the hill-side. It was worse for men 
 who had been fighting forward there. They had gone 
 over the ground quickly to the first goal, though many had 
 lost their way in darkness and many had fallen. Then the 
 enemy had dribbled in from positions on each side of them 
 and closed up behind them. The East Kents were cut off, 
 like other men of other regiments fighting alongside. Many 
 officers were picked off by snipers or hit by shells and ma- 
 chine-gun fire. Second lieutenants found themselves in 
 command of companies, sergeants and corporals and pri- 
 vates became leaders of small groups of men. The Buffs 
 were cut off, but did not surrender. One young officer 
 was the only one left with his company. He cheered up 
 the men and said it was up to the Buffs to hold out as long 
 as possible, and they built cover by linking up shell-holes 
 and making a defensive position. Three times the enemy 
 attacked in heavy numbers, determined to get their men, but 
 each time they were beaten off by machine-gun fire and 
 bombs. Fifteen hours passed like this, and then night came, 
 and with it grave and dreadful anxiety to the officer with 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 183 
 
 what remained of the company of men who looked to him 
 for leadership. There were no more bombs. If another 
 attack came, nothing could stop it. 
 
 '*We must fight our way back," said the second lieutenant. 
 Between them and their own lines were two German 
 trenches full of the enemy. It would not be easy to hack 
 a way through. But the East Kents left their shell-holes, 
 scrambled up into the open, and, with the second lieutenant 
 leading, stumbled forward through the darkness as stealth- 
 ily as possible to the German lines between them and our 
 old positions. Then they sprang into the enemy's trench, 
 bayoneting or clubbing the sentries. A German officer came 
 out of a dug-out with a sword, which is an unusual weapon 
 in a trench, but before he could use it our second lieutenant 
 shot him with his revolver. So to the next trench, and so 
 through again to a great escape. 
 
 There were other officers and men who had to fight des- 
 perately for life, like this. Young Kentish lads behaved 
 with fine and splendid bravery. A private belonging to a 
 machine-gun team remained alone in a shell-hole when all 
 his comrades were killed, and stayed there for three days, 
 keeping his gun in action until relieved by our advancing 
 troops. Three days had passed when he rejoined his unit, 
 and they, after a brief rest, were moving forward again to 
 the front line. The escaped man was given the offer of 
 remaining behind, but he said, "Thanks, but I'll go up along, 
 with the rest of the chaps," and back he went. 
 
 Another young private saw his company commander fall 
 by his side. The stretcher-bearers had not yet come up to 
 that spot, though all through the battle they did most noble 
 work ; and this private soldier was desperate to get help for 
 his officer. He resolved to make the enemy help him, and 
 went forward to where he saw Germans. By some menace 
 of death in his eyes, he quelled them — six of them — into 
 surrender, and, bringing them back as prisoners, made them 
 carry the young officer back to the dressing station, so sav- 
 ing his Hfe. I have told the story of the Buffs, or a brief 
 
/ 
 184 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 glimpse of it, and they will forgive me when I add that 
 what they have done has been done also by other English 
 battalions, not with greater valour but with as great, in 
 many battles and in these now being fought. Our English 
 troops, through no fault of mine, get but little praise or fame 
 though they are the backbone of the Army, and are in all 
 our great attacks. The boys of England, like those of its 
 garden county of Kent, have poured out their blood on these 
 fields of France, and have filled the history of this appalHng 
 war with shining deeds. 
 
 12 
 
 Fields of Gold 
 
 May 23 
 The beauty of these May days is so intense and wonderful 
 after the cold, grey weather and sudden rush of spring 
 that men are startled by it, and find it outrageously cruel 
 that death and blood and pain should be thrust into such a 
 setting. Once in history two fat kings met in a field of 
 France, between silken tents and on strips of tapestry laid 
 upon the grass, so that this scene of glitter and shimmer 
 was called for every age of schoolboys "The Field of the 
 Cloth of Gold." Out here in France now there is a field of 
 honour, stretching for more than a hundred miles, held by 
 British soldiers; and that is a true field of cloth of gold, for 
 everywhere behind the deep belt of cratered land, so barren 
 and blasted that no seed of hfe is left in the soil, there are 
 miles of ground where gold grows, wonderfully brilliant in 
 the warm sunshine of these days. It is the gold of densely 
 growing dandelions and of buttercups in great battalions. 
 They cover the wreckage of old trenches, and bloom in 
 patches of ground between powdered fragments of brick- 
 and-stone-work which are still called by the names of old 
 villages swept off the face of the earth by fierce bombard- 
 ments. 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 185 
 
 If you wish to picture our Army out here now, the land- 
 scape in which our men are fighting — and they Hke to think 
 you want to do so-^you must think of them marching 
 along roads sweet-scented with lilac and apple-blossom, and 
 over those golden fields to the white edge of the dead land. 
 They are hot under heavy packs all powdered with dust, so 
 that they wear white masks like a legion of Pierrots, and 
 on their steel helmets the sun shines brazenly. But there 
 is a soft breeze blowing, and as they march through old 
 French villages showers of tiny white petals are blown 
 upon them from the wayside orchards like confetti at a 
 wedding feast, though it is for this dance of death called 
 war. And these hot, dusty soldiers of ours, closed about by 
 guns and mule teams and transport columns surging cease- 
 lessly along the highways to the Front, drink in with their 
 eyes cool refreshing shadows of green woods set upon hill- 
 sides where the sun plays upon the new leaves with a melody 
 of delicate colour-music, and spreads tapestries of light and 
 shade across sweeps of grass-land all interwoven with the 
 flowers of France. 
 
 Our soldiers do not walk blindly through this beauty. It 
 calls to them, these men of Surrey and Kent and Devon, 
 these Shropshire lads and boys of the Derbyshire dales, and 
 at night in their camps, before turning in to sleep in the 
 tents, they watch the glow of the western sun and the fad- 
 ing blue of the sky, and listen to the last song of birds tired 
 with the joy of the day, and are drugged by the scent of 
 closing flowers and of green wheat growing so tall, so quick- 
 ly tall, behind the battlefields. These tents are themselves 
 like flowers in the darkness when candlelight gleams through 
 their canvas, and at night the scene of war is lit up by star- 
 shells and vivid flashes of light as great shells fall and burst 
 beyond the zone of tents, where British soldiers crouch 
 in holes and burrow deep into the earth. It is under the 
 blue sky of these days, and in this splendour of spring- 
 time, that English boys aiid young Scots go into the fires 
 
186 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 of hell, where quite close to them the birds still sing, as I 
 heard the nightingale amidst the crash of gun-fire. 
 
 They were Shropshire lads of the King's Shropshire 
 Light Infantry of the glorious 3rd Division, who helped to 
 turn the tide of battle on one of these recent days when 
 there was savage fighting through several days and nights. 
 The ofiicer in command of one of their companies found the 
 ruined village of Tilloy-les-Mufflains in front of him still 
 held by the enemy when our troops assaulted it. They were 
 working their machine-guns and raking another body of in- 
 fantry. 
 
 ''Come on, Shropshires," shouted the young ofiicer, and 
 his boys followed him. They worked round the flank of 
 the village, cut off ninety of the enemy and captured them, 
 and thereby enabled other troops to get forward. One of 
 these Shropshire officers went out with only a few men 200 
 yards beyond the front line that night, and took twenty 
 prisoners in a dug-out there. 
 
 Into that same village of Tilloy cleared by Shropshires 
 an ofiicer of the King's Own Liverpools, with a lance- 
 corporal, dashed into a ruined house from which the enemy 
 was sniping in a most deadly way, and brought out two of- 
 ficers and twenty-eight men as prisoners. It was a subal- 
 tern of the Suffolks who went out in daylight under fright- 
 ful fire to reconnoitre the enemy's lines and brought back 
 knowledge which saved many lives. On the night of May 
 3, when all the sky was blazing with fire, it was the Royal 
 Scots of the 3rd Division who held part of the line against 
 heavy counter-attacks. The men had been fighting against 
 great odds. Many of them had fallen, and the wounded 
 were suffering horribly. Thirst tortured them, not only the 
 wounded but also the unwounded, and there was no chance 
 of water coming up through the hellish barrage. No chance 
 except for the gallantry of the adjutant of the Royal Scots 
 away back at battle headquarters near Monchy, where heavy 
 crumps were bursting. He guessed his men craved for 
 water, and he risked almost certain death to take it to them, 
 
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS 187 
 
 going through all the fire with a few carriers and by a mira- 
 cle untouched. This same adjutant went out again across 
 the battle-ground under heavy fire to reorganize an ad- 
 vanced signal-station where there were many dead and 
 wounded, and all the lines were cut. It was a young sec- 
 ond lieutenant of the Royal Fusiliers of the 3rd Division 
 who took command of two companies when all the other 
 officers had been killed or wounded, and so comforted the 
 men that under his leadership they dug a line close to the 
 German position east of Monchy, and all through the day 
 and night of tragic fighting held it against strong attacks 
 and under infernal shell-fire. Day after day, night after 
 night, our men are fighting like that. And when for a little 
 while they are relieved and given a rest they come back 
 across those fields of the cloth of gold, beyond those barren 
 fields where so many of their comrades lie, and look around 
 and take deep breaths and say, ''By Jove, what perfect 
 weather!" and become a little drunk with the beauty of this 
 world of life, and hate the thought of death. 
 
PART IV 
 THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 
 
 I 
 
 Wytschaete and Messine3 
 
 June 7 
 After the battle of Arras and all that fierce fighting which 
 for two months has followed the capture of Vimy and the 
 breaking of the Hindenburg line, and the taking of many 
 villages, many prisoners, and many guns, by the valour and 
 self-sacrifice of British troops, there began to-day at dawn 
 another battle more audacious than that other one, because 
 of the vast strength of the enemy positions, and more stun- 
 ning to the imagination because of the colossal material 
 of destructive force gathered behind our assaulting troops. 
 It is the battle of Messines. 
 
 It is my duty to write the facts of it, and to give the pic- 
 ture of it. That is not easy to a man who, after seeing the 
 bombardments of many battles, has seen just now the appal- 
 ling vision of massed gun-fire enormously greater in inten- 
 sity than any of those, whose eyes are still dazed by a sky 
 full of blinding fights and flames, and who has felt the 
 tremor of earthquakes shaking the hill-sides, when suddenly, 
 as a signal, the ground opened and mountains of fire rose 
 into the clouds. There are no words which will help the 
 imagination here. Neither by colour nor language nor 
 sound could mortal man reproduce the picture and the 
 terror and the tumult of this scene. 
 
 Our troops are now fighting forward through smoke and 
 
 188 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 
 
 189 
 
 j^ist— English regiments, New-Zealanders, Protestant and 
 Catholic Irishmen. Their Divisions from north to south 
 were the 23rd, 47th (London), 41st, 19th, i6th (Irish), 
 36th (Ulster), 25th, New-Zealand, and 3rd Australian 
 
 LIKE BEFORE THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 
 
 They are fighting shoulder to shoulder in an invisible world, 
 from which they are sending up light signals to show the 
 progress they have made to the eyes of men flying high 
 above the storm of battle, and to watchers in the country 
 from which they went just as the faint rays of dawn flushed 
 a moonlight sky. They have made good progress up the 
 slopes of Wytschaete and Messines. Prisoners are already 
 
190 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 coming back with tales of how our men swept over them 
 and beyond. So far it seems that the day goes well for us, 
 but it is early in the day, and I must write later of what 
 happens later on that ridge hidden behind the drifting clouds 
 of smoke. 
 
 For two and a half years the Messines Ridge had been 
 a curse to all our men who have held the Ypres salient — 
 a high barrier against them, behind which the enemy stacked 
 his guns, shooting at them every kind of explosive, di- 
 rected upon these troops of ours in the swamps of the 
 Douve, in the broken woods of Ploegsteert, in all the flat 
 ground north and west of Kemmel, by German observing 
 officers very watchful behind their telescopes on that high 
 ground which rises up from Wytschaete to Messines. In 
 the early days of the war, before the enemy's grey legions 
 had swept down through Belgium in a great devastating 
 tide, some of our artillery and our cavalry rode along the 
 hog's back of the ridge and held it for a time against the 
 enemy's advanced patrols. On November i, 19 14, some of 
 our guns were parked in the market square of Warneton be- 
 yond the ridge, and on the next day found a good target 
 in German cavalry attacking from the woods, and held their 
 fire until these mounted men were within a thousand yards 
 of them, when riders and horses fell under a merciless storm 
 of shrapnel. Many Germans died that day, but behind 
 them was the vast army which came on like a rolling sea, 
 beating back our ten divisions — those first ten wonderful 
 divisions who fought against overwhelming odds and 
 massed artillery which gave them no kind of chance. So 
 we lost Wytschaete — Whitesheet, as our men have always 
 called it — and the Messines Ridge, and not all our efforts 
 could get it back again. 
 
 It is more than two years ago now — it was in March of 
 191 5 — that I saw an attack on Wytschaete, the first of our 
 British bombardments which I watched after adventures in 
 Belgium and France. Standing upon the same ground to- 
 day, looking across the same stretch of battlefield, watching 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 191 
 
 another attack up those frightful slopes, I thought back to 
 that other day, upon that early demonstration of our artil- 
 lery covering an infantry advance, and the remembrance 
 was amazing in its contrast to this new battle in the dawn* 
 Then our shrapnel barrage was a pretty ineffective thing — - 
 terrible as it seemed to me at the time. In those two years 
 our gun-power has been multiplied enormously — by vast 
 numbers of heavy guns and monstrous howitzers, and great; 
 quantities of field-guns — so that at daybreak this morning, 
 before our men rose from their trenches to go forward in 
 assault, the enemy's country up there was upheaved by a 
 wild tornado of shell-fire, and the contours of the land were 
 changed, and the sky opened and poured down shrieking 
 steel, and the earth was torn and let forth flame. 
 
 This battle of ours has started with such preparations as 
 to ensure all but that last certainty of success which belongs 
 to the incalculable fortune of war. It is not an exaggeration 
 to say that they began a year ago, when miners began to 
 tunnel under the slopes of Wytschaete and Messines, and 
 laid enormous charges of ammonal, which at a touch on this 
 day should blow up the hill-sides and alter the very geog- 
 raphy of France. For a year Sir Herbert Plumer and his 
 staff prepared their plans for this attack, gathered their 
 material, and studied every detail of this business of great 
 destruction. While other armies were fighting in the 
 Somme, and all the world watched their conflict, the Sec- 
 ond Army held the salient quietly, always on the defen- 
 sive, not asking for more trouble than they had. They 
 waited for their own offensive, and trained their own troops 
 for it. A week ago they were ready, with railways, guns, 
 Tanks, every kind of explosive, every kind of weapon which 
 modern science has devised for the killing of men in great 
 masses. A week ago all the guns that had been massing 
 let loose their fire. Night and day for seven days it has 
 continued with growing violence, working up to the su- 
 preme heights of fury as dawn broke to-day. For five 
 days at least many Germans were pinned to their tunnels as 
 
19S FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 prisoners of fire. No food reached them ; there was no way 
 out through these zones of death. A new regiment which 
 tried to come up last night was broken and shattered. A 
 prisoner says that out of his own company he lost fifty to 
 sixty men before reaching the line. For a long way behind 
 the line our heavy guns laid down belts of shell-fire, and 
 many of the enemy's batteries kept silent. 
 
 Our gunners smothered his batteries whenever he re- 
 vealed them to the airmen. Those flying men have been 
 wonderful. A kind of exaltation of spirits took possession 
 of them, and they dared great risks and searched out the 
 enemy's squadrons far over his lines. In five days from 
 June I forty-four separate machines were sent crashing 
 down, and this morning, very early, flocks of aeroplanes 
 went out to blind the enemy's eyes and report the progress 
 of battle. In the darkness queer monsters moved up close to 
 our lines, many of them crawling singly over the battlefields 
 under cover of woods and ruins. They were the Tanks, 
 ready to go into action on a great day of war, when their 
 pilots and crews have helped by high courage to victory. 
 
 Last night all was ready. Men knowing the risks of it 
 all — for no plans are certain in war — ^had a sense of oppres- 
 sion, strained by poignant anxiety. Many men's lives were 
 on the hazard of all this. The air was heavy, as though 
 nature itself were full of tragedy. A summer fog was 
 thick over Flanders, and the sky was livid. Forked light- 
 ning rent the low clouds, and thunder broke with menacing 
 rumblings. Rain fell sharply, and on the conservatory of 
 a big Flemish house where officers bent over their maps and 
 plans the rain-drops beat noisily. But the storm passed 
 and the night was calm and beautiful. Along the dark 
 roads, and down the leafy lanes, columns of men were 
 marching, and brass bands played them through the dark- 
 ness. Guns and gun-limbers moved forward at a sharp 
 pace. "Lights out" rang the challenges of the sentries to 
 the staff cars passing beyond the last village where any 
 gleam was allowed, and nearer to the lines masses of men 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 193 
 
 lay sleeping or resting in the fields before getting orders 
 to go forward into the battle zone. All through the night 
 the sky was filled with vivid flashes of bursting shells and 
 with steady hammer-strokes of guns, and from an observa- 
 tion-post looking across the shoulder of Kemmel Hill, 
 straight to Wytschaete and the Messines Ridge, I watched 
 this bombardment and waited for that moment when it 
 should rise into a mad fury of gun-fire before our men 
 lying in these dark fields should stumble forward. During 
 those hours of waiting in the soft warm air of the night I 
 thought of all I had heard of the position in front of us. 
 ''It's a Gibraltar," said an ofHcer who was there in the early 
 days of the war. "The enemy will fight his hardest for the 
 Messines Ridge," said another officer, whose opinion 
 has weight. ''He has stacks of guns against us.'' Such 
 thoughts made one shiver, though the night was warm, so 
 warm and moist that wafts of scent came up from the earth 
 and bushes. A full moon had risen, veiled by vapours until 
 they drifted by and revealed all her pale light in a sky that 
 was still faintly blue, with here and there a star. The moon 
 through all her ages never looked down upon such fires 
 of man-made hell as those which lashed out when the bom- 
 bardment quickened. That was just before three o'clock. 
 For two hours before that fires had been lighted in the Ger- 
 man lines by British shell-fire — big rose-coloured smoke- 
 clouds with hearts of flame — and all round the salient and 
 the Messines Ridge our guns flashed redly as they fired, 
 and their shell-bursts scattered light against which the trees 
 were etched sharply. I could hear the rattle of gun- wagons 
 along the distant roads, and the tuff -tuff of an engine driv- 
 ing very close up to the firing-lines, and above the great 
 loudness of our gun-fire the savage whine of German shrap- 
 nel coming over in quick volleys. The drone of a night- 
 flying aeroplane passed overhead. The sky lightened a lit- 
 tle, and showed black smudges like ink-blots on blue silk 
 cloth where our kite-balloons rose in clusters to spy out the 
 first news of the coming battle. The cocks of Flanders 
 
194 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 crowed, and two heavy German shells roared over Kemmel 
 Hill and burst somewhere in our lines. A third came, but 
 before its explosion could be heard, all the noise there had 
 been, all these separate sounds of guns and high explosives 
 and shrapnel were swept up into the tornado of artillery 
 which now began. 
 
 The signal for its beginning was the most terribly beauti- 
 ful thing, the most diabolical splendour, I have seen in war. 
 
 Out of the dark ridges of Messines and Wytscha^te and 
 that ill-famed Hill 60, for which many of our best have died, 
 there gushed out and up enormous volumes of scarlet flame 
 from the exploding mines and of earth and smoke, all 
 lighted by the flame, spilling over into fountains of fierce 
 colour, so that all the countryside was illumined by red light. 
 Where some of us stood watching, aghast and spellbound by 
 this burning horror, the ground trembled and surged vio- 
 lently to and fro. Truly the earth quaked. A New Zealand 
 boy who came back wounded spoke to me about his own 
 sensations. "I felt like being in an open boat on a rough 
 sea. It rocked up and down this way and that." 
 
 Thousands of British soldiers were rocked like that be- 
 fore they scrambled up and went forward to the German 
 lines — forward beneath that tornado of shells which 
 crashed over the enemy's ground with a wild prolonged 
 tumult just as day broke, with crimson feathers unfolding 
 in the eastern sky, and flights of airmen following other 
 flights above our heroes. 
 
 Rockets rose from the German lines — distress signals 
 flung up by men who still lived in that fire zone — white and 
 red and green. They were calling to their gunners, warning 
 them that the British were upon them. Their high lamps 
 were burning as lost hopes in God or man, and then falling 
 low and burning out. Presently there were no more of 
 them, but others which were ours in places which had been 
 German. Smoke drifted across and mingled with the morn- 
 ing mist. One could see nothing but a bank of fog thrust 
 through with short stars of light. The first definite news 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 195 
 
 that I had was from German prisoners, who came down 
 in batches, carrying our wounded when any help was needed 
 for our own stretcher-bearers. They described how our 
 men came close behind the barrage, some of them, by a kind 
 of miracle, in advance of the barrage. The Germans had 
 not expected the attack for another two days, and last night 
 were endeavouring to relieve some of their exhausted troops 
 by new divisions, the 3rd Bavarians relieving the 24th Sax- 
 ons, and the 104th Infantry Reserve the 23rd Bavarians. 
 They lost heavily on the way up to the lines by our fire, and 
 were then, after a few hours, attacked by our waves of 
 infantry. 
 
 The story of this great battle and great victory — for it is 
 really that — cannot be told in a few lines, and it is too soon 
 yet to give exact details of the fighting. But from the re- 
 ports that have now come in from all parts of the battle 
 front it is good enough to know that everywhere our men 
 have succeeded with astonishing rapidity, and that the plan 
 of battle has been fulfilled almost to the letter and to the 
 time-table. The New-Zealanders reached and captured Mes- 
 sines in an hour and forty minutes after the moment of 
 attack, in spite of heavy fighting in German trenches, where 
 many of the enemy were killed. Irish troops, Nationalists 
 and Ulstermen, not divided in politics on the battlefield, 
 but vying with each other in courage and self-sacrifice, 
 stormed their way up to Wytschaete, and after desperate re- 
 sistance from the enemy captured all that is left of the fa- 
 mous White Chateau, which for years our soldiers have 
 watched through hidden glasses as a far high place like the 
 castle of a dream. By midday our men were well down 
 farther slopes of the ridge, while our field-batteries rushed 
 up the ridge behind them to take up new positions. Farther 
 north along the shoulder of the Ypres salient our English 
 troops of the 19th, 41st, 47th, and 23rd Divisions advanced 
 along a line including Battle Wood, south of Zillebeke, and 
 now hold all but a small part af it. Meanwhile the Germans 
 are massing troops at Wameton and its neighbourhood, as 
 
196 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 though preparing a heavy counter-attack, and are shelling 
 Messines Ridge with some violence. For to-day at least, 
 in spite of fierce fighting that must follow, our men have 
 achieved a victory, with light losses considering the severity 
 of their task. The evil spell of the Ypres salient is broken. 
 The salient itself is wiped out, and if we can hold the Mes- 
 sines Ridge, Ypres and its countryside will no longer exact 
 that toll of death which for nearly three years has been a 
 curse to us. The roads and fields are under a glare of sun- 
 shine as I write, and down them, through the dust and the 
 fierce heat, come troops of German prisoners, exhausted and 
 nerve-broken, but glad of life. And passing them come the 
 walking wounded who attacked them in their tunnels at 
 dawn to-day and conquered. The lightly wounded men are 
 happy and proud of their victory. 
 
 *'We New-Zealanders can afford to be a little cocky," 
 said one of these bronzed fellows with eyes of cornflower 
 blue. *'My word, Tm glad we had the luck." He was 
 wounded in the foot, but the man just hugged the news 
 of victory. ''We shall be no end stuck up," he said, and then 
 he laughed in a simple way, and said, *T'm glad New Zea- 
 land did so well — that's natural. But they tell me the Irish 
 were splendid, and the Australians could not be held back. 
 It's good to have done the job, and I hope it will help on 
 the end." 
 
 That New-Zealander spoke the thought of thousands who 
 have been fighting in this battle. They have a right to be 
 proud of themselves, for they have broken the curse of the 
 salient and relieved it of some of its horror. 
 
 The Spirit of Victory 
 
 June 8 
 I HAVE never seen the spint of victory so real and so 
 visible among great bodies of British troops since this war 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 19T 
 
 began. It shines in the eyes of our officers and men to-day 
 up in the fighting zone and in the fields and woods below 
 Wytschaete and Messines, where they are resting and sleep- 
 ing after the battle, regardless of the great noise of gun-fire 
 which is still about them. Our men have a sense of great 
 achievement, something big and definite and complete, in 
 this capture of Messines Ridge. They knew how formi- 
 dable it was to attack, and they count their cost — the price 
 of victory — as extraordinarily light. Many brave men have 
 fallen, and along the roads come many ambulances where 
 prone figures lie with their soles up as a reminder that no 
 battle may be fought without this traffic flowing back; but 
 the proportion of highly wounded was high and the number 
 of wounded amazingly low among most battalions. I met 
 one company of Irish Fusiliers to-day who took their goal 
 without a single casualty and marched into Wytschaete 
 without firing a shot. That was a rare episode. But on all 
 sides I hear astonishment that our losses were so small con- 
 sidering the immensity of their task. It is this which makes 
 the men glad of victory — not having it clouded by such 
 heavy sacrifices of life as in the battles of the Somme. 
 "We got off light," said an Irish boy to-day; "we had the 
 best of luck." 
 
 All along the way to Wytschaete, where I went through 
 places which two days ago still lived up to the reputation of 
 evil names — Suicide Corner, V. C. Walk, Shell Farm — and 
 in woods like the Bois de Rossignol, where the death-birds 
 came screaming until a moment before yesterday's dawn, 
 officers and men, generals, brigadiers, sergeants, privates, 
 spoke of victory with an enthusiasm that made their eyes 
 alight. An officer reined in his horse and leaned over his 
 saddle to speak to me. "It was a great day for Ireland," 
 he said. Yesterday another man, with an arm in a sling, 
 also used the words "a great day," but said, "It's a great 
 day for New Zealand." And another officer, speaking of the 
 way in which all our men went forward to victory, Eng- 
 lish troops advancing with their old unbroken courage in 
 
198 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 spite of hard fighting through a year of war, said : "This 
 is the best thing our armies have ever done, the most com- 
 plete and absolute success. It all went like clockwork." 
 
 One great proof of victory is the relief of some of those 
 deadly places in the salient under direct observation from 
 Messines Ridge — screens of foliage which I passed to-day 
 are no longer needed, and one may walk openly in places 
 where German eyes had been watching for men to kill for 
 two years and a half. And another proof, written in hu- 
 man figures, is one huge mass after another of German 
 prisoners, a thousand or more in each assembling place in 
 the fields along the roadsides. They were lying and stand- 
 ing to-day in the sunshine, with coloured handkerchiefs tied 
 above their heads, many of them stripped to the waist to air 
 their shirts, some still wearing their heavy shrapnel hel- 
 mets with sackcloth covering, all drowsed with fatigue and 
 the prolonged strain of our shell-fire, so that they sleep 
 with heads on knees or lying as though dead in huddled pos- 
 tures. They wake at intervals, asking for water, and then 
 sleep again. There are such crowds of these field-grey men 
 that they are astounded by their own numbers, and when 
 questioned speak gloomily of the doom that is upon their 
 rule. 
 
 "What do you think of it all ?" asked an Irish officer of a 
 German officer whom he captured in Wytschaete village. 
 The man shook his head and said in good English, "We are 
 done for." Another officer taken by English troops on the 
 northern sector of the attack was frank in revealing his 
 tragic thoughts when he heard the mines go up. He thought, 
 so he says, "Thank Heaven the British are attacking. Now 
 I can surrender. Yesterday my division had three good 
 regiments, now they do not exist. This attack ought to end 
 the war." Let us not base too much optimistic belief on 
 such words by German prisoners. 
 
 In that northern part of the attack by the London bat- 
 talions of the 47th and the Yorkshires and other Enghsh 
 troops of the 23rd Division, who started near Triangle 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 199 
 
 Wood, there was bad ground for assembly before the battle 
 known as the Mud-Patch. There were no trenches there, 
 and our lads had to lie out all night in the open without 
 any cover from the shell-fire. It seemed that the Germans 
 saw them, and their commanding officer was in a fever 
 of anxiety, thinking they were discovered and would be 
 shelled to death. But, as though expecting a raid from one 
 point, the enemy only barraged round a group of mine- 
 craters, from which our men had been withdrawn, because 
 their shafts were packed with explosives ready to be touched 
 off at dawn. In one mine-crater held by the Germans a 
 shaft ran underneath called the Berlin Shaft — the way to 
 Berlin, according to the Australians who dug it months 
 ago. Above it was a half-company of Germans, and when 
 the mine was blown at dawn not a man escaped. Beyond 
 was the Damstrasse, where the enemy had deep trenches 
 and strong emplacements in the hollow, so that our Generals 
 were afraid of trouble here, but when our men came to it 
 they found nothing but frightful ruin, obliterating all the 
 trenches and redoubts, and the men who still lived there 
 shouted: ''Don't shoot, don't shoot, Kamerad!" 
 
 The taking of Wytschaete by the Irish Nationalists, with 
 Ulster men next to them, was one of the great episodes of 
 the battle, vying with the exploit of the men of New Zea- 
 land in carrying Messines Ridge. I went among them to- 
 day up there by Wytschaete Wood across our old trenches 
 and by ''the great wall of China," built a few months ago as 
 a barrier — a wonderful place of sand-bag defences and 
 deep dug-outs. Not much is left of Wytschaete Wood, 
 once 800 yards square, now a pitiful wreckage of broken 
 stumps and tattered tree-trunks. The slopes of the ridge 
 are all barren and tortured with shell-fire like the Vimy 
 Ridge, and across it unceasingly went flights of heavy shells, 
 droning loudly as they passed over the crest, and with all 
 our heavy howitzers firing with thunderous ear-stunning 
 strokes. But the Irish soldiers paid no heed to this noise of 
 gun-fire, for the enemy was answering back hardly at all, 
 
200 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 and the battle-line had gone forward. An Irish major 
 was asleep under a little bit of a copse within a few yards 
 of a 6-in. howitzer, splitting the heavens with its sharp 
 crack of sound, and he slept in his socks as sweetly as a 
 babe in the cradle until wakened to speak to me, which 
 made me sorry, because he had earned his rest. But he sat 
 up smiling, and glad to talk of his Irish boys, who had done 
 gloriously. Away off near a sinister little wood, where 
 many men have died in the old days, sat the brigadier of the 
 Irish troops, the South and West Country Irish who went 
 through Wytschaete Wood and took the village. "Go and 
 see my boys up in their trenches,'* he said; "they will tell 
 you all they have done, and it was well done. Old Ireland 
 has done great things." 
 
 The boys, as he called them, though some are old sol- 
 diers who fought at Suvla Bay, and the youngest of them 
 are old in war and remember as far back in history as the 
 days when they stormed through Guillemont and Ginchy, 
 were sitting with German caps on their heads, and examin- 
 ing German machine-guns, and sorting all their souvenirs 
 of battle. I talked with many of them, and they told their 
 adventures of yesterday with a touch of Irish humour and 
 a sparkle in their eyes. It was the little things of battle 
 which they remembered most; the rations and soda-water 
 they found in German dug-outs ; the way they groped around 
 for souvenirs as soon as they gained their ground. But 
 stupendous still in their imagination was the drum-fire of 
 our guns and the explosion of the mines. 
 
 "As soon as the barrage began," said an Irish sergeant 
 of the Munsters, "a mine only a few hundred yards away 
 from us at Maedelstede Farm went up, and we went down. 
 The ground rocked under us, and fire rushed up to the sky. 
 The fumes came back on to us and made us dizzy, but we — 
 the Royal Irish and the Munsters — went on to Petit-Bois 
 Wood, and then to Wytschaete Wood, and other Irish lads 
 passed through us to the attack on the village." 
 
 The only trouble was in and about the wood. In the cen- 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 201 
 
 tre of it was a small body of Germans, with a machine-gun, 
 who held out stubbornly and swept the Irish with fire. But 
 they were destroyed, and the attack swept on. There was 
 another post hereabout, in which a party of Germans held 
 out with rifle-fire. An Irish officer of a famous old family 
 led an attack on this, and fell dead with a bullet in his brain 
 at five yards range, but a sergeant with him, whom I met 
 to-day, helped to surround the enemy, and this hornets' nest 
 was routed out. A German officer had climbed a tree, and 
 in the coolest possible way signalled with his hand to his 
 men beyond. An Irishman brought him down, and made 
 him a prisoner. 
 
 Wytschaete village was a fortress position, with machine- 
 gun emplacements made for defence on all sides, but the 
 Irish closed round it and captured it easily. The garrison 
 was demoralized by prolonged shell-fire, which had made a 
 clean sweep of the hospice ruins and the church and chateau, 
 and every blade of grass above their tunnels. "I am an old 
 soldier," said one of their officers, "and I hate to be a 
 prisoner, but human nature cannot stand the strain of such 
 bombardments." 
 
 On the right of Irish Nationalists fought the Ulstermen, 
 keeping in absolute line with their comrades-in-arms, in 
 friendly rivalry with them to give glory to Ireland. They 
 advanced through Spanbeckmolen, a fortress position 
 through Hell Wood, to the top of Wytschaete Ridge, and it 
 is curious that these two bodies of Irish troops had an 
 almost identical experience. The South and West Country 
 Irishmen of Dublin and Munster took looo prisoners. So 
 did the Ulstermen. When the Catholic Irishmen were 
 shaken by the mine explosion a whole company of Germans 
 was hurled high in its eruption, and this awful fate hap- 
 pened to another company of Germans in front of the 
 Ulstermen. Without thought of old strife at home, these 
 men fought side by side and are proud of each other. Their 
 Irish blood has mingled, and out of it some spirit of healing 
 and brotherhood should come because of this remembrance. 
 
202 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 An Irish soldier poet has made a new version of "The 
 Wearing of the Green," inspired by the guns that wear 
 green jackets of foHage and cover the advance of the Irish 
 brigade. I heard some of the verses this morning : 
 
 They love the old division in the land the hoys come from, 
 And they're proud of what they did at Loos and on the 
 
 Somme, 
 If by chance we all advance to Whiteshee'c and Messines, 
 They'll know the guns that strafe the Huns were wearing 
 
 of the green. 
 
 Wytschaete and Messines are safe in our hands, and our 
 troops are far on the other side. A party of the enemy is 
 holding out in Battle Wood, but that will not be for long, 
 and is only a small episode. To-day and yesterday German 
 troops massed at Warneton, as though for a counter-attack, 
 but each time were scattered by our guns. From our new 
 ridge, so long an evil barrier against us, we have observa- 
 tion on them, and the tables are turned. 
 
 After the Earthquake 
 
 June 9 
 The ground gained by our troops in the great battle of 
 Messines remains firmly in our hands, and enemy attempts 
 to counter-attack have been broken by our artillery, in most 
 cases before the German troops have been able to advance. 
 Last evening shortly before dusk of another day of bril- 
 liant sunshine, almost too hot for our men in shadeless 
 country of the battlefields, SOS signals all along the line 
 gave warning of German endeavours to thrust back our new 
 front line far beyond the Messines Ridge, and away north 
 of St.-Eloi on the old line of the Ypres salient, now by our 
 victory no longer a salient. 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 203 
 
 Our gunners got to work again, in spite of a night-and- 
 day strain for more than a week, and for several hours there 
 was another tremendous bombardment from all our heavies 
 and field-guns, watched for miles around by Flemish peas- 
 ants sitting outside their windmills and outside cottage 
 doors, looking at this lightning in the sky, which is a revela- 
 tion to them of the mighty growth of that British Army 
 since those early days when a few divisions and a few guns 
 came to these fields of Flanders and fought to a thin, ragged 
 line round Ypres. In many cases the rockets which rose 
 from our lines last night calling for the help of the gunners 
 were hardly needed, for though the enemy was seen to be 
 assembling, he did not try to break through our barrage. 
 In many places massed bodies of his men were caught round 
 Warneton by this new storm of fire which burst upon them, 
 and the night scenes behind the German lines must have 
 been full of terror and tragedy for those poor wretches 
 urged forward along the roads ploughed up by our shells. 
 Only at Klein Zillebeke, on the northern flank of our battle- 
 line, did they gain a temporary footing, and many of them 
 lie dead there after the fierce fighting which is still in prog- 
 ress. 
 
 It is no wonder that, after such experiences of our gun- 
 fire, the German prisoners show no regret at being in Brit- 
 ish hands. I saw new batches of them to-day, mopped up 
 last night as an aftermath of the battle, young boys and 
 middle-aged men, all very sturdy and strong and aston- 
 ishingly clean after their escape from the tumult of that 
 frightful ground by Wytschaete and Messines. They 
 stretched themselves in the sunshine, and took their ease 
 in green fields, drinking quarts of water provided by their 
 guards. It is not with resignation but with joy that they 
 find themselves on our side of the lines, away from all that 
 horror of the fire zone. 
 
 "Now we shall go on leave," they said to one of our of- 
 ficers; ''we are sick of this war." He spoke to two Ger- 
 man boys who have been fighting for a year, and are now 
 
204 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 only seventeen and look much younger. "You ought to be 
 spanked and sent home to your mothers," he said. They 
 laughed, and said: 'That is what we should like, sir, if 
 you please." 
 
 All the prisoners are extraordinarily ignorant of the 
 feeling of hatred they have aroused against them in the 
 world, and expect that they should be admired for the way 
 they have fought. But they want the war to end quickly, 
 and the rank and file do not seem to mind very much whether 
 it ends by a German victory or German defeat, so that it 
 ends somehow. One human being, shattered in nerves, half 
 senseless, was dragged back after Hill 60 was mined, and 
 he said that he had seen only two men of his company after 
 the great explosion. All the others had been hurled sky- 
 high by the flames and gases, or buried in the fall of earth. 
 
 The work of this mining under the German lines has been 
 carried on for a year or more by a number of tunnelling 
 companies from Australia, New Zealand, and our own min- 
 ing districts. It was hard, dangerous toil, for the enemy 
 was down counter-mining, and there were frightful mo- 
 ments when the men who heard the working of picks very 
 close to them had to be rushed out lest they should be blown 
 into the next world. Their own work was done quickly 
 lest the enemy should discover the secret of these borings 
 beneath their lines before the ammonal with which they were 
 packed was detonated on the morning of the battle. It 
 was in darkness that the miners relieved each other lest 
 enemy aircraft or eyes that always stared down from the 
 ridges should see and suspect. Some of our English troops 
 took Hill 60 after this explosion, which flung some of them 
 to the ground as they rose at the signal of attack. From 
 the craters they dragged that dazed and terror-stricken 
 officer, who had lost all his company after that vibration 
 of an electric wire in contact with hellish forces. 
 
 Just south of these men, astride the Ypres-Comines 
 Canal, a number of London battalions of the 47th Division 
 were fighting forward to the ruins of the famous White 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 205 
 
 ^u ^f tViP ranal on the west of Hollebeke. It 
 
 «i,h black, d"/ ''■»'•■,, ;X Lai in"*"! machine- 
 
 tunnelled defences, i ney t ^^^^^^^ 
 
 with eighty P"^«'^"^^;^"!J' Ij'SateT where their com- 
 the canal bank opposi e White Chateau wn _ 
 
 of this filhti-s the enemy hotsted » """^^^Z'^,, ^t,^ 
 
 ?i?eSrsiSdTs;;«*:/^..»*e -^^ 
 
 to the great captures of the day. "J^ Division, who 
 L-rSt^lth-'i^^Srit.r-, ..t came 
 out to France. j^^^^ lO 
 
 O. the H*. of .Je.J^»^tt 'Si:-L~StH"SS 
 
 5r„aS^:s:s.?:tSroT.sfw'Sch.eW«. 
 
 behind. 
 
206 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 On the night of June 6 they lay by St.-Eloi, in the salient 
 opposite the Mound, a famous heap of earth taken over by 
 the glorious old 3rd Division, and lost when the Canadians 
 were violently attacked a year ago. This mound had been 
 cratered by deep mines in those bad old days of fighting, 
 but the enemy did not know that new shafts had been tun- 
 nelled under them, and that explosive forces enormously 
 greater than in the first mines were about to be touched off* 
 When the metal discs were fired by tunnelling officers the 
 sound of thousands of our men cheering with the wild mad- 
 ness of enthusiasm could be heard even above the deafen- 
 ing uproar of the explosions. Then waves of riflemen ran 
 forward, round the vast craters that had been flung open 
 and across the first line of German trenches, frightfully up- 
 heaved and shattered. There were not many living Ger- 
 mans here, and they were dazed by the shock and terror of 
 the mines and made no kind of fight. Beyond them was a 
 strong place known as the Damstrasse, a street of concrete 
 houses built of great blocks six feet thick, and so enormously 
 solid that not even heavy shell-bursts could do much damage 
 to them. This position had given great anxiety to our of- 
 ficers, who knew its strength, but as it happened, the vio- 
 lence of our shell-fire was so amazing that many of these 
 blockhouses were blown in, and the garrison of Damstrasse 
 was utterly cowed, so that they were captured by hundreds. 
 
 The King's Royal Rifles pressed forward into the fright- 
 ful chaos of country, with charred tree-trunks, upturned 
 trenches, rubbish-heaps which had been German strong 
 points, and a litter of machine-guns, twisted wire, bomb 
 stores, and dead bodies. The first check came outside the 
 ruin of an estaminet, in which a party of Germans, with 
 machine-guns and rifles, determined to sell their lives dearly. 
 They poured fire into our men, who suffered a good many 
 casualties here, but would not be baulked, whatever the 
 cost. They took what cover they could, and used their 
 rifles to riddle the place with shot. One by one the Ger- 
 mans fell, and their fire slackened. Then the Rifles charged 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 207 
 
 the ruins and captured all those who still remained alive. 
 Fresh waves of men came up and went forward into Ravme 
 Wood, with its tattered trunks and litter of broken branches. 
 Here there was another fight, very fierce and bloody, be- 
 tween some of the West Kents and German soldiers of the 
 35th Division who attempted a strong counter-attack. The 
 men of Kent had their bayonets fixed, and at a word from 
 their officers they made a quick, grim dash at the Germans, 
 advancing upon them through the dead wood with their 
 bayonets ready also, so that the morning sun gleamed upon 
 all this steel. The bayonets crossed. The men of Kent 
 went through the enemy thrusting and stabbing, but though 
 they saw red in that hour they gave quarter to men who 
 dropped their rifles and cried ''Kameradl" Twenty-five 
 prisoners were taken in that encounter, and over 800 pris- 
 oners were taken between the Mound and Ravine Wood 
 before the day was done, with a great store of booty, includ- 
 ing eight trench-mortars and nearly thirty machine-guns, 
 though many more lie buried in this ground, and two search- 
 lights and sacks of letters from German soldiers to their 
 homes. The enemy's losses hereabouts were very heavy. An 
 officer taken prisoner said his own company had been re- 
 duced to thirty men before the battle began owing to our 
 bombardment. Many of their batteries were knocked out, 
 and the gunners lie dead before them. Several Tanks came 
 up to share in the fight, and climbed over all this broken 
 ground, but did not. find much work to do as the strong 
 parts had been knocked out. 
 
 The completeness of this victory, the march through of 
 our troops, the utter despair of the Gernian troops, was 
 due in an overwhelming way to the guns, and the gun- 
 ners who served them. It is only right and just that 
 the highest tribute should be paid to these men, who have 
 worked day and night for nearly a fortnight, under the 
 intense strain, in an infernal noise, without sleep enough 
 to reheve the nerve-rack, and always in danger of death. 
 Gunner officers are hoarse with shouting under fire. They 
 
208 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 are hollow-eyed with bodily and mental exhaustion. The 
 ammunition-carriers worked themselves stiff in order to 
 feed the guns. They have used up incredible numbers of 
 shells. The gunners of one division alone fired 180,000 
 shells with their field-batteries, and over 46,000 with their 
 heavies. On the same scale has been the ammunition ex- 
 penditure of all other groups of guns. 
 
 An historic scene took place after our troops had gained 
 the high ground of Wytschaete and Messines. An order 
 passed along to all the batteries. Gun horses were standing 
 by. They were harnessed to the guns. The limbers of the 
 field-batteries lined up. Then half-way through the battle 
 the old gun positions were abandoned, after two and a half 
 years of stationary warfare in the salient, searched every 
 day of that time by German shells fired by direct observation 
 from that ground just taken. The drivers urged on their 
 horses. They drove at a gallop past old screens, and out 
 of camouflaged places where men had walked stealthily, and 
 dashed up the slopes. The infantry stood by to let them 
 pass, and from thousands of men, these dusty, hot, parched 
 soldiers of ours, who were waiting to go forward in support 
 of the first waves of assaulting troops, there rose a great 
 following cheer, which swept along the track of the gun- 
 ners, and went with them up the ridge, where they imlim- 
 bered and got into action again for the second phase of the 
 fighting down the farther slopes. 
 
 As scouts of the gunners, as their watchers and signallers, 
 were the boys of the Royal Flying Corps. I said yesterday 
 that they were uplifted with a kind of intoxication of en- 
 thusiasm. A youthful madness took possession of them. 
 Those squadrons which I saw flying overhead while it was 
 still dark on Thursday morning did daredevil, reckless, al- 
 most incredible things. They flew as men inspired by pas- 
 sion and a fierce joy of battle. They were hunters seeking 
 their prey. They were Berserkers of the air, determined to 
 kill though they should be killed, to scatter death among the 
 enemy, to destroy him in the air and on the earth, to smite 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 209 
 
 him in his body and in his works and in his soul by a terror 
 of him. This may seem language of exaggeration, the silly 
 fantasy of a writing-man careless of the exact truth. It is 
 less than the truth, and the sober facts are wild things. 
 Early on June 7 they were up and away, as I described them, 
 passing overhead on that fateful morning before the crim- 
 son feather clouds appeared over the battlefield. They 
 flew above German railway stations far behind the lines, and 
 dropped tons of explosives, blowing up rolling stock, smash- 
 ing rails and bridges. They attacked German aerodromes, 
 flying low to the level of the sheds and spattering them 
 with machine-gun bullets so that no German airmen came 
 out of them that day. One man's flight, told in his own 
 dry words, is like the wild nightmare of an airman's dream. 
 He flew to a German aerodrome and circled round. 
 A German machine-gun spat out bullets at him. The air- 
 man saw it, swooped over it, and fired at the gunner. He 
 saw his bullets hit the gun. The man ceased fire, screamed, 
 and ran for cover. Then our airman flew off, chased trains 
 and fired into their windows. He flew over small bodies of 
 troops on the march, swooped, fired, and scattered them. 
 Afterwards he met a convoy going to Comines, and he cir- 
 cled over their heads, hardly higher than their heads, and 
 fired into them. Near Warneton he came upon troops mass- 
 ing for a counter-attack, and made a new attack, inflicting 
 casualties and making them run in all directions. 
 
 One of our flying men attacked and silenced four ma- 
 chine-gun teams in a strong emplacement. Others cleared 
 trenches of German soldiers, who scuttled like rabbits into 
 their dug-outs. They fired everything they carried at any- 
 thing which would kill the enemy or destroy his material. 
 Having used up all his Lewis-gun ammunition upon march- 
 ing troops, one lad fired his Very-lights, his signal-rockets, 
 at the next group of men he saw. They flew at field-gun- 
 ners and put them to flight, at heavy guns crawling along 
 the roads on caterpillar wheels, at transport wagons, motor- 
 lorries, and one motor-car, whose passengers, if they live. 
 
210 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 will never forget that sudden rush of wings four feet over- 
 head, with a spasm of bullets about them. The aeroplane 
 was so low that the pilot thought he would crash into the 
 motor-car, but he just planed clear of it as the driver steered 
 it sharply into a ditch, where it overturned with its five oc- 
 cupants. The airman went on his journey, scattered 500 
 infantry and returned home after a long flight never higher 
 than 500 feet above the ground. 
 
 Meanwhile during the progress of the battle our air squad- 
 rons appointed for artillery observation work were all over 
 the enemy's batteries, signalling to our gunners and sending 
 back "O.K." flashes when our counter-battery work was ef- 
 fective. There were an amazing number of **O.K.'s." One 
 air squadron alone helped a group of heavies to silence 
 seventy-two batteries. Everywhere over the battle-ground 
 our air scouts were out and about, watching the progress of 
 infantry, speaking to them by signals, picking up their an- 
 swers, flying back to headquarters with certain informa- 
 tion; so that the direction of the battle was helped enor- 
 mously by this quick intelligence. It was a day of triumph 
 for the Royal Flying Corps, and for all those boys with 
 wings on their breasts, who, after their day's flight, come 
 down to the French estaminets to rattle ragtime on un- 
 tuned pianos, and give glad eyes to any pretty girl about, 
 and fling themselves into the joy of life which they risk so 
 lightly. 
 
 In this battle of Messines there was not any body of our 
 men who did not spend all their strength and take all risks 
 with a kind of passionate exultation of spirit. The Man- 
 chester men dug a six-foot deep trench-line to our new front 
 on the ridge, beating all records. Flinging off tunics and 
 shirts so that they were naked to the waist, New-Zea- 
 landers who took Messines dug as inspired diggers, fast 
 and furiously, and before next day had dawned had two 
 long, deep trenches as secure defences against German 
 counter-attacks. 
 
 The stretcher-bearers, the water-carriers, the transport 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES Sll 
 
 men with their pack-mules went up through shell-fire as I 
 saw them yesterday, and never tired. The stretcher-bearers 
 were heroic fellows, as in every battle from which I have 
 seen them coming back with their burdens across the cra- 
 tered ground of dreadful fields such as that of Wytschaete 
 and Messines, still shelled heavily by the enemy, whose fury 
 at losing that long-held ground is proved by his bombard- 
 ment of their ruins — the red brick-heap of Wytschaete Cha- 
 teau, the black tree-stumps which is all that is left of Mes- 
 sines. 
 
 Our casualties remain light, as figures of losses go in this 
 war and in proportion to the greatness of this battle. My 
 own estimates, based upon what I can hear of the losses of 
 different bodies of troops engaged, work out at something 
 like 10,000 for the day of battle. It is less than a fifth 
 of what I should have reckoned to be the cost of this cap- 
 ture of Messines Ridge, and gives the lie to German claims. 
 It is one of the greatest and cheapest achievements of Brit- 
 ish arms throughout this war, though the loss of so many 
 gallant men is sad enough, God knows, and for the enemy it 
 is as hard a blow as our taking of the Vimy Ridge two 
 months ago, when he w^as staggered by his loss. 
 
 4 
 
 The Effect of the Blow 
 
 June ii 
 The effect of our capture of Messines and Wytschaete has 
 been such a stunning blow on the enemy that he has not as 
 yet made any attempt at counter-attacking on a big scale. 
 The rapid advance of our men below the farther slopes of 
 the ridge and the rush forward of our guns made it im- 
 possible for him to rally his supporting troops quickly, and 
 as the hours pass it becomes more impossible for him to 
 storm his way back. His early attempts to assemble troops 
 
«12 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 in the Warneton neighbourhood were annihilated instantly 
 by enormous shell-fire directed by the new observation we 
 had gained at Messines, and during the past twenty-four 
 hours, up to the time I write, he shows no further sign of 
 asking for trouble, but is obviously engaged in reorganizing 
 his forces, demoralized by defeat, and getting his guns into 
 safer positions. Many of his guns lie battered and buried 
 about the battlefield, and some of his batteries, put out of 
 action by our bombardment, remain between our new lines 
 and his, but so covered by our fire that he has a poor 
 chance of getting them away. His losses in guns, trench- 
 mortars and machine-guns must be alarming to him, for 
 I have no doubt at all, after seeing the frightful effect of 
 our bombardment, that these were destroyed on a great 
 scale, so that the number of our trophies will not at all 
 represent his actual loss in weapons and material of war. 
 
 That is the human mechanical side of things. More hor- 
 rible to the unfortunate soldiers of the German army is the 
 devilish punishment inflicted upon them during the past 
 ten days, culminating on that day of battle when every 
 weapon for the slaughter of men, from the heaviest of high 
 explosives to boiling oil and gas-shells, was let loose upon 
 them in one wild tempest of destruction, which blew them 
 out of the earth and off the earth, and frizzled them and 
 blinded them, and choked them and mutilated them, and 
 made them mad. 
 
 One German boy, who looked not more than fifteen years 
 of age — a child — was found yesterday lying in a shell-hole 
 by the side of a dead man who had been shot through the 
 temple, and he was a gibbering idiot through fear. Not 
 the only one. German officers say that many of their men 
 went raving mad under the strain of our bombardment, 
 and tried to kill their comrades or themselves, or fell into 
 an ague of terror, clawing their mouths, with all the symp- 
 toms of the worst shell-shock. 
 
 Many of our prisoners believe they were betrayed, and 
 were sacrificed coldly and deliberately by their higher com- 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 21S 
 
 mand. Before the battle an order of the day was issued to 
 them, telling them to hold out if surrounded and fight their 
 way back with the bayonet, because behind them would be 
 fresh divisions ready to support immediate counter-attacks. 
 Those fresh divisions never appeared. We know that they 
 had no chance of getting near our lines because of our 
 far-reaching fire, and the work of our aircraft — and the 
 men of Messines and Wytschaete and all the ground south 
 of St.-Eloi were cut off and captured, if they did not die. 
 After our first assaults, the enemy, panic-stricken, were 
 more concerned in getting away their guns than in pro- 
 tecting their troops, and they were left to our mercy. 
 
 Walking about those monstrous mine-craters which we 
 tore out of the earth at dawn on June 7, and across 
 the old German lines beyond St.-Eloi on the left of our 
 attack, southwards by Wytschaete and the lower slopes 
 of Messines, to-day, as after the morning of battle, I 
 pitied any human souls who had to suffer what these 
 German soldiers must have suffered in the agony of 
 fear before death came to many of them. All this 
 wide area of country is blasted and harrowed and 
 holed with monstrous pits. There was at least one great 
 shell to every nine yards, and at 200 yards its flying steel 
 has a killing power. No idea of it all can be conveyed by 
 many words describing this upheaval of sand-bags and 
 barricades and trenches and redoubts, and this sieve of 
 earth, pitted by countless shell-craters. All the woods where 
 the Germans lived — Oaten Wood and Damstrasse Wood 
 and Ravine Wood, down to Wytschaete Wood and Hell 
 Wood — are but gaunt stumps sticking out of ash-grey heaps 
 of earth. German dead lie here and there in batches or 
 in rows as they were shot down by enfilade fire, but I have 
 seen very few bodies, for the most of them were buried 
 in the upheaved earth, as one can tell by the foul vapours 
 which creep out from the smashed trenches, where the deep 
 dug-outs have collapsed and tunnels have fallen in, so that 
 
^14 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 all this battleground is a graveyard of men, buried as they 
 died or before they died. 
 
 Three men escaped by some wild freak of chance from a 
 mine-crater under the Mound by St.-Eloi. I stood on the lip 
 of it to-day, high above its shelving sides, and find it hard 
 to believe that any living thing could have escaped from 
 its upheaval. But the Germans h^d many dug-outs in the 
 old craters which existed here before this last one was 
 blown, and after that ferocious fighting a year ago, when 
 we lost this ground. One of those dug-outs remained firm 
 when our mine was touched off four days ago, and out of 
 its mouth crept, two days later, three haggard men, still 
 shaking and dazed, who had been deep in the ground when 
 all about them was hurled sky-high, with a rush of gas 
 and flame and a monstrous uproar. They were unscathed, 
 except in their souls, where terror lived. 
 
 By my side to-day, as I looked down into this pit of hell, 
 stood a man who had worked for a year in the making 
 of it — an Australian officer of engineers. He stood smok- 
 ing his pipe on the edge of the shell-crater, and said in a 
 cheerful way, "It is good to be in the fresh air again." 
 
 The fresh air did not seem to me very good there this 
 morning. It was filled with abominable noise, which is a 
 menace of death — the savage whine of German shrapnel 
 flung about between the Bluff and St.-Eloi in a haphazard 
 way, and heavy crumps searching for our batteries in their 
 new positions, and our shells whistling over in long flights. 
 Hideous sounds in a ghastly scene which filled me with 
 nausea, so that I wanted not to linger there. 
 
 But I understood this Australian's craving for open-air 
 life, even such open air as this, when he told me that he 
 had been working underground for nearly two years in the 
 dark saps pierced under the German lines, and running very 
 close to German saps nosing their way, and sometimes 
 breaking through, to ours, so that the men clawed at each 
 other's throats in these tunnels and beat each other to 
 death with picks and shovels, or were blown to bits by 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 215 
 
 mine explosions. It was always a race for time to blow up 
 the charges, and sometimes the enemy was first, and some- 
 times we were, and once the enemy in a great attack against 
 the Canadians got in and blew up our shafts and sapheads 
 and cut off our tunnellers. That Australian officer was one 
 of those. For forty-eight hours he was buried alive, and 
 had to dig his way out. So now after his ^'ob was done he 
 likes the open-air life. 
 
 *'No more underground work for me after this war,'* 
 he said. "I've had enough of it." 
 
 The German ground hereabouts was taken by those troops 
 of ours whose fighting across the Damstrasse and in Ravine 
 Wood I described yesterday. Through them went an- 
 other body of troops — the troops of the 24th Division — 
 whose fortunes I have described in other battles, includ- 
 ing some Leinster lads who have a padre for their hero, 
 and English county troops who knew the look of Vimy 
 Ridge before the Canadians reached the crest of it. They 
 had to make the final assault to the farthest line of attack, 
 passing through masses of men who had taken the first 
 lines. All this was rehearsed in fields behind the battle- 
 ground so thoroughly that the men could have gone for- 
 ward blindfold. It all went like clockwork, and though the 
 enemy fought hard on that last line beyond the Damstrasse 
 by Rose Wood and Bug Wood, one post holding out with 
 machine-guns, our men captured it with few casualties. 
 They took 300 prisoners that day, with six field-guns, 
 and their spirit is high after victory. Next morning the 
 Irish padre was seen sitting outside a shell-hole with a clean 
 white collar and white socks with his boots off. "Well 
 done, boys!" he said, and they were glad to see him there. 
 
 All our men were wonderfully inspired by a belief in the 
 guns, so that they walked close behind a frightful barrage. 
 Each body of troops vied with other regiments in a friendly 
 rivalry. There was a race between the South and North 
 Irish as to whether a green flag or an orange should be 
 planted first above the ruins of Wytschaete. I don't know 
 
216 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 which won, but both flags flew there when the crest had 
 been gained. 
 
 5 
 Looking Backward 
 
 June 12 
 "The enemy must not get the Messines Ridge at any price." 
 
 This sentence stands out as an absolute command in the 
 German order issued to their troops before the battle which 
 they knew was coming. The words are peremptory, among 
 promises of artillery support and immediate counter-attacks 
 from divisions behind the first-line troops, which would be 
 read now as a hollow mockery by those men who are our 
 prisoners, captured in crowds from their welter of mined 
 and cratered earth. While half-way through the battle 
 their artillery tried to drag their field-guns back to some- 
 thing like safety in the wake of heavy guns, which even 
 before the battle had been withdrawn to the farthest pos- 
 sible range of action, though forward observing officers tried 
 to conceal this from the infantry by coming to their usual 
 posts. The battle is over. Messines Ridge, which was not 
 to be ours at any price, is ours at a price which our Army 
 thinks very cheap — though many brave men paid for it 
 with their lives — and our outposts are pushing forward 
 towards Warneton, far beyond the farther slopes, after 
 an enemy retiring upon that place. Only our men who have 
 fought in the Ypres salient know the full meaning of that 
 order. *The enemy must not get the Messines Ridge at 
 any price." 
 
 The Messines Ridge was our curse, and the loss of it 
 to the enemy means a great relief to that curse by straight- 
 ening out the salient south of Hooge, and robbing the enemy 
 of direct observation over our ground and forcing his guns 
 farther back. 
 
 ^From Messines and Wytschaete he had absolute ob- 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 217 
 
 servation of a wide tract of country in which our men lived 
 and died — how complete an observation I did not realize 
 until after this battle, when standing in Wytschaete Wood 
 and on the Mound by St.-Eloi, and on the ground rising 
 up to Messines, I looked back, and saw every detail of our 
 old territory laid out like a relief map brightly coloured. 
 "My God," said an officer by my side, ''it's a wonder they 
 allowed us to live at all." He had fought in the old days 
 in the salient, had lived like a hunted animal there, hiding 
 in holes from the monstrous birds of prey screeching and 
 roaring overhead in search of human flesh. Before us 
 now, looking as the Germans used to look, we saw all this 
 countryside, which is a field of honour, where our youth has 
 fallen in great numbers, a great graveyard of gallant boy- 
 hood. The enemy could see every movement of our men, 
 unless they moved underground or under the cover of foli- 
 age on Kemmel Hill and its leafy lanes, or behind the camou- 
 flage screens which run along the roadways, or between the 
 gaps in the ruined villages. Startlingly clear were the red 
 roofs of Dickebusch and the gaunt ribs of its broken houses, 
 into which for two years and a half the enemy has flung 
 big shells, and the church tower of Kemmel, where the 
 graves are opened by shell-fire and old bones laid bare. The 
 roads to Voormezeele and Vierstraat, through which I went 
 yesterday, are still under the old spell of horror, and all 
 those obscene ruins of decent Flemish hamlets. South- 
 ward one saw Neuve-Eglise, with its rag of a tower, and 
 Plug Street Wood, where bullets snapped between the 
 branches about Piccadilly Circus and down the Strand 
 and across to Somerset House, and where at Hyde Park 
 Corner I first heard the voice of "Percy," a high-velocity 
 fellow, who kills you with a quick pounce. German eyes 
 staring from Wytschaete and Messines, making little marks 
 on big maps, talking to their gunners over telephone wires, 
 and registering roads and cross-roads, field-tracks, camps, 
 billets, farmhouses tucked into little groups of trees through 
 which their red roofs gleamed, watching through telescopes 
 
218 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 for small parties of British soldiers or single figures in a 
 flowered tapestry of fields between the winding hummocks 
 of sand-bag parapets, had all this ground of ours at the 
 mercy of their guns, and that was not merciful. 
 
 Day by day two years ago I used to see Dickebusch in 
 clouds of smoke, and hated to go through the place. They 
 shelled separate farmhouses and isolated barns until they 
 became bits of oddly standing brick about great holes. They 
 shelled the roads down which our transports came at night, 
 and communication-trenches up which our men moved to 
 the front lines, and gun-positions revealed by every flash, 
 and dug-outs foolishly frail against their frightful 5-9's, 
 w^hich in early days we could only answer with a few pip- 
 squeaks. Yet by some extraordinary freak, not certainly by 
 any kind of charity, for that does not belong to war, there 
 were places they failed to shell, though they were clearly 
 visible — little groups of Flemish cottages with flaming red 
 tiles, a big old house here or there with pointed roofs rising 
 above a screen of poplar-trees, fields still cultivated, as I 
 saw them yesterday, by old Flemish women who bent over 
 the beetroots and hung out washing under German eyes and 
 German guns, and went up and down with plough-horses 
 close to our gun-positions, and sold bad beer to English 
 soldiers glad of any kind of beer in places where death was 
 imminent and where, as they drank, the glass might be 
 smashed out of their hand by a flying scythe or a yard of 
 wall. 
 
 "Why do you stay here ?" I asked an old woman in Plug 
 Street village a year and a half ago. Four children played 
 about her, though at the time shells were whining overhead 
 and crashing but half a fi^ld away. "It is my home," she 
 said, and thought that a good enough answer. 
 
 "How about the children?" I asked, and she said, "It's 
 their home, and we earn a little money." 
 
 Even when this last battle began those peasants still 
 remained encircled by our batteries and with German crumps 
 falling about their fields; blear-eyed old men gazed up to 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 21^ 
 
 the sky, watched the flame-bursts of the mines, then turned 
 to their earth again; and the battle itself was heralded at 
 dawn by the crowing of cocks in little farmsteads some- 
 where down by Kemmel. Chanticleer sounded the battle- 
 charge with his clarion note, as in old dawns when English 
 and French knights were drawn in line of battle. 
 
 An officer who was with me in Wytschaete Wood, looked 
 down at these old places where he had lived in the menace 
 of death, and remembered his escapes; that time when the 
 back of his dug-out was hit by a huge shell as he sat in his 
 pyjamas, smoking a cigarette; and that other time when his 
 servant was buried alive quite close to him, and the nights 
 and days under constant shell-fire. But these little home- 
 steads in or about the salient are few in their strange es- 
 cape, and elsewhere there is not a building which stands 
 unpierced or in more than a fragment of ruin. Young 
 officers of ours lived within these ruins wondering whether 
 it would be this day or next, now, as they spoke, or in the 
 silence that followed, that some beastly shell would burst 
 through and tear down the Kirchner prints which they 
 had pinned to broken timbers, and smash the bits of mir- 
 ror they used for shaving-glasses and lay them out in the 
 wreckage. When he goes home on leave and sits at his 
 own hearthside these dream-pictures come back to him with 
 their old horror, as to thousands of men who have fought 
 in the salient, like those London boys I met one night in 
 Ypres cooking cocoa under shell-fire, like those King's Royal 
 Riflemen I saw going up to a counter-attack after the first 
 attack by '^flammenwerfer," and the padre who went up to 
 the canal bank at night and found five dead men in a Red 
 Cross hut and not a soul alive about him, and the Canadians 
 who fought through a storm of shells in Maple Copse. 
 
 The horror of that salient in its old evil days lives in its 
 sinister place-names : Dead Horse Corner and Dead Cow 
 Farm, and the farm beyond Plug Street, Dead Dog Farm, 
 and the Moated Grange on the way to St.-Eloi, Stinking 
 Farm, and Suicide Corner, and Shell-Trap Barn. I passed 
 
220 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 by some of these places and felt cold in remembrance of all 
 the evil of them. Boys of ours have been smashed in all 
 these ill-famed spots. Every bit of ruin here is the scene of 
 foul tragedy to young life. To these places women will 
 come to weep when the war is done, and the stones will 
 be memorials of brave hearts who came here in the dark- 
 ness with just a glance at the lights in the sky and a word 
 of "Carry on, men," before they fell. 
 
 The Australians at Messines 
 
 June 17 
 The sun is fierce and hot over Flanders, giving great splen- 
 dour to this June of war, but baking our troops brown and 
 dry. Up in the battle-line thirst is a cruel demon in that 
 shadowless land of craters, where the earth itself is parched 
 and cracked, and where there is a white, blinding glare. 
 
 On the day of the Messines battle water went up quickly, 
 with two lemons for each man, "to help them through the 
 barrage," according to a young staff officer with a bright 
 sense of humour at the mess-table. But there was never 
 too much, and in some places not enough for the wounded 
 men, whose thirst was like a fire, and yet not greedy, poor 
 chaps, if there was only a little to go round. 
 
 "Can you spare a drop," said a group of them — all Aus- 
 tralian lads — to a friend of mine who was going up one 
 day with a kerosene-tin full of water to the front line. 
 "The fellows up in front want it badly," said my friend, 
 "and I promised to get it there, but if you'll just take a 
 sip " 
 
 Those Australians were all in a muck of wounds and 
 sweat. But they just moistened their lips and passed the 
 water on. One man shook his head and said, "Take it 
 to the fellows in front." It was the old Philip Sidney 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 221 
 
 touch by way of Australia, and it is not rare among all 
 our fighting men — lawless chaps when they are on a loose 
 end, but great-hearted children at times like this. 
 
 All this pageant of war in France and Flanders is on 
 fire with sun, and it is wonderful to pass through the 
 panorama of the war zone, as I do most days, and get a 
 picture of it into one's eyes and soul — columns of men 
 marching with wet, bronzed faces through clouds of white 
 dust, or through fields where there is a patchwork tapestry 
 of colour woven of great stretches of clover drenching the 
 air with its scent, and of poppies which spill a scarlet flood 
 down the slopes, and of green wheat and gold-brown earth. 
 Gunners ride in their shirts with sleeves rolled up. About 
 old barns men work in their billets stripped to the belt. Up 
 in the "strafed" country of the old salient men sit about 
 ruins between spells of work on roads and rails on the 
 shady side of shell-broken walls, dreaming of bottled beer 
 and rivers of cider, and the New-Zealanders are as brown 
 as gipsies under their high felt hats. 
 
 Talk to any group of men, or go into any officers* mess, 
 and one hears about new aspects and angles of the recent 
 fighting by our Second Army; episodes which throw new 
 light on the enemy's losses and our men's valour, and suf- 
 ferings — because it wasn't a "walk-over" all the way round 
 ■ — and incidents, which ought to be historic, but just come 
 out in a casual way of gossip by men who happened to be 
 there. 
 
 I only heard yesterday about twenty German officers 
 who were dragged out of one dug-out near Wytschaete. 
 They were all huddled down there in a black despair, know- 
 ing their game was up as far as the Messines Ridge was con- 
 cerned. Their men had all gone to the devil, according to 
 their view of the situation, abandoned by the guns, which 
 might have protected them. The Second Division of East 
 Prussians had been wiped out. Of a strength of 3600 we 
 captured over 2000, whilst most of the remainder must 
 be killed or wounded. In the counter-attack the Germans 
 
222 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 brought up a new division and flung them in, and the queer 
 thing is that our men were not aware of this, but just 
 marched through them to their final goal, believing they be- 
 longed to the original crowd on Messines Ridge, and not 
 the counter-attacking troops who had just arrived. 
 
 The Australians had some great adventures in this bat- 
 tle, and not enough has been told about them, because 
 they took a good share of the fighting, especially in the 
 last phase of it, when they passed through some of our 
 first-wave troops and held a broad stretch of new front 
 under violent fire and against the enemy's endeavours to 
 retake the ground. On the extreme right of our line, 
 forming the pivot of the attack, was a body of Australian 
 troops who had to get through the German barrage and 
 fling duck-board bridges over the little Douve river, and 
 cross to the German support line under machine-gun fire 
 from a beastly little ruin called Grey Farm. The enemy 
 was sniping from shell-holes, and bullets were flying about 
 rather badly. A young Australian officer dealt with Grey 
 Farm, crawling through a hedge with a small party of 
 men, and setting fire to the ruin, so that it should give 
 no more cover. Meanwhile, farther to the north, the Ger- 
 mans were still about in gaps not yet linked up, and in strong 
 points not yet cleared. A body of them gave trouble in 
 Huns' Walk on the Messines road, where there was a belt 
 of uncut wire when the Australians arrived. "Hell !" said 
 the Australians. *'What are we going to do about that?" 
 There was heavy shell-fire and machine-gun fire, and the 
 sight of that wire was disgusting. 
 
 "Leave it to me," said a young Tank officer. "I guess 
 old Rattle-belly can roll that down." He and other Tank 
 officers were keen, even at the most deadly risks, to do good 
 work with their queer beasts alongside the Australians for 
 reasons that belong to another story. 
 
 They did good work, and this Tank at Huns' Walk 
 crawled along the hedge of wire and laid it flat, as its 
 tracks there still show. Another Tank was slouching 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 223 
 
 about under heavy shelling in search of strong posts, with 
 the Australian boys close up to its flanks with their bayo- 
 nets fixed. Suddenly, a burst of flame came from it, and it 
 seemed a doomed thing. But out of the body of the beast 
 came a very cool young man, who mounted high with bits 
 of shell whistling by his head. He stamped out the fire, and 
 did not hear the comments of the Australian lads, who said, 
 "Gosh, that fellow is pretty game. He's all right." 
 
 Much farther north another Tank came into action, with 
 the Australians near. A few old remnants of charred wall 
 and timber, where there was a strong post of Germans in 
 concrete chambers, were causing our troops loss and worry. 
 ^'Anything I can do to help you?" asked a Tank officer very 
 politely through the steel trap-door. ''Your machine-guns 
 would be jolly useful in our trench," said an Australian of- 
 ficer. "We are a bit under strength here." 
 
 The Tank ofificer was a friend in distress. He dis- 
 mantled his machine-guns, took them into the trench and 
 fought alongside the Australians until they were relieved. 
 
 Just west of Van Hove Farm, in a gap between the Aus- 
 tralians and the English, the Germans got into a place called 
 Polka Estaminet — don't imagine it as a neat little inn with 
 a penny-in-the-slot piano in the front parlour — and they 
 had to be driven out by sharp rifle-fire. Next morning 
 one of our men walked into a pocket of a hundred Germans, 
 and a young Australian officer was told off with twenty men 
 to bomb them out. There was a battle of bombs, which was 
 very hot while it lasted, and then the Germans bolted off 
 under machine-gun and rifle fire. Australian patrols went 
 out and brought in forty wounded Germans and counted 
 sixty to eighty dead. 
 
224 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 7 
 
 A Battle in a Thunder-Storm 
 
 June 29 
 In a violent thunder-storm whose noise and lightning min- 
 gled in an awesome way with the tumult and flame of the 
 great artillery a minor battle broke out last evening round 
 Lens and southwards beyond Oppy. The Canadians fought 
 their way into Avion, a southern suburb of Lens, to a line 
 giving them the larger half of the village, and driving the 
 enemy back across the swamps to the outer defences of 
 Lens city. Outside Oppy and south of it troops of old 
 English county regiments seized the front-line system of 
 German trenches and captured about 200 prisoners and 
 several guns. West of Lens some Midland troops stormed 
 and gained a line of trenches which belong to the main de- 
 fences of the city, and north of it there was a big raid which 
 caused great loss of life to the enemy. It was a heavy series 
 of blows falling suddenly upon him, and giving him no time 
 for a leisurely retirement to his inner line of defence in Lens 
 I saw the beginning of the battle, and watched the fright- 
 ful gun-fire until darkness and dense banks of smoke blotted 
 out this vision of the mining cities in which men were fight- 
 ing through bursting shells. That beginning was a terrify- 
 ing sight, and a sense of the enormous tragedy of the world 
 in conflict overwhelmed one's soul, because of the strange 
 atmospheric effects, and that most weird mingling of storm 
 and artillery, as though the gods were angry and stirred to 
 reveal the eternal forces of their own thunderbolts above 
 this human strife. Just in front of where I crouched in 
 a shell-crater was Swallows' Wood, or the Bois d'Hiron- 
 delle, and beyond that La Coulotte, which the Canadians 
 had just taken, and a little way farther the long strag- 
 gle of streets which is Avion, leading up to Lens, with its 
 square-towered church and high water-towers and factory 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 225 
 
 chimneys. Straight and long, bordered by broken trees, 
 went the Arras-Lens road, on which any man may walk 
 to a certain rendezvous with death if he goes far enough, 
 and I saw how it crossed the Souchez river by the broken 
 bridge of Leauvette, from which the Canadians were going 
 to make their new attack. A gleam of sunlight rested there 
 for a while, and the little river was a blue streak this side of 
 Avion. But the sky began to darken strangely. The air 
 was still and hushed. A blue dusk crept across the land- 
 scape. The trees of Hirondelle Wood and the towers of 
 Lens blackened. Far behind Vimy, old ruins — of Souchez 
 and Ablain-St.-Nazaire — ^were white and ghostly. 
 
 One of my companions in a shell-hole looked up and said : 
 "Is the 'good old German God' at work again?" Other 
 powers were at work. Huge shells from our heavy how- 
 itzers, now away behind us, passed overhead with a noise 
 such as long-tailed comets must have. I watched them 
 burst, raising volumes of ruddy smoke in Avion and Lens. 
 To the right of Lens by Sallaumines there was some other 
 kind of explosion, rolling up and up in big, curly clouds. In 
 the still air there was the drone of many engines. The 
 darkening sky was full of black specks, which were Brit- 
 ish aeroplanes flying out on reconnaissance over Lens and 
 Avion. "O brave birds 1" said a friend by my side, waving 
 up to them. German shrapnel puffed about their wings, 
 bursting with little glints of flames, but they flew on. 
 
 It was then just seven o'clock. Our guns had almost 
 ceased fire. There were strange sinister silences over all 
 the battlefield, broken only by single gun-shots or the high 
 snarl of German shrapnel or the single thud of a German 
 crump. It was almost dark. The blue went out of the 
 little Souchez river. Lens and Avion were in gulfs of 
 blackness, A long rolling thunderclap shook all the sky, 
 and flashes of lightning zigzagged over the Vimy Ridge, 
 whitening the edges of its upheaved earth. The sky opened, 
 and a storm of rain swept down fiercely. 
 
 "Yes, the 'good old German God' is busy again," said my 
 
^26 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 fellow-tenant of the shell-crater and of the pond that welled 
 up in it. "Just our beastly luck !" It was ten minutes past 
 seven, and we had heard that the battle was to begin at 
 seven. Perhaps it had been postponed. 
 
 As the thought was uttered the battle began. It began 
 with one great roar of guns. Not only behind us but 
 far to our right and left. Flights of shells passed over 
 our heads as though long-tailed comets of the spheres had 
 i)roken loose from the divine order of things. In a wide 
 sweep round Lens they burst with sharp flashes and 
 lighted fires there. Outside the Cite du Moulin, at the 
 western edge of Lens, a long chain of golden fountains 
 rose as though little mines had been blown, and they were 
 followed by a high bank of white impenetrable smoke. On 
 the right of Avion another smoke-barrage was discharged, 
 and above it there rose one of the strangest things I have 
 seen in war. It was the figure of a woman, colossal, so 
 that her head seemed to reach the heavens. It was not a 
 fanciful idea, as when men watch the shapes of clouds 
 and say, "How Hke Gladstone!" or "There is a camel!" 
 or "A ship!" This woman figure of white solid smoke 
 was as though carved out of rock, and she seemed to stare 
 across the battlefield, and stayed there unchanged for sev- 
 eral minutes. The guns continued their fury. Rockets 
 went up out of Avion, and the German guns answered 
 these signals. There was one wild tumult of artillery 
 beating down the lines southward to Oppy, and beyond 
 and above and through and into all this violence of sound 
 there was the roll and rattle of thunder — heavy claps — and 
 the rattle of the storm-drums. Lightning flashed above the 
 flashes of our batteries, gave a livid outline to black trees 
 and chimneys, and pierced the heart of all this darkness 
 with long light swords. It was bad luck for our men, 
 as I have heard since from messages which came back out 
 of those smoke-banks through which no mortal eye could 
 see. The men were drenched to the skin as soon as they 
 started to attack. The rain beat into their faces and upon 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 22T 
 
 their steel hats. In a few minutes all the shelled ground 
 across which they had to fight became as slippery as ice, so 
 that many of them stumbled and fell. In Avion the enemy 
 had already let loose floods to stop the way to Lens, and by 
 the rain-storm they spread into big swamps. But the Cana- 
 dians went ahead straight into the streets of Avion, leaving 
 little searching-parties on their trail to make sure of the 
 ruined houses, where machine-guns might be hidden. 
 
 This street fighting is always a nasty business, but in the 
 south and western streets there was not much trouble from 
 German infantry. Round Leauvette many of them lay dead. 
 The living rear-guards surrendered in small parties from 
 cellars and tunnels. The chief trouble of the Canadians 
 was on the right, by Fosse 4 and a huddle of pit-heads 
 where the enemy was in strength with many machine-guns, 
 where he fired with a steady sweep of bullets, which I heard 
 last night above all the other noise. The Canadians swung 
 to the left a little to avoid that stronghold, and established 
 themselves on a diagonal line, striking north-west and 
 south-east through the slums, where they took what 
 cover they could from the German shell-fire. To the left 
 of Lens our Midland troops had some hard fighting in 
 front of the Cite du Moulin, and gave a terrible handling 
 to the Eleventh Reserve Division, who have previously 
 suffered on the Canadian front, so that they were disgusted 
 to find themselves near their old enemies again. They re- 
 lieved the Fifty-sixth Division, which is down to one-seventh 
 of its strength since fighting against the Leinsters in the Bois- 
 en-Hache, near Vimy. The raid farther north inflicted 
 frightful losses on the enemy in his dug-outs. In one big 
 tunnelled dug-out not a man escaped. 
 
 The attack at Oppy, in the south, was a successful ad- 
 vance by Warwickshire lads and other English troops, who 
 followed a great barrage into the enemy's front-trench sys- 
 tem and captured all those of the garrison who were not 
 quick enough to escape. They were men of the Fifth 
 
^28 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Bavarian Division, which is one of the best in the German 
 army, and made up of very tough fellows. 
 
 So the evening ended in our favour, and our losses were 
 not heavy, I am told. Not heavy, though always the price 
 of victory has to be paid by that harvest of wounded who 
 came back under the Red Cross down the country lanes 
 of France. 
 
 8 
 
 The Tragedy at Lombartzyde 
 
 July 13 
 The Germans have claimed a victory near Lombartzyde, 
 and it is true that by heavy gun-fire they have driven us 
 from our defences in a wedge-shaped tract of sand-dunes 
 between the sea and the Yser Canal. This reverse of ours 
 is not a great defeat. It is only a tragic episode of human 
 suffering such as one must expect in war. But what is 
 great — ^great in spiritual value and heroic memory — is the 
 way in which our men fought against overwhelming odds 
 and under annihilating fire, and did not try to escape nor 
 talk of surrender, but held this ground until there was no 
 ground but only a zone of bloody wreckage, and still fought 
 until most of them were dead or disabled. 
 
 The men who did that were the King's Royal Rifles and 
 Northamptons of the ist Division, and this last stand of 
 theirs beyond the Yser Canal will not be forgotten as long 
 as human valour is remembered by us. It is wonderful to 
 think that after three years of war the spirit of our men 
 should still be so high and proud that they will stand to 
 certain death like this. Those men who came back from 
 the other side of the canal came back wounded, and had 
 to swim back. They were a remnant of those who have 
 stayed, lying out there now in the churned-up sand, or 
 have been carried back to German hospitals. They were 
 soldiers of the Northamptons and the Sixtieth. Among 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 229 
 
 the King's Royal Rifles there were many London lads, 
 from the old city which we used to think overcivilized and 
 soft. Well, it was men like that who have shed their blood 
 upon the sand-dunes, so that this tract by the sea is conse- 
 crated by one of the most tragic episodes in the history of 
 this war. 
 
 It was on the seashore, when a high wind ruffled the 
 waters on the morning of July lo, that the enemy began 
 his attack with a deadly fire. His position was in a net- 
 work of trenches, tunnels, concrete emplacements, and 
 breastworks of thick sand-bag walls built down from the 
 coast to the south of Lombartzyde. Facing him were other 
 trenches and breastworks which we had recently taken over 
 from the French. Behind our men was the Yser Canal, 
 with pontoon bridges crossing to Nieuport and Nieuport- 
 les-Bains. Without these bridges there was no way back 
 or round for the men holding the lines in the dunes. The 
 enemy began early in the morning by putting a barrage 
 down on our front-line system of defences from a large 
 number of batteries of heavy howitzers. Most of his shells 
 were at least as large as 5-9's, and for one long hour they 
 swept up and down our front, smashing breastworks and 
 emplacements and flinging up storms of sand. After that 
 hour the enemy altered his line of fire. There was a five 
 minutes' pause, five minutes of breathing-space for men 
 still left alive among many dead, and then the wall of 
 shells crossed the canal and stayed there for another hour, 
 churning up the sand with a tornado of steel. 
 
 The guns then lifted to the front line again, and for 
 another hour continued their work of destruction, paus- 
 ing for one of those short silences which gave men hope 
 that the bombardment had ceased. It had not ceased. It 
 travelled again to the support line and stayed smashing 
 there for sixty minutes — then across the canal again, then 
 back all over again. 
 
 There was one interval of a whole quarter of an hour, 
 and the officers had time to tell their men that it must be 
 
230 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 a fight to the death, because the position must be held 
 until that death. There must have been few of them who 
 did not know that after that bombardment they would meet 
 the enemy face to face if they still remained alive. 
 
 The commanding officer of the Sixtieth became convinced 
 by three o'clock in the afternoon that all this destructive fire 
 was preparatory to a big attack. He saw that his bridges 
 had gone behind him, so that there was no way of escape, 
 and he saw that the enemy was trying to cut off all means 
 of relief and communication. He tried to get messages 
 through, but without success. Two shells came into his 
 battalion headquarters, killing and wounding some of the 
 officers and men crowded in this sand-bag shelter and 
 dug-out in the dune. He took the survivors into a tunnel 
 bored by the miners along the seashore, and here for a 
 time they were able to carry on. But it was almost im- 
 possible to get out to reconnoitre the situation, or to give 
 some word of comfort or courage to men standing to arms 
 amongst the wreckage. Flights of hostile aeroplanes were 
 overhead, and they flew low and poured machine-gun fire at 
 any living man who showed. Away behind they were 
 searching for our batteries. 
 
 At 6.15 all the German batteries broke into drum-fire 
 and flung shells over the whole of our position for three- 
 quarters of an hour without a second's pause. After all 
 these previous barrages it reached the utmost heights of 
 hellishness, destroying what had already been destroyed, 
 sweeping all this wide tract of sand-dunes right away from 
 the coast to the south of Lombartzyde with flame and smoke 
 and steel, and reaping another harvest of death. 
 
 There are many details of this action which may never 
 be known. No man saw it from other ground, and those 
 who were across that bank of the Yser could see very little 
 beyond their own neighbourhood of bursting shells. But a 
 sergeant of the Northamptons, who had an astounding es- 
 cape, saw the first three waves of German marines advance 
 with bombing parties. That was shortly after seven o'clock 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 231 
 
 in the evening. They were in heavy numbers against a few 
 scattered groups of English soldiers still left alive after a 
 day of agony and blood. They came forward bombing 
 in a crescent formation, one horn of the crescent trying 
 to work round behind the flank of the Rifles on the sea- 
 shore as the other tried to outflank the Northamptons on 
 the right. 
 
 A party of German machine-gunners crept along the edge 
 of the sands, taking advantage of the low tide, and enfiladed 
 the support line, now a mere mash of sand, in which some 
 wounded and unwounded men held out, and swept them 
 with bullets. Another party of the marines made straight 
 for the tunnel, which was now the battalion headquarters 
 of the Sixtieth, and poured liquid fire down it. Then they 
 passed on, but as if uncertain of having completed their 
 work, came back after a time and bombed it. Even then 
 there was at least one man not killed in that tunnel. He 
 stayed there among the dead till night and then crept out 
 and swam across the canal. Two platoons of Riflemen 
 fought to the last man, refusing to surrender. One little 
 group of five lay behind a bank of sand, and fired with 
 rifles and bombs until they were destroyed. 
 
 Meanwhile the Northamptons, on the right, were fight- 
 ing desperately. Seeing that the German marines were 
 trying to get behind them on the right flank and that they 
 had not the strength to resist this, they got a message 
 through to some troops farther down in front of Lom- 
 bartzyde to form a barrier so that the enemy could not 
 come through, and these fought their way grimly up, thrust- 
 ing back the enemy's storm troops, and then made a defen- 
 sive block through which the marines could not force their 
 way. 
 
 The Northamptons fought without any chance of es- 
 cape, without any hope except that of a quick finish. The 
 German marines brought up a machine-gun and fixed it 
 behind the place where the Northampton officers had es- 
 tablished their headquarters, and fired up it. Our ma- 
 
232 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 chine-guns were out of action, filled with sand or buried 
 in sand. One gunner managed to get his weapon into 
 position, but it jammed at once, and with a curse on it, 
 he flung it into the water of the Yser, and then jumped 
 in and swam back. Another gunner lay by the side of his 
 machine-gun, hit twice by shells, so that he could not work 
 it. One of his comrades wanted to drag him off to the canal 
 bank, in the hope of swimming back with him. To linger 
 there a minute meant certain death. "Don't mind about 
 me," said the machine-gunner of the Northamptons. 
 "Smash my gun and get back." There was no time for 
 both, so the gun was smashed and the wounded man stayed 
 on the wrong side of the bank. 
 
 The fighting lasted for an hour and a half after the be- 
 ginning of the infantry attack. It was over at 8.30. The 
 wounded sergeant of the Northamptons who swam back 
 saw the last of the struggle. He saw a little group of his 
 own ofBcers, not more than six of them, surrounded by 
 marine bombers, fighting to the end with their revolvers. 
 The picture of these six boys out there in the sand, with 
 their dead lying around them, refusing to yield and fight- 
 ing on to a certain death, is one of the memories of this 
 war that should not be allowed to die. 
 
 Over the Yser Canal men were trying to swim, men 
 dripping with blood and too weak to swim, and men who 
 could not swim. Some gallant fellow on the Nieuport 
 side — there is an idea that it was a Lancashire man — 
 swam across with a rope under heavy fire and fixed it so 
 that men could drag themselves across. So the few sur- 
 vivors came over, and so we know, at least in its broad 
 outline, how all this happened. It is a tragic tale, and 
 there will be tears when it is read. But in the tragedy 
 there is the splendour of these poor boys, young soldiers 
 all, who fought with a courage as great as any in history, 
 and have raised a cross of sacrifice beyond the Yser, be- 
 fore which all men of our race will bare their heads. 
 
 The enemy did not reach the canal bank, but stayed 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES ^33 
 
 some 300 yards away from it. He was "beaten back from 
 the trenches south of Lombartzyde, and gained no ground 
 there. 
 
 9 
 
 The Struggle for Hell Wood 
 
 June 14 
 Between Wytschaete and Messines is a wood, horribly 
 ravaged by shell-fire, called on our trench-maps Bois de 
 TEnfer, or Hell Wood. North of it was a German strong 
 point, with barbed-wire defences and heavy blocks of con- 
 crete, called FEnfer — Hell itself — and south of it, behind 
 a labyrinth of trenches, some broken walls above a nest of 
 dug-outs, known as Hell Farm. These filthy places were 
 central defences of great fortified positions held by the 
 enemy just north of Messines, and just south of Wyt- 
 schaete, and round them and beyond them was some of 
 the fiercest fighting which happened on that day of battle 
 when we gained the Messines Ridge. 
 
 Until now I have left out that part of the battle story — 
 one cannot write the history of a battle like that in a day or 
 two — but it must be told, because it was vastly important to 
 the success of the general action, and the troops engaged 
 in it showed the finest courage. They were men of the 
 25th Division, including Cheshires, Irish Rifles, Lancashire 
 Fusiliers, North Lanes, and Worcesters, and other country- 
 lads who were blooded in battles of the Somme, where once 
 I watched them surging up the high slopes under a heavy 
 fire and fighting their way into the German trenches. In 
 this battle of Hell Wood they were so wonderful in the 
 cool, steady way they fought that when an airman came 
 down to report their progress he said to their General, 
 'T knew your fellows, because they advanced in perfect 
 order as though on parade." 
 
 Before the battle, when they lay about Wulverghem, op- 
 
£34 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELI 
 
 posite the fortress positions they had to attack, they did .3ome 
 great digging in the face of the enemy assembly trenches, as 
 plain as pikestaves to German observers, and advertising, as 
 did the enormous ammunition dumps, new batteries and 
 wagon-lines, the awful stroke of attack that was being 
 prepared. 
 
 It was a record night's work of twelve hundred Lan- 
 cashire lads who went out into the dead strip between their 
 trenches and the enemy's, and dug like demons. When at 
 dawn they crept back to their own lines they left behind them 
 a trench four-feet-six deep and 1050 yards long for a jump- 
 out line on the day of battle. The enemy officers saw it, and 
 must have sickened at the sight. They marked it on their 
 maps, which were captured afterwards. It was frightful 
 ground in front of these troops of ours, as I have seen it 
 partly for myself from the ground about the mine-craters 
 looking over Hell Wood. 
 
 The first part of our men's advance after the moment of 
 attack was hardly checked, and they went forward in open 
 order as steadily as though in the practice fields, through 
 buttercups and daisies. Their trouble came later, when 
 they found themselves under machine-gun fire from Hell 
 Wood, on the left of their advance line, and from Hell 
 Farm in front of them. It was a body of Cheshires who 
 side-slipped to the left to deal with that fire from the wood. 
 They made a dash for those scarred tree-trunks, from which 
 a stream of bullets poured, and fought their way through to 
 the German machine-gun emplacements, though a number 
 of them fell. As they closed upon the enemy the German 
 gunners ceased fire in a hurry. Many of them stopped ab- 
 ruptly, with bullets in their brains, and fifty men surren- 
 dered with fourteen machine-guns. Hell Farm was gained 
 and held, and at the top of Hell Wood the Cheshires routed 
 out another machine-gun, so that all was clear in this part of 
 the field. 
 
 Meanwhile the main body of assaulting troops — Lanca- 
 shire Fusiliers, North Lanes, Irish Rifles, and Worcesters — 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 2^5 
 
 has passed on to another system of defences known as Octo- 
 ber Trench, which was a barrier straight across their way. 
 Here, as they drew close, they came to a dead halt against 
 a broad belt of wire uncut by our gun-fire, and hideously 
 tangled in coils with sharp barbs. Behind, as some of 
 the officers knew, the enemy had brought up twenty-six 
 machine-guns, enough to sweep down a whole battalion 
 held by wire like this. Even now the men don't know how 
 they went over that wire. They knew instantly that they 
 must get across or die. From October Support Trench, 
 farther back, with another belt of uncut wire in front of 
 it, heavy fire was coming from Germans who had their 
 heads up. ''Over you go, men," shouted the officers. The 
 men flung themselves over, scrambled over, rolled over, tear- 
 ing hands and faces and bits of flesh on those rusty prongs, 
 but getting over or through somehow and anyhow. Parties 
 of them raced on to October Support Trench, flung them- 
 selves against that wire and got, bleeding and scratched, to 
 the other side, unless they were killed first. Some of them 
 fell. It was the most deadly episode of the day, but the 
 Germans paid a ghastly price for this resistance, and 300 
 German dead lie on that ground round the old ruins of Mid- 
 dle Farm behind the wire. 
 
 Away back when fighting here began was a body of Irish 
 Rifles who had gone as far as they had been told to go. They 
 saw what was happening, watched those other men flinging 
 themselves against the barbed hedge. "To hell with staying 
 here," shouted one of them. "To hell with it," said others. 
 "We could do a power of good up there." 
 
 "Come on then, boys," said the first men, beginning to 
 run. They ran fast towards the end of the wire belt, 
 slipped round it, and fell on the flank of the enemy. It 
 was timely help to the other men, some of whom owe 
 their lives to it. 
 
 The second phase of the battle began when another body 
 of the same troops passed through those who had already 
 assaulted and won their ground, and went forward to a 
 
286 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 new line beyond. They passed through in perfect order, 
 which is a most difficult manoeuvre in battle when the 
 ground is covered with troops who have already been fight- 
 ing, with wounded men and stretcher-bearers, and souvenir- 
 hunters and moppers-up and runners, and all the tumult of 
 new-gained ground. But in long, unbroken waves the 
 fresh troops lined up beyond these crowds, and made ready 
 to advance upon the new line of attack. Again, groups of 
 them had to be separated from the main body in order to 
 seize isolated positions on the wings, where groups of 
 Germans were holding out and sweeping our flanks with 
 fire. 
 
 North-east and south-east of Lumm Farm were bits of 
 trench from which the enemy was routed after sharp bouts 
 of fighting. Beyond were some holed walls called Name- 
 less Farm, and these were captured before the call of "cease 
 firing," which was the signal for the party to halt while our 
 guns began a new bombardment over the new line of attack.' 
 
 It was this silence which scared an officer of the Cheshires, 
 who had led his men away forward to capture a body of 
 Germans trying to escape from Despagne Farm, right 
 out in the blue this side of Owl Trench, which was the 
 next position to be attacked, after our guns had dealt with 
 it. A sergeant and two men of the Cheshires ran right into 
 Despagne Farm and bayoneted the German machine-gun- 
 ners who had been spraying bullets on our men. Then 
 the officer seemed to feel his heart stop. He looked at 
 his wrist-watch, and was shocked at the time it gave. The 
 realization of the frightful menace approaching as every sec- 
 ond passed made every nerve in his body tingle. It was our 
 new bombardment. A vast storm of explosives which was 
 about to sweep over this ground, already pitted with deep 
 shell-holes, it seemed as though nothing could save this body 
 of Cheshires, who had gone too far and could not get back 
 before their own guns killed them. There was only one 
 chance of escape for any of them, and that was for each 
 man to dive into one of those eight- feet-deep shell-holes 
 
 I 
 
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES 237 
 
 and crouch low, scratching himself into the shelving sides 
 before the hellish storm of steel broke loose. The Cheshires 
 did this, flung themselves into the pits, lay quaking there like 
 toads under a harrow, and hugged the earth as the bombard- 
 ment burst out and swept over them. By an amazing freak 
 of fortune it swept over them quickly, and there were only 
 two casualties among all those men huddled in holes, ex- 
 pecting certain death. A bit of luck, said the men, get- 
 ting up and gasping. Weaker men would have been broken 
 by shell-shock and terror-stricken. These Cheshires went 
 on, took the next German defences and many prisoners, 
 and then dug in according to orders and prepared for 
 anything that might happen in the way of trouble. It 
 was the German counter-attack which happened. Six hun- 
 dred men came debouching out of a gully called Blawepoort- 
 beek, with its mouth opposite Despagne Farm. The Chesh- 
 ires had their machine-guns in position and their rifles 
 ready. They held back their fire until the German col- 
 umn was within short range. Then they fired volley after 
 volley, and those 600 men found themselves in a valley of 
 death, and few escaped. 
 
PART V 
 The Battles of Flanders 
 
 I 
 
 Breaking the Salient 
 
 July 31 
 The battle which all the world has been expecting has 
 begun. After weeks of intense bombardment, not on our 
 side only, causing, as we know, grave alarm throughout 
 Germany and anxiety in our enemy's command, we launched 
 a great attack this morning on a front stretching, roughly, 
 from the River Lys to Boesinghe. We have gained ground 
 everywhere, and with the help of French troops, who are 
 fighting shoulder to shoulder with our own men, in the 
 northern part of the line above Boesinghe, we have cap- 
 tured the enemy's positions across the Yser Canal and 
 thrust him back from a wide stretch of country between 
 Pilkem and Hollebeke. He is fighting desperately at va- 
 rious points, with a great weight of artillery behind him, 
 and has already made strong counter-attacks and flung up 
 his reserves in order to check this sweeping advance. Many 
 Tanks have gone forward with our infantry, sometimes in 
 advance and sometimes behind, according to the plan of 
 action mapped out for them, and have done better than 
 well against several of the enemy's strong points, where, 
 for a time, our men were held up by machine-gun fire. 
 
 So far our losses are not heavy, and many of these are 
 lightly wounded, but it is likely that the enemy's resist- 
 ance will be stronger as the hours pass, because he realizes 
 
 238 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 
 
 the greatness of our menace, and will, beyond doubt, bring 
 up all the strength he has to save himself from a complete 
 disaster. During the past few weeks the correspondents in 
 the field have not even hinted at the approach of the battle 
 that has opened to-day, though other people have not been 
 so discreet, and the enemy himself has sounded the alarm. 
 But we have seen many of the preparations for this terrific 
 adventure in the north, and have counted the days when all 
 these men we have seen passing along the roads, all these 
 guns, and the tidal wave of ammunition which has flowed 
 northwards should be ready for this new conflict, more for- 
 midable than any of the fighting which raged along the 
 lines since April of this year. 
 
 I am bound to say that as the days have drawn nearer 
 some of us have shuddered at the frightful thing growing 
 ripe for history as the harvests of France have ripened. 
 Poring over maps of this northern front, and looking 
 across the country from the coast-line and newly taken hills, 
 like those of Wytschaete, the difficulty of the ground which 
 our men have to attack has been horribly apparent. Those 
 swamps in the north around Dixmude, the Yser Canal, 
 which must be bridged under fire, the low flats of our 
 lines around Ypres, like the well of an amphitheatre, with 
 the enemy above on the Pilkem Ridge, were so full of peril 
 for attacking troops that optimism itself might be frightened 
 and downcast. 
 
 As I have written many times lately, the enemy has massed 
 great gun-power against us, and has poured out fire with 
 unparalleled ferocity in order to hinder our preparations. 
 Our bombardments were more terrific, and along the roads 
 were always guns, guns, guns, going up to increase the rela- 
 tive powers of our own and the German artillery. There 
 was little doubt that in the long run ours would be over- 
 whelming, but meanwhile the enemy was strong and de- 
 structively inclined. All the time he was puzzled and nerve- 
 racked, not knowing where our attack would fall upon him, 
 and he made many raids, mostly unsuccessful, to find out 
 
240 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 our plans, while we raided him day and night to see what 
 strength he was massing to meet us. Russia lured him, and 
 in spite of our threat he has sent off some six divisions, I 
 believe, to his Eastern theatre of operations, but at the same 
 time he relieved many of the divisions which had been broken 
 
 by our fire in the lines, replacing them by his freshest and 
 strongest troops. They did not remain fresh, even after 
 only a few hours, for our guns caught some of them during 
 their reliefs, as late as two o'clock this morning in the case 
 of the 52nd Reserve Division, so that they stepped straight 
 into an inferno of fire. 
 
 The weather was against us, as many times before a bat- 
 tle. Yesterday it was a day of rain and heavy, sodden 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 241 
 
 clouds, so that observation was almost impossible for our 
 flying men and kite-balloons, and our artillery was greatly 
 hampered. The night was dark and moist, but luck was 
 with us so far that a threatening storm did not break, and 
 our men kept dry. The darkness was in our favour, and the 
 assaulting troops were able to form up for attack very close 
 to the enemy's lines — lines of shell-craters in fields of craters 
 from which our storms of fire had swept away all trenches, 
 all buildings, and all trees. The enemy held these forward 
 positions lightly by small groups of men, who knew them- 
 selves to be doomed, and waited for that doom in their pits 
 like animals in death-traps. In their second-hne defences, 
 less damaged, but awful enough in wreckage of earthworks, 
 the enemy was in greater strength, and from these positions 
 flares went up all through the night, giving a blurred white 
 light along the barriers of mist, and rising high into the 
 cloudy sky. Scores of thousands of our men, lying on 
 the wet earth in puddles and mud-holes, watched those 
 flares and hoped they would not be revealed before the 
 second when they would have to rise and go forward to 
 meet their luck. They lay there silently, never stirring, 
 nor coughing, nor making any rattle of arms, while Ger- 
 man shells passed over them or smashed among them, 
 killing and wounding some of those who lay close. Enemy 
 aircraft came out in the night bolder than by day, since they 
 have been chased and attacked and destroyed in great num- 
 bers by British flying men, determined to get the mastery of 
 the air, and to blind the enemy's eyes before this battle, and 
 beyond any doubt successful as far as this day goes. The 
 night-birds swooped over places where they thought our 
 batteries were hidden and dropped bombs, but as they could 
 see nothing their aim was bad, and they did no important 
 damage, if any at all. So the hours of the night crept by, 
 enormously long to all those men of ours waiting for the 
 call to rise and go. Our gun-fire had never stopped for 
 weeks in its steady slogging hammering, but shortly after 
 half-past three this ordinary noise of artillery quickened and 
 
M2 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 intensified to a monstrous and overwhelming tumult. It was 
 so loud that twelve miles behind the lines big houses moved 
 and were shaken with a great trembling. People farther 
 away than that awakened with fear and went to their 
 windows and stared out into the darkness, and saw wild 
 fireballs in the sky, and knew that men were fighting and 
 dying in Flanders in one of the great battles of the world. 
 This morning I watched the fires of this battle from an 
 observation-post on the edge of the salient. I knew what 
 I should have seen if there had been any light, for I saw 
 those places a day or two ago from the same spot. I should 
 have seen the ghost-city of Ypres, and the curve of the sa- 
 lient round by Pilkem, St.-Jullen, and Zillebeke, and then 
 Warneton and Houthem below the Messines Ridge. But 
 now there was no light, but hundreds of sharp red flashes 
 out of deep gulfs of black smoke and black mist. The red 
 flashes were from our forward batteries and heavy guns, 
 and over all this battlefield, where hundreds of thousands 
 of men were at death-grips, the heavy, smoke-laden va- 
 pours of battle and of morning fog swirled and writhed 
 between clumps of trees and across the familiar places of 
 death round Ypres, hiding everything and great masses of 
 men. The drum-fire of the guns never slackened for hours. 
 At nine o'clock in the morning it beat over the countryside 
 with the same rafale of terror as it had started before four 
 o'clock. Strangely above this hammering and thundering 
 of two thousand guns or more of ours, answered by the 
 enemy's barrage, railway whistles screamed from trains 
 taking up more shells, and always more shells, to the very 
 edge of the fighting-lines, and in between the massed bat- 
 teries, using them as hard as they could be unloaded. 
 
 Over at Warneton and Oostaverne, in the valley below 
 the Messines Ridge, the enemy was pouring fire along our 
 line, shells of the heaviest calibre, which burst monstrously, 
 and raised great pillars of white smoke. It was a valley of 
 death there, and our men were in it, and fighting for the 
 slopes beyond. 
 
 i 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 243 
 
 It is a battle, so far, of English, Scottish, and Welsh 
 troops, with some of the Anzacs — New-Zealanders as well 
 as Australians — and all along the line they have fought hard 
 and with good success over ground as difficult as any that 
 has ever been a battlefield, because of the canal and the 
 swamps and the hollow cup of the Ypres area, with the 
 enemy on the rim of it. 
 
 Among the battalions who fought hardest were the Liv- 
 erpool, the South and North Lancashires, the Liverpool 
 Scottish and Liverpool Irish, the Lancashire Fusiliers, Lan- 
 cashire Regiment, the King's Royal Rifles, West Kents, Sur- 
 reys, Durham Light Infantry, the Cheshires, Warwicks, 
 Staffords, Sussex, Wiltshires and Somersets, the Royal Irish 
 Rifles, the Black Watch, Camerons, Gordons and Royal 
 Scots, the Welsh battalions, and the Guards. From north 
 to south the Divisions engaged were the Guards, the 38th 
 (Welsh), the 51st (Highland), the 39th, the 55th, the 
 15th (Scottish), the 8th, 30th, 41st, 19th, and Anzacs 
 on the extreme right. 
 
 One can always tell from the walking wounded whether 
 things are going ill or well. At least, they know the fire 
 they have had against them, and the ease or trouble vvith 
 which they have taken certain ground, and the measure 
 of their sufferings. So now, with an awful doubt in my 
 mind, because of the darkness and the anxiety of men 
 conducting the battle over the signal-lines, and that awful 
 drum-fire beating into one's ears and soul, I was glad to 
 get first real tidings from long streams of lightly wounded 
 fellows coming along from the dressing-station. They were 
 lightly wounded, but pitiful to see, because of the blood that 
 drenched them — bloody kilts and bloody khaki, and bare 
 arms and chests, with the cloth cut away from their wounds, 
 and bandaged heads, from which tired eyes looked out. One 
 would not expect good tidings from men who had suffered 
 like these, but they spoke of a good day, of good progress, 
 of many prisoners, and of an enemy routed and surren- 
 dering. ''A good day" — that was their first phrase, though 
 
M4i FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 for them it meant the loss of a limb or sharp pain anyhow, 
 and remembrance of the blood and filth of battle. They 
 were eager to describe their fighting, and I saw again the 
 pride of men in the courage of their comrades, forgetting 
 their own, which had been as great. These lads told me 
 how they lay out in the night, and how the German planes 
 came over, bombing them; how they rose and went forward 
 in attack. The enemy was quickly turned out of his front 
 line of shell-craters, and there were not many of him there. 
 In the second line he was thickly massed, but some of them 
 threw up their hands at once, crying ''Mercy !" 
 
 The Scots came up against a strong emplacement fitted 
 with machine-guns, and here the German gunners fired 
 rapidly, so that our men were checked. They rushed the 
 place, and at the last a German hoisted a white flag, but 
 even then others fired, and I met one young Scot to-day 
 who had a comrade killed after that sign of surrender. 
 
 Beyond Ypres, on the way to Menin, there was a big 
 tunnel where our English lads expected trouble, as it could 
 hold hundreds of Germans. But when they came to the tun- 
 nel and ferreted down it they only found forty-one men, 
 who surrendered at once. Some of the enemy's troops 
 were quite young boys of the 191 8 class, but most of 
 them were older and tougher men. The success of the 
 day is shared by English troops, including the ' Guards, 
 with the Welsh, who fought abreast of them with equal 
 heroism, and with Scottish and Anzacs. The Welsh have 
 wiped out the most famous German regiment of the Third 
 Guards Division, known as the "Cockchafers." 
 
 Fighting with us, the French troops kept pace with their 
 usual gallantry, carrying all their objectives according to 
 the time-table. In one great and irresistible assault, these 
 troops of two nations swept across the enemy lines and have 
 reached heights on the Pilkem Ridge, as I hope to tell to- 
 morrow in greater detail. For the day, it is enough to say 
 that our success has been as great as we dared to hope. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 245 
 
 2 
 
 From Pilkem Ridge to Hollebeke 
 
 August i 
 The weather is still abominable. Heavy rain-storms have 
 waterlogged the battlefields, and there are dense mists over 
 all the countryside. It is bad for fighting on land, and worse 
 for fighting in the air. But fighting goes on. Yesterday 
 the enemy made strong counter-attacks at many points of 
 our new line, and especially to the north of Frezenberg, 
 west of Zonnebeke, where, at three in the afternoon, his 
 infantry advanced upon the 15th (Scottish) Division after 
 a violent bombardment. They were swept down by artillery 
 and machine-gun fire. At five o'clock they came on again, 
 moving suddenly out of a dense smoke-barrage, and gained 
 300 yards of ground. Our guns poured shells on to this 
 ground, and at nine o'clock last night our men went behind 
 the barrage and regained this position. The enemy's gun- 
 fire is intense over a great part of the country taken from 
 him, and his long-range guns are shelling far behind the 
 lines. Generally the situation is exactly the same as it 
 stood at the end of the first day of battle, when our ad- 
 vance was firm and complete at the northern end of the 
 attack, where the Guards and the Welsh had swept over 
 the Pilkem Ridge without great trouble, and where farther 
 south the troops who had advanced beyond St-Julien had to 
 fall back a little, partly under the pressure of counter-at- 
 tacks, but chiefly in order to get into line with their right 
 wing, which had been engaged in the hardest fighting, and 
 had not reached the same depth of country. That was in 
 the wooded ground south-east of the salient, where the 
 enemy had a large ntimber of machine-guns in the cover 
 of Glencorse Copse, Inverness Wood, and Shrewsbury For- 
 est, and repulsed the very desperate attacks of the 8th and 
 30th Divisions. 
 
M6 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Outside one copse there was a very strong position, 
 known to our men as Stirling Castle. It was once a 
 French chateau, surrounded by a park and outbuildings, 
 long destroyed but made into a strong point with concrete 
 emplacements. Rapid machine-gun fire poured out of this 
 place against our men, but it was captured after several 
 rushes. The trenches in front of it were also gained by the 
 Royal Scots and Durham Light Infantry of the 8th Divi- 
 sion. Later a counter-attack was launched against them 
 by the Germans of one of the young classes, and here 
 at least these lads, who do not seem to have fought very 
 well elsewhere, came on like tiger cubs and gained some of 
 their trenches back. From all the woods in this neighbour- 
 hood there was an incessant sweep of machine-gun bullets, 
 and, as I have already said in earlier dispatches, many small 
 counter-attacks were launched from them, without much 
 success, but strong enough to make progress difficult to 
 our men, now that the weather had set in badly, so that 
 our guns were hampered by lack of aeroplane observation. 
 All through the night and yesterday the enemy's barrage- 
 fire was fiercely sustained, and our men dug themselves in 
 as best they could, and took cover in shell-holes. 
 
 Hard fighting had happened that day southward and on 
 the right of our attack past Hollebeke and the line between 
 Oostaverne and Warneton, Opposite Hollebeke there were 
 English county troops of the 41st Division — West Kents, 
 Surreys, Hampshires, Gloucesters, Oxford and Bucks, and 
 Durham Light Infantry — and they went ''over the bags," as 
 they call it, in almost pitch-darkness, like the men on either 
 side of them. This was the reason of an accident which was 
 almost a tragedy. As they went forward over that shell- 
 destroyed ground they left behind them Germans hidden in 
 shell-pits, who sniped our men in the rear, and picked off 
 many of them until later in the day they were routed out. 
 Beyond this open country the ruins of Hollebeke were full 
 of cellars, made into strong dug-outs, and crowded with Ger- 
 mans who would not come out. They will never come out. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 247 
 
 Our men flung bombs down into these underground places, 
 and passed on to the Hne where they stay on the east side 
 of the village. At a little bit of ruin there was some delay 
 because of the machine-guns there, and for some time it 
 was uncertain whether we held the place, as a messenger 
 sent down to report its capture was killed on his journey. 
 Along the line of the railway here there was a row of con- 
 crete dug-outs, and a bomber of the Middlesex went up 
 alone, climbed the embankment, and dropped bombs through 
 their ventilator. So there was not much trouble from them. 
 
 In some of the dug-outs in this neighbourhood about a 
 score of bottles of champagne were found, for a feast by 
 German officers. But our soldiers drank it; indeed, one — 
 a Canadian fellow — drank a whole bottle to himself, being 
 very thirsty, and after that he found one of the officers 
 for whom the drink was meant, but for the fortune of 
 war. He was lying on his truckle bed below ground, hop- 
 ing, perhaps, to be asleep when death should come to him 
 out of the tornado of fire which had swept over him for 
 days, *'Come out of that," shouted the Canadian, and then, 
 having left his arms behind him, dragged him out by the 
 hair. 
 
 South of Hollebeke three little rivers run. One of them 
 is the Rozebeek, and another is the Wambeek, and the third 
 is the Blaupoortbeek, and there is a small ridge between 
 each of them, and a copse between them. Two bodies of 
 English troops of the 19th and 37th Divisions — Lancashires, 
 Cheshires, Warwicks, Staffords and Wiltshires, Somersets, 
 Bedfords, South Lancashires, and Royal Fusiliers — attacked 
 these positions, those on the right making their assault 
 four hours later than those on the left. They had already 
 pushed out by small raids and rushes half-way to the copse 
 before the attack, and when the signal to go forward came 
 they made the rest of the way very quickly, so that the copse 
 fell. The enemy here fought hard, and had cover in con- 
 crete emplacements, with underground entries. Beyond he 
 held out stoutly under machine-gun and rifle barrage. Mean- 
 
248 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 while, on the extreme right of attack were the Australians 
 and New-Zealanders in the ground below Warneton. It 
 was difficult country. The enemy had gone to great trouble 
 to wire his hedges and camouflage the shell-holes with wire 
 netting, below which he hid machine-guns and snipers. The 
 village of La Basseville, like all the places we call villages, 
 a mere huddle of broken bricks, had already been taken once 
 and lost in a counter-attack. Now it was the New-Zealand- 
 ers who took it. The same thing happened as at Hollebeke. 
 The enemy refused to leave his dug-outs and was bombed 
 to death in them. ''Can't make any use of the cellars," 
 came a message through, ''as they are choked with dead." 
 Not far from La Basseville was the stump of an old wind- 
 mill standing lonely on a knoll. Because of its observation 
 it was important to get, and it was the Australians who cap- 
 tured it after hard fighting. At 9.30 in the morning the 
 Germans came out in waves across the Warneton-Gapaard 
 road and so encircled the windmill that the Australians had 
 to draw back and leave it. But at midnight, after it had 
 been shelled for several hours, they went back, routed out 
 the garrison, and now hold it again. At half-past three 
 the same afternoon the New-Zealanders were counter-at- 
 tacked at La Basseville, but the Germans were beaten 
 back. 
 
 So the fortunes of the day were alternating, but at the 
 end of it the position became clear. We had made and 
 held all the ground that we intended. Then our men dug 
 in, and the rain, which had begun on the afternoon of the 
 battle, grew heavier. It has rained ever since. The ground 
 is all a swamp and the shell-holes are ponds. The Army lies 
 wet, and all the foulness of Flemish weather in winter is 
 upon them in August. Through the mist the enemy's shell- 
 fire never ceases, and our guns reply with long bombard- 
 ments and steady barrages. The walking wounded come 
 back over miles of churned-up ground, dodging the shells, 
 and when they get down to the clearing-stations they are 
 caked with mud and very weary. War is not a blithe busi- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS M9 
 
 ness, even when the sun is shining. In this gloom and filth 
 it is more miserable. 
 
 The weather has been bad for flying men. Impossible, 
 one would say, looking up at the low-lying storm-clouds. 
 Yet on the day of battle our airmen went out and, baulked 
 of artillery work, flew over the enemy's country and spread 
 terror there. It was a flying terror which, when told in 
 the barest words of these boys, is stranger than old mythical 
 stories of flying horses and dragons on the wing. Imagine 
 one of these winged engines swooping low over one as one 
 walks along a road far from the lines, and above the roar 
 of its engine the sharp crack of a revolver with a bullet 
 meant for you. Imagine one of these birds hovering above 
 one's cottage roof and firing machine-gun bullets down the 
 chimneys, and then flying round to the front and squirting 
 a stream of lead through the open door, and, after leaving 
 death inside, soaring up into a rain-cloud. That, and much 
 more, was done on July 31. These airmen of ours attacked 
 the German troops on the march and scattered them, dropped 
 bombs on their camps and aerodromes, flying so low that 
 their wheels skirted the grass, and were seldom more than 
 a few yards above the tree-tops. The narrative of one 
 man begins with his flight over the enemy's country, cross- 
 ing canals and roads as low as thirty feet, until he came to 
 a German aerodrome. The men there paid no attention, 
 thinking this low flier was one of theirs, until a bomb fell 
 on the first shed. Then they ran in all directions panic- 
 stricken. The English pilot skimmed round to the other 
 side of the shed and played his machine-gun through the 
 open doors, then soared a little and gave the second shed 
 a bomb. He flew round and released a bomb for the third 
 shed, but failed with the fourth, because the handle did not 
 act quickly enough. So he spilt his bomb between the shed 
 and a railway train standing still there. By this time a 
 German machine-gun had got to work upon him, but he 
 swooped right down upon it, scattering the gunners with a 
 burst of bullets, and flew across the sheds again, firing into 
 
^50 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCSENDAELE 
 
 them at twenty feet. His ammunition drum was exhausted, 
 and he went up to a cloud to change, and then came down 
 actually to the ground, tripping across the grass on dancing 
 wheels, and firing into the sheds where the mechanics were 
 cowering. Then he tired of this aerodrome and flew off, 
 overtaking two German officers on horses. He dived at 
 them and the horses bolted. He came upon a column of 200 
 troops on the march, and swooped above their heads with a 
 stream of bullets until they ran into hedgfes and ditches. He 
 was using a lot of ammunition, and went up into a cloud 
 to fix another drum. Two German aeroplanes came up 
 to search for him, and he flew to meet them and drove 
 one down so that it crashed to earth. German sol- 
 diers gathered round it, and our fellow came down to them 
 and fired into their crowd. A little later he flew over a 
 passenger train and pattered bullets through its windows, 
 and then, having no more ammunition, went home. 
 
 There was a boy of eighteen in one of our aerodromes the 
 night before the battle, and he was very glum because he was 
 not allowed to go across the German lines next day on ac- 
 count of his age and inexperience. After many pleadings 
 he came to his squadron commander at night in his pyjamas 
 and said, **Look here, sir, can't I go?" So he was allowed 
 to go, and set out in company with another pilot in another 
 machine. But he soon was alone, because he missed the 
 other man in a rain-storm. His first adventure was with 
 a German motor-car with two officers. He gave chase, saw 
 it turn into side roads, and followed. Then he came low 
 and used his machine-gun. One of the officers fired an 
 automatic pistol at him, so our boy thought that a good chal- 
 lenge and, leaving go of his machine-gun, pulled out his own 
 revolver, and there was the strangest duel between a boy 
 in the air and a man in a car. The aeroplane was fifty 
 feet high then, but dropped to twenty just as the car pulled 
 up outside a house. The young pilot shot past, but turned 
 and saw the body of one officer being dragged indoors. He 
 swooped over the house and fired his machine-gun into it, 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 251 
 
 and then sent a Very-light into the car, hoping to set it on 
 fire. Presently he was attacked by a bombardment from 
 machine-guns, "Archies," and light rockets, so he rose high 
 and took cover in the clouds. But it was not the last epi- 
 sode of his day out. He saw some infantry crossing a 
 wooden bridge and dived at them with rapid bursts of 
 machine-gun fire. They ran like rabbits from a shot-gun, 
 and when he came round again he saw four or five dead 
 lying on the bridge. From the ditches men fired at him 
 with rifles, so he stopped low and strafed them, and then 
 went home quite pleased with himself. 
 
 There were scores of flying men who did these things. 
 The pilots of two units alone flew an aggregate of 396 
 hours 25 minutes, and fired 11,258 rounds of machine-gun 
 bullets at grotmd targets, to say nothing of Very-lights. 
 Those machines were not out in France for exhibition pur- 
 poses, as gentlemen now abed in England are pleased to 
 thinJc. All this sounds romantic, and certainly there is the 
 romance of youthful courage and fearless spirit. But apart 
 from human courage, the ugliness and foulness of war 
 grow greater month by month, and if anybody speaks to me 
 of war's romance I will tell him of things I have seen to-day 
 and yesterday and make his blood run cold. For the sum 
 of human agony is high. 
 
 3 
 
 The Beginning of the Rains 
 
 August i 
 A VIOLENT rain-storm began yesterday afternoon after our 
 advance across the enemy's lines to the Pilkem Ridge and 
 the northern curve of the Ypres salient, and it now veils all 
 the battlefield in a dense mist. It impedes the work of our 
 airmen and makes our artillery co-operation with the in- 
 fantry more difficult, and adds to the inevitable hardships 
 of our men out there in the new lines where the ground has 
 
253 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 been cratered by our shell-fire into one wild quagmire of 
 pits. To the enemy it is not altogether a blessing. His air- 
 men get no observation of our movements, and his gunners 
 do not find their targets, while his poor, wretched infantry, 
 lying out in open ground or in woods where they get no 
 cover from our fire, must be in a frightful condition, unable 
 to get food because of our barrages behind them, and wet 
 to the skin. 
 
 The enemy's command has been unable to organize any 
 effective counter-attacks, and so far has sent forward small 
 bodies of storm troops moving vaguely to uncertain objec- 
 tives and smashed by our fire before they have reached oiir 
 lines. There were many of these attacks yesterday. Agaii.ot 
 the Lancashire regiments of the 15th and the Scots of the 
 55th Division they were repeated all through the day, be- 
 ginning at three o'clock in the afternoon, and coming again 
 at eleven o'clock, 1.45, and 7.15 this morning. 
 
 The Lehr Regiment, whom the Kaiser called his brave 
 Coburgers during the battles of the Somme, were very 
 severely mauled yesterday and suffered heavy losses. Both 
 the 235th Division and the Third Guards Division, engaged 
 by our men on the Steenbeek line, have been shattered. So 
 great has been the alarm of the enemy at the menace to his 
 line that he has been rushing up reserves by omnibuses and 
 light railways to the firing-line over tracks which are shelled 
 by us day and night. The suffering of all the German 
 troops, huddled together in exposed places, must be as hide- 
 ous as anything in the agony of mankind, slashed to bits by 
 storms of shells and urged forward to counter-attacks which 
 they know will be their death. 
 
 I saw this morning large numbers of prisoners taken dur- 
 ing the past twenty-four hours and just brought in. They 
 had the look of men who have been through hell. They were 
 drenched with rain, which poured down their big steel hel- 
 mets. Their top-boots were full of water, which squelched 
 out at every step, and their sunken eyes stared out of ash- 
 grey faces with the look of sick and hunted animals. Many 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 253 
 
 of them had cramp in the stomach through long exposure 
 and hunger before being captured, and they groaned loudly 
 and piteously. Many of them wept while being interro- 
 gated, protesting bitterly that they hated the war and wanted 
 nothing but peace. They have no hope of victory for their 
 country. An advance into Russia fills them with no new il- 
 lusions, but seems to them only a lengthening of the general 
 misery. They do not hide the sufferings of their people at 
 home, and say that in the towns there is bitter want, and only 
 in the rural districts is there enough to eat. In the field they 
 are filled with gloomy forebodings, and live in terror of our 
 tremendous gun-fire. The older men, non-commissioned of- 
 ficers who have come back after wounds, and other soldiers 
 of long training, say that the boys of the yoimg classes 
 who are now filling up the ranks have no staying power 
 under shell-fire and no fighting spirit. Among the prison- 
 ers I saw to-day I think about a quarter of them, or per- 
 haps a little less, were these young boys, anaemic-looking 
 lads, with terror in their eyes. The others were more 
 hardy-looking men, though pale and worn. It is certain 
 that they made no great fight yesterday when our men were 
 near them, except when they still had cover in concrete em- 
 placements. And it is no wonder that all fight has gone 
 out of them. Some even of our own men were startled and 
 stunned by the terrific blast of our gun-fire. Some of these 
 men have told me that when they went forward to get into 
 line before the attack, they had to pass through mile after 
 mile of our batteries, the heavy guns behind, and gradually 
 reaching the lighter batteries forward, until they arrived 
 at the field-guns, so thickly placed that at some points they 
 were actually wheel to wheel. The night was dark, but 
 there was no darkness among these batteries. Their flashes 
 lit up their neighbourhood with lurid torches, Winding the 
 eyes of the troops on the march, and all about the air rocked 
 with the blast of their fire and the noise was so great that 
 men were deafened. As the troops went forward for five 
 or six miles to the assembly-lines flights of shells passed over 
 
254 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 their heads in a great rush through space, and it was terri- 
 fying even to men Hke one of those I met to-day, who has 
 become familiar with the noise of gun-fire since the early 
 days of Ypres and the fury of the Somme. But the worst 
 came when the field-guns began their rapid fire before yes- 
 terday's dawn. It was like the fire of machine-guns in its 
 savage sweep, but instead of machine-gun bullets they were 
 i8-pounder shells, and each report from thousands of guns 
 was a sharp, ear-splitting crack. 
 
 An Irish fellow who described his own adventures to me 
 as he lay wounded and told his tale as vividly as a great 
 orator, because of the perfect truth and simplicity of each 
 phrase, said that he and all his comrades hurried to get away 
 from their own lines when the signal of attack came in order 
 to escape from the awful noise. They preferred the greater 
 quietude of the enemy's positions. They went across blasted 
 ground. It had been harrowed by the sweep of fire. 
 Trenches had disappeared, concrete emplacements had been 
 overturned, breastworks had been flung like straws to the 
 wind. The only men who lived were those who were hud- 
 dled in sections of trench which were between the bar- 
 rage-lines of our fire. Our men had no fear of what the 
 enemy could do to them. They went forward to find crea- 
 tures eager to escape from this blazing hell. It was only 
 in redoubts like the Frezenberg Redoubt which had escaped 
 destruction that the German machine-gunners still fought 
 and gave trouble. Many of the enemy must have been 
 buried alive with machine-guns and trench-mortars and bomb 
 stores. But there were other dead not touched by shell-fire, 
 nor by any bullet. They had been killed by our gas attack 
 which had gone before the battle. Rows of them lay clasp- 
 ing their gas-masks, and had not been quick enough before 
 the vapour of death reached them. But others, with their 
 gas-masks on, were dead. One of our men tells me that 
 he came across the bodies of a group of German officers. 
 They belonged to a brigade staff, and they were all masked, 
 yjith tin beast-like nozzles, and they were all stone dead. It 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 255 
 
 IS the vengeance of the gods for that gas, foul and damnable, 
 which they used against us first in the second battle of 
 Ypres and ever since. It is the worst weapon of modem 
 warfare, and has added the blackest terror to all this slaugh- 
 ter of men. 
 
 Because there was not great fighting with infantry yes- 
 terday, it must not be thought that our men had an easy 
 time. The enemy was quick to put down his barrage, and 
 although it was not anything like our annihilating fire, it 
 was bad enough, as any shell-fire is. I met some young 
 Scots of the Gordons and Camerons to-day, who had been 
 through an episode of a thrilling kind, which was horrible 
 while it lasted. When the signal for attack came yester- 
 day, they were a little mad, like some of their comrades, 
 because they said they saw the Germans running away on the 
 other side of our wall of shells. Without waiting for the 
 barrage to creep forward, these Scots ran forward right 
 among our own shells, and, by some miracle, many of them 
 escaped being hit, and went forward in pursuit. A party 
 of about a hundred went right beyond their goal and found 
 themselves isolated and out of touch with the main body. 
 They were heavily shelled and attacked by bombing parties. 
 They sent runners back asking for reinforcements, but none 
 came because of their far-flung position. They tried to sig- 
 nal for an artillery barrage to protect them, but this call was 
 not seen. They ran out of ammunition, and saw that death 
 was coming close to them. It touched some men with great 
 chunks of hot shell, and they fell dead in their shell-craters. 
 Other men were buried by the bursts of 59' s. These boys 
 of the 8/ioth Gordons were proud. They did not want to 
 retire, though they knew they had gone too far, but at last, 
 when all their officers had been killed but one, the order was 
 given to this little remnant of men to save their lives and 
 get back if they could. They went back through heavy 
 fire, and I talked with two of them this morning, happy 
 to find themselves alive and bright-eyed fellows still. It 
 is extraordinary what escapes many of them have had. A 
 
256 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 group of them in the farthest Hne of advance lay down in 
 craters under a rapid sweep of machine-gun fire from a re- 
 doubt in front of them. They watched over the edge of 
 their craters how two Tanks came up, heaving and lurch- 
 ing over the tossed earth, until they were within gun-range 
 of the redoubt. Then they opened fire. But the enemy's 
 gunners had seen them, and tried to get them with direct 
 hits. Most of the shells fell short all around those English 
 lads hiding in the craters. Some of these were buried and 
 some killed. But the others held on to their ground, which 
 is still in our hands. 
 
 The stretcher-bearers were magnificent, and worked all 
 day and night searching out the wounded and carrying them 
 back under fire. Many of tlie German prisoners gladly lent 
 a hand in this work on their way back. At the dressing- 
 stations to-day I saw them giving pickaback to men — ours — 
 who were wounded about the legs and feet. They prefer 
 this work to fighting. 
 
 ' After yesterday's battle our line includes the whole of 
 the Pilkem Ridge and the ground in the valley beyond to 
 the line of the Steenbeek river, and southwards in a curve 
 that slices off the old Ypres salient. It has been a heavy 
 blow to the enemy. Now it is all rain and mud and blood 
 and beastliness. 
 
 Pill-Boxes and Machine-Guns 
 
 August 3 
 The weather is still frightful. It is difiBcult to believe that 
 we are in August. Rather it is like the foulest weather of 
 a Flemish winter, and all the conditions which we knew 
 through so many dreary months during three winters of 
 war up here in the Ypres sailent are with us again. The 
 fields are quagmires, and in shell-crater land, which is 
 miles deep round Ypres, the pits have filled with water. The 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 257 
 
 woods loom vaguely through a wet mist, and road traffic 
 labours through rivers of slime. It is hard luck for our 
 fighting men. But in spite of repeated efforts the enemy 
 has not succeeded in his counter-attacks, after our line with- 
 drew somewhat at the end of the first day south and south- 
 east of St.-Julien. In my first accounts of the battle I did 
 not give full measure to the hardness of the fighting in 
 which some of our troops were engaged, nor to the stub- 
 bornness of the enemy's resistance. It is now certain that, 
 whereas many of the German infantry, terror-stricken by 
 our bombardment, surrendered easily enough, others made 
 good use of strong defences not annihilated by our fire, and 
 put up a desperate defence. Fresh troops, like the 221st Di- 
 vision, were flung in by the German command in the after- 
 noon of the first day and made repeated attacks, under 
 cover of the mist, against our men, who were tired after 
 twenty-four hours in the zone of fire, who in some sectors 
 had suffered heavily, but who fought still with a courage 
 which defied defeat. A commanding officer of a Lanca- 
 shire battalion went to meet some of his men coming back 
 yesterday. They were wet and caked with mud and un- 
 shaven and dead-beat, and they had lost many comrades, but 
 they had the spirit to pull themselves up and smile with a 
 light in their eyes when the commanding officer said he was 
 proud of them, because they had done all that men could, 
 and one of them called out cheerily, ''When shall we go on 
 again, sir?" An officer who was left last out of his bat- 
 talion to hold out in an advanced position said to the padre, 
 who has just visited him. in hospital, 'T hope the General 
 was not disappointed with us." The General, I am sure, was 
 not disappointed with these men of the 55th Division. 
 No one could think of them without enthusiasm and ten- 
 derness, marvelling at their spirit and at the fight they 
 made in tragic hours. Because it was a tragedy to them 
 that after gaining ground they had been asked to take, and 
 not easily nor without losses, they should have to fall back 
 
258 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 and fight severe rear-guard actions to cover a necessary- 
 withdrawal. 
 
 These Lancashire men, with many men of the Liverpool 
 battalions, had to attack from Wieltje through successive 
 systems of trenches. This ground is just to the right of St- 
 Julien and to the left of Frezenberg, below the Graven- 
 stafel Spur, Zonnebeke, and Langemarck. The way lay 
 past a number of German strong points — Beck House, Plum 
 Farm, Pound Farm, and Square Farm — once small farm- 
 steads, long blown to bits, but fortified by concrete strong- 
 holds with walls of concrete two yards thick. Our gun- 
 fire wrecked all the ground about them and toppled over a 
 few of these places, but left a number untouched, and that 
 was the cause of the trouble. Each one had to be taken by 
 a separate action led by our young platoon commanders, 
 and it was a costly series of small engagements — costly to 
 officers, especially, as always happens at such times. These 
 young subalterns of ours handled their men not only gal- 
 lantly, but skilfully, and the men followed their lead with 
 cunning as well as pluck, and got round the concrete 
 works by rifle-fire and bombing until they could rush them 
 at close quarters. In this way two strongly held farms were 
 taken, while from the right the Lancashire men were swept 
 by enfilade fire from a third farm until its garrison was 
 routed out and i6o of them captured. There was hard 
 fighting farther on for a line of trenches where some of 
 the wire was still uncut, with machine-gun fire rattling from 
 the left flank. 
 
 But the fiercest fighting came after that against another 
 series of those concrete forts, among them the Pommern 
 Redoubt, where separate actions had again to be made by 
 little groups of men under platoon commanders. The 
 enemy's machine-gunners served their weapons to the last. 
 In this ground, too, were five batteries of German field- 
 guns, who fired upon our men until they were within 500 
 yards. The gunners had to be shot down, and our men 
 streamed past the guns in perfect order just as they had 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 259 
 
 rehearsed the attack beforehand, sending back reports, 
 carrying through the whole operation as though on a field- 
 day behind the Hnes. Yet by that time their strength had 
 been ebbing away, and many of them had fallen. They 
 reached the extreme limit of their advance with outposts 
 at two more fortified farms — Wurst and Aviatik Farms — 
 from which two days later a delayed report came back from 
 the last remaining officer of the party that he had reached 
 this high ground in front of Wurst Farm, and that his bat- 
 talion was badly depleted. That was an heroic little mes- 
 sage, but a few hours later that ground was no longer in 
 our hands. The troops of the 39th Division on the left of 
 the Lancashire men had found some trouble with uncut 
 wire, and the enemy developed a strong counter-attack from 
 the north, taking advantage of that exposed flank. They 
 prepared for attack by a heavy artillery barrage, controlled 
 by low-flying aeroplanes and co-operating with the infantry. 
 At the same time another counter-attack came down from 
 the high ground on the right to strike between the Lanca- 
 shire men of the 55th Division and the Scottish troops of 
 the 15th on their right. It was decided to withdraw to a 
 better defensive line, and 160 Lancashire Fusiliers got into 
 Schuler Farm, and held it against heavy odds in order to 
 cover this movement. They stayed there, using machine- 
 guns and rifles until only thirty of them were left stand- 
 ing, and all around them were dead and dying. Their work 
 was done, for they had held out long enough to protect 
 the withdrawing lines, and the thirty survivors decided to 
 fight their way back through an enemy fast closing in upon 
 them. So they left the farm, and of the thirty ten reached 
 the new line. Since then the enemy has made repeated 
 attacks from the high ground on the right, and especially 
 against the Pommern Redoubt, but every time he has been 
 cut up by the fire of our guns and rifles. I hear that this 
 afternoon he is again massing for another attempt, accord- 
 ing to the orders given to the German troops that they must 
 
260 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 get back all the ground they have lost, and at all costs, by- 
 August 3, which is to-day. 
 
 I have already told in a general way in previous dis- 
 patches how the Scots of the 15th Division farther south 
 than the Lancashire men fought their way up to the Frezen- 
 berg Redoubt, coming under a blast of machine-gun fire 
 from a neighbouring farm until they captured its garrison, 
 and then going on to two other enemy redoubts. They 
 had the same trouble as the Lancashire men with these 
 concrete forts, but attacked them with stubborn courage, 
 and put them out of action. One of my good friends was 
 wounded in front of one of these emplacements in com- 
 mand of his battalion of 8/ioth Gordons, and it was by 
 an odd chance that I saw him as he lay wounded in a 
 casualty clearing-station a few hours later. "I hear my 
 men have done well," he said. They did as well as they 
 have always done in many great battles, and not only well, 
 but wonderfully, and they went as far as they were allowed 
 to go, and held on in their old grim way when things were 
 at their worst. The whole line of the Scottish troops below 
 the Langemarck-Zonnebeke road was attacked at two in 
 the afternoon, or thereabouts, and their advanced line grad- 
 ually withdrew under a fierce fire. At six o'clock the enemy 
 slightly penetrated the advance line, driving the Gordons 
 back a hundred yards, but the Camerons drove them out 
 and away. This was on a front to the east of St.-Julien 
 and south of Zonnebeke. 
 
 The general position remains the same. The weather re- 
 mains the same, and the mud and the discomfort of men 
 living under incessant rain and abominable shell-fire do 
 not decrease; nevertheless, they have smashed up attack 
 after attack, and their spirit is unbreakable. The enemy is 
 suffering from the same evil conditions, and his only advan- 
 tage is that perhaps he has better cover in which to assemble 
 his men, and that, owing to his defeat, he is nearer to his 
 base, so that they have not so far to tramp through the 
 swamps in order to get up supplies of food for guns and 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 261 
 
 men. As usual, we have behind us a wide stretch of shell- 
 broken ground, which, in foul weather like this, becomes a 
 slough. 
 
 August 5 
 For the first time for four days and nights the rain has 
 stopped, and there is even a pale gleam of sunshine, though 
 the sky is still heavy with rain-clouds. Oh, foul weather! 
 What a curse it has been to our men! But the guns have 
 never ceased their fire because of the rain and the mist, and 
 all last night again and to-day there has been tremendous 
 gunning. 
 
 Our gunners have been working at high tension for sev- 
 eral weeks, and the admiration of the infantry goes out 
 to these men who, though they do not go over the top, are 
 under heavy fire from German counter-battery work and. 
 bombed by German aeroplanes and strained by the enor- 
 mous responsibility of protecting the infantry and keeping 
 up barrage-fire without rest. In this battle the gunners 
 have done marvellously, to the very limit of human endur- 
 ance. As for the infantry, words are not good enough 
 to describe the grit of them all. Apart from all the in- 
 evitable beastliness of battle, they have had to fight in this 
 filthy weather, and it has made it a thousand times worse. 
 In August men don't expect to get drowned in shell-holes, 
 nor to get stuck to the armpits in mud before they reach 
 the first German line. It was not as bad as that everywhere, 
 but exactly that in parts of the line even before the heavy 
 rains came on. The men of the 8th and 30th Divisions who 
 attacked over ground like this east of Zillebeke went 
 through abominable adventures. It was almost pitch-dark 
 when they went forward, and the first thing that happened 
 was that battalions became hopelessly mixed because of the 
 darkness and the nature of the ground ; and the second thing 
 that the barrage went ahead of them so that they had to 
 struggle behind in the morass unsupported by its fire, and 
 shot at by Germans on their flanks. 
 
FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Two lines of trenches known to our men as Jackdaw 
 Support and Jackdaw Reserve were captured without much 
 difficulty as far as the enemy was concerned, about eighty 
 prisoners being taken in them, but with enormous difficulty 
 on account of the boggy ground. Imagine these men, 
 loaded up with packs and rifles and sand-bags and shovels, 
 slipping and falling among the shell-pits, which were full 
 of mud, water, and wire. Fellows stopped to pull out 
 their comrades and were dragged in after them. It took 
 them three-quarters of an hour to get over two lines of 
 undefended trenches, whole platoons getting bogged in them 
 and slipping back when they tried to climb out. It was a 
 trying time for the officers who saw the barrage of our 
 guns getting away ahead. Beyond them was high ground, 
 from which German machine-gun and rifle fire swept them, 
 and not far away German snipers potted our men, and espe- 
 cially our officers, as they climbed in and out of shell- 
 craters. Two officers of the Manchesters had been killed 
 by one of these fellows when a private crept out alone on 
 his flank, stole round him very quietly, pounced and killed 
 him. It took two and a half hours to get to Jackdaw Re- 
 serve Trench in Sanctuary Wood, and the enemy's riflemen 
 who had been firing at close range then ran back, or as 
 our men say, "hopped it." The Menin road from Ypres 
 runs through the high ground just here, and it was about 
 here that the hardest time came for the 30th Division, be- 
 cause of the fierce machine-gun fire. It was here, also, that 
 many gallant deeds were done by men who had lost their 
 officers, and by the officers who had lost their men but col- 
 lected stragglers and groups from mixed units to get on 
 with the attack. A young private soldier of a machine- 
 gun company advanced with his Lewis gun and by rapid 
 fire put a German machine-gun out of action, so that a 
 bombing party could get on. A lance-corporal of the Man- 
 chesters rallied up stragglers, organized groups, and rushed 
 some of the German strong points. A captain behaved 
 throughout the battle with the most fearless gallantry, and 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 9>6S 
 
 when his men wavered and fell back before the blast of 
 machine-gun bullets that drove across the Menin road, ral- 
 lied them and gathered up lads from other units, and cap- 
 tured two strong points with these storming parties. He 
 was wounded in this action, but paid no heed to that, and 
 continued to lead his men. It was here that the great tun- 
 nel ran across the Menin road, from which forty-one Ger- 
 mans were taken. To the right of the road this side of 
 Inverness Copse and the Dumbarton Lakes stood Stirling 
 Castle on the high ground of a semi-circular ridge sur- 
 rounded by deep shell-pits. The "castle" itself was just 
 a heap of broken bricks on this commanding ground, and 
 behind those bricks were German machine-gunners, who 
 served their weapons until our men were close to them. 
 Then they ''hopped it" again, but stayed on the other side 
 of the ridge, firing at any men who showed themselves over 
 the crest. Our men fought round the castle for hours, 
 heavily shelled as soon as the enemy's gunners knew it was 
 in our hands, and meeting counter-attacks which developed 
 later. 
 
 A thousand and more acts of courage were done in those 
 hours by men who knew that their comrades' lives and 
 their own depended upon "getting on with the job,'' as they 
 call it. It was necessary to get reports back to brigade 
 headquarters at all costs, so that supplies and supports 
 might be sent up, and to get into touch with battalion and 
 company commanders from the advanced line. It was not 
 easy either to write or to send down these messages. Wires 
 were cut and runners killed. But it had to be done. A 
 company sergeant-major, though lightly wounded first and 
 then badly wounded after leading his men up under a sweep 
 of machine-gun bullets, sat down in the mud and scribbled 
 out his report. There was a young Irish private in these 
 Manchesters who did wonderful work as a runner with 
 these messages. He volunteered whenever there was a 
 dangerous bit of work to do, exposing himself over and 
 over again, and gathering up stragglers to fill up gaps in 
 
264i FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the line of defence. A sergeant acted as runner when two 
 of his own had been killed, and got through under intense 
 fire. And one of these runners had a great adventure all 
 to himself on his journey under fire. This young private 
 was going up with a message when he saw something move 
 outside a dug-out. He went forward cautiously, and saw 
 a German soldier disappear into the dark entry. The Man- 
 chester lad was all alone, but he followed the German into 
 the hole, down a flight of mud stairs and into an under- 
 ground cave. He stood face to face with eighteen men. 
 One of them was a non-commissioned officer. They stared 
 back at him with brooding eyes, as though wondering 
 whether they should kill him. He shouted at them, "Now, 
 then, come out, and look sharp about it," and made a sign 
 to the door. They put their hands up and said, "Kam- 
 erad." "Well, then, get out," said the boy. They filed 
 out past him, and he waited till the last had gone. Then 
 he went up the mud stairs to open ground again, and saw 
 that the eighteen men had scattered, finding that he was all 
 alone. He shouted to them and fired his rifle over their 
 heads, so that they thought twice of escape, and then came 
 back to him meekly. So he formed them up, and marched 
 behind them down to the prisoners' cage, where he took 
 his recipt for eighteen prisoners. 
 
 There was now great shelling, and the enemy was mass- 
 ing for a counter-attack. Through this fire a young Irish 
 officer in the machine-gun section brought up nine out of 
 his twelve guns in order to meet the attack, and without 
 that great courage of his the position would have been very- 
 bad. A sergeant of machine-gunners stood in a bit of a 
 trench with his team when a shell burst, killing two men 
 and wounding others. He stood there, splashed with blood 
 and in great danger of death, without losing his nerve or 
 his spirit, and after helping the wounded he "carried on" 
 and kept his guns in action. 
 
 Meanwhile, down at brigade headquarters the situation 
 was very obscure; so obscure that the brigadier sent up a 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 265 
 
 young captain, his brigade major, to find out the situation 
 and report on it. Not a safe and easy job to do at such 
 a time; but this officer, whom I met to-day, went up to 
 StirHng Castle, where he found mixed units still under 
 heavy machine-gun fire, and only one or two officers, with- 
 out knowledge of the general situation owing to- the diffi- 
 culty of getting communications. The brigade major reor- 
 ganized the situation with a cool head and a fine courage, 
 collected parties of mixed riflemen, and took them to the 
 high ground, where there was a good field of fire, and then, 
 with his orderly, moved across the Menin road, which was 
 at that time unprotected. He organized the support of 
 this, and on the way came across the entrance to the tunnel 
 under the road. He stopped and listened. It seemed to 
 him that he could hear movements and voices. He went 
 into the tunnel, and heard and saw a German there. He 
 covered him with a revolver, and the man put his hands 
 up. But the German was not alone. There was a shuffling 
 of feet farther down, and the German said, "There are 
 four of us farther in the tunnel." The brigade major went 
 farther down^ with his revolver ready, and met the four 
 men and told them in French and English that he would 
 kill them if they moved a step. They surrendered, two of 
 them speaking good English, and the brigade major's or- 
 derly took one of their rifles, not being armed himself, 
 and with that weapon escorted them back. They were 
 men of the 238th Regiment, and had only been in that line 
 twenty-four hours. It was the brigade major's report that 
 cleared up the situation from his headquarters and made it 
 more easy of control. 
 
 Some Scottish troops who fought alongside the Man- 
 chesters at Stirling Castle behaved with equal valour. They 
 endured long and intense shelling, while through the murk 
 and smoke enemy aeroplanes flew very low, firing their 
 machine-guns at the troops, batteries, and mule convoys, 
 w^ith a good imitation of our own air pilots. What I have 
 told so far covers only a small section of the Front, but 
 
^66 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 I have now given a broad picture of all the length of bat- 
 tle, and these episodes I have just described v^ill give a 
 closer idea of the way in which all our soldiers have been 
 fighting in this country around Ypres, and of all they have 
 suffered in the foulest weather I have ever seen in summer. 
 
 August 4 
 The Tanks have justified themselves again, and won their 
 spurs — spurs as big as gridirons — in the battle of Flanders. 
 They had plenty of chance to show what they could do. 
 
 As I described yesterday, the way of our advance was 
 hindered by a number of little concrete forts built in the 
 ruin of farmsteads which had withstood our gun-fire. At 
 Plum Farm and Apple Villa, and in stronger, more elabo- 
 rate, fortified points, like the Frezenberg and Pommern 
 Castle and Pommern Redoubt, the enemy's machine-gun- 
 ners held out when everything about them was chaos and 
 death, and played a barrage of bullets on our advancing 
 men. Platoons and half -platoons attacked them in detail 
 at a great cost of life, and it was in such places that the 
 Tanks were of most advantage. It was at Pommern Castle, 
 east of St.-Julien, that one of the Tanks did best. Don't 
 imagine the castle as a kind of Windsor, with big walls 
 and portcullis and high turrets, but as slabs of concrete in 
 a huddle of sand-bags above a nest of deep dug-outs. On 
 the other side of it was Pommern Redoubt, the same in 
 style of defence. Our men were fighting hard for the 
 castle, and having a bad time under its fire. The Tank 
 came to help them, and advanced under a swish of bullets 
 to the German emplacement, lurching up the piled bags over 
 the heaped-up earth, and squatting on top like a grotesque 
 creature playing the old game of 'Tm the King of the 
 Castle; get down, you dirty rascals." The dirty rascals, 
 who were German soldiers, unshaven and covered in wet 
 mud, did not like the look of their visitor, which was firing 
 with great ferocity. They fled to the cover of Pommern 
 Redoubt beyond. Then the Tank moved back to let the 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 267 
 
 infantry get on, but as soon as it had turned its back the 
 Germans, with renewed pluck, took possession of the castle 
 again. The men who were fighting round about again gave 
 a signal to the Tank to get busy. So it came back, and 
 with the infantry on its flanks made another assault, so 
 that the enemy fled again. Pommem Redoubt was attacked 
 in the same way with good help from the Tank. 
 
 The Frezenberg Redoubt was another place where the 
 Tanks were helpful, and they did good work at Westhoek, 
 the remnant of a village to the right of that. One of them 
 attacked and helped to capture a strong point west of St.- 
 Julien, from which a good many Germans came out to sur- 
 render, and afterwards some Tanks went through the vil- 
 lage, but had to get out again in a hurry to escape capture 
 in the German counter-attacks. It was not easy to get 
 back in a hurry, as by that hour in the afternoon the rain 
 had turned the ground to swamp, and the Tanks sank deep 
 in it, with wet mud half-way up their flanks, and slipped 
 and slithered back when they tried to struggle out. Many 
 of the officers and crews had to get out of their steel forts, 
 risking heavy shelling and machine-gun fire to dig out their 
 way, and in the neighbourhood of St.-Julien they worked 
 for two hours in the open to de-bog their Tank while Ger- 
 man gunners tried to destroy them by direct hits. In a 
 farm somewhere in this neighbourhood no fewer than sixty 
 Germans came out with their hands up in surrender as 
 soon as the Tank was at close quarters, and a story is told, 
 though I haven't the exact details, that in another place 
 the m.ere threat of a Tank's approach was enough to decide 
 a party of eight to give in. It is certain beyond all doubt 
 that the enemy's infantry has a great fear of these ma- 
 chines, and does not see any kind of humour in them. In 
 this battle there is not a single case of an attack upon a 
 Tank by infantry, though we know that they have been 
 given special training behind their lines with dummy Tanks 
 according to definite rules laid down by the German Com- 
 mand. 
 
268 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 One fight did take place with a Tank, and it is surely the 
 most fantastic duel that has ever happened in war. It was 
 queer enough, as I described a day or two ago, when one 
 of our airmen flew over a motor-car, and engaged in a 
 revolver duel with a German officer, but even that strange 
 picture is less weird than when a German aeroplane flew 
 low over a Tank, and tried to put out its eyes by bursts 
 of machine-gun bullets. Imagine the scene — that muddy 
 monster crawling through the slime, with sharp stabs of 
 fire coming from its flanks, and above an engine, with 
 wings, swooping round and about it like an angry albatross, 
 and spattering its armour with bullets. It was an unequal 
 fight, for the Tank just ignored that waspish machine-gun 
 fire, and went on its way with only a scratch or two. The 
 Tanks were in action around the marshes and woodlands 
 by Shrewsbury Forest. Here, as I have already said, there 
 was very severe infantry fighting, in which the Leicesters, 
 Northamptons, and above all the Middlesex Regiment had 
 desperate engagements, and the enemy made many counter- 
 attacks, so that the progress of our men was slow and' 
 difficult. The Tanks helped them as best they could. 
 
 So goes the tale of the Tanks on the first day of the 
 battle of Flanders. It will be seen from what I have writ- 
 ten that they gave good help to the troops. The pilots and 
 crews behaved with splendid gallantry, and not only took 
 great risks, but endured to the last extremity of fatigue 
 in that narrow, hot space where they work their engines 
 and their guns. 
 
 The Song of the Cockchafers 
 
 August 8 
 One of the most bitter blows to Germany, if she has heard 
 the news, must be the destruction of the famous regiment 
 of ''Maikaefer," or Cockchafers, by our Welsh troops. The 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 269 
 
 Kaiser called them his brave Coburgers. In Germany the 
 very children sang in the streets about them. And proud 
 of their own exploits, they had their own soldier poets 
 who wrote songs about the regiment, to which they marched 
 through Belgium and France and Galicia. I saw one of 
 these songs yesterday, picked up on the battlefield near 
 Pilkem. It was written by one Paul Zimmermann of theirs, 
 and was printed in a leaflet sold at ten pfennigs (a penny). 
 It tells how the Cockchafers come out in the spring and 
 how the children sing when they come. They are ready 
 for battle then, wherever it may be. The call comes for 
 them wherever there is the hardest fighting, sO' the Cock- 
 chafers swarmed through Belgium, and taught the French 
 a lesson, and pressed after the wicked English, who — so 
 the lying legend goes — used dumdum bullets, and swept 
 back the Russians through Galicia. Old Hindenburg calls 
 for them every time when there are brave deeds to be done. 
 I have copied out two verses for those who read German : 
 
 Der Mai der hringt uns Sonnenschein, 
 
 Er hringt uns Bluhtenpracht; 
 Der Mai der hringt uns Kaeferlein 
 
 Viel tausend hii.er Nacht; 
 Und von der Kinderlippen klingts : 
 
 'Maikaefer, fliege, Meg/^ 
 Und durich den FrUhlinges juhel dringts: 
 
 "Dein Vater ist im Krieg." 
 
 Uns Garde Fusiliere nennt 
 
 Maikaefer jeder Mund, 
 Weil unser stolzes Regiment 
 
 Im Mai stets fertig stand. 
 
 Well, old Hindenburg will call in vain now for his Cock- 
 chafers, the Guard Fusilier Regiment of the 3rd Guards 
 Division, for nearly six hundred of them are in our hands 
 and others lie dead upon the ground near Pilkem. They 
 had relieved the looth Infantry Reserve Regiment on the 
 
270 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 night of July 29, and lay three battalions deep in their 
 trench systems across the Yser Canal north-east of Boe- 
 singhe, scattered thinly in the shell-craters which were all 
 that was left of the trenches in the front lines, more densely 
 massed in the support lines, and defending a number of 
 concrete emplacements and dug-outs behind. The 9th 
 Grenadier Regiment and a battalion of the Lehr Regiment 
 reinforced the Cockchafers and lay out in the open be- 
 hind the Langemarck — Gheluvelt line, and in the support 
 lines a battalion of the Lehr of the 3rd Guards Division 
 had already relieved a regiment of the 392nd Infantry Re- 
 serve Regiment. Some sections of the 3rd Battalion of the 
 9th Grenadier Regiment had been sent forward from 
 Langemarck to act as sniping posts, and two special ma- 
 chine-gun detachments were also pushed up to check our 
 assault. They were enough to defend this part of the Pil- 
 kem Ridge, and the ground itself was in their favour as 
 our men lay in the hollow with their backs to the Yser 
 Canal, across which all their supports and supplies had to 
 pass. 
 
 What was in the favour of the Welsh was that they knew 
 the ground in front of them in every detail from air photo- 
 graphs and from night and day raids, having lived in front 
 of it for several months, digging and tunnelling so as to 
 get cover from ceaseless fire, and storing up a great desire 
 to get even with the enemy for all they had suffered. They 
 had suffered great hardships and great perils, intensified 
 before the battle because of violent shelling by high explo- 
 sives and gas-shells, so that when the hour for attack came 
 they had been hard tried already. It made no difference 
 to the pace and order of their assault. Our bombardment 
 had been overwhelming, and the heavy barrage which sig- 
 nalled the assault was, according to all these Welshmen, 
 perfect. They followed it very closely, so closely that 
 they were on and over the Cockchafers before they could 
 organize any kind of defence. Many of the enemy's ma- 
 chine-guns had been smashed and buried. Those still in- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 271 
 
 tact were never brought into action, as their gunners had 
 no time to get out of the concrete shehers in which they 
 were huddled to escape from the annihilating fire. 
 
 It was in these places that most of the prisoners were 
 taken — there and in a big trench, ten feet wide and twelve 
 deep, on the outskirts of Pilkem village, where there is no 
 village at all. The Cockchafers came out dazed, and gave 
 themselves up mostly without a show of fighting. In some 
 of their concrete shelters, like those at Mackensen Farm — 
 don't imagine any buildings there — and Gallwitz Farm 
 and Boche House and Zouave House, there were stores of 
 ammunition, with many shells and trench-mortars. 
 
 So the Welsh went on in waves, sending back the pris- 
 oners on their way, through Pilkem to the high ground by 
 the iron cross beyond, and then down the slopes to the 
 Steenbeek stream. On the left were the Royal Welsh Fusi- 
 liers, who took the ground of Pilkem itself. On the right 
 were men of the Welsh Regiment. In the ground beyond 
 Pilkem they found the regimental headquarters in finely 
 built dug-outs, but the staff had fled to save their skins. 
 There was another big dug-out near by used by the enemy 
 as a dressing-station. It had room enough for a hundred 
 men. There were fifty men. The Welsh swarmed round 
 it — ^thirty wounded and twenty unwounded Germans. The 
 doctor in charge was a good fellow, and, after surrender- 
 ing his own men, attended to some of the wounded Welsh. 
 Two machine-guns and sixteen prisoners were taken out 
 of a place called Jolie Farm, and thirty prisoners out of 
 Rudolf Farm — concrete kennels in a chaos of craters — 
 and three officers and forty-seven men came out of the 
 ruins of a house somewhere near the Iron Cross. All the 
 Welsh troops behaved with great courage, and a special 
 word is due to the runners, who carried messages back 
 under fire, and to the stretcher-bearers, who rescued the 
 wounded utterly regardless of their own risks. After- 
 wards the mule drivers and leaders were splendid, bringing 
 up supplies under heavy barrage fire. Wales did well that 
 
272 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 day, and the Welsh miners, who had already proved them- 
 selves as great diggers and great tunnellers and very brave 
 men, showed themselves cool and fearless in the assault. 
 
 August 6 
 
 I am now able to mention more of the troops whose ad- 
 ventures I have described in previous dispatches, in addition 
 to the Guards and the Welsh, who in a great assault, hardly 
 checked by the enemy, captured the heights of Pilkem 
 and went down the slopes beyond to the Steenbeek stream. 
 
 The Manchesters, with Royal Scots, Royal Irish Rifles, 
 and Durham Light Infantry of the 8th Division, were 
 amongst those who attacked Stirling Castle below Inverness 
 Copse, as I narrate4 in full detail yesterday, with the in- 
 cident of the runner who captured eighteen prisoners in a 
 dug-out and of the young brigade major who reorganized 
 the position and found five Germans in the great tunnel 
 under the Menin road. 
 
 As I have already said, it was the men of Lancashire with 
 battalions of the Liverpool Regiment of the 55th Division 
 who went up from Wieltje against the concrete forts, where 
 they fought in many independent little actions under platoon 
 commanders, who shot down the gunners of five German 
 batteries, and went forward as though on the drill-ground, 
 in spite of heavy losses and great fire, to Wurst Farm and 
 the high ground below the Gravenstafel, until they were 
 forced to fall back somewhat under a heavy German coun- 
 ter-attack, when 160 men covered the withdrawal, and ten 
 alone got back. 
 
 Farther south, they were Scots of the 15th Division who 
 attacked the Frezenberg — Gordons and Camerons among 
 them — and farther south still on their right were Sher- 
 wood Foresters and others of the 39th Division, who had 
 some of the hardest fighting of the day, up through Hooge, 
 that place of old ill-fame, round Belle waerde Lake and 
 across the Menin road to the Westhoek Ridge. 
 
 It was these Scots and these English who bore the brunt 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 273 
 
 of the great German counter-attack on the afternoon of 
 August I. After fighting their way forward past the pill- 
 box emplacements or concrete redoubts with a stiff and 
 separate fight at the ruin of an estaminet on the cross-roads 
 at Westhoek, where a sergeant and ten or twelve men cap- 
 tured forty of the enefny, the Sherwood Foresters and 
 their comrades took "cover" during the night, exposed to 
 fierce shell-fire and drenched in the rain, now falling 
 steadily, and filling the shell-craters with mud and water, 
 so that men were up to their waist in them. It was at about 
 2.30 on the following afternoon that the enemy developed! 
 his counter-attack from the direction of Bremen Redoubt 
 and the high ground beyond our line, taking advantage of 
 the mist to assemble and get forward. It was the critical 
 hour of the battle. 
 
 The enemy's attack was preceded by a heavy artillery 
 barrage, and by an incessant and wide-stretching blast of 
 machine-gun fire. His assaulting troops drove first at the 
 Midland men south of the Roulers railway, and the Sher- 
 woods and Northamptons tried to hold their line by rifle- 
 fire, Lewis-gun fire, and bombs. When officers fell wounded 
 the non-commissioned officers and men carried on and 
 fought a soldiers' battle. One Lewis-gunner drove the 
 enemy back from a gap in the lines and others held back 
 the enemy's storm troops long enough to give their com- 
 rades time to get into good order as far as was possible in 
 a fight of this kind. The Germans forced their way for- 
 ward among the shell-craters and ruins hoping to surround 
 the Sherwoods and the men of Nottingham and Derby, who 
 were steadily firing and fighting, so that the enemy's losses 
 were not light. Meanwhile the Scots of the 15th Division 
 on the left were meeting the attack and found their flank 
 exposed owing to these happenings on their right. It be- 
 came more and more exposed as the attack proceeded, and 
 just before three o'clock the Gordons, who were in this 
 perilous position, had to swing back. This movement un- 
 covered the battalion headquarters, where one of the of- 
 
274 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 ficers, acting as adjutant, had turned out his staff, which 
 fought to defend the position. He then gathered all the 
 Gordons in his neighbourhood and held on to the station 
 buildings. Meantime the left of the Gordons had been 
 swung back to form a defensive flank, and with two Vick- 
 ers guns they swept the rear lines of the storm troops with 
 deadly fire. The enemy fell in great numbers, but other 
 waves came on and nearly reached the top of the crest upon 
 which our men had formed their line. There a young of- 
 ficer of the Gordons seized the critical moment of the bat- 
 tle and by his rapid action proved himself a great soldier. 
 With some of the Camerons he led his men forward down 
 the slopes towards the advancing enemy, each man firing 
 with his rifle as he advanced, making gaps in the German 
 wave. The enemy stood up to this for a minute or two, but 
 when the Highlanders were within fifty yards of them they 
 broke and ran. As they fled our gunners, who had not seen 
 the first SOS signals owing to the mist, came into action 
 and inflicted great losses up on the retreating men. But the 
 day was saved by the action of the Scottish infantry, who 
 had learned the use of the rifle in open warfare, and who 
 had been trained for this kind of action in small groups, 
 acting largely on individual initiative. Many of the enemy 
 were surrounded by fire, and one officer and seven men 
 gained our line in safety, while the others were caught in a 
 death-trap. There were moments when, but for the cour- 
 age and discipline of our troops, the enemy's counter-at- 
 tack had a great chance of success, and the history of this 
 battle might have been less victorious for us. 
 
 6 
 
 Woods of Ill-Fame 
 
 August 12 
 There was violent fighting yesterday. After our success- 
 ful advance at dawn across the Westhoek Ridge, when 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 275 
 
 more than 200 prisoners were taken, the right of our attack 
 in Glencorse Wood, or Schloss Park as the Germans call 
 it, and among the tree-stumps which were once woods south 
 of that, was heavily engaged with an enemy concealed in 
 the usual concrete emplacements, and defending himself 
 with well-placed machine-guns. 
 
 Among our troops who had the hardest struggle were 
 the Irish Rifles, Cheshires, Lancashire Fusiliers, North 
 Lancashires, and Worcestershires of the 25th Division 
 against Glencorse Wood, and the Bed fords and Queen's of 
 the 1 8th Division against Inverness Copse. 
 
 As on the ridge, the infantry came to close quarters and 
 fought with bombs and rifles and bayonets, but it was 
 mainly gun-fire again which decided the issues of the day 
 and caused most losses on both sides. As I have said many 
 times, since the battle of July 31 the enemy has massed a 
 great power of artillery against us, and has apparently no 
 immediate lack of ammunition. For miles the horizon was 
 seething with the smoke of heavy shells. The enemy's 
 barrage-fire was great Ours was greater. Between Glen- 
 corse Wood and Inverness Copse, and all about Stirling 
 Castle and the Frezenberg, he made a hell of fire, and 
 many of our men had to pass through its fury, and not all 
 passed or came back again. But afterwards the enemy's 
 turn came, and masses of his men, thick waves of them, 
 sent forward with orders to counter-attack, were caught 
 under the fire of our guns and smashed to pieces. 
 
 The enemy attempted five separate counter-attacks yester- 
 day, and in spite of all his losses renewed his efforts this 
 morning with great determination, so that, after the ex- 
 haustion and ordeal of the night under continual fire, our 
 men were compelled to give way in Glencorse Wood. That 
 was necessary, because farther south the enemy had held 
 their ground, and the copse was a salient exposed to haras- 
 sing fire from large numbers of guns in the neighbourhood 
 of Polygon Wood and the country east. It is a favourite 
 device of the enemy to withdraw his guns on to the flanks 
 
276 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 of our advance, as soon as we have penetrated his lines, 
 in order to check further progress, and he did this as soon 
 as the battle of July 31 was fought, though he had to leave 
 many of his field-guns in the mud of No Man's Land, where 
 they still lie. 
 
 This method of defence did not ensure the success of his 
 counter-attacks, though it had made the progress of our 
 men hard south of Glencorse Wood. It was at about mid- 
 day yesterday that our troops, who had made good their 
 ground along Westhoek Ridge, had to call for further help 
 from the guns. At the same time aeroplanes, taking ad- 
 vantage of wonderful visibility after the rains, were above 
 the German lines, and saw a great gathering of German 
 troops in Nuns' Wood and Polygon Wood. The calls were 
 answered by large groups of batteries over a stretch of 
 country miles deep. The heavies, far behind the lines, an- 
 swered with 15-inch and 12-inch shells. The 92' s heard 
 the call in the quiet fields, where wild flowers grow over 
 old shell-holes. Their 8-inch brothers heard the call and 
 came quick into action. Six-inch and 4-2's made reply, and 
 from them broke out one great salvo, followed by long rolls 
 of drum-fire. Among the shell-craters of Nuns' Wood 
 there were hundreds of men lined up for attack. They had 
 their rifles at the slope, and they were hung round with 
 bombs and trench-spades and cloth bags with iron rations, 
 and they began to move forward just as that bombardment 
 opened upon them. All the shell-fire burst over them and 
 into them. They were swept by it. They were killed in 
 heaps. Afterwards one of our airmen flew low over that 
 stricken wood where they had been, and he came back with 
 his report. Never before, he said, had he seen so many dead 
 men. The German soldiers were lying there in great num- 
 bers. Other attempts were made to get forward, but it was 
 only on the right, where there was close fighting, that the 
 enemy made any progress. 
 
 At about six in the evening there was another call on 
 our gunners, and this time the report came that the enemy 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 277 
 
 was assembling in the valley of the Hanebeek. Two bat- 
 talions of them were able to advance into the open towards 
 our lines before our guns found their target. Then they 
 flung themselves down under this new storm of fire or tried 
 to escape from it by running or plunging into shell-craters. 
 There were not many who escaped. 
 
 One of them who became a prisoner in our hands said that 
 two battalions were annihilated — he used the phrase 
 *Viped out." Perhaps that was an exaggeration. There 
 are always some men who slip through, but in this case 
 whole ranks of men were blown to bits. 
 
 I talked to-day with some of our own wounded who came 
 limping through the casualty clearing-stations. They were 
 men of the Worcesters and Bedfords and Queen's, whose 
 battalions I have met before after battles. One of them 
 told me how he lay out all night waiting for the attack in 
 the dawn on Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse. There 
 are only tree-stumps there in the great white stretch of shell- 
 craters, and the enemy was holding the place lightly with 
 machine-guns in those pits that had been made by our 
 fire. Our men were upon them quick after the barrage, and 
 they were routed out of their holes before they had time 
 to put up a strong defence. By bad luck, as sometimes hap- 
 pens, owing to the eagerness of our men to cover as much 
 ground as possible, the Irish Rifles and the North Lan- 
 cashires of the 25th Division went at least 200 yards be- 
 yond their goal, and were caught in our barrage, which was 
 preventing supports coming up to the enemy. As soon as 
 they realized their deadly error they fell back again, carrying 
 their wounded. 
 
 Later 
 
 There was sharp hand-to-hand fighting on the Westhoek 
 Ridge by the Lancashire Fusiliers, North Lancashires, and 
 Cheshires. Both sides at last came into the open, the enemy 
 standing about his concrete houses as our men advanced 
 upon them, and using machine-guns and rifles. Most of 
 these Germans were men of the 54th Reserve Division, and 
 
278 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 bold fellows who did not surrender so easily as I first im- 
 agined, in spite of the intense and prolonged barrage that 
 had swept over them and wrecked their ground. In a 
 strong point at the south end of the ridge, one of those 
 concrete blockhouses which shelter machine-guns, they held 
 out for three hours, and it was only taken when it had 
 been battered by trench-mortars brought up into action at 
 close range by some gallant men of ours, and when it was 
 rushed from the flanks while the ground was still being 
 swept by bullets. After that the ridge was ours on its for- 
 ward slopes, at the northern end dropping below the 
 western slopes southwards. 
 
 In Glencorse Wood the Lancashire men were enfiladed 
 by machine-guns when a large part of the wood was no 
 longer in our hands. It is on high ground, and with other 
 slopes beyond, like those of Nuns' Wood and Polygon 
 Wood, forms the barrier guarding the vital centres of the 
 German position in the north, so that he fights to hold it 
 with the full weight of his power in men and guns. Both 
 are powerful, and his fire on Friday and Saturday was the 
 fiercest ever faced by men who have fought through the 
 Somme and later battles. 
 
 But his counter-attacks have failed against our West- 
 hoek positions, and everything I have heard shows that his 
 battalions, above all the 27th Regiment, were massacred 
 by our artillery. Those Germans did not all die by shell- 
 fire. The Lancashire Fusiliers and the North Lancashires 
 fired their rifles all through Friday and Saturday at human 
 targets they could not fail to hit. German reserves hur- 
 ried up to relieve the shattered battalions and flung straight 
 into the counter-attacks, wandered about in the open, igno- 
 rant of our- men's whereabouts, like lost sheep. They were 
 in full field kit, and as they came into the open our men 
 shot at them with deadly effect. The first sign of the first* 
 great counter-attack on Friday was when seventy men or so 
 came forward on the left and tried to rush an old German 
 gun-emplacement. They were seen by the Lancashire 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 279 
 
 Fusiliers, and the commanding officer, believing that an at- 
 tack was imminent, sent through the call for the guns 
 which led to the bombardment I have described in my earlier 
 message. 
 
 We also opened a widespread barrage of machine-gun 
 fire, and this caused heavy slaughter. All the country was 
 aflame throughout the afternoon of Friday, and it was be- 
 {-jTQ the attack, at 6.40 in the evening, that the enemy's ar- 
 tillery concentrated in full and frightful fury. This ar- 
 tillery-fire has never ceased since then, though slackening 
 down a little from time to time, and to-day it was in full 
 blast again. It is a day of wonderful light, so that every 
 tree and house and field of standing corn is seen for miles 
 from any height in a stereoscopic panorama below a fleecy 
 sky with long blue reaches between the cloud mountains. 
 There was a lot of air fighting this morning because of this 
 light across the landscape, and wherever I motored to-day 
 there was the loud drone of the flying engines, and little 
 fat bursts of shrapnel trying to catch German planes who 
 came over on bombing adventures above our camps and 
 villages. The enemy is all out, and it seems to me likely that 
 he wishes to make this battle a decisive one of the war. I 
 do not see how he can hope to decide it in his own favour 
 after the loss of the Pilkem and Westhoek Ridges, but he 
 is out to kill regardless of his own losses. 
 
 7 
 The Battle of Langemarck 
 
 August 16 
 This morning our troops made a general advance beyond 
 the line of our recent attacks and gained about 1500 yards 
 of ground on a wide front, which includes the village of 
 Langemarck, and goes southward in the region of Glen- 
 corse Copse and Polygon Wood. From north to south the 
 
280 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 divisions engaged were the 29th, 20th, nth, 48th, 36th 
 (Ulster), i6th (Irish), 8th, and 56th. 
 
 On the left of our troops the French went forward also, 
 and struck out into the swampy neck of ground which 
 they call the Peninsula or Presqu'ile, surrounded on three 
 sides by deep floods. On the right of our attack the fight- 
 ing has been most violent, and the enemy has made strong 
 and repeated counter-attacks over all the high ground which 
 drops down to Glencorse Wood from the Nuns' Wood to 
 the Hanebeek. His losses have been high, for although the 
 weather is still stormy, making the ground bad for our men, 
 there is light for our flying men and artillery observers, and 
 at various parts of the Front his assembly of troops has 
 been signalled quickly, so that our guns have smashed up 
 his formations and caused great slaughter. 
 
 The Germans used to call the battles of the Somme the 
 "blood-bath." Their diaries and their letters revealed the 
 horror they had of the shambles into which they were 
 driven. In the early days of this year they made a strategic 
 retreat, under the guidance of Hindenburg, with the one 
 object of escaping from our intense artillery-fire, but their 
 methods of defense have been entirely changed by holding 
 the front lines lightly by weak troops and scattered ma- 
 chine-gun emplacements, and concentrating their best troops 
 behind for counter-attacks, in order to save man-power 
 and lessen the tide of casualties. It is a sound system of 
 defence, but it is the policy of an army fighting a retreat and 
 giving up ground at the highest possible cost, never getting 
 back by counter-attack to quite the same line over which the 
 enemy had flowed. As a life-saving policy, however, the 
 success has not been great, for it is certain that the German 
 troops are suffering hideously from our shell-fire, and their 
 counter-attacks have been costly in blood. 
 
 I suppose these words of mine convey nothing to people 
 who read them. How could they when for three years we 
 have been talking in superlatives without exaggerating the 
 facts, but without understanding them, as minds are numbed 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 281 
 
 by colossal figures? But out here, seeing the flame of shell- 
 fire night after night stretching away round a great horizon, 
 and hearing from near and from afar the ceaseless ham- 
 mer-strokes of great guns, and watching the starlit sky, as 
 I watched it last night from quiet cornfields, all red and 
 restless with winking lights leaping up in tongues and 
 spreading lengthwise in a sullen glare, one does realize a 
 little the monstrous scale of all this and the destruction that 
 is being done among the masses of men in the dark and in 
 the hiding-places of the woods and trenches. 
 
 Experts are wrangling over the numbers of the German 
 reserves. Fantastic figures are given of the millions of 
 Germans still under arms. Well, there is no exact data, 
 and all we know with any certainty is that the enemy is still 
 outwardly strong — strong at least in defence. But the 
 magnitude of his losses during three years is revealed by the 
 fact of to-day's fighting and the place in which it happened. 
 It was in the autumn of 19 14, during the first battle of 
 Ypres, that the Germans attacked our Third Brigade at 
 Langemarck, where our English troops made a great and 
 victorious assault to-day. Three years ago they were the 
 German lads of the 19 14 class who marched up to our lines, 
 linked arm in arm to be mowed down by the most deadly 
 rifle-fire in the world, because those men of our old Army 
 were the finest marksmen. Yesterday at Lens, or rather at 
 Hill 70, there were boys of the 19 19 class who helped to 
 hold the German lines, and that fact is one great tragedy 
 of German hopes and the great proof of her defeat. 
 
 Last night our English troops who were going to attack 
 the village of Langemarck, the old ghost-village which has 
 been wiped out of all but history, went across the Steen- 
 beek stream and lay there waiting for the hour of their as- 
 sault. They were all light-infantry men, the King's, the 
 Duke of Cornwall's, Somerset, the "Koylies" (King's Own 
 Yorkshire Light Infantry), the King's Royal Rifles, and 
 the Rifle Brigade of the 20th Division. 
 
 As we know now from captured orders a German regi- 
 
282 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAE? .E 
 
 ment was ordered to attack our lines at 3.45 this morning. 
 Only forty men of that regiment were seen advancing and 
 they were annihilated. Our men went forward when there 
 was light enough. Immediately on their right, in front of 
 them, was the ruin of an old estaminet called Au Bon Gite, 
 made into a fortified emplacement and defended by ma- 
 chine-guns. It was a nasty place, and our men avoided it, 
 and swept both sides of it and beyond, so that its garrison 
 of gunners had to surrender. Keeping a steady line as 
 much as possible over bad ground, they went forward, leav- 
 ing the waves that followed them to deal with batches of 
 prisoners who had been left alive after our bombardment 
 of the night, and made their way toward Langemarck. 
 Here they were in real trouble, but not from the enemy. It 
 was the state of the ground that threatened them »vith the 
 worst disaster. All round Langemarck the floods were out, 
 and the heavy rains of the week had filled old shell-holes to 
 the brim and made a bog everywhere. Men sank up to 
 their waists as in the worst days of the fighting during 
 the winter on the Somme. It was not water but wet mud 
 that made their cold bath, and they had to use their rifles 
 to keep themselves from sinking deep, and men on little 
 islands of more solid ground had to haul out their com- 
 rades. All this meant loss of time, so that our barrage 
 would sweep ahead of them and the German gunners would 
 be able to do dirty work. 
 
 On the left of Langemarck the men were delayed by 
 these bogs. On the right they were able to push up with 
 great difficulty, but still to get on and work up to the vil- 
 lage. The enemy ran as soon as they saw that our men 
 were near. There were some spasmodic bursts of machine- 
 gun fire, but the defence was feeble, and here, anyhow, the 
 enemy had been demoralized by our frightful gun-fire. 
 
 A regimental commander, a full colonel, was taken here, 
 and that is a rare bird to catch, as in most cases German of- 
 ficers of that rank are well behind the line. He was de- 
 jected and nerve-shaken, and spoke freely of the great losses 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS aSS 
 
 of his men. They were men of the 79th Reserve Division 
 who had been holding Langemarck, and they have suffered 
 most severely, having lost large numbers of men in the pre- 
 vious attacks. Other prisoners came from the 214th Divi- 
 sion, holding the line north of the Staden Railway — the 
 railway to the ground above Bixschoote. The regiment 
 which perhaps suffered worst of all was a battalion of the 
 262nd, which was broken to pieces in the British attack 
 across the Steenbeek. 
 
 To the right of the attack on Langemarck our light-in- 
 fantry men were successful, and in spite of concrete block- 
 houses and some deadly machine-gunning, won all the 
 ground they had been asked to get. The men report that 
 they saw large numbers of German dead, and that little 
 groups of men fled before them as they advanced. Later 
 in the morning the enemy rallied, and came back in counter- 
 attacks, one of which seems to have come within ten yards 
 of our men before it withered away under rifle and machine- 
 gun fire. 
 
 It was on the right centre of the attack that, as I have 
 said, the fighting was most uncertain. The Irish Divisions 
 were heavily engaged here working towards Polygon Wood 
 and the high ground thereabouts. They had to advance over 
 frightful ground, and against the enemy in his greatest 
 strength, because he is determined to defend these high 
 slopes if he loses all else. 
 
 8 
 
 Capture of Hill Seventy 
 
 August 15 
 This morning, at dawn, the Canadians captured Hill 70, 
 attacked and gained a maze of streets and trenches form- 
 ing the mining colonies of St.-Laurent and St.-Emilie, and 
 are now fighting on the outskirts of Lens. A fair number 
 of prisoners have been taken — I sav/ parties of them march- 
 
^84 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 ing down under escort an hour or two ago. Some of the 
 enemy's troops were seen running away from the wreck- 
 age of the red houses in the suburbs of Lens as soon as 
 Hill 70 was taken, but in some parts of the outer defences 
 north and west of the city the garrison is fighting fiercely. 
 The Canadians have, at any rate, gained most of the out- 
 ward bastions of Lens formed by the separate colonies, or 
 cites, as they are called, made up of blocks of miners' cot- 
 tages and works united in one big mining district. 
 
 Hill 70 is ours again after two years since we took it 
 and lost it. I don't know whether that will cause a thrill to 
 people at home. I think it will to those whose men fought 
 there in the September of 191 5. One of my own great 
 memories of the war is of those days in the battle of Loos, 
 when the Scots of the 15th Division and the Londoners of 
 the 47th, and afterwards the Guards, went through the vil- 
 lage of Loos and gained that dirty ridge of ground among 
 old slag-heaps under frightful shell-fire. It was gained in 
 the first great rush of the Londoners and the Scots. The 
 Londoners played a football up the slopes, and the Scots 
 went up with their pipes — do you remember? — and for a 
 few hours they had a quiet time here and collected souvenirs, 
 until later the enemy came back in fierce counter-attacks, 
 and the Guards and the ist Division fell back after heroic 
 fighting and great losses. I saw the Jocks on that first 
 day coming back with German helmets on their heads, 
 laughing in spite of their wounds, and for the first time 
 I saw masses of German prisoners taken by British troops, 
 and in the square of Bethune, through which, in driving 
 rain, there went a steady tide of men and artillery, there 
 was a group of German guns as trophies of victory. It 
 seemed a great victory at first. It was only afterwards we 
 knew how much more might have been gained. And there 
 was a tragic story to tell. Some of the Jocks went as far 
 as an outlying northern suburb of Lens, but few of them 
 ever came back again. Now to-day, after two years less 
 a month, the Canadians have fought over the same ground. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 285 
 
 and have gone over and beyond Hill 70 and linked up many 
 of their former gains in these mining cites on the outskirts 
 of Lens. 
 
 In describing former fighting round Lens I said it was 
 like a war in Wigan. The comparison is true. But to-day, 
 when I watched the scene of the Canadian attack with 
 heavy shell-fire over all these houses and pit-heads, I thought 
 of another northern town which would look very much like 
 this if the hell, of war came to it. I thougM of Bolton and 
 its suburbs, Entwistle and other straggling little towns on 
 the edge of the moors, with Doff cocker and rural villages 
 among cornfields, and factory chimneys on the horizon, and 
 slag-heaps beyond green fields. That will give an image 
 to English people of the scene of war to-day, except that 
 Lens and its suburbs were never so black as our English 
 factory towns, and its walls are still red in spite of their 
 shell-holes. 
 
 Before the attack began at dawn wild flights of shells 
 passed over this little world of ruin to Hill 70, which is no 
 hill at all, but just a low hummock of ground criss-crossed 
 with trenches and burrowed with dug-outs and barren and 
 filthy with relics of death, on the northern side of the city 
 of Lens. From all the ruins around, separate villages of 
 ruin joining up with the streets of Lens itself, red flames 
 gushed up when our batteries fired at a hot pace, and where 
 the shells burst there were long low flashes spreading across 
 a sky heavy and black with stormclouds. Over the German 
 lines and the houses where they held the cellars the shells 
 burst in a tumult which had a sudden beginning just before 
 the dawn, and above all their smoke and fire there were 
 fountains of wonderfully bright light, of burning gold and 
 of running flame all scarlet and alive. The light was from 
 our smoke-producing rockets, and the running flame was 
 from drums of boiling oil which we fired into the enemy's 
 trenches to burn him alive if we caught him there. I saw 
 the far spread of gun-fire in the early morning after the 
 
286 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 thin crescent moon had faded, and when there was a grey, 
 moist Hght over the city and fields. 
 
 Soon after the Canadians had taken Hill 70 the enemy 
 flung back a great barrage, so that the ridge was vomiting 
 up columns of black smoke like scores of factory chim- 
 neys on a foggy day. And in all the suburbs of Lens, those 
 cites of St. -Laurent and St.-Emilie and St. -Pierre, and into 
 Lievin and Calonne, and Maroc and Grenay, he pitched 
 heavy shells which came howling across the wilderness of 
 bricks and slag-heaps, and broke into gruff enormous coughs 
 out of which black demons of smoke rose like the evil genii 
 out of the bottle, darkening the view. An hour or so later 
 the sun came brightly through the clouds, and these cites of 
 strife, girdled by cornfields in which the stooks are standing, 
 and by green hills across which the tide of slaughter has 
 swept, leaving them in peace again, were flooded with fresh, 
 glinting light, so that the scene was rich in colour. There 
 was not a figure to be seen on Hill 70, not a movement of 
 life among the houses around Lens. The Canadians had 
 gone across in the smoke, and now they were hidden among 
 the ruins. The only life was that of shell-fire, and it has 
 a life of its own, though it is meant for death. 
 
 A little to the left in front of me was one of the fosses 
 which rise among the broken houses. For some reason the 
 enemy had special spite against it, and every few minutes a 
 great shell came with a yell and smashed about it. The 
 German gunners were flinging their stuff about in a random 
 way, searching for our batteries and hoping to kill collec- 
 tions of men. They did not have much luck, and they all 
 but caught sixty of their own men who had just come along 
 as prisoners, and, having escaped from the barrage-fire, 
 hoped for safety from their own guns. One of their shells 
 fell within twenty yards of them, but before the next one 
 came their guards told them to quick march, and they ran 
 hard. They were wretched-looking men, more miserable in 
 physique than any I have seen for a long time, and sallow 
 and pinched and gaunt. Some of them were very young, 
 
r 
 
VIMY RIDGE 
 
 AND 
 
 ARRAS 
 
 scale 2JVHes_to ' Inch 
 Approximate BattleFronts 
 June 1916 — — ^ 
 Dec 1917 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 287 
 
 but not all, and there were none so young as those described 
 to me by some Canadian soldiers who fought with them 
 to-day. 
 
 "They were children," said one man, "no bigger than 
 school-boys. I call it cruel to send such youngsters into 
 the fighting-line." 
 
 Another man told me that he saw boys lying dead who 
 looked no older than fourteen, and it made him feel sick. 
 They could not all have been like that, these men of the 
 155th and 156th Reserve Regiments, regiments from whom 
 some of the prisoners come, because they are making a very 
 stiff fight in some parts of their defensive system, and the 
 Canadians have real men against them. It seems that Hill 
 70 was held lightly and by the younger class of soldiers, the 
 best Prussian troops being kept back to hold the inner de- 
 fences of Lens, and to make counter-attacks. 
 
 *Tt was a walk-over," said a Canadian, describing the as- 
 sault on the hill. "Our barrage was great, and it had 
 simply smashed the ground to pulp. I thought it a worse 
 wreck than Vimy, which was some wreck. One could just 
 see a faint suggestion of trenches, but everything was clean 
 swept. There were two or three machine-gun emplacements 
 which gave us a bit of trouble, but not much. We jumped 
 on them and wiped them out. I can't say I saw many Ger- 
 man dead, but just a few boys. I expect the others were 
 buried and smashed up." These Canadians were wonderful. 
 They went into the battle with an absolute confidence. "I 
 knew we should do the trick," said one of them, who came 
 walking back with a wound in his thigh, "and all my pals 
 were of the same mind." 
 
 He said one amazing thing, lying there waiting for his 
 operation in the back parlour of a miner's cottage, in one 
 of these mazes into which the enemy was plugging shells at 
 times: "I enjoyed the show very much," he said, "it was 
 a fair treat." 
 
 Next to him lay another badly wounded man with a piece 
 of wire plucked from his own flesh wrapped up in a piece 
 
288 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 of cotton- wool as a trophy, and a hole through his leg. He 
 grinned at me and said : "We put it across them all right. I 
 wouldn't have missed it, but I'm sorry I got this leg messed 
 up. I didn't come over to get a Blighty wound. I want to 
 see the end of this war. That's what I want to do. I want 
 to be in at the end." 
 
 The wounded men came back like that unless they came 
 back with only the soles of their boots showing over the 
 edge of the ambulance. Fortunately, up to midday at least, 
 there were not many badly wounded men. The spirit of 
 men who have fought and fought and seen the worst hor- 
 rors of war, and suffered its most hideous discomforts, is 
 one of those miracles which I do not understand. I only 
 record the fact about these hardy Canadians and the Cana- 
 dian Scottish. 
 
 Of the same character are the civilian inhabitants of one 
 of these mining cites on the edge of the battlefields, where 
 they have remained since the beginning of the war. Nearer 
 even than the edge. They live in streets where most of 
 the houses have been hit and many of them wrecked. Death 
 comes about and above them. Many of the people have 
 been killed, and the children go to school in cellars with 
 gas-masks because of the poison that comes on an east 
 wind or a north. They were there again to-day: old 
 women drinking early morning coffee in little rooms that 
 have stood between masses of ruin; a widow in black 
 weeds, like a dowager duchess, walking slowly down a 
 street shelled last night and to-day ; girls with braided hair 
 standing at street comers, among soldiers in steel helmets, 
 watching shells bursting a little way off, with no certainty 
 that that is their limit. 
 
 One of these girls came along, and I saw that she had a 
 bandaged head. 
 
 "Wounded ?" I asked. She nodded and said, "Yes, a day 
 or two ago." 
 
 "Why do you stay in such a place?" I said. "Aren't 
 you frightened?" 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS £89 
 
 She laughed. "What can one do? My mamma keeps 
 living here, so how can I go away? Besides, one gets used 
 to it a little." 
 
 I am bound to say I don't get used to these things, but see 
 them always with amazement. 
 
 A Few Days Later 
 Lens itself is now no better than its outer suburbs, a town 
 of battered houses without roofs and with broken walls 
 leaning against rubbish-heaps of brickwork and timber. The 
 enemy sent out a wireless message that the English gunners 
 were destroying French property by bombarding the city, 
 and then made a deep belt of destruction by blowing up long 
 blocks of streets. After that our guns have completed the 
 ruin, for there was a German garrison in every house, and 
 in this kind of warfare there must be no tenderness of senti- 
 ment about bricks and mortar if the enemy is between the 
 walls. So now in Lens the only cover for Germans and 
 their only chance of safety is below ground in the tunnels 
 and cellars reinforced by concrete and built by the forced 
 labor of civilians two years and more ago when the city 
 was menaced by a French attack. Into these tunnels the 
 German garrisons of Lens make their way by night, and in 
 them they live and die. Many die in them it is certain, for 
 a tunnel is no more than a death-trap when it is blocked at 
 the entrance by the fall of houses, or when it collapses by 
 the bombardment of heavy shells which pierce down deep 
 and explode with monstrous effect. That has happened, as 
 we know, in many parts of the German line, and recently on 
 the French front whole companies of German soldiers were 
 buried alive in deep caves. It is happening in Lens now, 
 if the same effect is produced by the same power of artillery. 
 But death comes to the German soldiers there in another 
 way, without any noise and quite invisible, and very hor- 
 rible in its quietude. Many times lately the Canadians have 
 drenched the city of Lens with gas that kills, and soaks 
 down heavily into dug-outs and tunnels, and stifles men in 
 
290 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 their sleep before they have time to stretch out a hand for 
 a gas-mask, or makes them die with their masks on if they 
 fumble a second too long. The enemy, who was first to use 
 poison-gas, should wish to God he had never betrayed his 
 soul by such a thing, for it has come back upon him as a 
 frightful retribution, and in Lens, in those deep, dark cel- 
 lars below the ruins, German soldiers must live with terror 
 and be afraid to sleep. 
 
 Yesterday, when I went to that neighbourhood, I saw 
 four German soldiers who had come out into the open, 
 rather risking death there than by staying in their dungeon. 
 They appeared for a minute round the corner of some 
 brick-stacks in the Cite St.-Auguste. I was watching the 
 German lines there, and staring at the ruined houses and 
 slag-heaps and broken watertowers of Harnes and Annay, 
 beyond the outer fields of the mining city. The church 
 towers in both those villages still stand, though a little dam- 
 aged, and some of the red roofs are still intact. The Ger- 
 man lines were away beyond a strip of No Man's Land, and 
 here not a soul was to be seen, no trace of life in all this land 
 of death until suddenly I saw those four figures come 
 stealthily up behind the brick-stacks. They stood up quite 
 straight and looked towards our ground, and then after a 
 second crouched low so that only their heads showed above 
 a little dip in the ground. A few minutes later I saw two 
 more Germans. They ran at a jog-trot along a hedge out- 
 side the Cite St.-Auguste and made a bolt through a gap. 
 It was as strange to see them as though they were visitors 
 from another planet, for, in this district of Lens, no man 
 shows his body above ground unless he is careless of a quick 
 death, and one may stare for days at the empty houses and 
 the broken mine-shafts and the high black slag-heaps with- 
 out seeing any living thing. 
 
 On our side of the lines, during a long walk yesterday to 
 the crest of Hill 70, I saw only a few lonely figures above 
 ground, although below ground there were many, and in 
 one dug-out where I was lucky to go I found a luncheon- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 291 
 
 party of officers discussing the psychology of Kerensky 
 and news of the world one day old, and the chances of 
 three years more of war or thirty, as men do round a Lon- 
 don dinner-table, though there were loud, unpleasant noises 
 overhead, where German shells were in flight to a trench 
 which had been recommended to me as a nice safe place for 
 a Sunday walk. Somehow, I did not believe in the safety 
 of any walk in this neighbourhood, because there were fresh 
 shell-holes along the tracks between the ruined houses which 
 could not inspire the simplest soul with confidence. There 
 is not a house there which has not been knocked edgewise 
 or upside down, and the little village church I passed is 
 no longer a place for worship but a nightmare building, in- 
 habited by the menace of death. The German gunners can- 
 not leave these mining villages alone, though they are as de- 
 serted as the Polar regions, with no cheerful Tommy's face 
 to be seen through any of the empty window-frames, or 
 through any of the holed walls or down any of the sand- 
 bag shelters which used to be the homes of British soldiers 
 when the fighting was closer this way. 
 
 It is the loneliness which one hates most in these places, 
 especially when shells come along with a beastly noise which 
 seems a particular menace to one's own body as there is no- 
 body else to be killed. So I was glad to fall in with a 
 young officer who was working his way up the line. He 
 had just brought down a wounded man, and was stopping 
 a while in a wayside dressing- station, where there was a 
 friendly and lonely doctor, who offered the hospitality of 
 his sand-bags and steel girders to any passer-by, and said 
 "Stay a bit longer" when bits of shell could be heard whin- 
 ing outside. We went along the way together, close to the 
 grim old muck-heap, the Double Grassier, where Germans 
 and English lived cheek by jowl for two years until recent 
 weeks, fighting each other with bombs when they were 
 bored with each other's company, and so past the village 
 of Loos. 
 
 The way up to Hill 70 is historic ground, and every 
 
29S FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 bit of brickwork, every stump of a tree, every yard or so 
 of road, is haunted by the memory of gallant men, who in 
 September just two years ago came this way under fright- 
 ful shell-fire and fell here in great numbers. Among them 
 were the Londoners of the glorious 47th Division and the 
 Scots of the 15th — as I walked by the village of Loos I 
 thought of some friends of mine in the Gordons who had 
 great adventures there that day amongst those dreadful' 
 little ruins^and Hill 70 was taken and lost again after 
 heroic fighting and tragic episodes, which are still remem- 
 bered with a shudder by men who hate to think of them. 
 
 It is only a few weeks ago that we took the ground be- 
 yond in that great Canadian assault upon Hill 70 which I 
 described at the time, and up there on the hill-side — it is not 
 much of a hill, but goes up very gradually to the crest — 
 the trenches are still littered with German relics, and in the 
 deep dug-outs burnt out and blown out there are still Ger- 
 man bodies lying. The smell of death comes out of these 
 holes, and it is not a pleasant place. 
 
 Before the Canadian assault English troops of the glori- 
 ous old 6th Division captured and held the approaches 
 and raided the Germans in Nash Alley, which is a famous 
 trench in the history of the Durhams and the Essex Regi- 
 ment and of the Buffs and West Yorkshires, and resisted 
 ferocious German attacks with the most grim courage. 
 Under their pressure the Germans yielded part of their line 
 one night, withdrawing to another line of trenches secretly, 
 but these troops of ours followed them up so quickly that 
 they were in the German dug-outs before the candles had 
 gone out. The Canadian capture of Hill 70 was a great 
 blow to the German command, and they tried vainly to get 
 it back by repeated counter-attacks. They will never get it 
 back now, and Lens, which lies below it, remains for them 
 a death-trap, which only pride makes them hold, and where 
 in the cellars men are forced to live hellishly under our 
 shells and gas in order to uphold that pride in men who do 
 not take the risks nor suffer the agony of this hidden death. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 293 
 
 9 
 
 Londoners in Glencorse Wood 
 
 August 17 
 The battle of Langemarck yesterday, and all the struggle 
 southward to the ground about Glencorse Wood and In- 
 verness Copse was one of the most heroic as well as one of 
 the bloodiest days of fighting in all this war. The enemy 
 put up a fierce resistance except at points where underfed 
 boys had been thrust out in shell-holes, as in the neighbour- 
 hood of Langemarck. to check the first onslaught of our men 
 if possible, and if not to die. Behind them, as storm troops 
 for counter-attack, were some of the finest troops of the 
 German army. Among them was the 54th Division, which 
 had already been severely mauled by our gun-fire and was 
 utterly exhausted. But other divisions, like the 34th, who 
 were in front of our Londoners, were fresh and strong, 
 only just brought into the battle-line. Behind the imme- 
 diate supporting troops were massed reserves whom the 
 German command held ready to hurry up in wagons and 
 light railways to any part of the field where their lines 
 were most threatened, or when instant counter-attacks might 
 inflict most damage on our men. 
 
 In gun-power the enemy was and is strong. He had pre- 
 pared a large concentration of guns south-east of our right 
 flank, and whatever may be his reserves of ammunition he 
 has gathered up great stores for this present battle. On the 
 right of our attack he stood on high ground, the crest of 
 Polygon Wood, and the slopes down from Abraham 
 Heights and the Gravenstafel Ridge. It is the big door 
 which he must slam in our face at all costs, because it opens 
 out to his plains beyond; and against it he has massed all 
 his weight. Our men, it will be seen, were not likely to 
 have a walk-over. They did not, but took all they gained 
 by hard fighting. It could in no sense of the word be a 
 
294 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 walk-over. The ground was hideous, worse than in the 
 winter on the Somme. That seems strange, with a hot sun 
 shining overhead and dust rising in clouds along traffic 
 roads behind the battle-line as I saw it to-day. That is the 
 irony of things. Where our men were fighting yesterday 
 and to-day there are hundreds of thousands of shell-holes, 
 some three feet deep and some ten feet deep, and each shell- 
 hole is at least half full of water, and many of them are 
 joined so that they form lakes deep enough to drown men 
 and horses if they fall in. So it was, and is, around the 
 place where Langemarck village stood, and where the old 
 lake of the chateau that no longer stands has flooded over 
 into a swamp, and where a double row of black tree-stumps 
 goes along the track of the broken road where the people 
 of Langemarck used to walk to church before the devil 
 did in so many old churches and established little hells of 
 his own on their rubbish-heaps. So it was yesterday and 
 remains to-day all about, the stumps of trees sticking up 
 out of a mush of slimy, pitted ground which go by the 
 romantic names of Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse, 
 and Shrewsbury Forest and Polygon Wood. The photo- 
 graphs of our airmen taken yesterday in low flights over 
 these damned places reveal the full foulness of them. Seen 
 from this high view, they are long stretches of white barren 
 earth pockmarked by innumerable craters, where no man or 
 human body is to be seen, though there are many dead and 
 some living lying in those holes, and they are all bright and 
 shining, because the sun is glinting on the water which 
 fills them, except where dense clouds of smoke from great 
 gun-fire drift across. 
 
 The courage of men who attacked over such ground was 
 great courage. The grim, stubborn way in which our 
 soldiers made their way through these bogs and would 
 not be beaten, though they sHpped and fell and stuck deep 
 while the enemy played machine-gun bullets on to their 
 lines and flung high explosives over the whole stretch of 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 295 
 
 bogland through which they had to pass, is one of the 
 splendid and tragic things in our poor human story. 
 
 I told yesterday how some of our English battalions took 
 Langemarck like this, leaving many comrades bogged, 
 wounded, and spent, but crawling round the concrete houses, 
 over the old cellars of the village and routing out the Ger- 
 mans who held them with machine-guns. At the block- 
 house on the way up, called Au Bon Gite, an oblong fort 
 of concrete walls ten feet thick, the Germans bolted in- 
 side as soon as they saw our men, slammed down an iron 
 door, and for a time stayed there while our bombers prowled 
 round like hungry wolves waiting for their prey. Later 
 they gave themselves up because our line swept past them 
 and they had no hope. 
 
 In another place of the same kind, called Reitre Farm, 
 from which came a steady blast of machine-gun fire, our 
 men made several desperate rushes and at last, when many 
 lay v/ounded, a machine-gunner of ours got close and thrust 
 the barrel of his weapon through a slit in the wall and 
 swept the inner chamber with a flood of bullets. 
 
 There were savage fights in some of the dark cellars of 
 Langemarck between men who would not surrender and 
 men who would not turn back, and men who fell heavily 
 against other men and knew that in these underground holes 
 it must be their life or the other's, and the quicker the bet- 
 ter. They fought their way beyond Langemarck yesterday, 
 and on the left of our advance we hold to-day all the 
 ground that was taken, which follows the curve of the 
 Langemarck — Gheluvelt line, dug and wired by months of 
 labour according to the orders of the German command, 
 afraid of our coming menace, and now blotted out. The 
 fighting all about this ground was by groups of English 
 soldiers, in some cases without officers, and in some cases 
 led by privates with a sense of leadership and fine, stem 
 courage. They were Royal Fusiliers, Lancashire Fusiliers, 
 Middlesex, Guernseys, and other battalions of the 29th Di- 
 vision, the Light Infantry battalions of the 20th Divi- 
 
296 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 sion, the Yorkshires, Lancashires, South Staffords, Lin- 
 coins, and Borderers of the nth Division, and the Ox- 
 fords, Gloucesters, and Berkshires of the 48th Division. So 
 things happened on the left of the battle. All ground was 
 gained as it had been planned, and all held, and many hun- 
 dreds of prisoners were taken, though that is not the best 
 proof of success. 
 
 On the right it was different. It was on the right that 
 the enemy fought hardest, counter-attacked most fiercely and 
 most often, and concentrated the heaviest artillery. There 
 were the Irish Brigades here, and English county troops of 
 the 8th Division, and London battalions of the 56th. All 
 this side of the attack became involved at once in desperate 
 fighting. The ground was damnable — cratered and full 
 of water and kneedeep in foul mud — and beyond them was 
 high ground, struck through with gully-like funnels, through 
 which the enemy could pour up his storm troops for counter- 
 attack; and away in the mud were the same style of con- 
 crete forts as up north, still unbroken by our bombardments 
 and fortified again with new garrisons of machine-gunners, 
 taking the place of those who on July 31 were killed or 
 captured when this ground was stormed and, later, lost. 
 
 The English and the Irish battalions made progress in 
 spite of heavy fire on them and no light losses; but in the 
 afternoon of yesterday they had to withdraw from their 
 advanced positions under the pressure of fierce counter- 
 attacks by fresh troops. They fought these rear-guard ac- 
 tions stubbornly. Irish as well as English fought some- 
 times in small groups in isolated posts, until they were 
 killed or captured. They made the enemy pay a big price 
 in blood for his old ground, but their own casualties could 
 not be light in view of the desperate character of this 
 struggle. 
 
 As yet I know very few details of the Irish side of things. 
 I know more about the Londoners, for I have been to see 
 them to-day, and they have told me the facts of yesterday. 
 They are tragic facts, because for English troops it is al- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 297 
 
 ways a tragedy to withdraw from any yard of soil they have 
 taken by hard fighting, and many good London lads will 
 never come back from that morass. But there is nothing 
 the matter with London courage, and to me there is some- 
 thing more thrilling in the way these boys fought to the 
 death, some of them in the bitterness of retreat, than in 
 the rapid and easy progress of men in successful attack. Ly- 
 ing out all night in the wet mud under heavy fire, they at- 
 tacked at dawn up by Glencorse Wood, in the direction of 
 Polygon Wood. On the right they and their neighbours 
 at once came under blasts of fire from five machine-guns in 
 a strong point, and under a hostile barrage-fire that was 
 frightful in its intensity. They could not make much 
 headway. No mortal men could have advanced under such 
 fire, and so their comrades on the left were terribly ex- 
 posed to the scythe of bullets which swept them also. 
 
 Men of London regiments — the Queen's Westminsters 
 and the old ''Vies" and the Rangers and the Kensingtons. — 
 fought forward with a wonderful spirit which is a white 
 shining light in all this darkness — through Glencorse Wood 
 and round to the north of Nuns' Wood, avoiding the most 
 deeply flooded ground here, where there was one big boggy 
 lake. Parties of the Middlesex went into Polygon Wood, 
 which is a long way forward, and actually brought prisoners 
 out of that place. At a strong point near the Hooge — 
 Gheluvelt road they killed thirty-four Germans and cap- 
 tured the redoubt. But there were Germans still left in 
 other concrete houses near by, and they were very strong at 
 the Zonnebeke position on the north-west. 
 
 Very soon counter-attacks developed from the south 
 out of Inverness Copse, and from the north. The London- 
 ers were exhausted after their dreadful night and all this 
 fighting over foul ground; they were in exposed positions, 
 and they were shut in by the most terrible gun-fire. What 
 happened with the Irish and other troops happened here. 
 Our airmen, flying low, saw small isolated groups of Lon- 
 don boys fighting separate battles against great odds. The 
 
298 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 enemy was encircling them, and they were trying to hold 
 rear-guard positions, so that their comrades could with- 
 draw in good order. A signalled message that found its 
 way to headquarters tells one such story. I read to-day 
 the little pink slip bearing the words as they came in. They 
 are from a Middlesex officer. ''Am in shell-hole before 
 second objective, and two strong points held by the enemy. 
 Have ten men with me. We are surrounded, and heavy 
 machine-gun fire is being turned on us. Regret no course 
 but to surrender. Can't see any of our forces." 
 
 That message was the only one of its kind received, but 
 there were many small groups of London men, led by young 
 officers, or without officers, who held on to the last like that, 
 and did not let down the pride of their great city, so gay, so 
 ignorant yesterday afternoon, with a tide of traffic swirling 
 down its streets, while out here on the wet barren earth, 
 under the same sun, these boys of London fought and died, 
 or in small groups rose from among their dead and wounded 
 and went white-faced into the circle of the enemy who had 
 surrounded them. 
 
 lO 
 
 Somersets at Langemarck 
 
 August 19 
 The enemy, after denying our taking of Langemarck, now 
 admit their loss of it. Our prisoners who were brought 
 through the place had the German wireless read out to them 
 and were abashed by the untruth of the message. It was a 
 German sergeant-major who put up the only excuse. He 
 laughed and said : "In this war it is only those who win who 
 can afford to tell the official truth. A reverse is always 
 covered by a lie." 
 
 We are well beyond Langemarck, and to-day I went 
 among the men who got there first — the 20th Division — 
 fighting their way past machine-gun blockhouses, which is 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 299 
 
 the new system of German defence, past the deadly ma- 
 chine-gun fire that came out of them, and through to the 
 village and its surrounding swamps. These young officers, 
 who have lost many of their comrades, and these men of 
 theirs belonging to light-infantry battalions, were sleep- 
 ing and resting in their tents behind the fighting-lines, and 
 cleaning themselves up after days in wet mud and the filth 
 of the battlefield. But they were keen to tell the tale of 
 their adventures, and if I could put them down just as they 
 were told, one man adding to another man's story, the ex- 
 citement of remembrance rousing them from their weari- 
 ness, and queer grim laughter breaking out when they spoke 
 of their greatest dangers, it would be a strange narrative. 
 They were men who had escaped death by prodigious 
 chance, and officers and men greeted each other joyfully and 
 with a splendid spirit of comradeship as brothers-in-arms 
 who were glad to see each other alive and remembered how 
 they had stuck it together in the worst hours. They belonged 
 to the Somerset Light Infantry of the 20th Division, and 
 they came from old towns like Bridgwater and Crewkeme 
 and Yeovil, w^hich seem a million miles away from such 
 scenes of war. One young officer of the Somerset knew 
 most of what had happened, and his own adventures that 
 day would fill a book if told in detail. He took me into 
 his tent and showed me how his kit had been pierced by 
 bullets and torn by the blast of shell-fire, and he marvelled 
 that he had no more than a hurt hand cut against the teeth 
 of a German sniper and a body bruised all over, but with 
 a whole skin. "A bit of luck," he said. This young man 
 must have been born under a lucky star, for the things 
 he went through that day would have frightened a cat rely- 
 ing on nine lives and taking a hundred chances on the score 
 of them. 
 
 On the way up to Langemarck to the left of that solid 
 blockhouse called Au Bon Gite, where the enemy held out 
 behind iron doors while our troops went past them swept 
 by machine-gun fire, there were many German snipers lying 
 
300 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 about in shell-holes. They were very brave men, put out 
 into these holes to check our advance, and knowing that 
 they were bound to die, because that is the almost certain 
 fate of snipers on such ground. They lay doggo, pretend- 
 ing to be corpses when any of our men were near enough 
 to see, but using their rifles with deadly aim when they 
 had any elbow-room. I heard that one man killed four of 
 our officers, and another killed fourteen men and wounded 
 eleven before he was shot through the head. One of these 
 men well behind our advancing waves lay very still, close to 
 the young officer of the Somersets of whom I spoke, and 
 who saw the fellow move and raise his rifle. He pounced 
 on him and struck him across the face with his bare fist 
 and tore his hand open against the man's teeth. They were 
 bad teeth, and the hand is now festering. Another sniper 
 gave himself away, and the young officer shot him through 
 the head with a revolver, which was very busy all that day. I 
 have already told how these light-infantry men had to 
 struggle through bogs around Langemarck, how they fell 
 into shell-holes full of water, and how, under great fire, 
 they made their way into the place where Langemarck vil- 
 lage had once been and attacked the dug-outs and block- 
 houses there. Some of the strangest episodes happened 
 between the village and a point called the Streiboom. There 
 were two more blockhouses on the Langemarck road girdled 
 by machine-gun fire. The first one was rushed by twenty 
 men, led by this young officer I have been telling about, and 
 bombed until thirty Germans tumbled out and surrendered. 
 But beyond was the other blockhouse, and upon this the of- 
 ficer of the Somersets advanced with only six men. A ma- 
 chine-gun was firing from the right of it, and it was a strong 
 place of concrete with no open door. The seven Somersets 
 went straight for it, and the officer flung two bombs through 
 the loopholes, but they did not seem to take effect. Then 
 he hurled two more bombs, which were his last, at the iron 
 door, but they did not burst. With his bare fists he beat at 
 the door and shouted out, *'Come out, you blighters, come 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 301 
 
 out." Presently, to his surprise, they came out, not two or 
 three, nor six or seven, but forty-two stout and hefty men. 
 Among them was an English soldier badly wounded, who 
 had been taken prisoner three days before. He was a 
 Yorkshireman, who had lain among the enemy, well treated, 
 but dying. The Germans could not send him behind their 
 lines because of our bombardment, which had cut off their 
 supplies, so that they were four days hungry when they 
 surrendered. In another dug-out was another Yorkshire- 
 man, and he is now safe and well behind our own lines. 
 
 There were eight machine-guns in that last blockhouse, 
 one of which I saw to-day, and two of them, fitted up with 
 new springs, were used against the enemy. One of them 
 was worked on a hydraulic lift, so that it could be got into 
 action very quickly from its underground place. In the 
 blockhouse from which the forty-two had been taken by 
 this small body of Somersets was a great store of 5-9 shells. 
 All told this little group of men took 100 prisoners that 
 day, and their officer himself is said to have killed sixteen 
 Germans and to have wounded many more. After the 
 blockhouse affair he chased a number of the enemy running 
 down the Langemarck road, and, using his revolver in the 
 cowboy fashion, dropping his wrist from the shoulder, he 
 plugged them as he ran. After that he went on and held 
 an exposed advanced post with a mixed lot of Somersets 
 and ''Koylies" (King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry) 
 and Rifle Brigade men. They had next to no ammunition, 
 but they held on all night, hoping for the best, but not 
 sure of it. And this young officer who was their leader 
 told me to-day that — great God! — he "enjoyed" himself 
 and was "fearfully bucked" with his day's work. The ex- 
 citement of it all was in his eyes, as he told me, in much 
 more detail than I have given, the story of the thirty-six 
 hours. 
 
 It is indeed an astounding chapter of courage all this at- 
 tack on Langemarck by men who before the attack had been 
 bombarded with gas and other shells, and who then floun- 
 
S02 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 dered in deep bogs, where they got stuck up to the waist, but 
 worked in small parties up and on, fighting all the way 
 against an enemy who put up a gallant and stubborn re- 
 sistance and sold every hundred yards of ground as dearly 
 as he could. The runners who went back again and again 
 through that slough of despond under damnable fire were 
 real heroes. The stretcher-bearers who carried down the 
 wounded all that day and night regardless of their own 
 lives were beyond words splendid, and the carriers who 
 brought up rations so that the men in front should have 
 enough to eat and drink were as brave as those who fought. 
 In the midst of all this turmoil, all this death, all this mud 
 and blood, men kept their sense of humour and their 
 shrewd wit in a way which beats me. ''Do you speak 
 English?'* said a sergeant-major to a German non-com- 
 missioned officer who came out of a dug-out full of men, 
 "Nein, nein," said the man. "Well, you've got to learn 
 bally quick," said the sergeant-major, "so go and tell those 
 pals of yours to come out before something happens to 
 them." And the German learnt enough English in the 
 sergeant-major's eyes to deliver the command correctly 
 enough. 
 
 I have spoken only of the Somersets. Other light In- 
 fantry — the Durhams and the "Koylies" and the D.C.L.I. — 
 who worked with them and who took Reitres Farm and 
 other strong points, were not less dogged, and this day at 
 Langemarck was a glorious revelation of the old spirit of 
 the West Country, which is still strong and fine. 
 
 And now I must write again about the Canadians, whose 
 attack towards Lens I watched the other day among our 
 guns. 
 
 That story is not yet finished, and has been going on ever 
 since that morning when the Canadians took Hill 70 and the 
 cites of St.-Emilie and St.-Laurent, working forward 
 towards the heart of Lens. It is clear that the enemy's 
 command issued orders for Hill 70 and the other ground 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 303 
 
 to be retaken at all costs. There have been no fewer than 
 thirteen counter-attacks against the Canadian troops, and 
 men of the 4th Guards Division, and later of the 220th Regi- 
 ment, have come forward in wave after wave and hurled 
 themselves with desperate courage against the Canadian 
 defence. 
 
 Time after time they have been seen assembling by our 
 flying men and observers, and time after time their ranks 
 have been shattered by our guns. To the north of Lens 
 there is a chalk quarry, which was not gained by the Cana- 
 dians in their first attack, so that they established their 
 line on the v/est side of it, and it was against this line that 
 repeated efforts were made. Each attempt was smashed up, 
 and then the Canadians advanced into the quarry and cap- 
 tured ninety men of many units and twenty machine-guns. 
 The prisoners complain that their ofiicers had lost their 
 heads, and had been utterly demoralized. After violent at- 
 tacks on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the enemy 
 made a great effort with every weapon of frightfulness on 
 Friday evening, using poison-gas and flame- jets and a 
 hurricane of high explosives in order to drive the Canadians 
 off Hill 70. It failed with great losses to themselves when 
 the German infantry attacked, and the attacks yesterday 
 have had no greater success. The Canadians claim that 
 the enemy's losses must be at least three times as great as 
 their own. There were moments when the Canadians were 
 hard pressed, and one of them was when a battalion com- 
 mander was warned that the Germans were behind him. 
 "Fm all right," he said cheerily, and then suddenly he said, 
 "Good Lord, so they are." He was not heard from again 
 for two hours and a half, and in that time he had organized 
 his clerks and batmen and signallers and driven out a party 
 of Germans who had worked out round No Man's Land and 
 thrust a wedge behind him. The fighting has been savage 
 and fierce, and the Canadians have used the bayonet at 
 close quarters and fought hand to hand in the dark cellars 
 
304 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 of the mining cites. This phase of the war is as bloody as 
 anything that has been done in the history of human strife. 
 
 II 
 
 The Irish in the Swamps 
 
 August 21 
 It is of the Irish now that I will write, though their story 
 is four days old and not a tale of great victory. It is easier 
 to write of success than of failure, and of great advances 
 than of grim rear-guard actions fought by men desperately 
 tried but still heroic. But I want to tell the story of the 
 Irish who went forward over bad ground on the morning 
 of August 16, that morning when there was great success 
 at Langemarck on the left, and something less than suc- 
 cess on the right. 
 
 These Irishmen had no luck at all. They gained ground 
 but lost it again. It is up to the Irish to tell this tale, for 
 they were grand men and they fought and fell with simple 
 valour. They were the Southern Irish and the men of 
 Ulster side by side again, as they were at Wytschaete, where 
 I met them on the morning of the battle and afterwards, 
 glad because they had taken a great share in one of the 
 finest victories of the war. Their laughter rang out then 
 as they told me their adventures, all their young officers 
 keen to say how splendid their men had been, and the men 
 themselves drawing cheerful comparisons between this 
 day's luck and that other day at Ginchy, on the Somme, 
 when they gained another victory, but with thinned ranks, 
 so that when I met them marching out they had but the 
 remnants of battalions, and their general called out words 
 of good cheer to them with a break in his voice. After 
 Wytschaete they were in high spirits. Quick in attack, full 
 of the old Irish dash, they were the men for a sudden as- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 305 
 
 sault, needing an impetuous advance, while they were fresh 
 and unspoilt. But they had no luck this time. 
 
 Let me tell first the happenings of the Irish troops on the 
 right, the Catholic Irish, whose own right was on the 
 Roulers railway, going up to the Potsdam Redoubt. An 
 hour or so before the attack the enemy, as though knowing 
 what was about to come, flung down a tremendous and 
 destructive barrage, answered by our own dnmi-fire, which 
 gave the signal for the Irish to advance. The Dublin 
 Fusiliers and the Royal Irish Rifles went forward on the 
 right and the Inniskillings on the left. In front of them 
 were numbers of German strong points, the now famous 
 pill-boxes, or concrete blockhouses, which the enemy has 
 built as his new means of defence to take the place of 
 trench systems. They were Beck House, Borry Farm, and 
 the Bremen Redoubt — sinister names which will never be 
 forgotten in Irish history. There were also odd bits of 
 trench here and there for the use of snipers and small 
 advanced posts. As the first wave of the Irish assaulting 
 troops advanced Germans rose from those ditches and ran 
 back to the shelter of the concrete works, and immediately 
 from those emplacements and from other machine-gun posi- 
 tions echeloned in depth behind them swept a fierce enfilade 
 fire of machine-gun bullets, even through the barrage of our 
 shell-fire, which went ahead of the Irish line. Many men 
 in the first wave dropped, but the others kept going, and 
 reached almost as far as they had been asked to go. The 
 Royal Irish Rifles worked up the Roulers railway to the 
 level crossing, and captured two German officers and thirty 
 prisoners. The Dublin Fusiliers, on their left, were held 
 up by machine-guns from the Bremen Redoubt, and later 
 a message came down from that small party. It was from 
 a young Irish subaltern. "I am lying out here in a shell- 
 hole. All officers and men killed or wounded." Other men 
 joined him, but were cut off and taken prisoners. On the 
 left the Inniskillings, who had crossed over the Zonnebeke 
 river, made good and rapid progress, capturing two strong 
 
306 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 redoubts and seizing an important little hill — Hill '^^y — 
 which was one of the keys of the position. The success of 
 the day would have been gained if the centre had been 
 carried, and if the supporting troops could have come 
 up. But neither of these things happened. The supporting 
 weaves were caught by the cross-fire of machine-guns, and 
 they could make hardly any headway. The Borry Farm 
 Redoubt gave most trouble. It contained five machine- 
 guns and a garrison of sixty expert and determined gun- 
 ners, and never fell all day. It broke the centre of the 
 Irish attack, and was the cause of heroic but deadly efforts 
 by the Irish Rifles, followed by Inniskillings. The Royal 
 Irish Fusiliers attacked it by direct assault, knowing that 
 everything was staked on their success. They went for it 
 like tigers, but without avail. One of the battalion officers, 
 seeing this failure, but knowing how all depended upon the 
 capture of that fort, thereupon led another attack by a 
 company of the Royal Irish Rifles. This met the same fate. 
 
 Meanwhile the men of the Ulster Division were fight- 
 ing just as desperately. They had ahead of them several 
 of the concrete forts, one of which, near Pond Farm, was 
 a strong defensive system with deep dug-outs and over- 
 head cover proof against shell-fire. This and other strong 
 points had wooden platforms above the concrete walls, on 
 which the gunners could mount their machines very quickly, 
 firing them behind two yards thickness of concrete. 
 
 Opposite the Pommern Redoubt stands a small hill which 
 the enemy has used for a long time as one of his chief 
 observation-posts, as it gives a complete view of our ground. 
 Beyond that the country rises to a saddle-back ridge, with 
 double spurs guarded on the lower slope by a small fort 
 called Gallipoli, and from these spurs he could fling a ma- 
 chine-gun barrage across the low ground. An ugly posi- 
 tion to attack. It was worse for the Ulster men because of 
 the state of the ground, which was a thin crust over a bog 
 of mud. On the left some of the Inniskillings and Irish 
 Rifles rushed forward as far as a network of trenches and 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 307 
 
 wired defences, which they took in a fierce assault against 
 a Bavarian garrison, who fought to a finish. Here they 
 recaptured one of our Lewis guns lost in the fighting on 
 July 31. On the right the Irish Rifles and the FusiUers, 
 walking through the fire of many machine-guns, made a 
 straight attack upon Hill 35, which dominated the centre 
 of the Ulster attack. Before it were some gun-pits, and 
 the Ulster men, by most desperate efforts, took and crossed 
 these pits and fought up the slopes of the hill beyond. But 
 they could not keep the hill nor the pits. So after m.any 
 hours of frightful fighting the situation was that some scat- 
 tered groups of Dublins and Royal Irish held out on a 
 far goal with exposed flanks, with some Inniskillings cling- 
 ing to the slopes of Hill 2^7^ while on the other side of 
 the Zonnebeke river the Ulster men had been forced off 
 their little hill, and had been unable to get beyond the Ger- 
 man chain of concrete houses. 
 
 The enemy's aeroplanes came over to survey the situa- 
 tion, and, taking a leaf from our book, flew very low, 
 firing their machine-guns at the advanced posts of Irish 
 lying in shell-holes and in the hummocky ground. They 
 were in a desperate position, those advanced posts. . . . 
 Then the enemy launched his counter-attack from the di- 
 rection of Zonnebeke, and gradually the shattered lines 
 of the Irish fell back, slowly fighting little rear-guard ac- 
 tions in isolated groups. Many of them were surrounded 
 and cut off, or had to fight their way back in the night or 
 the dawn of next day. 
 
 All through the worst hours an Irish padre went about 
 among the dead and dying, giving absolution to his boys. 
 Once he came back to headquarters, but he would not take 
 a bite of food or stay, though his friends urged him. He 
 went back to the field to minister to those who were glad 
 to see him bending over them in their last agony. Four 
 men were killed by shell-fire as he knelt beside them, and 
 he was not touched — not touched until his own turn came. 
 A shell burst close, and the padre fell dead. 
 
308 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 There were many other men who gave up their lives 
 for their friends that day — stretcher-bearers, who had a 
 long way to go imder fire, and runners, who had to crawl 
 on their stomachs from shell-hole to shell-hole, and carry- 
 ing-parties and medical officers. Near the Frezenberg Re- 
 doubt, which was on the right of the Catholic Irish, a doc- 
 tor worked, never sleeping for days and nights, but going 
 out of his dug-out to crawl after wounded men and band- 
 aging up their wounds under heavy fire. The first man he 
 found was not one of his Irish. Away in front of the 
 line, in No Man's Land, was a bogged Tank, and Irish sen- 
 tries heard a wail from it. The doctor heard of this and 
 crept out to the Tank and found a Scottish soldier there 
 badly wounded, as he had crept into this shelter days be- 
 fore. The doctor bandaged him, and, without calling for 
 help, carried him back on his own shoulders. Another 
 Scot was found in a shell-hole wounded in both legs. He 
 was one of the Gordons, and had been lying there since 
 July 31. He is "in a good state of health," was the report 
 of the Irish patrol, and will be sent home to-night. 
 
 Before the battle and after it the Bavarians behaved de- 
 cently about the wounded, and allowed the stretcher-bearers 
 to work in the open without being shelled, though some of 
 them were hit in the machine-gun barrage. It is good to 
 know that, and fair to say it. The Bavarians against the 
 Irish fought, as I am told by Irishmen, in a clean, straight 
 way, and their defence was stronger than our attack. The 
 Irish troops had no luck. It was a day of tragedy. But 
 poor Ireland should be proud of these sons of hers, who 
 struggled against such odds and fought until their strength 
 was spent, and even then held on in far posts with a spirit 
 scornful of the word "surrender." Some very noble young 
 officers gave up their lives rather than say that word, and 
 all these dear Irish boys went to the last limit of human 
 endurance before they fell back. Not by any hair's-breadth 
 did they lose the honour they won at Wytschaete and 
 Ginchy. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 309 
 
 12 
 
 The Way Through Glencorse Wood 
 
 August 22 
 There was severe fighting again to-day eastwards of St.- 
 Julien (3^ miles north-east of Ypres), extending south 
 across the Zonnebeke, beyond the Frezenberg Redoubt, 
 while on the right our troops again penetrated Glencorse 
 Copse (due east of Ypres), and fought on that ugly ris- 
 ing ground which the enemy is defending in great strength. 
 The Divisions engaged, from north to south, are the 29th, 
 38th, nth, 48th, i8th, 6ist, 15th, 19th, 47th, 14th, and 
 24th. 
 
 On the left progress has been made from the high road 
 of St.-Julien to the Zonnebeke-Langemarck road, which 
 cuts across it, guarded on the enemy's side by two strong 
 points with the usual concrete shelters which the Germans 
 have adopted as their new means of forward defence. Be- 
 low them there is another strong position called Winnipeg, 
 about which our men were heavily engaged in the early 
 hours of this morning, and below that again the same 
 series of pill-boxes and concrete blockhouses against which 
 the Irish battalions went forward with such desperate 
 valour on the i6th of this month, as I described in my 
 message yesterday. 
 
 Scottish troops of the 15th Division attacked to-day 
 where the Southern Irish were engaged six days ago. Be- 
 fore them they had those sinister forts. Beck House and 
 Borry Farm, and Vampire Point guarding the way to the 
 Bremen Redoubt, which will be remembered always in the 
 history of the Irish brigades as places of heroic endeavour, 
 just as now this morning they will take their place in the 
 annals of our Scottish fighting. To the left of them are 
 other forts, round which the Ulster men were fighting last 
 week — Pond Farm, Schuler Farm, and others on the way 
 
310 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 to the Gallipoli Redoubt. About these places Warwick- 
 shires and other Midland troops of the 6ist Division have, 
 been fighting, and have met with the same difficulties, 
 apart from the state of the ground, which has dried a lit- 
 tle. It has not dried much, for our shell-fire has broken 
 up the gullies and streams with which it was drained, and 
 the country is water-logged, so that the pools remain until 
 the sun dries them up. The shell-holes and these ponds are 
 not so full of water as when the Irish went across, and 
 the surface of the shell-broken earth is hardening. But it 
 is only a thin crust over a bog, so that the Tanks which 
 went forward to-day here and there could not get very far 
 without sinking in. One Tank was taken by a gallant crew 
 almost as far as a German strong point nearly half a mile 
 beyond our old front line very early in the morning, and 
 did good work up there. The enemy put down a furious 
 barrage-fire soon after the attack had started to-day, and 
 kept the Frezenberg Redoubt under intense bombardment. 
 But as soon as the attack developed he could not use his 
 artillery against our men at many points, not knowing 
 what forts and ground were still held by his own troops. 
 He relied again upon the cross-fire of machine-guns, ar- 
 ranged very skilfully in depth, for enfilade barrages, and 
 upon the garrisons who held his concrete redoubts in the 
 advanced positions. In one of the blockhouses this morn- 
 ing our Warwickshire men captured forty-seven prisoners, 
 who, when they were surrounded, took refuge in tunnelled 
 galleries running to the right of the main fort, called 
 Schuler Farm. Some of our men fought through the en- 
 filade fire of machine-guns as far as the slopes of Hill 35, 
 and to the right of this the Scots made a gallant and fierce 
 assault towards Bremen Redoubt. 
 
 August 30 
 
 The sky of Flanders is still full of wind and water, and ' 
 heavy rain-storms driven by the gale sweep over the bat- 
 tlefield, flinging down trees already broken by shell-fire. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 311 
 
 Behind the lines some of the hopfields round Poperinghe 
 and other villages are sadly wrecked. Many of the hop- 
 poles have fallen, and the long trailing hops lie all tangled 
 in the mire. Many telephone v^ires were down also just 
 after the gale, and the signallers had a rough windy time 
 in getting them up again. But it is on the field of battle 
 that this weather matters most, and there in such places as 
 Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse and Sanctuary Wood 
 on our side of the lines, the linked shell-craters are ponds. 
 In and between them is a quagmire. 
 
 I write of Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse rather 
 than of the ground farther north, in the valley of the Steen- 
 beek, though that is just as bad, or a little worse, because 
 yesterday I went to see the troops of the 14th Division who 
 made the last attack in those sinister woodlands in the 
 track of the London men who fought there so desperately 
 on July 31. 
 
 The last attack, beginning on August 22, was made by 
 light-infantry regiments, among whom were the Duke of 
 Cornwall's and the Somerset Light Infantry. They were 
 fine well-trained men — trained hard and trained long in the 
 tactics of assault — and though they took ground which 
 they could not hold, because the enemy was in great 
 strength against them and they were weakened after hard 
 fighting in frightful ground, they held off repeated coun- 
 ter-attacks and inflicted great loss upon the enemy, and held 
 their original line intact against most fierce assaults. The 
 enemy's storm troops advanced against them through In- 
 verness Copse, and in encircling movements which tried to 
 get round and through their flanks again and again during 
 two days of violent fighting, they counter-attacked behind 
 the barrage-fire of many batteries, so that all the ground 
 held by our men was swept by high explosives and shrapnel 
 hour after hour, and when these waves of Saxons and 
 Prussians were broken or repulsed, others came with a 
 sheet of flame before them — from ''flammenwerfer" ma- 
 chines, which project fire like water from a fireman's hose. 
 
312 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Our riflemen and light infantry did not break before this 
 advancing furnace, but fired into the heart of it, and saw 
 some of the **flammenwerfer" men go up in their own 
 flame like moths bursting in the light of a candle with loud 
 reports, "a, loud pop" as the men describe it, so that noth- 
 ing of them was left but a little smoke and a few cinders. 
 
 But that was at the end of the battle, and the light-in- 
 fantry battalions had bought through terrible hours before 
 they faced that last ordeal. Before the attack they held a 
 line opposite Glencorse Wood on the left and running 
 down on the right past Stirling Castle, the old German 
 fort above a nest of dug-outs, which has become famous 
 in all this fighting. In front of them lay Inverness Copse, 
 a thousand yards long by 500 deep, with many concrete, 
 blockhouses hidden, or half hidden, among the fallen trees 
 and tattered stumps and upheaved earth of this blasted 
 wood; and north-east of that, ruins of an old chateau 
 called Herenthage Castle. 
 
 Facing our left were three lines of battered trenches 
 north of Inverness Copse, and two blockhouses called L- 
 shaped Farm — on an aeroplane photograph it looks exactly 
 like the capital letter — and Fitzclarence Farm. These places 
 were strongly garrisoned, and the German machine-gunners 
 were safe within their concrete walls from any shell-splin- 
 ters. Our barrage swept on to the enemy's lines, flung up 
 the earth, crashed among the trees, and tore all this belt of 
 land to chaos, where already it was deeply cratered by the 
 earlier bombardment. Behind that barrage went over the 
 light-infantry battalions, and immediately they came under 
 gusts of machine-gun fire from the blockhouses which still 
 stood intact. It was then 7 o'clock in the morning. They 
 forced their way into Inverness Copse, followed 'by some 
 Tanks, and roved round one of the blockhouses, where 
 thirty Germans sat inside with their steel doors shut and 
 their machine-guns firing through the loop-holes. Some 
 sappers were sent for, and blew in the doors, and the gar- 
 rison were killed fighting. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 813 
 
 The Duke of Cornwall's men were checked for a time by- 
 machine-gun fire from Glencorse Wood, and advance waves 
 were held up round a blockhouse with a garrison of sixty- 
 men north of Inverness Copse, but after fierce fighting this 
 place fell, and not a man escaped. The Somerset Light 
 Infantry passed on, and fought their way to the rubbish- 
 heap called Herenthage Chateau, where a hundred and 
 twenty Germans of the 145th Infantry Regiment held out 
 in concrete chambers. Only their officer remained alive 
 after the fighting here, and he was brought in a prisoner. 
 
 The Somersets established themselves in their goal with 
 posts in front of Inverness Copse and Herenthage Castle, 
 but on the left the Cornish lads were held up by machine- 
 gun fire east of "Clapham Junction," where there was an- 
 other fortified farm with sixty men and six machine-guns 
 inside. A Tank came up and sat outside the place, firing 
 point-blank at its walls, and the Cornwalls followed it and 
 burst the doors in and fought until again not a single Ger- 
 man remained alive, after a terrible bayonet contest. So 
 the attack had succeeded, but with forces now heavily re- 
 duced. It was now ten o'clock in the morning. The story 
 that follows is one long series of counter-attacks. It be- 
 gan with a barrage which came down with a tempest of 
 shells half-way through Inverness Copse. For miles 
 around the German batteries concentrated their fire on 
 this ground and raked it. From the east of Inverness 
 Copse, and at the same time from the south, storming par- 
 ties of Germans advanced behind this great gun-fire and, 
 though the first attack was broken and then the second by 
 rifles and machine-guns, a third developed in greater 
 strength. A runner cane down from the Somersets — one 
 of those brave runners who all day long and next day 
 worked to and fro through dreadful barrage-fire tintil 
 many were killed and other men went out to search for 
 those dead boys and look for their dispatches, unless they 
 had been blown to bits. The message from the Somersets 
 reported that they could not hold on. They were being 
 
814 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 enclosed on both flanks, and proposed to fall back half-way 
 through Inverness Copse, and this was done. Some re- 
 serves from light-infantry battalions were thrown in to 
 strengthen the line, and the Comwalls threw out a de- 
 fensive flank with strong points. 
 
 At midday another attack was made on the Somersets, 
 and driven off by rifles and machine-guns, and at two 
 o'clock they reported that the enemy was massing in an 
 attempt to turn their left flank, which was then weak. The 
 artillery answered an urgent call, and the German assembly 
 was destroyed. So the evening came and the night, and 
 the Light Infantry held on east of Stirling Castle and partly 
 in Inverness Copse with many dead and wounded about 
 them, and lines of German dead in front of them, await- 
 ing riflemen coming to their support. 
 
 In a brigade headquarters a group of officers waited 
 more anxiously for this help, having more responsibility. 
 They sat with wet towels about their heads and eyes, in 
 poisonous fumes and dreadful stenches which crept down 
 from' above, where heavy shells burst incessantly, shaking 
 all the earth and blowing out the candles. The concrete 
 ceiling bulged in. Runners came in white- faced and shak- 
 ing, after frightful journeys, and officers bent to the can- 
 dlelight to read scribbled messages sent down by hard- 
 pressed men. Outside were the groans of wounded men. 
 
 At dawn. Tanks went out to attack the strong points 
 north of Inverness Copse, where the enemy had rallied 
 again, and one of them approached Fitzclarence Farm 
 and broke up a counter-attacking preparation there. Some 
 Germans ran into the blockhouse there and shot down the 
 steel doors and lay doggo. Others came out of a trench 
 to attack the Tank, but fled before the fire. Later in the 
 morning German aeroplanes came out and flew very low 
 and played their machine-guns on to our men, but without 
 doing much harm. 
 
 From I A.M. to 3.30 a.m. the enemy kept a terrific bar- 
 rage over all our ground, and then flamed out all along 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 315 
 
 the line the signal of a new counter-attack. It was the 
 "flammenwerfer" attack against the Duke of Cornwall's 
 Light Infantry, and the whole sky was red with the light 
 of these advancing fire-jets. For a time, in spite of the 
 enemy's heavy losses, the Cornwalls had to retire before 
 these far-reaching flames, but they rallied and went for- 
 ward again, driving the enemy part of the way back, where 
 he was swept by our artillery-fire. The enemy kept up a 
 steady barrage-fire over three wide belts, and an officer 
 who went up to report the position had the worst hours of 
 his life on that journey through bursting shells and over 
 the fields of dead. But in spite of a message that had come 
 down reporting a new withdrawal, it was found that the 
 line was intact, and that the thin ranks of Light Infantry 
 and King's Royal Rifles had beaten back all the enemy's 
 assaults, and had destroyed their spirit for further attacks 
 by most deadly losses. We could not hold Inverness Copse, 
 but the fighting here was worthy of men who, during two 
 years of war, have fought with steadfast courage and have 
 many acts of heroism in their long record. 
 
 13 
 
 The Slaughter-House of Lens 
 
 August 23 
 One day, when it is possible to get in and around Lens, the 
 veil will be torn from a human charnel-house, or, rather, 
 from charnel-houses which none of us may yet enter or 
 see through the drifting smoke. Yesterday I looked down 
 on Lens and saw its roofless buildings and its gaping walls, 
 but I could only guess at the scenes which are hidden below 
 ground there in the tunnels where the Germans assemble 
 for their counter-attacks against the Canadians, and to 
 which they drag back their dead and wounded. Those 
 places must reek v>^ith the smell of death and corruption, 
 
316 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 for the losses of the Prussian Guards during the last few 
 days, and of other divisions who have come up against the 
 Canadians, have been, I am told and believe, enormous. 
 The Canadians tell me that their troops have never had 
 harder or more prolonged fighting, not even in their old 
 days of the Ypres salient nor on the Somme. Every hun- 
 dred yards of the ground they have taken, and during 
 the last week or so they have taken thousands of yards 
 of open country and of ruined streets in and about the 
 mining cites, until they have forced their way into Lens 
 itself, have been contested by desperate fighting and held 
 against unceasing counter-attacks delivered by great bodies 
 of picked German troops supported by monstrous bom- 
 bardments. Imagination can, if it likes, picture the 
 slaughter involved in all this to those German assault 
 troops, because they have not succeeded in gaining their 
 purpose, and counter-attacks like that, in those numbers 
 and in that strength, are shattered when they do not suc- 
 ceed. It is a wonderful tribute to the Canadians and to 
 their grim tenacity that, after all the repeated counter-at- 
 tacks against them, and after storms of fire from batteries 
 which have increased in number every day, they hold their 
 lines round Lens intact as they stood on August 15 and 16, 
 and have gained an entry into the streets of Lens and 
 swung up southwards with increasing pressure. 
 
 Lens is packed tight with German troops. They be- 
 long to the 4th Guards Division, and latterly to the ist 
 Guards Reserve, the crack division of the German army, 
 which had a month's rest at Cambrai before being sent into 
 this slaughter-house. For although that city is tunnelled 
 throughout, all the cellars being linked up and strengthened 
 with massive concrete, so that even heavy shells cannot 
 pierce down to them, men cannot fight in tunnels if they 
 are on the ofifensive, and must get out of them to make 
 their counter-attacks. It is at those times that they suffer 
 more hideously than in any other battle. 
 
 Our aeroplanes are always watching for these assem- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 317 
 
 blies. To take only one case out of many, they reported 
 a mass of men in a certain square of Lens the day before 
 yesterday. Our guns turned on to them, not only our field- 
 guns but our heavies, up to those howitzers which could 
 batter down a massive fortress after a few rounds. Men 
 under the fire of such shells as those things send do not 
 escape in great numbers. Most of them die. The Prus- 
 sians in the square of Lens were caught by this hurricane 
 fire, and before they could get into the tunnels many were 
 blown to bits. 
 
 Yesterday as I looked down on Lens the fire had 
 quietened on both sides, as though the guns were tired. 
 For several minutes at a time there was a great quietude 
 over the city of doom, and as the afternoon sun lay warm 
 upon its red walls, and cast black shadows across its de- 
 serted streets, where no single figure walked, it was hard 
 to believe that a few hours before swarms of men had 
 been fighting on the edge of those houses, and that the 
 place was full of new dead and old. The water of the 
 Souchez river was as blue as the sky, which was deep bright 
 blue above wispy clouds. A little light glinted from the 
 white church tower which a shell has smashed off at the 
 top. Perhaps some German officer was there staring 
 through his glasses, or perhaps it was only a bit of metal 
 caught by the sun. A smoke-barrage drifted densely across 
 the northern side of the city, and every now and then there 
 came a sharp vicious hammering of machine-guns to show 
 that somewhere in those ruins men were alive and watch- 
 ful. Then the guns got busy again, but in a slow, unhur- 
 ried way. The enemy had a hate against the outer edge of 
 Lievin, and every two minutes smote it with a great shell, 
 which burst with big billowing smoke-clouds, and a flash 
 which was followed by a low, sullen roar. He flung shells 
 as big as this into Angres and Avion, but seemed to rely 
 on machine-gun fire to barrage our lines nearest to his own. 
 Behind me to the right were some of our big howitzers, 
 old friends of mine, whose voices I prefer at a mile or 
 
S18 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 two*s distance. They tuned up their bass viols and played 
 their dead march. Perhaps it was their shells I saw smash- 
 ing on to the German defences. Rosy clouds went up, and 
 in those clouds the dust of red-brick houses went up, too, 
 leaving gaps of nothingness where the buildings had once 
 been. There was a kite-balloon in the sky behind me with 
 the wispy clouds like white horse-tails all curled about it, 
 and presently there came riding above it several coveys of 
 aeroplanes, so that the sky was filled with their loud drone- 
 song. They flew round about Lens, and only a few Ger- 
 man "Archies" tried to strafe them with bursts of shrap- 
 nel. They flew not very high above the mining city, circling 
 round and round like hawks before swooping to their prey. 
 The guns were loud but shrill; and sweet and clear above 
 them a bugle sounded from some camp of ours behind the 
 lines among the cornfields all gold and glowing in the even- 
 ing light, with a little shadow sleeping beside each stook; 
 and it blew the evening retreat. It is the first time I have 
 heard a bugle play that call so near to the guns, and it 
 stirred one's heart with a queer sense of emotion, as though 
 its music belonged to the spirit world. The night closed 
 down on the battlefields but did not bring peace. Below 
 the stars there were many strange lights and fires and 
 sounds. A tall bank of clouds was pierced with lightning 
 so like shell-fire, except for a longer tremor of light, that 
 men looked and wondered what devilry was on over there 
 in the back areas. The devilry was round about. It was 
 time for the German raiders to come out under the cover 
 of darkness, and they came and dropped their bombs over 
 quiet villages and among the cornfields and the hop-gar- 
 dens. The explosions came up with sharp flashes and grufl^ 
 roars from dark fields between black belts of trees. From 
 the earth hands of light stretched up, reaching up to the 
 clouds and touching them with their finger-tips. They felt 
 their way for those flying raiders, groped about like hands 
 searching in a dark room, and then clasped each other. In 
 the archway below their long straight arms shrapnel 
 
 I 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 319 
 
 glinted like confetti. Our anti-aircraft guns had got theif 
 target. Along the lines rockets were rising, giving a sec- 
 ond or two of white steady light to No Man's Land, with 
 fringes of trees etched blackly against it. Somewhere a 
 dump — ours or the enemy's — had been hit, and the clouds 
 above it were tipped with scarlet flame. So then the night 
 scene began as usual, and as it is played out below the 
 stars every night. And somewhere in Lens the Prussians 
 were preparing for a new counter-attack, while German 
 doctors in deep tunnels stared down upon a mass of 
 wounded which was their day's harvest. Into one of the 
 houses there the night before, where fifteen German sol- 
 diers lay in the cellar after a day of prodigious fighting, a 
 party of Canadian raiders appeared and dragged them all 
 out to a ditch over the way in the Canadian lines. Well 
 may the German prisoners say to these men of ours, "You 
 give us no rest." There is never a night's rest in Lens nor 
 round about it unless men are put to sleep for ever. Many 
 of them were put to sleep by thousands of gas-shells fired 
 into the town by our artillery a night ago as an answer 
 to German gas. Perhaps they were glad of it, for the 
 wakeful hours in Lens must be hell on earth. 
 
 August 24 
 To the south of Lens there is a slag-heap overgrown with 
 weeds called the Green Grassier. It is clearly visible across 
 the Souchez river beyond a broken bridge, and I have often 
 seen it from the lower slopes of Vimy. It was the scene 
 of fierce fighting yesterday, for in the morning the Cana- 
 dians, who are showing an indomitable spirit after ten days 
 of most furious attacks and counter-attacks, launched an 
 assault upon it and seized the position. Later in the day 
 the enemy came back in strength and, after violent efforts, 
 succeeded in thrusting the Canadians off the crest of this 
 old mound of cinders, though they still cling to the western 
 side. It is another incident in the long series of fierce 
 and bloody encounters which since the battle of Vimy, on 
 
320 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 April 9, have surrounded the city of Lens and given to 
 its streets and suburbs a sinister but historic fame. The 
 Canadians have fought here with astounding resolution. 
 They have hurled themselves against fortress positions, and 
 by sheer courage have smashed their way through streets 
 entangled with quick-set hedges of steel, through houses 
 alive with machine-gun fire, through trenches dug between 
 concrete forts, through tunnels under red-brick ruins, 
 Sometimes too strong to be touched by shell-fire, and 
 through walls loopholed for rifle-fire and hiding machine- 
 gun emplacements designed to enfilade the Canadian line of 
 advance. Through the cites of St. -Laurent, St. -Theodore, 
 and St.-Emilie, to the north and west of Lens, they have 
 fought past high slag-heaps and pit-heads, along railway 
 embankments, and down sunken roads, until they have 
 broken a route through frightful defences to the western 
 streets of the inner city. 
 
 Every day, and sometimes many times a day, they have 
 been counter-attacked by swarms of Germans coming up 
 out of their tunnels, and between these attacks they have 
 been under terrific gun-fire from a wide semicircle of 
 heavy batteries. In the early days of the war the French 
 fought like this through the streets of Vermelles, smashing 
 their way from one wall to another, from one house to 
 another, and over trenches dug across the streets. That 
 lighting in Vermelles stands as one of the most frightful 
 episodes of the war, and when I first went there I stood 
 aghast at the relics of this bloody struggle. But Vermelles 
 is hardly more than a village, and the mining district of 
 Lens, with all its suburbs, covers several square miles of 
 ground, so that the Canadians have had a longer and a 
 harder task. Six German divisions have attacked them in 
 turn, and have been shattered against them. These are the 
 7th and 8th, the 4th Guards Division, the nth Reserve, 
 the 220th, and the ist Guards Reserve Division. In addi- 
 tion to these six divisions, some portions, at any rate, of 
 the 185th Division and of the 36th Reserve Division have 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 331 
 
 been engaged. The total German strength used at Lens 
 must well exceed fifty battalions, and the German losses 
 may perhaps be estimated at between 12,000 to 15,000 men. 
 
 The Canadians themselves have been hard pressed at 
 times, but have endured the exhaustion of a savage strug- 
 gle with amazing strength of spirit, grimly and fiercely 
 resolved to hold their gains, unless overwhelmed by num- 
 bers in their advanced positions, as it has sometimes hap- 
 pened to them. But it is no wonder that some of the men 
 whom I met yesterday coming out of that city of blood 
 and death looked like men who had suffered to the last 
 limit of mental and bodily resistance. Their faces were 
 haggard and drawn. Their eyes were heavy. Their skin 
 was grey as burnt ash. Some of them walked like 
 drunken men, drimk with sheer fatigue, and as soon as 
 they had reached their journey's end some of them sat 
 under the walls of a mining village with their chalky hel- 
 mets tilted back, drugged by the need of sleep, but too 
 tired even for that. They were men of the battalions who 
 three days ago came face to face with the enemy in No 
 Man's Land, a stretch of barren cratered earth between 
 St.-Emilie and the northern streets of Lens, and fought 
 him there until many dead lay strewn on both sides, and 
 their ammunition was exhausted. An officer of one of 
 these battalions came out of a miner's cottage to talk to 
 me. He was a very young man with a thin, clean-shaven 
 face, which gave him a boyish look. He was too weary to 
 stand straight and too weary to talk more than a few jerky 
 words. He leaned up against the wall of the miner's cot- 
 tage, and passed a hand over his face and eyes, and said : 
 
 'T'm darned tired. It was the hell of a fight. We fought 
 to a finish, and when we had no more bombs of our own 
 we picked up Heine's bombs and used those." [The Cana- 
 dians call their enemy Heine and not Fritz.] "Heine was 
 at least three times as strong as us, and we gave him hell. 
 It was hand-to-hand fighting — rifles, bombs, bayonets, butt- 
 ends, any old way of killing a man, and we killed a lot. 
 
322 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 But he broke our left flank, and things were bloody in the 
 centre. He had one of his strong points there, and swept 
 us with machine-gun fire. My fellows went straight for 
 it, and a lot of them got wiped out. But we got on top of 
 it and through the wire, and held the trench beyond until 
 Heine came down with swarms of bombers." 
 
 This young Canadian officer was stricken by the loss 
 of many of his men. "The best crowd that any fellow 
 could command," and he had been through indescribable 
 things under enormous shell-fire, and he had had no sleep 
 for days and nights, and could not sleep now for thinking 
 of things. But he smiled grimly once or twice when he 
 reckoned up the enemy's losses. The remembrance of the 
 German dead he had seen seemed like strong wine to his 
 soul. ''We made them pay," was his summing up of the 
 battle. The nightmare of it all was still heavy on him, and 
 he spoke with a quiet fierceness about the enemy's losses 
 and the things he had endured in a way which would scare 
 poor, simple souls who think that war is a fine picturesque 
 business. 
 
 J A senior officer of a battalion on the flank of his was a 
 different type of man — a very tall, strong- featured man of 
 middle age, like an English squire of the old style, with a 
 fine smiHng light in his eyes, in spite of all he had been 
 through, and with a vivid way of speech that would not 
 come fast enough to say splendid things about his men, to 
 describe the marvellous way in which they had fought in 
 frightful conditions, to praise first one and then another 
 for the things they had done when things were at their 
 worst. He had been addressing some of the survivors of 
 this battle when I came upon him, and I saw them march 
 away, straightening themselves up before this officer of 
 theirs, and proud because he was pleased with them. He 
 thanked them for one thing above all, and that was for 
 the gallant way in wnich, after all their fighting, they had 
 gone out to fetch in their dead and wounded, so that not 
 one wounded man lay out there to die or to be taken pris- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 323 
 
 oner, and the dead were brought back for burial. He said 
 a word, too, for Heine, as they call him. The Germans 
 had not sniped or machine-gunned the stretcher-bearers, but 
 had sent their own men out on the same mission too. That 
 was after the battle, and there was no surrendering while 
 the fighting was on. 
 
 This officers' story was as wonderful as anything I have 
 heard in this war. And the man himself was wonderful, 
 for he had had no sleep for six days and nights, and had 
 suffered the fearful strain of his responsibility for many 
 men's lives; yet now, when I met him straight from all that, 
 he was bright-eyed and his mind was as clear as a bell, and 
 the emotion that surged through him was well controlled. 
 He described the things I have attempted to describe be- 
 fore — the fortified streets and houses of Lens, which make 
 it one great fortress, tunnelled from end to end with exits 
 into concrete forts two yards thick in cement, in the ruined 
 cottages. On the morning of our attack the enemy was 
 expecting it, and within a minute and a half of our barrage 
 put down his own barrage with terrific intensity. So there 
 were the Canadians between two walls of high explosives, 
 and it was between that inferno that they fought in the 
 great death struggle. For the Canadians had already ad- 
 vanced towards the enemy's line, and in greater numbers-- 
 three times as great — he had advanced to ours, and the 
 two forces met on the barren stretch of earth crossed by 
 twisted trenches, which for a time had been No Man's 
 Land. 
 
 While the battalion on the left was heavily engaged fight- 
 ing with rifles and bombs until their ammunition gave out, 
 and then with bayonets and butt-ends, the battalion on 
 the right was working southward and eastward to the 
 northern outskirts of Lens. They came up at once against 
 the fortress houses from which machine-gun and rifle fire 
 poured out. The Canadians in small parties tried to sur- 
 round these places, but many were swept down. Some of 
 them rushed close to the walls of one house, which was a 
 
SU FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 bastion of the northern defences of Lens, and were so close 
 that the machine-guns, through slits in the walls, could not 
 fire at them. They even established a post behind it and 
 beyond it, quite isolated from the rest of their men, but 
 clinging to their post all day. The enemy dropped bombs 
 upon them through the loopholes and sand-bagged windows, 
 fired rifle-grenades at them, and tried to get machine-guns 
 at them, but there were always a few men left to hold 
 the post, until at last, when the line withdrew elsewhere, 
 they were recalled. One house near here, into which a party 
 of Canadians forced their way, was a big arsenal. Its 
 cellars were crammed with shells and piled boxes of bombs. 
 In other cellars were dead bodies, and the stench of corrup- 
 tion mingled with the stale vapour of gas. Down in one 
 of these vaults a young Canadian soldier stayed with his 
 officer, who was badly wounded, and could not leave him, 
 but waited until night, when he carried the officer back to 
 safety. 
 
 Before that night came there were great German counter- 
 attacks. Masses of men carrying nothing but stick-bombs, 
 which they had slung around them, advanced down the 
 communication-trenches and flung these things at the Ca- 
 nadians of the left battalion, who were fighting out in the 
 open, and in another communication-trench with the right 
 battalion. The enemy walked over the piled corpses of his 
 own dead before he could drive back the Canadians, but 
 by repeated storming parties he did at last force them to 
 give way and retreat down the trench to gain the support 
 of their comrades of the other battalion, which had not 
 been so hard pressed. These came to the rescue, and for a 
 long time held the German grenadiers at bay. The fight- 
 ing was fierce and savage on both sides. 
 
 At last, weakened by their losses and with failing stores 
 of ammunition, these two battalions were given the order 
 to retire to a trench farther back, and the survivors of the 
 most desperate action in Canadian history withdrew, still 
 fighting, and established blocks in the communication- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 3^5 
 
 trenches down which the enemy was bombing, so that they 
 could not pass those points to the hne upon which here 
 on the north of Lens the Canadians had fallen back. South- 
 ward there had been no withdrawal, and other battalions 
 had forced their way forward a good distance, shutting up 
 that entrance to the city and getting down into the deep 
 tunnels, over which there howled the unceasing fire of the 
 German heavies. Our own guns were hard at work, and 
 I have already told how the Prussians were destroyed in 
 the square of Lens by 12-inch shells and shrapnel. 
 
 I could write more, but I have written enough. The 
 Canadians never had fighting so hard as this, but the losses 
 they have inflicted upon the enemy have made Lens a Prus- 
 sian tomb, so that its tunnels are death vaults. The heart 
 of the city is still a fortress, and the new garrison is still 
 strong there, so that, like Thiepval, which held out for 
 many weeks after it was enclosed on three sides. Lens will 
 not fall in a night. But as a dwelling-place for German 
 troops it is a city of abomination and dreadfulness. 
 
 14 
 
 The Agony of Armentieres 
 
 September 15 
 The harvests of France and Flanders have been gathered 
 in, and already the plough, driven by men too old to fight 
 or boys too small and young, or by peasant women whose 
 men are somewhere near St-Quentin or Verdun, is turning 
 up the stubble in the fields and making a brown landscape 
 where three weeks ago it was all gold and bronze. 
 
 The trees are turning brown also, deepening to a reddish 
 tint in all the woods between Boulogne and the battlefields, 
 where there are only dead trees. Round about Poperinghe 
 the trailing hops have been pulled down from their poles, 
 already stripped in places by last month's gale, and the 
 
326 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 sticks are all bare. Outside the wooden huts built on the 
 edge of war by refugees from Ypres and shell-broken vil- 
 lages, Flemish women sit with the hops in their laps and 
 in great baskets beside them, and British soldiers on the 
 march with dry throats exchange remarks about the good 
 beer which they may never have the luck to drink. White 
 cloud-mountains which turn black and threaten a deluge 
 between bursts of sunshine are banked up above the russet 
 foliage and the brown earth and the old black windmills 
 which wave their arms across the landscape, and in the 
 wind there is a smell of moisture and mist, and the first 
 faint sniff of rotting leaves. It is the autumn touch — the 
 autumn touch of a war in which some of us have seen four 
 harvests gathered into French barns and four winters come. 
 It makes one feel a bit sad, that thought. It puts an autumn 
 touch for a second or two into the souls of men coming 
 back from leave as I came back with some of them two 
 days ago. 
 
 By day the sky out here is full of interest, for one cannot 
 go anywhere near the lines without seeing that aerial ac- 
 tivity which has become intense and fierce lately. Yester- 
 day I saw a great flight of our aeroplanes over the dead 
 town of Armentieres. There were between twenty and 
 thirty of them making their way over the German lines, 
 and the enemy hated the sight of them. His anti-aircraft 
 guns got to work savagely and bursts of black shrapnel filled 
 the sky all about those steady wings, but did not bring them 
 down. He hated other aircraft watching over his lines — 
 a long line of kite-balloons, "clustered like grapes," as some 
 one, described them, in our side of the sky. They were as 
 white as snow when the sun touched them, and made tempt- 
 ing targets for long-range guns. Some German gunners 
 registered on one of them nearest to Armentieres, and I saw 
 a terrific burst of yellow smoke, so close to it that it seemed 
 like a hit. But the smoke cleared, and the kite balloon 
 stayed calmly on its wire, and there was no parachute dem- 
 onstration by our observers in the basket. The drone of 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 327 
 
 our aeroplanes and the reports of German anti-aircraft guns 
 made the only noise in Armentieres — that and the sound of 
 two men's footsteps as I and another walked through the 
 streets of that town which is dead. 
 
 It is a queer thing to walk through a big town out of 
 which all life has gone, and queer to me especially in Armen- 
 tieres, because I knew it not long ago when there were many 
 women and girls about its streets, and when one could take 
 one's choice of tea-shops — though only eighteen hundred 
 yards away from the German line — and get an excellent 
 little dinner in more than one restaurant. One could have 
 one's hair cut and a shampoo to the musical accompaniment 
 of field-batteries outside the town, and buy most of the 
 things a man wants in the simple life of war (except peace) 
 in shops kept by brave Frenchwomen — women too brave 
 and too rash because they lived within 1800 yards of the 
 enemy's line as though it were eighteen miles. Armentieres 
 was a modern little manufacturing town for lace and thread, 
 with neat red-brick houses kept by well-to-do people who 
 liked good comfortable furniture,' and put a piano into their 
 front parlour and a little marble Venus and other knick- 
 knacks of art on the drawing-room table as a proof of good 
 taste above the mere sordid interest of money-making. 
 
 For a long time in the war that town has been known 
 to British soldiers who have passed it on their way to 
 Plug Street as "Armentears." They made friends with 
 some of the girls in the tea-shops, and said "Hallo, granny ! 
 Tray bong !" to old ladies who sold them picture post cards. 
 Now it is a town of tears to any people who once lived 
 there. The tea-shops have been smashed to bits and the 
 women and the girls have gone, unless their bodies lie in 
 the cellars beneath the ruins. The agony of Armentieres 
 began at the end of June, when the enemy first began to 
 bombard it with systematic violence, and though there is no 
 life left in it the broken houses are still battered by more 
 shells when the enemy's gunners have nothing else to do. 
 When I walked through its streets yesterday I was the 
 
328 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 witness of the horror that had passed. The German bom- 
 bardment began quite suddenly one night, and the old 
 women and the girls and the children were in their beds. 
 They rushed down into their cellars, not for the first time, 
 because during nearly three years of war stray shells had 
 often come into the town. But never like this. These were 
 not random shells, scattered here and there. They came 
 with a steady and frightful violence into every part of the 
 town, sweeping down street after street, blowing houses 
 to dust, knocking the fronts off the shops, playing fantastic, 
 horrible tricks of choosing and leaving, as shell-fire does 
 in any town of this size. There were gas-shells among the 
 high explosives, and their poison filtered down into the 
 cellars. A fire broke out in one of the squares beyond the 
 old church of St.-Vaast, and the houses were gutted by 
 flames, which licked high above their roofless walls. 
 
 The fires were out when I walked there yesterday, and the 
 church of St.-Vaast was surrounded by its own ruins — 
 great blocks of masonry hurled from its dome and but- 
 tresses amidst a mass of broken glass. Inside there is a 
 tragic ruin, and rows of cane chairs lie in wild chaos among 
 the broken pillars and the piled stones. The pipes of the 
 great organ have been flung out of their framework, but 
 curiously the side altars, with the figures of apostles and 
 saints, and the central figure of the Sacred Heart, are hardly 
 touched, and stand unscathed amidst this great destruction. 
 There is nothing new in all this. For three years I have 
 been walking through destroyed towns and villages, but it 
 has the grim interest of recent history, and Armentieres 
 is the scene of a tragedy to its civilian population which 
 makes one's heart ache with a new revolt against this mon- 
 strous cruelty of war upon the innocent and the helpless. 
 
 It was easy to see what had happened during those days 
 and nights of terror some weeks ago. I looked into the 
 blown-out fronts of little shops and houses, and saw how 
 everything had been abandoned in that rush of women and 
 children to the cellars. In spite of the wreckage of the 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 329 
 
 upper stories and of the walls about them, some of the 
 rooms were intact. Here were the remains of an estaminet, 
 with its cash-box on the bar counter, and games such as 
 soldiers love — dominoes and darts, and quoits and bagatelle, 
 set out as though for an evening's entertainment. Here 
 was a chemist's shop, with many bottles unbroken on the 
 shelves, though most of the house was blown across the 
 street. I looked through a hole in the wall to a drawing- 
 room, with a piano, standing amid a litter of broken furni- 
 ture, as though some madman had wreaked his fury on the 
 sofa and chairs. 
 
 But it was in the cellars that the pitiful drama had been 
 — in those cellars down which I peered wondering whether 
 any poor bodies lay there still. The shells had pierced 
 down to some of the women hiding in them. Poison-gas 
 came to choke some of them. Rescue parties of our 
 R.A.M.C. went into Armentieres immediately to get the 
 poor creatures away, and risked their lives a score of times 
 on each journey they made. It is an amazing thing that 
 even then, in spite of their terror and their agony and 
 their wounds, many of the old women could hardly be 
 made to leave the town, and clung desperately to their 
 homes, though these had fallen down on top of them. 
 
 Outside Armentieres yesterday I met one of the R.A.M.C. 
 lads who had helped in this rescue work — he has been 
 given a Military Medal for it — and he told me of his trou- 
 ble with two old ladies when things were at their worst. 
 Neither had a rag of clothing on except the blankets he 
 wrapped round them as they lay on stretchers; but when 
 his attention wandered from them, owing to shells which 
 burst close to the ambulance, one of these old dames scram- 
 bled up and ran off naked down the street. He went after 
 her, and on his return found that the other old lady had 
 given him the slip. 
 
 He had astounding experiences, this Wessex boy who is 
 an expert in bandaging wounds, and through many days 
 of dreadfulness and many nights he worked in Armentieres 
 
830 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 under heavy fire, and did not turn a hair. He was such a 
 Mark Tapley that when everything was falling about him 
 and Hell was let loose he became more and more cheerful 
 and refused to take things seriously. 
 
 "I don't think I ever laughed so much," he told me yes- 
 terday. "I don't know how it was, but I couldn't help see- 
 ing the comical side of it all, in spite of the ghastly sights." 
 I suppose this boy's sense of humour was touched by the 
 monstrous idiocy of the shell-fire, which produced effects 
 like those on a music-hall stage when the funny man breaks 
 all the crockery and brings the roof down over his head. 
 He laughed like anything when he was shelled out of his 
 makeshift dressing-station on one side of the street, and 
 had to establish his quarters on the other side of another 
 street. 
 
 "How's it going, my lad!" asked his officer, who came 
 to visit the aid post. 
 
 *'Well, sir," he answered, *'it's rather hotter than the 
 last place, except for direct hits." 
 
 He laughed ''like anything" again when a shell came 
 through the kitchen and smashed up the stove, and failed 
 to kill an old lady, already covered with bruises but very 
 talkative. He laughed again when they had to pack up 
 traps in a hurry, with the stiff body of a small dead child 
 on the top of the kit and a barrage down the street. 
 
 "This is the funniest old show I ever did see," was the 
 comment of the boy from Wessex, and certainly, when one 
 comes to think of it, it is a funny thing that such things 
 should happen in this civilized world of ours and in this 
 Christian age. But the boy from Wessex, and others like 
 him, did not let their sense of humour get the better of 
 their pity or their work of rescue. They crawled out and 
 dragged in the bodies of dead or wounded people. 
 
 Down below in the cellars was a crowd of poor people, 
 mostly women and girls, and when the shell-fire was at its 
 height their wailing and their prayers were rather trouble- 
 some to the Wessex boy and his comrades upstairs bandag- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 331 
 
 ing the wounded. The R.A.M.C. men, at most deadly risk 
 to themselves, managed to clear most of the cellars, carry- 
 ing out the people on shutters, and taking them away in 
 ambulances to hospitals. To one of these casualty clearing- 
 stations was brought a boy of nineteen, who had been 
 gassed. He was a life-long parayltic and wizened like an 
 old man, and deaf and dumb. Nobody knew where he 
 had come from or to whom he belonged, but he had one 
 creature faithful to him. It was a small dog, who came 
 on the stretcher with him, sitting on his chest. It watched 
 close to him when he lay in the hospital, and went away 
 with him, sitting on his chest again, when he was sent 
 farther away to another clearing-station. This dog's fidel- 
 ity to the paralysed boy, who was deaf and dumb and 
 gassed, seems to men who have seen many sights of war 
 and this agony in Armentieres the most pitiful thing they 
 know. 
 
 Yesterday, apart from the knocking of anti-aircraft guns 
 and the drone of our planes, it was all quiet there, and I' 
 walked through the silent streets over the broken bricks and 
 glass, and was startled by the utter death of the town. For 
 this quietude and ruin of a place that one has seen full of 
 life gives one a sinister sensation, and one is frightened by 
 one's loneHness. 
 
 15 
 The Battle of Menin Road 
 
 September 20 
 Our troops attacked this morning before six o'clock on a 
 wide front north and south of the Ypres-Menin road, and 
 have gained important ground all along the line. It is 
 ground from which during the past six weeks there has 
 been that heroic and desperate fighting which I have de- 
 scribed as best I could in my daily messages, giving even 
 at the best only a vague idea of the difficulties encountered 
 
SS2 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 by those men of ours who made great sacrifices in great 
 endeavours. It is the ground which in the centre rises up 
 through the sinister woodlands of Glencorse Copse and 
 Inverness Wood to the high ground of Polygon Wood and 
 the spurs of the Passchendaele Ridge, which form the ene- 
 my's long defensive barrier to the east of the Ypres saHent. 
 Until that high land was taken progress was difficult for 
 our troops on the left across the Steenbeek, as the enemy's 
 guns could still hold commanding positions. The ground 
 over which our men have swept this morning had been 
 assaulted again and again by troops who ignored their 
 losses, and attacked with a most desperate and glorious 
 courage, yet failed to hold what they gained for a time, 
 because their final goal was attained with weakened forces 
 after most fierce and bloody fighting. The Empire knows 
 who those men were — the old English county regiments, 
 who never fought more gallantly; the Scots, who only let 
 go of their forward positions under overwhelming pressure 
 and annihilating fire; the Irish divisions, who suffered the 
 most supreme ordeal, and earned new and undying honour 
 by the way they endured the fire of many guns for many 
 days. As long as history lasts, the name of these woods, 
 from which most of the trees have been swept, and of 
 these bogs and marshes which lie about them, will be linked 
 with the memory of those brave battalions who fought 
 through them again and again. They are not less to be 
 honoured than those who with the same courage, just as 
 splendid, attacked once more, over the same tracks, past 
 the same death-traps, and achieved success. By different 
 methods, by learning from what the first men had suffered, 
 this last attack has not as yet been high in cost, and we 
 hold what the enemy has used all his strength and cunning 
 to prevent us getting. He used much cunning and poured 
 up great reserves of men and guns to smash our assaulting 
 lines. For the first time on July 31 we came up against his 
 new and fully prepared system of defence, and discovered 
 the power of it. Abandoning the old trench system which 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 333 
 
 we could knock to pieces with artillery, he made his for- 
 ward positions without any definite line, and built a large 
 number of concrete blockhouses, so arranged in depth that 
 they defended each other by enfilade fire, and so strong that 
 nothing but a direct hit from one of our heavier shells 
 would damage it. And a direct hit is very difficult on a 
 small mark like one of those concrete houses, holding about 
 ten to twenty men at a minimum, and fifty to sixty in their 
 largest. These little garrisons were mostly machine-gimners 
 and picked men specially trained for outpost work, and 
 they could inflict severe damage on an advancing battalion, 
 so that the forward lines passing through and beyond them 
 would be spent and weak. Then behind in reserve lay the 
 German "Stosstruppen," specially trained also for counter- 
 attacks, which were launched in strong striking forces 
 against our advanced lines after all their struggle and loss. 
 Those blockhouses proved formidable things — ^hard nuts 
 to crack, as the soldiers said who came up against them. 
 There are scores of them whose names will be remembered 
 through a Hfetime by men of many battalions, and they 
 cost the lives of many brave men. Beck House and Borry 
 Farm belong to Irish history. Wurst Farm and Winnipeg, 
 Bremen Redoubt and Gallipoli, Iberian and Delva Farm, 
 are strongholds round which many desperate little battles, 
 led by young subalterns or sergeants, have taken place on 
 the last day of July and on many days since. English and 
 Scots have taken turns in attacking and defending such 
 places as Fitzclarence Farm, Northampton Farm, and Black 
 Watch Corner in the dreadful region of Inverness Copse 
 and Glencorse Wood. To-day the hard nut of the concrete 
 blockhouse has been cracked by a new method of attack and 
 by a new assault, planned with great forethought, and 
 achieved so far with high success. 
 
 Among the troops engaged on the 2nd Army front were 
 the Australians and South-Africans, Welsh and Scottish 
 battalions, and many of the old English regiments, includ- 
 ing the Cheshires, Warwicks, Worcesters, Stafifords, Wilt- 
 
834 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 shires, Gloucesters, Berkshires, Oxford and Bucks, York 
 and Lancashires, Sherwood Foresters, and Rifle Brigade. 
 The Divisions to which they belonged were, from north to 
 south, the 2nd Australians, ist Australians, the 23rd and 
 41st (with the 2ist and 23rd in reserve), the 39th, the 19th, 
 the 30th, 14th, and 8th. 
 
 I should like to give the full details of the preparations 
 which have made this success possible and the methods by 
 which some at least of the terrors of the blockhouse have 
 been laid low, but it cannot yet be done, and it is enough 
 now that good results have been attained. One thing was 
 against us as usual last night. After several fine days the 
 weather turned bad again, and last night many men must 
 have looked up at the sky, groaned, and said, ''J^^t our 
 luck." At half -past ten it began to rain heavily, and all 
 through the night there was a steady drizzle. It was awful 
 to think of that ground about the woodlands, already full 
 of water-holes and bogs, becoming more and more of a 
 quagmire as the time drew near when our men have to rise 
 from the mud and follow the barrage across the craters. 
 All through the night our heavy guns were slogging, and 
 through the dark wet mist there was the blurred light of 
 their flashes. Before the dawn a high wind was raging 
 at thirty miles an hour across Flanders, and heavy water- 
 logged clouds were only 400 feet above the earth. How 
 could our airmen see. When the attack began they could 
 not see, even when they flew as low as 200 feet. They 
 could see nothing but smoke, which clung low to the battle- 
 fields, and they could only guess the whereabouts of Ger- 
 man batteries. Later, v/hen some progress had been made 
 at most points of the attacking line, the sky cleared a little, 
 blue spaces showed through the black storm-clouds, and 
 there were gleams of sun striking aslant the mists. 
 
 This sky on the salient was a strange vision, and I have 
 seen nothing like it since the war began. It was filled with 
 little black specks like midges, but each midge was a British 
 aeroplane flying over the enemy's lines. The enemy tried 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 335 
 
 to clear the air of them, and his anti-aircraft guns were 
 firing wildly, so that all aboui them were puffs of black 
 shrapnel. Behind, closely clustered, were our kite-balloons, 
 like snow-clouds where they were caught by the light, star- 
 ing down over the battle, and in wide semicircles about the 
 salient our heavy guns were firing ceaselessly with dull, 
 enormous hammer-strokes, followed by the shrill cry of 
 travelling shells making the barrage before our men, and 
 having blockhouses for their targets and building walls of 
 flying steel between the enemy and our attacking troops. 
 In the near distance were the strafed woods of old battle- 
 grounds like the Wytschaete Ridge and Messines, with their 
 naked gallows-trees all blurred in the mist. 
 
 Our men had lain out all night in the rain before the 
 attack at something before six. They were wet through to 
 the skin, but it is curious that some of them whom I saw 
 to-day were surprised to hear it had been raining hard. 
 They had other things to think about. But some of them 
 did not think at all. Tired out in mind and body' under 
 the big nervous strain which is there, though they may be 
 unconscious of it, they slept. '1 was wakened by a friend 
 just before we went over," said one of them. The anxiety 
 of the officers was intense for the hours to pass before the 
 enemy should get a hint of the movement. It seemed that 
 in one part of the line he did guess that something was 
 in the wind and in the mist. This was on the line facing 
 Glencorse Wood. An hour or two before the attack he 
 put over a heavy barrage, but most of it missed the heads 
 of the battalions. There were many casualties, but the men 
 stood firm, never budging, and making no sound. They 
 all thought that some of their comrades must have been 
 badly caught, but, as far as I can find, it did not do great 
 
 damage. 
 
 All along the line the experience of the fightmg was 
 broadly the same. Apart from local details and difficulties, 
 the ground was not quite so bad as had been expected, 
 though bad enough, being greasy and boggy after the rain. 
 
336 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 but not impassable. The shell-holes were water-logged, 
 and they were dangerously deep for badly wounded men 
 who might fall in, but for the others there was generally 
 a way round over ground which would hold, and our as- 
 saulting waves who led the advance were lightly clad, and 
 could go at a fair pace after the barrage. "I saw wounded 
 men fall in the shell-holes," said a Warwickshire lad to-day, 
 "and God knows how they got out again, unless the 
 stretcher-bearers came up quick, as most of them did; but 
 as for me, I had lain in a shell-hole all night up to the waist 
 in mud, and I was careful to keep out of them." The 
 barrage ahead of them was terrific — the most appalling 
 fence of shells that has ever been placed before advancing 
 troops in this war. All our men describe it as wonderful. 
 "Beautiful" is the word they use, because they know what 
 it means in safety to them. 
 
 In the direction of Polygon Wood the plan of attack 
 seems to have worked like clockwork. The Australians 
 moved forward behind the barrage stage by stage, through 
 Westhoek and Nonne Boschen, and across the Hanebeek 
 stream on their left, with hardly a check, in spite of the 
 German blockhouses scattered over this country. In those 
 blockhouses the small garrisons of picked troops had been 
 demoralized, as any human beings would be, by the enor- 
 mous shell-fire which had been flung around them. Some, 
 but not all, it seems, of the blockhouses had been smashed, 
 and in those still standing the German machine-gunners got 
 their weapons to work with a burst or two of fire, but 
 then, seeing our troops upon them, were seized with fear, 
 and made signs of surrender. At nine o'clock this morn- 
 ing the good news came back that the Australians were right 
 through Glencorse Wood. Later messages showed that our 
 troops were fighting their way into Polygon Wood. They 
 swept over the strong points at Black Watch Corner, North- 
 ampton Farm, and Carlisle Farm. There was stiff fighting 
 round a blockhouse called Anzac Comer, east of the Hane- 
 beek stream, and it was necessary to organize two flank 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 337 
 
 attacks and work round it before the enemy machine-gun 
 fire could be silenced by bombs. In another case near here 
 the enemy came out of a blockhouse ready to attack, but 
 when they saw our men swarming up, they lost heart and 
 held up their hands. It is difficult to know how many pris- 
 oners were taken here in these woods and strong points. 
 The men's estimates vary enormously, some speaking of 
 scores and others of hundreds. 
 
 All this time the enemy's artillery reply was not excep- 
 tionally heavy, and, though it was prompt to come after the 
 first SOS signals went up from his lines, it was erratic and 
 varied very much in the success of our counter-battery work, 
 which all through the night and for days past has been 
 smothering his guns. South of the attack in Glencorse 
 Copse and Polygon Wood the assault in Inverness Copse 
 and Shrewsbury Forest, across the bog-lands round the 
 Dumbarton Lakes, was made by English battalions, includ- 
 ing the Queen's, the East and West Kents, the Northum- 
 berland Fusiliers, Sherwood Foresters, the King's Royal 
 Rifles, and the West Riding battalions. It was the vilest 
 ground, low-lying and flooded, and strewn with broken 
 trees and choked with undergrowth, but the troops here 
 kept up a good pace, and flung themselves upon the block- 
 houses which stood in their way. At an early hour our men 
 were reported to be on a ridge south-east of Inverness Copse 
 and going strong towards Veldhoek. The enemy's barrage 
 came down too late, and one officer, who was wounded 
 by a shell-splinter, led his men, i6o of them, to their first 
 position with only nine casualties. 
 
 Most of our losses to-day were from machine-gun fire 
 out of the blockhouses, and that varied very much at dif- 
 ferent parts of the line. There was some trouble at Het 
 Pappotje Farm in this way, where a party of German 
 machine-gunners put up a desperate resistance, shutting 
 themselves in behind steel doors before they were routed 
 out by a bombing fight. Southward from a strong point 
 called Groenenburg, or "Green Bug" Farm, to Opaque 
 
338 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Wood by the Ypres-Comines Canal, the attack by the 
 Cheshires, Wiltshires, Warwicks, Staffords, and Glouces- 
 ters was successful, though the enemy still holds out up 
 to the time I write in Hessian Wood, where he is defending 
 himself in a group of blockhouses against the Welsh Regi- 
 ment and Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 
 
 I have dealt so far with the centre of the attack, and 
 I know very little as to the fighting on the north by the 
 5th Army, except that the Highlanders, London Territo- 
 rials, Lancashire and Liverpool battalions, and Scots and 
 South-Africans have swept past a whole system of block- 
 houses, like Beck House and Borry Farm, running up 
 through Gallipoli, Kansas Cross, and Wurst Farm, across 
 the Langemarck-Zonnebeke road. All through the morn- 
 ing our lightly wounded men came filtering down to the 
 safer places in the Ypres salient and then to the quiet fields 
 behind, and they were in grand spirits in spite of the mud 
 which caked them and the smart of their wounds. Some 
 of them were brought down on the trolley trains, which go 
 almost as far as the battle-line, and some in open buses, 
 and some by German prisoners, but there were many Ger- 
 mans among the wounded — some of them with very ghastly 
 wounds, and these took their place with ours and mingled 
 with them in the dressing-stations, and were given the same 
 treatment. Our wounded told some strange tales of their 
 experiences, but there was no moan among them, whatever 
 they had suffered. 
 
 One man of the Cheshires described to me how he saw a 
 German officer run out of a dug-out, which had been a block- 
 house blown in at each end by our heavy shell-fire, and 
 make for another one which still stood intact. With some 
 of his comrades, our man chased him, and there was a 
 great fight in the second blockhouse before the survivors 
 surrendered, among them the officer, who gave to my friend 
 a big china pipe and a case full of cigars as souvenirs. He 
 was killed afterwards by one of his own men, who sniped 
 him as he was walking back to our lines. In another strong 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 339 
 
 point there was a great and terrible fight. The Prussian 
 garrison refused to surrender, and a party of ours fought 
 them until they were destroyed. ''It was more lively than 
 Wytschaete," said a man who was in this fight. ''It was less 
 tame-like, and the Fritzes put up a better show." They 
 fought hard round Prince's Plouse and Jarrock's Farm and 
 Pioneer House, not far from Hollebeke Chateau. 
 
 The prisoners I saw to-day were shaken men. Most of 
 them were young fellows of twenty-one, belonging to the 
 1 91 6 class, and there were none of the youngest boys among 
 them. But they were white-faced and haggard, and looked 
 like men who had passed through a great terror, which in- 
 deed was their fate. They belonged mostly to the 207th 
 Prussian Division, and had suffered before the battle from 
 our great shell-fire, which had caused many casualties 
 among their reliefs and ration parties. Many other pris- 
 oners belonged to the 121st Division. I can only give this 
 glimpse or two of the crowded scenes and the many details 
 of to-day's battle. To-morrow there will be time perhaps 
 to write more, giving a deeper insight into this day of good 
 success, which is cheering after so much desperate fight- 
 ing — over the same fields, although never to so far a goal. 
 
 September 21 
 In spite of many German counter-attacks yesterday and 
 many vain and costly attempts to counter-attack to-day, we 
 hold all the ground gained by our men yesterday, except 
 at one or two strong points, after their victorious progress. 
 This morning when I went again among the men who have 
 been fighting — there was a blue sky over the rags and tat- 
 ters of the City of Ypres, and behind the tall, solitary tree- 
 stumps on the ridge that goes up to Polygon Wood by way 
 of Glencorse Copse, and all the air was filled with the song 
 of many aeroplanes — all that I learned yesterday about 
 the battle was made more certain by the narratives of these 
 young soldiers, who are proud and glad of what they call 
 a real good show. The wounded men walking down over 
 
340 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the wide stretch of fields, which are still under gun-fire, 
 weak with loss of blood, suffering the first pain of their 
 wounds, and shaken by their experiences under shells and 
 machine-gun fire, spoke with a quiet enthusiasm of the day's 
 success, and said "It was easy" behind such a colossal bar- 
 rage as our guns rolled in front of them. Some of them in 
 their eagerness went too fast for the barrage in order to 
 chase the enemy, and I have met Australians here and there 
 and some men of the Welsh Regiment, who fought farther 
 south, wounded because they ran in front of the barrage- 
 lines, and were caught in our shell-splinters. But that was 
 a rare episode, and along the whole line of attack the men 
 followed the moving walls of shells, vast shells that fling 
 up masses of earth like suburban villas, and the smaller 
 shells that fell like confetti, all glinting in the wet mist, 
 and felt sure that the enemy in front of them would have 
 lost all his fight when they reached his hiding-places, if any 
 lived. Many Germans died on that ground, so that the 
 shell-holes between the blockhouses are wet graves in which 
 their bodies lie, and many of the blockhouses which resisted 
 so long in former attacks are smashed, or at least so bat- 
 tered that the garrisons inside were dazed and demoralized 
 by the fearful hammering at their walls. 
 
 There was a broad belt of death across that mile deep 
 of woods and ridges and barren fields, but here and there, 
 as I have already told, men stayed alive in the concrete 
 houses and fought with their machine-guns to the last, and 
 even kept sniping from shell-holes in which they had es- 
 caped, up to the time our troops reached them. They were 
 brave men, most of them, for it needs great courage to 
 show any fighting spirit after such a fury of gun-fire, and 
 50 per cent, of our prisoners are wounded, as I have seen 
 myself, and the others are haggard and spent after their 
 frightful adventure. An hour or two ago I met a column 
 of them on the road, marching down slowly through a 
 ruined village, and staring hollow-eyed at all the movement 
 of our troops, at all the transport behind our lines, at 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 341 
 
 all our whistling, busy Tommies, who glance back at them 
 without any malice now that the battle is over. In a dress- 
 ing-station a young wounded German sprang to his feet 
 as I came in, and said, *'Good day, sir," very politely, but 
 the pallor of his face was that of a dead man. The Ger- 
 man officers who are prisoners show the same kind of 
 eagerness to salute, which is a rare thing for them, and I 
 hear that they do not disguise that yesterday was a day 
 of great defeat for themselves, and of great victory for 
 us. The completeness and quickness of it staggered them, 
 and they speak of our barrage-fire as an awful phenomenon 
 that has undone all their plans and destroyed the new 
 method of defence which they believed could save them 
 to the end. As wounded men or prisoners they see things 
 darkly, and we should be deep in folly if we believed that 
 all the enemy's strength of resistance is destroyed. But at 
 least this is clear after yesterday, that the new German 
 method of holding his lines lightly by small garrisons in 
 blockhouses, with reserves behind for counter-attacks, has 
 broken down, and by reverting to the old system of strong 
 front lines he would suffer again as he suffered in the 
 Somme under the ferocity of our artillery. 
 
 The German officers have hard words to say about their 
 Higher Command which has led them into this tragedy, and 
 their own pride is broken. Yesterday the reserve divisions, 
 which were brought up in buses and then assembled in places 
 near our new front, to be flung against our advanced lines, 
 had a dreadful time, and must have suffered great losses. 
 After the rain of the night and the mist of the morning, 
 the weather cleared in time for our airmen to go on recon- 
 noitring, as I saw them in swarms in yesterday's sky, and 
 they were quick to report the massing of the enemy. Our 
 guns were quick to fire at these human targets. These 
 counter-attacks developed several times against the Eng- 
 lish and Highland troops, who were fighting across the 
 Zonnebeke-Langemarck road, north-west of the Graven- 
 stafel and Abraham Heights, at a place called the Schrei- 
 
842 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 boom, north of Langemarck. Some of the Rifle Brigade 
 and King's Royal Rifles, with other hght-infantry troops, 
 failed at first to get a certain trench, and very hard fight- 
 ing took place during the day in a pocket with desperate 
 courage. At the same time the Highlanders south of them 
 were fighting very hard also round about the blockhouses 
 by Rose House, Pheasant Farm, and Quebec Farm beyond 
 the Pilkem Ridge, into which I looked a week or two ago, 
 when things were quiet on the line. The Highlanders were 
 driven back for a while, and the enemy's counter-attacks 
 were made in strong force at about ten o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, and several times later. But they were broken up each 
 time by the rifle-fire of the Scottish troops, and by our field- 
 batteries. 
 
 Large numbers of the enemy were killed here in our first 
 attack and afterwards. Besides the artillery, a heavy bom- 
 bardment was made before the men went out by trench- 
 mortars, which raked a small area of shell-holes so thor- 
 oughly that the German snipers in them were destroyed, 
 and an important trench was taken by the Scots with hardly 
 any casualties. A good deal more than 100,000 rounds of 
 shells must have gone over from the guns before the battle, 
 and afterwards the German storm troops who tried to 
 recover the ground were smothered with fire. Six times 
 they came on with much determination, and six times their 
 waves were broken up. Some London Territorials had to 
 repel part of the assaulting waves, after a gallant struggle 
 for their objectives, and one young officer among them 
 earned special honour by gathering a company of men 
 together and leading them against the advancing enemy, 
 whom they scattered with bombs and rifles. 
 
 Most of the Germans here in this district round Wurst 
 Farm, east of Winnipeg, were men of the 36th and 208th 
 Divisions, and were a mixture of Prussians and Poles, who 
 seem to have been stout-hearted fellows. Their local re- 
 serves were quickly exhausted, and in the afternoon, when 
 they threw in further reserves, these were broken up in 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 
 
 the same way. A frightful fate met a German division 
 which was brought up in the afternoon near Roulers to be 
 hurled against the Londoners and Highlanders. Our guns 
 broke up their columns, and when they rallied and re- 
 formed, broke them again. Our aeroplanes flew low over 
 them, strafing them with machine-gun fire, and at inter- 
 vals gas clouded about them, so that they had to put on 
 their masks, if they had time to put them on before they 
 fell, and marched blindly forward to another doom, for 
 some of those who came within range were shot down by 
 the London men, little fellows, some of them, with the 
 Cockney accent which makes me homesick for the Fulham 
 Road when I hear it along the roads of Flanders, but with 
 big, brave hearts. Three of the German battalions de- 
 ployed and drove against the Highlanders at Delva Farm 
 and Rose House, and fought so hard that they could only 
 be driven back when the Highlanders rallied, and at eight 
 o'clock in the evening swept them out and away. Strong 
 counter-attacks were made between six and seven in the 
 evening in the neighbourhood of Hill 37 and the country 
 round Bremen Redoubt, against the King's Liverpools, 
 where the South-African Scots held their line. 
 
 There were a great many blockhouses in this district, 
 some of them damaged and some still intact, and in those 
 undamaged forts little parties of men, who fired their 
 machine-guns to the last moment before death or surrender. 
 Hill 37 was a hard place to attack, as the Irish found it, 
 and here Lancashire men fought their way up and round 
 in spite of the waves of machine-gun bullets that swept the 
 ground about them. The Bremen Redoubt, which had been 
 so costly to the Irishmen on July 31, was carried by the 
 South-Africans in a fine assault, while Scottish troops were 
 gaining other strong points and drawing tight nets round 
 any blockhouse from which came any fire. Out of these 
 places, in all that part of the line, many prisoners were 
 taken, and they made their way down anxiously through 
 their own shell-fire, which was barraging these fields. A 
 
$44 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 great party of Germans, white-faced and afraid, were found 
 in the long galleries running out of a fortified place called 
 Schuler Farm. 
 
 South of all this the Australians were fighting in the 
 centre of yesterday's great attack where the ground rises 
 to the foul heights of Polygon Wood. The Australian lads 
 were in their most perfect form. They had had some rest 
 since the hard, bad days at Bullecourt and in the dreadful 
 valley of Noreuil, where I went to see them outside the 
 Queant-Drocourt line. Since then I had seen them in 
 the harvest-fields of France, in the market squares of Flem- 
 ish towns, along the dusty roads which lead up to the 
 Front. Always I felt it good to see those easy-going fel- 
 lows in their flap hats, so lithe, so clean-cut, so fresh. It 
 was an honour to get a salute from them now and then, 
 for they are not great at that sort of thing, and one could 
 see with half an eye that they have not lost any of their 
 quality since some of them fought their great epic at Helles 
 and Suvla Bay, and afterwards at Pozieres gained and held 
 their ground under months of great shell-fire, and then 
 at Bullecourt fought with the grim endurance of men who 
 will not yield to any kind of hammering if their pride 
 is in the job. They are boys, many of them, and simple- 
 looking fellows who were not cut to the model of barrack- 
 room soldiers. They have a wildish gipsy look when one 
 sees them camped in the fields, and free-and-easy manners 
 in the village estaminets. When I heard they were going 
 to attack Polygon Wood I knew that we should get it, if 
 human courage could have the say, for the Australians are 
 not easily denied if they set their mind on a thing, and for 
 all their boyishness — though they have middle-aged fellows 
 among them too — they have a grim passion in them at such 
 times. Yet they are free-and-easy always, even on the bat- 
 tlefield, and a bit impatient of checks and restraints. Know- 
 ing them, and the heart and soul of them, one of their 
 commanding officers arranged a method of preventing them 
 from getting bored with the long strain of a two hours' 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS S45 
 
 wait, which was ordered when they should have gained 
 their first objective. He sent up to them by the carrying 
 parties bundles of the previous day's papers, all the picture 
 papers especially, and large quantities of cigarettes. The 
 idea worked beautifully, and it was the strangest thing 
 that has happened in any great battle. The Australian 
 lads got at the papers, and on the ground which they had 
 just captured spread them out and studied the news of 
 the day and smoked their cigarettes with quiet enjoyment, 
 while ahead of them rolled a stupendous barrage, with thou- 
 sands of heavy shells that came screaming over their heads 
 from our guns behind them, answered by other shells that 
 came the other way, and burst farther back on the battle- 
 field. So they were seen by one of our airmen, who was 
 surprised by what he saw. 
 
 The going had been pretty bad before then, as I was 
 told to-day by some of the men whom I met slightly 
 wounded along the Menin road. The enemy seemed to 
 smell danger in the night and put over a heavy barrage just 
 before the attack started. It was on the tail of the Aus- 
 tralians, and might have demoralized them if they had not 
 been so high in heart. They got away in good order, and 
 kept going to keep pace with the travelling storm of shells 
 which broke before them. One queer thing happened near 
 Clapham Junction. The enemy had apparently planned a 
 raid with **flammenwerfer," or flame- jets as we call these 
 devilish engines, at the very time of the attack, and they 
 were met by the Australian shock of assault, and fell be- 
 fore it. While some of the Australians worked round Glen- 
 corse Copse and Nonne Boschen or Nuns' Wood, others 
 fought up by Westhoek across the Hannebeek towards the 
 post called by a curious coincidence Anzac Corner. After 
 heavy fighting for a little while at one of the blockhouses 
 the Australian flag was planted at Anzac Corner and 
 waves there still. In Nonne Boschen the ground was 
 marshy and encumbered with fallen trees, but the boys 
 struggled through somehow, and then started for the 
 
346 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Polygon Wood, where there is no wood, as there seldom 
 is in these places when our artillery has done its work, 
 but only some blasted trunks and stakes. In Glencorse 
 Wood and round about it there were a good many Germans, 
 and they fought hard. Fifty of them were killed in hand- 
 to-hand fighting, or fighting at close quarters, and a block- 
 house on the north-west of the wood, where the garrison 
 would not surrender, but kept his machine-guns going, was 
 taken by a bombing attack. So after a two hours' wait at 
 the end of the first lap the Australians flung away their 
 cigarettes and the assaulting waves passed on to the ridge 
 of Polygon Wood. They could not take all the line they 
 had been asked to take in the first attempt, and were checked 
 on the right by machine-gun fire. So they dug in on a 
 crescent, which had its right ear somewhere by Carlisle 
 Farm to the north of Black Watch Corner, until supports 
 came up to make good their losses on the way, and they 
 were able to go forward and straighten out. After that 
 the counter-attacks began. All of them were broken up 
 by artillery-fire, and when one of the German divisions was 
 flung in, the only men who reached our lines were those 
 who tried to escape from the barrage which our guns put 
 over their assembly position. I should like to give a fuller 
 history than I did yesterday about the taking of Inverness 
 Copse and the bogs of the Dumbarton Lakes, and the tan- 
 gled ground of Shrewsbury Forest, but I have no time, 
 as the wires wait, except to pay a tribute to the men who 
 fought there over most difficult country, crowded with 
 blockhouses, and under severe fire from the enemy's guns. 
 Men from Surrey and Kent, from the Midlands, from 
 Wales, from the North, the battalions of the 8th and 14th 
 Divisions, all fought and won with equal courage and 
 success. 
 
 September 23 
 The enthusiasm of the troops who fought in Thursday's 
 battle of the Menin road is good enough proof that they 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 347 
 
 achieved success that morning without those great losses 
 which take the heart out of victory. All the men I have 
 seen are convinced that the enemy's losses are heavy. Not 
 so much in the actual attack, where he held his blockhouse 
 system with small garrisons, as afterwards, when he tried 
 to counter-attack. 
 
 I have already put on record some of the attempts he 
 made to regain ground on the afternoon of the battle. Yes- 
 terday and to-day he has continued his efforts with even 
 more disastrous results to his unhappy troops. About mid- 
 day yesterday a German regiment was sent up in motor- 
 omnibuses to a point behind the enemy's lines to make a new 
 assault upon our positions in Polygon Wood. The three 
 battalions then took to the road, and were seen very quickly 
 by our observers. The artillery made that road a way of 
 fire, and the German soldiers were caught in it and dis- 
 persed. Odd companies of them worked their way forward 
 by other tracks, but lost themselves in the chaos of shell- 
 craters, where other heavy shells burst among them. They 
 were no longer battalions or companies, but a terror-stricken 
 collection of individual soldiers, taking cover in holes and 
 without guidance or command. An officer collected fifty 
 of them and led them back to reorganize. He had no notion 
 of what had happened to the rest of the regiment, except 
 that it was broken and ineffective, in this wild turmoil of 
 crater earth. He went forward again on reconnaissance, 
 and walked into a body of Australians, who took him 
 prisoner. 
 
 So it happened with another column at Zandvoorde. One 
 of our aerial observers watched the long trail of men 
 marching up the road and sent a message to the guns. They 
 were the heavy guns which found the target with 92 shells 
 and with twelve-inchers, which are monstrous and annihi- 
 lating. Down there at Zandvoorde it must have been hell. 
 We can only guess how many men were blown to pieces, and 
 it is not a picture on which the imagination should care 
 to linger. It was a bloody shambles. 
 
348 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Along the Menin road later in the day came another long 
 column of marching men. They were men of the Sixteenth 
 Bavarian Division, who had been sent up in urgent haste 
 without knowledge of the ground, without maps, and with 
 officers who seem to have had no definite instructions ex- 
 cept to fling their men in an attack somehow and anyhow. 
 Over their heads in the darkness under the stars flew a 
 British aeroplane with a bomb of the heaviest kind. When 
 our airman saw these hostile troops advancing, flying low 
 like a great black bat he dropped his frightful thing on the 
 head of the column. It burst with a deafening roar and 
 scattered the leading company. Flying in the same sky- 
 space as the big aeroplane was a number of other night 
 raiders of ours. They also flew low above the marching 
 troops, and all down the road dropped their explosives. 
 Our guns added their help, and they fired many rounds 
 down the Menin road, bracketing the ditches. It is a dread- 
 ful thing to walk along a road which is being "bracketed," 
 and with those birds of prey above them the Bavarians 
 must have suffered the worst kind of horror. They did 
 not get near to our lines with any counter-attack. 
 
 None of these counter-attacks has reached our lines near 
 Polygon Ridge, which is the ground most wanted by the 
 enemy, and the nearest seems to have been yesterday after- 
 noon, when some of the Australian boys with whom I talked 
 to-day saw the movement of men and the glint of bayonets 
 in a little wood on an opposite spur. They saw the move- 
 ment of men for a minute or two, and after that a fury 
 of shells which fell into the wood and filled it with flame 
 and smoke. 
 
 *T don't know how a mortal man could have lived 
 through that," said one of these lads. "If any Fritz got out 
 of that without being cracked he must have had the luck 
 of Old Harry." 
 
 There were many of these Australian boys among whom 
 I went to-day before they had cleaned themselves of the 
 dirt of battle, and while they were still on fire with the 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 349 
 
 emotion of their amazing adventure. Some of them had 
 escaped only by enormous luck. I talked with one stretcher- 
 bearer, a fine, big, bullet-headed fellow with an unshaven 
 chin and a merry smile, who was astounded to find him- 
 self alive. He had spent the day and night bandaging 
 wounded, and, with his mates, carrying them down to the 
 dressing-station, a mile and more back. All the time he 
 walked and worked with bursting shells about him. They 
 knocked out several of his mates, but left him untouched. 
 They killed two or three of the wounded on his stretchers 
 going down, but did not scratch him. They blew up dug- 
 outs just as he had gone out of them, and trenches through 
 which he made his way. He was buried in earth flung 
 up by heavy shells, and he fell many times into deep craters, 
 and men dropped all round him, but to-day he still had a 
 whole skin and a queer, lingering smile, in which there is 
 a look of wonderment because of his escape. 
 
 An Australian officer, who was through the Dardanelles 
 and the Somme and Bullecourt, a slim, small-sized Aus- 
 tralian, with a delicate, clean-cut face, thoughtful and grave, 
 with a fine light in his eyes, was helping a wounded lad on 
 to a stretcher when a shell came over his head, killed the 
 boy, but left the officer unscathed. It was this officer, this 
 slight, delicate-looking man, who captured, with three lads, 
 sixty men and a German battalion staff in their headquarter 
 dug-outs below Polygon Wood. 
 
 "Where is your revolver?" he said to the captain. The 
 German hesitated, and said : ''You will shoot me if I fetch 
 it." "I will shoot you if you don't," said the Httle Aus- 
 tralian. And he meant what he said, as I could see by the 
 set of his lips when he told me the tale. But the German 
 captain handed over his revolver quietly, and his maps, 
 which were very useful. 
 
 It was a wonderful scene to-day among all these Aus- 
 tralian lads, who had just been relieved and were talking 
 over the scenes of yesterday's history in small groups while 
 they scraped off the mud and shaved before bits of broken 
 
350 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 mirror, and polished up German rifles and machine-guns 
 and handled their souvenirs, found in the dug-outs and 
 blockhouses. Many of them were stripped to the waist, 
 some of them wore German caps, some of them slept like 
 drugged men in spite of all the noise about them. After 
 taking the first objective they had to wait for two hours 
 before they went on, and there were queer scenes about 
 the blockhouses and in the felled woods. They had found 
 the German rations, and besides the sausages and bread 
 and gallons of cold coffee in petrol-tins, which the boys 
 shared among themselves, quantities of long, fat, and ex- 
 cellent cigars. Hundreds of Australians smoked these 
 cigars while they waited for the barrage to lift, and when 
 they went on again hundreds of them were still pufling them 
 as they trudged on to Polygon Wood. They had a good 
 day. I have met some of them, who said they enjoyed 
 it, and would not have missed it for worlds. The excite- 
 ment of it all kept them going. The battlefield was a wild 
 pandemonium of men, and the imagination of people who 
 have never seen war will hardly visualize such scenes, with 
 lads laughing and smoking while others lay dead, with 
 groups, fighting and falling round blockhouses while others 
 were eating German sausages and joking in captured em- 
 placements, with stretcher-bearers carrying men back under 
 heavy shell-fire and German prisoners dodging their own 
 barrage-fire on their way to our lines. An Australian doc- 
 tor had his arm smashed, but stayed among the boys, re- 
 gardless of his own hurt. A V.C. officer of the Dardanelles 
 was killed as he went back wounded on a stretcher. Ger- 
 man wounded lay crying for help, and our men rescued 
 them. So about Glencorse Wood and Polygon Wood hu- 
 man agony and the wild spirits of Australian youth, death, 
 and the vitality of boyhood in the passion of a great adven- 
 ture were queerly mixed, and one side of this picture of war 
 would be hopelessly untrue if it left out the other side. 
 
 One enthusiasm of the Australians was about the Eng- 
 lish soldiers who fought on their right, the Yorkshire boys 
 
 II 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 351 
 
 and others who went through Inverness Copse. Again 
 and again yesterday I heard them loud in praise of the 
 Tommies. 
 
 ''By gosh, they'll do for me ! They went ahead in grand 
 style. They couldn't be stopped anyhow, though they came 
 up against a durned lot of machine-gun fire. They were 
 just fine." 
 
 Far north of all this, above the Zonnebeke, were the 
 Londoners of the 58th Division and the Highlanders of 
 the 51st Division, and, as I have already written in pre- 
 vious messages, they had severe fighting and had to bear 
 the brunt of great counter-attacks. The ground in front of 
 the London Territorials was bad and difficult — bad because 
 it was intersected with swamps and cut up by weeks of 
 shell-fire, and horribly difficult because of a ridge rising 
 up on the left to the German strong point of Wurst Farm. 
 
 The London boys swung left in order to attack Wurst 
 Farm, and, avoiding a frontal assault, worked left-handed 
 all the time till they reached the ridge, and then rushed 
 the blockhouse from the rear. The garrison was surprised 
 and caught. They fought desperately, but the Londoners 
 overpowered them. The surviving Germans complained 
 bitterly, and said it was impossible to use their machine- 
 guns on every side at once. "It is not a fair way of fight- 
 ing," said a German officer, "and the Londoners laughed 
 and said, ''Not half!" and "I don't think!" and other iron- 
 ical words. 
 
 In a big dressing-station up there they captured two doc- 
 tors and sixty men, of whom many were wounded. The 
 German doctors said, "Have you any wounded we can 
 help? We are not fighting men." And they made them- 
 selves useful, and were good fellows. 
 
 Down in the valley the Londoners came face to face 
 with a party of Germans who showed fight, but the Lon- 
 doners — little fellows some of them — walked through them 
 and over dead bodies who had fallen before their rifle-fire. 
 There was a lot of musketry both then and afterwards when 
 
352 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the enemy counter-attacked, and they fired Hke sharp- 
 shooters. Down below them and almost behind them the 
 line dropped away to the fort of Schuler Farm, where the 
 enemy still held out. "There are a lot of Boches down 
 there," said an officer on the brigade staff of the London 
 Territorials. "No," said the brigade major, and then: 
 "Yes, and, by the Lord, there's a German officer staring at 
 me. The blighter is telling one of his men to take a pot 
 at me. See!" The brigade major ducked down his head 
 as a bullet flattened against the blockhouse wall. 
 
 It was an awkward situation for the Londoners, but 
 they formed a defensive flank and sent some lads to help 
 the troops who were attacking the position. "Domine 
 dirige nos" is the London motto, and there were many Lon- 
 don boys who had it in their hearts that day, and said with 
 the dear old Cockney accent, "Gord *elp us." That was 
 when the German counter-attacks developed, but were 
 smashed by gun-fire. 
 
 In all this fighting, as far as I can find, the Highland 
 Territorials of the 51st Division upon the left had the blood- 
 iest fighting. They gained their ground with difficulty, 
 because a battalion of the Royal Scots was badly held up 
 by wire and bogs and machine-gun fire at a stream called 
 the Lekkerbolerbeek. They had to fall back, reorganize, 
 and attack again, which they did with splendid gallantry, 
 and held their ground only by most grim endurance, be- 
 cause the enemy counter-attacked them violently all day 
 long after the objectives had been gained. 
 
 The enemy's losses were certainly appalling to him. Offi- 
 cers in this fighting, who have been through many of our 
 great battles, tell me that they have never seen before 
 so many dead as lie upon this ground. In one section of 
 Pheasant Trench a hundred yards long there are nearly a 
 hundred dead. Before the attack our barrage rolled for- 
 ward slowly, like a devouring fire. Instantly all along the 
 German line green lights rose as S O S signals, but as the 
 barrage swept on, followed by the Scots, the lights went 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 353 
 
 out. They rose again from the farther lines, and then those 
 ceased as the shells reached them. Only in the blockhouses 
 and the dug-outs down by the Lekkerbolerbeek were any 
 Germans left alive. 
 
 The blockhouses were dealt with by small parties of 
 Highlanders, who had been in training to meet them, and 
 went like wolves about them, firing their machine-guns and 
 rifles through the loopholes if the garrisons would not come 
 out. So they swept on to their final goal, which was at 
 Rose House and the cemetery beyond Pheasant Farm. 
 These men had some terrible hours to face. By ill-luck 
 their left flank was utterly exposed, and hostile aeroplanes, 
 flying very low, saw this and flew back with the news. The 
 enemy was already developing a series of counter-attacks 
 by his ''Stosstruppen," or storm troops, of the 234th Divi- 
 sion, which from three o'clock in the afternoon till seven 
 o'clock that evening made repeated thrusts against the High- 
 landers' front, and the heaviest weight of two and a half 
 battalions was sent forward against this flank. It was pre- 
 ceded by the heaviest German barrage ever seen by these 
 Scots, who have had many experiences of barrage-fire. Ofli- 
 cers watching from a little distance were horrified by that 
 monstrous belt of fire, and the garrison of Gordons seemed 
 lost to them for ever. It was not so bad as that. Eventu- 
 ally this flank fell back from Rose House to Pheasant Farm 
 Cemetery and other ground, where they were rallied by a 
 battalion commander, one of the youngest men of his rank 
 in the British Army, who supplied them with fresh am- 
 munition and directed them to hold up the German infantry 
 advancing under cover of their bombardment. In spite of 
 their losses our men fought their way back and regained 
 part of the ground by desperate valour. Our guns wiped 
 out the other counter-attacks one by one, inflicting fright- 
 ful losses on the enemy. They were caught most horribly 
 as they came along the road. Thirty machine-guns played 
 a barrage-fire on his lines where German soldiers tried to 
 escape across the shell-craters. The Highlanders used their 
 
854 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 rifles effectively, one man firing over 500 rounds. And a 
 gun was brought into action from a Tank which had come 
 lip as far as an advanced blockhouse, in spite of the boggy 
 ground. 
 
 There was great slaughter among the enemy that day. 
 Since then the slaughter has gone on, for his counter-attacks 
 have not ceased. His guns have been very active, bombard- 
 ing parts of our line intensely, and in the air his scouts 
 and raiders have been flying over our lines in the endeavour 
 to observe and destroy our troops and batteries, flying low 
 with great audacity, and using machine-guns as well as 
 bombs. But we hold all the important ground gained last 
 Thursday. 
 
 16 
 
 The Way to Passchendaele 
 
 September 26 
 During the past forty-eight hours there has been hard and 
 prolonged fighting north and south of the Menin road, and 
 in spite of formidable counter-attacks by the enemy which 
 began early yesterday morning and still continue, our troops 
 have made a successful advance in the neighbourhood of 
 Zonnebeke and southward beyond the Polygon Wood race- 
 course, which now belongs to the Australians. 
 
 It is south of that, by Cameron House and the rivulet 
 called the Reutelbeek, that the enemy's pressure has been 
 greatest, and where the battahons of the 33rd and 39th 
 Divisions on the right of the Australians, including the 
 Queen's, have had the hardest time under incessant fire 
 and attack since dawn yesterday, but on their right Sher- 
 wood Foresters and Rifle Brigade men, also severely tried, 
 have swept across the Tower Hamlets Ridge in the direc- 
 tion of Gheluvelt. 
 
 It was fully expected that any new endeavour of ours to 
 advance beyond the ground gained in the battle of Septem- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 355 
 
 ber 20 would be met by the fiercest opposition. The cap- 
 ture of Polygon Wood and Westhoek seriously lessened the 
 value of Passchendaele Ridge, which strikes northward 
 and forms the enemy's great defensive barrier, and it was 
 certain that in spite of the heavy losses he has already 
 suffered in trying to get back that high ground above In- 
 verness Copse he would bring up all his available reserves 
 to hinder our further progress at all costs. 
 
 For two days before yesterday he made no sign of move- 
 ment in his lines, and was kept quiet by the breakdown of 
 all his previous counter-attacks, which our men repulsed 
 with most bloody losses to the enemy, so that their divi- 
 sions were shattered and demoralized. The German Com- 
 mand used that time to drag the broken units out of the 
 line and to replace them or hurry up to their support the 
 reserves who had been waiting in the rest areas behind. 
 These men were rushed up by motor-omnibus and rail- 
 ways to points where it was necessary to take to the roads 
 and march to the assembly positions ready for immediate 
 counter-attacks. Those were in the Zandvoorde and 
 Kruiseik neighbourhood, south-east of Gheluvelt, ready 
 to strike up to the Tower Hamlets Ridge while others could 
 be assembled behind the Passchendaele Ridge. 
 
 No doubt our attack for this morning did not leave out 
 of account the strength of resistance likely to be offered. 
 The enemy showed signs of desperate anxiety to check us 
 on the Polygon Wood line, and the ground going south of 
 it to the Cheluvelt Spur, and he made a great effort by 
 massed artillery to smash up the organization behind our 
 lines, and by a series of thrusts to break our front. On 
 Monday afternoon, increasing to great intensity yesterday, 
 he flung down his barrage-fire in Glencorse Wood and In- 
 verness Copse, fired large numbers of heavy long-range 
 shells over Westhoek Ridge, Observatory Ridge, Hooge, 
 and other old spots of ill-fame, and concentrated most 
 fiercely on the ground about Cameron House, Black Watch 
 Corner, and the Tower Hamlets. 
 
356 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 At six o'clock yesterday morning, supported by this ter- 
 rific fire, he launched his first attack on the Surreys, Scot- 
 tish Rifles, Middlesex Regiment, and other troops around 
 the Tower Hamlets, and owing to their losses they were 
 obliged to fall back some little way in order to reorganize 
 for an assault to recapture their position. These fought 
 through some awful hours, and several of their units did 
 heroic things to safeguard their Hues, which for a time 
 were threatened. 
 
 While they were fighting in this way the 4th and 5th 
 Australians, on the high ground this side of Polygon Wood 
 racecourse and the mound which is called the Butte, also 
 had to repel some fierce attacks which opened on them 
 shortly after eight o'clock in the morning. The enemy 
 was unable to pierce their line, and fell back from this 
 first attempt with great losses in dead and wounded. It 
 was followed by a second thrust at midday and met the 
 same fate. At two o'clock in the afternoon the Austra- 
 lians sent some of their men to help the Surreys and the 
 English troops on their right, who were passing through 
 a greater ordeal owing to the storm of fire over them and 
 the continued pressure of the enemy's storm troops, who 
 were persistent through the afternoon in spite of the trails 
 of dead left in their tracks. It was a serious anxiety on 
 the eve of a new battle, but it failed to frustrate our at- 
 tack. All the area through which the enemy was trying 
 to bring up his troops was made hideous by artillery-fire 
 and the work of the Royal Flying Corps. 
 
 It was a clear moonlight night, with hardly a breath of 
 air blowing, and all the countryside was made visible by 
 the moon's rays, which silvered the roofs of all the villages 
 and made every road like a white tape. Our planes went 
 out over the enemy's lines laden with bombs, and patrolled 
 up and down the tracks and made some thirty attacks 
 upon the German transport and his marching columns. 
 All his lines of approach were kept under continual fire 
 by our guns of heavy calibre, and for miles around shells 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 357 
 
 swept the points which marching men would have to pass, 
 so that their way was hellish. Our aircraft went out and 
 flew very low, and dropped bombs wherever they saw men 
 moving through the luminous mists of the night. Behind 
 our own lines air patrols guarded the countryside. They 
 carried lights, and as they flew in the starlit sky they them- 
 selves looked like shooting stars until they dropped low, 
 when their planes were diaphanous as butterfly's wings in 
 sunlight. On the battlefield there was no unusual gun-fire 
 for several hours after dark. Guns on both sides kept up 
 the usual night bombardment in slow sullen strokes, but 
 at least on the Australian front it was not until about 4.45 
 in the morning that the enemy opened a heavy barrage in 
 Glencorse Wood. The Australian troops were already 
 massed beyond that ground for the attack which was short- 
 ly due. On the north, up by Wurst Farm, on the lower 
 slopes of the Gravenstafel, our London Territorials were 
 also waiting to go "over the bags," as they call it. Against 
 them the German guns put over a heavy barrage, but that 
 line of explosives failed tc stop or check the assault. 
 
 It was almost dark when our London lads went forward 
 through a thick ground mist, which was wet and clammy 
 about them. Our artillery had opened before them the 
 same monstrous line of barrage-fire which they had fol- 
 lowed on the 20th, and they went after it at a slow trudge, 
 which gave them time to avoid shell-craters and get over 
 difficult ground without lagging behind that protecting 
 storm. That violence of fire was as deadly and terrifying 
 this morning as on that other day. Through the mist our 
 men saw the Germans running and falling, and many of 
 them did not stay in the blockhouses, though it was al- 
 most certain death to come out into the open before the 
 barrage passed. There were dead men in many shell- 
 craters before our men reached them, and others after- 
 wards, as they passed through clumps of ruin which had 
 once been hamlets and farms. There was such a mess of 
 brickwork and masonry at Aviatik Farm, where Germans 
 
858 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 hiding in concrete walls fired machine-guns and rifles for 
 a time until the British troops closed on them. 
 
 Something like 150 prisoners were taken in this section 
 of the attack, and one of them was a queer bird who be- 
 longed to the sea. That is to say, he had been a sailor 
 on the Dresden and was in the battle of Falkland Island 
 and off Coronel, where he was picked up by a Swedish 
 boat and taken back to Germany. To his disgust he was 
 put in the loth Ersatz Division, and now, after his soldier 
 life, wants to work in a British shipyard. He was sur- 
 prised at the food given to him, and thought it was a bribe 
 to get information from him, believing that England is 
 agonizing with hunger. 
 
 About a hundred and fifty prisoners were taken also, 
 by the troops on the right of this section, belonging mostly 
 to the 23rd Reserve Division, with some of the 3rd Guards. 
 Our men who attacked in the direction of Zonnebeke vil- 
 lage were Leicesters, Notts and Derbys, East Yorks, Royal 
 Scots, Gordons, and King's Own, and they had some stiff 
 fighting on the way to the Windmill Cabaret and Hill 
 Forty, which seems to be the key to the position. Here 
 they came against some of the blockhouses at Toronto 
 Farm and Van Isackere Farm, but did not meet great 
 trouble there. Some of them had been so badly knocked 
 by shell-fire that the garrisons inside were killed by con- 
 cussion, and from others men came out to surrender as 
 soon as our men were near them. Near the village of 
 Zonnebeke the fight was more serious against the Royal 
 Scots and East Yorks, and the enemy's gun-fire, which had 
 not been very heavy on the other ground of attack, smashed 
 along the line of the railway embankment. 
 
 The Australian advance across the racecourse of Poly- 
 gon Wood and northward across the spur to below Zonne- 
 beke Chateau was steady and successful. There was a 
 regular chain of blockhouses on the way, but there again 
 the old black magic of the pill-box failed. The men ral- 
 lied inside them, many of them being Poles of the 49fh 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 359 
 
 Regiment, who hate the Prussians in a fierce way and ask 
 us to kill as many as possible for their sake. Most of 
 them were quick and glad to surrender. A platoon of 
 them were taken in some wooden dug-outs below the high 
 mound of Polygon Wood, that old Butte which is supposed 
 to be the burial-place of a prehistoric chief, though by 
 the Australians it is believed to be the observation-post of 
 Sir Douglas Haig in 19 14. 
 
 The enemy's gun-fire was heavy over part of the ground, 
 and there was a nest of machine-guns along a road which 
 gave some trouble, but in the main attack the losses of 
 the Australians were not heavy up to the time they gained 
 the last objective. It was our aircraft which brought back 
 the first news of the Anzacs on the racecourse in Polygon 
 Wood, and later they had reached the farthest goal, where 
 prisoners were surrendering freely. On the left of their 
 front the Australians were quite satisfied with their posi- 
 tion. On the right they had great anxiety because of the 
 check to the troops below them. At one time it was found 
 advisable for the Australians to swing back their flank a 
 little in order to avoid its exposure. But the Australians 
 are full of confidence and are sure that they can handle 
 any counter-attack which may be launched against them. 
 It has been a hard day for all our men, especially for those 
 who bore the brunt of the enemy's fire, and I believe will 
 be counted as one of the biggest days of fighting in this 
 war. Its decision is of vital importance to the enemy and 
 to ourselves, and so far it is in our favour. 
 
 17 
 The Battle of Polygon Wood 
 
 September 2y 
 The battle which began yesterday morning, after a whole 
 day of counter-attacking by the enemy, in great numbers 
 
360 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 and by great gun-fire, lasted until nightfall, and, as I told 
 yesterday, did not pass without anxious hours for those 
 in command, and trying hours for some of our fighting 
 men. 
 
 From the left above Zonnebeke down to the Australian 
 front on the heights of the Polygon Wood Racecourse the 
 advance was made with fair ease through the blockhouse 
 system and without severe losses, as they are reckoned 
 in modern warfare, in spite of difficult bits of ground and 
 the usual snags, as our men call them, in the way of unex- 
 pected machine-gun fire, odd bits of trench to which small 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS S61 
 
 groups of Germans clung stubbornly, dirty swamps which 
 some of our men could not cross quickly enough to keep 
 up with the barrage, and danger zones upon which the 
 enemy heaped his explosives. 
 
 There were incidents enough for individual men to be 
 remembered for a lifetime, hairbreadth escapes, tight cor- 
 ners in which men died after acts of fine heroism, and 
 strong points like Hill 40, on the left of the ruins of Zonne- 
 beke, around which some of our troops struggled with for- 
 tune. 
 
 Apart from local vicissitudes here and there during these 
 first hours of the battle it became clear by midday, or 
 before, that from the extreme left of the attack down to 
 the vicinity of Cameron House, on the right of the Austra- 
 lians, the general success of the day was good. The criti- 
 cal situation was on the right of the 4th and 5th Austra- 
 lians, and involving their right because of the enemy's vio- 
 lent pressure on British troops there during the previous 
 day, and again when our new attack started, so that their 
 line had been somewhat forced back and the Australian 
 right flank was exposed. 
 
 Hour after hour reports coming from this part of the 
 field were read with some anxiety when it was known how 
 heavily some of our battalions were engaged. This men- 
 ace to our right wing was averted by the courage of men 
 of the Middlesex and Surrey Regiments of the 33rd Divi- 
 sion, with Argylls and Sutherlands and Scottish Rifles, and 
 by the quick, skilful, and generous help of the Australian 
 troops on their left. It is an episode of the battle which 
 will one day be an historic memory when all the details 
 are told. I can only tell them briefly and in outline. 
 
 After terrific shelling, on Tuesday last, the enemy 
 launched an attack at six o'clock against our line by Carlisle 
 Farm and Black Watch Corner, south of Polygon Wood, 
 and forced some of our English troops to fall back towards 
 Lone House and the dirty little swamp of the Reutelbeek. 
 These boys of Middlesex and Surrey suffered severely. 
 
862 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 For some time it was all they could do to hold out, and 
 the enemy was still pressing. A body of Scottish Rifles 
 was sent up to support them, and by a most brave counter- 
 thrust under great gun-fire restored part of the Hne, so 
 that it was strong enough to keep back any advancing wave 
 of Germans by rifle and machine-gun fire. 
 
 Another body of men, the Argyll and Sutherland High- 
 landers, held out on exposed ground, isolated from the main 
 line, and threatened with being cut off by the enemy's 
 assault troops. Sir Douglas Haig has mentioned them spe- 
 cially in his message yesterday, and they deserve great 
 honour for the heroic way in which they held on to this 
 ground for many hours that day and night under harassing 
 fire from coal-boxes, or 5'9's, which threatened to wipe 
 out their whole strength. Yesterday they had strength 
 and spirit left to renew the attack, and to make another 
 attempt to get back the lost ground into which the enemy 
 had driven a wedge. 
 
 At the same time the Australians had realized the dan- 
 gerous situation which exposed their right flank, and they 
 directed a body of their own troops to strike southward 
 in order to thrust back the German outposts. Those Aus- 
 tralian troops shared the peril of their comrades on the 
 right, and withstood the same tornado of shelling which 
 was flung over all the ground here; but in spite of heroic 
 sacrifice did not at first wholly relieve the position of the 
 Australian right, which remained exposed. After the great 
 attack by the Anzacs in the morning their line was thrust 
 right out beyond Cameron House, but the English and 
 Scottish troops of the 33rd Division, who had also gone 
 forward in the new attack south of them, were again met 
 by a most deadly barrage-fire and checked at a critical time. 
 I was with some of the Australians yesterday when all 
 this was happening, and when there was cause for worry. 
 They were unruffled, and did not lose confidence for a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 ''Give us two hours," said one of them who had a right 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 363 
 
 to speak, "and we will make everything as sound as a bell." 
 In those two hours they drew back their flank to get into 
 line on a curve going back towards Lone House, and estab- 
 lished defensive posts which would hold off any attack likely 
 to be launched against them. 
 
 ''It is hard luck on the English boys down there," said 
 the Australians, "but they have had a bad gruelHng, and 
 they will come along in spite of it. There is not an Austra- 
 lian in France who doesn't know how the Tommy-Boys 
 fought on the 20th, and that will do for us." 
 
 The "Tommy-Boys," as the Australians call them, fought 
 as they have fought in three years of great battles, and in 
 spite of the ordeal through which they had passed — and 
 it was not a light one — they saved the situation on that 
 ground below Polygon Wood, and made it too dangerous 
 and too costly for the enemy to stay. Early this morning 
 the survivors of the Germans who had thrust a wedge be- 
 tween our lines past Cameron House crawled out again and 
 our line was straightened. 
 
 How the Australians established themselves on Polygon 
 Wood Racecourse and beyond the big mound called the 
 Butte I told in my message yesterday. Farther north the 
 Leicesters, Notts and Derbys, Royal Scots, Gordons, and 
 King's Own of the 59th and 3rd Divisions had attacked 
 north of the Ypres-Roulers railway, running at right 
 angles to the Langemarck-Zonnebeke road. On that road, 
 barring the way, was the station of Zonnebeke, now a mass 
 of wreckage, fortified with machine-gun redoubts, and 
 farther south the ruins of Zonnebeke church and village. 
 Across the road was the Windmill Cabarei;, an old inn 
 which has been blown off the map on the high ground of 
 Hill 40, which rises gradually to a hump a hundred yards 
 or so north of the station. It was bad ground to attack, 
 and strewn with little blockhouses of the new type, though 
 they are still called pill-boxes after an older and smaller 
 type. The blockhouses did not give much trouble. Our 
 new form of barrage, the most frightful combination of 
 
m^ FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 high explosives and shrapnel that has yet appeared in war, 
 rolled backwards and forwards about them, so that the 
 garrisons huddled inside until our men nipped behind them 
 and thrust rifles or bombs through the machine-gun loop- 
 holes, if they had not previously escaped to shell-craters 
 around where they might have more chance of escape. 
 
 And here I might say in passing that the enemy has 
 already modified his methods of holding the blockhouses, 
 and while only a few men remain inside, distributes the 
 rest of the garrison in shell-holes on either side, with their 
 machine-guns in the organized craters. Some of them 
 were found by our men, and though many of them had 
 been killed by our gun-fire, others remained shooting and 
 sniping until they were routed out. 
 
 The worst part of the ground on this line of attack 
 was around a blockhouse called Bostin Farm, where there 
 was a dismal, stinking swamp so impassable that the Royal 
 Scots, Scottish Fusiliers, and East Yorks of the 3rd Divi- 
 sion who tried to make their way through it lost touch with 
 the barrage, which rolled ahead of them, and had to work 
 round and up towards Hill 40. Here they came under ma- 
 chine-gun fire, and although some men forced their way 
 up the slope of the knoll on which the Windmill Cabaret 
 stood, they did not quite reach the crest. 
 
 Meanwhile men of the Gordons, Suffolks, and Welsh 
 Fusiliers were attacking round about Zonnebeke, where the 
 ground was swept by machine-gun bullets, and seized the 
 ruin of the church and the outskirts of the station yard. 
 There was heavy shelling from the enemy all day, which 
 caused the line to fall back a little, and at six o'clock yes- 
 terday evening the enemy launched two counter-attacks 
 from Zonnebeke and another around Hill 40. Half an 
 hour later the Royal Scots and Royal Scottish Fusiliers 
 moved forward to thrust the enemy back, and at exactly 
 the same time another counter-attack of his advanced in 
 their direction. Each body of men were protected by bar- 
 rage-lines of heavy shell-fire, and our shells and the Ger- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 96^ 
 
 man shells mingled and burst together in a wide belt of 
 fury, and sometimes neither side could cross it. 
 
 Farther north South Midland men did well. They ad- 
 vanced from Zevenkote on the right and Schuler Farm 
 on the left to Van Isackere Farm and Dochy Farm and 
 other blockhouses on each side of the high road between 
 Langemarck and Zonnebeke with hardly a check. They 
 found many of the blockhouses badly damaged after the 
 heavy fire that had been poured on each one of them, and 
 if they were not damaged the men inside were so nerve- 
 shaken that they were eager to surrender. Apparently they 
 had not expected the attack to follow the hurricane bom- 
 bardment, because there had been other shoots of this 
 kind before, and they made no real attempt to get their 
 machine-guns into action. It was from the slopes of the 
 Gravenstafel and the Abraham Heights beyond that ma- 
 chine-gun fire fell upon the Midland men, and the enemy^s 
 guns were shooting down the gullies between these ridges. 
 But the ground in this part of our attack yesterday was 
 taken without grave trouble and without great losses. 
 
 Most of the prisoners taken on this ground were Saxons, 
 and those I have seen marching down to a captivity which 
 they prefer to the field of battle are men of a good physique, 
 and smart, soldierly look. It is astonishing how quickly 
 they recover from the effect of bombardment and the great 
 horror of battle as soon as they get beyond the range of 
 shell-fire. But they are gloomy and disheartened. The of- 
 ficers especially acknowledge that things are going badly 
 for Germany, and say that there is, for the time at least 
 until the new class is ready, a dearth of men of fighting 
 age, so that the drafts they get are miserable and unfit. 
 They are overwhelmed with the thought of the monstrous 
 gun-power which we have brought against them to counter- 
 act their own artillery, which once had the mastery, and 
 they are struck by the audacity of our air service. 
 
 Certainly our flying men have been doing all in their 
 power to make life intolerable on the German side of the 
 
S66 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 lines. I have already described how they went out on 
 Tuesday night and broke up the columns of men marching 
 to attack us. One of these birds found a different kind of 
 prey. It was opposite the Australian front where a team 
 of German gunners were getting a gun away. Our airman 
 flew low over the heads of the gunners and played his ma- 
 chine-gun on to them and dropped bombs. He smashed up 
 the gun-limber and laid out the gunners, and the gun re- 
 mains there still, with the bodies of men and horses around 
 it. To-day out beyond Ypres I saw flights of our men 
 going out again beyond the German lines for that battle 
 in the air which has never ceased since the battle of Flan- 
 ders two months ago. 
 
 The weather is still in our favour, and there is. a blue 
 sky to-day and a soft, golden light over all this Flemish 
 countryside where our troops go marching up to the lines 
 with their bands playing, or lie resting in the hop-fields 
 on the way. That old place of horror, the Yser Canal, 
 reflected the blue above, and in the air there was that sense 
 of peace which belongs to the golden days of autumn. 
 But the guns were loud, and the flight of their shells went 
 crying through the sky. 
 
 October 2 
 Through the haze which lies low over Flanders, though 
 above there is still a blue sky, the noise of great gun-fire 
 goes on, rising and falling in gusts, and, like the beat of*' 
 surf to people who live by the sea, it is the constant sound 
 in men's ears, not disturbing their work unless they are 
 close enough to suffer from the power behind the thunder- 
 strokes. The trees are yellowing into crinkled gold, and 
 there is the touch and smell of autumn in the night air, and 
 the orchards of France are heavy with fruit. Wonderful 
 weather, the soldiers say. The artillery battle is endless, 
 and on both sides is intense and widespread. It was fol- 
 lowed yesterday by five German counter-attacks, which did 
 not reach our lines. In a very desperate way the enemy h 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 367 
 
 trying to push us back from positions which are essential 
 to the strength of his defence. All his guns are at work. 
 Is it the last phase of the war ? Does the enemy know that 
 he must win or lose all ? Our men have that hope in their 
 hearts, and fight more grimly and with higher spirit be- 
 cause of it. The success of the last two battles has deep- 
 ened the hope, and men come back from the line, back to 
 the rest-billets, with the old conviction newly revived that 
 at last they have the enemy down and under and very near 
 xiopelessness. In the rest-billets are the men who come 
 back. They come marching back along the dusty roads 
 from the fire-swept zone, first across ground pitted with 
 new-made shell-holes, with the howl of shells overhead, 
 and then through broken villages on the edge of the bat- 
 tlefields, and then through standing villages where only 
 a gap or two shows where a haphazard shell has gone, and 
 then at last to the clean, sweet country which no high 
 explosives reach, unless a hostile airman comes over with 
 his bombs. 
 
 In any old billet in Flanders one hears the tale of battle 
 told by men who were there, and it is worth while, as yes- 
 terday, when I sat down at table with the officers of a bat- 
 talion of Suffolks in a Flemish farmhouse. The men were 
 camped outside, and as I passed I liked the look of these 
 lads, who had just come out of one of the stiff est fights 
 of the war. They looked amazingly fresh after one night's 
 rest, and they stood in groups telling their yarns in the 
 good old dialect of their county, laughing as though it had 
 all been a joke, though it was more than a joke with death 
 on the prowl. 
 
 "Your men look fit," I said to the colonel of the Suf- 
 folks, and he smiled as though he liked my words, and said, 
 "You couldn't get their tails down with a crowbar. It 
 was a good show, and that makes all the difference. They 
 have been telling the Australian boys that you have only 
 got to make a face at the Hun and he puts his hands up. 
 They knocked the stuffing out of the enemy." 
 
368 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Inside the farmhouse there was the battaHon mess, at one 
 long table and one short, because it was felt better for all 
 the officers to be together instead of splitting up into com- 
 pany messes. I looked down the rows of faces, these clean- 
 cut English faces, and was glad of the luck which had 
 brought so many of these young officers back again. They 
 told the tale of the battle, and each of them had some de- 
 tail to add, because that was his part of the show, and it 
 was his platoon, and they had left the fighting-line the 
 night before. They spoke as though all the things had 
 happened long ago, and they laughed loudly at episodes of 
 gruesome interest and belonging to those humours of war 
 which are not to be written. 
 
 There was a thick mist when they went away at dawn, 
 so dense that they could not see the line of our barrage 
 ahead, though it was a deep belt of bursting shells. They 
 had been told to follow close, and they were eager to get 
 on. They went too fast, some of them almost incredibly 
 fast, over the shell-craters, and round them, and into them, 
 and out of them again, stumbling, running, scrambling, not 
 turning to look when any comrade fell. 
 
 "I was on the last position three-quarters of an hour 
 before the barrage passed,'' said a young officer of the Suf- 
 folks. He spoke the words as if telling something rather 
 commonplace, but he knew that I knew the meaning of 
 what he said, a frightful and extraordinary thing, for with 
 his platoon he had gone ahead of our storm of fire and 
 had to wait until it reached and then passed them. Some 
 of their losses were because of that, and yet they might 
 have been greater if they had been slower because the 
 enemy was caught before they could guess that our men 
 were near. They put up no fight in the pill-boxes, those 
 little houses of concrete which stank horribly because of 
 the filth in them, and from the shell-craters where snipers 
 and machine-gunners lay men rose in terror at the sight 
 of the brown men about them, and ran this way and that 
 like poor frightened beasts, or stood shaking in an ague 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 369 
 
 of fear. Some ran towards their own lines with their 
 hands up, shouting "Kamerad," believing they were run- 
 ning our way. They were so unready for attack that the 
 snipers had the safety-clip on their rifle-barrels, and others 
 were without ammunition. 
 
 In one shell-hole was an English-speaking German. "I 
 saved him," said one of the young Suffolk officers. *'He 
 was a downhearted fellow, and said he was fed up with the 
 war and wanted nothing but peace." 
 
 Near another shell-hole was a German who looked dead. 
 He looked as if he had been dead for a long time, but an 
 English corporal who passed close to this body saw a 
 hand stretch out for a bayonet within reach, and the man 
 raised himself to strike. Like a man who sees a snake with 
 his fangs out, the corporal whipped round, grabbed the 
 German's bayonet and ran him through. The way to the 
 last objective was easy on the whole, and the enemy was 
 on the run with our men after them until they were ordered 
 to stop and dig in. The hardest time came afterwards, as 
 it nearly always comes when the ground gained had to be 
 held for three more days and nights without the excite- 
 ment of attack and under heavy fire. That is when the 
 courage of men is most tried, as this battalion found. The 
 enemy had time to pull themselves together. The German 
 gunners adapted their range to the new positions and shelled 
 fiercely across the ways of approach, and scattered 5-9's 
 everywhere. It was rifle-fire for the Suffolk men all the 
 time. They had not troubled to bring up a great many 
 bombs, for the rifle has come into its own again, now that 
 the old trench warfare is gone for a time, or all time, and 
 with rifle-fire and machine-gun fire they broke down the 
 German counter-attacks and caught parties of Germans who 
 showed themselves on the slopes of the Passchendaele 
 Ridge, and sniped incessantly. They used a prodigious quan- 
 tity of small-arms ammunition, and the carriers risked their 
 lives every step of the way to get it up to them. They fired 
 30,000 rounds and then 16,000 more. There was one 
 
870 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 officer who spent all his time sniping from a little patch 
 of ground that had once been a garden. He lay behind 
 a heaped ruin and used his field-glasses to watch the slopes 
 of rising ground on his left, where human ants were crawl- 
 ing. Every now and then he fired and picked off an ant 
 until his score reached fifty. German planes came flying 
 over our troops to get their line, flying very low, so that 
 their wings were not a tree's height above the shell-craters, 
 and our boys lay doggo not to give themselves away. Some 
 of the hostile planes were red-bellied, and others which 
 came searching the ground were big, porpoise-like planes. 
 They dropped signal-lights and directed the fire of the 59' s. 
 A private of the Suffolks, lying low but watchful, saw a 
 light rise from the ground as one of these machines came 
 over, and it was answered from the aeroplane. "That's 
 queer," he thought; "dirty work in that shell-hole." He 
 crept out to the shell-hole from which the signal had come, 
 and found three German soldiers there with rockets. They 
 tried to kill him, but it was they who died, and our man 
 brought back their rifles and kit as souvenirs. 
 
 More rifle ammunition was wanted as the time passed, 
 and the carriers took frightful risks to bring it. The drums 
 of the Suffolks did well that day as carriers and stretcher- 
 bearers, passing up and down through the barrage-fire, and 
 there was a private who guided a party with small-arms 
 ammunition — ten thousand rounds of it — ^to the forward 
 troops, with big shells bursting over the ground. Twice 
 he was buried by shell-bursts, which flung the earth over 
 him, but on the way back he helped to carry a wounded man 
 800 yards to the regimental aid post under hot fire. He 
 was a cool-headed and gallant-hearted fellow, and went, 
 up again as a volunteer to the forward positions, and on 
 the same night crawled out on a patrol with a young lieu- 
 tenant to reconnoitre a position on the left which was still 
 in German hands. From farther left, on rising ground, 
 the Germans sprinkled machine-gun fire over the battalion 
 support lines, and the earth was spitting with those bullets. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 371 
 
 But in their own lines the German soldiers were moving 
 about with Red Cross flags picking up their wounded, and 
 they did not fire at our stretcher-bearers, apart from the 
 barrage-fire of 5-9's through which they had to make their 
 way. Only once did they play a bad trick. Under the 
 Red Cross flag some stretcher-bearers went into a pill-box 
 which had been abandoned, and shortly after machine-gun 
 fire came from it. That is the kind of thing which makes 
 men see red. 
 
 i8 
 
 Abraham Heights and Beyond 
 
 October 4 
 Another great battle has opened to-day, and in a wide at- 
 tack from the ground we captured on September 26, north 
 and south of the Polygon Wood crest, our troops have ad- 
 vanced upon the Passchendaele Ridge, and have reached the 
 Gravenstafel and Abraham Heights, which crown a western 
 spur of the ridge, and Broodseinde, which is the high point 
 and keystone of the enemy's defence lines beyond Zonne- 
 beke. South of that they are fighting between Cameron 
 House and Becelaere, across the Reutelbeek and its swampy 
 ground, and down beyond Polderhoek to the south end of 
 the Menin road. The divisions engaged, from north to 
 south, were the 29th, 4th, nth, 48th, New Zealand, 3rd, 
 2nd, and ist Australians. 
 
 This morning I saw hundreds of prisoners trailing back 
 across the battlefield, and crowds of them within the 
 barbed-wire enclosures set apart for them behind our lines. 
 Our lightly wounded men coming down the tracks for walk- 
 ing wounded speak, in spite of their blood and bandages, of 
 a smashing blow dealt against the enemy and of complete 
 victory. '*We have him beat," say the men, and they are 
 sure of this, sure of his enormous losses and of his broken 
 spirit, although the fighting has been bloody because of the 
 
872 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 great gun-fire through which our men have had to pass. 
 It has been a strange and terrible battle — terrible, I mean, 
 in its great conflict of guns and men — and the enemy, if 
 all goes well with us, may have to remember it as a turning- 
 point in the history of this war, the point that has turned 
 against him with a sharp and deadly edge. For, realizing 
 his great peril if we strengthened our hold on the Passchen- 
 daele Ridge, and knowing that we intended that — all signs 
 showed him that, and all our pressure on these positions — 
 he prepared an attack against us in great strength in order 
 to regain the ground he lost on September 26, or, if not that, 
 then so to damage us that our advance would be checked 
 until the weather choked us in the mud again. His small 
 counter-attacks, or rather his local counter-attacks, for they 
 were not weak, had failed. Even his persistent hammer- 
 ing at the right wing by Cameron House, below Polygon 
 Wood, had failed to bite deeply into our line, though for 
 a time on September 25 it had been a cause of grave anx- 
 iety to us and made the battle next day more difficult and 
 critical. But these attacks had failed in their purpose, and 
 now the German High Command decided for a big blow, 
 and it was to be delivered at seven o'clock this morning. 
 It was a day and an hour too late. Our battle was fixed 
 for an hour before his. 
 
 And so it happened that our men had to pass through 
 a German barrage to follow their own, a barrage which 
 fell upon them before they leapt up to the assault, and it 
 happened also most terribly for the enemy that our men 
 were not stopped, but went through that zone of shells, 
 and on the other side behind our barrage swept over the 
 German assault troops and annihilated their plan of at- 
 tack. . . . They did not attack. Their defence even was 
 broken. As our lines of fire crept forward they reached 
 and broke the second and third waves of the men who had 
 been meant to attack, caught them in their support and re- 
 serve positions, and we can only guess what the slaughter 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 373 
 
 has been. It is a slaughter in which five German divisions 
 are involved. 
 
 This battle of ours, which looks like one of the greatest 
 victories we have had in the war, was being prepared on 
 a big scale as soon as the last was fought and won. No 
 words of mine can give more than a hint of what those 
 preparations meant in the scene of war. For several days 
 past the roads to the Front have been choked with columns 
 of men marching forward, column after column of glori- 
 ous men, hard and fit, and hammering a rhythm on the 
 roads with the beat of their feet, and whistling and singing, 
 in tune and out of tune, with the fifes and drums far ahead 
 of them. Always, night and day, there was the sound of 
 this music, always in the stillness of these moonlight nights 
 the thud, thud of those tramping feet, always, along any 
 track that led towards the salient, the vision of these bat- 
 talions led forward by young ofificers with their trench 
 sticks swinging and a look of pride in their eyes because 
 of the fellows behind them. Their steel helmets flashed 
 blue in the sun so that a column of them seen from a dis- 
 tance was like a blue stream winding between the hop- 
 fields, or the broken ruins of old villages, or the litter of 
 captured ground. With them and alongside of them went 
 the tide of transport — lorries, wagons, London buses, pack- 
 mules, guns and limbers, and the black old cookers with 
 their trailing smoke. Everywhere there has been a fever 
 of work. Tommies, "Chinkies," coloured men piling up 
 mountains of ammunition to feed the guns. Under shell- 
 fire, bracketing the roads on which they worked, pioneers 
 carried on the tracks, put down new lengths of duck-board, 
 laid new rails. The enemy's artillery came howling over 
 to search out all this work, which had been seen by aero- 
 planes, and at night flocks of planes came out in the light 
 of the moon to drop bombs on the men and the work. Now 
 and again they made lucky hits. — got a dump and sent it 
 flaming up in a great torch, killed horses in the wagon- 
 lines or labouring up with the transport, laid out groups 
 
374. FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 of men, smashed a train or a truck ; but the work went on, 
 never checked, never stopping in its steady flow of energy 
 up to the lines, and the valour of all these labourers was 
 great and steady in preparing for to-day. Knowing the pur- 
 pose of it all, the deadly purpose, the scene of activity by 
 any siding filled one with a kind of fear. It was so prodi- 
 gious, so vastly schemed. I passed a dump yesterday, and 
 again to-day, in the waste ground on the old battlefield near 
 Ypres and saw the shells for our field-batteries being un- 
 loaded. There were thousands of shells, brand-new from 
 the factories at home, all bright and glistening and laid out 
 in piles. The guns were greedy. Here was food for a 
 monstrous appetite. We watched all this — the faces of 
 the men going up so bright-eyed, so splendid in their youth, 
 so gay, and all these shells and guns and materials of war. 
 and all this movement which surged about us and caught 
 us up like straws in its tide, and then we looked at the sky 
 and smelt the wind, and studied a milky ring which formed 
 about the moon. Rain was coming. If only it would 
 come lightly or hold another day or two — one night at 
 least. 
 
 Rain fell a little yesterday. The ground was sticky 
 when I went up beyond Wieltje to look at the Passchen- 
 daele Ridge to see some boys getting ready for the "show" 
 to-day, and to watch the beginning of the great bombard- 
 ment. . . . Curse the rain! It would make all the differ- 
 ence to our fighting men, the difference perhaps between 
 great success and half a failure, and the difference between 
 life and death to many of those boys who looked steadily 
 towards the German lines which they were asked to take. 
 What damnable luck it would be if the rain fell heavily! 
 Last night the moon was hidden and rain fell, but not very 
 hard, though the wind went howling across the flats of 
 Flanders. And this morning, when our men rose from 
 shell-holes and battered trenches and fields of upheaved 
 earth to make this great attack, the rain fell still but softly, 
 so that the ground was only sticky and sludgy, but not a 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 375 
 
 bog. The rain was glistening on their steel helmets, and 
 the faces of our fighting men were wet when they went 
 forward. They had passed already through a fiery ordeal, 
 and some of them could not rise to go with their comrades, 
 and lay dead on the ground. Along the lines of men, these 
 thousands of men, the stretcher-bearers were already busy 
 in the dark, because the enemy had put over a heavy bar- 
 rage at 5.30, and elsewhere later, the prelude to the at- 
 tack he had planned. His old methods of defence and 
 counter-attack had broken down in two battles. The spell 
 of the pill-box, which had worked well for a time, was 
 broken, so that those concrete blockhouses were feared as 
 death-traps by the men who had to hold them. The Ger- 
 man High Command hurried to prepare a new plan, guess- 
 ing ours, and moved the guns to be ready for our next at- 
 tack, registered on their own trenches, which they knew 
 they might lose, and assembled the best divisions, or the 
 next best, ready for a heavy blow to wind us before we 
 started and to smash our lines, so that the advance would 
 be a thousand times harder. The barrage which the Ger- 
 mans sent over was the beginning of the new plan. It 
 failed because of the fine courage of our troops first of all, 
 and because the German infantry attack was timed an 
 hour too late. If it had come two hours earlier it might 
 have led to our undoing— might at least have prevented 
 anything like real victory to-day. But the fortune of war 
 was on our side, and the wheel turned round to crush the 
 enemy. 
 
 The main force of his attack, which was to be made by 
 the Fourth Guards Division, with two others, I am told, in 
 support, was ready to assault the centre of our battle-front 
 in the direction of Polygon Wood and down from the 
 Broodseinde cross-roads. It was our men who fought the 
 German assault divisions at the Broodseinde cross-roads, 
 and took many prisoners from them before they had time to 
 advance very far. The enemy's shelling had been heavy 
 about the ground of Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood, 
 
376 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 where a week or so ago I saw the frightful heaps of Ger- 
 man dead, and spread over a wide area of our line of bat- 
 tle along the Polygon Wood heights and the low ground in 
 front of Zonnebeke. The men tell me that it did not do 
 them as much harm as they expected. The shells plunged 
 deep into the soft ground, bursting upwards in tall col- 
 umns, as I saw them this morning on the field, and their 
 killing effect was not widespread. Many of them also 
 missed our waves altogether. So, half an hour later, our 
 men went away behind our own barrage, which was enor- 
 mous and annihilating. The wet mist lay heavily over 
 the fields, and it was almost dark except for a pale glamour 
 behind the rain-clouds, which brightened as each quarter 
 of an hour passed, with our men tramping forward slowly 
 to their first objective. 
 
 The shell-craters on the German side were linked to- 
 gether here and there to form a kind of trench system, but 
 many of these had been blown out by other shell-bursts, 
 and German soldiers lay dead in them. From others, men 
 and boys, many boys of eighteen, rose with their arms up- 
 stretched, as white in the face as dead men, but living,, and 
 afraid. Across these frightful fields men came running 
 towards our soldiers. They did not come to fight, but to 
 escape from the shell-fire, which tossed up the earth about 
 them, and to surrender. Many of them were streaming 
 with blood, wounded about the head and face, or with 
 broken and bleeding arms. So I saw them early this 
 morning when they came down the tracks which led away 
 from that long line of flaming gun-fire. 
 
 The scene of the battle in those early hours was a great 
 and terrible picture. It will be etched as long as life lasts 
 in the minds of men who saw it. The ruins of Ypres were 
 vague and blurred in the mist as I passed them on the way 
 up, but as moment passed moment the jagged stump of the 
 Cloth Hall, and the wild wreckage of the asylum, and the 
 fretted outline of all this chaos of masonry which was so 
 fair a city once, leapt out in light which flashed redly and 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 377 
 
 passed. So it was all along the way to the old German 
 lines. Bits of villages still stand, enough to show that 
 buildings were there, and where isolated ruins of barns and 
 farmhouses lie in heaps of timber and brickwork about 
 great piles of greenish sand-bags and battered earthworks. 
 Through shell-holes in fragments of walls red light stabbed 
 like a flame, and out of the darkness of the mist they shone 
 for a second with an unearthly brightness. It was the light 
 of our gun-fire. Our guns were everywhere in the low 
 concealing mist, so that one could not walk anywhere to 
 avoid the blast of their fire. They made a fury of fire. 
 Flashes leapt from them with only the pause of a second 
 or two while they were reloaded. There was never a mo- 
 ment within my own range of vision when hundreds of 
 great guns were not firing together. They were eating up 
 shells which I had seen going up to them, and the roads 
 and fields across which I walked were littered with shells. 
 The wet mist was like one great damp fire, with ten miles 
 or more of smoke rising in a white vapour, through which 
 the tongues of flames leapt up, stirred by some fierce wind. 
 The noise was terrifying in its violence. Passing one of 
 those big-bellied howitzers was to me an agony. It rose 
 like a beast stretching out its neck, and there came from 
 it a roar which clouted one's ear-drums and shook one's 
 body with a long tremor of concussion. These things were 
 all firing at the hardest pace, and the earth was shaken 
 with their blasts of fire. The enemy was answering back. 
 His shells came whining and howling through all this 
 greater noise, and burst with a crash on either side of mule 
 tracks and over bits of ruin near by, and in the fields on 
 each side of the paths down which German prisoners came 
 staggering with their wounded. Fresh shell-holes, enor- 
 mously deep and thickly grouped, showed that he had plas- 
 tered this ground fiercely, but now, later in the morning, 
 his shelling eased off, and his guns had other work to do 
 over there where our infantry was advancing. Other work, 
 unless the guns lay smashed, with their teams lying dead 
 
378 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 around them, killed by our counter-battery work with high 
 explosives and gas; for in the night we smothered them 
 with gas and tried to keep them quiet for this battle and all 
 others. 
 
 I went eastward and mounted a pile of rubbish and tim- 
 ber, all blown into shapelessness and reeking with foul 
 odours, and from that shelter looked across to the Pass- 
 chendaele Ridge and Hill 40 on the west of Zonnebeke and 
 the line of the ridge that goes round to Polygon Wood. It 
 was all blurred, so that I could not see the white ruins of 
 Zonnebeke as I saw them the other day in the sunlight, nor 
 the broken church tower of Passchendaele. It was all 
 veiled in smoke and mist, through which the ridge loomed 
 darkly with a black hump where Broodseinde stands. But 
 clearly through the gloom were the white and yellow 
 cloud-bursts of our shell-fire and the flame of their shell- 
 bursts. It was the most terrible bombardment I have seen, 
 and I saw the fire of the Somme, and of Vimy, and Arras, 
 and Messines. Those were not like this, great as they were 
 in frightfulness. The whole of the Passchendaele Crest 
 was like a series of volcanoes belching up pillars of earth 
 and fire. *Tt seemed to us," said soldier after soldier who 
 came down from those slopes, "as if no mortal man could 
 live in it, yet there were many who lived despite all the 
 dead.'^ 
 
 I saw the living men. Below the big pile of timber and 
 muck on which I stood was a winding path, and other tracks 
 on each side of it between the deep shell-craters, and down 
 these ways came batches of prisoners and the trail of our 
 walking wounded. It was a tragic sight in spite of its proof 
 of victory, and the valour of our men and the spirit of 
 these wounded of ours, who bore their pain with stoic pa- 
 tience and said,, when I spoke to them, "It's been a good 
 day; we're doing fine, I think." The Germans were hag- 
 gard and white-faced men, thin and worn and weary and 
 frightened. Many of them, a large number of them, were 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 379 
 
 wounded. Some of them had masks of dry blood on their 
 faces, and some of them wet blood all down their tunics. 
 They held broken arms from which the sleeves had been 
 cut away, and hobbled painfully on wounded legs. The 
 worst were no worse than some of our own men who came 
 down with them and among them. 
 
 It has been a bad defeat for them, and they do not 
 hide their despair. They did not fight stubbornly for the 
 most part, but ran one way or the other as soon as our 
 barrage passed and revealed our men. Our gun-fire had 
 overwhelmed them. In the blockhouses were groups of 
 men who gasped out words of surrender. Here and there 
 they refused to come out till bombs burst outside their steel 
 doors. And here and there they got their machine-guns 
 to work and checked our advance for a time, as at Joist 
 Farm, on the right of our attack, and at a chateau near 
 Polderhoek, where there has been severe fighting. There 
 was heavy machine-gun fire from a fortified farm ruin 
 to the north of Broodseinde, and again from Kronprinz 
 Farm on the extreme left. The enemy also put down a 
 heavy machine-gun barrage from positions around Pass- 
 chendaele, but nothing has stopped our men seriously so 
 far. 
 
 The New-Zealanders and Australians swept up and be- 
 yond the Gravenstafel and Abraham Heights, went through 
 and past the ruins of Zonnebeke village, and with great 
 heroism gained the high ground about Broodseinde, a domi- 
 nating position giving observation of all the enemy's side 
 of the country. It has been a wonderful battle in the suc- 
 cess that surmounted all difiiculty, and if we can keep 
 what we have gained it will be a victorious achievement. 
 The weather is bad now and the rain is heavier, with a 
 savage wind blowing. But that is not good for the enemy's 
 plans, and may be in our favour now that the day has gone 
 well. Our English troops share the honour of the day 
 with the Anzacs, and all were splendid. 
 
S80 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 October 5 
 The men who were fighting in the great battle yesterday, 
 and after the capture of many strong positions held their 
 ground last night in spite of many German counter-attacks 
 and heavy fire, tell grim tales, which all go to build up the 
 general picture of the most smashing defeat we have in- 
 flicted on the enemy. 
 
 On one section of the Front, where the Warwicks, Sher- 
 woods, Lancashire Fusiliers and other county troops of the 
 48th and nth Divisions fought up to Poelcappelle and its 
 surrounding blockhouses, six enemy battalions in the front 
 line were either taken or killed. The men themselves do 
 not know those figures. They only know that they passed 
 over large numbers of dead and that they took many pris- 
 oners. 
 
 The New-Zealanders and the Australians on their right, 
 fighting up the Abraham Heights, took over 2000 prison- 
 ers, and say that they have never seen so many dead as 
 those who lay shapeless in their tracks. Other Australians 
 fighting for the Broodseinde cross-roads have counted 960 
 dead Germans on their way. The full figure of the Ger- 
 man dead will never be counted by us. They lie on this 
 battle-ground buried and half-buried in the water of shell- 
 holes, in blockhouses blown on top of them, and in dug- 
 outs that have become their tombs. They fought bravely 
 in some places with despairing courage in or about some of 
 the blockhouses which still gave them a chance of resist- 
 ance, and sometimes worked their machine-guns to the 
 last. Men lying in shell-craters still alive among all their 
 dead used their rifles and sniped our men, knowing that 
 they would have to pay for their shots with their lives. 
 That is courage, and New-Zealanders I met to-day, and 
 English lads, were fair to their enemy, and said Fritz 
 showed great pluck when he had a dog's chance, though 
 many of them ran when we got close to them behind the 
 barrage. It was the barrage that made them break. The 
 Fourth Guards Division seems to have fought well on the 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS S81 
 
 line of our first objective, though after that they would not 
 stand firm, and ran or surrendered Hke the others. 
 
 Owing to the coincidence of the simultaneous attack 
 from both sides yesterday morning, and the complete over- 
 throw of the German assault divisions who were about to 
 advance on us, there seems no doubt that some confusion 
 prevailed behind the German lines and on the left and centre 
 of our attack. All their attempts at counter-thrusts were 
 badly planned, and led to further disaster. They did not 
 advance in orderly formation, but straggled up from local 
 reserves and supports, and were smashed in detail by our 
 artillery. So it happened with two battalions who came 
 down the road to Poelcappelle, but withered away. The 
 Lancashire Fusiliers of the nth Division in that region 
 say the thing was laughable, though it is the comedy of 
 war, and not mirthful in the usual sense. Small groups of 
 Germans wandered up in an aimless way, and were shot 
 down by machine-gun and rifle fire. On the right of the 
 battle- front the enemy's attacks have been more serious 
 and thrust home with grim persistence against the "Koy- 
 lies," Lincolns, West Kents, and Scottish Borderers of the 
 5th Division. 
 
 It was after the advance of our men on Polderhoek and 
 its chateau by the Gheluvelt spur of the Passchendaele 
 Ridge. Some of the Surreys, Devons, and Duke of Corn- 
 wall's Light Infantry swung round the stream and marsh- 
 lands of the Reutel and accounted for many of the enemy 
 in close and fierce fighting. The Devons were astride the 
 stream and, working north of it, attacked a slope called 
 Juniper Spur. 
 
 In Polderhoek was a nest of machine-guns, which fired 
 out of the ruins of the chateau, and for some time our men 
 had difficult and deadly work. This was worst against 
 the Scottish Borderers, who were facing the chateau 
 grounds, but they dug in and made some cover, while be- 
 hind the prisoners, about 500 of them, were getting back 
 to the safety of our lines. 
 
38S FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 It was at three o'clock in the afternoon that the enemy 
 sent a very strong counter-attack down the slopes of the 
 Gheluvelt Spur against the 5th and 7th Divisions. Six 
 times through the afternoon masses of men appeared and 
 tried to force their way forward, but each time they were 
 caught under rifle-fire and machine-guns and artillery. 
 
 It was at seven o'clock that the heaviest attack came, 
 under cover of savage shelling, and our men had to fall 
 back on the ground beyond Cameron House, which is the 
 scene of the enemy's fierce attacks on September 25, when 
 they were for some little time a serious menace to us. This 
 morning the enemy had driven a wedge into our line in this 
 neighbourhood, and it is quite possible that he will deliver 
 other blows in the same direction. Last night he made 
 no great endeavour to bet gack ground. It was a dirty 
 night for our men, who had been fighting all day. The 
 rain fell heavily, filling the shell-holes and turning all the 
 broken ground of battle to the same old bog which made 
 so much misery in Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood 
 and other positions attacked on July 31 and afterwards. 
 
 *T lay up to my waist in water," said one of the Devons 
 who came down wounded this morning; "it was bitter cold, 
 and Fritz was putting over his 59's; he was also putting 
 over a lot of machine-gun fire, and the bullets camiC over 
 the heads of our men like the cracking of whips." It was 
 bad for the wounded and the stretcher-bearers — the splen- 
 did stretcher-bearers, who worked all through the night 
 up and down through fierce barrage-fire. 
 
 Most of them got through with their burdens by that 
 queer miracle of luck which is often theirs. But one little 
 party came down when the fire was fiercest, and took cover 
 in a shell-hole close beside some Warwickshire boys who 
 were crouching in another hole until the storm of shells 
 had passed. Suddenly they heard the howl of a monstrous 
 shell — an eight-inch or even a twelve-inch by the noise of it. 
 It fell and burst right inside the shell-crater where the 
 stretcher-bearers were huddled with their wounded men, 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 383 
 
 and they were blown out of it yards high, so that their 
 bodies were tossed hke straws in a fierce wind. ... I met 
 many men who worked their way down under fire like that, 
 and some who had been wounded already were wounded 
 again, and some of the comrades who trudged with them 
 were killed. 
 
 The Warwickshire battalions of the 48th Division on the 
 left of the New-Zealanders had some very hard fighting, 
 lasting all through the day, which concluded with an at- 
 tack on a position called Terrier Farm, above the pill-boxes 
 of Wellington House and Winchester House, which they 
 had captured after some bad quarters of an hour. 
 
 The Warwicks had started with great luck. In spite 
 of the German shelling they had got away to their first 
 objective with only three casualties. They went through 
 the first line of blockhouses without much trouble, picking 
 up prisoners on the way in most of them. Their first trouble 
 came from one of these concrete places called Wellington 
 House. Machine-gun fire came crackling from it, and bul- 
 lets were also sweeping the ground from hidden emplace- 
 ments. After twenty minutes' struggle Wellington House 
 fell, and the flanks on either side closed up and went for- 
 ward, the Warwicks helped on the right by a body of New 
 Zealand men. In the centre the machine-gun fire from 
 those concrete walls ahead caused a check and a gap, and 
 although they tried many times with great gallantry, under 
 brave officers, to silence that fire and work round the block- 
 houses, they could not do this without greater loss, and 
 decided to link up with their flanks by digging a loop-line in 
 front of those positions, which make a small wedge, or 
 pocket, in our line there. 
 
 The attack against Terrier Farm was done by other War- 
 wickshire lads, who were very game after a long day un- 
 der fire, but for all their spirit tired and cold. They stood 
 almost knee-deep in mud, and they were wet to the skin, as 
 it was now raining steadily, so a Tank came up to help 
 them, and drew close enough to Terrier Farm to fire broad- 
 
384 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 sides at its concrete and machine-gun its loophole. A white 
 rag thrust through a hole in the wall was the sign of the 
 enemy's surrender. But the conditions were too bad for 
 any greater progress, and the men dug in for the night, 
 while brother Tank crawled back. 
 
 All the Tanks used in the battle did well, in spite of the 
 bad going, and helped to reduce several of the blockhouses. 
 They had only two casualties among their crews, and most 
 of them got back to their hiding-places without damage from 
 German shells. 
 
 It is astounding that the German counter-attacks were so 
 quickly signalled to the guns, for the light all day was 
 bad, and the weather was dead against the work of the 
 flying men. They did their best by flying low and risking 
 the enemy's fire. There was one pilot who is the talk of 
 the Australians to-day. They watched that English child 
 doing the most amazing "stunts" over the fighting-lines. He 
 was out all day, swooping low, so that his plane seemed just 
 to skim over the craters. The Germans tried to get him by 
 any manner of means. They turned their "Archies" on to 
 him and their machine-guns, and then tried to bring him 
 down with rifle-fire, and that failing, though they pierced 
 his wings many times, they called up the heavies and tried 
 to snipe him with 59's, which are mighty big and beastly 
 things. But he went on flying till many of his wires were 
 cut and his struts splintered, and his aeroplane was a rag 
 round an engine. He was bruised and dazed when he came 
 to earth, making a bad landing in our own lines, but not kill- 
 ing either himself or the observer, who shares the honour 
 and the marvel of this exploit. 
 
 It was a great day for the Australians and the New- 
 2^alanders, their greatest and most glorious day. I saw 
 them going up — ^these lithe, loose-limbed, hatchet-faced fel- 
 lows, who look so free and fine in their slouch hats and so 
 hard and grim in their steel helmets. There were many 
 thousands of them on the roads or camped beside the roads. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 385 
 
 and Flanders for a time seemed to have become a little 
 province of Australia. 
 
 Then the New-Zealanders came along, a type half-way 
 between the English of the old country and the Australian 
 boys — ^not so lean and wiry, with more colour in the cheeks, 
 and a squarer, fuller build. It was good to see them — as 
 fine a set of boys as one could see in the whole world, so 
 that it was hard to think of them in the furnace fires up 
 there, and to know that some of them would come back 
 maimed and broken. In a dug-out on the battlefield I talked 
 with some of them, and they were cheery lads, full of con- 
 fidence in the coming battle. They wanted to go as far 
 as the Australians, to do as well, and among the Australians 
 also there was a friendly rivalry, the new men wanting to 
 show their mettle to those who are already old in war, one 
 battalion keen to earn the honour which belongs by right of 
 valour to another which had fought before. It was certain 
 they would get to the Broodseinde cross-roads if human 
 courage could get there against high explosives, and they 
 were there without a check, over every obstacle, regardless 
 of the enemy's fire, too fast some of them behind their own. 
 So the New-Zealanders went up to Abraham Heights and 
 carried all before them. The hardest time was last night in 
 the mud and the cold, under heavy fire now and then, but 
 they have stuck it out, as our English boys have stuck it 
 through many foul days and in harder times than these, and 
 that is good enough. 
 
 The German prisoners do not hide their astonishment at 
 the spirit of our men, and they know now that our troops 
 are terrible in attack, and arrive upon them with a strange, 
 fearful suddenness behind the barrage. One man, a Ger- 
 man professor of broad intelligence and a frank way of fac- 
 ing ugly facts, said that our artillery was too terrific for 
 words. They got harassed all the w^ay up to the front line, 
 and lost many men. When they got there they had to lie 
 flat in the bottom of shell-holes, and the next thing they 
 knew was when they were surrounded by masses of English 
 
386 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 soldiers. He described our men as gallant and chivalrous. 
 This professor thinks it will not be long before Germany 
 makes a great bid for peace by offering to give up Belgium. 
 By midwinter she will yield Alsace-Lorraine, Russia will 
 remain as before the war, except for an autonomous Po- 
 land ; Italy will have what she has captured ; and Germany 
 will get back some of her colonies, he thinks. He laughed 
 when an indemnity was mentioned, and said "Germany is 
 bankrupt." He describes the German Emperor as a broken 
 man and all for peace, the Crown Prince posing as the head 
 of the military party but being unpopular. If the German 
 people knew that the submarine threat had failed they would 
 demand that the war should stop at once. That is the 
 opinion of one educated German who has suffered the full 
 horror of war, and his words are interesting if they repre- 
 sent no more than his own views. 
 
 19 
 Scenes of Battle 
 
 October 7 
 The scene of war since Thursday, when our troops went 
 away in the wet mist for the great battle up the slopes of 
 the Passchendaele Ridge, has been dark and grim and over- 
 cast with a brooding sky, where storm-clouds are blown into 
 wild and fantastic shapes. Yesterday over the country 
 round Ypres, which still in its ruins holds the soul of all 
 the monstrous tragedy hereaboutb, white cloud-mountains 
 were piled up against black, sullen peaks and were shot 
 through with a greenish light, very ghastly in ks revelation 
 of the litter and the wreckage of the great arena of human 
 slaughter. Etched sharply against this queer luminance 
 were the lopped trunks of shell-slashed trees and bits of 
 ruined buildings with tooth-like jags above heaps of fallen 
 masonry. Rain fell heavily for most of the day, as nearly 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 387 
 
 all the night, and as it rains to-day, and a wet fog rose from 
 the ground where the shell-craters were already ponds 
 brimming over into swamps of mud. Through the murk 
 our guns fired incessantly, almost as intense as the drum- 
 fire which precedes an attack, though there was no attack 
 from our side or the enemy's, and it was a strange, un- 
 canny thing to hear all that crashing of gun-fire and the wail 
 of great shells in flight to the German lines through this 
 midday darkness. 
 
 I marvelled at the gunners, who have gone on so long — 
 so long through the days and nights — feeding those mon- 
 sters. The infantry have a hard time. It is they who fight 
 with flesh and blood against the machinery of slaughter 
 which is set against them. It is they who go out across the 
 fields on that wild adventure into the unknown. But the 
 gunners, standing by the heavies and the i8-pounders in 
 the sodden fields, with piles of shells about them and great 
 dumps near by, have no easy, pleasant time. On the 
 morning of the last battle I saw the enemy's shells search- 
 ing for them, flinging up the earth about their batteries, 
 ploughing deep holes on either side of them. They worked 
 in the close neighbourhood of death, and at any moment, 
 between one round and another, a battery and its gun teams 
 might be blown up by one of those howling beasts which 
 seem to gather strength and ferocity at the end of their 
 flight before the final roar of destruction. Now and again 
 a lucky shell of the enemy's gets an ammunition dump, and 
 a high torch rises to the dark sky, and in its flames there 
 are v/ild explosions as the shells are touched off. But the 
 gunners go on with their work in all the tumult of their 
 own batteries, deafening and ear-splitting and nerve-de- 
 stroying, and our young gunner officers, muddy, unshaven, 
 unwashed, with sleep-drawn eyes, pace up and down the 
 line of guns saying, "Are you ready. Number One? — 
 Number One, fire!" with no sign of the strain that keeps 
 them on the rack when a big battle is in progress. For them 
 the battle lasts longer than for the infantry. It begins be- 
 
388 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 fore the infantry advanced, it lulls a little and then breaks 
 out into new fury when the German counter-attacks begin. 
 It does not end when the SOS signals have been answered 
 by hours of bombardment, but goes on again to keep Ger- 
 man roads under fire, to smother their back areas, to bat- 
 ter their gun positions. 
 
 So yesterday, when the German guns were getting back 
 behind the Passchendaele, hauled back out of the mud to 
 take up new emplacements from which they can pour ex- 
 plosives on the ground we have captured, our gunners 
 could not rest, but made this work hideous for the enemy 
 and followed his guns along their tracks. The British gun- 
 ners in these frightful battles have worked with a courage 
 and endurance to the limit of human nature, and the in- 
 fantry are the first to praise them and to marvel at them. 
 The infantry go marching in the rain and trudging in the 
 mud, and stumbling over the water-logged craters, and out 
 on the battlefields stand knee-deep in pools and bogs that 
 have been made by shell-fire, cutting up the beds of the 
 Flemish brooks, like the Hanebeek and the Stroombeek and 
 the Reutelbeek, and by the heavy downpour on the up- 
 heaved earth. Winter conditions have come upon us, too. 
 They were the old winter pictures of war that I saw yester- 
 day round about the old Ypres salient, when wet men 
 gathered tmder the lee side of old dug-outs with cold rain 
 sweeping upon them, so that their waterproof capes stream 
 with water, and pattering upon their steel hats with a sharp 
 metallic tinkling sound. Along the roads Australian and 
 New Zealand horsemen go riding hard, with their horses' 
 flanks splashed with heavy gobs of mud. Gun-wagons and 
 transports pass, flinging mud from their " wheels. Ambu- 
 lances, with their red crosses spattered with slime, go thread- 
 ing their way to the clearing-stations, with four pairs of 
 muddy boots upturned beneath the blankets which show- 
 through the flap behind, and a dozen "sitting cases" huddled 
 together, with their steel hats clashing and their tired eyes 
 looking out on the traffic of war which they are leaving for 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 389 
 
 a time. They come down cold and wet from the line, but 
 in an hour or two they are warm, inside the dressing-sta- 
 tions, between sand-bagged walls built up inside ruined 
 houses, still within range of shell-fire, but safer than the 
 fields from which these men have come. 
 
 "If any man feels cold," said a medical officer yesterday, 
 "give him a hot-water bottle. To a man who had been lying 
 in cold mud until an hour or two before it was like offer- 
 ing him a place by the fireside at home. 
 
 The Y.M.C.A. is busy in another tent or another dug- 
 out. It has a cheery way of producing hot cocoa on the 
 edge of a battlefield and of thrusting little packets of choco- 
 late, biscuits, cigarettes, and matches into the hands of 
 lightly wounded men as soon as they have trudged down 
 the long trail for walking wounded and reached the first 
 dressing-station, where there is a little group of men waiting 
 to bandage their wounds, to say, "Well done, laddy ; you did 
 grandly this morning,'* and to fix them up with strange and 
 wonderful speed for the journey to the base hospital, where 
 there are beds with white sheets — sheets again, ye gods ! — 
 and rest and peace and warmth. 
 
 There are queer little groups between the sand-bags of 
 those forward dressing-stations. On one bench I saw a tall 
 New-Zealander and some Warwick boys — the Warwicks of 
 the 48th Division did famously in this battle — and a 
 farmer's lad from the West Country, who said "It seems 
 to Oi,'' and spoke with a fine simple gravity of the things 
 he had seen and done; and a thin- faced Lancashire boy, who 
 still wanted to kill more Germans and put them to a nasty 
 kind of death; and a fellow of the Lincolns, who said, 
 "Our lads went over grand." 
 
 Near by was a wounded German soldier who had clotted 
 blood over his face and a bloody bandage round his head. 
 A friendly voice spoke to him and said, "Wie gehts mit 
 Ihnen?" ("How are you getting on?") And he looked up 
 in a dazed way and said, "Besser hier als am Kampfe." 
 ("Better here than on the battlefield.") 
 
390 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 The tall New-Zealander said: "Fritz fought all right. 
 His machine-gunners fired till we were all round them." 
 
 " Twas a bit of a five-point-nine that hit Oi in the arm," 
 said the farmer's lad. "He put over a terrible big barrage, 
 and Oi was a-laying up till the waist in a shell-hole all filled 
 with mud, and Oi was starved with cold." 
 
 "They're all cowards, them Fritzes," said the Lancashire 
 boy. "They ran so hard I couldn't catch them with my 
 bayonet. Then a bullet came and went slick through my 
 head." The bullet failed to kill the Lancashire boy by the 
 smallest fraction of an inch, and had furrowed his skull. 
 
 The Warwickshire lads told queer tales of the battle, and 
 they bear out what I have heard from their officers else- 
 where. There were numbers of German soldiers who lay 
 about in shell-holes after our barrage had passed over their 
 lines and their blockhouses, and sniped our officers and men 
 as they swarmed forward, though they knew that by not 
 surrendering they were bound to die. It was the last su- 
 preme courage of the human beast at bay. There was one 
 of these who lay under the wreckage of an aeroplane, and 
 from that cover he shot some of our men at close range; 
 but because there were many bullets flying about, and shells 
 bursting, and all the excitement of a battle-ground, he was 
 not discovered for some time. It was a sergeant of the 
 Warwicks who saw him first, and just in time. The Ger- 
 man had his rifle raised at ten yards range, but the sergeant 
 whipped round and shot him before he could turn. Some of 
 these men were discovered after the general fighting was 
 over, and a nasty shock was given to a young A.D.C. who 
 went with his Divisional General to see the captured ground 
 next day. The General, who is a quick walker, went ahead 
 over the shell-craters, and the A.D.C. suddenly saw two 
 Germans wearing their steel helmets rise before the Gen- 
 eral from one of the deep holes. 
 
 "Now there's trouble," thought the young ofificer, feeling 
 for his revolver. But when he came up he heard the Gen- 
 eral telling two wounded Germans that the English had won 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 391 
 
 a very great victory, and that if they were good boys he 
 would send up stretcher-bearers to carry them down. 
 
 All over the battlefield there were queer little human 
 episodes thrust for a minute or two into the great grim 
 drama of this advance by British and Overseas troops up 
 the heights of the Passchendaele Ridge, where thousands 
 of German soldiers who had been waiting to attack them 
 were caught by the rolling storm of shells which smashed 
 the earth about them and mingled them with its clods. One 
 tragic glimpse like this was on the Australian way up to 
 the Broodseinde cross-roads, the key of the whole position, 
 after a body of those Australians had marched many miles 
 through the night over appalling ground under scattered 
 shell-fire, and were only in their place of attack half an 
 hour before it started. The story of that night march is in 
 itself a little epic, but that is not the episode I mean. The 
 Australians drew close to one of the blockhouses, and the 
 sound of their cheering must have been heard by the Ger- 
 mans inside those concrete walls. The barrage had just 
 passed and its line of fire, volcanic in its look and fury, went 
 travelling ahead. Suddenly, out of the blockhouses, a dozen 
 men or so came running, and the Australians shortened 
 their bayonets. From the centre of the group a voice 
 shouted out in English, "I am a Middlesex man, don't shoot. 
 I am an Englishman." The man who called had his hands 
 up, in sign of surrender, like the German soldiers. 
 
 'Tf s a spy," said an Australian. "Kill the blighter." The 
 English voice again rang out : "Fm English." And Eng- 
 lish he was. It was a man of the Middlesex Regiment who 
 had been captured on patrol some days before. The Ger- 
 mans had taken him into their blockhouse, and because of 
 our gun-fire they could not get out of it, and kept him 
 there. He was well treated, and his captors shared their 
 food with him, but the awful moment came to him when 
 the drum-fire passed and he knew that unless he held his 
 hands high he would be killed by our own troops. 
 
 The New-Zealanders had many fights on the way up to 
 
392 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the Gravenstafel and Abraham Heights, and one thing that 
 surprised them was the number of pill-boxes and block- 
 houses inhabited by the enemy close to their own lines. They 
 beheved that the foremost ones had been deserted. But 
 it must not be forgotten that running all through the narra- 
 tive of this battle is the thwarted plan of the enemy to at- 
 tack us in strength the same morning and at nearly the same 
 hour. For that reason he had thrust little groups of men 
 into advanced posts and into these most forward block- 
 houses with orders to hold them at all costs until the at- 
 tacking divisions should reach and pass them. And for 
 that reason, as we know, the enemy's guns laid down a 
 heavy barrage over our lines half an hour before our at- 
 tack started. 
 
 The New-Zealanders did not escape this shelling, and 
 their brigadiers were under the strain of intense, anxiety, 
 not knowing in their dug-outs, over which the enemy's fire 
 passed, whether their boys were so cut up that a successful 
 assault would be impossible. As it happened, the New- 
 Zealanders were not seriously hurt nor thrown into disorder. 
 When the moment came they went away in waves, Xvith the 
 spirit of a pack of hounds on a good hunting morning. As 
 fierce as that and as wild as that. They had not gone more 
 than a few yards before they had fifty prisoners. This was 
 at a blockhouse just outside the New Zealand assembly 
 line. There was no fight there, but the garrison surrendered 
 as soon as our men were round their shelter. The Hane- 
 beek stream flows this way, but it was no longer within its 
 bounds. Our gun-fire had smashed up its track, and all 
 about was a swamp made deeper by the rains. 
 
 The New Zealand lads had a devil of a time in getting 
 across and through. Some of them stuck up to the knees 
 and others fell into shell-holes, deep in mud, as far as their 
 belts. "Give us a hand. Jack," came a shout from one man, 
 and the answer was, "Hang on to my rifle, Tom." Men 
 with the solid ground under their feet hauled out others 
 in the slough, and all that was a great risk of time while 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 393 
 
 the barrage was travelling slowly on with its protecting 
 screen of shells. 
 
 The only chance of life in these battles is to keep close 
 to the barrage, risking the shorts, for if it once passes and 
 leaves any enemy there with a machine-gun, there is cer- 
 tain death for many men. The New Zealand boys nearly 
 lost that wall of shells because of the mud, but somehow 
 or other managed to scramble on over 800 yards in time 
 enough to catch it up. Many blockhouses yielded up their 
 batches of prisoners, who were told to get back and give no 
 trouble. The first fight for a blockhouse took place at Van 
 Meulen Farm, just outside the New-Zealanders' first ob- 
 jective. The barrage went ahead and sat down — as one of 
 the oflficers put it, though the sitting down of a barrage is 
 a queer simile for that monstrous eruption of explosive 
 force. From Van Meulen Farm came the swish of machine- 
 gun bullets, and New Zealand boys began to drop. They 
 were held up for half an hour until the "leap-frog" bat- 
 talions — that is to say, the men who were to pass through 
 the first waves to the next objective — came up to help. 
 
 It was a New Zealand captain, beloved by all his men for 
 his gallantry and generous-hearted ways, who led the rush 
 of Lewis-gunners and bombers and riflemen. He fell dead 
 with a machine-gun bullet in his heart, but with a cry of 
 rage because of this great loss the other men ran on each 
 side of the blockhouse and stormed it. 
 
 On the left of the New-Zealanders* line, one of their 
 battalions could see Germans firing from concrete houses on 
 the slopes of the Gravenstafel, and although they had to 
 lose the barrage, which was sweeping ahead again, they 
 covered that ground and went straight for those places un- 
 der sharp fire. Some of them worked round the concrete 
 walls and hauled out more prisoners. "Get back, there,'* 
 they shouted, but there was hardly a New-Zealander who 
 would go back with them to act as escort. So it happened 
 that a brigadier, getting out of his dug-out to see what was 
 happening to his men away there over the slopes, received 
 
FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the first news of success from batches of Germans who 
 came marching in company formation under the command 
 of their own officers, and without escort. That was how I 
 saw many of them coming back on another part of the field. 
 From the Abraham Heights there was a steady stream of 
 machine-gun fire until the New-Zealanders had climbed 
 them and routed out the enemy from their dug-outs, which 
 were not screened by our barrage so that they were able to 
 fire. Only the great gallantry of high-spirited young men 
 could have done that, and it is an episode which proved the 
 quality of New Zealand troops on that morning of the bat- 
 tle, so keen to do well, so reckless of the cost. On Abra- 
 ham Heights a lot of prisoners were taken and joined the 
 long trail that hurried back through miles of scattered 
 shell-fire from their own guns. 
 
 The next resistance was at the blockhouse called Berlin, 
 and the New-Zealanders are proud of having taken that 
 place, because of its name, which they will write on their 
 scroll of honour. It is not an Imperial place. It is a row 
 of dirty concrete pill-boxes above a deep cave, on the pat- 
 tern of the old type of dug-outs. But it was a strong 
 fortress for German machine-gunners, and they defended 
 it stubbornly. It was a five minutes' job. Stokes mortars 
 were brought up and fired thirty rounds in two minutes, 
 and then, with a yell, the New-Zealanders rushed the posi- 
 tion on both sides and flung pea-bombs through the back 
 door, until part of the garrison streamed out shouting their 
 word of surrender. The other men were dead inside. A 
 battalion commander and his staff were taken prisoners in 
 another farm, and the New-Zealanders drank soda-water 
 and smoked high-class cigarettes which they found in this 
 place, where the German officers were well provided. After 
 that refreshment they went on to Berlin Wood, where there 
 were several pill-boxes hidden among the fallen trees and 
 mud-heaps. They had to make their way through a ma- 
 chine-gun barrage, and platoon commanders assembled their 
 Lewis-gunners and riflemen to attack the house in detail. 
 
 I 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 895 
 
 From one of them a German officer directed the fire, and 
 when the gun was silenced inside came out with another 
 and fired round the corner of the wall until our men rushed 
 .upon him. Even then he raised his revolver as though to 
 shoot a sergeant, who was closest to him, but he was killed 
 by a bayonet-thrust. 
 
 At other parts of the line our English boys were fight- 
 ing hard and with equal courage, and some of them against 
 greater fire. It was on the right that the enemy's gun-fire 
 was most fierce, and our old English county regiments of 
 the 5th and 7th Divisions — Devons and Staff ords, Surreys 
 and Kents, Lincolns with Scottish Borderers, Northumber- 
 land Fusiliers, and Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry — op- 
 posite Gheluvelt and Polderhoek and the Reutelbeek had to 
 endure some bad hours. I have already mentioned in earlier 
 messages how the enemy made ceaseless thrusts against this 
 right flank of our attacking front, driving a wedge in for a 
 time, so that our men had to fall back a little and form a de- 
 cisive flank. It is known now that they were misled some- 
 what by some isolated groups of the enemy who held out in 
 pill-boxes behind Cameron House. When these were 
 cleared out our line swept forward again and established it- 
 self on the far side of that wood. Our men hold the outer 
 houses of Gheluvelt. 
 
 The whole of the fighting here was made very difficult by 
 the swamps of the Reutelbeek, worse even than those of 
 the Hanebeek, through which the New-Zealanders crossed, 
 and our English boys were bogged as they tried to cross. 
 But they fought forward doggedly, and by sheer valour 
 safeguarded our right wing in the hardest part of the bat- 
 tle. Meanwhile, far on the north in the district of the Schrei- 
 boom astride the Thourout railway, Scottish and Irish 
 troops were fighting on a small front but on an heroic scale. 
 It was the Dublin Fusiliers who fought most recklessly. 
 They had begged to go first into this battle, and they went 
 all out with a wild and uxultant spirit. The ground in 
 front of them was a mud-pit, and they had to swing round 
 
S96 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 to get beyond it. They did not wait for the barrage. They 
 did not halt on their final objective, but still went away into 
 the blue, chasing the enemy and uplifted with a strange 
 fierce enthusiasm until they were called back to the line we 
 wanted to hold. They excelled themselves that morning, 
 and could not be held back after the word "Go!" 
 
 20 
 
 The Slough of Despond 
 
 October 9 
 Another battle was fought and another advance was made 
 by our troops to-day with the French, in a great assault on 
 their left. Our Allies gained about 1200 yards of ground 
 in two strides, captured some hundreds of prisoners and 
 many machine-guns and two field-guns, and killed large 
 numbers of the enemy in this attack, and in the bombard- 
 ments which have preceded it. The Allied troops are within 
 a few hundred yards of that forest of which Marlborough 
 spoke when he said, * 'Whoever holds Houthulst Forest 
 holds Flanders," and have gone forward about 1500 yards 
 in depth along a line beyond Poelcappelle across the Ypres- 
 Gheluvelt road. The enemy has suffered big losses again 
 Two new divisions just brought into the line — the 227th 
 straight from Rheims only getting into the line at three 
 o'clock this morning, and the 195th arrived from Russia — 
 have received a fearful baptism of fire, and at least three 
 other divisions — the i6th, 233rd, and 45th Reserve Divi- 
 sion — have been hard hit and are now bleeding from many 
 wounds and have given many prisoners from their ranks 
 into our hands. 
 
 How was this thing done? How did we have any suc- 
 cess to-day when even the most optimistic men were preyed 
 upon last night by horrid doubts? Our troops, we know, 
 are wonderful. There is nothing they could be asked to do 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 397 
 
 which they would not try to do, and struggle to the death 
 to do. But last night's attack might have seemed hopeless 
 in the morning except to men who had weighed all the 
 chances, who had all the evidence in their hands — evidence, 
 I mean, of the measure of the enemy's strength and spirit — 
 and who took the terrific responsibility of saying "Go!" to 
 the start of this new battle. 
 
 It was a black and dreadful night, raining more heavily 
 after heavy rains. The wind howled and raged across 
 Flanders with long, sinister wailings as it gathered speed 
 and raced over the fields. Heavy storm-clouds hiding the 
 moon and the stars broke, and a deluge came down, drench- 
 ing all our soldiers who marched along the roads and tracks, 
 making ponds about them where they stood. And it was 
 cold, with a coldness cutting men with the sharp sword of 
 the wind, and there was no glimmer of light in the dark- 
 ness. To those of us who know the crater-land of the bat- 
 tlefields, who with light kit or no kit have gone stumbling 
 through it, picking their way between the shell-holes in 
 daylight, taking hours to travel a mile or two, it might 
 have seemed impossible that great bodies of troops could 
 go forward in assault over such country and win any kind 
 of success in such conditions. That they did so is a proof, 
 one more proof to add to a thousand others, that our troops 
 have in them an heroic spirit which is above the normal 
 laws of life, and that, whatever the conditions may be, they 
 will face them and grapple with them, and, if the spirit 
 and flesh of man can do it, overcome the impossible itself. 
 This battle seems to me as wonderful as anything we have 
 done since the Highlanders and the Naval Division cap- 
 tured Beaumont-Hamel in the mud and the fog. More 
 wonderful even than that, because on a greater scale and in 
 more foul weather. 
 
 This morning I have been among the Lancashire and 
 West Riding men of the 66th and 49th Divisions who lay 
 out last night before the attack, which followed the first 
 gleams of dawn to-day, and who marched up — no, they did 
 
398 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 not march, but staggered and stumbled up to take part in 
 the attack. These men I met had come back wounded. 
 Only in the worst days of the Somme have I seen such 
 figures. They were plastered from head to foot in wet 
 mud. Their hands and faces were covered with clay, like 
 the hands and faces of dead men. They had tied bits of 
 sacking round their legs, and this was stuck on them with 
 clots of mud. Their belts and tunics were covered with a 
 thick, wet slime. They were soaked to the skin, and their 
 hair was stiff with clay. They looked to me like men who 
 had been buried alive and dug up again, and when I spoke 
 to them I found that some of them had been buried alive 
 and unburied while they still had life. They told me this 
 simply, as if it were a normal thing. "A shell burst close," 
 said a Lancashire fellow, "and I was buried up to the neck." 
 "Do you mean up to the neck ?" I asked, and he said, "Yes, 
 up to the neck." There were many like that, and others, 
 without being flung down by a shell-burst or buried in its 
 crater, fell up to their waists in shell-holes and up to their 
 arm-pits, and sank in water and mud. 
 
 A long column of men whom I knew had to make their 
 way up at night to join in the attack at the dawn. I had 
 seen them the day before, with rain slashing down on their 
 steel hats and their shiny capes, and I thought they were 
 as grand a set of lads as ever I have seen in France. They 
 were men of the Lancashire battalions in the 66th Division. 
 
 It was at dusk that they set out on their way up to the 
 battle-line, and it was only a few miles they had to go. But 
 it took them eleven hours to go that distance, and they did 
 not get to the journey's end until half an hour before they 
 had to attack. It was not a march. It was a long struggle J 
 against the demons of a foul night on the battlefield. The * 
 wind blew a gale against them, slapping their faces with 
 wet canes, so that their flesh stung as at the slash of whips. 
 It buffeted them against each other and clutched at their 
 rifles and tried to wrench their packs off their backs. And 
 the rain poured down upon them in fierce gusts until they 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 399 
 
 were only dry where their belts crossed, and their boots 
 were filled with water. It was pitch-dark at the beginning 
 of the night, and afterwards there was only the light of 
 the stars. They could not see a yard before them, but only 
 the dark figure of the man ahead. Often that figure ahead 
 fell suddenly with a shout. It had fallen into a deep shell- 
 hole and disappeared. 
 
 "Where are you, Bill?" shouted one man to another. 
 "I'm bogged. For God's sake give me a hand, old lad." 
 
 There was not a man who did not fall. '1 fell a hundred 
 times," said one of them. "It was nigh impossible to keep 
 on one's feet for more than a yard or two." 
 
 So that little party of men went stumbling and staggering 
 along, trying to work across the shell-holes. 
 
 "My pal Bert," said one man, ''fell in deep, and then sank 
 farther in. 'Charlie,' he cried. Two of us, and then four, 
 tried to drag him out, but we slipped down the bank of the 
 crater and rolled into the slime with him. I thought we 
 should never get out. Some men were cursing and some 
 were laughing in a wild way, and some were near crying 
 with the cold. But somehow we got on." 
 
 Somehow they got on, and that is the wonder of it. 
 They got on to the line of the attack half an hour before 
 the guns were to start their drum-fire, and they joined the 
 thousands of other men who had been lying out in the shell- 
 holes all night, and were numbed with cold and waist-high 
 in water. 
 
 Not all of them got there. The German guns had been 
 busy most of the night, and big shells were coming over 
 Thirty men were killed or wounded with one shell, and 
 others were hit and fell into the water-pools, and lay there 
 till the stretcher-bearers— the splendid stretcher-bearers- 
 came up to search for them. 
 
 The Lancashires, who had travelled eleven hours, had had 
 no food all that time. "I would have given my left arm 
 for a drop of hot drink," said one of them, "I was fair 
 perished with cold." 
 
400 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 Some of them had rum served out to them. They were 
 the lucky ones, for it gave them a Httle warmth. But 
 others could not get a drop. 
 
 One man, who was shaking with an ague when I met 
 him this morning, had a pitiful tragedy happen to him. "I 
 had a jar of rum in my pack," he said, "and the boys said 
 to me, 'Keep it for us till we get over to the first objective. 
 We'll want it most then.' But when I went over I dropped 
 my pack. 'Oh, Christ !' I said, 'I've lost the rum !' " 
 
 They went over to the attack, these troops who were cold 
 and hungry and exhausted after a dreadful night, and they 
 gained their objective and routed the enemy, and sent back 
 many prisoners. I marvel at them, and will salute them if 
 ever I meet them in the world when the war is done. 
 
 There were a number of German blockhouses in front of 
 them, beyond Abraham Heights and the Gravenstafel. 
 These were Yetta House and Augustus House and Heine 
 House on the way to Tober Copse and Friesland Copse just 
 outside their line of assault. On their left there was a block- 
 house called Peter Pan, though no little mother Wendy 
 would tell stories to her boys there, and instead of Peter 
 Pan's cockcrow there was the wail of a wounded man. 
 Beyond that little house of death were Wolfe Copse and 
 Wolfe Farm, from which the fire of German machine-guns 
 came swishing in streams of bullets. There was no yard 
 of ground without a shell-hole. They were linked together 
 like the holes in a honeycomb, and the German troops, very 
 thick because of their new method of defence — ^very dense 
 in the support lines though the front line was more lightly 
 held — were scattered about in these craters. Large num- 
 bers were killed and wounded when our barrage stormed 
 over them, but numbers crouching in old craters were left 
 alive, and as the barrage passed they rose and came stream- 
 ing over in small batches, with their hands high — came to 
 meet our men, hoping for mercy. Many prisoners were 
 made before the first objective was reached, and after that 
 by harder fighting. Some of the men in shell-holes, wet 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 401 
 
 like our men and cold like our men, decided to keep fight- 
 ing, and fired their rifles as our lads struggled forward. 
 The boy who lost his rum- jar met three of these men in a 
 shell-hole, and he threw a bomb at them, and said, "This 
 is to pay back for the gas you gave me a month ago.'* 
 
 A little farther on there was another German in a shell- 
 hole. He was a boy of sixteen or so, and he raised his rifle 
 at the lad of the rum- jar, who flung the bayonet on one side 
 by a sudden blow, but not quick enough to escape a wound 
 in the arm. "I couldn't kill him," said the Lancashire lad ; 
 "he looked such a kid, like my young brother, so I took 
 him prisoner and sent him down." 
 
 Not all the prisoners who were taken came down behind 
 our lines. The enemy was barraging the ground heavily, 
 and many of their own men were killed, and some of our 
 stretcher-bearers, as they came down with the wounded. 
 Up in the leafless and shattered trees on the battlefield were 
 Germans with machine-guns, and German riflemen who 
 sniped our men as they passed. Many of these were shot 
 up in the trees and came crashing down. Up on the left 
 of the attack, where our troops were in liaison with the 
 French, the enemy were taken prisoners in great numbers, 
 officers as well as men, and the hostile bombardment was 
 not so heavy as on the right, so that the casualties seem 
 to have been light there. In spite of the frightful ground 
 all the objectives were taken, so that our line has drawn 
 close to Houthulst Forest. 
 
 There was heavy fighting by the Worcesters of the 29th 
 Division at a place called Pascal Farm, and a lot of con- 
 crete dug-outs on the Langemarck-Houthulst road gave 
 trouble with their machine-guns. Adler Farm, just out- 
 side our old line, somewhat south of that, also held out 
 a while, but was mastered, and opened the way to the sec- 
 ond objective, which on the right carried the attack through 
 Poelcappelle. Here there was hard fighting, by the Lan- 
 cashire Fusiliers, South Staffords, and Yorkshires of the 
 nth, and the German garrison put up a desperate resist- 
 
402 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 ance in the brewery of Poelcappelle. On the right there 
 has been grim fighting again in the old neighbourhood of 
 Polderhoek Chateau, but on either side of it our troops of 
 the 5th Division have made good progress, in spite of in- 
 tense and concentrated fire from many heavy batteries. 
 The enemy has again had a great blow, and has lost large 
 numbers of men — dead, wounded, and captured. That 
 our troops could do this after such a night and over such 
 foul ground must seem to the German High Command 
 like some black art. 
 
 October 10 
 In my message yesterday I described the appalling condi- 
 tion of the ground and of the weather through which our 
 men floundered in their assault towards Houthulst Forest 
 and Passchendaele. That is the theme of this battle, as it 
 is told by all the men who have been through its swamps 
 and fire, and it is a marvel that any success could have 
 been gained. Where we succeeded — and we took a great 
 deal of ground and many prisoners — it was due to the sheer 
 courage of the men, who refused to be beaten by even the 
 most desperate conditions of exhaustion and difficulty; and 
 where we failed, or at least did not succeed, in making 
 full progress or holding all the first gains, it was because 
 courage itself was of no avail against the powers of nature, 
 which were in league that night with the enemy's guns. 
 
 The brunt of the fighting fell yesterday in the centre 
 upon the troops of North-country England, the hard, tough 
 men of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and it was Lancashire's 
 day especially, because of those third-line Territorial bat- 
 talions of Manchesters and East Lancashires and Lanca- 
 shire Fusiliers, with other comrades of the 66th Division. 
 There were some amongst them who went "over the bags," 
 as they call it, for the first time, and who fought in one of 
 the hardest battles that has ever been faced by British 
 troops, with most stubborn and gallant hearts. I know 
 by hearing from their own lips, to-day and yesterday, the 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 403 
 
 narrative of the sufferings they endured, of the fight ^hey 
 made, and of the wounds they bear without a moan. 
 
 The night march of some of these men who went up to 
 attack at dawn seems to me, who have written many records 
 of brave acts during three years of war, one of the most 
 heroic episodes in all this time. It was a march which in 
 dry, fine weather would have been done easily enough in 
 less than three hours by men so good as these. But it took 
 eleven hours for these Lancashire men to get up to their 
 support line, and then, worn out by fatigue that was a 
 physical pain, w^et to the skin, cold as death, hungry, and 
 all clotted about with mud, they lay in the water of shell- 
 holes for a little while until their officers said, "Our turn, 
 boys," and they went forward through heavy fire and over 
 the same kind of ground, and fought the enemy with his 
 machine-guns and beat him — until they lay outside their last 
 objective and kept off counter-attacks by a few machine- 
 guns that still remained unclogged, and rifles that somehow 
 they had kept dry. Nothing better than that has been done, 
 and Lancashire should thrill to the tale of it, because their 
 sons were its heroes. Dirty, blood-stained, scarecrow 
 heroes, as I met some of them to-day, lightly wounded, 
 but hardly able to walk after the long trail back from 
 the line. It was eleven hours' walking on the way up, and 
 then, after the wild day and half a night under shell-fire 
 and machine-gun fire, eleven hours down again, in shell- 
 holes and out of them, falling every few yards, crawling 
 on hands and knees through slimy trenches, staggering up 
 by the help of a comrade's arm and going on again with set 
 jaws, and the cry of ''No surrender!" in their soul. . . . 
 Gallant men. They had no complaint against the fate that 
 had thrust them into this morass, nor any whimper against 
 their hard luck. They told of the hard time they had had 
 simply and gravely, without exaggeration and without self- 
 pity, but as men who had been through a frightful ordeal 
 with many thousands of others whose luck was no better 
 than theirs and whose duty was the same. They came 
 
404 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 under severe machine-gun fire from some of the German 
 blockhouses, especially on their flanks. Our barrage-fire 
 had gone travelling beyond them, and because of the 
 swamps and pools it was impossible to keep pace with it. 
 Men were lugging each other out of the bogs, rescuing 
 each other free from the rain-filled shell-pits. So they lost 
 the only protection there is from machine-guns, the screen 
 of great belts of gun-fire, and the Germans had time to get 
 out of the concrete houses and to get up from the shell- 
 holes and fire at our advancing groups of muddy men. 
 Many Germans were sniping from these holes, and others 
 were up broken trees with machine-guns on small wooden 
 platforms. I met one man to-day who had eleven com- 
 rades struck down in his own group by one of the snipers. 
 A party was detached to search for the German rifleman, 
 but they could not find him. They got ahead through Peter 
 Pan House and then they had to face another blast of 
 machine-gun fire. The German garrison, in a place called 
 Yetta House, gave trouble in the same way, and there was 
 a nest of machine-guns ahead at Bellevue. Some York- 
 shire lads of the 49th Division went up there to route them 
 out, but what happened is not yet known. 
 
 All through the day and last night the Lancashire men 
 were under the streaming bullets of a machine-gun bar- 
 rage, which whipped the ground about them as fast as 
 falling hailstones, so that no man could put his head above 
 a shell-hole without getting a bullet through his steel hat. 
 I have seen many of those steel hats punctured clean 
 through, but with the men who wore them still alive and 
 able to smile grimly enough when they pointed to these 
 holes. At night the lightly wounded men who tried to get 
 back had a desperate time trying to find their way. Some 
 of them walked away to the German lines and were up to 
 the barbed wire before they found out their mistake. It 
 was difficult to get any sense of direction in the darkness, 
 but the German flares helped them. They rose with a very 
 bright light, flooding the swamps of No Man's Land with a 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 405 
 
 white glare, revealing the tragedy of the battlefield, where 
 many bodies lay still in the bogs, for many men had been 
 killed. Before the darkness German aeroplanes came over, 
 as it were, in dense flocks. One Lancashire boy declared 
 he counted thirty-seven as he lay looking up to the sky from 
 a shell-hole, and they flew low to see where our men had 
 made their line. Our stretcher-bearers worked through the 
 day and night, but it was hard going even with empty 
 stretchers, and they fell and got bogged like the fighting 
 men, and many were hit by shell-fire and machine-gun 
 bullets. With full stretchers they made their way back 
 slowly, and each journey took many hours, and on the way 
 they stuck many times in bogs and slipped many times waist- 
 deep in shell-holes. The transport and the carriers strug- 
 gled with equal courage through the slough of despond, 
 trying to get up rations to their cold and hungry comrades 
 and ammunition wanted by riflemen and machine-gunners. 
 Even in water beyond their belts the men tried to clean their 
 rifles and their belts from the mud which had fouled them, 
 knowing that later on their lives might depend on this. 
 And it is a wonderful thing that some counter-attacks were 
 actually repulsed by rifle-fire and by machine-guns, which 
 jam if any speck of dirt gets in their mechanism. That 
 was on the left, when the Coldstream, Irish, and Welsh 
 Guards and some old county regiments of England — Mid- 
 dlesex, Worcesters, Hampshires, Essex — and a gallant Ht- 
 tle body of Newfoundlanders in the 29th Division had 
 fought forward a long way with rapid success. 
 
 The losses of the Guards in going over to the first ob- 
 jective were not heavy. They preceded the attack by a 
 tremendous trench-mortar bombardment, which so fright- 
 ened the enemy and caused such loss among them that be- 
 fore the infantry advanced many of them came rushing 
 over to our lines to surrender. On the second objective 
 there was heavy fighting at a strong place called Strode 
 House, which was surrounded with uncut wire and de- 
 fended by heavy machine-gun fire. The Guards, after 
 
4j06 from BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 being checked, rushed it from all sides and captured it with 
 all its garrison. There was more fighting of the same 
 kind farther south, at ruins close to Houthulst Forest, on 
 the edge of the swamps, which seem to be a No Man's Land, 
 because the ground is too wet for the Germans to live 
 there. Very quickly after the attack the enemy countered 
 heavily on the Guards* left, but the Guards held firm and 
 beat it off. 
 
 Farther south the Middlesex, Royal Fusiliers, and the 
 Newfoundlanders of the 29th Division went straight 
 through to their objective as far as Cinq Chemins Farm 
 (the Farm of the Five Roads), and they had to resist a 
 series of counter-attacks, starting before half-past eight 
 in the morning. The first of these was shattered by rifle- 
 fire, and the second by artillery-fire, but afterwards, owing 
 no doubt to heavy shelling, our line withdrew a little in front 
 of the Poelcappelle road. 
 
 On the left centre of our attack our progress was not 
 maintained. The ground here was deplorable, as the two 
 streams of the Lekkerbolerbeek and the Stroombeek had 
 been cut through by shell-fire, so that their boundaries were 
 lost in broad floods. Mortal men could not pass through 
 quick enough to keep up with a barrage, and after desper- 
 ate struggles they were forced to withdraw from the for- 
 ward positions beyond Adler Farm and Bums House. 
 
 Round the village of Poelcappelle, now no more than a 
 dust-heap of ruin, there was fierce fighting, and the enemy 
 held out in the brewery, from which he swept the ground 
 with machine-gun bullets so that all approach was deadly. 
 The Yorkshire men of the nth Division here made re- 
 peated rushes, but without much success, it seems. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the extreme right of the attack some very 
 grim and desperate work was being done by English troops 
 of famous old regiments round about Reutel and Polder- 
 hoek. At Polderhoek the enemy had a nest of dug-outs and 
 machine-gun emplacements behind the chateau, and in spite 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 407 
 
 of the assaults of Warwicks and Nor folks held them by 
 unceasing fire. 
 
 On the north of Polderhoek success was complete in the 
 attack on Reutel, though the village was defended by 
 machine-guns in a cemetery beyond Reutel, and several 
 defended blockhouses. These were attacked and taken by 
 the H.A.C., Warwicks, and Devons, and our line of objec- 
 tives was made good beyond Reutel and Judge Copse, which 
 have been thorns in our side — spear-heads rather — for many 
 days. 
 
 Splendid and chivalrous work was done on this part of 
 the ground by the stretcher-bearers. Out of two hundred 
 and fifty labouring in these fields over a hundred were hit, 
 and all of them took the utmost risk to rescue their fallen 
 comrades in the fighting-lines. The sappers and the pio- 
 neers, the transport and the runners, fought not against the 
 enemy from Germany, but against an enemy more difficult 
 to defeat, and that was the mud. 
 
 21 
 
 The Assaults on Passchendaele 
 
 October 12 
 Our troops went forward again to-day farther up the slopes 
 of the Passchendaele Ridge, striking north-east towards 
 the village of Passchendaele itself, which I saw this morn- 
 ing looming through the mist and the white smoke of shell- 
 fire, with its ruins like the battlements of a mediaeval castle 
 perched high on the crest. 
 
 It has been a day of very heavy fighting, and the su- 
 preme success will only be gained by the spirit of men reso- 
 lute to win in the face of continual blasts of machine-gun 
 bullets, heavy shelling, and weather which has made the 
 ground as bad as ever a battlefield has been. The enemy, 
 if we may believe what his prisoners say, expected the at- 
 tack, and that they did expect it is borne out by the quick- 
 
408 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 ness with which they dropped down their defensive bar- 
 rage, the violent way in which they shelled our back areas 
 during the night, and by other unmistakable signs of readi- 
 ness. Perhaps the last attack two days ago through the 
 wild gale and the mud warned them that not even the ele- 
 ments would safeguard them against us, and that our troops, 
 who had already achieved something that was next to im- 
 possible, would attempt another and greater adventure. 
 
 To me these blows through the mud seem the most dar- 
 ing endeavours ever made by great bodies of men. The 
 strength of the enemy — and he is very strong still — and the 
 courage of the enemy, which is high among his best troops, 
 are not the greatest powers which our men are called upon 
 to overcome in this latest fighting. Given a good barrage, 
 and they are ready to attack his pill-boxes now that we have 
 broken the first evil spell of them. But this mud of 
 Flanders, these swamps which lie in the way, these nights 
 of darkness and rain in the quagmires — those are the real 
 terrors which are hardest to win through. Yet our men 
 were confident of their fate to-day, and backed each other 
 with astounding courage to take the ground they were 
 asked to take; and that pledge which they made between 
 their battalions was after that night, now three nights 
 ago, when the Lancashire and Yorkshire men made their 
 march through the mud which I have described in other 
 messages^ — eleven hours' going before they reached their 
 starting-line after frightful tribulations in the darkness and 
 before they went into the battle, late for their barrage and 
 exhausted in body, but still with the pluck to fight through 
 machine-gun fire to their objectives. They did not go as 
 far as had been hoped, but they did far more than any one 
 might dare expect in such conditions, and the men in 
 to-day's battle depended for success upon the starting-line 
 gained for them by those comrades of North-country Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The New-Zealanders who went over to-day swore that 
 with any luck, or even without luck, they would plant their 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 409 
 
 flag high, and among those men there was a grim, smoulder- 
 ing fire of some purpose which boded ill for the enemy 
 they should find against them. These are not words of 
 rhetoric, to give a little colour to the dark picture of war, 
 but the sober truth of what was in those New Zealand 
 boys' minds yesterday when they made ready for this new 
 battle. 
 
 It was difficult to get the men anywhere near the line of 
 attack, owing to the foulness of the ground. Those who 
 vrere in their positions the night before^ — that is, on Wednes- 
 day night — found that they were not utterly comfortless in 
 the sodden fields. By a fine stroke of daring and by the 
 great effort of carriers and transport officers, who risked 
 their lives in the task, bivouacs were taken up and pegged 
 out in the darkness under the very nose of the enemy, so that 
 the men should not lie out in the pouring rain, and before 
 dawn came they were taken away, in order not to reveal 
 these assemblies. There was food also, and hot drink close 
 to the fighting-lines, and some of the coldness and horrors 
 of the night were relieved. A clear line was made for the 
 barrage which would be fired by our guns this morning. 
 But some troops had still to go up, and some men had to 
 march through the night as those Lancashire men had 
 marched up three nights before. They had the same grim 
 adventure. They, too, fell into shell-holes, groped their 
 way forward blindly in a wild downpour of rain, lugged each 
 other out of the bogs, floundered through mud and shell- 
 fire from five in the evening until a few minutes only before 
 it was time to attack. The enemy was busy with his guns all 
 night to catch any of our men who might be on the move. 
 He flung down a heavy barrage round about Zonnebeke, 
 but by good chance it missed one group of men thereabouts, 
 and scarcely touched any of the others in that neighbour- 
 hood. But his heavy shells were scattered over a wide area, 
 and came bowling through the darkness and exploding with 
 great upheavals of the wet earth. Small parties of men 
 dodged them as best they could, and pitched into shell-holes 
 
410 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 five deep in water when they threatened instant death. Then 
 gas-shells came whinning, with their queer little puffs, un- 
 like the exploding roar of bigger shells, and the wet wind 
 was filled with poisonous vapour smarting to the eyes and 
 skin, so that our men had to put on their gas-masks and 
 walk like that in a worse darkness. These things, and this 
 way up to battle, might have shaken the nerves of most 
 men, might even have unmanned them and weakened them 
 by the fainting sickness of fear. But it only made the 
 New-Zealanders angry. It made them angry to the point 
 of wild rage. 
 
 "To Hell with them," said some of them. "We won't 
 spare them when we go over. We will make them pay for 
 this night." They used savage and flaming words, cursing 
 the enemy and the weather and the shell-fire and the foul- 
 ness of it all. 
 
 I know the state of the ground, for I went over its crater- 
 land this morning to look at this flame of fire below the 
 Passchendaele spur. I had no heavy kit like the fighting 
 men, but fell on the greasy duck-boards as they fell, and 
 rolled into the slime as they had rolled. The rain beat a 
 tattoo on one's steel helmet. Every shell-hole was brimful 
 of brown or greenish water; moisture rose from the earth 
 in a fog. Our guns were firing everywhere through the 
 mist and thrust sharp little swords of flame through its 
 darkness, and all the battlefields bellowed with the noise of 
 these guns. I walked through the battery positions, past 
 enormous howitzers which at twenty paces distance shook 
 one's bones with the concussion of their blasts, past long 
 muzzled high velocities, whose shells after the first sharp 
 hammer-stroke went whinnying away with a high fluttering 
 note of death, past the big-bellied nine-point-twos and mon- 
 sters firing lyddite shells in clouds of yellow smoke. Before 
 me stretching away round the Houthulst Forest, big and 
 dark and grim, with its close-growing trees, was the Pass- 
 chendaele Ridge, the long, hummocky slopes for which our 
 men were fighting, and our barrage-fire crept up it, and in- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 411 
 
 femal shell-fire, rising in white columns, was on the top of 
 it, hiding the broken houses there until later in the morning, 
 when the rain ceased a little, and the sky was streaked with 
 blue, and out of the wet gloom Passchendaele appeared, 
 with its houses still standing, though all in ruins. There 
 were queer effects when the sun broke through. Its rays ran 
 down the wet trunks and the forked naked branches of dead 
 trees with a curious, dazzling whiteness, and all the swamps 
 were glinting with light on their foul waters, and the pack- 
 mules winding along the tracks, slithering and staggering 
 through the slime, had four golden bars on either side of 
 them when the sun shone on their i8-pounder shells. There 
 was something more ghastly in this flood of white light over 
 the dead ground of the battlefields, revealing all the litter of 
 human conflict round the captured German pill-boxes, than 
 when it was all tmder black storm-clouds. 
 
 It was at the side of a pill-box famous in the recent fight- 
 ing that I watched the progress of our barrage up the 
 slopes of Passchendaele, and it was only by that fire and 
 by the answering fire of the German guns with blacker 
 shell-bursts that one could tell the progress of our men. 
 
 "How^s it going?" asked a friend of two officers of the 
 Guards who came down the duck-boards from Poelcappelle 
 way. 
 
 "Pretty well," was the answer. "We have cut off four 
 Boche guns with our barrage, though we only had a little 
 way to go — on the left, you know." 
 
 "Big fellows?" 
 
 "No, pip-squeak. The usual seventy-seven." 
 
 It seemed that there had been a check on the left. Our 
 men had come up against abominable machine-gun fire. On 
 the right things were doing better. Our line was being 
 pushed up close to Passchendaele, within a few hundred 
 yards or so. Some prisoners were coming down — there had 
 been a lot of bayonet fighting, and a lot of killing. The 
 wounded are getting back already, most of them with ma- 
 chine-gun wounds, the worst of them with shell wounds. 
 
412 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 The New-Zealanders had hardly gone over before Ger- 
 man flares rose to call on the guns. The guns did not an- 
 swer for some little while; but instantly there was the 
 chattering fire of many machine-guns; and from places 
 above the Ypres-Roulers railway, and all the length of the 
 Goudberg spur of the Passchendaele, where there were 
 many blockhouses and concrete streets, there was poured out 
 a sweeping barrage of bullets. 
 
 Our men, advancing on all sides of the Passchendaele 
 Ridge and right up to the edge of Houthulst Forest, were 
 everywhere checked a while by the swampy ground. The 
 streams, or beeks, that intersect this country, like the Lek- 
 kerbolerbeek and the Ravelbeek, had lost all kind of bounds, 
 and by the effect of shell-fire had flowed out into wide bogs. 
 Here and there the men crossed more easily, and that led 
 to some parts of the line getting farther forward then others 
 and so to being enfiladed on the right or left. It is on the 
 left that we have had most difficulty, round about Wolfe 
 Copse and Marsh Bottom. On the right it is reported that 
 some of the Anzacs have been seen going up across the 
 slopes of Crest Farm, which is some 500 yards from Pas- 
 schendaele village, on the heights of the ridge. At the pres- 
 ent time it is impossible to tell more about this battle than 
 to say it is being fought desperately. Our airmen are un- 
 able to bring back exact news owing to the darkness which 
 has again descended, and all that is known so far is that 
 our men are making progress in spite of the deadly ma- 
 chine-gun fire against them, and that they are resolute to 
 go on. The enemy is fighting hard, and his Jaegers, with 
 green bands round their caps, and the men of the 223rd 
 Reserve Division, have not surrendered easily, though 
 many of them are now our prisoners. It is raining again 
 heavily, and the mists have deepened. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 413 
 
 22 
 
 Round Poelcappelle 
 
 October 14 
 To-day there was a fine spell, though yesterday, after Fri- 
 day's battle, it was still raining, and looked as if it might 
 rain until next April or March. Our soldiers cursed the 
 weather, cursed it with deep and lurid oaths, cursed it wet 
 and cursed it cold, by day and by night, by duck-boards and 
 mule-tracks, by shell-holes and swamps, by Ravelbeek and 
 Broenbeek and Lekkerbolerbeek. For it was weather which 
 robbed them of victory on Friday and made them suffer 
 the worst miseries of winter warfare, and held them in the 
 mud when they had set their hearts upon the heights. It 
 was the mud which beat them. Man after man has said 
 that to me on the day of battle and yesterday. 
 
 "Fritz couldn't have stopped us," said an Australian boy, 
 warming his hands and body by a brazier after a night in 
 the cold slime, which was still plastered about him. "It was 
 the mud which gave him a life chance." 
 
 "It was the mud that did us in," said an officer of the 
 Berkshires, sitting up on a stretcher and speaking wearily. 
 "We got bogged and couldn't keep up with the barrage. 
 That gave the German machine-gunners time to get to work 
 on us. It was their luck." 
 
 A young Scottish Borderer, shivering so that his teeth 
 chattered, spoke hoarsely, and there was no warmth in 
 him except the fire in his eyes. "We had a fearful time," 
 he said, "but it was the spate of mud that kept us back, and 
 the Germans took advantage of it." 
 
 "Whenever we got near to Fritz he surrendered or ran," 
 said a young sergeant of the East Surreys. "We should 
 have had him beat with solid ground beneath us, but we all 
 got stuck in the bog, and he came out of his blockhouses 
 and machine-gunned us as we tried to get across the shell- 
 
414 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 holes, all filled like young ponds, and sniped us when we 
 could not drag one leg after the other." 
 
 No proof is needed of the valour of our men. It is idle 
 to speak of it, because for three years they have shown 
 the height of human courage in the most damnable and 
 deadly places. But I have known nothing finer in this 
 war than the quality of the talk I have heard among the 
 men who fought all Friday after a night exposure in wild 
 rain, and lay out all that night in water-pools under gun- 
 fire, and came back again yesterday wounded, spent, bloody 
 and muddy, cramped and stiff, cold to the marrow-bones, 
 and tired after the agony of the long trail back across the 
 barren fields. They did not despair because they had not 
 gained all they had hoped to gain. "We'll get it all right 
 next time," said man after man among them. They all 
 stated the reasons for their bad luck. 
 
 "If you step off a duck-board you go squelch up to the 
 knees, and handling them big shells is no joke. All that 
 means delay in getting up ammunition." This was from a 
 young soldier who had been flung 50 yards and senseless 
 away from a group of comrades who were all killed by a 
 big shell-burst. His senses had come back, and a quiet, 
 shrewd judgment of all he had seen and his old faith that 
 our men can win through every time if they have equal 
 chances with the enemy. That faith, that confidence in their 
 o^n fighting quality, was not dimmed because on Friday 
 they did not go far. The fire of it, the beauty of it, vhe 
 simplicity of it shone in the eyes of these men, who were 
 racked by aches and shot through with pain, all befouled 
 by the mud, which was in the very pores of their skin, and 
 seared by remembrances of tragic things. To command . 
 soldiers like that should be the supreme joy of their officers, 
 an.d indeed there is not one of our officers who does not 
 think so, and is not proud of them with a pride that is 
 full of comradeship for his good company. Napoleon's 
 Old Guard was not of better stuff than these boys from Eng- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 415 
 
 lish farms and factories, Scottish homesteads, Australian 
 and New Zealand sheep- farm runs. 
 
 In these recent battles home troops and overseas troops 
 have been mixed together in the mud of battlefields, and they 
 come down together out of the shell-fire to field dressing- 
 stations, waiting to have their wounds dressed and telling 
 their tales of the fighting. There is no difference there be- 
 tween them. They are all figures carved out of the same 
 clay, with faces and hands of the tint of clay, like men 
 risen out of wet graves. A moist steam rises from them 
 as they group round the braziers, and they know each 
 other — Australian and English lad, Scot and Welsh, Irish, 
 New-Zealander — as comrades who have taken the same 
 risks, suffered the same things, escaped from death by the 
 same kind of miracle. They talk in low voices. There is 
 no bragging among them; no wailing; no excited talk. 
 Quietly they tell each other of the things that happened to 
 them and of the things they saw, and it is the naked truth, 
 idle sometimes as truth itself. So when they say, as I heard 
 them say yesterday, "It is all right, it was only the mud 
 that checked us,'* one knows that this is truth in the hearts 
 of brave men, the truth of the fine faith that is in them. 
 
 I told in my last message how the enemy was ready for 
 attack and tried to prevent it, before it started, by violent 
 shelling over our back areas, all through Thursday night, 
 mixing his high explosives with gas-shells and trying to 
 catch our men on the move and our batteries deep in the 
 mud. It is certain that his aeroplanes, flying low through 
 mists, saw great traffic behind the lines and the work of 
 thousands of men laying down new tracks and getting for- 
 ward with supplies. That could not be hidden from them. 
 We did not try to hide it, but worked in the daylight under 
 the eyes of their observers in Passchendaele and in Crest 
 Farm below it, and on the high ground above Poelcappelle, 
 so that they could see the tide of all this energy when the 
 gunners, pioneers, engineers, transports drivers, mule 
 leaders, and the long winding columns of troops surged up 
 
416 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the arteries of the battlefields and choked them about the 
 Piccadilly Circus of the crater-land. 
 
 It was a supreme defiance of the enemy's power, a chal- 
 lenge louder than any herald's trumpet announcing the be- 
 ginning of a new battle. The enemy accepted the chal- 
 lenge, though not, as we know, with any gladness of heart. 
 Behind his lines there was disorder and dismay, and his 
 organization had been horribly strained by the rapid series 
 of blows which had fallen on him and by his great losses. 
 His local reserves had been flung together anyhow, to meet 
 the pressure we had put upon him. Remnants of battalions 
 were mixed up with other remnants, and our prisoners are 
 from many units. These divisions of his which have 
 withstood the brunt of this recent fighting, like the 195th 
 and the i6th and the 227th, were horribly mauled and 
 broken, and other divisions coming up to relieve them were 
 caught by our long-range guns far back from the lines, 
 and lost their way in the swamps which are on their side 
 of the battlefield as well as on ours, and struggled forward 
 in the darkness and shell-fire to positions hard to find by 
 troops new to this ground. Their High Command issued 
 new orders hurriedly, and made desperate efforts to 
 strengthen their lines. They put up new apron-wire de- 
 fences around their blockhouses. All the heavy machine- 
 guns of the supporting troops were sent forward to the front 
 lines to reinforce those already in position in their block- 
 houses and organized shell-holes between the blockhouses 
 and the narrow streets of concrete. Never before did the 
 enemy mass so many machine-guns on his front for continu- 
 ous barrage over a wide region, and to defend the last spurs 
 of Passchendaele. He had machine-guns up trees as well 
 as on the ground, and he scattered his riflemen among the 
 shell-craters with orders to shoot until they were killed or 
 captured. 
 
 It is fair to these men to say that they obeyed their orders 
 and fought on Friday with most fierce courage. It was 
 only here and there that small bodies of German troops, 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 417 
 
 caught in our barrage and nerve-broken by the long agony 
 of lying in water under a ceaseless shell-fire, ran forward to 
 our men as soon as the first brown lines appeared out of the 
 mud and surrendered. The men behind the machine-guns 
 opened fire at the moment of attack, and it was the noise of 
 this light artillery, the longdrawn swish of its bullets whip- 
 ping the ground, and a devil's tattoo of groups of machine- 
 guns hidden up the slopes, that broke upon our men as soon 
 as they began to make their way through the mud. 
 
 I have already told how many of our men had spent the 
 night. Large bodies of them had lain out since Wednesday. 
 Of these some had been luckier than others, getting hot 
 drink and food and shelter under tarpaulin tents which did 
 not keep them dry, but kept off the full force of the beating 
 rains. Others, not so lucky, had to lie in shell-holes half 
 full, or quite full, of ice-cold water, and rations had gone 
 astray, as many ration parties could not get up through 
 the hostile barrage or were bogged somewhere down be- 
 low; and for some men at least there was not the usual 
 drop of rum to warm the "cockles of their hearts" and to 
 bring back a little glow of life to their poor numbed limbs. 
 Other men had spent the night in marching, spurred on by 
 the hateful fear of being too late to take their place in the 
 battle-line, so that their comrades would not have their 
 help, but spurred to no quickness because every yard of 
 ground had its obstacle and its ditch, and it was a crawl 
 all the way, with many slips and falls and shouts for help. 
 
 It was pitch-dark, and the rain beat against these men, 
 driven by the savage wind, plucking at their capes, buffet- 
 ing their steel helmets, straining at the straps of their 
 packs, slashing them across the face. There boots squelched 
 deep in the mud and made a queer, sucking noise as these 
 single files of dark figures went shuffling across along slimy 
 duckboards, a queer noise which I heard when I went up 
 with some of them on the morning of the battle over duck- 
 board tracks. Some of them lost the duck-boards and went 
 knee-deep into bogs, and waist-deep into shell-holes, and 
 
418 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 neck-deep into swamps. In spite of all the {rightfulness of 
 the night, the coldness, the weariness, and the beastliness of 
 this floundering in mud and shell-fire, they went forward 
 into the battle with grim, set faces, and attacked the places 
 from which the machine-gun fire came in blasts. The New- 
 Zealanders attacked many blockhouses and strong points 
 immediately in front of their first objective on the left above 
 the Ypres-Roulers railway, and on the way to the marsh 
 bottom and rising slope of the Goudberg spur, where at 
 Bellevue the enemy's machine-guns were thickly clustered. 
 
 Below that, by Heine House and Augustus, the Australian 
 troops were trying to work their way forward to the hum- 
 mock of Crest Farm, barring the way to Passchendaele, and 
 up on the left centre, from the cross-roads and cemetery 
 of Poelcappelle, the Scottish and English battalions — 
 Berkshires, East Surreys, West Kents, and others — as- 
 saulted the brewery, which has been captured twice and 
 twice lost, and a row of buildings in heaps of ruin on the 
 Poelcappelle road, which the Germans use as cover for 
 their machine-gunners. Many of these outposts were cap- 
 tured by groups. Our men worked round them and rushed 
 them, in spite of the streams of bullets which pattered 
 around them so that many fell in the first attempts. Here 
 and there the enemy fought fiercely to the last, and fell un- 
 der the bayonets of our men. Here and there, in the open 
 ground to the right of Poelcappelle and on the ground be- 
 low Passchendaele, batches of German soldiers made little 
 fight, but came rushing out of their holes with their hands 
 np, terror-stricken. 
 
 But machine-gun fire never ceased from the higher 
 ground, from tall masts of branchless trees, from shell- 
 craters beyond the reach of our men. Our barrage travelled 
 ahead, and slow as it was I saw it creeping up the lower 
 slopes of the Passchendaele ridge for the second objective 
 on Friday morning — our men could not keep pace with it. 
 They were stuck in the swamps at Marsh Bottom in the 
 Lekkerbolerbeek below Poelcappelle and in the bogs below 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 419 
 
 Crest Farm. They plunged into these bogs, fiercely cursing 
 them, struggling to get through them to the enemy, but the 
 men could do nothing with their legs held fast in such 
 slime, nothing but shout to comrades to drag them out. 
 While they struggled German snipers shot at them with a 
 cool aim, and the machine-gun bullets of the deadly barrage 
 lashed across the shell-craters. 
 
 Australian troops on the right made good and reached 
 the edge of the hummock called Crest Farm. Some of them 
 swarmed up it and fought and killed the garrison there, 
 but beyond was another knoll with machine-gunners and 
 riflemen, and as our men came up to the top of Crest Farm 
 they were under close and deadly fire. They would have 
 held their ground here if they could have been supported 
 on the left, but the New-Zealanders were having a terrible 
 time in Marsh Bottom and Bellevue, and could not make 
 much headway because of the deadly fire which came down 
 from the spur on which Bellevue is perched. All this 
 time it was raining hard, making the ground worse than be- 
 fore, and the wet mists deepened, preventing all visibility 
 for our machines working with the guns. Orders were 
 given not to continue the second stage of the attack, be- 
 cause the weather was too bad, and the Australians on the 
 right centre withdrew their line in order not to have an 
 exposed flank. In the afternoon the enemy's heavy artillery, 
 which had been very hesitating and uncertain during the 
 first stages of the attack, began to barrage the ground in- 
 tensely, and continued this fire all the night. 
 
 Meanwhile close and fierce fighting was all about Poelcap- 
 pelle. English and Scottish troops entered the ruins of the 
 village, in spite of the waves of machine-gun bullets which 
 girdled it, drove the Germans out of the brewery buildings 
 for a time, fought their way among the brick-heaps and 
 ruined houses, killed many men who held out there, and 
 with bayonet and rifle defended themselves against counter- 
 attacks which came down the Poelcappelle road. It was as 
 savage and desperate fighting as any episode in this war 
 
420 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 at close quarters, without mercy on either side, one man's 
 life for another's. Our men were reckless and fierce. They 
 fought in small parties, with or without officers. Ground 
 was gained and lost by yards, and men fought like wild 
 beasts across the broken walls and ditches and shell-craters 
 which go by the name of Poelcappelle. It was five o'clock in 
 the evening that another strong counter-attack by the enemy 
 came down Poelcappelle road and drove in our advanced 
 posts. The brewery then became a sort of No Man's Land 
 — an empty shell between opposing sides. Our men were 
 spent after all that night and day in the mud and all this 
 fighting, and now dusk was creeping down, and it was 
 hard to see who was friend and who was enemy among the 
 figures that crawled about in the slime. 
 
 It was the turn for stretcher-bearers, those men who 
 work behind the fighting-lines and then come to gather up 
 the htunan wreckage off it. With great heroism they had 
 worked all day under heavy fire, and now went on work- 
 ing without thought of self. They were visible to the 
 enemy, and their Red Cross armlets showed their mission. 
 Away on the slopes of Passchendaele his stretcher-bearers 
 could be seen working too. One body of 200 men came 
 out, waving the Red Cross flag, with stretchers and am- 
 bulances, and went gleaning in these harvest-fields, and no 
 shot of ours went over to them. But on our side shots 
 from German snipers were still flying and our stretcher- 
 bearers were hit. Three of them carrying one stretcher 
 were killed, and the officer with them directing this work 
 near Poelcappelle was fired with a flame of anger. He 
 seized a Red Cross flag and made his way very quickly 
 over the shell-holes towards the enemy's position, and 
 standing there, this officer of the R.A.M.C. shouted out a 
 speech which rang high above the noise of gun-fire and all 
 the murmur of the battlefield. 
 
 Perhaps what he said was quite incoherent and wild. 
 Perhaps no man who heard him could understand a word 
 of what he said, but there in the shell-holes hidden from 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 421 
 
 him in the mud were listening men with loaded rifles, and 
 they may have raised their heads to look at that single figure 
 with the flag. They understood what he meant. His ac- 
 cusing figure was a message to them. After that there 
 was no deliberate sniping of stretcher-bearers, though they 
 still had to go through shell-fire. It was hard on the 
 wounded that night. The lightly wounded made their 
 way back as best they could, and it was a long way back, 
 and a dark way back over that awful ground. God knows 
 how they managed it, these men with holes in their legs 
 and mangled arms and bloody heads. They do not know. 
 
 "I thought I should never get back," said many of them 
 yesterday. "It was bad enough going up, when we were 
 strong and fit. At the end of the journey we could hardly 
 drag our limbs along to get near the enemy. But coming 
 down was worse." 
 
 They fell not once but many times, they crawled through 
 the slime and then fell into deep pits of water with slippery 
 sides, so that they could hardly get out. They lay down in 
 the mud and believed they must die, but some spark of 
 vitality kept alive in them, and a great desire for life 
 goaded them to make another effort to go another hun- 
 dred yards. They cried out incoherently, and heard other 
 cries around them, but were alone in some mud-track of 
 these battlefields with a great loneliness of the soul. One 
 man told me of his night like that, told me with strange 
 smiling eyes that lightened up the mud mask of his face 
 under a steel hat that was like an earthenware pot on his 
 head. All the time he opened and shut his hands very 
 slowly and carefully, and looked at them as things separate 
 from himself. They had become quite dead and white in 
 the night, and were now getting back to life and touch from 
 the warmth of a brazier over which he crouched. ^ 
 
 "I crawled a thousand yards or so," he said, "and 
 thought I was finished. I had no more strength than a 
 baby, and my head was all queer and dizzy-like, so that I 
 had uncommon strange thoughts and saw things that 
 
422 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 weren't there. The shells kept coming near me, and the 
 noise of them shook inside my head so that it went funny. 
 For a long time while I lay there I thought I had my 
 chums all round me, and that made me feel a kind of com- 
 fortable. I thought I could see them lying in the mud all 
 round with just their shoulders showing humped up and 
 the tops of their packs covered in mud. I spoke to them 
 sometimes and said, *Is that you, Alf?' or 'Come a bit 
 nearer, mate.' It didn't worry me at first because they 
 didn't answer. I thought they were tired. But presently 
 something told me I was all wrong. Those were mud-heaps, 
 not men. Then I felt frightened because I was alone. It 
 was a great, queer kind of fear that got hold of me, and I 
 sat up and then began to crawl again just to get into touch 
 with company, and I went on till daylight came and I saw 
 other men crawling out of shell-holes and some of them 
 walking and holding on to each other. So we got back to- 
 gether." 
 
 They came back to the field dressing-stations, where 
 there was warmth for them and hot drinks, and clean 
 bandages for their wounds; and groups of men, who had 
 fought with the same courage, and now, in spite of all they 
 had endured, spoke brave words, and said it was not the 
 enemy that had checked them but only the mud. Their 
 spirit had not been beaten, for no hardships in the world 
 will ever break that. 
 
 But while I was talking with these men a figure came and 
 sat on a bench among them speechless, because no one un- 
 derstood his tongue. It was a wounded German prisoner, 
 and I saw from his shoulder-strap that he belonged to the 
 233rd Regiment of the 119th Division. Among all these 
 men of ours who spoke with a fine hopefulness of what they 
 would do next time he was hopeless. *'We are lost," he 
 said. "My division is ended. My friends are all killed." 
 When asked what his officers thought, he made a queer 
 gesture of derision, with one finger under his nose when 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 
 
 he says "Zut." 'They think we are *kaput' too; they only 
 look to the end of the war/' 
 
 "And when do they think that will come?" He said, 
 "God willing, before the year ends." 
 
 In civilian life he was a worker in an ammunition fac- 
 tory at Thuringen, by the Black Forest. He had seen many 
 English there, and never thought he should fight against 
 them one day. His father, who is forty-seven, is in the 
 war. He himself looked a man of that age — old and worn, 
 with a week's beard on his chin ; but when I asked him his 
 age he replied, "I am twenty-one. Last night I was twenty- 
 one, when I lay after three days in a shell-hole — ['ein 
 granatenloch' ] — and your men helped me out because I was 
 wounded." 
 
 "What do you think of our men?" he was asked, and 
 he said, "They are good. Your artillery is good. It is 
 very bad for us. We are 'kaput.' " 
 
 On one side of the fire were the men who think they are 
 winning, whatever checks they may have, and who always 
 attack with that faith in their hearts. On the other side 
 was the man who said "We are finished," and sat huddled 
 up in despair. All of them had suffered the same things. 
 
 To-day the sky is clear again, and the pale gold of au- 
 tumn sunlight lies over the fields, and all the woods be- 
 hind the lines are clothed in russet foliage. It is two days 
 late, this quiet of the sky, and if Friday had been like this 
 there would have been a flag of ours on the northern 
 heights of Passchendaele Ridge. But still the gunners go 
 on with their toil, those wonderful gunners of ours, who 
 get very little sleep and very little rest and go down for an 
 hour or two into a hole in the earth in those sodden fields 
 where all day long and all night there is the tumult of 
 bombardment. Piles of shells lie on the ground, heaps 
 around them, and behind men are labouring to bring up 
 more; and across the battlefields, strangely close to the 
 actual fighting-line, black trains go steaming along rails 
 which hundreds of men have risked their lives to lay a hun- 
 
424 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 dred yards, so that the guns shall be fed and the gunners 
 have no respite. On the left of the line there is blue among 
 the brown of our armies, and on the morning of the battle I 
 saw French limbers and transport wagons using the same 
 tracks as our own, and heard the rattle of the "soixante- 
 quinze" again below Houthulst Forest, where there are still 
 leaves on the trees and the beauty of a dense yellowing 
 foliage is there beyond all those other woods where there 
 are only fangs and stumps of trees in the fields where our 
 men have fought. 
 
 October 23 
 
 The fighting yesterday east of Poelcappelle and on the 
 right of the French by Houthulst Forest across the Ypres- 
 Staden railway showed a curious inequality in the strength 
 and determination of the German defence. The French 
 themselves had easy going, swinging up from Jean Bart 
 House across some trench works and through a cluster of 
 blockhouses. The German artillery-fire was slight against 
 them, so that their losses are very few — though they 
 were held a while in the centre by machine-gun fire — and it 
 seems likely that the French gas-shells, fired over the 
 enemy's batteries before the attack, had had a paralysing 
 effect on some of the German gunners. Whatever the cause, 
 there was a strange absence of high explosives, and the 
 line was not thickly held by the men of the 40th Division, 
 who have lately come from Russia. One officer and a score 
 of men were captured, and a number of dead lie about the 
 blockhouses, killed by the French bombardment. The 
 others fled into the forest. Behind them they left two 
 field-guns. 
 
 East of Poelcappelle and on the right of our attack the 
 German infantry were also weak in their resistance, and 
 our men of the Norfolk and Essex Regiments who ad- 
 vanced hereabouts did not have much trouble with them at 
 close quarters. What trouble there was came from a ma- 
 chine-gun barrage farther back, which whipped over the 
 shell-craters and whistled about the ears of our assault- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 425 
 
 ing troops. The heavy gunning that we have put over this 
 ground for more than a week, with special concentration 
 on strong points Hke the ruined brewery outside the scrap- 
 heap village of Poelcappelle and the other blockhouses, had 
 made this area a most unhealthy neighbourhood for German 
 garrisons, and they had withdrawn some of their strength 
 to safer lines, leaving small outposts, with orders to hold 
 out at all costs — orders easy to give and hard to obey in 
 the case of men dejected and shaken by a long course of 
 concussion and fear. 
 
 A Bavarian division, the Fifth Bavarian Reserve, had 
 been living in those pill-boxes and shell-holes until two 
 nights ago, and whatever the German equivalent may be of 
 "fed up" they were that to the very neck. Some of our Suf- 
 folk and Berkshire boys had taken prisoners among these 
 Bavarians on days and nights before the attack, and these 
 men made no disguise of their disgust at their conditions 
 of life. Like other Bavarians taken elsewhere, they com- 
 plained that they were being made catspaws of the Prus- 
 sians, and put into the hottest parts of the line to save 
 Prussian skins. Some of the Bavarian battalions have had 
 an epidemic of desertion to the back areas, in the spirit of 
 "I want to go home." A fortnight ago there was a case of 
 thirteen men who set off for home. A few of them actually 
 reached Nuremberg, and others were arrested at Ghent. 
 
 One strange and gruesome sign of trouble behind the 
 German firing-hne was found by one of our Cameronlans 
 the other day after an advance. It was a German officer 
 bound and shot. Opposite Poelcappelle the German Com- 
 mand thought it well to pull out the 5th Bavarian Reserve 
 and replace them two nights ago by Marines of the 3rd 
 Naval Division, who are stout fellows, whatever their 
 political opinions may be after the recent mutiny at Wil- 
 helmshaven, from which some of them have come. On our 
 left centre yesterday they fought hard and well, with quick 
 counter-attacks, but opposite Poelcappelle they did not re- 
 sist in the same way and did not come back yesterday to 
 
426 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 regain the ground taken by our men of the Eastern 
 Counties. 
 
 The Norfolk and Essex battalions had to make their 
 way over bad ground. In spite of a spell of dry weather 
 one night of rain had been enough to turn it all to sludge 
 again and to fill and overflow the shell-holes, which had 
 never dried up. The Lekkerbolerbeek has become a marsh 
 waist-deep for men, not so much by rain-storms as by shell- 
 storms which have torn up its banks and slopped its water 
 over the plain. Before the attack yesterday morning our 
 air photographs taken in very low flights showed the sort 
 of ground our men would have to cross. Everywhere the 
 shell-craters show up shinily in the aerial photographs, 
 with their water reflecting the light like silver mirrors. 
 Higher up there are floods about Houthulst Forest extend- 
 ing to the place where the enemy keeps his guns behind 
 the protection of the water, and no lack of rain-filled shell- 
 holes on each side of the Ypres-Staden railway. 
 
 Bad going ; but our battalions went well, keeping close to 
 their whirlwind barrage of fire and keeping out of the 
 water-pits as best they could, and scrambling up again when 
 they fell over the slimy ground. Manchesters and Lan- 
 cashire Fusiliers, Cheshires, Gloucesters, and Royal Scots; 
 Northumberland Fusiliers, Suffolks and Norfolks, Essex 
 and Berkshires — how good it is to give those good old names 
 — went forward yesterday morning in the thick white mist, 
 and took all the ground they had been asked to take 
 whether it was hard or easy. It was hardest to take, and 
 hardest to hold, on the right of Houthulst Forest and on 
 the left of the Ypres-Staden railway. Here the enemy 
 held his line in strength, and protected it with a fierce 
 machine-gun barrage and enfilade fire from many bat- 
 teries which were quick to get into action. 
 
 Houthulst Forest, in spite of all the gas that has soaked 
 it, was full of German troops of the 26th Reserve Divi- 
 sion, under stem orders to defend it to the death, with an- 
 other division in support, and the Marines on their right. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 427 
 
 They had many concrete emplacements in the cover of the 
 forest, from which they were able to get their machine- 
 guns into play, and along the Staden railway there were 
 blockhouses not yet destroyed by our bombardment, which 
 were strongholds from which they were not easily routed. 
 There was hard fighting by the Royal Scots for some huts 
 along the railway, and after holding them they had to with- 
 draw in the face of a heavy counter-attack, which the 
 enemy at once sent down the line. Elsewhere the Man- 
 chesters had a similar experience, coming under heavy 
 cross-fire and then meeting the thrust of German storm 
 troops. They and the Lancashire Fusiliers behaved with 
 their usual fine courage, and were slow to give ground at 
 one or two points, where they were forced to draw back 
 two hundred yards or so. The Cheshires and the Glouces- 
 ters were severely tried, but the Gloucesters especially held 
 out yesterday in an advanced position, with the most reso- 
 lute spirit against fierce attacks and great odds, and still 
 hold their ground. At daybreak to-day, after all the ex- 
 haustion of yesterday and a cold wet night and heavy 
 fire over them, they met another attack, shattered it, and 
 took twenty prisoners. That is a feat of courage which 
 only men out here who have gone through such a day and 
 night— and there are many thousands of them— can properly 
 understand and admire. It is the courage of men tried to 
 the last limit of human will-power and sustained by some 
 burning fire of the spirit in their coldness and their weari- 
 ness. The Northumberland Fusiliers, at another part of 
 the line, and the Cheshires and Lancashire Fusiliers dug in 
 round an old blockhouse, using their rifles to break up the 
 bodies of Germans who tried to force through. At night, 
 or rather at eight o'clock last evening, when it was quite 
 dark, the enemy regained a post, but could do no more than 
 that, and it was a small gain. On the whole the progress 
 made yesterday was good, and considering the state of the 
 ground, still our greatest trouble, was a splendid feat of 
 
428 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 arms by those men of the old county regiments who are 
 given the honour they deserve by public mention. 
 
 The enemy losses were heavy. All last week they were 
 heavy, owing to the ceaseless fire of our guns, and the dead 
 that lie about the ground of this new advance, to a thou- 
 sand yards in depth, show that his men have suffered. 
 
 23 
 
 The Canadians Come North 
 
 October 26 
 Once again our troops, English and Canadians, have at- 
 tacked in rain and mud and mist. It is the worst of all 
 combinations for attack, and during the last three months, 
 even on the dreadful days in August never to be forgotten 
 by Irish battalions and Scots, they have known that com- 
 bination of hostile forces not once but many times, when 
 victory more complete than the fortune of war has given us 
 yet, though we have had victories of real greatness, hung 
 upon the moisture in the clouds and the difference between 
 a few hours of sunshine and the next storm. 
 
 To-day our men of the 5th Division have again attacked 
 JPolderhoek Chateau, the scene of many fights before, and 
 taken many prisoners from that 400 men of four German 
 Companies who were its garrison, holding the high ruins 
 which looked down into swamps through which our men 
 had to wade. They have fought their way to the vicinity of 
 Gheluvelt. This ground is sacred to the memory of the 
 British soldiers who fought and died there three years ago. 
 One of our airmen, flying low through the mist and rain- 
 squalls, is reported to have seen Germans running out of 
 Gheluvelt Chateau, a huddle of broken walls now after this 
 three years* war, and escaping down the Menin road. 
 Nothing is very definite as I write from that part of the line, 
 as nothing can be seen through the darkness of the storm and 
 few messages come back out of the mud and mist. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 429 
 
 Northwards the Canadians have taken many "pill-boxes" 
 and an uncounted number of prisoners — not easily, not 
 without tragic difficulties to overcome in the valleys of those 
 miserable beeks, which have been spilt into swamps, and up 
 the slopes of the Passchendaele spur, such as Bellevue, with 
 its concrete houses which guard the way to the crest. 
 
 North still, beyond Poelcappelle, whether the Broen- 
 beek and the Watervlietbeek intermingle their filthy waters 
 below two spurs, which are thrust out from the main ridge 
 like the horns of a bull, south of Houthulst Forest, bat- 
 talions of the London Regiment with Artists Rifles and 
 Bedfords have attacked the enemy in his stone forts through 
 his machine-gun barrages and have sent back some of their 
 garrisons and struggled forward up the slopes of mud 
 in desperate endeavour. And on the left of us this morn- 
 ing the French made an advance where all advance seemed 
 fantastic except for amphibious animals, through swamps 
 thigh-deep for tail men. This was west of a place falsely 
 named Draeibank, and surrounded by deeper floods, which 
 would have made the most stalwart "Poilus'* sink up to 
 their necks, and, with their packs on, drown. It was no 
 good going into that, though on the right edge of the deep 
 waters some French companies waded through and took 
 a blockhouse, with a batch of prisoners and machine-guns. 
 
 West of Draeibank there were several blockhouses, but 
 their concrete had been smashed under the French bombard- 
 ments, and those Germans who had not been killed fled be- 
 hind the shelter of the waters. Their barrage of gun-fire 
 fell heavily soon after the attack began by the French, 
 but for the most part into the floods which our "Poilu" 
 friends did not try to cross, so that they jeered at these 
 water-spouts ahead of them. 
 
 Our troops had a longer way to go and a worse way, and 
 it has been a day of hard fighting in most miserable con- 
 ditions. Their glory is that they have done these things I 
 have named on such a day. The marvel is to me that they 
 were able to make any kind of attack over such ground as 
 
430 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 this. In those vast miles of slime there has been from six 
 o'clock this morning enough human heroism, suffering, and 
 sacrifice to fill an epic poem and the eyes of the world with 
 tears. It is wonderful what these men of ours will do. But 
 in telling their tale they smile a little grimly in remembrance, 
 or say just simply : "It was hell !" 
 
 There is more in a battle than fighting. What goes be- 
 fore it to make ready for the hour of attack is as vital, and 
 demands as much, perhaps a little more, courage of soul. 
 Before this battle there was much to be done, and it was 
 hard to do. Guns had to be moved, not far, but moved, 
 and out of one bog into another bog — those monsters of 
 enormous weight, which settle deeply into the slime. To 
 be in time for this morning's barrage, gunners, already 
 worn, craving sleep and silence, dog-weary of mud and 
 noise after weeks and months of great battles, had to 
 work like Trojans divinely inspired to win another day's 
 victory, and they spurred themselves harder than their 
 horses in this endeavour. They were often under shell- 
 fire. Not only the gunners, but all the transport men, all 
 the pioneers and working parties have done their utmost. 
 Battalions of fighting men, busy not with their rifles but 
 with shovels and duck-boards, worked in the mud — ^mud 
 baulking all labour, swallowing up logs, boards, gun-wheels, 
 shells, spades, and the legs of men, the slime and filthy 
 water slopping over all the material of war urgently wanted 
 for this morning's "show." The enemy tried to harass the 
 winding teams of pack-mules staggering forward under a 
 burden of ammunition boxes, rations, every old thing that 
 men want if they must fight. Those mule leaders and trans- 
 port men do not take a lower place than the infantry who 
 went away to-day. They took as many risks, and squared 
 their jaws to the ordeal of it all like those other men. The 
 fighting troops went marching up or driving up in the rain. 
 Far behind the Front the roads were filled with dense surg- 
 ing traffic, which we out here will always see and hear in 
 our dreams after peace has come, the great never-ending 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 431 
 
 tide of human life going forward or coming back, as one 
 body of men relieve those who have gone before. Rain 
 washed their faces, so that they were red with the smart of 
 it. It slashed down their mackintosh capes and beat a 
 tattoo on their steel helmets. On the tops of London buses, 
 the old black buses which once went pouring up Piccadilly 
 before they came out to these dirty roads of war, all the 
 steel helmets were tilted sideways as the wind struck aslant 
 the muddy brown men with upturned collars on their way 
 up to the fighting-lines. 
 
 But last night was fine. The sky cleared and the stars 
 were very shining. Orion's Belt was studded with bright 
 gems. It was like a night of frost, when the stars have 
 a sharper gleam. Away above the trees there was a flash 
 of gun-fire, red spreading lights, and sudden quick stabs 
 of fire. The guns were getting busy again. *'A great 
 night for bombing,'' said an officer; *'and good luck for 
 to-morrow." Our night patrols were already out. In 
 the garden where that oflacer spoke there was a white milky 
 radiance, so that all the trees seemed insubstantial as in a 
 fairy grove where Titania might lie sleeping. Far off 
 beyond the trees was a white house, and the moonlight lay 
 upon it, and gave it a magic look. Perhaps the work being 
 done inside was the black magic of war, and men may 
 have been bending ove^ -laps strangely marked, and full of 
 mystery, tmless one knows the code which deals with the 
 winning of battles. "For once we may have luck with 
 the weather," said another officer. About midnight there 
 was a change. Great clouds gathered across the moon. It 
 began to rain gustily, and then settled down to a steady, 
 slogging downpour. 
 
 Our luck with the weather went out with the stars, and 
 this morning when our men went away the ground was 
 more hideous than it has ever been this year, and that 
 would seem a wild exaggeration to men who tried to get 
 through Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood on the wet 
 days of August. They went into swamps everywhere, into 
 
432 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the zone of shell-craters newly brimmed with water, and 
 along tracks without duck-boards, where men went ankle- 
 deep, if not knee-deep or waist-deep. 
 
 The enemy was expecting them. There seems no doubt 
 of that. An hour or so before the attack he began to bar- 
 rage the ground in some parts, and in their blockhouses 
 the German machine-gunners got ready to sweep the ad- 
 vancing battalions. Our own barrage thundered out short- 
 ly before six from all the guns which had got to their places 
 after the great struggle in the mud. On the right the 
 ground about Polderhoek Chateau was flooded down in 
 the hollow below that ruin, which is perched up on a rise. 
 Our men of the 5th Division^Devons, Scottish Border- 
 ers, Duke of Comwall's Light Infantry — were not far 
 away from it, a few hundred yards, but it was a difficult 
 place to attack. The enemy had built concrete defences 
 inside and blockhouses on either side of it and in the wood 
 behind. But our men went very gallantly through the 
 morass, in spite of the machine-gun fire that swept over 
 them, and worked on either side of the chateau, closing 
 round the blockhouse, while from the centre they made a 
 direct attack on the chateau ruins. In spite of the foul 
 weather, with a high wind blowing and a thick, wet mist, 
 our airmen went out all along the line and flew very low, 
 peering down at our men. One of them reported quite 
 early that our boys were all round Polderhoek Chateau, 
 hauling out the Huns, while bombing fights were in prog- 
 ress on either side of it. Later messages confirmed this. 
 Sixty prisoners were seen coming back down the Menin 
 road. A wounded German officer said the garrison of 
 the chateau was 400 men, of four companies. It seems 
 that they must all have been taken or killed, for later it was 
 established that all the blockhouses and the chateau had 
 been cleared, and our men were fighting beyond Polderhoek 
 Wood. 
 
 Farther south there was fighting round about Gheluvelt, 
 by Devons and Staffords of the 7th Division, and an ob- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 433 
 
 server reported that he had seen Germans running out of 
 that chateau down the high road east of it, but it seems 
 that there were a number of dug-outs in Gheluvelt Wood 
 where the garrisons held out after our advance attack had 
 passed, and this was a great menace to our men, so that 
 they may have had to withdraw in order to avoid that trap, 
 or to keep in touch with the troops on their right, who 
 were held up at a couple of redoubts in the morning. 
 
 Meanwhile the fiercest battle was being fought by the 
 Canadians near the centre of the attack, up the slopes of 
 Bellevue below Goudberg (which is just west of 'Passchen- 
 daele), where the enemy had long and elaborate defences 
 of concrete, and to the right and left of that from Vienna 
 House, below Crest Farm on the right, to the ground on 
 the left beyond Wolfe Copse. It was from the direction 
 of Peter Pan House and Wolfe Copse that the Canadians 
 succeeded in getting a grasp of the Bellevue slopes, at- 
 tacking a row of concrete huts in a sunken road which 
 were strongly held by German machine-gunners. The 
 enemy counter-attacked strongly and sharply down the 
 northern end of the spur, and from the direction of Pass- 
 chendaele, and drove our men for a time down the slopes, 
 though only for a time. Farther left there was heavy fight- 
 ing round the pill-boxes. Two of them, Moray House 
 and Varlet House, yielded a score or more of prisoners 
 each, but the ground all about the left of our attack by 
 the Broenbeek and the Watervlietbeek was one great deep 
 marsh, through which the men had the utmost difficulty 
 in struggling. 
 
 The German wounded are in a terrible condition, cov- 
 ered in mud and blood, and shaking as men with ague. 
 They are full of despair, and their officers say that Ger- 
 many is only holding out in the hope of a U-boat victory. 
 The German people, they say, will suffer badly this winter 
 from lack of food. Our own wounded are men who seem 
 to have come out of watery graves, and are plastered from 
 head to foot in a whitish slime. In the field dressing- 
 
434) FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 stations they are as patient as after all these battles, and if 
 m some places they had ill luck they blame the weather for 
 it. No words are too bad for that, but in spite of it our 
 men did wonders to-day. 
 
 October 28 
 The most important position in the attack yesterday was 
 given to the Canadians to carry, and the story of their 
 capture of the Bellevue spur is fine and thrilling as an act 
 of persistent courage by bodies of men struggling against 
 great hardships and under great fire. Nothing that they 
 did at Courcelette and Vimy and round about Lens was 
 finer than the way in which on Friday they fought their 
 way up the Bellevue spur, were beaten back by an intense 
 destructive fire, and then, reorganizing, went back through 
 the wounded and scaled the slope again and drove the Ger- 
 man machine-gunners out of their blockhouses. 
 
 I have seen those Germans as prisoners of the Cana- 
 dians. They are men of the nth Bavarian Division, which 
 includes the 3rd Bavarian Infantry Regiment and two re- 
 serve infantry regiments. The other day I wrote about 
 undersized, half-witted fellows who were caught by our 
 men, and said the German man-power must be wearing thin 
 if they sent recruits like this. These Bavarian soldiers are 
 not undersized, but tall, proper men, and stout fellows who 
 fought hard. They carried their mud with a certain swag- 
 ger, not as men who had surrendered easily, and were not 
 utterly dejected, like so many of our prisoners. They had 
 been picked to hold Bellevue because of their good moral, 
 and they were full of confidence in their defensive posi- 
 tion. They were perched up above the swamps through 
 which our men had to wade to get at them. They had 
 plenty of concrete houses for their shelter, and their ma- 
 chine-guns. The weather was in their favour. They 
 guessed that the British would try to attack them again, 
 but they looked at the floods and rain-clouds, and felt 
 safe, or pretty safe. For some reason of psychology — ■ 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 435 
 
 which is greatly influenced by shell-fire — these men of the 
 nth Bavarian Division were not mutinous against dis- 
 cipline like other Bavarians, who are cursing the Prussians 
 because of too much fighting, and malingering, and jeer- 
 ing at the officers, or refusing to go into the forward posi- 
 tions, like 800 men of the 99th Reserve Infantry Regi- 
 ment, who, according to a prisoner, revolted against going 
 into the line at Lens. 
 
 'They were all sent to prison," says the man, "and seem 
 to have been very pleased with the change." 
 
 A look at a contour map explains the reason why the 
 nth Bavarians were satisfied with their defensive posi- 
 tion at Bellevue, on Goudberg or Meetscheele spur, which 
 strikes out westwards from the main Passchendaele Ridge. 
 The deep gully of the Ravelbeek runs below the slopes on 
 which Bellevue is raised, and down there there is one 
 filthy swamp of mud and water. On the other side of the 
 gully is a hill which rises to Passchendaele, and the sepa- 
 rate hummock of Crest Farm, south-east of that high 
 pile of ruin, which commands the long, wide view of the 
 plains beyond. Bellevue on one side and Crest Farm and 
 Passchendaele on the other support each other from at- 
 tack, and from their blockhouses they are able to sweep 
 machine-gun fire upon any bodies of men advancing up 
 either slope. So the Australians found in the great at- 
 tack on October 12, when they had to fall back, when Pass- 
 chendaele itself was almost in their grip, because of the 
 enfilade fire from the ground about Bellevue, while other 
 Australians, trying to work up those slopes on the west 
 side of the Ravelbeek, were terribly scourged by the ma- 
 chine-gun barrage. The Canadians knew all that. They, 
 too, had the black luck of that terrible twelfth of October, 
 when English and New Zealand and Australian troops ad- 
 vanced into bogs, struggled through a sea of mud, and 
 failed to gain a victory, not by lack of valour, for the 
 courage of them all was almost superhuman, or rather 
 human as we know it in this war, but by the sheer impossi- 
 
436 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 bility of getting one leg after the other in the slime that 
 covered all this ground. 
 
 It was as bad on Friday morning — worse. The rain had 
 poured down all night and the shell-craters brimmed over, 
 and every track was so slippery that men with packs and 
 rifles fell at every few steps. Beyond the duck-board 
 tracks there were no tracks for 1500 yards, and there was 
 a morass knee-deep and sticky, so that men had to haul 
 each other to get unstuck. In the darkness and pouring 
 rain and shell-fire it was hard going — a nightmare of re- 
 ality worse than a black dream. But the men got to their 
 places and lay in the mud, and hoped they were not seen. 
 As I said in my last message, some of them seem to have 
 been seen by hostile aircraft coming out before the moon 
 went down, and the enemy's guns ravaged the ground 
 searching for them. 
 
 The right body of Canadian troops worked up towards 
 Crest Farm along the main Passchendaele Ridge — that is 
 to say, on the right of the Ravelbeek gully. Their ground 
 here was very bad, but nothing like that on the left below 
 Bellevue. They got close to Duck Wood, where there 
 are a few stumps of trees to give a meaning to the name, 
 and on their right other troops pushed forward towards 
 Decline Copse, which protected their flank. Heavy ma- 
 chine-gun fire came at them out of Duck Wood, from 
 shell-craters and "pill-boxes," and the enemy shelled very 
 fiercely all around with high explosives and a great num- 
 ber of whiz-bangs from field-batteries very close to them 
 just below Passchendaele. All the Canadian soldiers speak 
 of these whiz-bangs, directed, after the ground was taken, 
 by low-flying aeroplanes, who signalled with flash-lamps 
 or with a round or two of machine-gun fire when they 
 saw any group of men. The signals were answered rapidly 
 by a flight of the small shells. 
 
 But from a tactical point of view, apart from the hard- 
 ships and perils of the men, the situation on the Canadian 
 right was good. They had their ground, and would have 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 437 
 
 found it easier to hold if all had been well on the other 
 side of the Ravelbeek up by Bellevue. All was not well 
 there at that time. The Canadian troops on the left were 
 having the same tragic adventure as befell the Australians 
 in the same place two weeks before. In trying to work up 
 beyond Peter Pan House they were caught in the clutch 
 of the mud, and moving slowly behind their barrage came 
 under the fire of many machine-guns worked by those nth 
 Bavarians from a row of blockhouses along the road run- 
 ning across the crest of the ridge, and from other strong 
 points above and below that line. The Canadian Brigade 
 made most desperate attempts to get as far as those damn- 
 able little forts, and small parties of grim, resolute fel- 
 lows did get a footing on the higher slopes, scrambling 
 and stumbling and falling, with the deadly swish of bullets 
 about them, and those Bavarians waiting for them with 
 their thumbs on the triggers of their weapons behind the 
 walls. 
 
 Behind, it was difficult to get news of that heroic Cana- 
 dian Brigade. Foul mists and smoke lay low over them; 
 no signals or messages came back. An airman, who flew 
 along the line to work in contact with the guns, could see 
 nothing at two thousand feet, nothing when he risked his 
 wings at a thousand feet, nothing still on another journey 
 at half that height. The Canadian rockets were all wet, 
 and no light answered the airman's signals. Ten times he 
 flew along the line, twice at last within two hundred yards 
 of the ground, when he did see the infantry struggling 
 through the enemy's lash of bullets. A bit of shrapnel 
 or shell casing smashed through the airman's engine, and 
 his wings were pierced. He flew in a staggering way on 
 our side of the lines and crashed down and got back with 
 his report. 
 
 The next news was not good. It looked like a tragedy. 
 Under the continued fire the Canadian Brigade had to fall 
 back from Bellevue almost to their original line. It was 
 then that officers and men of this Canadian Brigade showed 
 
438 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 what stuff they were made of — -stuff of spirit and of body. 
 Imagine them, these muddy, wet men, with their ranks 
 thinned out by losses up those hellish slopes of Bellevue, 
 and with all their efforts gone to nothing as they gathered 
 together in the mist in the low ground again. It was 
 enough to take the heart out of these men. Strengthened 
 by a small body of Canadian comrades they re-formed 
 and attacked again. That was great and splendid of them. 
 The barrage was brought back and the lines of its shell- 
 fire moved slowly before them again as when they had first 
 started. So they began all over again the struggle through 
 which they had already been, and went out again into its 
 abomination. Even now I do not know how they gained 
 success where they had failed. I doubt whether they 
 know. The enemy was still up the slopes and on the slopes, 
 still protected in his concrete, and with his machine-guns 
 undamaged. But these Canadians worked their way for- 
 ward in small packs, and each man among them must have 
 been inspired by a kind of rage to get close to the block- 
 houses and have done with them. They went through 
 those who had fallen in the first attack, and others fell, 
 but there was enough to close round the concrete forts and 
 put them out of action. The garrisons of these places, 
 thirty in the largest of them, fifteen to twenty in the 
 smaller kind, had been told to hold them until they were 
 killed or captured. They obeyed their orders, but preferred 
 capture when the Canadians swarmed about them and 
 gave them the choice. There were about 400 prisoners 
 brought down from Bellevue, and nearly all of them were 
 taken from the blockhouses on the way up to the crest and 
 from a row of them along the road which goes across the 
 crest. 
 
 It was a few hours before the enemy behind launched 
 his counter-attacks, after a heavy shelling of Bellevue, 
 which he now knew was lost to him — a bitter surprise to 
 his regimental and divisional commanders. It is uncer- 
 tain what delayed his counter-attacks, but the mud had 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 439 
 
 something to do with it, for on the German side as well as 
 on ours there are swamps in which tall men sink to their 
 necks, and bogs in which they are stuck to their knees, so 
 badly that some of our prisoners lost their boots in getting 
 free of this grip. 
 
 It was at about four o'clock in the afternoon that the 
 first German column tried to advance upon Bellevue from 
 the northern end of the spur. They were caught in our 
 barrage and shattered. Half an hour later another heavy 
 attack was delivered against the Canadians on the main 
 Passchendaele Ridge, and this was repulsed after close 
 and fierce fighting, in which fifty prisoners were taken by 
 our side. 
 
 All through the night, after those vain efforts to get 
 back their ground, the enemy shelled the Canadian posi- 
 tions heavily, but on the left, by Bellevue, the men of that 
 brigade, which had done such heroic things, not only held 
 their groimd, but went farther forward to Bellevue cross- 
 roads, where there was another row of blockhouses. They 
 were abandoned by the enemy, who had fled hurriedly, 
 leaving behind their machine-guns and ammunition — 
 eighteen machine-guns on 300 yards of road, which shows 
 how strongly this position was held by machine-gun de- 
 fence. Yesterday there were more counter-attacks, but 
 they had no success, and many lie on the ground. 
 
 The price of victory for the Canadians wa's heavy in 
 physical suffering, and unwounded men as well as wounded 
 had to endure agonies of wetness and coldness and thirst 
 and exhaustion. It was only their hardness which enabled 
 them to endure. They lay in cold slime, and a drop of 
 rum would have been elixir vitse to them. Away behind, 
 carrying parties were stuck in bogs as the fighting men 
 had been stuck. Pack-mules were floundering in shell- 
 craters. Men were rescuing their comrades out of pits 
 and then sinking themselves and crying for help. At ten 
 yards distance no shout was heard because of the roar of 
 
440 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 gun-fire and the howling of shells and the high wailing 
 of the wind. 
 
 "I saw some fellows in front of me," said a wounded lad 
 of the Devons, "and I halloed to them because I wanted 
 company and a bit of help. But they didn't hear all my 
 halloing, and they went faster than I could, and I could 
 not catch up with them because my leg was bad." 
 
 "It was water we wanted most," said a young Canadian, 
 "and some of us were four days thirsty in the front line. 
 No blame to anybody. It was the state of the ground." 
 
 "I had a poisoned finger," said a young field-gunner, 
 "and my arm swelled up, but I couldn't leave the battery 
 before the show, as they were short-handed." 
 
 Sitting round after the battle these men out of the 
 slime, these muddy, bloody men, spoke quietly and soberly 
 about things they had seen and suffered, and the tales they 
 told would freeze the blood of gentle souls who do not 
 know even now, after three years of war, what war means 
 to the fighting men. But as they listened to each other 
 they nodded, as though to ,say, "Yes, that's how it was," 
 and there was no consciousness among them of extraordi- 
 nary adventures, and neither self-glory nor self-pity. They 
 had just done their job, as when their wounds heal they will 
 do it again, if fate so wills. 
 
 What I have written about the Canadians is true of all 
 English battalions who were fighting on each side of them, 
 and to whom I devoted most of my message on the day of 
 the battle. Those London Territorials, Lancashire troops. 
 Artists Rifles, Bed fords, and the old county regiments of 
 the 5th and 7th Divisions who were fighting around Pol- 
 derhoek Chateau and on the way to Gheluvelt had the same 
 sufferings, the same difificulties in bad ground, the same 
 ordeal of shell-fire, machine-gun fire, and German counter- 
 attacks. They showed the same courage, neither more nor 
 less, and although the capture of Bellevue spur was the 
 most important gain of the day, it was only possible be- 
 cause the English battalions on either side kept the enemy 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 441 
 
 hotly engaged, and assaulted his lines of blockhouses with 
 repeated efforts. The fighting of the Artists Rifles and 
 Bedfords of the 63rd Division was typical of all the history 
 of this day in hardship and valour. Even the German offi- 
 cers taken prisoners by them expressed their wonderment 
 and admiration. "Your men are magnificent," they said. 
 "They have achieved the impossible. We did not think 
 any troops could cross such ground." That belief was rea- 
 sonable. The stream of the Paddebeek had become a 
 wide flood, like all the other beeks in the fighting ground. 
 It seemed unfordable and impassable, and on the other 
 side of it was the old German trench system with machine- 
 gun emplacements. The 63rd plunged in, wading up to 
 their waists, and horribly hampered while machine-gun bul- 
 lets whipped the surface of the water. There was fierce 
 fighting for Varlet House, a strong blockhouse, and the 
 Artists and Bedfords, Royal Fusiliers and Shropshires 
 swarmed round it, and finally routed the garrison. Desper- 
 ate attempts were made against other strong points, and 
 the men of the 63rd Division gained some of them, and 
 captured about 140 prisoners. 
 
 Meanwhile on the left of our line, around the flooded 
 areas to the west of Houthulst Forest, the French have 
 made great progress on Friday and Saturday. The Bel- 
 gians have made a dash too, and there was a gallant epi- 
 sode, not without a gleam of humour, when a small party 
 of Belgian soldiers crossed the marshes in a punt, found 
 the ground deserted by the enemy, and went forward at a 
 hot pace to join up with the French in the freshly captured 
 village of Merckem. The French themselves have cleared 
 a wide tract of marsh-land during these two days' opera- 
 tions, cleared it of men and cleared it of guns, which the 
 enemy had just time to drag away round a spit of land on 
 the edge of the floods. These floods are very deep and 
 broad above Bixschoote and below Dixmude, where the 
 St.-Jansbeek slopes over by Langewaade and swirls round 
 a peninsula of mud. 
 
442 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 On Friday the French routed out the German outposts 
 who guarded that mud-bank, several thousands yards in 
 length, and yesterday made a bigger attack above St.-Jans- 
 beek and Draeibank. Before their gallant infantry ad- 
 vanced through these bogs, for it is all a bog, the French 
 gunners were in full orchestra, and played a terrible sym- 
 phony on the 75 's and 120's. Over 160,000 shells were 
 fired by the "soixante-quinze" batteries at the German posi- 
 tions in the marshes and on the west side of Houthulst 
 Forest. Then under cover of this fury of the fire the 
 French infantry advanced in waves. In spite of the ground 
 they went very fast and very far, and spread out in a fan- 
 shaped phalanx between Merckem and Aschoop. Their 
 field-guns are now able to enfilade Houthulst Forest on 
 the western side, and the German guns north of that must 
 be making their escape. It is an important tactical success, 
 which will make Houthulst Forest less tenable by the 
 enemy. 
 
 October 30 
 
 Following up the heroic capture of Bellevue spur, on 
 October 26, the Canadians attacked again this morning on 
 both sides of the Ravelbeek, working up from Bellevue 
 to the top of Meetscheele spur on the left, and gaining 
 Crest Farm on the right, up the main ridge of Passchen- 
 daele. If this ground can be held — and the taking is some- 
 times not so hard as the holding — almost the last heights 
 of the Passchendaele Ridge are within our grasp, and all 
 the desperate fighting of the last three months or more, the 
 great assaults on the ridges by English, Scottish, Irish, 
 Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian troops, through 
 bogs and marshes in the low ground, against concrete 
 blockhouses and great numbers of machine-guns, against 
 masses of the finest German troops fighting every yard of 
 the way, and against incredibly bad luck with the weather, 
 even as far back as August, will have given us the domi- 
 nating ground in Flanders overlooking the plains beyond. 
 
 Crest Farm, on a knoll below the village of Passchen- 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS MS 
 
 daele, is the outer fort of Passchendaele itself, and its cap- 
 ture exposes the greater fortress under the ragged ruins 
 which stick up like fangs on the skyline of the ridge. 
 
 Without Crest Farm Passchendaele was unapproach- 
 able, and the capture of this hummock is of historical im- 
 portance. But in order to take or hold it, as the Austra- 
 lians found, it was necessary that Bellevue and Meetscheele 
 should also be ours. Both heights were taken this morning 
 by the Canadians. 
 
 It was not a great battle in numbers of men, and the 
 longest distance to go was not more than a thousand yards, 
 but it was a hard battle, not won lightly, because of the 
 desperate resistance of the enemy, the difficulty of the 
 ■ground, the badness of the weather, and the physical hard- 
 ships endured by the men. The enemy had relieved his 
 troops who met the Canadians' attack on Bellevue on Fri- 
 day last — the nth Bavarian Division, who are now said 
 to be on their way to Italy — although I saw one of their 
 non-commissioned officers this morning, taken prisoner a 
 few hours before, after he had been lying in a shell-hole 
 for three days. He knew nothing about his division and 
 nothing about the German thrust in Italy. Nor did he 
 care what had happened over there, but was only glad to 
 be out of the shell-fire with the hope that the war would 
 end soon, somehow and anyhow. His division had appar- 
 ently been replaced by the 238th, a strong and well-dis- 
 ciplined crowd of men, who knev/ the value of the Pass- 
 chendaele Ridge, and fought hard this morning until the 
 Canadians had forced their blockhouse when the rest of 
 them ran back into Passchendaele. 
 
 The German Command probably expected an attack this 
 morning. As usual, yesterday he shelled heavily over the 
 neighbourhood of our tracks and back areas of the battle 
 zone in order to hinder the getting up of supplies, and in 
 the night he sent out his air squadrons to bomb the coun- 
 try about Ypres and try to play hell generally behind our 
 lines. Our airmen were about in the night too. It was 
 
M4i FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the night of the full moon, wonderfully clear and beautiful 
 in this part of Flanders, and many tons of explosives were 
 dropped over enemy dumps and batteries and routes of 
 march. The weatherwise, who have been gloomy souls for 
 some weeks, and no wonder, predicted heavy rain before 
 the night was out, and a rising gale of wind. They were 
 right about the wind. It came howling across the sea and 
 the flats from somewhere in the west of Ireland, but it 
 veered to the east later in the night and the rain held off 
 until after midday. By that time our attack had gone 
 away and gained the ground; and it is in their new posi- 
 tions that the Canadians and other British troops are now 
 suffering the foul storm, with a cold rain slashing upon 
 them. The night was cold for them, and they lay out in 
 shell-holes, getting numbed and cramped and longing for 
 the first gleam of light, when they could get on the move 
 and do this fighting. It is the waiting which is always 
 worst, and it was waiting under the heavy fire of big shells 
 and shrapnel and whiz-bangs and gas-shells and machine- 
 gun bursts scattered over the sodden fields in this wet dark- 
 ness without aim, but sinister in its blind search for men. 
 The carriers trudged through all this, stubborn in spirit, to 
 get up ammunition and supplies. There was rum for the 
 fighting men, and they thanked God for it, because it gave 
 them a little warmth of body and soul in the cold quarter 
 of an hour before an attack at dawn, when the vitality 
 of men is low. 
 
 Some of the Canadians say that the enemy started to 
 barrage before our own artillery gave the signal of attack 
 by combined fire. Five minutes before the start, they say, 
 hostile shell-fire burst over them. Men get this fancy 
 sometimes when there is Tio truth in it, but it may have 
 been true. They all agree that the German SOS flared 
 up instantly the attack was begun, and that the enemy's 
 gunners answered it without a second's pause. At the 
 same time many machine-guns began their sharp tattoo 
 from the blockhouses on the slopes above and from many 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 445' 
 
 hiding-places. In front of the Princess Patricia's Light 
 Infantry there was a number of fanged tree-stumps called 
 by the sylvan name of Friesland Copse. They expected 
 one or two machine-guns there, but found a nest of them. 
 It was a hornets' nest, not easily routed out. The German 
 machine-gunners kept up a steady stream of bullets across 
 their field of fire, and the Princess Pat's suffered in trying 
 to rush the place. Small parties of them assaulted it with 
 grim courage, and when they fell, or took cover in shell- 
 craters, others made their way forward, trying to get round 
 the flanks of the position. It was in that way finally that 
 they made the last close dash upon the emplacements and 
 destroyed them. Some of the German gunners surrendered 
 here, but not many. Hard and fierce was the fighting at 
 close quarters. 
 
 The Canadian troops pushed on to Meetscheele village — 
 no village at all, as you may guess, but just a tract of shell- 
 craters and a few mounds of broken brick about a few 
 concrete chambers, with dead bodies of German soldiers 
 lying huddled outside the walls. That is a village in the 
 battlefields. The blockhouses gave trouble, for there were 
 living men inside with the usual weapon which spat out 
 bullets. So there was another struggle here, very fierce 
 and bloody, and the place was only taken by groups of 
 men who crawled round it in the mud, sprang at it out of 
 shell-craters, and acted with individual cunning and cour- 
 age. That at least is how some of these men described 
 it this morning, when they came away with wounds. Be- 
 yond Meetscheele was another row of blockhouses on a 
 road, and another fight, desperate and exhausting and 
 bloody. But it was from that neighbourhood that the Ger- 
 mans began to run, and when they were seen running the 
 Canadians knew that the objectives had been won. All 
 that was on the left of the Ravelbeek stream, which is a 
 No Man's Land of slime between the slopes. 
 
 On the right, which is the main Passchendaele Ridge, 
 another Canadian Brigade was fighting up to Crest Farm. 
 
M6 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 They, too, had to assault some "pill-boxes" and had to 
 fight hard for their ground, but they captured Crest Farm 
 and the farmer's boys, who were stalwart young Germans, 
 and a number of machines with which they plough the 
 fields for the harvest of death. These machine-guns and 
 their ammunition store were used against the enemy by 
 the Canadians, and helped to smash up the counter-attacks, 
 which assaulted the new positions very quickly after their 
 capture. On the extreme right of the Canadians the enemy 
 opened a very heavy bombardment from the Keif burg 
 spur, and it was so violent that special artillery action was 
 called for, and a number of Australian heavies took meas- 
 ures to silence these guns. The first counter-attack de- 
 veloped at about eight o'clock, from the direction of Mos- 
 selmarkt, but this was dealt with by our guns, and did not 
 reach the Canadian lines. Our airmen, flying in the gale, 
 reported groups of men retreating in a disorderly way, and 
 the German stretcher-bearers were busy. At about 9.30 
 hostile infantry in extended order were seen advancing 
 towards the front, and our guns again got busy. Mean- 
 while the Artists, Bedfords, Royal Fusiliers, and Shrop- 
 shires of the 63rd Division, and London men of the 58th 
 Division were fighting in the low swampy ground to the 
 north of the Canadians. They have had a very hard time 
 on both sides of the Paddebeek and in other swamps, where 
 little isolated garrisons of the enemy hold their ''pill-boxes" 
 in a girdle of the machine-gun fire. The rain is now heavy, 
 and a thick, dank mist lies over the fields, and what was 
 bad ground is now worse ground. There is no aeroplane 
 observation this afternoon, and the Canadians, who are 
 holding the captured positions, can no longer be seen by 
 the hostile air squadrons. This morning they flew very 
 low over the infantry in places, dropping bombs and firing 
 their machine-guns at groups of men. The battle is one of 
 those called "a minor operation," but the ground taken by 
 heroic effort is the gateway to Passchendaele. 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 447 
 
 24 
 
 London Men and Artists 
 
 October 31 
 We still hold the high ground about Crest Farm and the 
 Meetscheele Spur, froril which Passchendaele is only 400 or 
 500 yards distant, and the Canadians have consoHdated 
 their positions there, and with the help of the guns have 
 beaten off the enemy's counter-attacks. Up there the 
 ground is dry, and the Canadian soldiers are on sandy soil 
 above the hideous swamps of the valleys and beeks. The 
 enemy's batteries are shelling our new lines with intense 
 fire, and are attempting as usual to harass our tracks and 
 artillery. To-day, after the battle, the weather is clear and 
 beautiful again, as it was on the day after the last battle — 
 a tragic irony which makes our men rather bitter with 
 their luck — and in the sunshine and fleecy clouds there are 
 many hostile aeroplanes overhead and many air combats 
 between their fighting-planes and ours. I saw the be- 
 ginning of one over Ypres this morning before the chase 
 of the enemy machine passed out of sight with a burst of 
 machine-gun fire, and all through the morning our anti- 
 aircraft guns w^ere busy flinging white shrapnel at these 
 birds, who came with prying eyes over our camps, their 
 wings all shining in the sunlight and looking no bigger 
 than butterflies at the height they flew. Yesterday, during 
 the battle, it was almost impossible to fly, owing to the 
 strength of the gale, and impossible to see unless a pilot 
 almost brushed the earth with his wings. One of our air- 
 men did fly as low as that, as I have told, and went ten 
 times on his business up and down the Canadian lines. But 
 elsewhere, above the dreadful swamps of the Paddebeek 
 and the Lekkerbolerbeek, the airmen had an almost hope- 
 less task. 
 
 It was partly owing to this that it was very difficult to 
 
448 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 get any news of the London Territorials of the 58th Divi- 
 sion and the Artists, Bedfords, and others of the 63rd 
 who went away at the same time as the Canadians in the 
 low ground instead of on high ground. Even their bat- 
 talion commanders, not far behind, could see nothing of 
 the men when the attack had started, and could get no ex- 
 act knowledge of them for many hours. The wounded 
 came back to give vague hints of what was happening, but 
 as a rule wounded men know nothing more than their own 
 adventures in their own track of shell-craters. Some of 
 them have never come back. No man knows yet what has 
 becom.e of them out there. Little groups may still be hold- 
 ing on tO' advanced posts out there in the swamps. 
 
 It is idle for me to try to describe this ground again, 
 the ground over which the London men and the Artists had 
 to attack. Nothing that I can write will convey remotely 
 the look of such ground and the horror of it. Unless one 
 has seen vast fields of barren earth, blasted for miles by 
 shell-fire, pitted by deep craters so close that they are like 
 holes in a sieve, and so deep that the tallest men can drown 
 in them when they are filled with water, as they are now 
 filled, imagination cannot conceive the picture of this slough 
 of despond into which our modern Christians plunge with 
 packs on their backs and faith in their hearts to face 
 dragons of fire a thousand times more frightful than those 
 encountered in the "Pilgrim's Progress." The shell-craters 
 yesterday were overbrimmed with water, and along the 
 way of the beeks, flung out of bounds by great gun-fire, 
 these were not ponds and pools, but broad deep lakes in 
 which the litter and corruption of the battlefield floated. 
 
 The London Territorials had in front of them a number 
 of blockhouses held by the enemy's machine-gunners on 
 each side of the road which runs from Poelcappelle to 
 Spriet. Far out in front of their line was a place called 
 Whitechapel — a curious coincidence that Londoners should 
 attack in its neighbourhood — and nearer to them, scat- 
 tered about in enfilade positions, were other "pill-boxes." 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 449 
 
 On hard ground in decent weather these places could have 
 been assaulted and — if courage counts, as it does — taken 
 by these splendid London lads of ours, whose spirit was 
 high before the battle, and who have proved their quality, 
 not only before in this Flanders battle, but also at Bulle- 
 court and other places in the line. But yesterday luck was 
 dead against them. Archangels would have needed their 
 wings to get across such ground, and the London men had 
 no divine help in that way, and had to wade and haul 
 out one leg after the other from this deep sucking bog, 
 and could hardly do that. Hundreds of them were held 
 in the bog as though in glue, and sank above their waists. 
 Our artillery barrage, which was very heavy and wide, 
 moved forward at a slow crawling pace, but it could not 
 easily be followed. It took many men an hour and a half 
 to come back a hundred and fifty yards. A rescue party 
 led by a sergeant-major could not haul out men breast 
 high in the bog until they had surrounded them with duck- 
 boards and fastened ropes to them. Our barrage went 
 ahead and the enemy's barrage came down, and from the 
 German blockhouses came a chattering fire of machine- 
 guns, and in the great stretch of swamp the London men 
 struggled. 
 
 And not far away from them, but invisible in their own 
 trouble among the pits, the Artists Rifles, Bed fords, and 
 Shropshires were trying to get forward to other block- 
 houses on the way to the rising ground beyond the Padde- 
 beek. The Artists and their comrades were more severely 
 tried by shell-fire than the Londoners. No doubt the enemy 
 had been standing at his guns through the night, ready to 
 fire at the first streak of dawn, which might bring an Eng- 
 lish attack, or the first rocket as a call to them from the 
 garrisons of the blockhouses. A light went up, and in- 
 stantly there roared out a great sweep of fire from heavy 
 batteries and field-guns; 4-2's and 5-9's fell densely and in 
 depth, and this bombardment did not slacken for hours. 
 It was a tragic time for our valiant men, struggling in 
 
450 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 the slime with their feet dragged down. They suffered, 
 but did not retreat. No man fell back, but either fell under 
 the shell-fire or went on. Some groups of London lads 
 were seen going over a little rise in the ground far ahead, 
 but no more has been heard of them. Some of them got 
 as far as the blockhouses, assaulted them without any pro- 
 tective fire from our artillery, because the barrage was 
 ahead, and captured them. By this wonderful courage in 
 the worst and foulest conditions that may be known by 
 fighting men they took Noble's Farm and Tracas Farm. 
 
 It was by this latter farm that an heroic act was done 
 by a young London lieutenant — one of those boys of ours 
 who heard the call to the colours and went quickly round 
 to the nearest recruiting office, not knowing what war was, 
 but eager to offer his youth. He knew the full meaning of 
 war yesterday by the concrete blockhouse on the Tracas 
 road. He had a group of men with him, his own men 
 from his own platoon, and he asked them to stick it out 
 with him. They stuck it out until all were killed or 
 wounded, and the last of them still standing was this lieu- 
 tenant. I do not know if even he was standing at the end, 
 for he had been wounded. He had been wounded not once 
 only, but eight times, and still he asked his men to stick 
 it out with him, and at last fell among them, and so was 
 picked up by the stretcher-bearers when they came search- 
 ing round this place under heavy fire, and found all the 
 men lying there. 
 
 There was a queer kind of road going nowhere and 
 coming from nowhere east of Papa House. For some 
 time before the battle Germans were seen coming out of 
 it, remarkably clean, and not like men who have been liv- 
 ing in mud-holes. It is a concrete street tunnelled and 
 apertured for machine-guns, and bullets poured from it 
 yesterday, and the London lads had a hard time in front 
 of it. The London Regiment and the Royal Fusiliers who 
 fought this battle, and not far from them were the Artists 
 Rifles — ^the dear old "Artists'* who in the old Volunteer 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 451 
 
 days looked so dandy in their grey and silver across the 
 lawns of Wimbledon. They suffered yesterday in hellish 
 fire, and made heavy sacrifices to prove their quality. It 
 was a fight against the elements, in league with the Ger- 
 man explosives, and it was a frightful combination for the 
 boys of London and the clean-shaven fellows of the Naval 
 Brigade, who looked so splendid on the roads before they 
 went into this mud. They did not gain all their objectives 
 yesterday, but what glory there is in human courage in the 
 most fiery ordeal they gained eternally. 
 
 The gunners were great too. They were in the mud 
 like the infantry in some places. They were heavily 
 shelled, and the transport men and gun-layers and gunner 
 officers had to get a barrage down when it was difficult 
 to stand steady in the bogs. They have done this not for 
 one day and night but for many days and nights, and the 
 strain upon them has been nerve-racking. After the last 
 battle, when the Londoners were relieved and marched 
 down past the guns, they cheered those gunners who had 
 answered their signals and given them great bombard- 
 ment and worked under heavy fire. I think the cheers 
 of those mud- and blood-stained men to the London gun- 
 ners ring out in an heroic way above the noise and tragedy 
 of battle. 
 
 25 
 The Capture of Passchendaelb 
 
 November 6 
 It is with thankfulness that one can record to-day the cap- 
 ture of Passchendaele, the crown and crest of the ridge 
 which made a great barrier round the salient of Ypres 
 and hemmed us in the flats and swamps. After an heroic 
 attack by the Canadians this morning they fought their 
 way over the ruins of Passchendaele and into ground be- 
 yond it. If their gains be held the seal is set upon the 
 
452 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 most terrific achievement of war ever attempted and car- 
 ried through by British arms. 
 
 Only we out here who have known the full and intimate 
 details of that fighting, the valour and the sacrifice which 
 have carried our waves of men up those slopes, starting at 
 Messines and Wyschaete at the lower end of the range in 
 June last, crossing the Pilkem Ridge in the north, and 
 then storming the central heights from Westhoek to Poly- 
 gon Wood through Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood, 
 from Zonnebeke to Broodseinde, from the Gavenstafel to 
 Abraham Heights, from Langemarck to Poelcappelle, can 
 understand the meaning of to-day's battle and the thrill 
 at the heart which has come to all of us to-day because of 
 the victory. For at and around Passchendaele is the high- 
 est ground on the ridge, looking down across the sweep of 
 the plains into which the enemy has been thrust, where 
 he has his camps and his dumps, where from this time 
 hence, if we are able to keep the place, we shall see all his 
 roads winding like tapes below us and his men marching up 
 them like ants, and the flash and fire of his guns and all 
 the secrets of his life, as for three years he looked down on 
 us and gave us hell. 
 
 What is Passchendaele? As I saw it this morning 
 through the smoke of gun-fire and a wet mist it was less 
 than I had seen before, a week or two ago, with just one 
 ruin there — the ruin of its church — a black mass of slaugh- 
 tered masonry and nothing else, not a house left stand- 
 ing, not a huddle of brick on that shell-swept height. But 
 because of its position as the crown of the ridge that crest 
 has seemed to many men like a prize for which all these bat- 
 tles of Flanders have been fought, and to get to this place 
 and the slopes and ridges on the way to it, not only for its 
 own sake but for what it would bring with it, great numbers 
 of our most gallant men have given their blood, and thou- 
 sands — scores of thousands — of British soldiers of our 
 own home stock and from overseas have gone through 
 fire and water, the fire of frightful bombardments, the 
 
DERS FRONT AFTER THE CAPTURE OF PASSCIIENDAEI.E 
 
til' 
 
 h 
 
 1 C! 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 453 
 
 water of the swamps, of the beeks and shell-holes, in which 
 they have plunged and waded and stuck and sometimes 
 drowned. To defend this ridge and Passchendaele, the 
 crest of it, the enemy has massed great numbers of guns 
 and incredible numbers of machine-guns and many of his 
 finest divisions. To check our progress he devised new 
 systems of defence and built his concrete blockhouses in 
 echelon formation, and at every cross-road, and in every 
 bit of village or farmstead, and our men had to attack 
 that chain of forts through its girdles of machine-gun fire, 
 and, after a great price of life, mastered it. The weather 
 fought for the enemy again and again on the days of our 
 attacks, and the horrors of the mud and bogs in this great 
 desolation of crater-land miles deep — eight miles deep — 
 over a wide sweep of country, belongs to the grimmest re- 
 membrances of every soldier who has fought in this battle 
 of Flanders. The enemy may brush aside our capture of 
 Passchendaele as the taking of a mud-patch, but to resist 
 it he has at one time or another put nearly a hundred divi- 
 sions into the arena of blood, and the defence has cost him 
 a vast sum of loss in dead and wounded. I saw his dead 
 in Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood, and over all this 
 ground where the young manhood of Germany lies black 
 and in corruption. It was not for worthless ground that 
 so many of them died and suffered great agonies, and 
 fought desperately and came back again and again in 
 massed counter-attacks, swept to pieces by our guns and 
 our rifle-fire. Passchendaele is but a pinprick on a fair- 
 sized map, but so that we should not take it the enemy had 
 spent much of his man-power and his gun-power without 
 stint, and there have flowed up to his guns tides of shells 
 almost as great as the tides that flowed up to our guns, 
 and throughout these months he has never ceased, by day 
 or night, to pour out hurricanes of fire over all these fields, 
 in the hope of smashing up our progress. A few days ago 
 orders were issued to his troops. They were given in the 
 name of Hindenburg. Passchendaele must be held at all 
 
454 FROM BAPAmiE TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 costs, and, if lost, must be recaptured at all costs. Pass- 
 chendaele has been lost to the enemy to-day, and if we 
 have any fortune in war, it will not be retaken. 
 
 The Canadians have had more luck than the English, 
 New Zealand and Australian troops who fought the bat- 
 tles on the way up with most heroic endeavour, and not 
 a man in the Army will begrudge them the honour which 
 they have gained, not easily, not without the usual price of 
 victory, which is some men's death and many men's pain. 
 For several days the enemy has endeavoured to thrust us 
 back from the positions held round Crest Farm and on 
 the left beyond the Paddebeek, where all the ground is a 
 morass. The Artists and Bedfords who fought there on 
 the left on the last days of last month had a very hard and 
 tragic time, but it was their grim stoicism in holding on to 
 exposed outposts — small groups of men under great shell- 
 fire — which enabled the Canadians this morning to attack 
 from a good position. A special tribute is due to two 
 companies of Shropshires who, with Canadian guides, 
 worked through a woodland plantation, drove a wedge 
 into enemy territory, and held it against all attempts to 
 dislodge them. 
 
 Heavy German counter-attacks were made during the 
 past few days to drive us off Crest Farm and the Meet- 
 scheele spur, but they only made a slight lodgment near 
 Crest Farm and were thrust back with great loss to them- 
 selves. Meanwhile there was the usual vast activity on 
 our side in making tracks and carrying railroads a few 
 hundred yards nearer, and hauling forward heavy guns 
 out of the slough in which they were deeply sunk, and 
 carrying up stores of ammunition and supplies for men and 
 guns, and all this work by pioneers and engineers and 
 transport men and infantry was done under infernal fire 
 and in deep mud and filth. Last night the enemy increased 
 his fire as though he guessed his time was at hand, and all 
 night he flung down harassing barrages and scattered shells 
 from his heavies and used gas-shells to search and dope 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 455 
 
 our batteries, and tried hard by every devilish thing in war 
 to prevent the assembly of troops. The Canadians assem- 
 bled — lying out in shell-craters and in the deep slime of the 
 mud, and under this fire, and though there were anxious 
 hours and a great strain upon officers and men, and many 
 casualties, the spirit of the men was not broken, and in a 
 wonderful way they escaped great losses. It was a moist, 
 soft night, with a stiff wind blowing. The weather 
 prophets in the evening had shaken their heads gloomily 
 and said, 'Tt will rain, beyond all doubt." But luck was 
 with our troops for once, and the sun rose in a clear sky. 
 There was a great beauty in the sky at daybreak, and I 
 thought of the sun of Austerlitz and hoped it might pre- 
 sage victory for our men to-day. Beneath the banks of 
 clouds, all dove-grey, like the wings of birds, the sun rose 
 in a lake of gold, and all the edges of the clouds were 
 wonderfully gleaming. The woods in their russet foliage 
 were touched with ruddy fires, so that every crinkled leaf 
 was a little flame. The leaves were being caught up by 
 the wind and torn from their twigs and scattered across the 
 fields, and the wet ditches were deep with leaves that had 
 fallen and reddened in last week's rain. But it was the 
 light of the dawn that gave a strange spiritual value to 
 every scene on the way to the battlefield, putting a glamour 
 upon the walls of broken houses and shining mistily in the 
 pools of the Yser Canal and upon its mud-banks, and the 
 strange little earth dwellings which our men once used 
 to inhabit along its line of dead trees, with their trunks 
 wet and bright. When I went up over the old battlefields 
 this glory gradually faded out of the sky, and the clouds 
 gathered and darkened in heavy grey masses and there 
 was a wet smell in the wind which told one that the 
 prophets were not wrong about the coming of rain. But 
 the duck-boards were still dry and it made walking easier, 
 though any false step would drop one into a shell-crater 
 filled to the brim with water of vivid metallic colours, or 
 into broad stretching bogs churned up by recent shell-fire 
 
4^56 FROM BAJPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 and churned again by shells that came over now, bursting 
 with a loud roar after their long high scream, and flinging 
 up waterspouts after their pitch into the mud. The Ger- 
 man long-range guns were scattering shells about with 
 blind eyes, doing guesswork as to the whereabouts of our 
 batteries, or firing from aeroplane photographs to tape out 
 the windings of our duck-board tracks and the long 
 straight roads of our railway lines. For miles along and 
 around the same track where I walked, single files of men 
 were plodding along, their grey figures silhouetted where 
 they tramped on the skyline, with capes blowing and steel 
 hats shining. Every minute a big shell burst near one 
 of these files, and it seemed as if some men must have been 
 wiped out, but always when the smoke cleared the line was 
 closed up and did not halt on its way. The wind was 
 blowing, but all this grey sky overhead was threaded 
 through with aeroplanes^ — our birds going out to the battle. 
 They flew high, in flights of six, or singly at a swift pace, 
 and beneath their planes our shells were in flight from 
 heavy howitzers and long-muzzled guns whose fire swept 
 one with blasts of air and smashed against one's ears. Out 
 of the wild wide waste of these battlefields with their dead 
 tree-stumps and their old upheaved trenches, and litter of 
 battle, and endless craters out of which the muddy water 
 slopped, there rose a queer big beast, monstrous and un- 
 gainly as a mammoth in the beginning of the world's slime. 
 It was one of our "sausage" balloons getting up for the 
 morning's work. Its big air-pockets flapped like ears, and 
 as it rose its body heaved and swelled. 
 
 It was beyond the line of German "pill-boxes" captured 
 in the fighting on the way to the Steenbeek, and now all 
 flooded and stinking in its concrete rooms, that I saw 
 Passchendaele this morning. The long ridge to which the 
 village gives its name curved round black and grim below 
 the clouds, right round to Polygon Wood and the heights 
 of Broodseinde, a long formidable barrier, a great ram- 
 part against which during these four months of fighting 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 457 
 
 our men flung themselves, until by massed courage, in 
 which individual deeds are swallowed up so that the world 
 will never know what each man did, they gained those 
 rolling slopes and the hummocks on them and the valleys 
 in between, and all their hidden forts. Below the ridge 
 all our field-guns were firing, and the light of their flashes 
 ran up and down like Jack o' Lanterns with flaming 
 torches. Far behind me were our heavy guns, and their 
 shells travelled overhead with a great beating of the wind. 
 In the sky around was the savage whine of German shells, 
 and all below the Passchendaele Ridge monstrous shells 
 were flinging up masses of earth and water, and now and 
 then fires were lighted and blazed and then went out in wet 
 smoke. 
 
 The Canadians had been fighting in and beyond Pass- 
 chendaele. They had been fighting around the village of 
 Mosselmarkt, on the Goudberg spur. It was reported they 
 had carried all their objectives and were consolidating their 
 defences for the counter-attacks which were sure to come. 
 The enemy had put a new division into the line before our 
 attack, a division up from the Champagne, and, judging 
 from the prisoners taken to-day, a smart, strong, and well- 
 disciplined crowd of men. But they did not fight much as 
 soon as the Canadians were close up on them. The Cana- 
 dian fighting was chiefly through shell-fire which came 
 down heavily a minute or so after our drum-fire began, 
 and against machine-gun fire which came out of the block- 
 houses in and around Passchendaele, from the cellars there, 
 and other cellars at Mosselmarkt. 
 
 The Canadians on the right were first to get to Pass- 
 chendaele Church. Wounded men say they saw the Ger- 
 mans running away as they worked round the church. On 
 the left the Canadians had farther to go, but wave after 
 wave of them closed in and got into touch with their right 
 wing. The enemy's machine-gun fire was very severe, 
 especially from a long-range barrage, but there was little 
 hand-to-hand fighting in Passchendaele, and the men who 
 
458 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 did not escape surrendered and begged for mercy. Up to 
 the time I write I have no knowledge of any counter-attack, 
 but it was reported quite early in the morning that there 
 were masses of Germans packed into shell-holes on the 
 right of the village, and others have been seen assembling 
 on the roads to the north of Passchendaele. The Cana- 
 dians believe they will hold their gains. If they do, their 
 victory will be a fine climax to these long battles in Flan- 
 ders, which have virtually given us the great ridge, all but 
 some outlying spurs of it, and the command of the plains 
 beyond. 
 
 November 7 
 
 Hindenburg's command that Passchendaele must be held 
 at all costs, or if lost retaken at all costs, has not so far 
 been fulfilled by the Eleventh Prussian Division which 
 garrisoned the crest of the great ridge. Passchendaele and 
 the high ground about it is firmly ours, and as yet there 
 have been only a few feeble attempts at counter-attacks by 
 the enemy. Why there was no strong and well-organized 
 counter-attack is a mystery to the German officers and 
 men taken prisoner by us, and especially to two battalion 
 commanders whom I saw marching down to-day behind 
 our lines at the head of a small party of Prussian soldiers. 
 
 One of the German colonels was the commander of the 
 support battalion. He had apparently come up tO' Pass- 
 chendaele the night before to confer with the commander 
 of the front line. Now from six o'clock yesterday morn- 
 ing until four o'clock in the afternoon he sat, with his 
 brother-officer and four or five men, in that little stone 
 house which was already their prison and might be their 
 tomb. For some queer reason this pill-box of theirs, or 
 dose-box as the Canadians call it, was overlooked by the 
 assaulting troops. As no machine-gun fire came from it, it 
 was passed by, perhaps as an empty house, and the mop- 
 pers-up did not trouble about it. The commander of the 
 support line, a tall, bearded man, very handsome and sol- 
 dierly as I saw him to-day, urged the other commanding 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 459 
 
 officer, a younger, weaker-looking man, to stay quiet and 
 await the counter-attack. *'Our men are sure to come,*' 
 he said, "and then we shall be rescued." 
 
 But hour after hour passed following the British attack 
 at dawn, and there was no sign of advancing Germans or 
 of retreating Canadians. Imagine the nervous strain of 
 those two men, and of the soldiers who sat watching them 
 and listening to their conversation, as it could be heard 
 through the crashing of shells outside. At four o'clock 
 neither of these battalion commanders could endure the 
 situation longer. 
 
 "If we stay here they will kill us when they find us," 
 said the tall, bearded man. "It is better to give ourselves 
 up now," they decided. So they have told their own story, 
 and at four o'clock they went outside and crossed a few 
 yards of ground, until they were seen by some of the Cana- 
 dians, and raised their hands as a sign of surrender. 
 
 It may have been that the absence of the commander 
 of the support line was the reason for the poor effort made 
 to counter-attack yesterday after the Canadian assault had 
 swept through Passchendaele and on the right and on the 
 left had fought along the crest of the Boudberg spur, 
 through Meetscheele and Mosselmarkt. I think there must 
 have been other reasons, but whether or not it is certain 
 that no big attack developed. Groups oi men were seen 
 assembling yesterday at various places to the north of 
 Passchendaele, but these were scattered by our gun-fire. 
 Other groups were seen to the north of Mosselmarkt on 
 the left, but these were also broken up and did not draw 
 near. One officer tried to get up with his men, but when 
 he saw there was no support, and that our shell-fire was 
 heavy, he retired, and a few of his men were taken pris- 
 oners. After fierce gun-fire yesterday afternoon all along 
 the crest of the ridge, the enemy's bombardment slackened 
 off, and the night was quieter than the Canadians had ex- 
 pected, though Passchendaele and its neighbourhood could 
 not be called a reall)^ quiet spot. 
 
460 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 I have told already in my message yesterday the general 
 outline of the Canadian attack, which has won ground for 
 which so many thousands of our men have been fighting, 
 up the slopes and through the valleys along the spurs, and 
 since the beginning of the battle of Flanders, until only 
 this crown at the northern end of the ridge remained to 
 be dragged from the enemy's grasp. In Passchendaele it- 
 self the Prussian garrison did not fight very stubbornly, 
 but fled, if the men had any chance, as soon as the Cana- 
 dians were sighted at close quarters. In spite of the severe 
 machine-gun fire the Canadian advance on that right wing 
 was rapid and complete, and they sent back about 230 
 prisoners from the blockhouses and cellars and shell-craters 
 during the morning. The action was more difficult on the 
 left, up from Meetscheele to Mosselmarkt and Goudberg, 
 a distance of more than a thousand yards, and a farther 
 objective than that of their comrades on the right. The 
 Canadians here on the left were confronted with a diffi- 
 cult problem, owing to the nature of the ground. Below 
 the Goudberg spur on its western side was the horrible 
 swamp into which the Artists, Bedfords, and others had 
 plunged when they made their desperate attack in the last 
 days of October. The enemy had outposts in these marshes 
 at Vine Cottage — a. sweet, pitiful name for such a place — 
 and Vanity Farm. For a time they had thrust a wedge into 
 our line here on the left of the Canadians between Source 
 Trench and Source Farm, but, as I have already told, an 
 heroic little attack by English and Canadian troops drove 
 them out before yesterday's battle, and these small groups 
 of men held on grimly under great difficulties, quite iso- 
 lated in their bog. It was necessary to capture Vine Cot- 
 tage in order to defend the Canadian left flank in this last 
 attack, and for that purpose a small body of Canadians 
 were sent off the night before last to seize it and hold it, 
 while the main assault of the Canadian left wing, avoid- 
 ing the swamp altogether there, was to attack along the 
 Goudberg spur. This plan of action was carried out, but 
 
THE BATTLES OF FLANDERS 461 
 
 not without hard fighting round Vine Cottage in the 
 swamp. All day yesterday there was very little news of 
 that fight, for a long time no news. The headquarters of 
 the brigade was having a hard time under intense shell- 
 fire, and had lost many signallers and runners. The men 
 in the swamp had no communication with the rest of the 
 battle-front, and fought their fight alone and unseen. It 
 was a hard and bloody little action. The German garrison 
 of Vine Cottage fought with great courage and desper- 
 ately, not making any sign of surrender, and using their 
 machine-guns savagely. By working through the swamp 
 and getting on short rushes to close quarters, the Cana- 
 dians were able at last to close round this blockhouse and 
 storm it. The survivors of the garrison then surrendered, 
 and they niunbered forty men. Meanwhile on the high 
 road of Goudberg the main left wing of the Canadian 
 troops took the ground that was once Meetscheele village 
 in their first wave of assault, and afterwards closed round 
 Mosselmarkt. Here in the desert of shell-craters and 
 wreckage there were some concrete cellars and forts, one 
 of them being used as a battalion headquarters and another 
 as a field dressing-station. Over a hundred prisoners were 
 gathered in from this neighbourhood, not in big batches, 
 but scattered about the ground in shell-craters and cellars. 
 Three German field-guns were captured, with other 
 trophies, including stores of ammunition. It will never be 
 known how many prisoners were taken yesterday. Many 
 of them never reached our lines, and never will. They 
 were killed by their own barrage-fire, which swept over all 
 this territory when the enemy knew that he had lost it. 
 Rain fell in the afternoon, and more heavily to-day, in 
 sudden storms which are broken through at times by bursts 
 of sunshine gleaming over all the wet fields, so that there 
 is far visibility until the next storm comes and all the land- 
 scape of war is veiled in mist. It is a dreary and tragic 
 landscape, and though I have seen four autumns of war 
 and the long, wet winters of this Flemish country, the 
 
462 FROM BAPAUME TO PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 misery of it and the squalor of it struck me anew to-day, 
 as though I saw it with fresh eyes. In all this country 
 round Ypres, still the capital of the battlefields, holding 
 in its poor, stricken bones the soul of all this tragedy, and 
 still shelled — yesterday very heavily — by an enemy who 
 even now will not let its dust alone, there is nothing but de- 
 struction and the engines of destruction. The trees are 
 smashed, and the ground is littered with broken things, and 
 the earth is ploughed into deep pits and furrows by three 
 years of shell-fire, and it is all oozy and liquid and slimy. 
 Our Army is like an upturned ant-heap in all this mud, 
 and in the old battle-grounds they have dug themselves in 
 and built little homes for themselves and settled down to 
 a life of industry between one shell-crater and another, and 
 one swamp and another, for the long spell of winter war- 
 fare which has now enveloped them, and while they are 
 waiting for another year of war, unless Peace comes with 
 the Spring. 
 

 HI***) Aveluy 
 
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 THE RETREAT 
 
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 THE SOM ME | 
 
 Scale 2 Milesto 1 Inch 
 Approximate Ba ttle Fronts 
 June 1916 ^mHmtammmmm 
 April 1917 '■♦^* ''*^ 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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