Dawn on the 13th of May was the signal for a howitzer bombardment of the cavalry front which surpassed in intensity and duration any previous gun-fire during the whole War.
From four o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the afternoon it drifted from one section to another, without respite. During the entire forenoon the trench line north and south of the Zonnebeke Road, viewed from Potijze, a thousand yards to the rear, was covered continuously with a heavy pall of smoke, as if a well-fed conflagration was raging beneath. The flashes of bursting shells in that smoke-cloud were so numerous that no human eye could follow or count them, even in a most restricted range of vision.
The sound was one grand, incessant roar. All the thunderstorms of time, crashing in splendid unison, would not have made a more magnificent din. The ear could not intelligibly record so tempestuous a maelstrom of sound-waves, and the brains of those in the midst of its wildest fury became numb and indifferent to the saturnalia of explosion, save for one here and there which lost its mental balance, perhaps never to be regained.
Early in the morning General de Lisle sent me to Potijze with Captain Hardress Lloyd. General Meakin rode up with us on his first visit to the Salient since his return from sick leave.
Ypres was impassable. We took a round-about course to the north, now dashing down a muddy lane, now over a turnip field where constantly passing traffic had worn a sort of path, over an improvised bridge across the canal, at last reaching the Ypres-St. Jean Road that led away to Wieltje and St. Julien. By a cross road of sorts we found our way to Potijze, thankful to have arrived safely.
Before we had traversed much of the way from our headquarters, west of Ypres, we were in a bad shell-zone. On the narrow road, ammunition limbers went up at a trot and returned at full gallop. The route was lined with red-bandaged wounded struggling rearward as best they could, and ambulances were always in evidence. As we turned a corner a Black Maria exploded with a fearful bang fifty yards ahead, right beside the roadway. A small piece of the shell hit General Meakin in the head, but luckily was so spent it did not cause a wound.
As we neared the canal blue ruin was spread everywhere. Battery on battery of our artillery, firing like mad, barked and roared from the fields at our sides, while Hun shells fell close and fast around them.
A car dashed towards us, the chauffeur holding up his hand to stop us. It was "Babe" Nicholson's car, empty except for the driver, whom Nicholson had told to "look out for himself," while "Babe" was showing the way trenchwards to a depleted battalion of York and Durham Territorials sent forward as reserve. Only 380 of their 1,000 remained from the fortnight's fighting and sixteen of their officers had been killed or wounded, but they trudged up as if arriving fresh from home.
"Stop, sir," said the scared chauffeur. "They are shelling the road beyond so heavily no one can get through."
"Did you just come through?" asked Hardress Lloyd.
"Yes," replied the boy; "but a couple almost lit on me. One of them blew the car into the hedge."
"Go ahead, President," said Lloyd grimly. "We have got to get there somehow."
We got there, somehow.
Once we ran through the ill-smelling shell-cloud of a coal-box that burst a few yards in front of us, and twigs from the trees fell over the car as the shells screamed above, but we dodged on, past shell-holes and around barricades, untouched.
Pulling up, I saw Nicholson's car behind us, the driver grinning.
"I thought if it was good enough for you it was good enough for me," he said. "But I'm hanged if I thought anyone could get over that road and not be hit. It's the first time I've been up here."
I introduced him to my tiny Potijze dug-out, which he thought "smelled horrid." He was inclined to a preference for the open air until a great howitzer-shell lit fifty feet away, pieces from it knocking over some of the wall of the ruined house behind which the dug-out had been made. As he joined me in the cramped space below ground another Black Maria burst across the road from us, making the earth tremble and showering splinters on the roof of our shelter.
Fortunately for those whose work took them over the roads that morning the sky was leaden and rain fell at intervals, rendering German aeroplane observation impossible. Had a Hun airman caught sight of the traffic-filled road over which we had come the enemy gunners might have effectually closed it to traffic.
As we waited at Potijze the shells from the British guns behind us seemed to fill the air. Gradually the fire of the German howitzers concentrated on the trench-line in front of us, and the Boche gunners burst shrapnel all about the fields, searching erratically for the English batteries.
Budworth, of the artillery, was very much upset that morning by the target selected by one of the British howitzers.
Our divisional batteries H, I, and the Warwickshire Territorial Battery, were doing fine work and splendid execution.
Budworth's observers sent back word that some of our heavy guns were shelling a farm that he had instructed should not be shelled by his batteries.
Instantly he sent to the howitzer commander and asked him to "Please get off that farm."
"What's wrong with it?" asked the howitzer man. "It's in German hands, right enough."
"Of course it is," said Budworth. "But I've figured out that the Hun Artillery Commander would have his headquarters about there; very probably in that very farm. The old chap is peppering my batteries with shrapnel, which don't bother us, for we just get in our funk-holes and wait until it's all over, then run out and bang away. For that matter we don't even go in for it, if we are busy. If the old Boche chap who is running their guns should be killed by one of your big shells, and another German beggar, who decided to use high explosives on us, should take his place, we couldn't stay here long. Whatever you do, don't bother the old German gunner-chap. He is quite all right, from our standpoint, where he is at present."
Budworth's theory was proven sound by the fact that out of his three batteries of field guns he only lost eleven men and ten horses in a fortnight of fighting.
Standing in the Zonnebeke Road and looking toward Verlorenhoek, the shell-swept front line was plainly visible, a little more than half a mile away.
To reconstruct a fight on a two-and-a-half mile front such as the battle of May 13th, with official regimental reports to which to refer, would be sufficiently difficult. To piece it out while it was actually in progress was increasingly so.
I ran back and forth from our headquarters west of Ypres to the town of Potijze many times that day. By evening, when I left the Salient for the night, I had met with scores who had terrible tales to tell. The wounded made an unending stream westwards, and numbered many a familiar face.
Officers and men all declared the shell-fire was the heaviest they had seen. At no point in the line was the German shelling more fierce than on either side the Zonnebeke Road, near Verlorenhoek. The Queen's Bays were to the north of it, the 5th D.G.'s on their left. On the south of the road were the 1st Life Guards, and on their right the 2nd Life Guards, then the Leicestershire Yeomanry.
The Bays, under Lieutenant-Colonel "Algy" Lawson, formerly of the Greys, held on like grim death in spite of the storm of shell that burst over them at four o'clock in the morning and continued hour after hour throughout the day.
The Life Guards were driven back from their trenches with heavy losses, and the Leicestershire Yeomanry had to fall back as well.
This exposed the right flank of the Bays, but still they stuck to their position.
At about half past ten o'clock the commanding officer of the 5th D.G.'s ordered the retirement of his regiment, the men trickling back in two thin lines, one at either end of their section of front.
This resulted in the left of the Bays being uncovered as well as their right, but they put their teeth in and held on. The 11th Hussars came up magnificently on the left shortly after, and shared the glory, with the Bays, of saving the line.
Twice during the day the Huns formed for an infantry attack in front of the Bays, and each time our splendid guns were told of the concentration, and poured shell into the massing Germans with terrible execution, scattering the enemy detachments like chaff before the wind, and thus nipping the attack in the bud.
A strong enemy detachment came down the Zonnebeke Road and deployed to the north of it, immediately in front of the Bays. The Boches were lying in the open, but were protected from our rifle and machine-gun fire by a swell of ground.
A fat German observation officer obtained a place of vantage in a shattered farmhouse just south of the road. No amount of sniping could dislodge him, though the bullets chipped off bits of brick from the slender stack behind which he was sheltered. Up came a Naval Division armoured Rolls-Royce. Opposite the end of the Bays' trenches it stopped and opened fire.
The Hun officer in the farm noted the approach of the car, and fled up the road as fast as he could run.
"I had to laugh so much at the funny figure the little fat chap cut, with the tails of his long grey coat flapping straight out behind him as he ran," said one of the Bays to me that night. "I swear it did in any chance I had of hitting him. He got back to his own lot safe, I think, but he did made a holy show of himself doing it."
A large number of the enemy were seen concentrating in a wood in front of the Bays toward evening, and again word to our gunners was followed by a bombardment of the group of trees that made immediate evacuation of it the only alternative to sure death.
On the extreme left of the cavalry line, the 18th Hussars suffered more heavily than the other regiments of the 2nd Brigade, though the 9th Lancers had many casualties.
The trenches occupied by the 18th Hussars were blown to bits. Some of the regiment retired to the left into the adjacent trenches of the East Lancashire, and some went back over the open ground in search of the reserve trenches. Failing to find them, the troopers advanced to the ruins of their own line and dug themselves in as best they could, only to be blown out of some parts of the trenches a second time.
The Hospital Corps men could not reach the 18th wounded, as the Huns had a machine-gun trained on the only approach to the trenches. Consequently many men, unable to be moved to a place of safety, were killed as they lay wounded in trench or dug-out.
The right of the cavalry line, from the Ypres-Roulers Railway toward the Menin Road, was in very soft ground.
The 3rd Dragoon Guards, North Somerset Yeomanry, and Royals, of General David Campbell's 6th Brigade, were literally picked up and thrown back by the howitzer shells, while the line was simply blotted out of existence.
The Royals, in reserve, made a charge at 7.30 in the morning that took them to the place where the original trenches had been, but all that remained of them, even at that early hour, were great tumbled piles of earth and mud without semblance of form.
Cecil Howard, Campbell's Brigade Major, was the only officer on the 6th Brigade Staff who was not hit, Campbell himself being slightly wounded.
The most spectacular manœuvre of the day fell to the lot of Bulkeley Johnson's 8th Brigade, who were taken from reserve to counter-attack at 2.30 p.m. and win back the part of the line out of which Kennedy's 7th Brigade, the 1st and 2nd Life Guards, and the Leicestershire Yeomanry had been shelled.
The area to be won back reached from the Ypres-Zonnebeke Road to the Ypres-Roulers Railway. On the left of it the gallant Bays had stuck to their trenches. On the right of it, David Campbell's men were holding on, though frightfully decimated; their left, resting on the railway, bent back slightly by the retirement of the 7th Brigade.
The British artillery opened the 2.30 attack in splendid style. Then up went the 8th Brigade, Blues, 10th Hussars, and Essex Yeomanry.
It made the pulses beat high to hear the story of that charge from the Bays, who had reserved seats for the show.
The lines swept forward with a cheer that was drowned in the crashing of the shells. The Blues reached the line of shell-holes that marked the position of the Life Guards' trenches. No cover was to be found. So on they went, a few of them actually penetrating the German trenches 400 yards beyond, but soon realizing that their numbers were insufficient to maintain their position, and slowly coming back with what was left of their regiment. The 10th Hussars went up invincibly, men dropping at every step. One big trooper was seen advancing some distance ahead of his comrades, those who had been in line with him at the start all down. He stalked along coolly, without waiting for the others. The big trooper made a gallant showing, standing for a moment and firing steadily, then tramping on, to stop and fire again. No one dreamed he would reach the Hun trenches alive, but he did so, and was the first of the 10th Hussars to disappear over the enemy's parapet.
Had the Germans stuck to their trenches the few of the 10th to reach them might easily have been wiped out. But the Teuton soldiers fled before that stern advance.
Like the Blues, the 10th Hussars were too few to be able to consolidate the small portion of enemy trench which they had won, so nothing remained but a retirement.
Back they came, the Hun supports quickly taking advantage of their withdrawal. Two armoured cars pushed beyond the Bays' trench, up the Zonnebeke Road, and poured a heavy machine-gun fire across the rear of the retreating 10th Hussars' line. Few of that regiment would have returned had this covering fire not protected their retirement.
Once a group of troopers took a few dozen German prisoners, but the captured Huns were nearly all killed by German shell-fire before they could be taken to a place of safety. No trenches existed in that area into which to put them, and English and German, captors and prisoners alike, were mowed down by Hun shrapnel as they crossed the fields towards Potijze.
Months after that memorable battle, I had sent to me by a friend, a distinguished officer in the 11th Hussars, some leaves from his War diary. His account of the operations of his regiment that day read as follows:—
"Thursday, May 13th.—At about four a.m. a terrific bombardment began against our front line trenches. The fire was most intense, and heavier even than at Messines. At 7.30 a.m. Brigade Headquarters received a message from the 5th D.G.'s, saying that a great deal of their trenches had been blown in, and that their position was critical. The troops of C Squadron, 11th Hussars, under Norrie, were ordered up to support them. There was no communication trench to the front line, but by clever use of the ground they reached the 5th D.G.'s with very few casualties. The bombardment still increased. The Bays were holding on as well, but asked for more ammunition. A party from Renton's troop succeeded in getting some up, but had several killed in doing so. About 12 o'clock a regiment of the 3rd Cavalry Division, on the right of the Bays, were shelled out of their trenches, and the Germans succeeded in getting a footing in them. General Briggs ordered a counter-attack, which was launched at 2.30 p.m. Renton, who had been twice up to the front line to get information for the Brigadier, volunteered to lead the 10th Hussars up to the Bays' right, where they were to commence their attack. The whole affair was carried out like an Aldershot parade movement. The men screamed at the top of their voices, the officers making hunting noises, as they all charged across the open. It was a glorious sight. The Germans ran as if the devil himself was after them, our guns pouring shrapnel into them. The trenches were retaken, but in the excitement the attackers rushed on another half a mile.
"The Germans then turned on all their artillery, killing their own men as well as ours. Confusion followed, and the attacking line, being broken up, withdrew about half a mile. It was a pity they ever went beyond their original line, as the casualties were heavy.
"To return to our own section of the line. The 5th D.G.'s reported that they had put Norrie's troop into their front line, keeping the other troop (Sergeant Lemon) in a support trench. Their casualties had been heavy, and the situation extremely critical. During the afternoon information came in that the whole of the 5th D.G.'s had been shelled out of their trenches, and were retiring. Shortly after this Lance-Corporal Watts came back from the front line with a message from Norrie, explaining the situation. He had held on with his troop when the 5th D.G.'s retired, and besides his own men had a troop of the 5th and one of their machine-guns, and was covering the left flank of the Bays—a grand piece of work. The line had to be held at all cost, so the 11th Hussars were ordered to advance and retake the lost trenches. Lawson's Squadron (A) was sent in advance, with instructions to work up behind the Bays, and push in on their left. Later, another message came in to say that a squadron of the 19th Hussars, under Tremayne, had pushed up to Norrie and had been put on his left; however, there still existed a considerable gap of unoccupied trench. Divine Providence must have come to our aid, as the shelling practically stopped as the regiment advanced. Soon after 6 p.m. Brigade Headquarters heard that Lawson had successfully got his squadron up to the front line. B Squadron, Stewart Richardson, followed on, and by dusk the line was re-established.
"Our casualties for the day were about fifty, the Bays had the same, and the 5th D.G.'s had over one hundred, a large number of which, however, occurred during the retirement. As the sun was setting the battle died down. It had been a nerve-straining day, full of gallant episodes."
Wires cut, messengers killed, and the inevitable and exaggerated and mistaken reports of the wounded, made the long day of fighting an anxious one at de Lisle's headquarters.
The day's casualties in the 1st and 3rd Cavalry Divisions were thought, until well into the following day, to exceed fifty per cent. of the men engaged.
Early in the forenoon came word that "Hardly any of the 3rd D.G.'s and the North Somerset Yeomanry are left." At midday Colonel Burnett and Major Corbett, of the 18th Hussars, were reported killed, but two or three hours later we learned the news, while unfortunately true as to Major Corbett, was incorrect as to Burnett, who was sound and well.
At 4 p.m. General de Lisle sent me to Colonel Browne, the Chief Medical Officer of the 1st Cavalry Division, to ascertain what was actually known as to officer casualties in the Division.
Colonel Browne said: "We cannot get the ambulances up yet to evacuate the wounded, the shell-fire so covers the roads. Thus far but eight of our wounded officers have been brought back."
Among the eight was Major Sewell, of the 4th D.G.'s. The 9th Lancers, Sewell thought, had suffered from the shell-fire even more heavily than the 18th Hussars.
As I was about to leave Potijze, at seven o'clock that night, a staff officer reported that General Kennedy had just told him but ninety men were left to him out of his fine 7th Brigade, and he greatly feared that a large proportion, if not all, of the missing were killed or wounded.
General Briggs, at Potijze, received report after report of heavy losses from the various 3rd Cavalry Division units, as dark drew on, until it seemed that the Division had been practically wiped out. But 200 men were reported to be left to Campbell of the 6th Brigade. Kennedy's 7th Brigade mustered 120 at the close of the day, and Bulkeley Johnson's 8th Brigade was so shattered that to obtain an estimate of its numbers was most difficult.
In spite of the fact that the 6th, 7th, and 8th Brigades had, according to all military theory, ceased to exist as fighting forces, their remnants were gathered together as best the darkness of the night allowed, and put hard at work "digging themselves in," in preparation for the fight that the morning light would be sure to bring them.
The Northumberland Territorial Brigade, its numbers raised to 1,200, was sent up to help the tired troopers dig. Their General, Fielding, an old Aisne acquaintance, lunched with us that day. He had just taken over their command, as their former Brigadier had been killed a fortnight before in the Salient. The transformation of that lot of Terriers from raw, untried troops to veterans of shell-warfare had not taken many days.
Captain Johnson, a French liaison officer who had been attached to General Briggs' staff since Mons, and who had won the respect and deep affection of all with whom he came into contact, was shot through the head and instantly killed that night as he was accompanying General Briggs on a tour of the trenches in front of Potijze.
Wilson's 4th Division, on the left of the 1st Cavalry Division, which had also suffered heavily on the 13th, had sent a message asking the cavalry to take over some of its line, but that night it found it possible to occupy a few hundred yards of the line held by the 18th Hussars. This proved a most welcome assistance. The right of the 3rd Cavalry Division front, from the Ypres-Roulers Railway to the Menin Road, was given into the hands of the Irish Fusiliers, of the 27th Division.
The line, thus shortened slightly, was the scene of feverish work all night long, that the importance of the small German gain might be minimised, and a further Hun advance blocked.
The actual ground gained by the Germans on May 13th was but 300 to 400 yards on a front of 1,000 yards. Our new line from the Zonnebeke Road across the Ypres-Roulers railway was in better terrain than the old position, and offered superior natural advantages for defence to the deplorable original line.
So we were far from disheartened when day broke on May 14th.
The German heavy guns had seemed at times during the 13th to number scores on scores. Though fire came from every direction into the badly placed and rottenly made British trenches, blowing our thin line sky-high all along the front, the net result of advantage to the enemy was extremely small.
On the morning of the 14th de Lisle said to me: "Bad as our losses have been, I have the situation in hand. The men have held the line, and will continue to do so. Every hour sees things get better."
The shattered, depleted, almost anihilated regiments of the day before were found by the grey light of that cold, rainy May morning to be fighting forces still, their moral undamaged, and their spirits undimmed.
By half past six o'clock I was off for Potijze with de Lisle, a heavy rain during the night having covered the road with slimy mud and made it terribly slippery. We found Hun gunners so docile that I could with impunity run the general to the G.H.Q. line on the Potijze road.
As I waited in the roadway two of the Blues came past. Mud-covered and battle-stained, they slouched along as if completely tired out.
"Good morning," I called out, cheerily.
"Good morning, sir," they answered, straightening, instinctively, as they spoke. Fine chaps they were, and soldierly from head to foot, in spite of the mantle of dirt in which they were wrapped.
Nerves and muscles relaxed, almost at the limit of endurance, steeped in physical fatigue, like a flash they could pull up, eyes clear, heads erect, voices firm, the look on their faces showing that they were just as good fighting men at that moment as they were thirty-six hours previously.
Over the smoke of welcome cigarettes we chatted of the charge of the day before. The rushing of the German trenches, the capture of a section of them, and then being overpowered and turned out by overwhelming numbers of Huns, was gone over, spiritedly, by the troopers.
"Only seventy of the Blues are left, though," said one of them. "That's the hard part of it."
"You are sure to find more when things get straightened out," I replied. "Casualty lists always grow smaller when the returns are all in."
They trudged on soberly, "Hoping so." Splendid men.
I was sent to search the houses in Potijze, or what was left of them, for a couple of wounded officers who were reported to be waiting to be evacuated by an ambulance that had not yet arrived.
An Essex Yeomanry trooper limped slowly passed as I started, and I gave him a "lift" for a few hundred yards. He had badly sprained his knee during the charge the day before. By morning it had become so swollen and painful he could only hobble along with great difficulty. No thought of coming back to have it attended to, after the charge, had entered his mind.
"We were told to hang on till dark," he explained, "and it took all of us that were left to hang on. I couldn't have come back very well, could I?"
Before the day was over some of the official casualty lists of the brigades were compiled, and we were greatly cheered to find the losses were less heavy than had at first been reported.
The 1st Cavalry Division casualties for May 13th numbered 523. In the 1st Cavalry Brigade two officers were killed and five wounded, and 164 troopers killed or wounded. The 2nd Cavalry Brigade had a casualty list of 249. Three officers in the brigade were killed and eleven wounded. Among the killed was Lieutenant Lunan, a very brave medical officer attached to the 9th Lancers. The 18th Hussars lost 160, the 9th Lancers 140, and the 4th D.G.'s thirty-five.
The 3rd Cavalry Division suffered more heavily. David Campbell's 6th Brigade had eleven officers killed and twenty-two wounded—thirty-three out of a total of forty-nine. In the ranks, the Royals lost 117, the North Somerset Yeomanry 105, and the 3rd Dragoon Guards sixty-nine. The total for the brigade was 330 casualties. The 7th Brigade lost over 450 officers and men. Seven Leicestershire Yeomanry officers were killed and five were wounded. In the ranks, the Leicestershires had 180 casualties, making a total of over 190, all told, out of a strength of 300. The 8th Brigade's list of over 300 brought the total of killed and wounded for the 3rd Division to more than 1,100.
A patrol of 15th Hussars, under Lieutenant Kenneth Maclane, while the regiment was holding a part of the line to the north of Verlorenhoek, went up to the German first line trenches during the afternoon and found a section of them deserted, which showed the Huns were little better satisfied with the strategical location of their line than we had been with parts of ours.
Visits to Potijze from time to time meant coming close to big shell-bursts, but the fury of the 13th had made the itinerant shell-fire of the 14th so insignificant in contrast that we paid little attention to even the biggest of the Black Marias.
That night the 2nd Cavalry Division, General Kavanaugh commanding, relieved the 1st and 3rd Divisions on a narrowed front, the infantry closing in on the sides. Before morning of the 15th our tired men were on their way back to billets for a well-earned rest.
En route from Potijze to our headquarters at dusk on the 14th, my despatch case fell from the car. I went over the road carefully at daylight the following morning, and only desisted in my futile search when the "morning hate" made it foolish to tarry longer in the vicinity.
Great was my delight during the afternoon to learn that a wire had been received at Divisional headquarters, saying that, "amongst the débris on the battlefield had been found a despatch case belonging to Frederic Coleman." A gunner of H Battery, R.H.A., had spied it in a roadside ditch in the Salient, and thoughtfully taken it to Major Skinner, commanding the battery, who had at once advised us of its recovery.
On the night of May 15th and morning of May 16th, General Hubert Gough's 7th Infantry Division made a splendid "push" to La Quinque Rue, in front of Festubert, the report of which made cheery reading.
The men of the 1st Cavalry Division were housed in "huts" near Vlamertinghe. On the 16th General de Lisle addressed the contingents, one after another. He asked me to verify one or two details that had been reported, and this work gave me a most pleasant couple of hours chatting about the battle of May 13th with men of half a dozen of the different regiments that took part in it.
The evening of the 17th found the 1st Cavalry Division, after seventy-two hours' rest, again marching through Ypres to take a further turn in the trenches.
The Salient had been comparatively quiet since the last German onslaught on the 13th, but howitzer shells were daily falling over the lines with tiresome regularity.
I was sent by General de Lisle to a house near Ypres, where we had planned to have a "basket dinner" before leaving for night quarters on the Menin Road. A very young staff-officer, instructed to guide me, misunderstood that such duty was required of him, and went off about some business of his own before I had been able to learn the location of the house.
Meeting "Rattle" Barrett, I asked him if he could give me the desired information.
"I don't know about the dinner part of it," said "Rattle"; but your headquarters for the night are well east of Ypres, on the Menin Road. Go to the house nearest the château that stands by the Halte, where the railway crosses the road, and you can't miss it if you try.
The General had disappeared on foot, the juvenile staff-officer was nowhere to be found, so off I went, in accordance with Barrett's instructions.
Darkness was coming on. I passed along lines of 2nd Cavalry Brigade troopers, marching toward Ypres and through it.
No lights were allowed, though my car was secure from liability of offence in that particular, for the electric installation had gone wrong, a not infrequent occurrence, and no one but a master electrician could coax a glimmer out of the headlamps.
Bump! Bump! I jolted from hole to hole in the smashed roadway. The streets were crowded with the machinery of the divisional relief in full swing. Ypres seemed more smashed, if possible, than when we had last passed through six days before. From the Grande Place down the Rue de Menin, to the bridge and Menin Road beyond, and well out past the fork, where the roads branched to Zonnebeke and Menin respectively, the path was narrow and tortuous. Piled high on either hand were heaps of débris, alternated with chasms, some sufficiently deep so that a fall to the bottom would put a car promptly hors de combat.
An unpleasant smell of burning flesh came from the smouldering mounds lining the way.
Star-shells and trench lights from the firing line made it possible to see the road. Save for their assistance I could not have made the journey without accident.
The house where we were to spend the next few days was easily found. The officers of the 80th Infantry Brigade were busy in it arranging reliefs when I arrived.
A house of stout brick, badly scarred and knocked about, covered a cellar, low roofed and filled with foul air, but reasonably safe from shell-fire.
In this underground sanctuary the flickering light of a dozen candles fell on crowded tables for signallers, around which the men not busy with 'phone or ticker were asleep, heads resting on their crossed arms. Officers pored over maps spread on other tables, or were engaged in close attention to the receipt or despatch of innumerable orders. Against one wall were three or four bedsteads, covered with mattresses that had borne the wearied forms of a long succession of British fighting men, from general officers to privates, and bore ample evidences of having done so.
A battery of British guns were firing from a position near by, and German shells were bursting close enough to cause an interruption of a conversation by their constant crashes.
No news could I find of General de Lisle until Captain Webb, of the Signal Corps, arrived.
"The General?" he said in reply to my query. "I think the General is in a house on the right of the road as you leave Ypres on the west."
I lost no time in getting under way. The return journey was like a bad dream. Shells fell in the vicinity of the road, but not so near as to damage the steadily flowing river of troops, ammunition and food transport, horse and mechanical; ambulances, motor-cycles, and once, another car.
A fatiguing house-to-house search landed me at the spot where dinner had been. Orders left for me instructed me to bring various impedimenta to the Menin Road; so, for the third time, I ploughed through Ypres and toward the Halte, where at last I found de Lisle. Nor was that by any means the last trip over that route that I was to make that night. But enough of motoring troubles.
On the 18th it rained with dour persistency.
The 1st Cavalry Division line ran south from the Ypres-Roulers railway, past the west shore of the Bellewaarde Lake. It dipped south-east around the ruins of the Hooge Château and to the east of where Hooge once stood. Crossing the Menin Road, the front threaded the Sanctuary Wood, on the eastern edge of which the enemy were entrenched.
The position in the Sanctuary Wood was the extreme easterly promontory of the Ypres Salient, and not many yards west of the line which the 1st Cavalry Division held in February and March.
General de Lisle's cellar headquarters were less than 2,000 yards from the nearest front-line trench, and Hooge itself was not much further distant.
In an adjacent farm, which had been abandoned for many days, dead cattle and chickens lay about the yard. The table in the living room showed the family had decamped at meal time, evidently hurried by a shell which shaved a corner off the house. They left without waiting to gather up any of their simple belongings.
The lonely cows ambled inquisitively toward me, and were evidently greatly appreciative of a thorough milking, though few cared to drink milk from cows pastured in that poisoned zone, where every inch of ground was septic.
On a dash through Ypres at daybreak I again saw the poor hunted collie. Many mongrels thereabouts were frankly glad of a kind word and a pat on the head, but the high-bred, beautiful collie, his splendid coat matted and bedraggled, was so thoroughly frightened that all my efforts to get close to him were fruitless. It was wicked to leave him to death by a chance shell, and more than one of us risked carrying away a shell-souvenir in a vain attempt to save him.
At an early hour de Lisle said: "Find a shelter of some sort for your car, President. Don't forget that the Germans turn their shells down this road a bit at times."
A search resulted in the discovery of a maltster's, where some push-cyclists attached to a battalion of King's Royal Rifles cordially offered to make room for my battered conveyance. A passing ammunition train the night before had ripped off a front mud-guard, and a horse ambulance had crumpled one of the rear guards, while a transport mule had endeavoured to climb into the tonneau, to the sad detriment of my folded cape hood.
I never met a more cheery lot than those K.R.R. cyclists, who generously insisted on my sharing a tin of steaming hot tea and warming myself at their comfortable fire. They showed me a pump in the ruins of a house adjoining, enabling me to get a rare wash, and a still rarer shave, giving me a quite respectable appearance in comparison with my comrades of the 1st Cavalry Division Staff.
During the morning the General sent me to a riddled château not far distant, where General Mullens had placed 2nd Cavalry Brigade headquarters. An attempt to use the remains of the drawing-room as a more comfortable habitation than the cellar, was abandoned during the day, as coal-boxes fell with annoying regularity in the château yard.
A call at the headquarters of General Arbuthnot, C.R.A. of the 28th Division, in a house west of Ypres, found my lost despatch case had been sent there by Skinner of H Battery, to whom General Arbuthnot had kindly wired offering to keep it until I could call and reclaim it.
At Arbuthnot's headquarters I met a captain of his staff, who had been a military attaché in China before the Boxer troubles in 1900, and who knew many of the acquaintances I had made when campaigning with General Gaselee in the war with China.
In the course of conversation, I mentioned the prevailing belief in many quarters that unwritten truces existed between British and German gunners with regard to shelling certain areas. I instanced Dickebusch, a continual home of one of our divisional headquarters, which had been unshelled until our guns hammered a town in the German lines where Hun headquarters were thought to have been located, and thereafter was inundated with a steady rain of shell-fire for many days.
"Some peculiar things of that sort have happened," said the Captain. "The Divisional headquarters to which I was recently attached, occupied, near the line, a château which for months had not been visited by a German shell. I became possessed with the idea, without any real evidence to which to attribute it, that so long as our lot did not shell the Hollebeke Château, our house would be free from a Hun shelling. The Hollebeke Château was in the German lines, and while I did not, of course, know positively, I felt sure it contained some German brigade or divisional headquarters. Many a time our batteries fired at enemy batteries on all sides of the Hollebeke Château, but not once was it made a target by our gunners.
"For week after week this condition of affairs continued, and was often the subject of comment among us. Naturally, in the absence of communication of any sort between the opposing forces, all this may have been mere coincidence.
"One day, returning from a walk, I entered the drive to our château just as Hun shells began to rain upon us. The shrapnel came thick and fast for several minutes, and the Divisional Commander and some of his staff officers had very narrow escapes. One shrapnel bullet passed through a wall only ten or twelve inches from the General's head.
"None of our divisional guns had been firing for some hours, but another battery in the vicinity had been doing quite a bit of shelling that morning. Curious, I asked the aeroplane observer who had been directing the fire of that battery what target he had given them.
"'I went up to direct their fire on some German guns reported to be near the Hollebeke Château,' the observer told me. 'I couldn't locate the described spot, so directed our battery to throw a few shells into the château itself. Our gunners at once registered one lyddite through the roof and four shells right through the face of the building. I'll bet we made it hot for any Boches that were inside.'
"Comparing times," continued the Captain, "I learned that the Hollebeke Château received its shelling exactly ten minutes before our headquarters château was shelled by the Huns. What made the incident more curious was the fact that for weeks our batteries did no more damage to the Hollebeke Château and never again, at least until I left it, did our château have a German shell near it."
The rain softened the earth about the dug-outs in front of Ypres, and soon an epidemic of caved-in sides and roofs was raging all along the line, assisted by Black Marias, which shook the moist ground until dug-out supports fell and walls collapsed wholesale. A captain of the 18th Hussars was in a dug-out roofed by an iron bedstead. A small landslide brought down the beams above and the bedstead fell, so striking the Hussar officer that his neck was broken and he was instantly killed.
The 19th, 20th, and 21st of May passed quickly, the three brigades of the Division changing from front line to support dug-outs and back again in relays as the days succeeded each other.
On the 21st the sun came out, bright and strong, and justified a few minutes' delay en route through Ypres to obtain some photographs. The town was sadly depressing. Earthquake and conflagration might produce as much ruin, but could hardly arrange it so fantastically.
In Ypres Madame Caprice came hand in hand with Devastation and Death. In diabolical mood she flung the shattered buildings of the staid old town hither and thither with an eye to the spectacular. The grotesque met one's glance on every side. Only a James Pryde could have done justice on canvas to such a scene.
After a thunderstorm of almost tropical intensity on the night of the 21st, the 1st Cavalry Division troopers were relieved, and soon after daylight were sleeping soundly in the huts and the adjacent farms near Vlamertinghe. The 22nd and 23rd of May they spent in resting, and on the evening of the 23rd again went back into the trench line.
General de Lisle returned for his rest to new quarters at Esquelbecq, in a thirteenth century château which boasted the honour of having once been stormed by Marlborough.
The 14th Division of the "K" Army was billeted near Esquelbecq, and had been placed in the newly formed 6th Corps. Allenby's 5th Corps then consisted of the 28th Division, 9th Division (the first of the "K" Divisions to arrive in France), and the Northumberland Territorial Division. The 6th Corps, containing the 4th Division, the 27th Division, and the new 14th Division was placed under the command of General Keir.
On the evening of May 23rd, while the troopers of the 1st, 2nd and 9th Cavalry Brigades tramped through Ypres once more, and took over part of the sodden trench-line of the Salient, General de Lisle again took up headquarters in the big château not far west of the demolished town.
The Salient front trenches led over the line that was taken up after the reconstruction following the hard fighting on May 13th. Wilson's 4th Division reached from the French right, near the Ypres-Yser Canal on the north, to the Canadian Farm, then past the Ypres-Passchendaele Road to the Ypres-Zonnebeke Road near Verlorenhoek.