18-22 October, 1914
WHEN THEY LOST ZONNEBEKE
Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton was generally known as the Master of Belhaven, ‘Master’ being the courtesy title of the eldest son of a Scottish viscount or baron. He was an officer of the Royal Artillery during the First Battle of Ypres. His diary was written from day to day in the field. Here is an extract which describes the fierce fighting that led to the fall of Zonnebeke near Ypres, in October 1914, and a spy hunt in which Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton took part. The only son of the 10th Lord Belhaven and Stenton, he was killed in action 31 March, 1918, whilst in command of a Brigade of Field Artillery
All that night the population of the country streamed through the town (Zonnebeke) and by next morning (19 October) the streets were fairly clear. Our infantry, after falling back, took up the entrenched line which they had providentially prepared two days before. At daylight the guns also took up positions immediately in the rear of the infantry brigade. From that moment the battle of Ypres began.
All that day we were bombarded by the Germans, but so far they confined their attentions to the trenches and did not drop shells in the town. Also, they had evidently not yet got up their heavy guns, as we were only under shrapnel fire. The German infantry did not make any attempt to assault.
I spent most of the morning with Bolster, who commanded the 106th Battery, in his dug-out immediately in the rear of the infantry trenches. (He was killed two days later.) We were on the crest of a small rise, and thirty or forty yards in front of us, on the forward slope, was the line of our infantry trenches, at that point held by the South Staffordshire Regiment. We had an excellent view of the country to our front, which much resembled Essex or Suffolk, being greatly enclosed and with many hedges and small woods.
Standing in the trench with nothing but my eyes showing, I watched, with Bolster, the enemy’s infantry trickling over the skyline in very open order and come on in short rushes. They did not present much of a target for artillery; and, owing to the farms, woods and hedges, we could only see them here and there as they crossed open patches. This ridge they were crossing was under fire of our guns, and whenever we saw enough of them bunched together, we let off a few rounds at them. I shall never forget seeing some thirty or forty Germans running across a green field which was divided in two by a wire fence, probably barbed, as I noticed that on reaching the wire fence they all concentrated and ran through a gate in it. Our lines of fire were already laid out, and from the map we were able to get the range to a yard.
ONE SHELL – FIFTEEN DIED
The next time we saw a party crossing the fields and making for the gate Bolster ordered a round of gun-fire. At this short range (2,300 yards), with my Zeiss glasses I could almost see the faces of the Germans, it being a gloriously fine, sunny day.
Just before they reached the gate, he gave the order to fire. The guns, which were hidden behind us, loosed off and we heard the shells whining away. As the Germans clustered in the gate, a shell from No. 1 gun burst immediately in front of them, The whole lot at once lay down, and at first I thought that they were taking cover until our fire stopped. However, I watched them for some hours, and not one of them moved again. I counted fifteen in a circle of some twenty yards diameter.
By now a good many of the German infantry had crossed the ridge, not only immediately in front of us, but all along the front. Owing to their being so close, and the fact that our guns were behind the crest of our hill, we were unable to reach them. We continued, however, to pour shrapnel on their supports as they crossed the skyline, doing considerable damage.
At one time I was leaning against the wall of a little house, some twenty yards from Bolster, who was in his hole, and I pointed out to him that the enemy were bunching behind a certain clump of bushes. My head was eight or nine feet higher than his, and he could not see them. He, therefore, asked me to range the battery for him, and so one of the ambitions of my life was realized in that I ranged a battery of guns in action. Measuring off the angle between the place at which we were then firing, and the place where I had seen the Germans bunching, with the graticule calibration of my glasses. I gave the necessary switch of some five degrees, and ordered a round of battery fire. The ground sloped away from left to right. The range on the left was about right, but the right section were short.
This was owing to the angle-of-sight being different for the two flanks of the battery. However, as I did not wish to upset the battery angle-of-sight, I increased the range in the right section by fifty yards, and then ordered a round of gun-fire. This was completely successful, two shells bursting in the clump of bushes in which I had seen the Germans collecting. I think that some twenty or thirty of them must have been in these bushes, and when the shells burst I saw only two or three run out. One ran away altogether; the other two, after staggering a few yards, collapsed. The remainder, I think, must have been knocked out at once.
Meanwhile, the German infantry, who were now too close and too much in the hollow below us for our guns to reach, were coming on, and we soon saw their scouts emerge from a pheasant cover not 200 yards in front of us.
As the guns were only 200 yards behind us, this was getting uncomfortably close for artillery. However, we did not feel any anxiety, as our own infantry were well dug in between us and them. As soon as those German scouts appeared our infantry opened fire on them at 200 yards, and the wretched Germans, who evidently did not know of the existence of this branch, began to fall thickly. They at once retired into their pheasant cover, and, being reinforced in considerable strength, opened fire on us.
Things were now very lively, and Bolster could neither leave his observation hole, nor could I leave the wall against which I had flattened myself. At the same time the German field artillery discovered the position of our trenches and the shrapnel began to arrive. Every time one put one’s head out it was immediately saluted with half a dozen bullets, which made a noise like very loud and angry mosquitoes as they passed. I stopped at this place for some time, but in the lull of the firing I managed to run back to the gun-line.
In the course of the afternoon General Lawford asked me to take a message to the colonel of the Staffordshires in his trench. With some difficulty I got there, crawling the last twenty yards, perfectly flat. I found that the Staffordshires headquarters had made themselves extremely comfortable in a very big bomb-proof, which one approached by going down several steps. The colonel told me that his pioneer sergeant was a coalminer, and I at once recognized the pitman’s work by the way in which the roof and the bomb-proof had been ‘propped’. I had tea with them down there, and a cigarette, and was quite sorry to leave these comfortable and perfectly safe quarters for the perilous journey of returning to Zonnebeke.
British positions in front of Ypres after 24 October, 1914, before the onslaught on Gheluvelt.
I had scarcely left the Staffordshires’ bomb-proof when a shrapnel shell burst just behind me and on my right, the pieces striking the ground some ten yards to my right. Ten seconds later the second shell of the pair arrived, and burst ten or twenty yards away to my left. Had I been ten yards more to the right, or more to the left, one or other would have got me. I had the same luck all the way back, shrapnel bursting all round, but none touching me. That night we again stayed in Zonnebeke, the guns being withdrawn at dusk.
All the next day (20 October) the Germans continued to shell our trenches. The loss among the infantry was very heavy, but the guns, being well concealed, and not having been located by the hostile aeroplanes, scarcely suffered at all. As usual, the batteries were withdrawn at nightfall, and went into billets round Frezenberg, some two miles west of Zonnebeke. Our headquarters were in a dirty little inn on the crossroads in Frezenberg. We occupied our old positions before dawn (21 October) and the battle continued. The Germans had, however, been very heavily reinforced and the attack was much heavier.
About midday the enemy began to bombard the town itself for some hours, but only with shrapnel. This did not do very much damage, but was very alarming, as the bullets from the shrapnel and pieces of the shells flew about the streets like hail. They were firing in bursts – that is to say, six shells arriving at a time. The air was thick with the flying lead, fragments of steel, slates from the roofs, glass and bricks. The noise was appalling: one could hardly hear oneself speak. One really wondered how anything could live in such an inferno, the more so as the main street of Zonnebeke was a prolongation of the German line of fire, and rifle bullets were continuously whining down the street.
About 3 o’clock in the afternoon the ‘Black Marias’ (high-explosive shells) started. Zonnebeke has a church standing in a small square, with a very high steeple, and evidently the German gunners, knowing that our headquarters were in the centre of the town, were using the church steeple as a target.
This bombardment in the streets of a town by high-explosive shells was, I think, the most alarming part of the experience. Everything in the town shook when one of those shells burst. The whole ground appeared to tromble as if in an earthquake even when the explosion was 100 yards away. About 5 o’clock news came down that Major Malony, who commanded the 104th Battery, in action near the level crossing, had been seriously wounded. He was observing from the infantry trenches some 800 yards in front of his guns and at the foot of the windmill by Zonnebeke Station. The medical officer at once went off to try to find a motor ambulance, and I rode up to the station.
The fire was so hot in the street that I decided to leave my horse Bucephalus under a large porch, and I continued my way to the windmill on foot, keeping close into the walls of the houses on the side from which the shells were coming. So long as the houses in the street were continuous, they afforded me complete protection from shrapnel or rifle bullets, and I was hit only by bricks and mortar from the walls of the houses; but as I neared the outskirts of the town the houses became detached one from another, and then it was very unpleasant having to cross the spaces between them. The shrapnel was bursting at intervals of ten or fifteen seconds, and it was impossible to judge when they would come. However, I found that by waiting until a shell had just burst, I usually had time to run like a hare to the next house. The rifle bullets, of course, could not be legislated for at all.
ONE IN TWELVE ALIVE
I eventually reached the windmill close to Malony’s observation post. Here I found a young officer of, I think, the Queen’s, who was sheltering under the mound of the windmill with some twenty men. He told me that he and his men were all that were left of a company of 250. He also told me that Malony had been dragged out of his trench and was lying behind a cottage on the other side of the road. On reaching this, I found that he had already been moved back towards his battery. I could see him being carried on a stretcher. He was now under, cover from rifle-fire and it was much better to let them continue across the 800 yards intervening between where he was hit and the battery, than to take him all the way round through the streets of the town, which were being heavily shelled. I therefore started back down the street towards where I had left my horse, and was met by the motor ambulance which the doctor had sent up. I stopped it, made the man turn round and got in beside him, telling him to drop me when we passed my horse. The motor was a Daimler with the well-known scuttle-dash. I sat on the floor and stuck my head well under cover of the dash. I thought that if I was going to be hit I might as well avoid getting it in the head.
In spite of the shells bursting in front and behind us the ambulance was not hit, and the driver certainly exceeded the speed limit. I found Bucephalus happily munching some hay, and re-mounted him. I sent the ambulance on to the level-crossing.
By this time the Germans had got the range of the church accurately; the open place I had to cross was thick with white smoke from bursting shrapnel. I never expected to cross it alive. The street was paved with round cobbles and covered with slimy mud – a place, under ordinary circum-stances, I should have hesitated along at a walk. However, on this occasion we negotiated it, including a right-angle corner, at as fast a gallop as poor old Bucephalus was capable of, and regained the cover of the narrow streets untouched.
The early months of the war the many windmills dotting the plains of Flanders became observation posts, field dressing stations and machine gun emplacements. These easy targets were progressively reduced to piles of blasted rubble.
I found the ambulance at the level-crossing, and took it up to the farm, where we were joined by the medical officer. Malony had just arrived at the farm and was lying on some straw in the kitchen, with several other wounded men. At first I thought he was dead, the bullet having struck him on the side of the head and apparently had passed through the brain. He had been looking through his range director when hit. He was breathing very heavily and the doctor thought he was in a very bad way. I was, however, able to tell him that only an hour or two before, Malony had told me that he had a bad attack of asthma, and this probably accounted for the breathing.
We got him into the motor ambulance and sent him off to Ypres. The doctor and I trotted along the road leading from the farm to the main road, immediately behind the ambulance.
It was now just dark. The wagon-line of Malony’s battery was in a field beside us. The battery had not been shelled all day, but suddenly a single shrapnel burst twenty feet above our heads in the darkness. It must have been a chance shot. The ambulance put on speed and the doctor and I galloped after it. At the time we had no idea that the shell had done any damage. However, the next morning, we heard that it had flattened out two complete teams. Our infantry were all this time being subjected to appalling fire both by shrapnel and ‘Black Marias’, the trenches in many parts being completely blown in, and the men in them buried. They dug out as many as they could, but when the cover was gone the survivors were exposed to view, and as nothing can live under fire unless entrenched, I fear that many of the men were buried alive.
British infantry moving through unspoiled fields in Flanders, 1914.
By nightfall it was obvious to General Lawford that our position was becoming untenable, and it was decided to withdraw as soon as it was dark.
By this time we had no supports, the supports and reserves having long ago been sent up into the trenches. Even the General’s own headquarter guard had gone up, too. The only men available were some belonging to a company of the Royal Engineers. These hastily threw up a little shelter trench at the level crossing, and if the worst came to the worst we hoped to be able to hold the crossing until the remains of the infantry got through.
Unfortunately, we had no position prepared in the rear, and it seemed quite likely that we should have no chance of digging in at a fresh place. The same thing had been happening on our right, and the other brigades were compelled to withdraw also. The remains of the brigades evacuated their trenches and retired in the course of the night in good order and without confusion.
At dawn the next morning (22 October) we took up a position extending roughly from the level-crossing west of Zonnebeke to the V of Veldhoek. This line, unfortunately, passed through a thick wood, and it was in this wood that on succeeding days our losses were most heavy.
The previous afternoon we had been much bothered by spies, who adopted every possible sort of trick to communicate with the enemy. At one time it was noticed that the arms of a certain windmill were turning in a most erratic manner. The windmill was deserted, the sails furled, and there was apparently no one in it. It was, therefore, quite clear that someone was playing with it; and by the time we reached the windmill the spies had got away. We blew it up next day.
MOST DANGEROUS SPY HUNT
We also suspected that the Germans had adopted their usual trick, when evacuating a town, of leaving men behind, concealed usually in the cellars of the houses, with a telephone. General Lawford instructed me to go with the provost-sergeant and search the houses for spies. This was as unpleasant a task as one could well hope to perform.
By now the eastern part of the town, where I was searching, was being subjected to a heavy and continuous shrapnel fire. The street was also enfiladed by rifle fire. All the doors had been locked by their owners before leaving the town, and I think that this part of Belgium must make a peculiarly strong form of locks and bolts; never would I have believed it would have been so difficult to break in doors.
However, at last we found a forge, and in it a large bar of iron, so heavy that it was as much as two men could do to carry it. Our task now became quite easy. The sergeant and I would take up our positions, revolver in hand, on each side of the door, while two men charged across the street with the heavy bar of iron. One blow was almost invariably enough. The bar and its carriers would collapse on the pavement, while the sergeant and I rushed in.
We searched dozens of houses in this manner, but found them all empty. However, we came to one house where, on rushing in, we were met by a man in plain clothes with a rifle, who immediately fired and shot the provost-sergeant practically through the heart. He did not live many minutes, but our assailant did not survive to see the result of his treachery.
By now the roofs of the houses were coming in, and I withdrew my search-party to brigade headquarters and reported to General Lawford that I did not consider it possible to continue a house-to-house search until the fire moderated. He approved of my action and ordered the search to be discontinued.
The enemy captured Zonnebeke immediately after we left, but fortunately did not press their attack.