11 November, 1914
THE HORROR of SANCTUARY WOOD
In this grim picture of the horrors of war Corporal Lucy, 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, tells of the fighting round Sanctuary Wood on 11 November, a most critical day in the history of the First Ypres battle, when the most violent attacks of the German army were resisted. He tells how he first encountered men of the London Territorial battalions thrown into the tortured battle line.
We stood-to in the wet shell holes and crumbling trenches under the thunder and blasting flashes of German high explosives. There is no need to describe his bombardment, except to say that it was the worst in my experience. A few of our fellows broke under it, and one poor chap entirely lost his head and ran back out of his trench. He did not have a chance in the open. The earth was vomiting all round us and he tumbled over after a few yards. Better to have kept to the trench. No trained, sane, soldier in his right mind would leave like that.
A corporal, a burly fellow, fell near me with a shrapnel bullet in the back of his head. He lay unconscious all the day, nodding his holed head as if suffering only from some slight irritation, and did not become still until evening. Earlier in the day one youngster said ‘What about putting him out of his misery?’ A more experienced man explained that there was no pain. The small stirrings and little moans came from a man who was already as good as dead.
Another soldier had his belly ripped open and sat supporting his back against the trench, while he gazed with fascinated eyes at large coils of his own guts which he held in both hands. It was almost the ghastliest sight I ever saw. However, its sequel was better. The man’s entrails had not been penetrated. He got safe out of the trench, was washed, tucked in, and mended well in hospital.
Maimed men passed crouching and crawling behind me, leaving trails of blood on the ground on their way to a ditch which led back through woods behind. Some of them were moaning too loud, unlike our old men. One young militiaman in particular came by roaring, and seeking sympathy for a broken arm from everyone he met.
A lance-corporal told him ‘for God’s sake to put a sock in it’, and that ‘if you was ever badly wounded you would have no breath left to howl’. That stopped his hysterics. I should say that the non-commissioned officers of the old army had their work cut out keeping an eye on the inexperienced men in circumstances like these.
Some of the newer men could not even fire a rifle properly, and at times our hearts quailed for our safety and theirs. The few officers we had no doubt saw all that we did, but they were free to move about, and this was a great advantage from the point of view of a junior NCO pinned to his sector, to the bit of trench he was given to defend, and always under the close scrutiny of the men he was supposed to lead and encourage.
A runner pushing past gave me a nasty shock: ‘God, are you alive?’ he blurted out. ‘We heard down at headquarters you had been killed.’
‘No hope!’ I said, hardly daring a longer sentence lest instant death should finish it.
The trenches were filled with the acrid smell of shell smoke. Heavy shrapnel burst right down on us, its pall of smoke roofing the trench and blotting out the sky. I was flung about by the concussion, and thrown flat against the trench bottom. My whole body sang and trembled. One ear was perforated by the concussion, and I could hardly hear.
The runner came over to me, and we held each other with our hands. ‘Are you all right ?’ I nodded, unable to utter a word. The message I am taking is, ‘Stand-to!’ because the enemy is massing just in front of us,’ he said. ‘Nasty spot, this.’ And he hurried along, two more close bursts adding to his speed. Before the shelling ceased we were ordered to man the trench: ‘Stand-to! Stand-to! Every one,’ and our rifles lined our broken parapets. The man of my section on my immediate left kept his head down. I grasped his arm and shook him savagely: ‘For Christ’s sake, get up, you bloody fool. The Germans are coming.’ He fell over sideways and on to his face when I released him, and saw that his pack was covered with blood. He was dead. My eyes moved off him to my shoulder, which was spattered with his brains and tiny slivers of iridescent bone.
Northumberland Hussars in Sanctuary Wood, 1914.
The soldier on my right, wincing like most of us, standing head and shoulders exposed to the fury of the shells, said desperately: ‘Mother of God! This is terrible.’ A tall old sweat farther along shouted grimly: ‘Ha-ha, me bhoys! Now we’re for it.’
Six German army corps were marshalled in the open, advancing like they were on parade towards the weak British Army.
The magnificent Prussian Guards made a review of it. They executed their famous goose-step in the sight of their foe, and the field-grey waves came on. The Kaiser was close behind in some neighbouring town, ready to receive reports of the great break-through when it came.
THE PRUSSIAN GUARD
The left of the Prussian Guard attack caught us. Farther to our left the line broke, mended, broke, and mended again. A counter-attacking English regiment went through a temporarily victorious enemy like a knife through butter, and recaptured a lost village with great dash.
We stopped the Germans on our front, and they were the finest troops of Germany, led by the flower of her noblest houses.
That was all: a weak night attack was repelled. The next morning we found a German alive at our wire. He dropped his wire-cutters and made a friendly motion with his hand, intending surrender. Our desperate fellows covered him with their rifles. I called out: ‘No! Save him!’ A bitter voice replied: ‘No bloody fear. No Sergeant Benson tricks here.’ And the brave German was swiftly killed. [Sergeant Benson had been killed by the Germans when attempting to rescue a wounded enemy soldier.]
We stayed in the line for two more days, easily checking weaker attempts to drive us back, and then once more we went out to reserve. We ceased to fight as a battalion. We were too weak. We were told off to be ready to relieve the regiments in the line at a moment’s notice. A Scottish Territorial regiment with a similar duty twice went up, and twice recaptured trenches and reinstated another battalion. They were unbelievably cheerful.
One young Highlander going back out of the line a second time called out: ‘Give us a shout if ye want us again’. The Terriers had arrived. The part-timers, the supposed Saturday-night soldiers. Another regiment of them from London did great work. Although we Regulars got just a bit weary at reading their recorded deeds in every newspaper we managed to scrounge.
While in reserve I was detailed one morning to escort a sick party to Hooge. On the way back I got caught in a barrage and bolted into a dugout. It was the headquarters of a Regular battalion in reserve. The commanding officer growled at me: ‘Who’s that?‘ I gave my rank and regiment and asked permission to stay a minute until the shells stopped. ‘Get out of here,’ he ordered, and he sent me out into the shelling. The next morning some of our men assisted in digging him and his adjutant from the dug-out, which had been blown in on them. They were both dead.
Now, in a weak moment, I thought I would go sick myself. I had developed haemorrhoids, and they bled rather badly. A sergeant with a perforated ear like mine said he would join me and go to the field-ambulance to be dressed, hoping to be detained there. We had other minor cuts, and a good many bruises too, and the skin was inclined to go dirty. The knuckles of our trigger fingers were cut open from constantly firing our rifles. A calloused knuckle on a forefinger is the hallmark of the 1914 men.
On the way we had to dodge a good many shells, and in an interval of sheltering behind a house we answered some call we could not resist, and returned, feeling ashamed, to our reserve trench. On our way we pulled a young frightened lance-corporal from shelter and made him join up with us. He later turned out to be the most distinguished soldier in the regiment; and he was four times decorated for valour.
On 19 November we were again in the line, because a battalion that had suffered worse than ours had to be given a rest; but that evening the London Territorial Regiment, fresh and strong, came to relieve us – a relief that was to take us away from that battlefield of Ypres, right back to the Belgian village of Westoutre.
This time only forty men of my battalion were able to march away. The rest had been killed or wounded. Forty of us left out of two hundred and fifty, and only about three weeks after there were only forty-six left out of an entire battalion. I searched my mind for total figures, and roughly reckoned that in three months ninety-six men out of every hundred had been killed oi wounded. I was too weary to appreciate my own luck. I was so completely dazed that I lingered in the front line, while a London Territorial congratulated my battalion on giving the Germans ‘Denbigh’. He was a cultured man in the uniform of a private soldier. But – Denbigh – I did not know the word. I still do not know its meaning. [The Earl of Denbigh was Colonel Commandant of the Honorable Artillery Company and personally aimed a gun at the Battle of Tel el-Kebir in 1882, causing the fleeing Egyptians to be halted.] The Londoner looked for praise, he liked talking to me, a Regular corporal of the line. He asked if I thought his battalion would, one day, be as good as those of the old army.
I said, ‘Yes. Every bit as good.’ My eyes weakened, wandered, and rested on the half-hidden corpses of men and youths. Near and far they looked calm, and oven handsome, in death. Their strong young bodies thickly garlanded the edge of a wood in the rear, a wood called Sanctuary. A dead sentry at his post leaned back in a standing position against a blasted tree, keeping watch over them. Proudly and sorrowfully I looked at them, the Macs and the O’s, and the hardy Ulster boys joined together in death on a foreign field. My dead chums.
A silence more pregnant than the loudest bombardment stole over the country, the evening silence of the battlefield. A robin sat in a broken bush on the parapet and burst into song.
“The Londoner said quietly, ‘You’d better hurry up, Corporal. The Irish are falling in on the left.’ I slung my rifle over the left shoulder.
‘So long, chum. Good luck!’
‘ So long,’ said the Londoner.
I left him with our dead. The roll was being called when I joined our small party, but there was no zest in this roll-call. All the men stood heavily and answered listlessly. Information about dead and wounded was murmured. Our curiosity now was not for the out-numbering dead, but for our few selves, and in a dazed way we inspected each other’s faces, because every survivor was a phenomenon in himself. We exchanged half-smiles of appreciation and silent congratulations. Then we slouched off across the cold, barren, wintry fields, without talk, to join the main road at Hooge and, arriving there, got into step once more on the hard, paved road. Hooge was wrecked. South of it the Menin Road from Ypres was stiff with French cavalry. They were drawn up in long lines on the west of the road, with their horses’ heads facing inwards toward the centre of the road – massed in thousands and standing by, mounted, to check the Germans in case the British broke.
British troops in Ypres main square as the destruction of the town by German artillery is getting underway.
The first battle for Ypres was over, and Ypres was saved.
As we drew nearer to the old moated town we thought it had not been worth defending, for it was already in ruins and it looked as if every house had been destroyed by shell or flame.
The First Battle of Ypres. A house near to the entrance of the Cathedral deanery used as a makeshift hospital in Cathedral Square, completely destroyed by a shell.