Like Samson in his Wrath
The preparations for the new battle were perforce as obvious to the Germans, with their complete dominance in observation posts, as they were to us. All the available open space through the Ypres Salient, which is sparsely dotted with farmhouses, tail-ends of villages and copses, was crammed with men, animals, stores, guns and transport; from Poperinghe forward the place was like a circus ground on the eve of a benefit. New roads and railways had changed the map so completely in a few weeks that one was a stranger here. The instinct revolted against the inevitable punishment to come, already tokened by those big holes now met in walls and crossings. Not the famous footprint in the sand contained a sharper shock than the shell-hole unerringly torn out by the far-off gunner ‘registering’ his targets in the middle of some previously secure trackway; and whatever had been formerly by some mercy peaceful, sleep-inviting ground in the Salient was not so now. A fever was in the midsummer air, and it has left a disordered recollection of the sequence of events, so that I find myself in unexpected sympathy with Tennyson’s oracle:
‘Who can say
Why to-day
To-morrow will be yesterday?’
What the infantryman in France knew about the war as a whole was seldom worth knowing, and we had little time or taste for studying the probable effect upon us of events beyond the skyline of immediate orders; yet before Third Ypres we heard without delight that a store of ammunition and battle requirements, covering several square miles, had been exploded by an enemy airman, and that the Germans had driven in the English trenches at Nieuport in the most blunt and unintimidated style. Such news got about very slowly, but made a mark where it touched. Then there was the usual soul-sapping doubt about the date of our push. Before it came, there were opportunities enough for death or glory. But the experienced sense observed that people did not espouse these with the comparatively bright eye of a year before; 1917 was distasteful.
The battalion camped in readiness among the familiar woods west of Vlamertinghe, but the woods were changed and the parting genius must have gone on a stretcher. No Belgian artisans were hammering strips of tarred canvas on the hut roofs now in the homely style of our original visits here; there were ugly holes of various sizes among the huts. Wooden tracks led this way and that in puzzling number through the crowded airless shadows, and new roads threw open to the public a district only suited for the movements of a small and careful party. At the corner where one swaggering new highway left the wood eastward, an enormous model of the German systems now considered due to Britain was open for inspection, whether from the ground or from step-ladders raised beside, and this was popular, though whether from its charm as a model or value as a military aid is uncertain. Vidler and Tice inspected it, at least, as stern utilitarians, and infallible officers. No great way off, a large ammunition dump was in use, and those who had ignored it previously became aware of it one night when something from above hit it. The irritated crackling of myriads of cartridges and small explosive, interspersed with thunder-shocks, woke everyone up; but sleep when it had come was precious in those days.
German airmen adventured over in daytime to drive down the observation balloons helplessly wallowing there, and the troops, who appreciated such displays, saw one German machine race along only a few yards above the trees, with machine-gun playing, in an attempt to escape two British machines; all ran like boys to see it brought down and its occupants captured. But the wood was a sultry and offensive place, and when one was out of it (Collyer and I were somehow allowed a few hours in Poperinghe) the relief was surprising; return after dark was from the frankness of a restaurant with white cloths and glittering glasses into a gross darkness and surcharged crucible.
The road towards Vlamertinghe, newly constructed of planks, forced a publicity on farmlands into which I had only gone before on some pleasant trespass. It took one presently through a gorgeous and careless multitude of poppies and sorrels and bull-daisies to the grounds of Vlamertinghe Château, many-windowed, not much hurt, but looking very dismal in the pitiless perfect sun. Its orchards yet clung to some pale apples, but the gunners were aware of that, the twelve-inch gunners, whose business here seemed like a dizzy dream. Under several splendid untrimmed trees, among full-flooding grass, shone certain rails, and on these rails were some tremendous iron engines, with gaping mouths; standing behind, if you could keep your eye unblurred at the titanic second of their speaking, you could see their mortal monosyllables of inferno climbing dead straight into the sky. But these metaphors occurred later. Continuing eastward, one might pass that other remarkably complete country house called Reigersburg, but one would be shocked at the new broad-gauge railway thrust past it into conspicuous open ground, and the trucks waiting on it, no doubt at liberty for a speedy transit to Brussels after the 39th Division had ‘gone over’ and tidied up. This was one of various fantastic tricks which as we went up gave us the anticipatory chill – ‘Not on us?’ the Oysters cried. The Yser Canal itself had been drastically rearranged. New bridges crossed it, powerful works, carrying real roadways. On the far side, the old bank which alone afforded cover from view and splinters to all those who lived or moved along the canal had been hewn through for the roadways and other tracks. Great heaps of warlike materials stood up naked and unashamed; batteries glinted and bellowed in transparent air. These gay grimaces had not failed to upset the enemy, who was tearing up the once idle ground and venerable shelters with long-range guns. The most solid bridge, No. 4, was a ferocious target; but at the Ypres end, called the Dead End, the new causeway was swollen with dead mules, pushed out of the road on to the sloping bank. The water below, foul yellow and brown, was strewn with full-sized eels, bream and jack, seething and bulged in death. Gases of several kinds oozed from the crumbled banks and shapeless ditches, souring the air. One needed no occult gift to notice the shadow of death on the bread and cheese in one’s hand, the discoloured tepid water in one’s bottle.
On one of the preliminary evenings the new Colonel, with his habitual bad luck, sent forward from C Camp an officer fresh from England, and one or two men with him, to patrol the land over which our assault was intended, with a special eye to the enemy’s concern with some ancient gunpits there. This officer took with him his set of the maps, panoramas, photographs and assault programmes which had been served round with such generosity for this battle. He never returned. The next night a seasoned officer, from another battalion, patrolling the same ground, disappeared. It was believed that these had been taken prisoner, but I was not much inclined to that view when, the third night, I was sent up with one or two old hands to see what I could see. We reached the very sketchy front line before it was quite dark, soon afterwards crawled over the top and were carefully making our way through our own wire – not that its puny tendrils needed much care! – when with a crash and flame on all sides at once a barrage began. Shells struck so fast that we seemed to be one shell-hole away, and no more, from the latest, and as we dodged and measured our length in wild disorder, we drifted a long way into No Man’s Land. The barrage followed our direction like a net, and when it stopped, as we lay panting and muttering in the smell of explosive mixed with that of the dewy weeds and broken clods, I saw that we were a few yards from a German sap, and I heard stealthy movement in that sap. This might have been the secret of my predecessors’ misfortune. After the shelling we were not much good for observation or offence, and found out no more. On our shaky way down from the line, we passed two cottages, called Pittsburg and Frascati – formerly picturesque studies for amateur water-colour. We quickly found that we should have chosen any other route, for, as we passed, shells flinging out bright terrible phosphorus howled into these thatched hovels. Running along another of the new plank roads, uncertain where it led, we beheld in the sickening brightness a column of artillery waggons, noiseless, smashed, capsized, the remains of mules and drivers sprawling among the wreckage.
We passed, and I determined that we must rest the few hours till day in the canal bank. In order to save us a weary search among blown-in dugouts, and others specially allotted already, I called upon the Canal Bank Major, who was normally in control of the accommodations. No sooner was I inside the sandbag porch of his lair than a shell knocked the porch in, and some more of my nerve system with it. The Major knew nothing up-to-date about the canal bank, which was (in Vidler’s phrase) ‘not quite itself ’ at the time; so my call was mere formality, and we soon were running over the canal to the old familiar places, in the middle of some gas shelling, which seemed to increase the foul mist sneaking along, and worried us. There is a hypocritical tunelessness about a gas shell in flight and in explosion. With that, there was the thought of being pitched bleeding into the gummy filths and mortifications below. At last we were in a ‘small elephant’ dugout, which if hit would be smashed like an egg, and I stretched myself on the dusty boards. I woke with a stiff neck in slightly gasiferous sunlight, mechanically receiving a mug of lurid tea with a dash of petrol from one of my invincibles.
I could dilate upon other drama that occurred towards July 31, 1917; there was, for instance, that tooth of mine, which our Irish doctor painfully extracted for me by muscular Christianity in the wood, surely the last afternoon we were there; as many of my signallers as were off duty stood round with a hideous pleasure, and one or two begged to offer their compliments on so great a fortitude! But the battle cannot be postponed longer. I had to thrust aside my Cambridge Magazine with Siegfried Sassoon’s splendid war on the war in it; sent my valise along to the dump; and fell in, wondering how Sassoon could pass one or two technical imperfections (as I thought them) in his fine verse. The spirit of battle was not rampant among us that turgid, thirsty night; our route was complicated by design and by accident, and the travelling companionship of numbers of tanks and other troops confused us. The unfamiliar way was now narrow as a lane, now broad and undefined as a football ground, sometimes dark, then lit whitely at a distance. At last we occupied trenches on the scene of our proposed business. Two days – was it? – elapsed; nature tried her hand at a thunderstorm; then the last colourless afternoon arrived. Before that a number of our men had been killed, and all drenched and shaken. That afternoon I saw the miserable state of a little group of houses called La Brique, now the object of a dozen German guns, and, escaping death, I well understood the number of bodies lying there. Everyone was moving in the open, without any help for it, and yet we were beating away at every point of importance opposite. Presently I stood with my friend Tice looking over the front parapet at the German line. Tice, though blue-chinned and heavy-eyed, showed his usual extreme attention to detail, identifying whatever features he could, and growing quite excited and joyful at the recognition of ‘Kitchener’s Wood’ in the background. To-morrow morning— The afternoon grew pale with cloud. Tice went along one trench and I along another, with some absurd familiarity as, ‘See you in the morning, old boy.’