Field Marshal French’s operational orders for 18 October called on Major-General Thompson Capper’s 7th Division to ‘move on Menin’.1 French intended this as a direct assault on the town (12 miles south-east of Ypres), but Capper and Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, IV Corps commander, interpreted this in a more circumspect manner and advanced less than 3 miles. French already had a poor opinion of Rawlinson, and this apparent failure to carry out his instructions only confirmed his misgivings.
The following day GHQ issued orders for an aggressive resumption of the advance, but as the 7th Division attempted to capture Menin, it encountered stiff German resistance. Major-General Julian Byng’s 3rd Cavalry Division, guarding Capper’s left flank, was pushed back to a line between Zonnebeke and Poelcappelle. This left the 7th Division dangerously exposed, forcing it to retire to a line guarding Ypres. Rawlinson’s Corps had been attacked by the vanguard of the four reserve corps of the German Fourth Army. They were marching westwards to join forces with Beseler’s III Reserve Corps, already engaged with the Belgians and French along the Yser River.
Colonel George Macdonogh, GHQ’s senior intelligence officer, had warned French of the growing numbers of German troops advancing on Ypres, but his reports, and those from IV Corps, were dismissed by French and his operational staff at GHQ. Disappointed by IV Corps’ performance, French pinned his hopes on Haig’s I Corps, which was forming up to the east of Ypres and would soon lead the advance on the left of IV Corps.
The entire Allied line was about to bear the weight of Falkenhayn’s offensive. The German Sixth Army was ordered to attack the Franco-British defences to the south of Ypres, while the German Fourth Army was to act as a battering ram to break through the Franco-Belgian-British line between Ypres and the Channel coast. In the coming weeks the British Army would undergo the most intense and sustained experience of combat so far in its history.
Ypres and the terrain running due north of the city was flat and lowlying. A few miles to the south of Ypres, a gently sloping ridge ran in a north-easterly direction from Wytschaete and Messines in the south to Passchendaele and beyond in the north. It was on this ridge – dotted with chateaux, woods and coverts – that the 7th Division would receive its baptism of fire.
During the morning of 20 October, the 7th Division went over to the defensive as it waited for the arrival of I Corps. The 22nd and 21st Brigades held a line from just north of Broodseinde that ran due south to the Menin road. The 20th Brigade continued the line south of the Menin road to Kruiseecke. There the line abruptly turned westward by 90 degrees to the far side of Zandevoorde where it met up with the Cavalry Corps.
The two Royal Engineer companies allotted to each division helped the infantry with the siting and construction of trenches, but the engineers were few in number and their resources limited. Lieutenant Kerrich RE assisted the 1st Grenadier Guards, holding the right-angled position around Kruiseecke. Barbed wire remained in desperately short supply: ‘Not one coil of new wire was to be had,’ wrote Kerrich. ‘The whole lot had to be collected from neighbouring fences, and the amount of work done by one section in a day was heartbreakingly small.’2 The infantry were often forced to dig with their entrenching tools, there being insufficient picks and shovels in the battalion and brigade reserves. As a consequence, the British defences consisted of short, isolated sections of entrenchment.
Kerrich had also attempted to clear the foreground immediately in front of the trenches to give the infantry an improved field of fire. There was very little time available, however, and during the morning of the 20th he was warned that the enemy was close at hand. ‘Not so long afterwards,’ he recalled, ‘someone shouted, “Here they come”, and the R.E., having orders not to fight, faded away to our farm.’3
The defensive line taken by the 7th Division was subsequently criticized because its trenches were dug on forward slopes visible to the German guns. This was taken as an example of the inexperience of the division in the latest tactics; these had been learned the hard way by the other infantry divisions at Le Cateau and on the Aisne. There was some truth in this, especially as regards the 22nd Brigade, but a withdrawal by the other two brigades to suitably concealed positions would have entailed a substantial withdrawal onto the main ridge, which, no doubt, would have brought down the wrath of the Commander-in-Chief.
The prime weakness of the 7th Division’s position was not so much the siting of its trenches as the length of line it had been ordered to hold. On the 20th, the division’s three brigades were spread across a distance of just over 8 miles, and while this would be progressively reduced over the coming days, the infantry were stretched dangerously thin. By way of comparison, the two powerful divisions of I Corps would take up a near identical length of the line on the 21st.4
The shortage of field artillery would also be keenly felt, especially as one of the 13-pounder RHA batteries had been reassigned to the 3rd Cavalry Division, leaving just F battery and six batteries of 18-pounders to be divided up among the three infantry brigades. The division’s heavy artillery comprised two four-gun batteries of 4.7in. guns. The near-obsolete 4.7in. gun was of limited value, however, as the Official History confirmed with only slight exaggeration: ‘Its shooting was irregular and its shells unreliable. These characteristics earned for it the name of “strict neutrality”, for shells fell on friend and foe alike.’5
The German assault against IV Corps began in the afternoon of 20 October but was too late to cause much damage. Byng’s 3rd Cavalry Division was forced to retreat but the 7th Division held its line without difficulty. The following day, the 3rd Cavalry Division began to move behind the 7th Division to take up a position alongside the Cavalry Corps, south of Ypres. This was also the day that the Germans attacked the 7th Division in force: two reserve divisions from the east, plus a cavalry division pushing south of Kruiseecke. The German infantry were well supported by artillery that included 15cm and 21cm heavy howitzers.
Brigadier-General S. T. B. Lawford’s 22nd Brigade, on the left of the line, was particularly hard hit. Sir Richard Sutton, a junior officer in the 1st Lifeguards (3rd Cavalry Division), described how his regiment was despatched to support the brigade: ‘When we got there some of the infantry were leaving their trenches in spite of their officers trying to prevent them. They lost rather heavily in this. We took up our position in the support trenches and prevented any further retirement.’6
Sutton had yet to face real combat and he was unaware of the ordeal that the 22nd Brigade had just undergone. Inexperienced troops were invariably unnerved by a heavy artillery bombardment, which in the case of the brigade had been followed up by a massed infantry attack. The 1st Royal Welch Fusiliers had been struck the hardest, reduced in three days of fighting to six officers and 206 other ranks. The brigade fell back in disorder but rallied in front of Zonnebeke, aided by the arrival of a battalion of Irish Guards from I Corps.
Further south, a section of the 21st Infantry Brigade position was overrun by German reserve infantry, but, possibly through their own inexperience, the Germans failed to exploit the advantage. A company of 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers repulsed the Germans, the British line restored. The 20th Brigade, holding Kruiseecke, fought off attacks by the German 3rd Cavalry Division, although because of its right-angled position it remained subject to constant enfilade fire.
The 20th Brigade was supported by F Battery RHA. Major J. S. Olivant, the battery commander, recalled how the signals officer of the 1st Grenadier Guards at Kruiseecke requested assistance in knocking out a German machine-gun position hidden in a nearby house. Olivant described a good if basic example of infantry–artillery co-operation: ‘Just before dawn one gun, drawn by drag ropes over several hundred yards by practically all the battery detachments, was got into position from which, at the first streak of light, the target was visible. As soon as it could be seen rapid fire was opened, the house breached and machine gun silenced. The gun was successfully run back before it could be located.’7 The Grenadiers were grateful for the artillery presence; their CO, Colonel M. Earle, considered the lighter 13-pounders to be more useful for close-support work than the standard 18-pounder field gun.
On 20 October I Corps began to arrive on the battlefield, the 2nd Division taking up a line to the north of the 7th Division and providing welcome reinforcement to the beleaguered 22nd Brigade. Once in position, it waited for the arrival of the 1st Division on its left. Large numbers of refugees passed through the British lines, proof of the imminent arrival of the Germans. The troops of the 2nd Division also encountered farm animals roaming wild, for some a source of food but for others a distressing sight. Sergeant John McIlwain of the 2nd Connaught Rangers wrote: ‘All about that part of Flanders, the terrified cattle go wild about the fields; roaring every night in their hunger, fright and desolation, waiting to be milked yet running stupidly from our men who attempt to relieve them.’8
Haig and his divisional commanders did not share Field Marshal French’s belief that they faced only weak forces. Their suspicions were confirmed by the fierceness of the German response to their advance. Major-General C. C. Monro’s 2nd Division pushed forward only a short distance beyond the Zonnebeke–Langemarck road before taking up a defensive position at around 2 p.m. Major-General S. H. Lomax’s 1st Division was preparing to march due east, but with news that Germans were pushing through the Houthulst forest it swung round in a northerly direction to face this potential threat, anchoring its left flank to the French Territorial divisions around Bixschoote, while an advance guard pushed past Langemarck to join up with the 2nd Division.
On the 22nd the Germans attacked along the full length of the I Corps line. Captain H. C. Rees of the 2nd Welch, a short distance in front of Langemarck, described the initial bombardment:
The Germans opened fire with eight 8-inch [21cm] howitzers on Langemarck and in about four hours reduced the town to ashes. It was really a splendid spectacle. A number of field guns were also employed. I saw a field-gun shell strike the spire of the church just above the cross and send the cross some twenty feet in the air. The church shortly afterwards caught fire, and went up in a sheet of flames.9
Wisely, the bulk of the British troops were deployed well forward of the town and suffered few casualties, although the psychological strain on the waiting troops was severe, as Private Samuel Knight of the Welch revealed: ‘My nerves are taut. I was waiting for death. It is not a hand-to-hand struggle, but man pitted against a huge death-dealing machine. I am unhurt. But I wonder how much longer I could have withstood the strain.’10
The following day, the German 51st Reserve Division launched a mass infantry assault to capture Langemarck, as described by Rees:
At the corner of the hedge, we had a machine gun. Colonel Morland [battalion CO] and I stood by this gun for about an hour. We actually saw the Germans form up for attack and opened fire on their first line at 1,250 yards. From that time onwards, we had every form of target from a company in mass, who tried to put a large haystack between us and them, but who formed on the wrong side of it, to a battalion in fours near the edge of the Houthulst forest. Sgt Longden, who was firing the gun, told me that evening that he reckoned he’d killed a thousand Germans. I put it at about four or five hundred casualties. I never saw the Germans make a worse attack or suffer heavier losses.11
The 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry – holding a line directly opposite Poelcappelle – also faced the attack by the 51st Reserve Division. The British battalion had suffered fairly heavy casualties in the advance on the 21st, and spent the next day digging trenches. Captain Henry Dillon was concerned that his stretch of the line was too thinly held: ‘The night came on rather misty and dark, and I thought several times of asking for reinforcements, but I collected a lot of rifles off the dead, and loaded them and put them along the parapet instead.’12 As the light began to fade, the British line was subjected to a sudden and violent German bombardment:
Presently the guns stopped, and I knew then that we were in for it. I had to look over the top for about 10 minutes, however, under their infernal Maxims before I saw what I was looking for. It came with a suddenness that was the most startling thing I have ever known. A great grey mass of humanity was charging on to us not 50 yards off. Everybody’s nerves were pretty well on edge as I had warned them what to expect, and as I fired my rifle the rest all went off almost simultaneously. One saw the great mass of Germans quiver. In reality some fell, some fell over them, and others came on. I have never shot so much in such a short time.
At the very last moment they did the most foolish thing they possibly could have done. Some of the leading people turned to the left for some reason, and they all followed like a flock of sheep. My right hand is one huge bruise from banging the bolt up and down. I don’t think we could have missed at the distance and for one short minute or two we poured the ammunition into them in boxfulls. My rifles were red hot at the finish.
The firing died down and out of the darkness a great moan came. People trying to crawl away; others who could not move gasping out their last moments with the cold night wind biting into their broken bodies and the lurid glare of a farm house showing up clumps of grey devils killed on the left further down. A weird awful scene; some of them would raise themselves on one arm or a crawl a little distance, silhouetted as black as ink against the red glow of the fire.13
The accounts by Dillon and Rees revealed both the tactical ineptitude of the German reserve infantry and their great bravery. Haig’s I Corps weathered repeated attacks over a period of two days, inflicting severe losses on their enemy. The heavy casualties suffered by the reserve formations were later cynically manipulated as the ‘Kindermord’ (‘Death of the Innocents’), a German nationalist myth that envisioned idealistic students marching towards the Allied lines, singing martial songs with arms linked and flags unfurled. The Langemarck Myth was subsequently taken up by the Nazis but it could not conceal the shortcomings of the German Supreme Command in sending poorly trained men into battle.
The German 46th Reserve Division did have some success against the 1st (Guards) Brigade around the Inn at Kortekeer on the 22nd, pushing in a section of the British trenches that left part of the 1st Cameron Highlanders cut off from the rest of the brigade. Brigadier-General E. S. Bulfin of the 2nd Brigade was ordered to retake the position the following morning. Well supported by artillery, the 1st Loyal North Lancashires and 1st Queen’s (loaned from the 3rd Brigade) spearheaded the attack. Second Lieutenant J. G. W. Hyndson of the North Lancs described his part in the final stages of the assault:
We are now close to the ‘Bosche’ trenches, and must pause to wear down his nerves until he dare not show a hair, before we can complete the attack. We commence to fire for all we are worth at selected portions of their position. Little by little we get the upper hand, but the slightest attempt on our part to work forward is met by angry bursts of fire.
And so the fight goes on until about one o’clock, when the firing from the enemy trenches almost dies down. The time has now come to put the finishing touches to the battle, and we work forward in small groups until only two hundred yards separate us from the enemy. From this point of vantage the whole regiment rises up, and with rousing cheers, which must have put fear into the hearts of the Germans, we surge forward with fixed bayonets and charge.
On we dash, yelling with all our might, passing over the front German trench, we bayonet the surviving defenders, and pass on to the reserve trenches. Here we expect to meet with stout resistance, but the Germans have had enough, and suddenly the glorious sight of masses of great-coated men standing up to surrender meets out gaze. The fight is practically over, and we gather some four hundred unwounded prisoners and send them under escort to the rear.14
The British attack could have come directly from Field Service Regulations, and underlined the disparity in the quality of the forces involved. According to Brigadier-General Bulfin, ‘over 600 prisoners captured and one machine gun. 1,200 dead Germans left out in front, many of the German prisoners mere boys.’15
To the south of I Corps, the over-extended 7th Division desperately needed swift and comprehensive reinforcement if its line was to hold. The Franco-British allies agreed that I Corps’ position would be taken over by the French, allowing it to move directly to support the 7th Division and to prepare for a continuation of the offensive. On 23 and 24 October, the 2nd Division moved out of the line, to be replaced by General Dubois’s IX Corps. On the 25th, the 1st Division relinquished its trenches on the northern section of the salient, and briefly acted as an Allied reserve. The redeployment of the 2nd Division saved the 7th Division from almost certain collapse.
On 24 October the two divisions of the German XXVII Reserve Corps threw themselves against the 7th Division. The German 244th and 246th Reserve Regiments smashed into the 21st Brigade. Gaps appeared on both flanks of the 2nd Wiltshire Regiment, through which the Germans advanced. Unaware that this had happened, the Wiltshires carried on firing to their front and were consequently attacked from both flanks and rear; the majority of the battalion was captured, with fewer than 90 soldiers reaching British lines.
German infantry now poured through the breach and into Polygon Wood. Once in the wood, however, the Germans became confused, unable to exploit their advantage. A series of vigorous British counterattacks – firstly from the meager 7th Division reserves and then from the 2nd Division – repulsed the Germans and, at the point of the bayonet, threw them back to their own lines. The 2nd Worcestershires lost up to 200 men in the counter-attack through Polygon Wood, while the casualties suffered by the two German regiments provided further evidence of the ferocity of the combat. Jack Sheldon relates that on the morning of the 24th, ‘the fighting strength of Reserve Infantry Regiment 244 had been 57 officers and 2,629 other ranks. By that evening they were reduced to six officers, 77 NCOs and 671 other ranks.’16 The 246th Regiment suffered similar losses.
Major-General Capper was much praised for his bravery during the battle, encouraging his troops to fight wherever the danger was greatest. ‘Capper himself seemed to bear a charmed life’, wrote auxiliary driver C. D. Baker-Carr. ‘Day after day he exposed himself in the most reckless fashion. He wasn’t brave; he simply did not know what fear meant. His steely blue eyes, beneath a thick crop of dark, wiry hair, stared at one with the look of a religious fanatic.’17 This style of leadership was certainly inspirational but could only directly affect a small number of troops. It also led to heavy casualties among senior officers – Capper was killed at the front in 1915 – and it took the commander away from his prime role of managing all his forces. Capper’s ADC described how he raged against ‘the modern practice of tying the general to the end of a telephone wire, but the complaint of his staff was that he was far too little at the end of the wire, but miles away in front’.18
As the battle continued so the RFC did its best to provide support for the troops below. The deteriorating weather, complete with regular low cloud, hampered aerial reconnaissance, and the initial developments in photography from the air made on the Aisne do not seem to have progressed much at Ypres. On the positive side, the RAF’s Official History explained how, ‘good work was done in directing the fire of the artillery, and the few wireless machines were much in demand’.19 Unfortunately, there were too few wireless-radio equipped aircraft, and artillery-spotting usually relied on more conventional methods that involved flying close to British artillery batteries. This, in turn, brought aircraft alongside the trigger-happy infantry. Major ‘Ma’ Jeffreys witnessed a tragic incident on the 26th, almost identical to that observed by Maurice Baring on the Aisne (see page 183). ‘During the day,’ Jeffreys wrote, ‘a British aeroplane flying low over the lines and dropping lights was mistaken for a German and heavily fired upon by the Black Watch, who brought it down in flames, all the men cheering as it came down. A dreadful sight, as we were watching and realised it was British.’20
The aircraft had a large Union Jack painted on its underside, but as a French officer pointed out to the RFC, at height only the red cross was visible and was easily confused with the German Maltese Cross. It was suggested that the British should adopt the French circular markings. An RFC report on the battle for Ypres noted: ‘The mishap of the 26th hasted the adoption of this suggestion and thereafter the French target was painted on British aeroplanes, with the alteration of the blue for red and red for blue, to preserve national distinctions.’21
The battle on the 24th had been a close run thing for the 7th Division, but the restoration of its line and the arrival of the 2nd Division encouraged Field Marshal French to continue offensive operations alongside General Dubois’s IX Corps. The Anglo-French assault was slow in getting underway on the 25th and gains were limited. The advance of the 2nd Division between Zonnebeke and Polygon Wood had the unfortunate consequence of drawing away attention from the vulnerable ‘right-angled’ position of the 20th Brigade around Kruiseecke. Although the Germans had spent most of the 25th reorganizing after their setbacks on the previous day, the British command seemed unaware of a build up of German forces on both sides of Kruiseecke, which had included an exploratory night attack (repulsed) on the hamlet itself.
As the 2nd Division continued it slow advance on the 26th, the Germans opened a fearsome bombardment against the 20th Brigade. Understrength and exhausted by several days’ fighting, the defenders were overwhelmed in the subsequent German infantry attack. By midday the Germans had broken through on the southern side of the line, before taking Kruiseecke.
The capture of Kruiseecke had, in fact, removed a dangerous anomaly in the British line, but once the position had been lost, the 20th Brigade fell apart. In the space of a few hours the Germans had battered down the southern part of the British defences, so that the ridge position of Gheluvelt was now exposed. Haig, who had the 1st Division in reserve, rode out from his headquarters in the afternoon and was ‘astounded at the terror stricken men coming back’22 before sending up reinforcements that temporarily replaced the 20th Brigade and re-established a more effective line. The 7th Division had taken a battering. From just its three infantry brigades, up to 26 October, the division had lost 162 officers and 4,320 other ranks, which amounted to an unsustainable casualty rate of 44 per cent of officers and 37 per cent of other ranks.23
Haig had now taken over the direction if not the actual command of the 7th Division. Rawlinson had already lost control of the 3rd Cavalry Division (formally assigned to the Cavalry Corps on the 25th), and his increasingly anomalous position was neatly if sharply resolved by the disbandment of IV Corps on 27 October. Capper’s 7th Division was absorbed into I Corps and Rawlinson sent back to Britain to prepare the 8th Division (now forming up) for trench warfare. French had been disappointed with Rawlinson, although a new IV Corps (7th and 8th Divisions) was reconstituted at the end of the battle for Ypres with Rawlinson again at its head.
Douglas Haig had been alone among senior British officers to enjoy the full confidence of his Commander-in-Chief, and over the course of the 1914 campaign his star would steadily rise. French had also given Haig more leeway in command decisions, so much so that Haig increasingly took control of operational matters. Haig’s overweening certainty in his own abilities, his jealousy of potential rivals and sharp, sometimes unjust, criticism of colleagues and subordinates made him a less than attractive character, but his overall competence in military matters, his energy and, above all, his obdurate will made him the ideal commander for a defensive battle, when at times all seemed lost.
To the south of Ypres, the advance of Allenby’s Cavalry Corps had been halted by the German offensive of 20 October. The British cavalry were opposed by elements of the German I, IV and V Cavalry Corps (plus four Jäger battalions), and in the face of superior numbers the British fell back to a defensive line stretching from Messines in the south to the right flank of the 7th Division around Zandvoorde. The Official History made much of the apparent German numerical superiority, but in terms of the cavalry-versus-cavalry combat, the greater German numbers were countered by the British advantage of holding a generally sound defensive position.
For the first two days of the offensive Allenby’s cavalry was forced to weather the German storm, but with support from the 11th Infantry Brigade and the arrival of the 3rd Cavalry Division from the 22nd onwards, the British line was secured against a German breakthrough.
Where possible, each of the three cavalry divisions would hold back a brigade as a mobile reserve. Bob Lloyd of the 1st Life Guards – part of Brigadier-General Kavanagh’s 7th Cavalry Brigade – described his brigade’s role in glowing terms when called upon for help: ‘It straight away galloped to the danger point, dismounted, and going in with the bayonet, put things again in order. It then held the line until relieved, after which it got back to its position in reserve. Our brigade seemed to get a call almost every time we were put, so we became known to the troops in the salient as “Kavanagh’s Fire Brigade”.’24
It was ironic that the cavalry had been so swiftly and efficiently transformed into mounted infantry, a role bitterly opposed by Sir John French and the cavalry school in the years before the war. This process had begun on the Aisne, when the infantry was desperately short of reserves and the cavalry found itself without any traditional cavalry functions to perform. But as the battle of Ypres continued the cavalry would be relegated to the position of ‘dismounted’ infantry, occupying the trenches rather than their saddles for increasingly long periods. When the 1st Connaught Rangers (from the Indian Lahore Division) arrived as reinforcement to the 2nd Cavalry Division on the 22nd, a staff officer observed how Major-General de Lisle ‘ordered them to dig a trench to show them how it ought to be done properly’.25 It was a portent of things to come, but it was much to the cavalrymen’s credit that they so readily took up this new and unwanted responsibility.
While the Germans maintained a degree of pressure on Allenby’s corps, a stalemate of sorts existed between the opposing cavalry formations. But on the 29th the situation would be transformed by an all-out assault on Messines and the Ypres salient by new German divisions. To the south, the soldiers of II and III Corps had already endured an offensive that had pushed them to the limit.