Part 9

Sept. 6th.

What had happened, or why we were suddenly to turn against the enemy after ten days of retreat, we could not conceive; but the fact was there, and the difference in the spirits of the men was enormous. They marched twice as well, whistling and singing, back through Tournans and on to Villeneuve. Here we had orders to halt and feed, but the halt did not last long, for a summons to the 5th Division Headquarters (in a hot and stuffy little pothouse) arrived at 1 P.M., and by 2 we were marching on through the Foret de Crecy to Mortcerf. It was frightfully hot and dusty, and the track through the forest was not easy to find. Although I had issued stringent orders about the rear of one unit always dropping a guide for the next unit (if not in sight) at any cross-roads we came to, something went astray this time, and half the Brigade turned up at one end of the village of Mortcerf, whilst the other half came in at the other. We were on advanced guard at the time, and so increasing the frontage like this did no harm; but it caused rather a complication in the billets we proceeded to allot.

A delightful little village it was, and the Maire, in whose house we put up, was extremely kind; but by the time I had covered the front with outposts and ridden back, very hot and tired, General Smith Dorrien turned up, and announced that we were to push on in an hour. He was, by the way, very complimentary about the way in which the 15th Brigade had behaved all through, and cast dewdrops upon us with both hands. It was very pleasant, but I was rather taken aback, for I genuinely did not think that we had done anything particularly glorious in the retreat. However, it appeared that the authorities considered that the Brigade was extremely well disciplined and well in hand--for which the praise was due to the C.O.'s and not to me--and were accordingly well pleased.

So we made a hurried little meal at the Maire's house, and Madame threw us delicious pears from a first-floor window as we rode away.

We had not far to go in the dusk, only two or three miles on to the turning which led to La Celle. The Dorsets were pushed on into and beyond La Celle, in rather complicated country--for there was a deep valley and a twisting road beyond; but the few Uhlans in the village bolted as they entered it, and no further disturbances occurred in our front. On our right, however, there was heavy firing, for the 3rd Division had come across a good many of the enemy at Faremoutiers, and at 9.30, and again at 11.30, general actions seemed to be developing. But they died away, and we slept more or less peacefully on a stubble field with a few sheaves of straw to keep us warm. Perpetual messengers, however, kept on arriving with orders and queries all night long, and our sleep was a broken one.

Sept. 7th.

We awoke with the sun, feeling--I speak for myself--rather touzled and chippy, and waited a long time for the orders to proceed. The cooks' waggon turned up with the Quartermaster-Sergeant and breakfast--and still we didn't move. Eventually we fell in and moved off at noon--a hot day again--very hot, in fact, as we strung along on a narrow road in the deep and wooded valley. Very pretty country it was; but what impressed itself still more on me was the gift of some most super-excellent "William" pears by a farmer's wife in a tiny village nestling in the depths--real joy on that thirsty day.

There were still some Uhlans left in the woods, and I turned a couple of Norfolk companies off the road to drive them out. Some of our artillery had also heard of them, and a Horse battery dropped a few shells into the wood to expedite matters; but I regret to say the only bag, as far as we could tell, was one of our own men killed and another wounded by them.

At Mouroux we halted for a time, and then pushed on, rather late, to Boissy le Chatel--the delay being caused by the motor-bikist carrying orders to us missing, by some mischance, our Headquarters altogether--though we were within a few hundred yards of Divisional Headquarters, and had reported our whereabouts--and going on several miles to look for us.

We were now again the advanced guard of the Division, and had to find outposts for it a mile beyond. It is always rather a grind having to ride round the outposts after a long day, but one can't sleep in peace till one is satisfied that one's front is properly protected, so it has to be done; and as the Brigade Staff is limited, the Staff Captain allotting the billets, and the Brigade Major seeing that all the troops arrive safely, one generally has to do these little excursions by oneself. On the road I came across Hubert Gough, commanding the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, in a motor, cheery as ever, with his cavalry somewhere on our right flank keeping touch with us. We put up in a little deserted chateau in Boissy le Chatel, but it was overcrowded with trees and bushes and very stuffy.

Sept. 8th.

Next morning we had, before starting, the unpleasant duty to perform of detailing a firing-party to execute a deserter. I forget what regiment he belonged to (not in our brigade), but he had had rotten luck from his point of view. He had cleared out and managed to get hold of some civilian clothes, and, having lost himself, had asked the way of a gamekeeper he met. The gamekeeper happened to be an Englishman, and what was more, an old soldier, and he promptly gave him up to the authorities as a deserter.

We left at 7.25 A.M. as the last brigade in the Division. I might mention here that, for billeting, the ground for the Division was divided into "Brigade Areas," each area to hold not only an Infantry Brigade but one or two Artillery Brigades, a Field Ambulance, and generally a company of R.E., and occasionally some other odds and ends, such as Divisional Ammunition Column, Train, Irish Horse, Cyclists, &c., and for all these we had to find billets. The troops billeted in these areas varied in composition nearly every day. It was very hard work for the Staff Captain (Moulton-Barrett), whose proper job would normally have been limited to the 15th Brigade; but he and Saint Andre, who both worked like niggers, somehow always managed to do it satisfactorily. It would have turned my hair grey, I know, to stuff away a conflicting crowd of troops of different arms into an area which was always too small for them. But M.-B. would sit calmly on his horse amid the clamour of inexperienced subalterns and grasping N.C.O.'s, and allot the farms and streets in such a way that they always managed to get in somehow--though occasionally I expect the conditions were not those of perfect comfort. We were lucky in the weather, however, and many times troops bivouacked in the open in comparative ease when a rainy night would have caused them extreme discomfort.

It was not always easy to find billets even for our own Brigade Staff, for though we were a small unit, comparatively, we had a good number of horses and half a dozen vehicles; and besides this, we had to have a decent room or place for the Signal section, and rig up a wire for them to work in connection with the Divisional Headquarters or other troops. In this Cadell was excellent, and we rarely had a breakdown. Sometimes, of course, we were too far off to get a wire fixed in time, and then we had recourse to our Signal "push-bikists"--no motor cyclists being on our establishment. The Signal companies, by the way, had only been completely organized a month or two before the war, and what we should have done without them passes my imagination, for they were quite invaluable, and most excellently organized and trained.

And sometimes when, after all this work, we had settled down into billets for the night, an order would come to move on at once. Fresh orders had then hurriedly to be written, and despatched by the orderly of each unit (who was attached to our headquarters) to his respective unit, giving the time at which the head of the unit was to pass a given point on the road so as to dovetail into its place in the column in the dark, and all with reference to what we were going to do, whether the artillery or part of it was to be in front or in rear, what rations were to be carried, arrangements for supply, position of the transport in the column, compositions of the advanced or rear-guard, &c., &c. It sounds very complicated, and still more so when you have to fit in not only your own brigade but all the miscellaneous troops of your "Brigade Area." But Weatherby had reduced this to a fine art, and, after all, we had had heaps of practice at it; so orders were short and to the point, and issued in really an extraordinarily short time.

To return. Our march that day was through pretty country, with fighting always going on just ahead of us or on both flanks, but we were never actually engaged. At Doue we halted for an hour or so, and then received orders to push out a battalion to hold the high ground in front. But when we had got there we only found a panorama stretching out all round, dotted with troops, and our guns firing from all sorts of unseen hiding-places, with the enemy well on the run in front of us. Soon the order came for us to push on, and we moved forward through Mauroy, down a steep hill into St Cyr and St Ouen, pretty little villages in a cleft in the ground, across the Petit Morin river and up a beastly steep hill on the other side.

Then came a "pow-wow" in a stiff shower of rain, and on again slowly over the plateau, in a curious position, for there was a big fight going on amid some burning villages in the plain far on our left--I don't know what Division--probably the 4th--and a smaller fight parallel to us on the right, not two miles off; and we were marching calmly along the road in column.

Then a longer halt, whilst we got closer touch with the 14th Brigade on our right. It was a tangled fight there; for when we pushed forward some cyclists in that direction they were unintentionally fired on by the East Surrey; and the latter, who had rounded up and taken about 100 of the enemy prisoners, mostly cavalry, were just resting whilst they counted them, when some of our own guns lobbed some shells right into the crowd, and five German officers and about fifty of the prisoners escaped in the confusion.

A little farther on, near Charnesseuil, we got orders to billet for the night there, and the Brigade Headquarters moved on to Montapeine cross-roads. Here there was a good deal of confusion, stray units of several divisions trying to find their friends, and the cross-roads blocked by a small body of sixty-three German prisoners. We got the place cleared at last, and the Staff occupied an untidy, dirty, unfurnished house and grounds at the corner. It had been used by the enemy the night before, and they had luckily brought great masses of straw into the house.

I stowed away the prisoners in the stables--great big, docile, sheepish-looking men of the Garde-Schuetzen-Bataillon (2nd and 4th companies) and machine-gun battery attached. I talked to several of them, and they said that the battalion had lost very heavily and there were hardly any officers left. One of the latter, Fritz Wrede by name, I found wounded and lying on the straw in a dark room in the basement. Other wounded were being brought in here, and all complained of feeling very cold, although the evening was quite warm. I made some men heap straw on them, which was an improvement--but I believe that wounded always do feel cold.

Wrede had a bullet through the shoulder, but was not bad, so I got him to sign a paper to say he would not try to escape--otherwise he might have made trouble. Our men, as usual, were more than kind to the prisoners, and insisted on giving them their own bread and jam--though the Germans had already been given a lot of biscuit. I remember being struck with the extreme mild-seemingness of all the prisoners, and wondering how such men could have been capable of such frightful brutalities as they had been in Belgium--they looked and behaved as if they wouldn't have hurt a fly.

Sept. 9th.

Next morning we moved off at 7.30 and went via Saacy across the Marne to Merz, and thence up an extremely steep and bad road through the woods. It was a very hot day, and as there was no prospect of getting the transport up I left it behind at Merz, meaning to send it round another way when the road was clear. Firing was going on to the left front, and we halted for a council of war with the Divisional Staff, which was immediately in front of us.

The 14th Brigade was apparently hung up somewhere to our left front and couldn't get on, so we were sent on to help them take the high ground towards the Montreuil road. They were, we were told, already in possession of Hill 189; but when we emerged from the woods there was a Prussian battery on the hill. There did not seem to be any men with it, as far as we could see, and it was not firing. But we made a good target, and not more than a battalion had got clear when the "deserted" battery opened fire and lobbed a shell or two into the Bedfords and Cheshires.

They only lost a man or two killed and wounded; but a Howitzer battery with us, which was already on the lookout, came into action at once and speedily silenced the German guns for the time being.

Bols, who was leading, reported that the hill was attackable--it was really only a rise in the ground,--and after a reconnaissance I gladly issued orders. So the Norfolks and Dorsets proceeded to attack in proper form, whilst I sent the Bedfords round to the right towards Bezu to try and take the rise in flank. The 14th Brigade were meanwhile somewhere on the left, and we got touch with them after a time; but they could not get forward, as a number of big guns from much further off kept up a heavy fire, and there was a body of infantry hidden somewhere as well, to judge from the number of bullets that came over and into us.

That was rather a trying afternoon. Dorsets and Norfolks were held up about half a mile from Hill 189, and I went forward to Bezu with the Bedfords to try to get them on to the flank. Thorpe and his company got forward into a wood, but lost a number of men in getting there; and the lie of the ground did not seem to justify my sending many more to help him, as the space up to the wood was swept by a heavy fire. Just about this time poor Roe of the Dorsets, who had taken some of his company into this wood, was shot through the head--as was also George, one of his subalterns.

Meanwhile those horrible big guns from somewhere near Sablonnieres were giving us a lot of trouble, and knocked out also several of the Cheshires, who had been sent by the Divisional Commander towards the left to support the 14th Brigade. The latter--(I went to see Rolt, the Brigadier, but there was little we could combine)--seemed at one moment to be a little unhappy, as they were enfiladed from Chanoust on their left; but the Dorsets had worked carefully forward on their tummies, and with the Norfolks held a low ridge well to the front, whence, though they could not get forward themselves, they could do the enemy a good deal of damage. So the 14th Brigade stuck it out, and we kept up the game till dusk, when we dug ourselves in a little further back and posted outposts.