Part 24

Poor Johnston--he became Brigade-Major after Weatherby left for the 5th Divisional Staff (some time in April 1915, I think), and, as I remarked, was killed shortly afterwards. His death was a very heavy loss to the Brigade.

At Dranoutre we--that is, the Brigade staff--lived in a perpetual atmosphere of mud and draughts. The Cure's house was very small and very dirty, and was not improved by the pounds of mud which every one brought in on his boots at all hours of the day and left on our best drugget--a cheap, thin thing which I bought in Bailleul (they had not such a thing as a carpet in the whole town) wherewith to cover the nakedness of the brick floor of the one tiny room in which we all worked and ate.

Weatherby and I slept in the house, and the others were billeted outside, but the quarters were none of them more than passable--poor villagers' rooms, with a frowzy though comfortable bed, a rickety washhand-stand, if you were lucky (I did not even have that), no carpet on the dirty wooden floor, and one small hard-backed chair, generally minus a portion of a leg; never any chest of drawers or anywhere to put your things, as if there by any chance was such a thing in the room, it was sure to be full of the inhabitants' rusty old black clothes and dirty blue flannel shirts, and petticoats, thick and musty, by the ton,--I never saw so many petticoats per inhabitant.

Our mess had only had one change since the beginning of the war, and that was in the signal officer. Cadell had gone sick in November, and Miles had replaced him in December. For about a month, including all the period at Ypres, we had had no signal officer (except Naylor for two days), nor any Brigade-Major from about the 12th November (at Ypres) till the beginning of December; so Sergeant King, a first-rate signaller, though not the senior, had carried on for Cadell, and Moulton-Barrett had added the duties of Brigade-Major to his own. But by the middle of December we were complete again. Weatherby had returned from his sick leave, and Miles, of the K.O.S.B.'s, was now signalling officer. A quite excellent one he was, too--very silent, always an hour or two late for dinner (owing to strenuous night work), never asking questions, but always doing things before they were even suggested, and very thoroughly at that; he was a great acquisition. Moulton-Barrett was still Staff Captain--very hard-working and conscientious, and very thorough; Weatherby was still Brigade-Major--keen and resourceful; Beilby was still veterinary officer--capable and helpful; and St Andre was still interpreter and billeting officer--cheerful and most willing. His duties were mostly to investigate the numerous cases of natives who wanted to go somewhere or do something--generally to fetch their cows off a shell-swept field, or to rescue their furniture from a burnt village, or to fetch or buy something from Bailleul--and recommend them (or otherwise) to me for passes--a most trying duty, wearing to the temper; but he was angelic in patience, and, as a light recreation, used to accompany me to the trenches fairly often.

One case there was where, for three nights running, great fids of wire were cut out of some artillery cables connecting them with their observers--a most reprehensible deed. So I had patrols out to spy along the lines,--no result, except that next morning another 100 yards had gone. So I made St Andre publish a blood-and-thunder proclamation threatening death to any one found tampering with our wires. Spies were plentiful, and a gap in our wires might be fatal.

And then the culprit owned up. It was an old woman near whose cottage the wires passed, and her fences required mending.

Neuve Eglise, which we inhabited for a fortnight or more, and where we spent Xmas Day, was a good cut above Dranoutre. Except for the first three days, when we lived with a doctor,--and his stove smoked frightfully till we discovered a dead starling in the pipe,--we dwelt in exceeding comfort, comparatively speaking. It was a brewer's house, about the biggest in the village--which was three times the size of Dranoutre,--with real furniture in it, a real dining-room (horribly cold, as the stove refused to work), and a most comfortable series of highly civilized bedrooms. (Last time I was in the neighbourhood--August 1915--there was long grass in the streets, not a soul in the place, half the houses in absolute ruins, and our late quarters with one side missing and three parts of the house as well.) The trenches were much less pestered with shells and bullets than the Dranoutre lot, and it was easier work altogether for the men. We quite enjoyed it, and on Xmas Day so did the Germans. For they came out of their trenches and walked across unarmed, with boxes of cigars and seasonable remarks. What were our men to do? Shoot? You could not shoot unarmed men. Let them come? You could not let them come into your trenches; so the only thing feasible at the moment was done--and some of our men met them halfway and began talking to them.

We got into trouble for doing it. But, after all, it is difficult to see what we could otherwise have done, unless we shot the very first unarmed man who showed himself--pour encourager les autres; but we did not know what he was going to do. Meanwhile our officers got excellent close views of the German trenches, and we profited accordingly; the Boche did not, for he was not allowed close enough to ours.

Which reminds me that on one occasion, when going round the trenches, I asked a man whether he had had any shots at the Germans. He responded that there was an elderly gentleman with a bald head and a long beard who often showed himself over the parapet.

"Well, why didn't you shoot him?"

"Shoot him?" said the man; "why, Lor' bless you, sir, 'e's never done me no 'arm!" A case of "live and let live," which is certainly not to be encouraged. But cold-blooded murder is never popular with our men.

Talking of anecdotes, and the trend of our men's minds, I heard that on another occasion a groom, an otherwise excellent creature, wrote home to his "girl" thus: "Me and the master rode out to the trenches last night. We was attacked by a strong German patrol. I nips off me horse, pulls out my rifle and shoots two of them, and the rest bolted." Not a single atom of truth in the story, except that he was nestling in a warm stable at an advanced village, whilst his master was shivering in the mud of the trenches that night.

Another gem was a statement by a Transport officer's servant that he had shot 1200 Germans himself with a machine-gun. This was a man who, I verily believe, had never even been within earshot of a gun, much less seen a German, his duties being exclusively several miles in rear of the firing line. And, being a civilian up till quite recently, I am sure he did not know the muzzle of a maxim from its breech.

During our tours in "Divisional reserve" we generally spent the time in St Jan's Cappel (already described) or Bailleul. The latter town, with its rather quaint old brick fourteenth-century church, porched a la Louis Quinze, was tolerable rather than admirable. Nothing of civil interest, and hardly anything to buy except magnificent grapes from the "Grapperies," even in November. We housed a battalion or more in the man's series of greenhouses, and he responded--after several more battalions had been quartered there--with a claim for 2,000,000 francs. He could not prove that a single pane of glass or any of his vines had been broken, nor any grapes stolen, for indeed they had not been, but he based his claim on the damage done to them by tobacco smoke (which I always thought was particularly good for them), and by the report of the big guns, which shattered the vines' nerves so that he was sure they would not produce again (also a fallacy, for I had some more excellent grapes there nearly a year afterwards--September '15). I did not hear what compensation he got, but he would have been lucky to get 20 francs.

I once went into a poorly furnished watchmaker's shop, but the lady there could do nothing for my watch. She told me that, being an optician in a small way as well, she had had a whole stock of spectacles and glasses. When the Germans came through the town in October, they demanded fieldglasses. The few ones she had they stole, and then because she had no more they stole her watchmaker's tools, and swept all the spectacles and glasses and watches on to the floor and stamped them to powder.

There is really little more to relate about our time at Dranoutre and neighbourhood. It was a time of a certain amount of nerve-strain, for we all knew that our trenches were by no means perfect, and that if the enemy did attack us we should have great difficulty in bringing up reserves in time to beat them off; for we could not keep them under cover within decent range--there were no billets or houses,--and if we dug trenches for them they were not only exposed to the enemy's shell fire but were certain to be half full of water in two days; whilst we could not get anything like enough trench stores and timber, and what we did get we had enormous difficulty in bringing up to the trenches.

During all this time the artillery helped us all they knew, and were extremely well run, first by Ballard, then Saunders, and then Sandys, as Brigade Commanders. But they were badly handicapped by want of shells, especially howitzer high explosives, and we had to suffer a great deal of shell fire without returning it.

We used to average about four casualties a day in each battalion, say fifteen to twenty a day in the Brigade, which made a big hole in the strengths. Officers were always getting killed--often, alas, their own fault, through excess of zeal; and men used perpetually to lose their lives through getting out of the trenches in order to stretch their half-frozen limbs. Sickness was, strange to say, almost negligible. There were far more cases of arthritis and other things due to cold wet feet than anything else; and the men were extraordinarily healthy, comparatively speaking, considering the desperately uncomfortable hard life.

General Morland was, of course, commanding the Division during this time, and used to come nearly every morning in his car to see us; also Sir C. Fergusson, now Corps Commander, often came.

But during the whole of that winter there was very little for the higher commands to do, except to collect and send up material for the trenches, and to try and keep pace with the German developments--for we could do little or nothing in the way of offensive action.

I tried to get the thing neatly organised, as to stores and times and amounts and transport for taking the things up to the trenches; but it was very difficult, as sometimes there were no engineer stores to be had, or the wires got broken by shell fire and took a long time to repair, or it was more urgent to bring up rations or water or ammunition, and the requisite transport for all was not available. But all the same, the trenches gradually improved.

At last, on the 18th February, we got news that there was to be a move from our present line. The fact was that the 28th Division (also the 27th), composed of white troops from India and other tropical places, had had an exceedingly nasty time. Many of the men were rotten with fever, and the cold wet weather had sent scores and scores into hospital. They had been put into the trenches round St Eloi to relieve the French, who had held all the line round here chiefly with their field artillery and a very few men; and the trenches were, consequently, most sketchy, according to British ideas, and the approaches under heavy fire. The French did not mind, for, if they were shelled out of their trenches, as often happened, they just skipped out of them and turned their guns on till the Germans were cleared out; and then they went back again. But this sort of thing did not suit us; and when the Germans did attack our trenches here they took a good many and we lost a lot of men, especially when we tried to counter-attack and retake them. So the 28th Division was hors de combat for the moment, and was sent down to recuperate in a quieter area--which was that of the 5th Division.

Our orders were for the 13th and 15th Brigades to move north to St Eloi and be replaced by the 83rd and 84th Brigades. This was done,--a most complicated move, for the 84th Brigade, which fell to our lot, was composed of four very weak battalions, and we had five battalions, mostly rather strong; and by the 24th February we had six battalions, including the 9th Londons (an excellent battalion) and 6th Cheshires (a strong and hard-working one).

We ought to have been relieved, in the normal state of affairs, on the 17th February, but we were kept on, as a matter of fact, till the 27th, because of this new arrangement.

On that morning I received word that an extraordinary lamp message had been read during the night in the enemy's lines by a signaller of the 6th Cheshires. It was a long, confused message in English, repeating that "the hill" was going to be attacked at noon on that day, with messages about "B.C. codes"--whatever that may be,--trumpery wire entanglements, the unready English, good leading essential, &c., and a lot of other undecipherable nonsense. The whole message had lasted nearly two hours, with interruptions and repetitions. I did not know what to make of it. It was probably a "leg-pull," or somebody practising his English; but as there was a 1000 to 1 chance of its being sent by some sympathiser in our front, and of the projected "attack" being a real one, I sent two companies down as a reserve to the Bus Farm in our reserve line, and held a battery ready before its time. But nothing happened, and we were relieved without incident.

Bols, by the way, had, from commanding the Dorsets, been appointed to command the 84th Brigade, and he took over before leaving, on the day before we left. I was very sorry indeed to lose him, but knew that, once his foot was well on the ladder, he would go right ahead--as he has. The same applied to Ballard, who also had been given a Brigade--the 7th.

The 15th Brigade thereupon retired into billets at Bailleul, with orders to stay there for three days only, and then to go straight to St Eloi and take over these trenches of the 28th Division. Not much rest--twenty days in the trenches, three out, and then trenches again.

As regards myself, however, my days of connection with the Brigade were numbered. I had heard, with mixed but pleasant feelings, that I had been promoted Major-General "for distinguished service" on the 18th February (Weatherby got a brevet majority in the same 'Gazette'), and I was now ordered to go home and report myself in London. My successor was to be Northey, of the 60th Rifles, from Givenchy way, and he turned up on the 2nd March at our Headquarters, which were then at 28 Rue de Lille. I at once recognised that he would carry on excellently well, and had no compunction in leaving the command in his hands. All that was left for me to do was to take a tender farewell of the officers of the Brigade and of my staff, and to publish a final farewell order to the old Brigade. I was very sad at leaving, and had I known what an awful time they were going to have at St Eloi and Hill 60, I should have been sadder still. Of all the regimental officers and men who had left Ireland with me on the 14th August 1914, six and a half months previously, I could count on my ten fingers the number of officers left:--