A LULL IN THE STORM. THE FIGHT FOR HOOGE
Relief of the front-line Battalions—Heavy losses of the Seventh Brigade—Good work of the Third Pioneer Battalion—Sudden advance of the enemy—The Knoll of Hooge—The Menin Road—Description of the scene—The 28th relieves the Royal Canadians—Heavy bombardment by the enemy—The importance of the Knoll of Hooge—The enemy springs four mines under the first-line trenches—A company of the 28th perishes—A terrific explosion—Fierce fighting of the 6th June—Effective work of Captain Styles—The enemy in dangerous proximity to our support line—Former tragedies in Zouave Wood—Serious casualties of the 6th Brigade—The effective loss of the village of Hooge—Preparations for retaliation.
After the storm which had blown for thirty hours since the morning of June 2nd, a kind of lull settled down on the field. The artillery bombardments on both sides showed that the fighting was by no means finished, but the infantry remained on the ground where the assault of June 3rd had left them. It was now necessary to relieve the decimated front-line battalions.
The 6th Brigade was in reserve of the 2nd Division, and it was decided to bring it up to the Hooge section on the left, but this move was not finally completed until the night of the 5th-6th, when the Royal Canadian Regiment was relieved by the 28th (North-West) Battalion. June 4th, 8.30 A.M. At 8.30 a.m. on the 4th the battalions of the 2nd and 3rd Brigades in the firing line were relieved by the 1st Brigade; the 1st Battalion (Ontario Regiment) under Lieut.-Colonel Hodson took the place of the 7th and 10th from the old line to Square Wood; and the 2nd Battalion (Eastern Ontario) was substituted for the 15th and 14th in the new trench from Square Wood to Maple Copse. On the following day the 43rd, 52nd, 58th, and 60th Battalions, 9th Brigade, relieved the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and the 49th Battalion in the centre of the position at 12.45 p.m., and these regiments were able to go back for a well-deserved rest.
June 5th
The casualties of the 7th Brigade had indeed been severe, totalling in all 45 officers and 1,051 men, and making up with those sustained by the 8th Brigade considerably more than 3,000, apart from the losses incurred by the 60th and 52nd Battalions of the 9th Brigade. The effect of the action can be seen by giving the rifle strength of the Brigade as it came out of the fighting. This was as follows:—Royal Canadian Regiment, 500; the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, 210; 42nd Battalion, 460; 49th Battalion, 450; or 1,620 to a Brigade, which, if it had been at the full strength of 900 rifles to a battalion, would have numbered 3,600, or nearly three to one of the actual survivors. They had left their trenches, however, sensibly improved, chiefly owing to the efforts of the 3rd Pioneer Battalion, commanded by Lieut.-Colonel Holmes, which all through the action continued to make good the new front line and to dig trenches in support of it. This work was indeed essential, as it must be remembered that the larger part of the new position had never been intended for defence at all.
Map—BATTLE OF HOOGE 5th TO 6th JUNE 1916
In the meantime, it became clear that the situation could not be left as it was. Officers' patrols had been out on the night of the 4th-5th and had located the enemy's position fairly accurately. Night, 4th-5th. But while the Higher Command was planning the counterstroke, the enemy moved suddenly against the only part of the front line which remained in our possession.
The knoll of Hooge, if it hardly formed part of Mount Sorrel Ridge system, was yet an eminence of great importance, for from it one could look straight down to the walls of Ypres. It had in consequence changed hands over and over again, until the chateau, stables, and tiny village were nothing but a rubble heap of bricks stained with the best blood of Great Britain and Canada. Its last adventure had been in the summer of 1915, when it was lost on July 31st and retaken by the 6th Division on August 8th. Since then, however, the advance trenches had been pushed forward until they were right at the east end of the village and looked down on Lake Bellewaarde. On the left the ground falls swiftly, too, to Bellewaarde Beek, on the other side of which was the 60th British Brigade. The line here was exposed and open to the Germans on the higher ground, and was only held by a series of bombing posts.
On the night of the 5th-6th the 28th Battalion came up to relieve the Royal Canadian Regiment. The direct way up to Hooge is the Menin Road, straight from the historic gate. But you will not take that way unless you are anxious for death, for it is ranged to the last millimetre. The battalion will turn outside the gate, which has seen so many armies and generations pass, and skirt the edge of the calm and stagnant moat. Then it will turn through the long grass and water meadows such as fringe the Thames, and finally into the communication trenches. After this descent it is a question of a long struggle up the communication trenches, of clawing one's way through abandoned telephone wires which conspire in the effort to strangle, and of climbing and leaping shell-holes where the German guns have struck the trench with accuracy. Finally comes the Menin Road again. The great causeway runs straight with the rectitude of a Roman road. But there is added to it modern engineering, which has raised it twenty feet above the ground on each side. The road is lined with poplars, now mostly decapitated and scarred. Now and again, as the relieving battalion advances, a high, shrill noise will be heard overhead, followed by the flash and detonation of shells among the shattered trees. The 28th Battalion, used to these manifestations, plodded steadily up to the relief of the Royal Canadian Regiment on the night of June 5th.
Night of June 5th.
There are three lines of trenches of great importance in the Hooge position. The front-line trenches are now pushed forward to the extreme limit of the village beyond the crater the British blew up in August, 1915—for these look down into the valley of the Germans, though they are, in their turn, somewhat commanded by the enemy's heights at Bellewaarde Farm. These trenches connect with the British on the left of this rise beyond Bellewaarde Beek, and on the right stretch as far as the gap which leads down to Zouave Wood.
Some two hundred yards behind lies a support line, a good trench leading down to the Beek. Its field of fire is limited by the slope of the ground upwards towards the front-line trenches. North-east it commands a good field of fire, and proved, in consequence, useful to the 28th Battalion when the front line had been abandoned. Behind the support line the machine-guns were concentrated for the defence, and behind that again was another set of trenches.
The disposition of the 6th Brigade was as follows:—One and a half companies of the 28th in the front line and in bombing posts. The remaining two platoons and the machine-gun sections were in the support line. The machine-gun sections consisted of three Colt guns left by the 7th Brigade,[[1]] two Lewis guns of the Royal Canadian Regiment, one Colt gun of the 6th Brigade Machine-Gun Company, and in addition a Stokes gun. The other two companies of the 28th were in support trenches by the Menin Road. The 31st Battalion was in reserve along with a company of the 60th Battalion of the 9th Brigade, which it was found impossible to relieve at the last moment on the night of the 5th-6th. The 29th and 27th were in Brigade reserve. Shortly after midnight the 6th Brigade was in position. The shelling during the night was very heavy, and the relief was, in consequence, accomplished under some difficulties, but as these bursts of fury died away time after time there was no particular reason to suspect an attack of the German infantry. At 7 a.m. on the 6th an unprecedented bombardment began once more, and lasted until the very moment of the assault at Hooge seven hours later.
June 6th, 7 A.M.
One vital fact was entirely unknown to the Royal Canadian Regiment and the 7th Brigade. The Germans in planning their attack on Mount Sorrel and Hill 62 had not in the least forgotten the importance of the knoll at Hooge. It was necessary to capture it if the new line was to be made complete and the Ypres salient finally broken. Their right wing had, as has been recorded, lapped round in the direction of the village and had been driven back by the sturdy fire of its defenders. But long before this they had made their plans and had driven four mines right under the front-line trenches. When the hour of attack at 2 p.m. came the mines were sprung simultaneously. June 6th, 2 P.M. The aeroplane photographs after the event show them actually overlapping in the craters they threw up. The explosion was horrible, and one entire company of the 28th perished in it almost to the last man. Many of the remaining company of the 28th were involved in the catastrophe; the bombing posts were abandoned and the survivors concentrated in the support trenches. Yet so tremendous was the noise of the artillery preparation that the garrisons in the Fortified Posts behind were quite unaware that any mines had been exploded until the survivors began to arrive, although they were but a little distance from the scene of this tremendous detonation.
June 6th, afternoon.
After this the day of the 6th witnessed some very fierce fighting. The Germans had already taken the whole Canadian front line from the gap to Mount Sorrel on the morning of June 2nd, and were determined to carry the remainder at Hooge on the 6th. Soon after the mines had exploded they came forward in the usual formation with packs on their shoulders like men expecting no resistance. So far as the front line was concerned they were right; otherwise they made an error. They occupied the remains of the trenches in Hooge and assaulted the 60th British Brigade opposite Bellewaarde Farm, but were repulsed with considerable loss by the resolute infantry of the British Brigade which had neither been mined at all nor bombarded to any considerable extent. The enemy then came straight down the line of the Menin Road both on the right- and the left-hand sides. By this time, however, the resistance, in spite of the continuous bombardment. had been organised by Captain Styles, of the 28th, who was fortunate in having at his disposal in the support line such an exceptionally strong force of machine-guns.
The battle was back on the old line always occupied when Hooge is lost, and was defended with the greatest obstinacy by the Canadian infantry and gunners. On the left-hand side of the causeway the enemy got as far down the hill as Bellewaarde Beek, but any further advance was swept out of existence by the machine-guns in the support line. On our right side of the Menin Road the attack appeared more dangerous. The enemy succeeded in jumping from shell hole to shell hole, and attained dangerous proximity to our support line. But here again the 28th drove them back by rifle and machine-gun fire.[[2]]
June 6th, 3.30 P.M.
By 3.30 p.m. on June 6th the attack on the support line had been repulsed for the moment by Captain Styles and the machine-guns, but it persisted on the right-hand side of the road all the afternoon. At about 4 o'clock the enemy determined to attack the support trenches now held by the 31st. Their avenue of approach was obvious. It was through the gap and down by the Zouave Wood. This is an old field of battle, fought over until every yard of earth is covered with the relics of the slain. Here in October of 1914 seven hundred of the Prussian Guard broke clean through the British front line, and paused as though bewildered when they found they had attained their object. They were immediately caught in reverse by the fire of the 7th Division, still holding the slope of the ridge to the right and left, and charged from the support trenches by the 52nd (Oxfordshire Light Infantry), who killed them to a man. For many months afterwards their piled bodies still cumbered the ground. The Germans, undismayed by this precedent, attacked down Zouave Wood at 4 o'clock and renewed their attempts during the course of the evening. The support trenches are good ones, the field of fire excellent, the wood itself devoid of all substantial cover, and the enemy gained nothing by the attempt except a heavy list of casualties. Hooge had gone, but the support line still remained.[[3]] The main attacks were delivered in two waves at five yards' interval and fifty yards' distance. But although all the main attacks were repelled, the Germans succeeded in establishing small posts down our old communication trenches in the Zouave Wood area.
Early on the night of the 6th-7th the bombardment, which had been applied to the whole area for nearly seventeen hours, died away. None the less, the casualties of the 6th Brigade were serious—20 officers and 580 men.
June 6-7th, night.
The whole line, then, had gone, and Ypres remained open to its assailants. This is the first reflection on the loss of the village of Hooge. But all the time that attack was going on, and some time before it, the powers that be had been brooding darkly over methods of retaliation and reconquest. It was time to teach the enemy that two could play at the game of the new artillery preparation, and ground lost by that method could as speedily be regained. In the next chapter we shall see how these plans evolved themselves and what the result of the trial was. As it is, on the night of the 6th, the Germans were sitting on the rim of the saucer imagining that in the third battle of Ypres they had at last conquered the salient.
[[1]] Under Lieut. Ziegler. When Lieut. Ziegler was wounded Lance-Corporal James took over the command. The assistance of these guns was invaluable in repelling the attacks.
[[2]] The advance of the enemy down the communication trench north of the Menin Road was checked by Lieut. Gilmour, of the 28th, who put up a block just beyond the support trench nearest to the front and drove them back with bombs.
[[3]] Capt. W. E. Manhard, of the 8th Field Company R.E., showed great gallantry and devotion to duty in making the new front line secure. His splendid example was an inspiration to all ranks working under him.