FOOTNOTES:

[31] The boundaries of the 36th Division, the successive objectives, and all the names used in the following description are shown on [Map II].

[32] The 32nd, half of the 33rd Machine-Gun Companies, and the 19th Motor Machine-Gun Battery, were at the disposal of the 36th Division for the attack.

[33] i.e., four Tanks.

[34] One officer records that, two evenings before the attack, he played bridge in the open air till midnight.

[35] Our own Vickers gun teams had dropped behind the infantry here. Vickers guns, tripods, and belt boxes are very heavy loads on ground cut to pieces by shell-fire.

[36] The 25th Division in France and Flanders. By Lieut.-Colonel M. Kincaid-Smith.

[CHAPTER VI]
The Battle of Langemarck: August 1917

On July the 7th the Division, less Artillery, Engineers, and Pioneers, moved to the training area south-west of St. Omer, headquarters being established at Wizernes. The area was considerably smaller than that occupied the previous summer after the Somme fighting, being in fact the southern portion of the latter. Billeting accommodation in the villages was inadequate, and had to be augmented by tents. Small hardship this in such weather and such surroundings. Many officers whose lodging was entirely comfortable chose for preference to sleep in the open air, or in tents in the cherry orchards. The men were soaked in sunshine. Old friendships of 1916, and of the early spring, when Brigades had been training for Messines, were renewed. Fishermen obtained some excellent trout-fishing. In fact, the Division probably never had, during all its service in France and Flanders, a pleasanter period than these twelve days of rest and training. They ended with a great gymkana at Acquin on the 23rd, with horse-races, mule-races, jumping, transport competitions, wrestling on horseback, and sports of all kinds. A feature of the afternoon was the "divisional drag," whipped by Major S. H. Green, the D.A.Q.M.G., with a team of horses borrowed from Signals, trained and mannered to a point not unworthy of the Coaching Club, but undoubtedly on the heavy side—and the hairy!

On moving to Wizernes the 36th Division had come under the command of the XIX. Corps, Fifth Army, General Gough having moved north from Artois for the impending battle. The Artillery, Engineers, and 16th Rifles had not shared the good fortune of their comrades. Relieved at Wytschaete on July the 5th, the former had marched straight to wagon-lines off the Poperinghe-Ypres Road, coming under the orders of the C.R.A., 55th Division. By the night of the 7th one section of each 18-pounder battery was in action in the northern part of the Salient, on the Ypres-Poelcappelle Road. A week later all the batteries were in positions allotted by the 55th Division for the opening attack, the preliminary bombardment for which began on the 16th. The Field Companies and Pioneers moved first to the region about Watou, half-way between Cassel and Poperinghe, where they were engaged in digging new wells to improve the water supply for the great numbers of troops that would be passing through during the offensive. This was hard work but safe. After three weeks of it, however, they moved forward, and were henceforth employed on road repair and the making of cross-country tracks for men and animals. At this work they suffered much from shelling, and particularly from gas shell. The 150th Field Company, of its complement of six officers, had three killed and two wounded within a week; as well as losing a high proportion of its sappers.

The Division moved up at the end of July in huge brigade convoys of 'buses and lorries, and by the 30th was in the back area of the XIX. Corps, between Watou and Poperinghe. Headquarters were established temporarily in the latter town at two houses in the rue d'Ypres. The following morning began the terrible struggle which is generally known as the third Battle of Ypres.[37]

The great attack launched that morning was the second stroke of a campaign which had begun triumphantly at Messines. The plans made for 1917 by the Allied Command had been thrown into some confusion by the retirement of the German armies on the Somme to their Hindenburg system, in March, and later by the stopping of General Nivelle's great offensive in Champagne.[38] The British had certainly played their part at Arras and Messines. The British Command could obviously now not count upon another great French offensive for some little while, and it was under the vital necessity of keeping the German armies heavily engaged. Its greater object was to strike at the Belgian coast, where the submarine bases of Ostend and Zeebrugge were becoming a menace so serious to the very existence of the nation. That scheme has not been made public, and its details can be no more than a matter of surmise to any but those in the confidence of the British Command, or the Imperial General Staff. It will not be discussed here. It is known, however, pretty generally, that it involved an attack upon the coast-line and a landing. Camps had been formed near Dunkirk, surrounded by barbed wire, where divisions were to be assembled in greatest secrecy. And as for the attack in the Salient, a glance at a railway map will show how serious an advance across the Passchendaele Ridge upon Roulers would have been to the German communications. A threat to the next great railway, the main Brussels line between Ghent and Bruges, would probably have led to the abandonment of the coast by the enemy. Ludendorff, in mid-July, while the 36th Division was enjoying its repose in peaceful country, had made one move in the game—no more than the move of a pawn in such a struggle, but a clever and effective one. At Lombartzyde, outside Nieuport, he had launched an attack against our troops upon the little slice of ground held by them north of the Yser Canal, driving them back into the river. Two divisions had very serious losses, including over a thousand prisoners, and, worst of all, the "jumping-off" ground for an attack on the coast line had been snatched away.

Even if they failed in the ambitious venture, the British could at least hope, beside continuing their policy of striking blow upon blow at the enemy, to make an end of the accursed Ypres Salient, and drive the Germans from the dominating semicircle of higher ground from which they had so long harassed our troops. Half of this task had indeed been accomplished by the Battle of Messines. The southern curve of the Salient had almost disappeared. It remained to cut away the northern. The great part of the fighting of Ypres, 1917, was to take place north of the Zonnebeke Road.

The attack launched on July the 31st by the Fifth Army of General Gough, and the First French Army of General Anthoine on his left, met with a considerable measure of success. At its outset, indeed, the success appeared complete; but the Germans, holding their positions lightly and in depth, with the local counter-attack as one of the main weapons of defence, retook much of the ground won. The Pilkem spur was, however, in our hands. Great as had been our losses, the attack upon a position of tremendous strength had gone well enough for a beginning. But the weather, so pitiless on the Somme, that had almost startled pessimists by its unwonted mercy at Messines, broke that very day. Ere afternoon was over rain began to fall in torrents. By the following morning the ground, ploughed up by weeks of shell-fire, was a sea of mud.

The 55th Division, in the fate of which the 36th Division was particularly interested, since its artillery was supporting the attack, and its other arms were to relieve their Lancashire comrades in that sector at a later date, had fared as well as any other. The troops had gone forward with great dash and had almost everywhere reached their final objective, known as the Green Line, east and just south of St. Julien. The leading battalions had, however, suffered very heavy loss from the fire of German machine-guns, distributed in depth, and had not been sufficiently strong to resist the counter-attack when it came. They were driven in upon the second objective, or Black Line, which followed, roughly speaking, the line of the road running south-east from St. Julien to the farm known as Pommern Castle, in the Pommern Redoubt.[39] It was an advance of fifteen hundred yards. To the south affairs had gone less well, and the Black Line remained to be taken.

It had been the intention of the Commander of the XIX. Corps to keep the assaulting troops in line after they had made their attack, till the eve of the next. The result of the Battle of Langemarck was greatly affected by the fact that this resolution was not kept. The 55th Division had suffered so greatly, and its infantry was in a state of such fatigue, that it was decided to withdraw it at once. The decision may have been inevitable; on that point the Corps Commander, General Watts, was alone in a position to form a judgment. For him and the 36th Division alike, it was disastrous. It meant that for his next attack he had in his hands a Division jaded, weary, shaken by deadly shell-fire, having lost a good third of its infantry strength ere ever it left its trenches for the assault.

On the morning of August the 2nd, the 107th Brigade entrained at Poperinghe and detrained at the famous Goldfish Château, west of Ypres, coming under the orders of the 55th Division, to which it had been allotted as a reserve. While his Brigade was on the move, General Withycombe received orders from the 55th Division for it to relieve the 164th Brigade in the old British front-line trenches. The General reached Wieltje, the Headquarters of the 164th Brigade, at 12-45 p.m. Three-quarters of an hour later he received a telegram from the 55th Division ordering a further relief, that of the much-depleted 165th and 166th Brigades in the captured German positions. His men had a long march in heavy rain, and had not completed the relief of the 164th Brigade till 3-40 p.m. The new relief was entirely unexpected, and was not in accordance with the intimation received by General Nugent that his troops were to be used as a reserve. It was carried out in continuous rain, through mud eighteen inches deep, under heavy fire from howitzers of heavy calibre, and in the midst of bombing attacks launched against the right flank of the 55th Division. Not till six o'clock on the morning of August the 3rd was its completion announced. The Brigade had had heavy casualties, particularly the 10th and 15th Rifles, which had taken over the Black Line. After that night's work, in fact, there could be no question of employing those battalions in the coming attack.

That night two battalions of the 108th Brigade, the 13th Rifles and 9th Irish Fusiliers, relieved the 165th Brigade, which had moved back to the old British front and support lines; and two battalions of the 109th Brigade, the 11th Inniskillings and 14th Rifles, the 166th Brigade; the whole force under the command of General Withycombe, G.O.C. 107th Brigade, who had his headquarters in the great mined dug-outs at Wieltje. Divisional Headquarters were established at Mersey Camp, north of the Poperinghe-Ypres Road, and about mid-way between the two towns, taking over command at 4 a.m. on August the 4th. On taking over the line from the 55th Division, General Nugent decided that, in view of the dreadful conditions, it might be held more lightly, and withdrew two of the supporting battalions to camps about Brandhoek and Vlamertinghe, replacing them by companies of the supporting battalions of the 107th Brigade. There were other reliefs during the period of waiting, all the battalions having a turn, though the six which were to lead over on August the 16th were saved as much as might be. The headquarters of the Brigades also took turn about in command of the line, in the filth and stenches of Wieltje dug-outs.

Wieltje dug-outs! Who that saw it will forget that abominable mine, with its "town major," its thirteen entrances, the water that flowed down its main passages and poured down its walls, its electric light gleaming dully through steam-coated lamps, its sickly atmosphere, its smells, its huge population of men—and of rats? From behind sack-curtained doorways the coughing and groaning of men in uneasy slumber mingled with the click of typewriters. In the corridor one would fall over a runner, slimy from head to foot with mud, resting while he waited for a return message to the front line. One advantage only it had: it was safe within. And that was in part counterbalanced by the danger of exit and entrance, constantly menaced by storms of fire. The cross-country tracks, simply paths from which wire had been cleared, behind it, were more horrible still. Their object was to allow troops and pack animals—even the shells for the field artillery had to go forward by pack—to avoid roads under constant shell-fire. But the Germans now knew them every whit as well as the roads, and shelled them all day with every calibre up to 8-inch howitzers. No one who used them but had at some point to lie crouched on his belly, watching huge columns of earth and water spout up with the burst of the big shells. Horrors were not new, nor did the sight of dead bodies affect men overmuch, but there was one vision upon one of these tracks, the mangled remains of a complete party of artillery carriers, six men and twelve horses, which burnt itself upon the brains of those that saw it.

The war had in those days reached its worst stage. Gas shelling and aeroplane bombing were at their height. The infantry resting in the camps between Vlamertinghe and Elverdinghe had to endure, night after night, the crashing of great bombs among the huts and tents. The casualties to horses were very high, a horse being ten times as vulnerable as a man to bombs. The Casualty Clearing Stations probably suffered higher losses than in any other battle of the war. The counter-battery work was ferocious on both sides. For our batteries there was little concealment, and for their guns and teams little shelter. The gunners of the 36th Division, who had been in action at the opening of the Battle of Langemarck for over a month, suffered from strain and discomfort perhaps even more severely than the infantry on this occasion. And, day after day, fell the rain.

In the trenches the mud and the artillery fire were the most serious foes. The German infantry could easily be held. There was one counter-attack on the 8th, on the extreme left. Our bombing squads moved up and drove the enemy out. On the 10th the II. Corps on the right attacked to establish itself upon the Black Line, the artillery covering the 36th Division co-operating. The attack was in the main successful, and the way was prepared for a further advance. On the night of the 14th the troops of the 107th Brigade, then in front line, were relieved, and those which were to carry out the attack moved up, picking up their bombs and special equipment at battle stores previously established as far forward as possible, past which the platoons moved slowly in single file.

The final objective of the 36th Division was from a point on the Zonnebeke-Langemarck Road near Gallipoli Copse, on the right, to Aviatik Farm on the left. This was represented by a series of strong concrete forts, and known as the Red Line. The 16th Division was attacking on the right and the 48th Division on the left of the 36th. The attack of the 36th Division was to be made by the 108th Brigade on the right and the 109th Brigade on the left, with the 107th Brigade in reserve. Each Brigade was to attack with two battalions in front line, one in support, about a thousand yards in rear, and one in reserve, in the old British front and support lines. Each battalion was to attack on a two-company front, in four waves. The second and fourth waves were to be only half the strength of the first and third, owing to companies having been reduced for the time being to three platoons. The objective of the leading companies was the line Gallipoli-Schuler Farm, the old Green Line of the first offensive, still so-called. On this line the rear companies were to pass through to the final objective, the original leading companies following in close support. The supporting battalions were then to move up and take over the Green Line. A company from each of the supporting battalions was allotted to the leading two battalions on each brigade front as "moppers up." Special platoons were given as their objectives such concrete strongholds as Somme, Pond Farm, Hindu Cott, Green House, Schuler Farm. Four guns of each of the Machine-Gun Companies of the attacking brigades were to go forward with the infantry, the remainder being used for the barrage. No Stokes mortars could be taken forward owing to the state of the ground. The task of the R.E. was the consolidation of the Dotted Green Line. This was to be a defensive system on our side of the wire running from Gallipoli Copse through Green House, using that obstacle for our own purposes. That of the Pioneers was the clearance of the Wieltje-Gravenstafel Road.

The field artillery, under the orders of General Brock, the C.R.A., consisted of the 36th and 61st Divisional Artilleries and the 108th and 150th Army Field Artillery Brigades. For the creeping barrage there were fourteen 18-pounder batteries, giving, as at Messines, about one gun to twenty yards. There were four 18-pounder batteries for distant barrage, to search hidden ground, and deal with strong points beyond the creeping barrage, while the six 4.5 howitzer batteries fired a hundred yards ahead of the latter, resting on all known strong points and machine-gun emplacements. The pace of the barrage was a hundred yards in five minutes, with a pause of thirty-five minutes in front of the Green Line. This seems as slow as could well be, but events were to prove that it was too fast in the conditions. There were three gas-shell bombardments prior to the attack, the last being on the night of the 15th, "Y/Z" night. For these there was allotted a hundred rounds per 18-pounder and fifty rounds per howitzer. One section of tanks was to take part in the attack, but there was at no time a probability of tanks reaching our front line. Zero was at 4-45 a.m.

There was very heavy shelling of the assembly trenches and the roads in rear during the night of the 15th. A small dug-out occupied by the headquarters of the 14th Rifles near Spree Farm was hit repeatedly, and it was impossible to keep alight a candle inside it. So excellent, however, was the German concrete, that it held out. Between midnight and 2-30 a.m. the four leading battalions must have suffered on an average fifty casualties apiece.

The story of the attack, alas! is not a long one. The German barrage came down swiftly, but, as it was for the most part on the assembly trenches and behind them, it had small effect upon the leading waves. But enemy machine-guns all along the front opened fire almost simultaneously with our barrage. Gallipoli, Somme, Aisne House, Hindu Cott, Schuler Farm, Border House, and Jew's Hill, were held in strength by the enemy. The concrete "pill-boxes," containing in some cases half a dozen separate compartments, seemed to be entirely unaffected by the pounding of many weeks. Moreover, strong wire entanglements running down obliquely from Gallipoli were encountered. The lanes cut by artillery fire were covered by machine-guns. The ground was a veritable quagmire. The "mopping-up" system was found to be impossible. The concrete works had to be fought for; they could not be passed by and left to "moppers up" in rear. The inevitable result was that the men quickly lost the barrage. The strength of the attacking force had become inadequate to its frontage of one thousand five hundred yards. So heavily had the battalions lost since the Division took over the line, and particularly during the last twenty-four hours in the trenches, that seventy men was about the average strength of the company. There were assuredly not two thousand infantrymen in the force which went "over the top." The foremost wave must have consisted of less than three hundred men, probably reduced to a third within half a minute. Not unfitting was the description of a sergeant who took part in the attack: "It looked more like a big raiding party than anything else."

In the circumstances, after what they had endured, with ranks so thinned, against such opposition, it may be said, without calling upon superlatives or high-flown words, that none but troops of excellent quality would have gone forward at all. The troops of the 36th Division did much more than this. On the extreme right the 9th Irish Fusiliers, attacking from the Pommern Redoubt, pressed up across Hill 35, driving the Germans before them from the gun-pits on its forward slope. The 13th Rifles on their left advanced equally well. Somme, one of the strongest forts on the front, was passed by the leading wave, but the platoon detailed to take and hold it was unable to do so, though the rifle-grenade section strove gallantly to work round and take it in flank. The adjutant, Captain Belt, made an attempt to dig in in front of the place with a handful of men, but was severely wounded and fortunate in being able to crawl back to our lines. On the right of the 36th Division, the 16th had at first made good progress, but a counter-attack drove its troops back to their original line. From six o'clock onwards men began to fall back. Colonel R. P. Maxwell, commanding the 13th, seeing what was happening, led forward his battalion headquarters to a desperate attack upon Somme. He was unsuccessful, being himself severely wounded. It will be remembered that Colonel Maxwell, who had two sons on active service, had been wounded in Martinsart on the eve of the Somme attack. He was to reappear, none the less, in France in 1918. Colonel Somerville, commanding the 9th Irish Fusiliers, had already been mortally wounded. With the failure of Colonel Maxwell's forlorn hope, it may be said that the attack on the front of the 108th Brigade collapsed, though the 9th Irish Fusiliers made an effort to cling to the top of Hill 35.

On the right of the 109th Brigade, the 14th Rifles had to cross ground far worse even than the ordinary, completely under water, in fact. In their passage they came under withering machine-gun fire from Pond Farm. Lieutenant Ledlie made a fine attempt to capture this place, surrounding it on three sides with the few men remaining to him when he reached it, and killing any Germans who showed themselves. With his numbers so greatly depleted, he waited for support before making an attempt to rush it, sending back two messages. But no supports came; the men could not face the machine-gun fire. They had already suffered greatly from the artillery barrage, which the leading waves had avoided. At eight o'clock, seeing that his position was hopeless, he withdrew his men a hundred and fifty yards, covering his retirement by Lewis-gun fire. The best work of the day was accomplished by the men of the 11th Inniskillings. They also had heaviest casualties on the right, where a mere fragment was left glued to the ground in front of the Green Line, the men crawling in to our line after dark. On the left the usual blast of fire came from Border House and Fort Hill. One officer and seven men, by doubling when they fell behind the barrage, reached the Green Line, but none could move up to their support, and they were compelled to withdraw. The men of the supporting companies rushed Fort Hill with bomb and bayonet, killing a number of Germans and taking some prisoners. This was the one appreciable gain, an advance on the extreme left of some four hundred yards. The 48th Division had not been able to accomplish even as much on the flank. From Fort Hill a rough line to the original position in Capricorn Keep was consolidated. The reserve battalions of each Brigade, the 12th Rifles on the right and the 10th Inniskillings on the left, had moved up to the Black Line, where officers busied themselves in reorganizing the men and making preparations for a possible counter-attack by the enemy. The latter may have had such intention. He was at least observed to reinforce his position strongly behind Pond Farm. On an S.O.S. rocket being sent up, our barrage fell upon his platoons moving up at this point, and scattered them with heavy loss.

General Nugent for a time contemplated a second attack with a new barrage, to take at least the Green Line. The reports of Brigadiers and Staff Officers visiting the line in the afternoon made it clear that the troops were in no fit state for any such attempt. Disorganization was still considerable; a high proportion of officers and N.C.O.'s had fallen, and the men were utterly exhausted. Moreover, neither the 108th nor the 109th Brigade could have mustered five hundred men for a new attack. General Nugent accordingly decided against this course, and instead ordered the relief of the two attacking Brigades by the 107th that night. This was carried out in circumstances of great difficulty, some platoons not quitting the front line till after five o'clock next morning. The weary remnants were moved straight back by 'bus to Winnizeele, and that night a Brigade of the 61st Division relieved the 107th Brigade in the line.

It is impossible to arrive at the exact casualties during the hours of the actual assault. Between 6 a.m. on the 16th and 9 a.m. on the 18th, however, there passed through the Divisional Dressing Stations 58 officers and 1,278 other ranks, wounded or gassed. These casualties do not include those of the attached artillery. They are very high if the depleted state of the infantry prior to the attack be taken into consideration. But they are almost insignificant if compared with the total casualties suffered in the holding of the line in the Salient, from August the 2nd to the 18th. In that period the 36th Division lost 144 officers and 3,441 other ranks killed, wounded, or missing. That is to say, it had more than two thousand casualties ere launched to the attack. Two other commanding officers, besides Colonels Somerville and Maxwell, were among the casualties. Colonel A. C. Pratt, 11th Inniskillings, had been killed at the entrance to Wieltje dug-outs early on the morning of the 16th, while Colonel Macrory, 10th Inniskillings, had been severely wounded a few days earlier. The difficulties of evacuating wounded during the action were extraordinary. Stretcher cases had to be brought by hand at least two thousand yards, and it took eight men to each stretcher. There were 433 stretcher-bearers, of whom rather more than half were R.A.M.C., the remainder being men of a Tunnelling Company and the Divisional Salvage section. Among many who displayed great bravery in the work of evacuating wounded under heavy shell-fire was the Assistant Chaplain-General of the Division, the Rev. F. J. Halahan, M.C., who by precept and personal example encouraged the stretcher-bearers to new efforts. Search parties, sent out after dark, brought in about a hundred wounded men from in front of our line. The conduct of the medical officers with the battalions, tending their wounded under the very heavy shell-fire that was maintained throughout upon the Black Line, was beyond praise. Captain Gavin, R.A.M.C., attached to the 14th Rifles, did splendid work at Rat Farm, where two other medical officers were killed. This gallant officer, who earned a bar to his Military Cross on that occasion, and had escapes little short of miraculous, was to be killed a few months later by no more serious an accident than a fall from his horse.

Among those good dumb soldiers, the transport animals, the casualties were the highest ever suffered by the Division. The pack mules, the use of which was even more necessary than at Messines, but infinitely less favoured by the terrain, were pushed forward too soon, and came under heavy machine-gun fire. Many were killed, and a far greater number had to be destroyed, though a few survived their wounds, and, like gallant veterans, bore their scars till the war was over. The loss among artillery horses was also very great.

This action was the only attack made by the 36th Division which suffered complete reverse, for that on the Ancre had been a local victory, of which the fruits were lost through no fault of its troops. It is important to consider what were its causes and what its lessons.

Many of the former will have become apparent in the course of this sketch of the battle and of the days preceding. They may be summarized as, firstly, exhaustion and attrition of units; secondly, weather; thirdly, lack of essential preparation.

The Division had been holding the line for thirteen days. Owing to the dreadful state of the trenches and the heaviness of the German shell-fire, constant reliefs had been necessary. From the "resting" battalions parties totalling sometimes as much as a thousand men a day had been furnished for work on forward areas under constant fire from artillery of the highest calibres. Apart from the question of the huge losses, there were no troops really fit or in a normal state of efficiency when the day of the assault arrived. The personal equation had been overlooked, with disastrous results. The water-logged condition of the ground was another prominent factor. What it was only those who have seen the Flanders plain strewn with shell-holes, sometimes almost lip to lip, can imagine.

But it was the machine-guns in the "pill-boxes," and the excellent fashion in which they were defended, that were by far the most fatal obstacles. The new German methods of defence in depth depended, in Flanders, upon the concrete structures built in and around the foundations of the destroyed farms with which that countryside is studded. They served their purpose admirably. Few that were captured by us were found to have been damaged by artillery. The British heavy artillery was firing from a salient, instead of, as at Messines, upon a salient. It had against it a far greater weight of German metal than in that battle, and suffered far more heavily from counter-battery. The German artillery dominated ours in the early stages of the battle, certainly in position, probably also in actual gun-power. The observation of the latter was almost worthless. And where any could be obtained it was well-nigh impossible to identify the "pill-boxes" from map to ground. An instance given by the G.O.C. 109th Brigade, General Ricardo, is illuminating. A few days prior to the attack he arranged with a liaison officer from the Corps Heavy Artillery a series of three-minute bombardments of certain strong points, with pauses between, so that it should be clear to the observers exactly which was being shelled, to correct the many various readings of maps and photographs. In several cases, he states, the concentration, nominally upon one strong point, covered many hundred yards. The same considerations applied to the cutting of wire, not nearly so effective as at Messines, through no fault of the gunners of the Division and of the batteries working beside them.

The "pill-boxes," which were mainly responsible for the losses of the troops in the attack of July the 31st, were standing intact and garrisoned on the 16th of August. The claims of counter-battery sometimes prevented demands for re-bombardment being fully met.

"We felt," said a distinguished officer after the action, "that the Battle of Messines was won at Zero, and that the Battle of Ypres was lost long before it." In the vast armies of the late war the Army Commander, and even the Corps Commander, was a shadowy personage, not alone to the private soldier, but to the Colonel commanding a battalion in the trenches or a brigade of artillery behind them. But the Second Army and the IX. Corps, under the orders of which the 36th Division fought at Messines, had a subtle power of making their presence felt. The system of liaison was practised by the Second Army as in no other. General Harington's car stopped at every door, and the cheerful young staff officers, who knew every communication trench on the Army front, who drank with company commanders in their front-line dug-outs before coming back to tea with a Brigadier, or with General Nugent at his Headquarters, formed a very real link between the Higher Command and the troops. The private soldier knew the Army Commander and his eyeglass as he knew no Corps Commander under whom he fought. His personality was a real accretion of strength. The difficulties at Ypres were infinitely greater than at Messines; that everyone recognised. But in the former case they did not appear to be met with quite the precision, care, and forethought of the latter. The private soldier felt a difference. He may have been unfair in his estimate, but that estimate was none the less of importance. For what the private soldier felt had a marked effect upon what the private soldier, the only ultimate winner of battles, accomplished.

Of the lessons the most obvious was that the barrage must be slower and of greater depth. General Nugent, in notes written after the battle as a comment upon captured orders of the Fourth German Army, made some interesting suggestions in this regard. He stated in the first case that the Germans could now no longer shell the area over which our troops were advancing, since their own troops were distributed in depth upon it. However much damage their barrage did to our supports, it did little or none to the leading troops. It was, however, more important to facilitate the advance of the latter than to protect the rear area during an attack. If both could not be accomplished, the artillery covering the front of assault should be strengthened at the expense of counter-battery groups. The creeping barrage, he suggested, might be slightly reduced to one 18-pounder per twenty-five yards, and augmented by a sweeping barrage, concentrated to cover about ten yards a gun, each group sweeping right and left along the front allotted to it, with a higher burst and greater searching effect upon shell-holes. The pace of the creeping barrage must be reduced, and there must be more frequent pauses. During these the sweeping barrage and a 60-pounder barrage in front of it might sweep and search. He also made some remarks upon the possibility of control of the barrage by the infantry, the advantages of which are too obvious to merit discussion, and the difficulties of which are equally apparent.

But the most interesting of General Nugent's suggestions were with regard to the formations of the infantry. "With the adoption," he wrote, "of a new form of German defensive tactics, consisting of small parties dotted about a wide area, the disadvantages of long lines of attack are that lines have small manœuvring capacity and lack depth. It is for consideration whether mobile company columns echeloned in depth on a narrow front, each a self-contained tactical unit with a machine-gun and trench mortar, each operating within an allotted zone, would not be a more suitable tactical formation than the present system, which breaks up under machine-gun fire and in badly shelled ground into a number of isolated groups without cohesion or leaders."

It is to be noted that when, on September the 20th, the 9th (Scottish) Division attacked at Frezenberg, the creeping barrage advanced the first two hundred yards in eight minutes; then slowed to a hundred yards in six minutes; halted on the first objective—four to five hundred yards—no less than an hour, and went forward again at the snail pace of a hundred yards in eight minutes. As regards the infantry, the attack was carried out by lines of sections in file at about twenty yards' interval. The system of "leap-frogging" was also employed instead of special groups for "mopping up." This attack was a complete success.[40]

[View Larger Image Here.]

Map III.

The Battle of Langemarck, 1917.