The Charge of the London Scottish at Messines, November 1, 1914.
(From the picture by Dudley Tennant.)
For five days afterwards the battle resolved itself into an artillery duel, and our weary men had a breathing space. Reserves were brought up from the Second Corps, and two Territorial battalions and two Yeomanry regiments were put into the firing line. On 6th November the Germans made a sudden attack on the Klein Zillebeke position, and drove in the French, who were holding the right towards the canal. This left the 4th Cavalry Brigade unsupported; but the Household Brigade,[89] under General Kavanagh, came to the rescue, and the French were able to recapture their trenches. Once more, however, the French were driven back, and to stem the rush Kavanagh doubled a couple of dismounted squadrons across the road. There was a moment of wild confusion, in which British, French, and Germans were mingled together in the village street. When the confusion was at its height Major Dawnay of the 2nd Life Guards led his men to the charge, and the village was cleared with great loss to the enemy. Unhappily, Major Dawnay was killed by a shrapnel shell, but not until the British position was saved.
You are accustomed to think of the 2nd Life Guards in all the glory of their peace uniform, in their steel helmets with horse-hair plumes, their gleaming breastplates, their white buckskin breeches and gloves, and their long knee-boots. Very different was the picture which they presented in the village street on that fierce day, their drab khaki uniforms splashed with mud and blood, their horses far in the rear, and they, on foot, lunging fiercely at the oncoming Germans with the bayonet. There is no pomp or glamour of gold lace, nodding plumes, and burnished steel on the modern battlefield.
Kavanagh's Brigade stemmed the torrent and held its trenches far into the night, until the 4th Brigade had strengthened its position. Next morning (7th November) our men made a counter-attack; but though German trenches were brilliantly captured, they could not be retained. It was during this attack that Captain J. F. Vallentin of the South Staffords won the Victoria Cross.[90]
Once more there was a lull. Nothing worthy of mention happened on the 8th, 9th, and 10th, but on the 11th the storm broke out again in all its fury.
You will remember that at Waterloo, when the cannon of the advancing Prussians were heard in the distance, and Napoleon saw defeat staring him in the face, he staked all on a charge of his Old Guard—the Guard that "dies but never surrenders." Six thousand of these men, the very flower and pride of his army, were hurled at the long-tried British. As they rushed up the slope, the British Guards, who had been lying down behind the top of the ridge, sprang to their feet and poured a volley into the enemy. The advancing columns wavered, and our men, charging with the bayonet, thrust them down the hill in utter confusion.
The Kaiser was now about to follow the example of Napoleon and make one mighty effort to snatch victory out of defeat by launching his famous Prussian Guards against the stubborn foe. The Prussian Guards are the very apple of the Kaiser's eye; they are all picked men, over six feet in height, of wonderful discipline and unquenchable courage, and they count it the highest honour that life holds to be selected from the ordinary regiments for service as the bodyguard of the Emperor. If living men could "hack their way through," these were the men to do it.
True, the Guards had not yet covered themselves with glory. They had suffered heavily at Charleroi[91] and Guise;[92] they had been badly beaten in the marshes of the Gond,[93] and had lost many of their numbers at Rheims;[94] but now, under the eye of the Kaiser himself, they were to sweep all before them and succeed where their comrades of the line had failed. Thirteen battalions of them were brought up from the Arras district with great speed and secrecy, and on Wednesday, 11th November, they were thrust against the point of the salient to the north and south of the Ypres-Menin road. The day opened with the most furious artillery attack known up to that time. The British trenches were continuously assailed with lyddite[95] and shrapnel; but our gallant men hung on, wondering how long they could exist in that tornado of spouting earth and flying shard.
For eight hours the terrific cannonade continued. About seven in the evening, when the sky was dark and rain was falling, British aeroplanes appeared overhead and began to sweep the plain with their searchlights. In their glare our men saw to their amazement the Prussian Guards advancing towards their trenches with the high, prancing step of a Potsdam parade—the officers with their swords at the "Carry," and the lines of men as steady as a rock. On they marched, with flags flying and drums beating, but never a rifle snapped from the British trenches. Already the Guards felt the thrill of approaching victory; to them it seemed that the Allied line had been destroyed by the terrible cannonade. In a few short hours they would be in Ypres; a few days more and they would gaze across the narrow seas to the white cliffs of that hated land which they had sworn to subdue.
They were eighty yards from the British trenches now, and their pace quickened. Suddenly they were caught in a whirlwind of fire; shrapnel hissed among them, machine guns clacked viciously, and French and British rifles spat death at them from front and flank. They went down in hundreds, but the gaps were filled up, and the line moved on unbroken. Battalions melted into companies, companies into platoons, and platoons into files, but still they were unchecked. Again and again they re-formed, only to see their ranks shattered once more; nevertheless their advance was not stayed.
So fixed was their resolution and so strong was the force of their assault that the Allied line was broken in three places. Our first-line trenches were swamped with the gray flood, some of which poured into the tangle of woods behind, where a wild, desperate battle raged amidst the trees for two days. Furiously counter-attacked, and enfiladed by machine-gun fire, the Guards were finally driven back to the two short sections of trench which they had won. Even here they were not secure. The "Fighting Fifth"[96] held a salient between them, and took merciless toll of them while fresh attacks were being prepared.
On the hundredth day of the war the Prussian Guard came, it saw, it was conquered. At nightfall the larger part of it lay dead in the wood—in some places eight ranks deep. The mighty effort of the Kaiser had failed; the flower of his army had been flung away, yet Ypres was as far off as ever.
On the 12th and the following days there were further assaults, during one of which Lieutenant Dimmer of the King's Royal Rifles won the Victoria Cross for heroic fighting, which will be detailed later.[97] All the German efforts were fruitless, and on the 17th, when French reinforcements gave the sorely-tried British a respite, the enemy began to vent his baffled rage on the famous old Cloth Hall of Ypres. So far it had been spared in order that from its ancient walls the Kaiser might announce to the world that Belgium was his. Now that the Guard had failed, and Ypres still defied him, he spitefully ordered his artillery to batter down the historic building which seemed to mock at his discomfiture.
The story of one other German failure must be told to round off this account of the First Battle of Ypres. While the Prussian Guard was making its vain effort, the left wing of the Würtemberg army was attacking the extreme left of the salient between Zonnebeke and Bixschoote. This portion of the line was held by Zouaves, French Territorials, and cavalry. Against them was flung an overwhelming force of Germans, including the left wing of the Würtemberg army. Around Bixschoote the fight raged with such fierceness that the place was choked with dead. Had it been captured the enemy would have carried Ypres from the north. The Zouaves, always famous as dashing fighters, excelled themselves in the defence of Bixschoote, and at no point of the Allied front did the enemy lose more heavily. For nearly a month the Zouaves held the pass until the weather broke and the high winds and snow blizzards of winter set in. So the storm of battle died away in a tempest of nature's making.