WITH THE SECOND CORPS.
The last ten days of October 1914 were days of furious but indecisive fighting all along the line from Arras to the sea. "The Germans rocked their attack from side to side, searching for the weak spot. They gained here; they lost there; but the line remained as it had been when Haig moved up his First Corps. The British held on, and continued to dig in. These were days of incessant battering and continual losses; the hospital trains running back to the base carried as many as 4,000 wounded in one day."
The Germans, as you know, were bent on winning the Channel ports at all costs. They thought that the capture of Calais and Boulogne would create a panic in Great Britain, and make us keep our new armies at home for the defence of our shores, instead of sending them abroad for the reinforcement of our Allies. They also thought that if the Channel ports could be captured the British Navy would have to be divided, one portion keeping watch over the German naval bases on the North Sea, the other part operating in the English Channel. In this case the Germans hoped that they might fight and win a naval battle against one part of our divided fleet. There was a good deal of talk in the German papers about mounting huge guns at Calais which would command at least half of the Strait of Dover, and make the dispatch of transports very difficult, if not impossible.
I have already described the three gates through which the Germans tried to pierce the Allied line and make their descent on the shores of the Channel. You know how they were held up at Arras and at La Bassée. Though they did not cease their efforts to break through these gates during the latter days of October, they began to direct a great attack on the bulge in the Allied line to the east of Ypres. Further, they also attempted to break through by way of the Yser. Military men still wonder why they continued to fling themselves against four points in the Allied line, instead of putting forward all their strength against one of them. We can only be thankful that they wasted their energies in attacking all these points, when they might have battered with all their force at one.
We will now return to the Second British Corps, which, you will remember, had been under fire for twelve days, and had become so exhausted that on 22nd October it was found necessary to withdraw it to a line running generally from the eastern side of Givenchy, east of Neuve Chapelle,[51] to a point about four miles south-east of Estaires. The Lahore Division of the Indian Corps had now arrived, and was about to receive its baptism of fire. The village of Neuve Chapelle, which was destined to figure largely in later history, is four miles north of La Bassée. It was captured by the Germans on the 27th, and its recapture was entrusted to the Indians. The 28th of October will be ever memorable in the annals of the Indian army. On that day it first showed its mettle on a European battlefield.
At Neuve Chapelle our trenches presented a salient[52] which could be swept by fire on both sides, and the Seaforths, who occupied some of them, were much exposed, and suffered heavily. The 47th Sikhs, the 9th Bhopal Infantry, and the 20th and 21st Companies of the 1st Sappers and Miners were now ordered to advance. They dashed forward with great spirit, and though they were under artillery fire for the first time, showed great indifference to the bursting shells. It was noticed that after the first few had exploded near them they hardly troubled to look around.
The fighting was of the most desperate and confused character, and the Germans flung their dead from their trenches to make cover, under which they advanced. No sooner had the British won a hundred yards of trench than they were driven back by a counter-attack. The line swayed to and fro, now in front of the ruins of what had been Neuve Chapelle, now behind them. Trenches were dug in the streets, and sometimes were only a few yards apart. Part of Neuve Chapelle was won, but the whole of it could not be recovered.
Next day there was a terrible fight at Festubert, a village less than two miles to the north-west of La Bassée. Ever since the 18th of October the German guns had been pounding the little place, which was held by the thin line of the 2nd Manchesters. In the early dawn of the 29th the Germans swarmed out of their trenches and swept down in dense masses on the British infantry, who were driven back to their supporting trench. Here they rallied, and thrust back the Germans who followed them. One of the lost trenches was recaptured by two men—Lieutenant James Leach and Sergeant Hogan, who were afterwards awarded the Victoria Cross, as you will hear later.
More Indians now arrived, and the defence of the La Bassée gate was entrusted to them, to two and a half British brigades, and most of the Second Corps artillery. Amongst the Indian infantry were the 8th Gurkha Rifles. You will remember that the Gurkhas are little men. The trenches which they took over had been dug for taller white men, and they found that they could not see out of them. The German machine guns enfiladed[53] the Gurkhas, and most of their white officers fell. Little wonder that, so placed and so strange to this new kind of warfare, they were forced back. Wandering in the dark, they managed by good luck to stumble on the trenches of the 1st Seaforths, a regiment to whom they are blood brothers.
For the next two days there was a heavy bombardment all along our position, and especially against the left wing behind Neuve Chapelle. On 2nd November the Germans again pierced the British line in one place, but a desperate charge of the 2nd Gurkhas, the famous regiment which had fought so bravely on the ridge at Delhi,[54] saved the situation.
For the next three weeks the troops in this section were engaged in beating off German attacks, which gradually grew less and less violent as the Germans concentrated their forces farther north for a great assault on Ypres. Our line was forced back till it ran from Givenchy, to which we stubbornly clung, north by Festubert, and onwards towards Estaires. After an unsuccessful attack on Givenchy (7th November) there was a fortnight's lull, during which the contest was little more than an artillery duel.