The Broembeek
It was decided to renew the attack, in combination with the French here, on the 9th October, from north-west of Langemarck across the Ypres-Staden railway down to a point in the line gained on the 4th October, east of Zonnebeke, on a front of six miles. The weather prepared itself in advance. Rain began punctually on the 7th, continued through the 8th, and made the going more than usually unspeakable. It affected the Guards Division principally, since their share of the work involved crossing the little valley of the Broembeek River which, should it continue to flood, offered every possible opportunity for holding up troops under fire, loss of direction (since men never move straight across bogs) and engulfment of material. The Broembeek was a stagnant ditch, from twenty to thirty feet wide and from two to five deep, edged with shell-holes and, in some parts, carrying vertical banks four or five feet deep. There was, mercifully, no wire in it, but night-patrols sent out the week before the battle of the 9th reported it could not be crossed without mats.
The 1st Brigade of the division, which lay in reserve while the 3rd Brigade held the front line, had trained for several days at Poll Hill Camp over ground “marked” to represent the ground that the Battalion would have to attack over. The certainty of being drenched to the skin on a raw October night as a preliminary to tumbling from shell-hole to shell-hole till dawn between invisible machine-guns and snipers was left to the imagination of the men.
On October 6th, “the details to be left out of the attack departed to join the Guards Division Reinforcement Battalion at Herzeele.” Men say that the withdrawal of these reprieved ones on the eve of action was as curious a sight as the arrival of a draft. (“For ye’ll understand, at that time o’ the war, men knew ’twas only putting off what was bound to happen.”)
Then, in foul weather, the Battalion entrained for Elverdinghe with the 3rd Coldstream of their Brigade. The idea was that the 1st Brigade (De Crespigny’s) would attack parallel to the line of the Ypres-Staden railway on their right, about three hundred yards from it, the 2nd Brigade (Sergison-Brooke’s) on their left next against the French, with the 3rd Brigade (Seymour’s) in support. This last brigade had been very heavily used in making arrangements for the Division to cross the Broembeek, piling dumps and helping to haul guns into fresh positions through the mud. The furthest objective set, for the advance, was the edge of the Houthulst Forest, three thousand yards across semi-fluid country with no landmarks other than the line of smashed rail on their right, and whatever fortified houses, farms, pill-boxes and shell-holes they might encounter during their progress. When they had overcome all obstacles, they were instructed to dig in on the edge of the forest.
At 9.30 on the night of the 8th, in heavy rain, the Battalion marched from Abingley Camp to their assembly lines (these all duly marked by tapes and white signboards, which, to the imaginative, suggest graveyards) from Elverdinghe to Boesinghe road, up “Clarges Street” to Abri Wood, and then to Cannes farm till they met the guides for their assembly areas at Ruisseau farm. From here began the interminable duck-boards that halt and congest the slow-moving line; and it was not till four in the morning that the Battalion was formed up and moved off. The rain had stopped a little before midnight and a late moon came to their help.
The companies were commanded as follows: No. 1, Captain the Hon. P. J. Ogilvy; No. 2, Lieutenant D. S. Browne; No. 3, Captain R. B. S. Reford; No. 4, Lieutenant N. B. Bagenal.
There was some shelling as they got into their assembly positions at 5.20 A. M., but casualties were few. The 2nd Grenadiers and 2nd Coldstream led off under a few minutes’ blast of intense fire from field-guns and Stokes mortars, crossed the Broembeek and were away. At 6.20 the 1st Irish Guards and 3rd Coldstream followed them. The Battalion’s crossing-place at the river, which, after all, proved not so unmanageable as the patrols reported, had no bridges, but there was wire enough on the banks to have made trouble had the enemy chosen that time and place to shell. They went over in three-foot water with mud at the bottom; re-formed, wet and filthy, and followed the 2nd Grenadiers who had captured the first and second objectives, moved through them at 8.20 and formed up on the right of the 3rd Coldstream under the barrage of our guns for their own advance on the final objective—the edge of the forest.
So far, barring a tendency to bear towards the right or railway side, direction had been well kept and their losses were not heavy. The companies deployed for attack on the new lines necessitated by the altered German system of defense—mopping-up sections in rear of the leading companies, with Lewis-gun sections, and a mopping-up platoon busy behind all.
Meantime, the troops on the Battalion’s right had been delayed in coming up, and their delay was more marked from the second objective onward. This did not check the Guards’ advance, but it exposed the Battalion’s right to a cruel flanking fire from snipers among the shell-holes on the uncleared ground by the Ypres-Staden line. There were pill-boxes of concrete in front; there was a fortified farm buried in sand-bags, Egypt House, to be reduced; there were nests of machine-guns on the right which the troops on the right had not yet overrun, and there was an almost separate and independent fight in and round some brick-fields, which, in turn, were covered by the fire of snipers from the fringes of the forest. Enemy aircraft skimming low gave the German artillery every help in their power, and the enemy’s shelling was accurate accordingly. The only thing that lacked in the fight was the bayonet. The affair resolved itself into a series of splashing rushes, from one shell-hole to the next, terrier-work round the pill-boxes, incessant demands for the Lewis-guns (rifle-grenades, but no bombs, were employed except by the regular bombing sections and moppers-up who cleared the underground shelters), and the hardest sort of personal attention from the officers and N.C.O.’s. All four companies reached the final objective mixed up together and since their right was well in the air, by the reason of the delay of the flanking troops, they had to make a defensive flank to connect with a battalion of the next division that came up later. It was then that they were worst sniped from the shell-holes, and the casualties among the officers, who had to superintend the forming of the flank, were heaviest. There was not much shelling through the day. They waited, were sniped, and expected a counter-attack which did not come off, though in the evening the enemy was seen to be advancing and the troops on the Battalion’s right fell back for a while, leaving their flank once more exposed. Their position at the time was in a somewhat awkward salient, and they readjusted themselves—always under sniping fire—dug in again as much as wet ground allowed, and managed in the dark to establish connection with a battalion of Hampshires that had come up on their right.
They spent the night of the 9th October where they lay, in the front line, while the enemy sniped them, shelled their supports, or put down sudden wandering barrages from front to back. Every company commander had been killed or wounded during the day; their medical officer (Captain P. R. Woodhouse, M.C.) was wounded at duty on the 10th, the men were caked with mud and ooze, worn to their last nerves and badly in need of food and hot drinks. There was no infantry action on their front, however, throughout the 10th, and in the evening they were relieved by two companies of the 1st Grenadiers; the other two companies of that battalion relieving the 2nd Grenadiers in the support-line. The battle, which counted as “a successful minor operation” in the great schemes of the Third Battle of Ypres, had cost them four officers killed in action on the 9th, one died of wounds on the 11th, seven officers and their doctor wounded in the two days; forty-seven other ranks killed; one hundred and fifty-eight wounded, and ten missing among the horrors of the swampy pitted ground. The list runs:
| Capt. the Hon. P. J. Ogilvy | } | |
| Capt. R. J. P. Rodakowski | } | |
| 2nd Lieut. A. L. Wells | } | killed October 9. |
| 2nd Lieut. T. S. V. Stoney | } | |
| 2nd Lieut. H. V. Fanshawe | died 11th October of wounds received on the 9th. | |
| Capt. R. B. S. Reford | } | |
| Lieut. N. B. Bagenal | } | |
| Lieut. D. S. Browne | } | wounded October 9th. |
| 2nd Lieut. E. M. Harvey | } | |
| 2nd Lieut. T. Corry | } | |
| Capt. P. R. Woodhouse | } | |
| Lieut. H. H. Maxwell | } | wounded October 10th. |
| 2nd Lieut. E. H. Dowler | } |
It took them eight hours along the taped tracks and the duck-boards to get to Rugby Camp behind Boesinghe, where they stayed for the next two days and drew a couple of officers and a hundred men from the Divisional Reinforcement Battalion to replace some of their casualties.
On the 13th October they, with their Brigade, took over the support line on the old battle-front from various units of the 2nd and 3rd Guards Brigade. The 2nd Grenadiers relieved the 1st Grenadiers in the front line on the right and the 2nd Coldstream the Welsh Guards on the left sector. The Battalion itself was scattered by companies and half-companies near Koekuit-Louvois farm, Craonne farm, and elsewhere, relieving companies and half-companies of the other battalions, and standing by to attend smartly to the needs of the forward battalions in case of sudden calls for more bombs, small-arm ammunition, and lights. They were instructed, too, to be ready to support either flank should the troops there give way. But the troops did not give way; and they had nothing worse to face than heavy shelling of the supports at night and the work of continuing the duckboard-tracks across the mud. Most of the men were “accommodated in shell-holes and small, shallow trenches,” for water stopped the spade at a couple of feet below ground; but where anything usable remained of the German pill-boxes, which smelt abominably, the men were packed into them. It was in no way a pleasant tour, for the dead lay thick about, and men had not ceased speaking of their officers of the week before—intimately, lovingly, and humorously as the Irish used to do.
More than most, the advance on Houthulst Forest had been an officer’s battle; for their work had been broken up, by the nature of the ground and the position of the German pill-boxes, into detached parties dealing with separate strong points, who had to be collected and formed again after each bout had ended. But this work, conceived and carried out on the spur of the moment, under the wings of death, leaves few historians.
They were relieved on the 16th October by the 20th Lancashire Fusiliers of the 104th Brigade on their right, returned to Elverdinghe through Boesinghe, and entrained for a peaceful camp at Proven. During their three days’ tour, Lieutenant R. H. S. Grayson and fourteen other ranks were wounded, mainly by shell and two other ranks were killed.
They had begun the month of October with 28 officers and 1081 other ranks. They had lost in sixteen days 252 other ranks and 14 officers killed or wounded. Now they were free for the time to rest, refit, and reorganise in readiness, men said, to be returned to the Somme. (“Ye’ll understand that, in those days, we had grand choice of the fryin’-pan or the fire.”)