Rough Sketch of Guards' Position, April 13
Night fell upon a sorely-tried but unconquered line. The two front battalions had lost at least a third of their effectives. Under the screen of darkness the position was re-organised, and it was hoped that the Fifth Division, drawn back from Italy, would be able to effect a relief. This could not be fully accomplished, however, and at best only a small contraction of the front could be effected, so that the morning of April 13 found the exhausted Coldstream and Grenadiers still facing the German attack. Their line had been strengthened by the 210th Field Co. of the Royal Engineers. The front to be held was still very wide for so weakened a force.
It had been a hard day, but it was only the prelude of a harder one. On April 13 the morning began with thick mist, of which the Germans took advantage to rush their machine-guns to very close quarters. At early dawn the Coldstream found themselves once more heavily attacked, while an armoured car came down the road and machine-gunned the outposts at a range of ten yards. After severe mixed fighting the attack was driven back. At 9.15 it was renewed with greater strength, but again it made no progress. It is typical of the truly desperate spirit of the men, that when every man save one in an outpost had been killed or wounded, the survivor, Private Jacotin of the Coldstream, carried on the fight alone for twenty minutes before he was blown to pieces with a grenade.
The left flank of this battalion had also been heavily attacked, the enemy, with their usual diabolical ingenuity, shouting as they advanced through the fog that they were the King's Company of the Grenadier Guards. They were blown back none the less into the mist from which they had emerged. The 12th Yorkshire Light Infantry was also four separate times attacked, but held to its appointed line. This gallant unit fairly earned the title of the "Yorkshire Guards" that day, for they were the peers of their comrades. Meanwhile, however, outside the area of this grim fight the Germans had taken Vieux Berquin, pushing back the scanty line of defence at that point, so that they were able to bring up trench-mortars and guns to blast the Yorkshire battalion at La Couronne out of its shallow trenches. Captain Pryce, on the extreme left of the Guards, found the Germans all round him, and his Grenadiers were standing back to back and firing east and west. The company was doomed, and in spite of the gallant effort of a party of Irish Guards, who lost very heavily in the venture, the whole of them perished, save for Sergeant Weedon and six men who reported the manner in which their comrades had met their end. Captain Pryce had led two bayonet charges, first with eighteen men, which was entirely successful, and later with fourteen men, who buried themselves in the grey of the German ranks, and there remained. Such was the end of No. 2 Company of the 4th Grenadiers, and of its commander. This brave man received a posthumous V.C. in the record of which it is stated that with forty men he had held up a German battalion for ten hours and so saved a break through.
Apart from this flank company the centre company of the Grenadiers at this period consisted of six unwounded men, while the right company was twenty strong. All the officers were down. They were hemmed in on two sides by the enemy, but they were still resisting as the shades of night fell upon them. By dawn the Grenadier battalion had ceased to exist.
The 3rd Coldstream on the right were hardly in better case. The right company was surrounded, and fought until there was only a handful left. A few survivors fell back upon the Fifth Division and the Australians who were now well up to the line. The orders to the Guards had been to keep the Germans out until the Australians could arrive. They had been faithfully obeyed. The total casualties had been 39 officers and 1244 rank and file, the greater part from two weak battalions; 17 per cent of the brigade mustered after the action. Soldiers will appreciate the last words of the official report which are: "No stragglers were reported by the A.P.M." It is an episode which needs no comment. Its grandeur lies in the bare facts. Well might General de Lisle say: "The history of the British Army can record nothing finer than the story of the action of the 4th Guards Brigade on April 12 and 13."
Whilst the Guards had made their fine stand to the east of Hazebrouck, the rest of the Thirty-first Division, covering a front of 9000 yards, had a most desperate battle with the German stormers. The fine north country material which makes up the 92nd and 93rd Brigades had never been more highly tried, for they were little more than a long line of skirmishers with an occasional post. In some parts of the line they were absolutely exterminated, but like their comrades of the Guards, they managed somehow or other to retain the positions and prevent a penetration until reinforcements arrived. The remains of the Twenty-ninth Division on the left had also fought with the utmost devotion and held the line at the price of a heavy drain upon their weakened ranks. It has been calculated that the line held by the 31st Division upon these days was 5½ miles long, and that it was attacked by the 35th and 42nd German divisions, the 1st Bavarian Reserve, and 10th, 11th, and 81st Reserve divisions.
It would be well to continue the action upon the Hazebrouck front by giving at once an account of the operations of the First Australian Division under General Sir Harold Walker, which had the remarkable experience of being sent from Flanders to the Amiens front, being engaged there, and now being back in the Flanders front once more, all in little over a week. They detrained on April 12, and on the 13th their 2nd Brigade (Heane) found themselves in front of Hazebrouck with the remains of the 92nd British Brigade on their left and with the hard-pressed 4th Guards Brigade in front of them. In the evening the remains of the Guards were withdrawn through their line, and they were facing the pursuing Germans. On their left the Australians were in touch with the 1st Cameronians of the 19th Brigade in the Meteren area.