The scene of operations on October 7th for the Divisional attack was the practice trenches behind Estrée Blanche, near Enguingatte. The march to the assembly positions through very pretty country was pleasant enough, although the weather was cold and dull. After forming up, the attack proceeded by waves, one of the orthodox methods at the time, preceded by a real trench mortar bombardment, and accompanied by a real contact aeroplane, for which flares had to be lit at various intervals. The operations ceased at four o'clock, and as the battle ended the rain began. From then till we got home it poured in torrents. We splashed along field-tracks and muddy lanes as darkness fell, and still it came down. As we entered our billets, about 8 p.m., we most of us felt that field days were a luxury we would willingly forego.
The period in rest was now fast drawing to a close. It had at its commencement seen the battalion strong indeed in numbers, but lacking in cohesion and unprepared for any continued action. The pleasant weeks at St. Hilaire, in spite of the vigorous training that had taken place, had proved restful to the old members of the battalion, and had given the new-comers a full opportunity of acclimatizing themselves to their new surroundings. Everyone was fit, and ready for anything that might come. Equipment was complete, specialists were replaced, and all gaps filled. It was well that it was so, as the change in store for the battalion was to be severe. Real hardships and real danger were ahead, which the battalion, as expected, proved itself fully capable of enduring.
The move commenced on October 19th, the battalion leaving the village about 8 a.m. to join the Brigade column. At St. Hilaire, as elsewhere in France, as well as in England, the battalion had become very popular with their hosts, and many a tear was shed and many a kindly "God-speed" uttered as we moved off. It was a good long march, about fifteen miles in all, and though the day was cool a few fell out. The new drafts, good men though they were, had not all yet appreciated the Commanding Officer's inflexible rules in the matter of march discipline. Our destination was the Renescure area, east-south-east of St. Omer, and the road lay through Wittes and Racquinghem. Lieutenant Goulding and a billeting party went on ahead to the Proven area; but the battalion halted for the night in a series of small farms standing in a piece of country not unlike the ground round Inkerman Barracks at Woking. The morning of the 20th saw us early afoot. At 8 a.m. we were formed up on the Arques—Eblinghem—Hazebrouck road, ready to embus. There is always a certain amount of amusement at embussing. To begin with, the buses almost invariably face in the opposite direction to what is expected. Moreover, they are frequently of all sizes and shapes, and thereby upset your most careful calculations. For a man wearing full marching order, plus a blanket wound round his pack, it is no easy matter to scale a lorry. A bus—that is, a real bus—presents less difficulty; but the stairs are awkward, and the constructional expert of the General Omnibus Company did not design his seats to accommodate people requiring at least twelve inches of spare seat behind the traveller before he can hope to sit down. The scene to the uninitiated would appear to be sheer chaos. Each vehicle is surrounded by a heaving and struggling mass; and when this has been dissipated, there are still men who have to be almost literally forced into vehicles which look hopelessly overcrowded already. The operation takes time, but eventually the long column moves off. With the violent motion caused by the lack of springs and bad pavé the human mass is gradually shaken into a more or less solid condition; and it is really rather remarkable that at the end of the journey anyone is sufficiently mobile to begin the process of debussing.
The trip was quite a long one, and it was after two o'clock when Poperinghe was passed and the column came to a final stop. Everywhere the "push" in progress was very evident. Poperinghe itself was seething with troops of all arms, and the general air of activity so conspicuous behind an "active" front was very marked. After the whole battalion had been extracted, like sardines from a tin, a march of two or three miles—a very trying performance with cramped limbs—brought us to Plurendon Camp, in the Proven area, recently vacated by the Welsh Guards; and a cheerless and bleak-looking spot it was, covered with old canvas tents. After the pleasant billets of St. Hilaire, we felt already a bit discouraged, but it was a perfect paradise compared with some of the places to which we were about to be introduced. The weather was also very unsettled, and the mud that the rain produced was quite up to the best traditions of Flanders. To add to our discomfort, the tea ration, which had been put on the mechanical transport, arrived very late owing to a breakdown. We did not move the next day, as we had expected, but on October 23rd proceeded in the morning to Proven Station. After despatching the "Life-boat Party," the nucleus of 33⅓ per cent. of officers and men always left out by a battalion going into action, with a view to subsequent reorganization, and after about an hour in the train, we arrived at Elverdinghe about 1.30 p.m. A march of two miles followed, and then we entered Wolff Camp, in the Malakoff area. A more wretched and inhospitable spot it would be hard to find. Pitched in what had once been No Man's Land, it was an admirable representation of the tangled and disreputable desolation that one's imagination connects with such a place. The 2/5th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment had, moreover, failed to vacate the camp, and we had consequently to remain in the adjacent field for the time being, though the difference was little enough. The ground was broken and muddy beyond description. The only accommodation to be found consisted of tattered tents, through which the rain and wind drove at will—and there was no lack of either. A Y.M.C.A. tent, the sole refuge of the area, struggled manfully all day with a queue, often fifty yards long, of men waiting for tea and biscuits. Apart from this oasis, we were surrounded by a desert of hideous misery, but in spite of it all our spirits were high. Even for those not in the secret it was by now clear that we were moving up to take our turn in the grim struggle in the morass, into which a continual barrage had long since converted the Passchendaele Ridge. At least we felt we had come for a purpose; and if the usual routine were followed, we should be back in rest before long—those of us, at least, who had not "collected a Blighty," or a more permanent separation from the troubles of this world.
We were not allowed to be idle for very long. At 4.30 and 5 p.m. respectively working parties, 100 strong, moved up to the line, and the next morning a party of forty men went up to be similarly employed. Other parties were detailed to reconnoitre routes, a most necessary but difficult operation under the conditions. At 4 p.m. that day (October 26th) the battalion was suddenly ordered to move to Marsouin Farm, a camp nearer the line. As so often happens, the order synchronized with the approach of tea. The usual rush attended this sudden move, and resulted in the majority of the men missing their tea, a regrettable thing at ordinary times, but in view of the mental and physical strain about to be encountered particularly unfortunate.
Our Quartermaster left us at this point, his work being efficiently continued by Captain Bowring, summoned from the "nucleus party" for the purpose. Marsouin Farm proved to be the lowest form of habitation that can possibly be classified as a camp. "Bivvies" of the rudest description, "leans-to" of ground sheets or odd bits of corrugated iron, formed our quarters, all half immersed in mud of the thickest and vilest consistency. The biting air and heavy rainstorms combined to give the finishing touch to this execrable spot, which was calculated to inspire all ranks with as profound a contempt for death as was ever entertained by the most ardent believer in Valhalla. Similar "camps" were dotted about in the vicinity; and an unending stream of guns, men, pack transport, and so forth, poured by continually, struggling and slipping on the crude roads or corduroy tracks which led up to the battle zone. Trolley trams and light trains wound their way forward, grunting and creaking under loads consisting of all the multifarious stores required in modern warfare. The surrounding country, if difficult to describe, was certainly of a uniform appearance. It consisted simply of endless mud and water. As far as the eye could reach there was the same yellowish waste of muddy misery, shell-hole touching shell-hole with never a break, save where a splintered and winding duck-board track, a primitive road of half-buried logs, or the spidery lines of a light railway, relieved the hopeless monotony. Across this wilderness of squalor and filth every fighting man had to pass to reach the enemy. Ammunition, rations, R.E. material, Red Cross stores, everything, in fact, had to be transported over this quagmire, and woe betide the luckless man who fell from the slippery safety of the duck-boards into its clutches! All the while the guns on either side kept up their steady bombardment, now fierce and concentrated, now desultory and scattered.
On the evening of the 27th, at the usual short notice, the battalion was ordered forward to the reserve trenches. As has already been remarked, these sudden moves are very trying, and this one proved to be particularly so. The battalion was now leaving the last limits of what in such an area might be called civilization. Consequently rations, equipment, and ammunition had to be completed for the whole period in the desolate country into which we were now to penetrate. The scene that followed will not easily be forgotten. The march to Eagle Trench, which brought us into close proximity with the trench area, was made under considerable difficulties, owing to the large number of gas shells which were falling in the area. At one point on the duck-board track along which the battalion was winding its way in single file, Colonel Fletcher at its head, a large working party of another battalion was halted and blocking the way. This working party was held up in front by heavy enemy shell fire, which was falling on a road across which the track ran. After waiting some forty minutes, it was observed that the shell fire, which covered about 200 yards of the road, was being lifted at regular intervals of about fifteen minutes on to a different sector of the road, and after another fifteen minutes brought back to the former objective. Time was getting on, so Colonel Fletcher decided to try to rush his battalion through next time the bombardment lifted from the immediate neighbourhood of the track; and with this end in view arranged with the officer commanding the working party in front to get his men off the track to give the 2/6th K.L.R. a clear run through. It was known from a reconnaissance made the previous day that the track crossed the road and then the stream called the Steenbeck on the far side of it. The Commanding Officer calculated that he would just have time to get his battalion across the road and over the Steenbeck before the barrage returned to the track. Word was passed down the battalion from front to rear to be prepared to travel at the fastest possible speed, and at a correctly judged moment a move forward was ordered. The working party in front had meanwhile got off the track, so good progress could be made over the 200 yards which remained to be covered before the road was reached. When the head of the battalion arrived at the road, the unpleasant discovery was made that the bridge over the Steenbeck had been destroyed by the bombardment. An officer succeeded in crossing the stream by the trunk of a fallen tree, but on his return reported that the track on the other side had also been destroyed for a considerable distance, and that the place where it recommenced again could not be found in the darkness. The Commanding Officer came to an instant decision and ordered the column to turn to the left along the road in a north-easterly direction, with the intention of reaching another road which ran north-west through the village of Langemarck, from which place he expected to be able again to pick up the track which had to be followed. Unfortunately, the road on the side of the Steenbeck had been so churned up by shell fire that only very slow progress was possible; in fact, one stretch of twenty yards was thigh deep in a stiff porridge-like mud, which, for men loaded with Lewis guns and large supplies of ammunition, was extremely difficult to negotiate. It was a time of considerable anxiety, because the barrage was still proceeding about 300 yards south-east, and might come back at any moment, in which case the casualties could not fail to be heavy. However, good luck prevailed, and the tail end of the battalion had just got clear of the road before the bombardment lifted back on the section we had quitted.
In front of Langemarck.