By a curious coincidence there happened to be in the 2nd Rifles an officer, Lieutenant F. Adams, who was a native of the city of Courtrai. He was naturally chosen to make the reconnaissance, but his intimate knowledge of Courtrai may not have been altogether an advantage, for he made an investigation so thorough that he was not back till the following morning, when the barrage for the advance of the 108th Brigade had commenced. He had discovered that the Germans had evacuated all the quarter of the city north-west of the river, and blown up the five bridges which spanned the latter. When this news, and also the information that the troops of the 29th Division were on the Lys, north of the city, was received, the barrage was instantly stopped and the 12th Rifles, with no other protection than that of advanced and flank guards, marched down the road from Heule into Courtrai.
There were scenes of great enthusiasm among the citizens, who came forth into the streets from their cellars to greet the troops. But the Germans were not far off. As the first British troops appeared on the quays of the Lys, here eighty feet wide, heavy machine-gun fire burst out all along the opposite bank. Anything more difficult than to force a crossing, in the heart of a city full of friendly civilians, to whom and to whose property it was desired to do as little damage as might be, against German troops of the old mettle, could not well be imagined. But the Germans opposite were not of the old mettle, and General Vaughan decided to attempt to throw a bridge across in broad daylight. The 122nd Field Company with its pontoons had moved forward in readiness.
At 2 p.m. a smoke-screen was put down. Five minutes later, under its cover, the first boat-load was across. The men leapt ashore exultingly and drove the Germans from the bank. They had had scarce a casualty. Another boat-load followed, and in an incredibly short time the bridge was practicable for infantry. But the German artillery soon had its range. The men of the 122nd Field Company, who displayed the greatest gallantry, suffered heavy loss, and eventually the bridge was destroyed. The party on the other shore, however, held its ground without difficulty. The machine-gunners of "C" Company, attached to the Brigade, distinguished themselves particularly in this day's operations.
The obvious course now was to await darkness, throw another bridge across, clear the city of Germans, and be ready to advance eastward at peep of day. But news arrived meanwhile which altered these plans. The Allies were not going to batter Courtrai. They were going to force the Lys to northward, swing half-right, and drive down upon the Scheldt, or Escaut, as this portion of the river is called by French-speaking people, thus turning all the great industrial towns. As a fact, the evacuation of Lille, the western-most, was proceeding at this very moment. The 36th Division was required for the new thrust, and was to be relieved at once by the 123rd Brigade of the 41st Division.
In these circumstances, as the bridgehead—without a bridge—was useless to the relieving Brigade, the bridgehead party was quietly and skilfully withdrawn at dusk and ferried across, together with six captured Germans. The relief was complete by eight o'clock, and the 108th Brigade marched back through new-won Heule and Gulleghem, to the village of Drei Masten, north of the latter town. The other Brigades had begun to move back earlier in the afternoon.
If the troops had been cheerful before, they were jubilant now. They knew themselves infinitely better men than the enemy, who, still supported by huge masses of artillery and by machine-gun fire which General Jacob later described as "the heaviest ever experienced in this war," never awaited their onslaught long. It was evident to all now that the war would be over by Christmas. A little longer and the German Army would be beaten to its knees.
The worst danger, the greatest obstacle to the launching of the death-thrust, was now, in fact, behind, not in front. It lay in those terrible roads of the devastated area far behind, with which the troops, now upon the untouched soil of the richest agricultural land in Europe, might feel they had no connection, but across which every mouthful of food they ate and every bullet they fired had to come. The strain upon the mechanism of the lorries was tremendous, and they were constantly breaking down. The strain upon their drivers was no less, and at this period they were less easy to replace than their wagons. The loss of horses, too, from bombing, in the Artillery and the Supply Services, had been very serious and could not be replaced at the moment. To add to the difficulties of communication, rations had to be brought up for the Belgian civilians, many of whom had been left stripped bare and in danger of starvation by the Germans, who took horses, carts, cattle, fowls, and all stores they could lay hand upon, in their retreat. In the hardest work they were ever called on to perform, the A.S.C., both mechanical and horsed services, scored a triumph. The success they achieved was due in part to good organization and industry. But it was due, above all, to the grit and determination of the junior officers and drivers in the performance of their tasks. The lorry-driver, who stuck for fifteen hours at his wheel amid the ruts and turmoil of the Menin Road, as many of them did, with bombs crashing down at night; the section of the Divisional Train bringing up its wagons through valleys wreathed and stinking with gas, these men in truth deserved well of the infantrymen facing the bullets further forward, and were in truth their companions-in-arms.
FOOTNOTE:
[61] This supposition is correct. The 29th Division used the Menin Road.