Even now the weight of such a battle as this was severe, and yet it was to go on for another twenty-six days. On October 22 General Joffre visited the British Head-quarters. The result was the arrival on this, the 23rd of October, of the 9th French Army Corps. This reinforcement was sorely needed. On the east of Ypres the line was drawn perilously thin. From Zandvoorde round to Peolcappel it was held only by the 7th Division of infantry under Major-General Capper, and by the 3rd Cavalry Division, commanded by Major-General Byng. The cavalry, like the rest of the British mounted force, had gone into the trenches, or, rather, into hastily-made lines of fire-cover. Somewhat remarkably, the Germans had not been quick to discover the relative weakness of this part of the front. So far they had thrown the weight and fury of their attack against the north and south. Their mistake undoubtedly arose from the bold tactics adopted by the British Commander-in-Chief. On the east of Ypres he had kept up a show of counter-attack. The 7th Division had, on the 21st, made a bound forward to Passchendeale, on the way to Roulers. This, following upon the movement towards Menin, had evidently led the enemy to suppose that here was the strongest part of the British line. In plain language, the enemy had been most successfully "bluffed." As a consequence, the Germans opposite the 7th Division remained on the defensive, and there was gained a respite, if a bitter and incessant bombardment can so be called, of nearly two days. The interval was beyond estimate valuable. It enabled the 9th French Army Corps to take up part of the vastly too extended position held by these British forces, who had been spaced out over some six miles of country at the rate of considerably less than one man to the yard—a single line without reserves of any kind.
Following upon their arduous march from Ghent, during which, covering the retreat of the Belgian army, they had fought a rearguard action for the greater part of the way, the 7th Division had, since October 17, been almost incessantly engaged. Even the toughest of British troops—and these were among the toughest toughs in the army—would feel the worse for wear after such an experience. It had indeed approached "the limit"—as the limit was understood before the Battle of Ypres.
Picture the situation. These British and French troops in their hastily made trenches had not only masses of the enemy in front of them—masses thrown forward in dense columns of attack, which at all hazards they had to break—but the roar of battle in their rear, and from minute to minute they could not tell how the fortune of battle in their rear was going. They could only hope that their comrades, too, were "sticking it." Overhead was the almost incessant flight and ear-splitting explosions of shells, an indescribable din. To right and left flared the burning ruins of houses and villages. An acrid smoke rolled over the awful scene, darkening the grey sky with its lowering pall. In this pallid light and amid the contending thunders of the cannon, a monstrous chorus from hundreds of iron throats, the grey-green ranks of the enemy would suddenly swarm out of their trenches, and their savage yells mingling with their volleys, would try to dash across the intervening space, 200, sometimes not more than 100 yards. To reach the British trenches was a matter not of minutes; it was a matter of seconds. How were such rushes to be stopped? The only way was for these British infantrymen to sit tight and give them fifteen rounds "rapid"—fifteen rounds in less than as many seconds, rounds in which every bullet found its billet. The hostile mass came on trampling over its dying and its dead, but it was ragged and it grew more ragged with every one of those successive blasts of death. Then it became a mere torn remnant, then it wavered. Its fury was gone; its courage was gone; the driving power of its ruthless officers was gone; the fear of disciplinary punishment was gone; all were swallowed up in the instinctive love of life. A lightning rush back to cover to avoid that devastating hail of lead swept every protester off his feet. From first to last such an episode would be measured in time by minutes. Into those minutes, however, seemed crowded an eternity of experience. In circumstances like these the sole thought of the soldier is his individual duty. He feels with an absorbing intensity that the issue depends upon him doing it even to the death. In that feeling lies the glorious "joy of battle."
All round Ypres was ringed with these contending fires. The heaviest pressure of the German attack, however, was still on the sector of the front between Armentières and La Bassee. It was plainly hoped that if success attended this onset, the retirement of the whole of the British, French and Belgian forces to the north of it must follow, and strategically that must have been the result, for if the 2nd British Army Corps had given way, neither Ypres nor the line of the Yser could have been held. In the accounts which have been given hitherto of the battle, attention has mostly been directed to its later stages when the attack developed against Ypres from the east, but the vital combat which went far to secure the eventual victory was the death grapple between the 2nd Army Corps and the masses of Prince Ruprecht's Army thrown against them west of Lille. These troops of the 2nd British Army Corps had been fighting almost day and night since October 11, that is up to this time for twelve days, and it had been impossible to afford them any relief.
Along this sector of the front the 2nd and 3rd Corps of the British Army were opposed to eight corps of Germans. That immense superiority in numbers enabled the enemy to keep up an unbroken succession of assaults by a system of reliefs. Costly in life to the enemy though such tactics were, he was evidently convinced that under this strain the British must inevitably break. The fighting raged through this now desolated area of ruined houses and wrecked roads. Roofless, with great gaps torn in their walls by shells, the smashed remains of furniture mixed up with fallen and broken beams, splintered doors, and battered stairways, often the scenes of bitter hand-to-hand duels, the houses bordering the streets littered and obstructed by window-shutters shot-riddled and blown off their hinges, piles and fragments of bricks, slates and glass, the shapeless remains of chimneys and other flotsam of ruin. In face of the hostile pressure the British line had had to be drawn back on to the lower ground of the valley. This withdrawal, however, had tightened up and strengthened it, and the whole position was without question saved through General Smith-Dorrien making that necessary and prudent move in the right time.[8]
How the Devons at a decisive point of the line covered this retirement and beat off a furious German attack is told by one of the officers of the corps. He says:
On the night of October 22, we advanced a bit and dug ourselves more or less in by dawn, and soon after light we saw great masses of German infantry emerge from woods and hedges some 1,000 yards to our front, and advance to attack us. We opened fire on them, and killed dozens. This was answered by the Germans with a tremendous shell fire from their heavy guns. The Devons were perfectly wonderful; not a man left his trench. All day long the battle raged, and you never saw such an inferno. By night the place was a mass of fire, smoke, dead, and dying. All night they attacked us. Sometimes they got right up to our trenches, only to be hurled back by the Devons' bayonets. Dawn broke on the 24th with the same struggle still going on, and it continued all day and night, and all through the 25th. We never slept a wink, and by night we were absolutely done. No humans could have done more.
The men were perfectly splendid, and repulsed every attack, with great loss to the enemy. We were relieved at 1 a.m. on October 26, and as we marched back a mile into billets all the troops cheered us frantically. General Smith-Dorrien sent a wire congratulating us on our splendid fight. We heard officially from Divisional Head-quarters that there were 1,000 dead Germans in front of our trenches. The whole place was littered with their dead.
On October 24 the Indian troops under the command of General Watkis were sent to Lacon, three miles in the rear of the front, as a reserve. In the evening of that day, a day like those preceding it of dismal rain, the Germans made an exceptional effort. With the advantage of the bad and failing light, which it was probably hoped would confuse the British rifle fire, a thing they had now learned to dread, they delivered a massed assault in enormous force. The attack was made simultaneously by three columns directed one against the trenches held by the Wiltshires above Givenchy; the second against the trenches held by the Royal West Kents; and the third against the position of the Gordons at the farther end of the line near Fauquissart. The first two attacks failed completely. The third had a temporary success. The Gordons, with odds which no skill with the rifle could overcome, were driven from their trenches. This was undoubtedly the chief point of the German onset. While the struggle was going on the Middlesex regiment had been ordered up to support. They arrived nearly as soon as the Germans had seized the position. Darkness had now come on. Shaken by their heavy losses, the Germans were not prepared for this practically instantaneous counter-attack. They did not know what was behind it. The Middlesex regiment appeared to spring at them out of the ground. Though elated at their victory they were exhausted. For aught they could tell other forces were at the back of these. The fight was fierce but brief. The end of it saw the enemy flying back into the night to escape the deadly bayonets wielded with what seemed almost superhuman energy. The attack added another blank to Prince Ruprecht's record.
In the meantime persistent attacks had been kept up on the position of the 3rd Corps along the railway from Laventie to Armentières, as well as on the line held by the Cavalry Corps along the hills from Wytscheate to Zandvoorde. It was the evident intention of the Germans to seize this ridge as dominating the British position in Ypres. Along this sector they were massed in great strength. Shortened, however, as it now was the front held. The struggle round the village of Hollebeke was to the last degree desperate. The line, however, of the Indian troops along the high road from Armentières to Wytscheate still menaced this German attack in flank, and materially helped the Cavalry Corps to hold its ground.