For eight hours the terrific cannonade continued. About seven in the evening, when the sky was dark and rain was falling, British aeroplanes appeared overhead and began to sweep the plain with their searchlights. In their glare our men saw to their amazement the Prussian Guards advancing towards their trenches with the high, prancing step of a Potsdam parade—the officers with their swords at the "Carry," and the lines of men as steady as a rock. On they marched, with flags flying and drums beating, but never a rifle snapped from the British trenches. Already the Guards felt the thrill of approaching victory; to them it seemed that the Allied line had been destroyed by the terrible cannonade. In a few short hours they would be in Ypres; a few days more and they would gaze across the narrow seas to the white cliffs of that hated land which they had sworn to subdue.
They were eighty yards from the British trenches now, and their pace quickened. Suddenly they were caught in a whirlwind of fire; shrapnel hissed among them, machine guns clacked viciously, and French and British rifles spat death at them from front and flank. They went down in hundreds, but the gaps were filled up, and the line moved on unbroken. Battalions melted into companies, companies into platoons, and platoons into files, but still they were unchecked. Again and again they re-formed, only to see their ranks shattered once more; nevertheless their advance was not stayed.
So fixed was their resolution and so strong was the force of their assault that the Allied line was broken in three places. Our first-line trenches were swamped with the gray flood, some of which poured into the tangle of woods behind, where a wild, desperate battle raged amidst the trees for two days. Furiously counter-attacked, and enfiladed by machine-gun fire, the Guards were finally driven back to the two short sections of trench which they had won. Even here they were not secure. The "Fighting Fifth"[96] held a salient between them, and took merciless toll of them while fresh attacks were being prepared.
On the hundredth day of the war the Prussian Guard came, it saw, it was conquered. At nightfall the larger part of it lay dead in the wood—in some places eight ranks deep. The mighty effort of the Kaiser had failed; the flower of his army had been flung away, yet Ypres was as far off as ever.
On the 12th and the following days there were further assaults, during one of which Lieutenant Dimmer of the King's Royal Rifles won the Victoria Cross for heroic fighting, which will be detailed later.[97] All the German efforts were fruitless, and on the 17th, when French reinforcements gave the sorely-tried British a respite, the enemy began to vent his baffled rage on the famous old Cloth Hall of Ypres. So far it had been spared in order that from its ancient walls the Kaiser might announce to the world that Belgium was his. Now that the Guard had failed, and Ypres still defied him, he spitefully ordered his artillery to batter down the historic building which seemed to mock at his discomfiture.
The story of one other German failure must be told to round off this account of the First Battle of Ypres. While the Prussian Guard was making its vain effort, the left wing of the Würtemberg army was attacking the extreme left of the salient between Zonnebeke and Bixschoote. This portion of the line was held by Zouaves, French Territorials, and cavalry. Against them was flung an overwhelming force of Germans, including the left wing of the Würtemberg army. Around Bixschoote the fight raged with such fierceness that the place was choked with dead. Had it been captured the enemy would have carried Ypres from the north. The Zouaves, always famous as dashing fighters, excelled themselves in the defence of Bixschoote, and at no point of the Allied front did the enemy lose more heavily. For nearly a month the Zouaves held the pass until the weather broke and the high winds and snow blizzards of winter set in. So the storm of battle died away in a tempest of nature's making.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE PRICE OF VICTORY AND THE PASSING OF A HERO.
In the old days a battle lasted a day or two at most; victory frequently came within a few hours, and couriers were speeding away with the news of victory or defeat before night had shrouded the stark bodies of the slain. But in this war battles have continued for weeks; one contest has merged into another, so that it is hard to say where one ends and another begins. The great series of fights which we call the Battle of Ypres began on 19th October, and did not end until 17th November; it lasted for thirty days!