In the evening the 21st Brigade on the right made another advance, in the course of which a Territorial battalion, the 4th Cameron Highlanders, recruited mainly from Inverness-shire, Skye, and the misty Hebrides, pushed on far before their comrades. Under heavy fire, they advanced over country liberally seamed with ditches, one of which was so deep and wide that most of the men had to swim across it. The third company reached the back end of a German communication trench; but being without bombs, and having almost wholly used up its cartridges, was soon in desperate straits. About midnight these gallant fellows were reinforced by two platoons; but as they had no machine guns, and as the Germans were fast closing in on both sides of them, and they were "in the air," they were ordered to retire. In the small hours of the morning they made their way back through a heavy rain of shells, and by the time that the weary, mud-stained battalion had regained the British position it had been reduced to half its strength.
Playing their Comrades up to the Germans: the Pipers of the Black Watch at Richebourg.
(By permission of The Illustrated London News.)
During the general advance in May the Black Watch suffered very heavily. They assaulted the German trenches a few miles east of Richebourg (point A on the map, page [231]). Their first charge in the morning only reached the German wire, and they fell in swathes under the merciless machine-gun fire of the enemy. During the afternoon other companies of the Black Watch dashed up, and by a brilliant charge captured the trenches which had defied them in the morning. It was during this charge that the pipers showed wonderful courage. The two pipers of each company played their comrades right up to the Germans. The skirl of their pipes was heard above the din and crash of Maxims, rifles, and bursting shrapnel. The lads of "brown heath and shaggy wood" rushed on to victory with the pibroch of their sires ringing in their ears.
Still the fight went on. The Canadians, who had recovered from their terrible ordeal on the Ypres salient, were now sent up to relieve the two brigades of the 7th Division. On the afternoon of 18th May two companies of the 16th (Canadian Scottish) were ordered to advance on the hamlet at C, to the north-west of the orchard already mentioned. One company made a frontal attack, and the other proceeded along the communication trench which had been won by the Welsh Fusiliers. The advance was partly successful, and the companies dug in five hundred yards in front of the starting point.
On the night of the 20th an attack was made on the orchard itself. During the afternoon the little enclosure was heavily bombarded, and at 7.45, when the artillery fire ceased, the Canadians climbed over their parapets and dashed forward. The advance was made in broad daylight, and a torrent of fire beat down upon them. At the edge of the orchard they discovered a deep ditch full of water, with a wired hedge on the other side. Without pause, the men plunged into the water, and, scrambling up the bank, pushed through gaps in the hedges and swarmed into the orchard. On the far side there were many Germans, but they fled as the Canadians charged. Before long the orchard was in British hands.
Early on the 20th the 10th Canadian battalion made a gallant but unavailing attempt to seize a very strong German position known as Bexhill. The approach to it was defended by a redoubt strongly held with machine guns. On the evening of the next day the Canadians returned to the attack, but it was not until the early morning of the 24th that the redoubt was captured. Five hundred men of the 5th Brigade, along with 100 men of the 7th (British Columbia) Battalion, made an advance in the bright moonlight across a ditch which had been previously bridged, and by four in the morning were in possession of the stronghold. Two hours later Bexhill itself was won, and the victors received orders to "dig in and hang on." They did so, in spite of three very fierce counter-attacks.
It was now clear that we could make no further headway without more guns and more shells than we then possessed. We were meeting with the same difficulty that had beset the French in Artois. The German lines broke up into a series of little fortresses, each of which could only be captured by a separate assault. It was the Battle of Festubert which brought home to the British people the absolute necessity for providing the army with more and more big guns and an almost unending stream of munitions. Our losses were very heavy, and they would have been greatly reduced had our artillery been more numerous and better supplied. Less than three weeks after the close of the battle the Government appointed a Minister of Munitions.
The battle came to an end on the 26th, about the same time that the fierce struggle on the Ypres salient died down. The results were summed up by Sir John French as follows: "Since 16th May the First Army has pierced the enemy's lines on a total front of four miles. The entire first line system of trenches has been captured on a front of 3,200 yards, and on the remaining portion the first and second lines of trenches are in our possession." During the fighting we captured 8 officers, 777 men, 10 machine guns, and a considerable amount of war material.