Laventie, Winter 1916-1917
The sector was held with three companies in the front breastworks and supporting posts and one in reserve on Cardiff Road. Battalion Headquarters occupied shelters at Ebenezer Farm. These positions were far from ideal. The strength of the Battalion was much scattered and difficult of control in emergency, owing to the exceedingly bad communications within the area. The supporting platoons of the front line companies, at Bristol House, Cornwall Siding and Pump House, occupied the only remaining tenable portions of what had originally been the German second line prior to the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, and were separated from each other by about 100 yards of broken down and almost impassably wet breastworks. For communication from front to rear only one trench, Tilleloy South, was passable with any degree of safety in daylight. Between Pump House and the front line, a distance of about 250 yards, it was seriously overlooked from the German positions in the Bois du Biez, with the result that traffic up and down it was frequently sniped with trench mortar and 5·9 shells.
Always an area of considerable activity, the Moated Grange possessed several unpleasant features as a result of the active mining operations which had begun in 1915, and were still proceeding with unabated energy. The Duck's Bill Farm had given place to an enormous crater of the same name, linked with the British lines by a defended sap which left the front line at Sunken Road. The defence of this crater and sap took a platoon, whose arduous duties of continual listening and constant preparedness for an enemy raid were carried out under exceedingly rough conditions, as both the crater and the sap were full of water and shelters were conspicuous by their absence.
On the front occupied by the left company the German lines were invisible from the British breastworks owing to the lips thrown up round the Colvin craters, a series of some thirty or more of immense size which covered half the area of No Man's Land at this point. The largest of this series, the Mauquissart crater, occupied the site of what had once been our front line, and the breastwork now ran round its nearer lip. This mined area was the most uncomfortable part of the line, since the Germans were continually searching with trench mortar fire for the heads of our mine shafts while the cover afforded to enemy patrols by the crater lips themselves necessitated constant vigilance and counter-patrolling activity on the part of our trench garrison. Add to this the extreme hardship which the troops in this part of the line inevitably had to undergo owing to the total lack of dugouts and the perishing cold. The blowing of so many craters had, moreover, cut off the ditches between fields which had formerly been used for draining the trenches, with the result that there was no means of getting rid of the water which in a large number of firebays rose higher than the firestep. Under these conditions cooking in the neighbourhood of the front line was out of the question, and all cooked food had to be carried by permanent headquarter carrying parties from the Battalion cook-house near Ebenezer Farm; in the case of rations destined for the flank platoons this meant a trudge for the food carriers of over a mile in each direction at each meal.
The defences generally had suffered severely both from the enemy's shell fire and the effects of the alternation of sharp frost and heavy rain, and an immense amount of labour was called for in working and carrying parties for the breastworks as well as for the wire entanglements, which were in a very weak condition. The single communication trench, therefore, became frequently congested with long lines of troops "humping" material and food to the front line, and altogether the Moated Grange was a hard sector to run efficiently and a remarkably unpleasant one to live in.
Two tours of six days each were spent in this sector, broken by six days—not of rest, but of most exhausting working parties—in Riez Bailleul. The days in line saw a good deal of shelling and the Battalion suffered some loss, but in spite of this and of exposure to intense cold the men were probably more happy in the line than in billets. Further heavy falls of snow had occurred. The working parties supplied from Riez Bailleul were largely engaged in drawing trench stores and material at a dump on the La Bassée Road between Pont du Hem and Rouge Croix, itself nearly two miles from billets; and thence pushing it up to the front trenches on the tram-line dignified with the title of Great Eastern Railway, a further distance of upwards of 3000 yards. From railhead this material, consisting of trench boards, rolls of barbed wire, revetting frames, hurdles and other heavy stuff had to be distributed to companies in the line. These fatigues were obviously exhausting, and seldom did a party leaving billets at 5.30 p.m. return before midnight.
The most difficult task of all, however, which may not yet have quite faded from the memories of many, was connected with an ingenious scheme for draining the craters with heavy cast-iron water mains each about 16 feet long. With infinite labour these were brought to tram railhead, but at this point the difficulty of carrying pipes, each weighing some 200 pounds, along 500 yards of quagmire proved too much even for the stout hearts of Cockneys; and the high hopes which the author of the scheme had entertained of draining the craters vanished as his pipes sank in the mud. A change from this routine to the comparative peace of trench mortaring in the line was not unwelcome.
An act of gallantry occurred during the first tour which must be recorded. During one of the enemy's midday bombardments a time-fuzed medium trench mortar shell fell on the parapet of our breastwork on the lip of Mauquissart crater, and lodged in the revetting hurdle at the side of the trench. The firebay happened to be crowded with men working on the defences, and heavy casualties must inevitably have been caused but for the bravery of 2/Lieut. W. H. Webster, who rushed forward and, seizing the shell, flung it over the parapet into the crater, where it immediately exploded. For this gallant action 2/Lieut. Webster was awarded the D.S.O.