It was a melancholy scene through which the Grenadiers marched off. Some ten days before, when they passed through Gheluvelt, they had been greeted by the inhabitants; now it was a deserted ruin. Most of the houses and the church had been demolished, and such buildings as remained looked like dolls' houses, when the fronts have been removed. The roadway was full of great shell-holes, and some carcasses of horses added to the dreariness of the picture. Arrived at their destination, Nos. 2, 3, and 4 Companies were put in the firing line, and the King's Company in support. It was practically dark, and as the trenches were very bad they had to dig themselves in as well as they could.
The German General Staff was now getting impatient. In spite of their immense superiority in numbers and in guns, the Germans had succeeded only in making dents in the line, and had not yet broken through. So they determined to mass their guns and infantry at certain parts of the line, and drive a wedge through—one of the points selected being the left of the line held by the 1st Battalion Grenadiers near the cross-roads. Every one on the British side knew of the projected attack, from General Headquarters down to the latest-joined drummer boy, but foreknowledge was of little use, as there were no reserves available.
Oct. 29.
At 5.15 A.M. on the 29th—a densely foggy morning—the Battalion was heavily shelled by our own guns; presumably the fire was intended for the German infantry, which was known to be somewhere near. Although every possible precaution had been taken against an attack at dawn, there was no sign of any movement on the part of the enemy, and after the Battalion had waited for an hour and a half, the report of an intended attack was dismissed as untrue. The question then arose as to what should be done to obtain food for the supporting battalions. They had been hurried up in the dark, and no provision had been made for their rations, nor was it possible to bring food up in wagons to positions in such close proximity to the enemy. The Brigadier decided that, as the expected attack had not been made, it would be best to send these two battalions back to get their food, so that on their return they would be prepared to remain in the front trench, and meet any attack that might come later in the day.
They had been gone hardly half-an-hour when the Germans opened a very heavy fire, and in the mist which was still clinging to the ground rifle-fire was poured upon the Grenadiers from the left rear. It was at once realised that the enemy had managed to penetrate the line between the two Divisions. To meet this enfilade fire the left flank of the line turned back, and before long the whole Battalion was forced to leave the fire trenches and occupy the support trenches, which were far too deep for the men to fire from.
Major Stucley, the second in command, dashed off at once with Captain Rasch, the Adjutant, to bring up the King's Company, the only support available. In place of the shell-fire, which had practically ceased, there now arose a steady rifle and machine-gun fire from the houses to the left and even the left rear of the Battalion. Swinging round to the left, the King's Company, headed by Major Stucley, steadily advanced for about two hundred yards, when it came to the support trench occupied by No. 2 and No. 3 Company. Major Stucley at once grasped the gravity of the situation. The King's Company had already suffered many casualties, as it came up across the open, and the enemy's machine-guns were pouring a murderous fire into the other two companies—No. 4 Company under Captain Rennie still remained in the fire trenches on the right. The problem was how, with three companies and no reserve, to stop a force ten times as numerous. The Germans had taken all the houses near the Menin road, and the thin line of Grenadiers, with their left turned back to face the road, was all there was to stop the rush of the enemy.
And indeed it was a formidable rush. They came on in such numbers that an officer afterwards said the attacking force reminded him of a crowd coming on the ground after a football match. Shoulder to shoulder they advanced, much in the same way as their ancestors fought under Frederick the Great, and though for spectacular purposes at Grand Manoeuvres their mass formations were very effective, in actual warfare against modern weapons they proved to be a costly failure.
The German General Staff had studied the question of the attack with the usual German thoroughness. It had carefully considered whether it should adopt the formation evolved by the British Army from the South African war or not, and had come to the conclusion that the personal equation played too large a part in an advance in extended order, and that for a conscript army the only possible formation was close order, in which the small percentage of cowards would be carried forward by the great majority of brave men. Nevertheless, in spite of their solid phalanxes, it was said that the German officers advanced with revolvers in their hands, to shoot men who lagged behind.
For our men the difficulty was to shoot the Germans quick enough. Ever since the South African war the men had been taught to fire at a little brown smudge on a green background painted on the target, an artistic triumph of the musketry authorities, supposed to represent all that a man would be able to see of his enemy in a modern battle. But here were full-length Germans not a hundred yards off, alarmingly visible, and in such numbers that even for the worst shot there was not the slightest difficulty in hitting them, especially as they were often three or four deep. In spite of this, however, the apparently hopeless impossibility of stopping so many, and the futility of killing a few out of such a crowd, made some of our men sometimes shoot very wildly.
Major Stucley disdained all cover and dashed forward at the head of the King's Company, determined to save the situation. In the hail of bullets he fell shot through the head, and soon afterwards Captain Lord Richard Wellesley was killed in the same way. Major Weld-Forester, Captain Ponsonby, and Lieutenant the Hon. A. G. S. Douglas-Pennant, who had necessarily to expose themselves, were wounded. Captain Ponsonby recovered, but Major Weld-Forester and Lieutenant Douglas-Pennant died two days later.