A more serious attack, in which the 4th Division upon our right was intended to co-operate, was made by B Company at 7.30 p.m. on April 15 against the same cottages, which formed part of the hamlet called La Pierre au Beurre. Our bombardment in support of this attack was almost due to start, when an urgent message from the line announced that large forces of the enemy were massing opposite our front. To have called for S.O.S. fire by the artillery would totally have upset the programme of attack, and one could only hope that our zero would be the earlier. Luck was in our favour. Whatever else happened that night, it is certain that the enemy received a severe shelling from our guns.
The attack, carried out by B Company under Stanley, with D in support, was quite successful in its plan but not in its result. From a cause such as every series of complicated operations in open warfare threatened to introduce, the troops of the 4th Division on our right failed to co-operate as we expected. O'Meara, whom Stanley had placed in charge of his leading troops, after securing the cottages named as his objective, found himself attacked by the enemy from the very direction whence he had counted on assistance. After ineffectual attempts by our 'liaison' officer, Kirk, to get our neighbours to do their share, B Company had to be withdrawn to their original position. The 4th Division at this time were the flank division of one corps while we were of another. To reach the Battalion acting on our right a notice of our plan had to climb up through our Brigade, Division, and Corps to Army and down again as many steps the other side. A staff-officer from Army or from Corps should have been on the spot.
Coucher and Kemp, two capital officers, were killed during the evening when this attack took place. Our other casualties were Killed, 2; Wounded, 18; Missing, 1.
Throughout April 13 and for several days afterwards desultory fighting, in which our trench-mortars under Miller performed good service, was maintained for the possession of Baquerolle Farm and another lying 150 yards south of it and christened Boase's Farm. Both remained in our hands. With the troops on our left flank there was some difficulty. Their line bent back awkwardly, and when the enemy shelled the houses on the Calonne road, where their right flank rested, they showed signs of withdrawing and leaving our C Company 'in the air.' The Germans quickly benefited by this irresolution, for they commenced to push forward from house to house along the Calonne road, until Baquerolle Farm was in danger of being taken in its rear. The prompt determination of Lodge, the officer I have already mentioned as commanding C Company, served to avert critical consequences. He delivered a local counter-attack, capturing a machine-gun and killing several of the enemy. Our neighbours thus reoccupied their former positions, but were warned in Divisional Orders not to give up any more of the Robecq-Calonne road. This incident, which rightly earned for 'Tommy' Lodge a Military Cross, had a vexatious sequel a few days later. In quoting where the left flank of the Battalion in fact rested I made a slip in the co-ordinates of its map reference. By that mistake I was trapped, when it appeared as black and white in relief orders, into having to hand over 100 yards of extra frontage, and had the mortification of causing several hours of troublesome delay to the front line, besides innocently saddling my successors with responsibility that was not honestly theirs to receive.
By April 16 the tactical situation was already stable. On that night—in reality during the early hours of April 17—the Battalion was relieved almost in the ordinary way by the Gloucesters, who came forward from the luxury of St. Venant and took over the line between Carvin and Baquerolle. St. Venant had been Portuguese G.H.Q. but was so no longer. It was by now receiving plenty of 5.9s and was rapidly losing the character of the quiet, well-to-do little town in which part of the Division was to have been billeted when it left the Amiens district. Still, for the time being, what St. Venant received in shells it paid for in choice vintages and fine houses. The Germans were not the only people to taste a glass of French wine during the Great War. About this time Colonel Boyle, who had commanded the 6th Oxfords until their disbandment, arrived to assume command of the Battalion. He remained till Wetherall, whose wound had taken him to England, returned.
For the rest of April and during May the Battalion continued to do tours in the Robecq sector, which, owing to its proximity to Givenchy and Béthune, was never quiet so long as the enemy was planning to attack those places. An alteration of the front was brought about on April 23, when the Gloucesters under Colonel Lawson advanced in co-operation with the 4th Division and captured Riez du Vintage and La Pierre au Beurre. Of this victory some spoils fell to the Battalion, which was holding the front line. Company Sergeant-Major Moss, of D Company, who went out to reconnoitre two hours after the attack had taken place, brought in forty-five prisoners, and during the following night half-a-dozen machine-guns were collected by the company.
German shelling at this time was often heavy. The tracks across the open up to the front line were rendered specially unpleasant by the pernicious '106' fuzes, with which the enemy's artillery was well supplied. From Robecq, which was steadily being shelled to ruins and through which one passed with reluctance, a disinterested salvage party, consisting of Stanley and the officers of B Company, brought a piano, which was destined to be an historic instrument. On more than one occasion the Battalion returned from its spell in the front line to the St. Venant Asylum, a large institution said to be the second largest of the kind in France. Its protesting inmates had been removed in lorries at the time of the German capture of Merville, and the long galleries and rooms thereafter became filled with troops. The ample bath-house, laundry, and kitchen of the Asylum, though ravaged by shelling and rifled by the mysterious depredations of looters, more than provided for the Battalion's wants. I have to record a very regrettable incident in connection with St. Venant Asylum. On the morning of May 21, during some shelling, when most of us had descended to cover, a German shell pierced the building where C and D Company Headquarters were and dropped through into the cellar, where it exploded. Several men were killed and also 'Tommy' Lodge, the officer whose conduct had earned him distinction three weeks before at Baquerolle Farm. Robinson, too, was wounded and was lost to the Battalion.
At the Asylum, despite its comfort, it was difficult to feel at ease. On May 7 the Orderly Room was struck full on its door by a 5.9. Headquarters had many an anxious moment (as when a large aeroplane bomb was heard coming through the air; it fell 30 yards from the Mess). At the end of May rest billets were altered to La Pierrière, a small straggling village west of the La Bassée Canal, where few shells fell but whither the civilians were as yet timid to return. At La Pierrière, whenever the Battalion came out for its four days' rest, the Canteen was established on the most up-to-date lines with a full stock, including beer and the current newspapers from England. During the summer several local papers were kind enough to send me copies every week for free distribution to the men. I make this an opportunity to thank Mr. Stanley Wilkins and the Bucks Comforts Fund for most generous gifts of 'smokes,' which more than once helped to stave off a cigarette famine.