The History of the 33rd Divisional Artillery, in the War, 1914-1918.

by John Victor Macartney-Filgate

On November 10th came orders for the wagon-lines to join up with the guns and for all four batteries of the 162nd Brigade to remain in a position of readiness between Dourlers and Ecuelin. To the east all the bridges had been blown up by the retreating enemy, and pursuit by the batteries was utterly impossible. Moreover, it was known by all ranks that German plenipotentiaries had passed through our lines some days before to sue for terms, and the knowledge of that fact, combined with the utter rout of the enemy on the batteries' own front, prepared the men for the news which was shortly to come.

At 9.0 A.M. on Monday, November 11th, 1918, came the news that the war was over. In the Wattignies sector the order to break off hostilities did not come, as many accounts strove to describe it, in the midst of the battle, with raging gun-fire at one moment and our troops all shouting and waving their helmets at the next. The orders merely confirmed what already was known and anticipated, and although, when the message from G.H.Q. was read out to the assembled batteries, there was such cheering as comes from deep down in the heart, the occasion was far too great to be grasped in a single moment, and the gunners, as soon as the parade was over, set off to play a football match against the infantry! Such an attitude of mind must have seemed inexplicable to onlookers of other nationalities who could not understand the temperament of the British soldier, yet in a way the action was only natural. The Great Pursuit was over; nay, more, the war, the terrible nightmare of four years, was finished. How could the realisation of such a mighty event be grasped in a moment by men who for months and years had been hourly awaiting death, and now saw death pass from them?

CHAPTER XII.
FINALE.

And so the work is done, the record finished. In all humbleness the pen was taken up to chronicle the deeds of these men; in all humbleness it is laid down again with the closing of the story. In mere bald words it has been impossible to describe the wonderful gallantry, the grand determination and the final success over insuperable difficulties which typified the men of the 33rd Divisional Artillery. The true tale of their heroism, of their suffering and sacrifice can never really be understood by any save those whose privilege it was to be a witness thereof, but the story of the battles in which they took part may perhaps convey a small idea of the glory of their war record.

In December, 1915, they had their first experience of active service; in November, 1918, the last "Cease Firing" sounded and their work was accomplished. In all those ten hundred and fifty days of war the batteries were in the line for over eight hundred days, and these figures offer perhaps the most striking testimonial that can be given of their work. They had been at one time the extreme right-hand unit of the British line, on another occasion at Nieuport they guarded the extreme left. On April 9th, 1917, the guns of one of the brigades were the first of the whole line to follow up the enemy in every successive advance; in November, 1918, they were the first guns to cross the River Sambre. All along the British front they fought, at Nieuport, amid the grim horrors of Passchendaele and Ypres, at Kemmel, Givenchy, Cambrin and Arras; in the ruins of Hebuterne and the wilderness of Gommecourt, High Wood and Delville Wood; in the sea of mud round Bouchavesnes and in the Somme marshes. In the dark days of early 1918 they held with glorious obstinacy and determination the gate of the north; in that wonderful autumn of the same year it was the 33rd Divisional Artillery who took part in that mighty onslaught which flung the enemy back upon his frontiers and ultimately forced him to ask for peace. At this point it would have been gratifying to have been able to record in fuller detail the individual services of various officers and men who were especially connected with the doings of the brigades and batteries during the war, yet to attempt to do such a thing is well-nigh impossible. Each and all contributed their share, each and all played a noble part, and who is to judge as between man and man in the scorching fires of battle? Elsewhere has been described the great work done by Colonel Frederick Hall, whose sheer determination and personal endeavour got all the batteries out to France within eleven months of the date of their first recruitment—a record probably unequalled by any other New Army unit. Already mention has been made of Brig.-General C. F. Blane who took the brigades out to France and initiated them in the rigours of active service; of Lieut.-Colonel Rochfort-Boyd who led the 156th Brigade in the earlier days, and of Lieut.-Colonel O. M. Harris who commanded so gallantly the 162nd; of Colonel A. H. S. Goff and Lieut.-Colonel L. T. Goff, and of Brig.-General C. G. Stewart who succeeded General Blane as C.R.A. of the Division. Already we have spoken of Lieut.-Colonel Butler and Lieut.-Colonel Skinner, the two Brigade Commanders of the latter period of the war, and of Brig.-General G. H. W. Nicholson who controlled the batteries in the final victorious advance in 1918. Yet memory still teems with the names of many others, for who is there from out of all the batteries who is not also worthy of mention? Major Johnston and Major Bennett, both killed on the Somme; Captain Heap and Lieut. Tucker who died at Arras; Majors Studd, Barstow and Fetherston who were never away from the Divisional Artillery for long; Taylor, Sheeres and Heads of the 156th Brigade, Warr the "Mayor of King's Clere"; Benett-Stanford and van Straubenzee of the 162nd Brigade; Cory and Pavitt, Lutyens and Hill, Talbot and Bruce, Turner and Barnes; Gallie who died at Passchendaele, Colonel Johnson and Captain Rhodes of the D.A.C., both killed at Zillebeke. There is no end to the names of those who should be spoken of, since for every name mentioned at least three more immediately present themselves to the mind. One and all did their best, and better than that no man can do.

To follow the movements of the 33rd Divisional Artillery after the Armistice would indeed seem an anti-climax, and yet, just as the story has been told of its first formation, the gradual evolving of a unit of artillery from the original raw mass, so must the final days be recorded until the date when the men cast from them the apparel of war and returned to civilian life once more, men who had for ever deserved from their country the full rights of Citizenship. From November 11th until the 14th the batteries remained in the areas they had been occupying when hostilities ceased, and on the 14th they turned their faces towards the west and began to retrace their steps over the scenes of the late fighting. It was not decreed that they should take part in the occupation of Germany, and accordingly they marched back through Forest, Bertry and Clary to billets in Villers Outreaux (156th) and Lesdain (162nd). Here they remained until December 6th and here, or rather at Crevecoeur near by, was held on November 22nd a thanksgiving service at which officers and men were decorated for gallantry in the fighting now past and done with; here also the men were visited by His Majesty the King who had come over to France to thank in person his victorious troops, and on December 6th began the six-day march to the last rest billets which the men were to occupy in France.

Two routes were followed, one by each brigade, and, as mile after mile rolled by, the batteries turned their backs once and for all upon ground which for them held memories that can never be effaced. Through Tincourt and Manancourt, past Riencourt and Méaulte where they had assembled before moving into the Somme battle of 1916, through Blangy-Tronville and Pont Noyelles, Le Mesge and Picquigny, on beyond Selincourt and St. Maulvis they marched until at last they reached their permanent billets around Brocourt-Liomer, Inval Boiron and Hornoy. Here they stopped and here, for many weeks, they passed the time in educational schemes, in physical training and recreation until such time as authority should permit of their return to civil life once more.

All through the war demobilisation, a return to England, to Peace with no threat of war hanging over their heads, had seemed to these men a wonderful dream which could never come true by any possibility, which was so far removed from the order of things as to be something quite intangible and incredible. It seemed that the war must still be in progress beyond the eastern horizon, that soon they must be flung into the scorching fires of battle again, that this talk of a return to England for ever was fantastic, imaginary—a trick of their brains. Yet even this most wonderful of events did actually occur; in March, 1919, all units were reduced to "Cadre A," the surplus men being sent to the Base for demobilisation, in May a further 25 per cent. of these cadres was dispatched home, and in the second week of June only an equipment guard remained with each battery.

In July these last remnants of the 33rd Divisional Artillery departed from the land of France which owed to them so much. All through the first week of the month the skeletons of the batteries entrained and moved to Havre, and the 9th found them in that port waiting for a ship to carry them home. On Thursday, the 10th, the 156th Brigade embarked for Southampton, on the 12th and 17th the D.A.C. followed, and on Sunday July 27th, 1919, the 162nd Brigade, last remaining unit of the 33rd Divisional Artillery, watched the quays and houses of Havre glide slowly by as the ship gathered way and headed for the coast of England.

Thus the Brigades left France and set foot in England again, their work accomplished, the battle won. Camberwell turned out and gave right royal welcome to its Gunners when, a few days later, they marched as victors through the crowded streets; and well might it be so, for they had returned with such glory as can hardly be believed of mortal man. Several days did the people spend in rejoicing and in welcoming their citizen-soldiers home once more, days in which the pangs and miseries of those dark times of watching and waiting were put aside and forgotten. Yet in all those festivities, beneath all the laughter and song of that week there was for ever present the divine and sacred memory of those whose good fortune it had not been to return from the battle, of those many hundreds who had died in the service of the guns of the 33rd Division and who lay in soldiers' graves along the length and breadth of the far-flung battle line. Their example, their sacrifice must stand for all time as a memorial and a constant reminder to those who come after of the price which has been paid that they may live, and there will ever remain to those who mourn the loss of many whose places can never be filled, the proud memory of their heroism and endurance, the glad knowledge of a man's part nobly played.