The assurance seemed to contradict the experience of gunners at the front. In his Seventh Despatch of June 15th, 1915, Sir John French affirmed quite clearly that,
‘Throughout the whole period since the first break of the line on the night of April 22nd, all the troops in this area had been constantly subjected to violent artillery bombardment from a large mass of guns with an unlimited supply of ammunition. It proved impossible, whilst under so vastly superior a fire of artillery, to dig efficient trenches, or properly to re-organize the line.’
Indeed, on the very night when Mr. Asquith was speaking at Newcastle, a Territorial Force Officer (2/Lieutenant Geoffrey Woolley, of the 9th London Regiment) was earning his Victoria Cross for defending a position on Hill 60 against overwhelming enemy cannonade.
Hill 60, which was not a hill at all, but merely a hummock of railway earthwork, was in any case not visible from the Tyne, but the general disquietude at home at the time of the formation of the Coalition Cabinet reflected accurately enough the conditions which marked the place and time of General Baldock’s arrival in France, with which we are immediately concerned. One word more will complete this impression:
‘I much regret,’ wrote Sir John French in the same Despatch, ‘that during the period under report the fighting has been characterized on the enemy’s side by a cynical and barbarous disregard of the well-known usages of civilized war and a flagrant defiance of the Hague Convention. All the scientific resources of Germany have, apparently, been brought into play to produce a gas of so virulent and poisonous a nature that any human being brought into contact with it is first paralysed and then meets with a lingering and agonizing death.’
The first such gas attack was launched at Ypres, on Thursday, April 22nd. On the previous Thursday night (the 15th), we left a West Yorkshire Battalion spending its first night in France at a Rest Camp, near Boulogne.
So the 49th went to the war on the eve of the Second Battle of Ypres, at a time of an outrage of gas and a shortage of shells.
They went in eighty-four trains and on five days between April 12th and 16th, embarking at Southampton Docks, Avonmouth and Folkestone for Havre, Rouen and Boulogne respectively, and they joined the 4th Corps of the 1st Army, commanded by Lieut.-General Sir Henry Rawlinson. Corps Headquarters were posted at Merville, and there the Divisional Commander reported with five of his Staff Officers, and established, as we saw[28], Divisional Headquarters in the mayor’s house, 40 rue des Capucines. On April 18th, the following message was received from His Majesty the King:
‘I much regret not to have been able to inspect the Division under your Command before its departure to the Front. Please convey to all ranks my best wishes for success, and tell them that I shall follow with pride the progress of the West Riding Division.’