The First Seven Divisions / Being a Detailed Account of the Fighting from Mons to Ypres

by Lord Ernest Hamilton

On the same night, i.e., the night of October 31st, Wytschate shared the fate of Messines.

The 4th C.B. had succeeded in holding this place throughout the day, but during the course of the night they found themselves very hard pressed, and were gradually forced back. In this emergency the Northumberland Fusiliers and Lincolns were ordered up to the support of the cavalry.

These two 9th Brigade battalions had arrived at Kemmel during the afternoon, having marched that day from Estaires, a distance of some twelve miles. They were in billets, resting after their hard day's work, when the message arrived, about one o'clock in the morning, to the effect that they were required. Within an hour from the receipt of the message both battalions were on the road, the Lincolns being the first to arrive on the scene of action. The country was totally unknown to the newcomers, but a cavalry sergeant was met who volunteered to lead them to the position occupied by the enemy. Under his guidance they entered the cutting through which the light railway, which runs along the edge of the road from Kemmel to Wytschate, passes just before it reaches the town. Here they became aware of a number of men moving in their direction, who called out in excellent English and Hindustani that they were British cavalry and Indians. Before the actual identity of these men could, in the gloom of the night, be ascertained for certain, the newcomers opened fire, both from the end of the cutting and from the sides; and the Lincolns, who were closely packed in the narrow defile, fell in numbers before they could be extricated. After getting clear, they met the Northumberland Fusiliers advancing from the direction of Kemmel, and together the two battalions formed up, and with great gallantry once more attacked the entrance to the town. The inequality in numbers, however, was too great. The Germans were literally swarming in the town, and it was clear that General Shaw's two battalions had been set to an impossible task. They retired to the outskirts of the town, where they held on till daylight, lying in the open fields. When dawn broke the London Scottish could be seen on their right, but no troops on their left. The unpleasantness of the situation was not in any way relieved by a heavy fire which our own artillery now opened upon the two battalions, under the mistaken impression that they were Germans. Many men were killed and wounded by this fire. In conformity with the general plan of retiring to the Wulverghem road, the Lincolns and Northumberland Fusiliers were now withdrawn, and Wytschate went the way of Messines. The Lincolns lost 400 men and all but 4 officers during this short night attack. Col. W. E. Smith was specially commended for the great personal courage which he showed during the attack, and for the skill with which he ultimately withdrew his regiment. Lieut. Blackwood was awarded the D.S.O. for very gallantly continuing to lead the attack after every officer senior to himself had fallen. The losses of the Northumberland Fusiliers were not quite so heavy, but were still very severe, especially in officers.

The dismounted cavalry line now retired to the Wulverghem to Kemmel road, where they entrenched themselves, but their numbers were quite inadequate for the frontage to be held. Pending the arrival of the French, Sir Horace was ordered by the C. in C. to send up to their assistance every available man from the 2nd A.C., which was recouping at Pradelles. The Dorsets and Worcesters were accordingly sent to Neuve Eglise, and the remaining seven and a half battalions—all skeletons—were sent up to east of Bailleul under General Morland. Such was the position on November 1st.

On this day the anxiously awaited 16th French Army began to arrive, the troops being railed up at the rate of eighty train loads a day, and at 11 a.m. on the 2nd, both Messines and Wytschate were retaken by the French with some assistance from our cavalry. Some of the 12th Lancers, led by 2nd Lieut. Williams, of the Scots Greys, made a very brilliant bayonet charge during the recapture of the latter town. The above-mentioned officer was officially reported to have himself killed eleven Germans on this occasion, and was awarded the D.S.O.

The French now officially took over from us the line from Messines on the south to the canal on the north. It is interesting to note that, between October 27th and November 11th, some 200,000 French infantry, twenty regiments of cavalry and sixty pieces of heavy artillery reached Ypres, Poperinghe, and Bailleul. It is difficult to conceive of any more eloquent tribute to the astonishing performance of the thin little khaki ribbon, which had for a fortnight wound round Ypres, than the fact that this great force was found none too strong to hold one fourth of the front over which our handful of men had so far successfully resisted all the attempts of the enemy to break through. In calling attention to these figures, it is not intended in any sense to draw invidious comparisons between the relative merits of the French and British soldier, or even to suggest that the British troops accomplished a task of which the French would have been incapable. It is generally admitted by all our commanders at the front that the Frenchman as a fighter is unsurpassed, though his methods of fighting are not the same as ours; and, allowing for the fact that, in cases where the entire manhood of a nation fights, the average of individual excellence must obviously be lower than when only a select body of volunteers is engaged, for explanatory purposes with regard to the disposition of troops, one may safely reckon a French and British regiment as being of equal fighting value.

All that is aimed at, then, is to try and bring to the mind of the reader, by a comparison of figures, some grasp of the immensity of the performance of our troops east and south of Ypres, during the desperate efforts of the enemy to break through in the last fortnight of October and the first fortnight of November. It is worthy of note, too, that in spite of the huge reinforcements brought up, no material advance was made on the position taken over from us on November 1st. It is true that on the day following, the newly-arrived French troops re-took Wytschate and Messines, from which we had been driven, but they were unable to hold those places, and the line along which they had found us facing the enemy was never perceptibly advanced. The new line at the beginning of November, held jointly by the French troops and British cavalry, ran—roughly speaking—from Klein Zillebeke to Ploegsteert, with a concave face which skirted Hollebeke, Wytschate, and Messines. Our 1st Cavalry Division, supported by some units from the 2nd A.C., was withdrawn to Wulverghem, and the 2nd Cavalry Division went into reserve at Bailleul. Neuve Eglise became our advanced base for that part of the line, and was very quickly packed with British troops.

We have now taken a permanent farewell, as far as these pages are concerned, of all occurrences south of the canal at Hollebeke. We have seen the 2nd A.C. relieved by the Indians, and the Cavalry Corps relieved by the French, and, with this change of guardianship, we have seen two of the most important points in the line of defence pass out of the keeping of the original Expeditionary Force.

Of that force the 1st A.C. alone (with the 7th Division, which it had absorbed) still remained unrelieved east and south-east of Ypres. The force, however, which now stood between the enemy and the possession of Ypres, had by this time lost many of its distinctive characteristics. The actual battalion units had become in most cases reduced to a mere shadow of their original strength. The 7th Division had become part of the 1st A.C., and several battalions of the 2nd A.C. were acting in concert with this already mixed corps. Many of the brigades had been broken up from their original constituents, and the fragments consolidated into new and temporary brigades. Sir Horace was for the moment an A.C. commander without an A.C., the remnants of his six heroic brigades being scattered here and there along the whole front.

The first, and perhaps the most interesting, because the most strenuous, epoch in the war—as far as it concerned the British Force—was nearly closed; but not quite. Before that can be written of it, some great deeds had yet to be done, and were done. The Germans were still making continuous and determined efforts to break through to Ypres by way of Klein Zillebeke, and to that particular zone of the fighting our attention can henceforth be confined.