These Ypres woods have all the appearance of an English copse wood, that is to say, they are formed of some six years' growth of hazel and ash, with standard oaks dotted about here and there. Incidentally they were at this time full of pheasants, destined to be shot in normal times by the Lords of the Châteaux of Hooge, Gheluvelt and Heronhage. Precisely in the manner of a line of beaters driving game, the Grenadiers now pushed through the thick undergrowth, and while the pheasants rose before the advancing line, so did the Germans run. By 4.30 the wood was cleared and the morning line restored. The Northamptons thereupon re-occupied their trenches, but they were not destined to be left there in peace. About six in the evening the Germans again attacked the same part of the line, this time advancing with discordant yells, thinking, no doubt, to repeat their performance of the morning. If so, the event must have come to them as something of a surprise, for the Northamptons—profiting possibly by their previous experience—coolly waited till the attacking party was within fifty yards of the trenches, and then mowed them down. Not a German reached the trenches, and over 200 dead were left on the ground.
At night the R. Sussex were brought back into reserve and the remnant of the Gordons went back to the 20th Brigade, which brigade was at the time in the grounds of the Hooge Château. In addition to their previous losses, the Gordons had during the day lost their C.O., Major Craufurd, who was wounded in the early morning. The position of Lord Cavan's command was then, as follows: the Northamptons on the left, in touch with the R. Welsh Fusiliers in the 7th Division; then the Oxfordshire Light Infantry and the 2nd Grenadiers, who had become very much mixed up, and on the right the Irish Guards. Beyond were the French Territorials.
With the fall of night on the 2nd of November the acuteness of the five days' crisis may be said to have passed. The all-highest War Lord had come and gone; the supreme effort of the enemy to break through to Ypres had been made, and had failed; the British force had come out of the ordeal reduced to a shadow, and battered out of recognition, but unconquered. The Kaiser's forces had fallen back sullen and—for the time being—disheartened, realizing at last the hopelessness of the task they had been set to accomplish. Their losses had been prodigious, and though their repeated attacks had—at great sacrifice—forced back the face of the Ypres salient some two miles, the only military effect resulting therefrom was that the British force was at last in occupation of the true line of defence dictated by military prudence and the natural features of the country. From this line, that is to say, the ridge some 150 feet in height which runs from the corner of the canal at Hollebeke to Zonnebeke, they were never afterwards dislodged.
The 3rd, 4th and 5th were in the main uneventful. November 5th was chiefly memorable in this year, not for anti-Popish demonstrations, but as the day on which the 7th Division—after three weeks' incessant fighting—was temporarily relieved. During the three weeks in question it had lost 356 officers out of a full complement of 400, and 9,664 rank and file out of a total of 12,000. Battalions had been reduced to the dimensions of platoons, and had, in some cases, lost every combatant officer.
The 7th Division's performance, during its three weeks east of Ypres, will go down to history as one of the most remarkable achievements in the records of war. Many other units had, by the second half of November, lost as heavily in officers and men as had the twelve battalions of the 7th Division—in one or two cases even more heavily; but the losses of these had been distributed over three months; those of the 7th Division were concentrated into three weeks. They had been suddenly pitchforked into a position of the most supreme responsibility. They found themselves more by chance than by design standing in the road along which the War Lord had elected to make his most determined efforts to reach Calais. These efforts came as a succession of hammer-blows, which gave the defending force neither rest nor respite, and to cope with which their numbers were ludicrously insufficient. Their failure, however, would have spelt disaster to the cause of the Allies, and—realizing this—they actually achieved the impossible. There is something particularly stirring in the thought of this small force beaten back step by step, as fresh and fresh troops were hurled upon it day after day, and yet never turning its back to the foe, never beaten, never despondent, and never for a moment failing in the trust which had been imposed upon it. The most remarkable feature about the 7th Division was that it had no weak spot in its composition. Each one of its twelve battalions lived up in every particular to the high standard of duty and efficiency which the Division set itself from the beginning. The troops were mostly veterans from abroad, who had been summoned back from foreign service too late to take part in the earlier stages of the war, and they may therefore in a sense be considered as picked troops.[ [12]
The 7th and 15th Brigades from the 2nd A.C., who relieved the 7th Division, were themselves sadly thinned in numbers. The 7th Brigade, which took the place of the 20th Brigade, had, in fact, lost seventy-four per cent. of its numbers during the fighting round La Bassée, and was in almost as bad a plight as the 20th Brigade, which it relieved. The 15th Brigade, which replaced the 22nd, was rather stronger, having received drafts from home.
The 20th Brigade went back to Locre, and the 22nd to Bailleul. The 21st—which perhaps had suffered rather the least of the three—remained for the time being in the trenches.
At night the 6th C.B. took over the trenches at Heronhage Château from the 3rd Brigade, who had been having a rough time during the preceding days, and these went back into reserve.
ZWARTELEN