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

by Lord Ernest Hamilton

On November 17th we come to the last serious attempt of the enemy, during the 1914 campaign, to break through to Calais by way of Ypres. This final effort can be dismissed in a few words. It was made south of the Menin road by the XV. German Army Corps, and it took the form of two infantry attacks, one at 1 p.m. and another at 4 p.m.; and it failed utterly, the Germans leaving thousands of dead and wounded on the ground just in front of our trenches, to which they had been allowed to approach quite close.

The signal failure of this last spasmodic effort, and the subsequent passivity of the enemy, points with some significance to the conclusion that the position to which we had now been driven back along the Zillebeke—Zonnebeke ridge was impregnable, and was recognized as such by the enemy.

The 6th C.B. and the 2nd Grenadiers were the most prominent figures in this victory of November 17th. In the course of the second attack the 10th Hussars and 3rd Dragoon Guards allowed the enemy to come within a few yards of their trenches before they opened fire and mowed them down in masses. The 10th Hussars, however, again suffered somewhat severely in officers, the Hon. A. Annesley, Captain Peto, and Lieut. Drake being killed. The newly-arrived North Somerset Yeomanry, under Col. Glyn, behaved with the coolness and steadiness of veterans, and contributed in no small degree to the repulse of the enemy's second attack.

The 2nd Grenadiers received the highest praise from Lord Cavan for their part in this day's fighting. This battalion had now lost 30 officers and 1,300 men since the beginning of the campaign, and on the following day it was sent back into reserve to recoup and reorganize.

EPITAPH

With the German failure of November 17th the first chapter in the Great War may be considered closed. The desperate and all but uninterrupted fighting which, for three months, followed the defence of the Mons canal, was succeeded by a long lull, during which both sides were busily engaged fighting a common foe. The winter of 1914 proved the wettest in the memory of man, and ague, rheumatism, frost-bite, gangrene and tetanus filled the hospitals with little less regularity than had the shot and shell of the autumn. Then came the great battle of Neuve Chapelle, and in another part of the world the grim struggles of the Dardanelles. These are another story, and some day this will be told; but great as may have been—and undoubtedly has been—the glory won in other fields, nothing can ever surpass, as a story of simple, sublime pluck, the history of the first three months of England's participation in the Great War. The word "pluck" is used with intention, for it conveys, perhaps, better than any other word a sense of that indomitable spirit which is superior to every rub of adverse fortune. There were no War Correspondents present with the First Expeditionary Force. There was no wrapping of specially favoured deeds in tinsel for the eyes of a cheap gallery. Even if the wrappers had been present, the general standard was too high for invidious selection. A mole-hill stands out on a plain, but makes no show in the uplands. V.C.'s, it is true, were won; but for every one given a hundred were earned. Military honours are the fruit of recommendation; but when Generals, Colonels, Company Officers and Sergeants are no more, the deed must be its own record; there is none left to recommend.

The grandeur of the doings of those First Seven Divisions lies, it may well be, in their immunity from the play of a cheap flashlight—a flashlight which too often distorts the perspective, and so illuminates the wrong spot. There is a gospel in the very reticence of the records of the regiments concerned—in the dignity with which, without any blare of trumpets, they tell of the daily answer to the call of a duty which balanced them ceaselessly on the edge of eternity. But it is always told as of a simple response to the call of duty, and not as a thing to be waved in the faces of an audience.

But, though unflattered and unsung, those early deeds in France and Flanders can boast an epitaph which tells no lies, and which, in its simple tragedy, is more eloquent than a volume of strained panegyrics.

The register of "missing" is an enigma; it may mean many things. But the register of killed and wounded is no enigma. It tells, in the simplest terms, a tale of death and mutilation faced and found at the call of duty. Let us leave it at that.