Because there was not great fighting with infantry yesterday, it must not be thought that our men had an easy time. The enemy was quick to put down his barrage, and although it was not anything like our annihilating fire, it was bad enough, as any shell-fire is. I met some young Scots of the Gordons and Camerons to-day, who had been through an episode of a thrilling kind, which was horrible while it lasted. When the signal for attack came yesterday, they were a little mad, like some of their comrades, because they said they saw the Germans running away on the other side of our wall of shells. Without waiting for the barrage to creep forward, these Scots ran forward right among our own shells, and, by some miracle, many of them escaped being hit, and went forward in pursuit. A party of about a hundred went right beyond their goal and found themselves isolated and out of touch with the main body. They were heavily shelled and attacked by bombing parties. They sent runners back asking for reinforcements, but none came because of their far-flung position. They tried to signal for an artillery barrage to protect them, but this call was not seen. They ran out of ammunition, and saw that death was coming close to them. It touched some men with great chunks of hot shell, and they fell dead in their shell-craters. Other men were buried by the bursts of 5·9's. These boys of the 8/10th Gordons were proud. They did not want to retire, though they knew they had gone too far, but at last, when all their officers had been killed but one, the order was given to this little remnant of men to save their lives and get back if they could. They went back through heavy fire, and I talked with two of them this morning, happy to find themselves alive and bright-eyed fellows still. It is extraordinary what escapes many of them have had. A group of them in the farthest line of advance lay down in craters under a rapid sweep of machine-gun fire from a redoubt in front of them. They watched over the edge of their craters how two Tanks came up, heaving and lurching over the tossed earth, until they were within gun-range of the redoubt. Then they opened fire. But the enemy's gunners had seen them, and tried to get them with direct hits. Most of the shells fell short all around those English lads hiding in the craters. Some of these were buried and some killed. But the others held on to their ground, which is still in our hands.
The stretcher-bearers were magnificent, and worked all day and night searching out the wounded and carrying them back under fire. Many of the German prisoners gladly lent a hand in this work on their way back. At the dressing-stations to-day I saw them giving pickaback to men—ours—who were wounded about the legs and feet. They prefer this work to fighting.
After yesterday's battle our line includes the whole of the Pilkem Ridge and the ground in the valley beyond to the line of the Steenbeek river, and southwards in a curve that slices off the old Ypres salient. It has been a heavy blow to the enemy. Now it is all rain and mud and blood and beastliness.
IV
PILL-BOXES AND MACHINE-GUNS
August 3
The weather is still frightful. It is difficult to believe that we are in August. Rather it is like the foulest weather of a Flemish winter, and all the conditions which we knew through so many dreary months during three winters of war up here in the Ypres salient are with us again. The fields are quagmires, and in shell-crater land, which is miles deep round Ypres, the pits have filled with water. The woods loom vaguely through a wet mist, and road traffic labours through rivers of slime. It is hard luck for our fighting men. But in spite of repeated efforts the enemy has not succeeded in his counter-attacks, after our line withdrew somewhat at the end of the first day south and south-east of St.-Julien. In my first accounts of the battle I did not give full measure to the hardness of the fighting in which some of our troops were engaged, nor to the stubbornness of the enemy's resistance. It is now certain that, whereas many of the German infantry, terror-stricken by our bombardment, surrendered easily enough, others made good use of strong defences not annihilated by our fire, and put up a desperate defence. Fresh troops, like the 221st Division, were flung in by the German command in the afternoon of the first day and made repeated attacks, under cover of the mist, against our men, who were tired after twenty-four hours in the zone of fire, who in some sectors had suffered heavily, but who fought still with a courage which defied defeat. A commanding officer of a Lancashire battalion went to meet some of his men coming back yesterday. They were wet and caked with mud and unshaven and dead-beat, and they had lost many comrades, but they had the spirit to pull themselves up and smile with a light in their eyes when the commanding officer said he was proud of them, because they had done all that men could, and one of them called out cheerily, "When shall we go on again, sir?" An officer who was left last out of his battalion to hold out in an advanced position said to the padre, who has just visited him in hospital, "I hope the General was not disappointed with us." The General, I am sure, was not disappointed with these men of the 55th Division. No one could think of them without enthusiasm and tenderness, marvelling at their spirit and at the fight they made in tragic hours. Because it was a tragedy to them that after gaining ground they had been asked to take, and not easily nor without losses, they should have to fall back and fight severe rear-guard actions to cover a necessary withdrawal.
These Lancashire men, with many men of the Liverpool battalions, had to attack from Wieltje through successive systems of trenches. This ground is just to the right of St.-Julien and to the left of Frezenberg, below the Gravenstafel Spur, Zonnebeke, and Langemarck. The way lay past a number of German strong points—Beck House, Plum Farm, Pound Farm, and Square Farm—once small farmsteads, long blown to bits, but fortified by concrete strongholds with walls of concrete two yards thick. Our gun-fire wrecked all the ground about them and toppled over a few of these places, but left a number untouched, and that was the cause of the trouble. Each one had to be taken by a separate action led by our young platoon commanders, and it was a costly series of small engagements—costly to officers, especially, as always happens at such times. These young subalterns of ours handled their men not only gallantly, but skilfully, and the men followed their lead with cunning as well as pluck, and got round the concrete works by rifle-fire and bombing until they could rush them at close quarters. In this way two strongly held farms were taken, while from the right the Lancashire men were swept by enfilade fire from a third farm until its garrison was routed out and 160 of them captured. There was hard fighting farther on for a line of trenches where some of the wire was still uncut, with machine-gun fire rattling from the left flank.
But the fiercest fighting came after that against another series of those concrete forts, among them the Pommern Redoubt, where separate actions had again to be made by little groups of men under platoon commanders. The enemy's machine-gunners served their weapons to the last. In this ground, too were five batteries of German field-guns, who fired upon our men until they were within 500 yards. The gunners had to be shot down, and our men streamed past the guns in perfect order just as they had rehearsed the attack beforehand, sending back reports, carrying through the whole operation as though on a field-day behind the lines. Yet by that time their strength had been ebbing away, and many of them had fallen. They reached the extreme limit of their advance with outposts at two more fortified farms—Wurst and Aviatik Farms—from which two days later a delayed report came back from the last remaining officer of the party that he had reached this high ground in front of Wurst Farm, and that his battalion was badly depleted. That was an heroic little message, but a few hours later that ground was no longer in our hands. The troops of the 39th Division on the left of the Lancashire men had found some trouble with uncut wire, and the enemy developed a strong counter-attack from the north, taking advantage of that exposed flank. They prepared for attack by a heavy artillery barrage, controlled by low-flying aeroplanes and co-operating with the infantry. At the same time another counter-attack came down from the high ground on the right to strike between the Lancashire men of the 55th Division and the Scottish troops of the 15th on their right. It was decided to withdraw to a better defensive line, and 160 Lancashire Fusiliers got into Schuler Farm, and held it against heavy odds in order to cover this movement. They stayed there, using machine-guns and rifles until only thirty of them were left standing, and all around them were dead and dying. Their work was done, for they had held out long enough to protect the withdrawing lines, and the thirty survivors decided to fight their way back through an enemy fast closing in upon them. So they left the farm, and of the thirty ten reached the new line. Since then the enemy has made repeated attacks from the high ground on the right, and especially against the Pommern Redoubt, but every time he has been cut up by the fire of our guns and rifles. I hear that this afternoon he is again massing for another attempt, according to the orders given to the German troops that they must get back all the ground they have lost, and at all costs, by August 3, which is to-day.