August 8
One of the most bitter blows to Germany, if she has heard the news, must be the destruction of the famous regiment of "Maikaefer," or Cockchafers, by our Welsh troops. The Kaiser called them his brave Coburgers. In Germany the very children sang in the streets about them. And proud of their own exploits, they had their own soldier poets who wrote songs about the regiment, to which they marched through Belgium and France and Galicia. I saw one of these songs yesterday, picked up on the battlefield near Pilkem. It was written by one Paul Zimmermann of theirs, and was printed in a leaflet sold at ten pfennigs (a penny). It tells how the Cockchafers come out in the spring and how the children sing when they come. They are ready for battle then, wherever it may be. The call comes for them wherever there is the hardest fighting, so the Cockchafers swarmed through Belgium, and taught the French a lesson, and pressed after the wicked English, who—so the lying legend goes—used dumdum bullets, and swept back the Russians through Galicia. Old Hindenburg calls for them every time when there are brave deeds to be done. I have copied out two verses for those who read German:
Der Mai der bringt uns Sonnenschein,
Er bringt uns Bluhtenpracht;
Der Mai der bringt uns Kaeferlein
Viel tausend über Nacht;
Und von der Kinderlippen klingts:
"Maikaefer, fliege, flieg"
Und durch den Frühlingesjubel dringts:
"Dein Vater ist im Krieg."
Uns Garde Fusiliere nennt
Maikaefer jeder Mund,
Weil unser stolzes Regiment
Im Mai stets fertig stand.
Well, old Hindenburg will call in vain now for his Cockchafers, the Guard Fusilier Regiment of the 3rd Guards Division, for nearly six hundred of them are in our hands and others lie dead upon the ground near Pilkem. They had relieved the 100th Infantry Reserve Regiment on the night of July 29, and lay three battalions deep in their trench systems across the Yser Canal north-east of Boesinghe, scattered thinly in the shell-craters which were all that was left of the trenches in the front lines, more densely massed in the support lines, and defending a number of concrete emplacements and dug-outs behind. The 9th Grenadier Regiment and a battalion of the Lehr Regiment reinforced the Cockchafers and lay out in the open behind the Langemarck-Gheluvelt line, and in the support lines a battalion of the Lehr of the 3rd Guards Division had already relieved a regiment of the 392nd Infantry Reserve Regiment. Some sections of the 3rd Battalion of the 9th Grenadier Regiment had been sent forward from Langemarck to act as sniping posts, and two special machine-gun detachments were also pushed up to check our assault. They were enough to defend this part of the Pilkem Ridge, and the ground itself was in their favour as our men lay in the hollow with their backs to the Yser Canal, across which all their supports and supplies had to pass.
What was in the favour of the Welsh was that they knew the ground in front of them in every detail from air photographs and from night and day raids, having lived in front of it for several months, digging and tunnelling so as to get cover from ceaseless fire, and storing up a great desire to get even with the enemy for all they had suffered. They had suffered great hardships and great perils, intensified before the battle because of violent shelling by high explosives and gas-shells, so that when the hour for attack came they had been hard tried already. It made no difference to the pace and order of their assault. Our bombardment had been overwhelming, and the heavy barrage which signalled the assault was, according to all these Welshmen, perfect. They followed it very closely, so closely that they were on and over the Cockchafers before they could organize any kind of defence. Many of the enemy's machine-guns had been smashed and buried. Those still intact were never brought into action, as their gunners had no time to get out of the concrete shelters in which they were huddled to escape from the annihilating fire.
It was in these places that most of the prisoners were taken—there and in a big trench, ten feet wide and twelve deep, on the outskirts of Pilkem village, where there is no village at all. The Cockchafers came out dazed, and gave themselves up mostly without a show of fighting. In some of their concrete shelters, like those at Mackensen Farm—don't imagine any buildings there—and Gallwitz Farm and Boche House and Zouave House, there were stores of ammunition, with many shells and trench-mortars.
So the Welsh went on in waves, sending back the prisoners on their way, through Pilkem to the high ground by the iron cross beyond, and then down the slopes to the Steenbeek stream. On the left were the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who took the ground of Pilkem itself. On the right were men of the Welsh Regiment. In the ground beyond Pilkem they found the regimental headquarters in finely built dug-outs, but the staff had fled to save their skins. There was another big dug-out near by used by the enemy as a dressing-station. It had room enough for a hundred men. There were fifty men. The Welsh swarmed round it—thirty wounded and twenty unwounded Germans. The doctor in charge was a good fellow, and, after surrendering his own men, attended to some of the wounded Welsh. Two machine-guns and sixteen prisoners were taken out of a place called Jolie Farm, and thirty prisoners out of Rudolf Farm—concrete kennels in a chaos of craters—and three officers and forty-seven men came out of the ruins of a house somewhere near the Iron Cross. All the Welsh troops behaved with great courage, and a special word is due to the runners, who carried messages back under fire, and to the stretcher-bearers, who rescued the wounded utterly regardless of their own risks. Afterwards the mule drivers and leaders were splendid, bringing up supplies under heavy barrage fire. Wales did well that day, and the Welsh miners, who had already proved themselves as great diggers and great tunnellers and very brave men, showed themselves cool and fearless in the assault.
August 6
I am now able to mention more of the troops whose adventures I have described in previous dispatches, in addition to the Guards and the Welsh, who in a great assault, hardly checked by the enemy, captured the heights of Pilkem and went down the slopes beyond to the Steenbeek stream.