August 19
The enemy, after denying our taking of Langemarck, now admit their loss of it. Our prisoners who were brought through the place had the German wireless read out to them and were abashed by the untruth of the message. It was a German sergeant-major who put up the only excuse. He laughed and said: "In this war it is only those who win who can afford to tell the official truth. A reverse is always covered by a lie."
We are well beyond Langemarck, and to-day I went among the men who got there first—the 20th Division—fighting their way past machine-gun blockhouses, which is the new system of German defence, past the deadly machine-gun fire that came out of them, and through to the village and its surrounding swamps. These young officers, who have lost many of their comrades, and these men of theirs belonging to light-infantry battalions, were sleeping and resting in their tents behind the fighting-lines, and cleaning themselves up after days in wet mud and the filth of the battlefield. But they were keen to tell the tale of their adventures, and if I could put them down just as they were told, one man adding to another man's story, the excitement of remembrance rousing them from their weariness, and queer grim laughter breaking out when they spoke of their greatest dangers, it would be a strange narrative. They were men who had escaped death by prodigious chance, and officers and men greeted each other joyfully and with a splendid spirit of comradeship as brothers-in-arms who were glad to see each other alive and remembered how they had stuck it together in the worst hours. They belonged to the Somerset Light Infantry of the 20th Division, and they came from old towns like Bridgwater and Crewkerne and Yeovil, which seem a million miles away from such scenes of war. One young officer of the Somersets knew most of what had happened, and his own adventures that day would fill a book if told in detail. He took me into his tent and showed me how his kit had been pierced by bullets and torn by the blast of shell-fire, and he marvelled that he had no more than a hurt hand cut against the teeth of a German sniper and a body bruised all over, but with a whole skin. "A bit of luck," he said. This young man must have been born under a lucky star, for the things he went through that day would have frightened a cat relying on nine lives and taking a hundred chances on the score of them.
On the way up to Langemarck to the left of that solid blockhouse called Au Bon Gîte, where the enemy held out behind iron doors while our troops went past them swept by machine-gun fire, there were many German snipers lying about in shell-holes. They were very brave men, put out into these holes to check our advance, and knowing that they were bound to die, because that is the almost certain fate of snipers on such ground. They lay doggo, pretending to be corpses when any of our men were near enough to see, but using their rifles with deadly aim when they had any elbow-room. I heard that one man killed four of our officers, and another killed fourteen men and wounded eleven before he was shot through the head. One of these men well behind our advancing waves lay very still, close to the young officer of the Somersets of whom I spoke, and who saw the fellow move and raise his rifle. He pounced on him and struck him across the face with his bare fist and tore his hand open against the man's teeth. They were bad teeth, and the hand is now festering. Another sniper gave himself away, and the young officer shot him through the head with a revolver, which was very busy all that day. I have already told how these light-infantry men had to struggle through bogs around Langemarck, how they fell into shell-holes full of water, and how, under great fire, they made their way into the place where Langemarck village had once been and attacked the dug-outs and blockhouses there. Some of the strangest episodes happened between the village and a point called the Streiboom. There were two more blockhouses on the Langemarck road girdled by machine-gun fire. The first one was rushed by twenty men, led by this young officer I have been telling about, and bombed until thirty Germans tumbled out and surrendered. But beyond was the other blockhouse, and upon this the officer of the Somersets advanced with only six men. A machine-gun was firing from the right of it, and it was a strong place of concrete with no open door. The seven Somersets went straight for it, and the officer flung two bombs through the loopholes, but they did not seem to take effect. Then he hurled two more bombs, which were his last, at the iron door, but they did not burst. With his bare fists he beat at the door and shouted out, "Come out, you blighters, come out." Presently, to his surprise, they came out, not two or three, nor six or seven, but forty-two stout and hefty men. Among them was an English soldier badly wounded, who had been taken prisoner three days before. He was a Yorkshireman, who had lain among the enemy, well treated, but dying. The Germans could not send him behind their lines because of our bombardment, which had cut off their supplies, so that they were four days hungry when they surrendered. In another dug-out was another Yorkshireman, and he is now safe and well behind our own lines.
There were eight machine-guns in that last blockhouse, one of which I saw to-day, and two of them, fitted up with new springs, were used against the enemy. One of them was worked on a hydraulic lift, so that it could be got into action very quickly from its underground place. In the blockhouse from which the forty-two had been taken by this small body of Somersets was a great store of 5·9 shells. All told this little group of men took 100 prisoners that day, and their officer himself is said to have killed sixteen Germans and to have wounded many more. After the blockhouse affair he chased a number of the enemy running down the Langemarck road, and, using his revolver in the cowboy fashion, dropping his wrist from the shoulder, he plugged them as he ran. After that he went on and held an exposed advanced post with a mixed lot of Somersets and "Koylies" (King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry) and Rifle Brigade men. They had next to no ammunition, but they held on all night, hoping for the best, but not sure of it. And this young officer who was their leader told me to-day that—great God!—he "enjoyed" himself and was "fearfully bucked" with his day's work. The excitement of it all was in his eyes, as he told me, in much more detail than I have given, the story of the thirty-six hours.
It is indeed an astounding chapter of courage all this attack on Langemarck by men who before the attack had been bombarded with gas and other shells, and who then floundered in deep bogs, where they got stuck up to the waist, but worked in small parties up and on, fighting all the way against an enemy who put up a gallant and stubborn resistance and sold every hundred yards of ground as dearly as he could. The runners who went back again and again through that slough of despond under damnable fire were real heroes. The stretcher-bearers who carried down the wounded all that day and night regardless of their own lives were beyond words splendid, and the carriers who brought up rations so that the men in front should have enough to eat and drink were as brave as those who fought. In the midst of all this turmoil, all this death, all this mud and blood, men kept their sense of humour and their shrewd wit in a way which beats me. "Do you speak English?" said a sergeant-major to a German non-commissioned officer who came out of a dug-out full of men. "Nein, nein," said the man. "Well, you've got to learn bally quick," said the sergeant-major, "so go and tell those pals of yours to come out before something happens to them." And the German learnt enough English in the sergeant-major's eyes to deliver the command correctly enough.
I have spoken only of the Somersets. Other light infantry—the Durhams and the "Koylies" and the D.C.L.I.—who worked with them and who took Reitres Farm and other strong points, were not less dogged, and this day at Langemarck was a glorious revelation of the old spirit of the West Country, which is still strong and fine.
And now I must write again about the Canadians, whose attack towards Lens I watched the other day among our guns.
That story is not yet finished, and has been going on ever since that morning when the Canadians took Hill 70 and the cités of St.-Emile and St.-Laurent, working forward towards the heart of Lens. It is clear that the enemy's command issued orders for Hill 70 and the other ground to be retaken at all costs. There have been no fewer than thirteen counter-attacks against the Canadian troops, and men of the 4th Guards Division, and later of the 220th Regiment, have come forward in wave after wave and hurled themselves with desperate courage against the Canadian defence.