With our army in Flanders

by Valentine Williams

“The enemy owes his success ... entirely to the use of asphyxiating gas. It was only a few days later that the means, which have since proved so effective, of counteracting this method of making war, were put into practice. Had it been otherwise, the enemy’s attack on May 5 would most certainly have shared the fate of all the many previous attempts he had made.”

On the morning of the 20th, in the small hours, the 13th Brigade, exhausted by its spell of hard fighting, was relieved by the arrival of another brigade, which took over the hill. The East Surreys and the Bedfordshires went into the trenches, and forthwith had to bear the brunt of a whole series of most desperate efforts made by the Germans to recapture the hill, or, failing that, to prevent us from consolidating the positions gained. Desperate hand-to-hand fights, bombing encounters, and point-blank rifle and machine-gun fire, together with an incessant stream of shells, marked the whole of that day and the following night, when the Devons came up and relieved.

The East Surreys and the Bedfords fought most gallantly, and were splendidly seconded by the 6th King’s Liverpools, a Territorial battalion, which, notwithstanding the terrific fire, rendered very real support to the regulars in the front line by carrying up stores of all kinds throughout the fighting. A quartermaster-sergeant of the Bedfordshires paid a fine tribute to the work of these gallant Territorials. “The approaches to our positions,” he wrote to me, “were swept by a storm of bullets and shells of all kinds, and they (‘The King’s’) had a large number of casualties, but they never flinched, and it was largely owing to the manner in which they kept up the supply of hand-grenades and ammunition of all kinds that we were able to hang on and finally drive back the enemy’s attacks.”

The losses of the East Surreys and the Bedfordshires were very severe, but two V.C.’s and many other decorations were afterwards awarded to the two battalions in recognition of their fine behaviour.

In the meantime the 13th Brigade had marched off to its rest-billets, looking forward to a spell of well-earned repose. But it was not to be. Hardly had the brigade settled down in its new quarters before urgent orders reached the Brigadier to push it up with all speed through Ypres to the Pilckem Road in support of the French, who had been driven in by the German gas attack, and of the Canadians, whose flank had been left “in the air” by the French withdrawal.

The Germans could not do without Hill 60. They wanted it notably as a vantage-point from which to sweep the Ypres salient with a rain of fire to support the tremendous effort, which they were just developing, to pierce the Allied line. “Necessity knows no law” is a saying that served to justify in German eyes the murder of Belgium. It served equally well to explain (if the moral aspects of the question were ever discussed, which I doubt) the employment of gas to wrest from our grasp the hill we had won and held with untarnished weapons.

On May 1 the gas appeared on Hill 60. The Dorsets held the line. It was in the early hours of the morning that a low greenish cloud came rolling over the top of the hill on to our trenches. Our men were taken unawares, unprepared. Of respirators they had none. Respirators were only just beginning to arrive at the front as the result of an appeal made to the women of England after the gas attack against the French and Canadians on April 22 and 24. In a minute or two the gas had got the Dorsets in its grip, and they were choking with its stifling fumes. The Germans came on at them behind their gas-cloud, but the Dorsets were ready for them. Half-asphyxiated as they were, they scrambled on the parapet of the trench and swept down the advancing files with machine-gun and rifle-fire.

That day the spirit of England, as enshrined in the begrimed and mud-stained exterior of these Dorsetshire lads, rose superior to the menace of a hideous and long-drawn-out death. Again and again throughout the morning and afternoon messages came down from the Dorsets on the hill to the Devons in support asking for machine-gun ammunition. All day long the Devons waiting in the woods heard the brave tap-tapping of the machine-guns on the hill, and knew that the Dorsets were keeping their end up.

The Devons went up in relief that night, cleverly led to our trenches without the loss of a man. They still speak with reluctance of the sights that met their eyes on the way, for the fields were strewn with many gallant Dorsets who had crawled into the fields and ditches to die. The men cursed the Germans savagely as they stumbled over the prostrate forms.

The 13th Brigade had not taken “The Duke’s” into action with them at Ypres, and on May 4 this battalion relieved the Devons on the hill. The following morning the Germans made another and stronger bid for the position. At eight o’clock in the morning of a balmy May day they opened their gas-cylinders behind the crest of Hill 60, and presently, “like mist rising from the fields,” in the words of an eyewitness, the vapours came creeping up in greater volume than ever. At the same time the German guns opened a heavy bombardment.