“The greater part of the officers and men are asphyxiated by gas. I understand that the enemy is on three sides of me. Unless I am reinforced fairly well, it will be impossible to do anything great.”
You observe no trace of panic, no heroics; just a blasé suggestion that, failing reinforcements, the “Fighting Fifth” might not be able to live up to its fine record and do anything great.
Soon after noon word reached the Canadian left that it was to fall back. But the Brigadier, hearing that the other brigade was going to counter-attack, decided to stay where he was and await developments. He communicated this decision to his troops, whereupon the officers sent back word to say they would hang on as long as they had a man to line the parapet.
It now became clear that St. Julien and the wood could no longer be held. The Canadian left had withstood all through the day of the 23rd furious onslaughts from three sides, and a fresh gas attack on the morning of the 24th settled the question. The left brigade fell back on a line running from St. Julien to Fortuin whilst awaiting the arrival of reinforcements from a British Division, which was coming up with all speed through a deadly zone of shell-fire. This was the morning of the 24th. By this time the Germans to the north had succeeded in establishing themselves on the west bank of the canal, having captured Steenstraat and some works south of Lizerne from the French.
On the 23rd Sir John French had had an important interview with General Foch, one of the most brilliant of the French Generals, who commands the left group of French Armies. General Foch gave the British Generalissimo a clear account of what had happened, informed him of his intention to make good the original line, and requested him to allow the British troops to hold on until the necessary reinforcements could arrive. Sir John French agreed to do this, but stipulated that he could not suffer his troops to remain in their present exposed position for an unlimited period of time.
It was now imperative to hold the Germans at all costs. There were two highly critical periods in the battle, and the first began now with April 24. On the canal bank Geddes’s detachment, reinforced by some battalions of the 13th Brigade, had been making a series of small attacks on the Germans at a heavy price but with good effect, for the Germans never got through here. The Lahore Division of the Indian Corps subsequently relieved Geddes’s gallant troops at the very moment that their intrepid leader, his work done, paid the supreme sacrifice. He was killed by a shell on the 26th in the upper room of a house in which the General commanding the 13th Brigade had established his headquarters, and where Geddes spent the night. The shells were bursting continually about the vicinity when Colonel Geddes arrived, and he was killed by one which entered the breakfast-room the next morning. The General commanding the 13th Brigade had a providential escape, as he had left the room to fetch a map a few seconds before.
The retirement of the Canadian left from St. Julien on the 24th had exposed the flank of the Canadian Brigade on the right, and it was essential to stop the gap. By this time General Hull’s 10th Brigade of the 4th Division, which was coming up to reinforce the Canadians, had reached the canal, and was on its way to Wieltje, where it arrived at 2.30 a.m. the following morning. It had been placed under the orders of the General commanding the Canadian Division, who sent an urgent message asking the brigade to attack St. Julien immediately.
It was a desperately difficult undertaking. The night was extremely dark, the ground, which had not been reconnoitred, was honeycombed with trenches and strewn with barbed wire, and, moreover, the artillery had not been able to “register”—that is to say, get its range of the terrain. Just before the attack was launched word came back that some Canadians were still holding out in the village of St. Julien. Therefore the place could not be shelled. The guns, however, opened on the wood west of the village.
It was half-past four in the morning when the attack got away. The 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a Territorial battalion that was on its trial that day, led with splendid dash on the right, the 1st Warwicks on the left. They were followed on right and left respectively by the 1st Royal Fusiliers and the 2nd Dublins, whilst the 2nd Seaforths were ordered to connect with General Riddell’s Brigade of the Northumbrian Division, which had been sent up to relieve the Canadians.
As soon as our men got out of their trenches they were met by a terrific machine-gun and rifle fire at close quarters, whilst the German heavy guns in the rear spouted a continual torrent of shells over the fields through which the assault was delivered. Our men dropped left and right, but they never wavered, and the Irish Fusiliers and the Dublins, Irishmen all, fighting shoulder to shoulder, actually got into the outskirts of St. Julien. The scattered ruins, the maze of trenches, and the barbed wire strung out everywhere, seriously delayed these two battalions and checked our advance. Two battalions of a brigade of the Northumberland Division, supporting the Dublins, lost their direction. These men had only been a few days in France, and were advancing over country which was totally unknown to their officers and themselves. On the left the Warwicks and on the other flank the Highlanders got to within 70 yards of the German trenches in front of the wood. Here they were hung up, and could make no further progress. They dug in, and were “properly hammered,” in the words of one who was there, by German high-explosive shells. Nevertheless, by this gallant attack, the gap between the Canadians east of St. Julien and north of Fortuin was filled.