Isolated, battered, worn, our men could do no more. The line broke. First it went on the right of a brigade near Frezemberg. It was 10.15 on May 8. Then the centre of the same brigade gave, and then part of the left of the brigade in the next sector to the south. It was here that the Princess Pat.’s Light Infantry, the colours that their graceful patroness had embroidered for them with her initials flying throughout the battle over their regimental headquarters, sustained their trial by fire. Their own Record Officer has given to the world their story of matchless heroism, has told how they held their fire-trench until it was annihilated, then fell back to their support trench, and held it until the Shropshires relieved them, a battered handful, 150 strong. I have seen the peaceful graveyard near Voormezeele where many of the dead of that gallant stand are sleeping, and it was as though the soul of the Empire was beating beneath the rows of white crosses.
North of the Frezemberg Road that Saturday morning the first battalion of the 1st Suffolks trod the blood-stained path to glory. They held out in their trenches under the terrific bombardment and against repeated assaults by the Germans until they were surrounded and overwhelmed. Of the 500 men that went into action of that gallant regiment, only seven emerged unhurt. North of the Frezemberg Road the 1st Yorkshire Light Infantry, which the army dubs the “ K.O.Y.L.I.’s,” likewise got a terrible hammering. Supported by a company of Monmouth Territorials, they stayed on till night, when the 12th London Regiment (The Rangers) going up to relieve were practically destroyed by shell-fire, only seventy surviving.
At half-past three in the afternoon a strong counter-attack made by the 1st Yorks and Lancs, the 3rd Middlesex, the 2nd East Surrey Regiment, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, and the 1st Warwicks, reached Frezemberg, but was eventually driven back, and finally remained on a line running north and south through Verlorenhoek. The Middlesex lost their Colonel, who, as he fell, cried, in the words of the Middlesex Colonel killed at Albuera: “Die hard, boys!” A charge by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders side by side with the 1st East Lancs towards Wieltje connected up the old trench-line with the ground won by the counter-attack.
May 9 and 10 saw the continuation of the hellish bombardment. The enemy, who had lost heavily on the 8th, notably against the 2nd Essex Regiment, which let a party of Germans come close up to their trenches and then simply wiped them out, furiously attacked the trenches of the 2nd Gloucester and the 2nd Cameron Highlanders, but were repulsed with heavy casualties. There was ding-dong fighting of the severest description about the trenches on either side of the Ypres-Menin Road, where a gas attack delivered on the 10th was driven back by the 2nd Cameron Highlanders, the 9th Royal Scots (Territorials), and the 3rd and 4th King’s Royal Rifles. The Rhodesian detachment serving with the 3rd K.R.R.’s had their baptism of fire in this fight, and suffered very heavily.
The following day the Germans concentrated their artillery fire on a point a little more to the north, against the 2nd Cameron Highlanders and the 1st Argyll and Sutherland; but the Scotsmen, as tenacious as ever, gave a good account of themselves, though the Germans attacked in force. A brilliant charge by the Royal Scots “Terriers” ejected them from a section of trench in which they had gained a footing. In the afternoon there were two more spells of shelling, each followed by an attack, but the first attack was beaten off, and, though the Germans gained ground in the second, the lost trenches were recovered during the night.
Meanwhile desperate fighting had been proceeding in the northern part of the salient, where, as has been seen, the Germans were making a tremendous effort to smash in our line. A great rambling Flemish homestead, situated west of the Wieltje-St. Julien Road, and called by our men “Shell-trap Farm,” was the centre of some of the hardest fighting of the war. The place owed its curious name to the sheer incredible number of shells which the Germans fired into the old red-brick buildings surrounded by a deep, broad moat. At one period 117 shells a minute were counted at this spot. Nevertheless, “Shell-trap Farm” proved too much for the authorities who regulate the nomenclature of places on the map, and a fiat went forth that the place should be known as “Mouse-trap Farm.”
As “Shell-trap Farm,” however, it will remain in the memory of the men who fought there. The farm changed hands several times during the fighting, finally remaining in our possession. With its wrecked walls, its shell-pitted front and splintered shutters, and its floors strewn with empty cartridge-cases, it reminds one of the Maison de la Dernière Cartouche on the field of Sedan.
The Germans got into the farm, but the 2nd Essex got them out in quick time. The enemy was shelling heavily at the time, but the Essex, advancing “as they pleased,” literally dodged the shells and rushed the farm. Theirs was a most inspiriting charge, and the Rifle Brigade, whom they passed on their way up, were so thrilled that they stood up in their trenches and gave the Essex a cheer. Presently the Germans regained possession of “Shell-trap Farm.” Then the East Lancs drove them out. By this time the farm and its approaches were a shambles, and the moat was full of dead men.
We held the farm that night. The next morning it was lost again. This time a Territorial battalion—the 5th South Lancs—won it back for us, and kept it. While the South Lancs were in possession a shell came into the farm, and laid out every officer and non-commissioned officer in the place. Thereupon a private sprang into the moat, swam across, and reported the situation to the commanding officer at Regimental Headquarters. The message he took back with him to “Shell-trap Farm” was that the Colonel hoped the men would hang on. Presently a bandolier was flung out across the moat bearing the Territorials’ reply. It ran: “We shall hold out.”
The 1st Hampshires beat off one German attack by killing every man that approached within fifty yards of their trenches. They and the men of the 1st Rifle Brigade and the 1st Somerset Light Infantry actually stood up on the parapets and defied the Germans to come on! The London Rifle Brigade, that holds so high a place among the London Territorial regiments, here earned battle honours that in years to come will figure proudly on its colours. They were practically overwhelmed by shell-fire, but stuck to their trenches through it all. They kept sending back cheerful messages to the rear. “Our trenches are irrecognizable,” ran one such report, “but we are quite cheerful.” When it was suggested to them that it might be as well if they evacuated their trenches, which were falling in on them, the reply was that they would be damned if they would. It was in this fighting that young Douglas Belcher, salesman of Waring and Gillow’s, of Oxford Street, won the Victoria Cross by holding a section of trench with a few comrades when the Germans had forced back the cavalry on one side of him. His daring bluff saved our left flank, and his decoration was indeed well earned. But I have anticipated.