With our army in Flanders

by Valentine Williams

No battle honour will figure more gloriously in years to come on the colours of the four battalions of the Guards Brigade than Landrecies. The magnificent stand which the brigade, under General Scott-Kerr, made in this little town averted a disaster and inflicted enormous losses on the enemy. The Germans delivered a surprise attack on the place in the mist and darkness of the night of August 25, hoping, by dint of tremendously superior numbers, to overwhelm the Guards and burst through our line. The Guards hastily improvised a defence, and throughout the night, through hours of bloody and desperate hand-to-hand fighting in the narrow streets, held their own. At last the Germans realized that the surprise had failed, and withdrew, leaving their dead piled up in ramparts on the cobblestones.

With the rest of the British Army, sorely pressed and exhausted, but not beaten, the Guards fell back from Mons. We hear of the Guards Brigade again in the woods of Villers-Cotterets, fighting a desperate rear-guard action, engaged at close quarters, as they love to be. Here the Irish Guards, on active service for the first time in this war—and right gallantly have they acquitted themselves—lost their Colonel, Lieutenant-Colonel Morris, a man as brave as he was big.

When fortune changed, and to the stern ordeal of the retreat and the bad news from Belgium succeeded the spirited pursuit of Von Kluck falling back baffled from Paris, once more we find the Guards in the centre of things. They fought in the battle of the Marne, and advanced with the rest of the army to the Aisne. Carrying out Sir John French’s historic order to “make good the Aisne,” the Guards Brigade had a stiff fight at Chavonne, but managed to cross the river at this place, after overcoming severe German resistance in the woods, by ferrying a battalion over the stream.

In the first great struggle about Ypres in October, 1914, the Guards—like every other British regiment engaged there, be it said—gave of their best in the defence of our line. The 2nd Scots Guards, holding the trenches at Kruseik, north-east of Zandvoorde, came in for the brunt of the smashing attempt of the Germans to pierce the line of the Seventh Division. The enemy actually managed to break through, but the gap was closed and the bulk of the storming party killed or made prisoner. The 2nd Scots Guards counter-attacked with splendid dash, and the German attempt failed, but in a subsequent vigorous assault by the enemy the gallant battalion was all but exterminated. That was on October 25. On October 31—by Sir John French’s own admission, the critical day of the battle—when the Germans broke through the line of the First Division, the 1st Coldstreams held on till the end, and were practically destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Guards Brigade, which had come into line on the previous evening, was fighting desperately on the left of the First Division. I have already mentioned in my chapter on Sir John French how the 2nd Worcester Regiment, by its gallant charge at Gheluvelt, saved the British Army on that fateful 31st of October. For a time the peril was averted. But after a short respite from their persevering efforts to obey the Emperor’s command to win Ypres at all costs, the Germans attacked again on November 6, this time against the Klein Zillebeke position, defended by the 2nd and the Guards Brigades and a French division—the Ninth—under General Moussy.

General Scott-Kerr, who commanded the Guards Brigade at Mons, wounded at Villers-Cotterets, relinquished the command to Brigadier-General the Earl of Cavan, who came out from England to take up the appointment. Lord Cavan commanded at Ypres. The achievements of the Guards Brigade in this war will for ever be associated with his name. A short, stoutly built little man, there is nothing particularly suggestive of the great soldier in his personal appearance, but a few minutes’ talk with him will show you the fine courage in his keen eyes, the tremendous virility in his language and gestures, that bespeak the leader of men.

Cavan is the Guards’ spirit incarnate. All his admiration goes to the fearless man. I wish I could tell you in his own words, as he told me, the now familiar story of how Mike O’Leary of the Irish Guards won the V.C. at Cuinchy. The General (who believes that where the Guards are there he should also be) witnessed the incident himself. He tells how he saw O’Leary, right ahead of his company, dash up one bank and kill the Germans there, then dash up another and kill the Germans there, then, going round the back, seize two Germans working a machine-gun by the scruff of the neck, and with either hand gripping their collars firmly, call to his comrades to relieve him of his prisoners. “A most extraordinary fellow,” says the General. “By rights he should have been killed a dozen times.”

Lord Cavan’s own fearlessness and complete indifference to danger are a by-word in the army. His officers swear by him. His men adore him, regarding him, with true Guards’ exclusiveness, as a treasured possession, a peculiar acquisition of the Guards. More than once he has been mentioned in despatches. This is what the Commander-in-Chief, on the recommendation of Sir Douglas Haig, wrote of his conduct at the first battle of Ypres: “He was conspicuous for the skill, coolness, and courage with which he led his troops, and for the successful manner in which he dealt with many critical situations.” Lord Cavan has no enemies, I believe, and no one who has seen him in the field will think that what I have written in praise of him is excessive.

A sudden German attack on November 6 drove back the troops on the left of the Guards Brigade, which was left exposed. A splendid charge by the Household Cavalry brought a British cavalry brigade to fill the gap on the left of the Guards, and the next day the Guards delivered a successful counter-attack, but could not retain the ground they had won against the overwhelming German odds.

On November 11 the final desperate effort of the Germans to break through to the sea, in the shape of the attack of the Prussian Guard, failed, and the battle came to a close. The First Brigade, with which were the 1st Coldstream and the 1st Scots Guards, with the rest of the First Division, stemmed the tide and threw the flower of the German Army back in confusion. The First Brigade left its commander on that blood-stained field in the person of the gallant Brigadier-General Fitzclarence, V.C., who, as I have told elsewhere, was the author of the famous order to the 2nd Worcesters that saved the day at Ypres on October 31.