The British Guards
In his cable of May 1 Mr. Gibbs gave details of the extraordinary heroism of the British Guards. He related incidents which had occurred April 11 to 14, after the Germans had broken through the Portuguese in their efforts to widen the gap between Armentières and Merville by gaining the crossings of the Lys.
The Grenadier, Irish, and Coldstream Guards were sent forward along the Hazebrouck-Estaires road when the situation was at its worst, when the men of the 15th Division and other units had fought themselves out in continual rearguard and holding actions, so that some of those still in the line could hardly walk or stand, and when it was utterly necessary to keep the Germans in check until a body of Australian troops had time to arrive. The Guards were asked to hold back the enemy until those Australians came and to fight at all costs for forty-eight hours against the German tide of men and guns which was attempting to flow around the other hard pressed men, and that is what the Guards did, fighting in separate bodies with the enemy pressing in on both flanks.
Greatly outnumbered, they beat back attack after attack, and gained precious hours, vital hours, by the most noble self-sacrifice. A party of Grenadiers were so closely surrounded that their officer sent back a message saying:
"My men are standing back to back and shooting on all sides."
The Germans swung around them, circling them with machine guns and rifles and pouring a fire into them until only eighteen men were left. Those eighteen, standing among their wounded and their dead, did not surrender. The army wanted forty-eight hours. They fixed bayonets and went out against the enemy and drove through him. A wounded Corporal of Grenadiers, who afterward got back to the British lines, lay in a ditch, and the last he saw of his comrades was when fourteen men of them were still fighting in a swarm of Germans.
Fought Back to Back
The Coldstream Guards were surrounded in the same way and fought in the same way. The army had asked for forty-eight hours until the Australians could come, and many of the Coldstreamers eked out the time with their lives. The enemy filtered in on their flanks, came crawling around them with machine guns, sniped them from short range and raked them from ditches and upheaved earth.
The Coldstream Guards had to fall back, but they fought back in small groups, facing all ways and making gaps in the enemy's ranks, not firing wildly, but using every round of small-arms ammunition to keep a German back and gain a little more time.
Forty-eight hours is a long time in a war like this. For two days and nights the Irish Guards, who had come up to support the Grenadiers and Coldstreamers, tried to make a defensive flank, but the enemy worked past their right and attacked them on two sides. The Irish Guards were gaining time. They knew that was all they could do, just drag out the hours by buying each minute with their blood. One man fell and then another; but minutes were gained, and quarters of hours and hours.