Horse-collecting parties went out all over the country, taking with them head-collars, head-ropes, bits, reins, surcingles, numnahs, horse-blankets, and nose-bags. These scoured every county in search of likely animals. Every farm, every livery stable, every hunting-box, all hound-kennels, and private stables were visited, and a choice made. All this, however, took time. Precious hours were thus being wasted while the enemy were calmly completing their arrangements for the long-contemplated blow at the heart of the British Empire.
While the War Office refused any information, special editions of the papers during Wednesday printed sensational reports of the ruthless completion of the impenetrable screen covering the operations of the enemy on the whole of the East Coast.
News had, by some means, filtered through from Yarmouth that a similar landing to those at Lowestoft and Weybourne had been effected. Protected as such an operation was, by its flanks being supported by the IVth and IXth Army Corps landing on either side, the Xth Army Corps under General von Wilburg had seized Yarmouth, with its many miles of wharves and docks, which were now crowded by the lighters’ craft of flotilla from the Frisian Islands.
It was known that the landing had been effected simultaneously with that at Lowestoft. The large number of cranes at the fish-docks were of invaluable use to the enemy, for there they landed guns, animals, and stores, while the provisions they found at the various ship’s chandlers, and in such shops as Blagg’s and the International Stores in King Street, Peter Brown’s, Doughty’s, Lipton’s, Penny’s, and Barnes’s, were at once commandeered. Great stores of flour were seized in Clarke’s and Press’s mills, while the horse-provender mills in the vicinity supplied them with valuable forage.
The hotels in the Market Place—the Bull, the Angel, the Cambridge, and Foulsham’s—were full of men billeted, while officers occupied the Star, the Crown and Anchor, and Cromwell House, as well as the Queen’s opposite the Britannia Pier, and the many boarding-houses along Marine Parade. And over all the effigy of Nelson looked down in silent contemplation!
Many men, it appeared, had also been landed at the red-brick little port of Gorleston, the Cliff and Pier Hotels being also occupied by officers remaining there to superintend the landing on that side of the Yare estuary.
Beyond these few details, as far as regarded the fate of Yarmouth nothing further was at present known.
The British division at Colchester, which comprised all the regular troops north of the Thames in the eastern command, was, no doubt, in a critical position, threatened so closely north and south by the enemy. None of the regiments, the Norfolks, the Leicestershire, and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers of the 11th Infantry Brigade, were up to their strength. The 12th Infantry Brigade, which also belonged to the division, possessed only skeleton regiments stationed at Hounslow and Warley. Of the 4th Cavalry Brigade, some were at Norwich, the 21st Lancers were at Hounslow, while only the 16th Lancers were at Colchester. Other cavalry regiments were as far away as Canterbury, Shorncliffe, and Brighton, and although there were three batteries of artillery at Colchester, some were at Ipswich, others at Shorncliffe, and others at Woolwich.
Therefore it was quite evident to the authorities in London that unless both Colchester and Norwich were instantly strongly supported, they would soon be simply swept out of existence by the enormous masses of German troops now dominating the whole eastern coast, bent upon occupying London.
Helpless though they felt themselves to be, the garrison at Colchester did all they could. All available cavalry had been pushed out past Ipswich, north to Wickham Market, Stowmarket, and across to Bury St. Edmunds, only to find on Wednesday morning that they were covering the hasty retreat of the small body of cavalry who had been stationed at Norwich. They, gallantly led by their officers, had done everything possible to reconnoitre and attempt to pierce the enemy’s huge cavalry screen, but in every instance entirely in vain. They had been outnumbered by the squadrons of independent cavalry operating in front of the Germans, and had, alas! left numbers of their gallant comrades upon the roads, killed and wounded.