page 233

Chapter XXIII Of the Battlefield of Ypres, of Gravenstafel and Abraham Heights, and of the Black Swamp Below Belle Vue Spur

—Everard Owen: Three Hills.

From the Lumbres area the battalions came to Renescure and Wallon-Capel and so to the Watou area. After two days they marched along the crowded highroad from Poperinghe to Viamertinghe and so into and through the famous town of Ypres. The broken tower of the ruined Cloth Hall had its appeal even to the most unimaginative. It stood foursquare, battered but still standing—the wall against which the old army had set its back and fought to the death. In its glory of desolation it typified the valour and steadfastness of a war that was now become so old that disputed barricades of 1914 had become legends of long ago, and the men who had fallen in the first fights seemed heroes of another age. Through the broken town the men page 234marched, out through the Menin Gate to the old British front line, and so to the edge of the battlefield.

Ridge after ridge the wilderness stretched back from St Julien and Pilkelm to Polderhoek and Passchendaele and from Messines on the one side to the Forest of Houthulst on the other. All the beautiful woods were dead and the skeletons of trees stood gaunt and stark against the skyline. The pleasant villages were heaps of filthy rubble. The gentle streams that had meandered through smiling valleys were flattened into horrible bogs and slimy quags. The green fields where the poppies had grown redly in the summer-time were a wide expanse of dull and dreary brown. For mile after mile shell-hole touched shell-hole with here and there a great gaping crater torn by a mine explosion. One could hardly follow the line of the old German trenches so ploughed and torn was all the earth. Line after line their pill-boxes crowned every height, swept every slope, enfiladed every approach. Solidly and with much labour they had been built with walls five feet thick of ferro-concrete, but a frightful storm had burst upon them rending and smashing and cracking the stout walls or covering the machinegun slits with heaps of upflung earth. Most of them were charnel houses, from which the garrisons bombed or crushed by falling ruin or suffocated by gas or killed by the frightful concussion of huge shells had never emerged. They had been costly to build but ten times more costly to destroy—and outside them lay the rows of British dead.

page 235

"The debris of the battlefield was everywhere; tangled heaps of rusty wire, broken rifles, smashed field-guns, rotting equipment, torn and filthy clothing, empty shell-cases, old tins, riven helmets, and all the ruined litter that makes still more hideous the ugly desolation of an old battlefield. Here and there along some corduroy track leading through the morass is the via dolorosa of the horse and the mule. One sees an upturned wagon; then one is wheelless; and after that the poor brown carcasses sometimes singly, sometimes in twos and threes, covered with a little earth, a few handfuls of quicklime or altogether uncovered. The tanks look like huge, terrible, uncouth monsters of a prehistoric age, that have had the life blown out of them or that have choked in a frightful struggle to flounder through the quaking slough. Everywhere there is desolation, destruction, and the visible signs of death and decay.

"On one side of the wilderness are the cemeteries of the British; on the other, from the Butte of Polygon and beyond, those of Germany. On the one side is 'Rest in Peace,' on the other, 'Hier ruht in Gott.' But above all is the common cross. In the central wilderness itself lay a tangle of the dead of all nations in graves which for the most part no man had marked. Here and there a few had been gathered together and there was a cross rudely shaped and pencil-marked, or perhaps an upturned rifle or broken helmet to mark the spot. Here lay 'Ein unbekanter Engländer,' there an 'Unknown German Soldier,' "—2/A.R.

page 236

The succession of low hills that stretched back from Ypres to Passchendaele buttressed the whole German line in the north and it was thought that if they could be taken and observation gained on to the level plain of Flanders that lay beyond, the whole enemy line would be forced to retreat. He would lose his hold on Ostend and Zeebrugge and so the war that was being lost on the sea might be saved. As on the Somme there was not much in the way of strategy. It was a shock battle pure and simple. During August and September blow after blow had been struck, and slowly, after a tremendous slaughter, the last range of hills was coming within effective range. It was hoped that one more thrust or perhaps two would break this line of resistance. An enormous mechanism of battle had been built up. A mesh of railways, heavy and light, of roads, of tracks, enabled troops and ammunition to be rushed forward at high speed. Masses of artillery, especially 6-inch howitzers, were placed in rows, axle to axle, over the wide front, huge dumps of shells were run in as close to the guns as was possible. Parks of tanks were assembled in little patches of dead ground. Long lines of kite balloons were flown to observe the movements of the enemy. The sky was full of aeroplanes. Some flew backward and forward, guarding the balloons; some bombed and machinegunned the German line; some observed and photographed the enemy positions, or spotted for the big guns wirelessing back the effect of the shooting. High over all flew the champions of the air, ready page 237to swoop down upon their prey or sweep headlong into fight if some valiant man of Germany should fly forth to attempt some deed of arms.

The first objective of the New Zealanders was to be the Gravenstafel-Abraham Heights section of the Broodseinde Ridge, and for this attack the 1st and 4th Brigades were selected. 1st Auckland, 1st Wellington, 3rd Auckland and 3rd Otago went into the front line and 2nd Wellington, 2nd Auckland, 3rd Wellington and 3rd Canterbury in close support, ready to move forward through the first wave and pass on to the final objectives.

After the men had assembled on the night of 3-4 October a drizzling rain commenced to fall. Through the miserable hours of waiting men huddled together in the shell-holes waiting for the dawn, shivering under their oil-sheets. All night the German guns searched the slopes, and towards morning their fire became very intense. In the darkness officers and N.C.Os moved round seeing that all was in place and giving the last instructions. Breakfast was an unappetizing meal of bully beef, dry bread and water. It is in this chill hour before the first light breaks that vitality is very low. Men stand quietly about, nerves on edge after the ordeal of the night, very tired, counting off the moments until the barrage, half-eager for it to come, yet fearful of the coming, for all know that many must die when the hour strikes. On the other side German soldiers were also waiting to attack.

Zero hour was at 6 a.m.—ten minutes before the hour fixed by the enemy for their great counter page 238attack and about a quarter of an hour before dawn. On a sudden the sky was red with leaping flame and the air was full of the rushing of innumerable shells hurtling down on the German trenches and emplacements. In the darkness the hillside in front was stabbed with daggers of fire. The long roll of the drum-fire beat out into the morning air, while the sharp rattle of the thousands of machine-guns pierced the duller roar of the cannon.

The infantry moved forward as the German machine-guns from the unbroken emplacements rattled out in burst after burst of fire. First Auckland swept over Aviatik Farm and Dear House, and, swinging over on to the sector of the flanking division, stormed Winzig after a desperate fight. First Wellington captured Boetleer, spread out over the brigade front and went on up the hill. Third Auckland and 3rd Otago overwhelmed River Side and Deuce House and Otto Farm. The battalions of the second wave were close on the heels of the first. The little brook of Hannebeek lay across the greater part of the front. The continual heavy shell-fire had turned the running stream into a wide bog through which ran winding paths along which men could pass only very slowly and in single file. The sections converged on three tracks and long continuous lines soon formed. On these narrow paths the German barrage fell with remarkable accuracy. To either side and clear in view lay dead men blackened by the explosions. Shell after shell shrieked down and burst a few feet on either side, flinging columns of black mud into the air. The page 239nervous strain was a terrible one because it was impossible to hurry and the screaming missiles fell with a machine-like regularity. Only the softness of the ground in which the shells failed to explode or were smothered saved the attacking troops from heavy loss.

Across the swamp resistance was met with at once. The shell-holes on the slope were full of Germans. Many had been killed in the barrage and others were demoralized and surrendered at once. But many fought desperately. A section moving forward in file commences to lose men. One man lurches forward into a shell-hole and lies a crumpled heap; another falls with a cry, clutching at the breast of his tunic; still another stumbles to one side and gazes stupidly at a spreading red stain. The remainder spread out and take cover. Fifty yards ahead is a line of Germans, their helmets scarcely discernible against the brown background. Rifle fire is opened at once but even at such absurdly short range it is amazing how many shots miss the mark. The morning mist, the battle smoke, the excitement all have a part in this. One or two of the more venturesome walk or crawl or run forward and by good fortune reach the flank or rear of the enemy. Under fire from two sides the centre of resistance commences to crumble. The attackers rush in from front and flank, and the enemy, realizing the hopelessness of their position, put up their hands and cry for mercy. Sometimes quarter is given; at other times there is only a shriek of agony as the bayonet is driven home.

page 240

A pill-box, scarred and torn with shell-fire, rises in the path of the advancing men. The machinegun crew are resolute and daring men. Their gun rattles and blazes from the embrasure and men fall rapidly. There is an immediate check, but again brave men run out on the flank, and taking desperate chances, get round to the rear and fling bombs in the open door. The bursts of fire cease but the attackers fling more bombs. No one emerges and, after a glimpse into the interior, no one wants to enter among the dying and dead. In another place a group of pill-boxes is one blaze of fire and riflemen on the flanks shoot down all attempts to surround them, but a trench mortar section comes up behind and deluges the flanking party with bombs until they run and the attack sweeps forward again.

On the crest of the ridge there is a desperate struggle, not so much for the few broken bricks that had been the hamlet of Gravenstafel, but for the group of pill-boxes that had been constructed nearby. There are brave men here and they resist J stubbornly, sniping from shell-holes, flinging their bombs, traversing with their guns. They are still fighting when the second wave comes up. It sweeps around them and over them and the wicked Mills bombs are hurled into the doors. They burst in the confined space with a ghastly effect. When the smoke clears our men cautiously look in and drawback, for the floor is a bloody horror. In the largest pill-box of all perhaps thirty men welter in their blood, and, even as the New Zealanders prepare to enter to do what can be done for such of page 241their wretched enemy as are not dying or dead, a valiant German officer, thinking first of his duty, pours some incendiary material over a mass of papers and sets fire to them. The whole dugout becomes a blaze and he and all his men die horribly in the flames. From another, a young officer, revolver in hand, charges out at the head of a dozen men. They all die and the attack, stayed for a moment, sweeps on.

All night the attackers had lain miserably in the drizzling rain, heavily shelled, plagued by machinegun fire, cold, sleepless, with vitality running low. But as the barrage opened they had moved forward. At once there was a transformation, a glow of feeling as the immensity of the thing entered into and lifted up a man's whole being. They passed the swamp and the German barrage with loss. They encountered the first opposition and saw comrades killed before their eyes. Scarce pausing in their stride they shook hands with friends of old times whom they found suddenly dying at their feet. Rage entered in—a cold, silent, terrible rage. Men stalked on up the torn hillside conscious of danger, aware that the whole air was moaning and shrieking with death in a dozen forms, but disdainful of it. They felt that their strength was the strength of ten and that their advance was inevitable and irresistable—and it was so.

There was a great exaltation of soul, a wonderful consciousness of power. So Hector must have felt when he led the Trojans to the storm of the Grecian wall and carried fire through the camp and to the page 242ships. So Harold the Saxon when the axes shore through Hardrada's shield wall; or Cromwell when Rupert's cavaliers became as stubble to his swords. In some the primitive blood-lust came uppermost, some fought with cheerful good humour, shooting Germans as if they were taking wickets; some for glory; some that a woman back in New Zealand might perchance feel a thrill of pride for some deed done that day; but most because there was a task to be done and it was their duty to do it. In this hour of advance and victory there was bravery in the very air and cowards and weaklings were borne along on a great wave of feeling.

Many of the Germans had been demoralized by the storm of fire that had beaten down upon them. In the faint dawnlight they had seen the waves of assault sweeping forward. Isolated in scattered shell-holes, they felt helpless, hopeless, lost. The wave came up surging slowly towards them. They fired a few shots with fingers that trembled on the triggers and hands that shook. Perhaps a hundred yards away a man dropped here and there, but there was no slackening in the steady thrust forward of the attacking host. Nothing seemed able to stem that resistless tide. No supports were coming from behind. There was still time to run; but in the path to safety thundered the British barrage. The dull gleam of the cold steel came nearer. Men looked backward—and a few, with the courage of despair, ran into the inferno of fire to be caught and flung broken to the earth. The others saw their comrades' fate and their knees weakened so page 243that they could not run. The rifles dropped from their palsied hands. Fear became terror, terror panic, panic madness. White and terror-stricken, some raised shaking hands; others wrapped oilsheets round their heads and cowered down, dumbly expectant of death. They were no longer men but driven cattle. Some were shot; some were bayoneted and screamed as the steel was driven home. Some were dragged out and half-kindly, half-contemptuously sent back to the rear without escort. There is no more distressing sight than to see men in whom fear has grown to be abject terror.

The battalions of the second wave swept on at the heels of their barrage down the reverse slope, mopping up small parties here and there, and in some cases suffering heavy loss from machine-gun fire. In one place when the barrage halts a pill-box is seen standing within it. Silent, and perhaps deserted, but perhaps also full of men who are waiting for the moment to swing out their machineguns and mow down the attacking line. Two N.C.Os go coolly through the bursting shells and approach it from the rear. One bomb and the garrison come pouring out and run back with their hands up. Kronprinz Farm, Calgary Grange, Waterloo, Fleet Cot, Berlin, and Berlin Wood all fall and the attack sweeps on to the final objective at the foot of Belle Vue Spur. The men in the lower trenches of the system surrender readily and the whole spur could probably have been carried even without barrage if another battalion could have been flung in without delay.

page 244

The battle was won. It had been a clean sweeping success and while the artillery still deluged the enemy trenches with fire the infantry dug in and consolidated the ground they had gained. On the night of the 5th-6th they were relieved by men of another division who failed in an assault on Belle Vue Spur three days later.

From the afternoon of the 4th heavy and continuous rain fell on the battlefield. The torn earth rapidly relapsed into a morass over which movement of any kind could only be made with extreme difficulty. Carrying parties floundered forward sometimes waist deep, taking perhaps two or three hours to move forward across a mile of ground. Pack mules were bogged and their loads had to be flung away to get the bearers themselves clear—one at least was drowned in the Hannebeek. The task of making passable tracks and restoring smashed roads was an almost hopeless one. The artillery men had an Herculean task in moving forward the fieldguns, and yet somehow they dragged their pieces not so much over but through the slough. But when with almost incredible labour they had the guns in position, they could find no stable platforms for them in the mire. After each discharge they kicked back and it took perhaps hours of effort before they could be found again. Dumps of ammunition could not be pushed forward because it was almost impossible to extend the light railways and the tram-lines, and so the shells had often to be carried forward by the men themselves. As for the heavies, they could not be moved at all. The result was that page 245the pill-boxes on Belle Vue Spur were practically undamaged, and more important still, the masses of wire in front of the position were uncut. This was the position when the 2nd and 3rd brigades took their place in the line in readiness for the attack on 12 October.

There was not the slightest chance of any great result following, even if the attack were successful. Corps and army were aware that the wire was not cut and thus no sufficient barrage could be provided. Yet they determined to attack. It was a gamble— and perhaps a justifiable gamble. The Germans had shown signs of demoralization, and it was possible that before a bold face they might abandon their impregnable position and run. Such things had been known to happen. Or perhaps there might be gaps in the wire which patrols, moving stealthily at night, could not observe and which could not be perceived even with the help of field-glasses. The men in the front line, however, had no illusions about the wire.

Once more in the grey dawn the guns opened, but their discharge was thin and ragged. The thunderroll was absent. Few batteries could maintain half their guns in action. Poor as the barrage was, the infantry could not keep within. They had before them, in some cases, upward of six hundred yards of black swamp. Progress through this was painfully slow, and before they had gone many yards the German machine-guns were firing vicious bursts. Men fell in the swamp and some were drowned in the brimming pools, others choked in the foul ooze, page 246others more fortunate crawled despite ghastly wounds to the sodden lip of some crater and lay there to be hit again, and perhaps again. But the others ploughed their way onward, and as the stronger or more fortunate drew close to the rusty belts some of the enemy indeed lost heart and commenced to flee backward over the ridge; but their machine-gunners took heart of grace and rattled through belt after belt while the New Zealanders fell by scores. Little handfuls, twos and threes at a time, emerged from the mud and the slaughter and searched for some gap by which they could make entry into the line. Desperate men strove to cut a passage through the wire with clippers, but were shot down by the enemy riflemen. One officer got half-way through before he fell riddled with bullets. Two others crawling beneath the wide entanglement, cutting here and there, actually got through and were killed in the very act of throwing their bombs.

In one place a road crossed the belt, and heroic men rushed desperately along it, only to fall before a blast of fire. On the extreme right the remnants of a platoon found a possible gap and so thrust their way in and compelled a garrison of eighty to surrender. When their prisoners had gone back the officer in command was left with a single follower, and this man was killed as he went back for reinforcements. Rifles and Lewis-guns were clogged with mud. The wire belts twenty-five and fifty yards in width were too wide to bomb across. The attack was held. Yet no man thought of retreat. Baffled, they held on to the slight gains that had page 247been made, dug or scraped some little shelter, cleaned the mud from the Lewis-guns and rifles, and shot through the wire at the enemy in the connecting trenches. All through the morning and the afternoon they lay there in front of the impassable wire, and when it was dark they were drawn back a space and commenced to dig in a new front line.

The English Division which had been relieved by the New Zealanders had left scores of their wounded behind them. These had been collected and got as far as the regimental aid posts, but many were still to be cleared when the casualties from the battle commenced to come in. There was a frightful congestion at Kronprinz and Waterloo. The conditions for carrying were unbelievably bad. Sometimes six and sometimes eight men were necessary to fight through with a single stretcher, and even then they slipped and staggered and stumbled very slowly, taking three or four hours to cover the single mile that took them back to the advanced stations. And then there was another three miles of mud and heavy shelling before they reached the Red Cross Station at Spree Farm. On the 12th four hundred men from the 4th Brigade were put on to clear the aid posts, but they could not cope with this tide of human wreckage. Next day twelve hundred men were sent forward with stretchers and they worked manfully clearing a great number.

There was an informal armistice all over the stricken hill slopes. The Germans were carrying back their own wounded and they fired no shot at the stretcher squads that searched the swamp and came even up to the wire in search of poor wretches page 248who had lived through the rain and hail of twenty-four, perhaps almost thirty-six, hours. They spared also the long rows of stretchers on which the wounded suffered for two days outside Waterloo. Night came again and the rate at which the poor sufferers could be moved slowed down greatly. And so some of them lay out for the second day and the second night, and it was not until the afternoon of the third day that they at last reached security, and warmth, and hot food, and the motor ambulances.

Consider the case of a man who fell on the edge of a great shell-hole almost brimming with water. For a space, an hour perhaps or two, the pain of his smashed hip might not be so great as he would be numb with shock. But gradually sensation would come back, and with sensation pain that became a throbbing torment; and then with the growing agony of the wound came thirst that grew until it was a separate torment. When after an infinity of time, as it seemed, he managed with one hand to reach his water-bottle and draw it from the web equipment, it was to find that the shell splinter that had crippled him had torn a hole in the water-bottle also, and that it was empty. The bitter tragic disappointment almost made him cry. Time passed— ages of time—and he sank into the soft mud, so that gradually his clothes became saturated, and he was very cold. "Oh, God! Oh, God! Stretcherbearers! Stretcher-bearers!" But his voice was only a husky croak. Late in the afternoon a party of bearers staggering and stumbling under a loaded stretcher rest for a moment beside him. Before they move on they give him a drink of water, put a haver-page 249sack under his head, drive his rifle into the ground beside him, put his steel hat on top of it, and move on, promising to come back to get him on their next trip. But it's night before they even reach the regimental aid post. And so the leaden hours go by and, as the darkness closes down, he grows colder, and it is appallingly lonely. For a while he is delirious and spends an age trying to reach his mother's hand, and he can't quite succeed. He becomes a little boy again, crying in the night and no one comes. And after a further space he becomes acutely conscious, his side throbbing with pain, his whole body aching with cold and the discomfort of his strained position. If he could only move an inch or two! And for a long while he endeavours to move ever so little to get some ease but the pain is too great and he is so weak. From a dozen yards away comes a groaning and then a torrent of blasphemy and prayer. Some poor wretch can stand it no longer and has lost control completely. Strangely though it gives courage to the wounded man. He is not alone in hell and the other chap seems worse than he, so he tries to call out some word of cheer. Not a very brilliant effort, but it warms his own mind and he sets his teeth and, manfully struggling against his own agony, finds that he has dozed for an hour or two. He wakes and finds himself still in a dark hell, and for a little while his self-control goes and he sobs with the pain and the loneliness and the horror, while from behind comes the sullen moaning of guns, firing, firing, firing in the distance. At last day dawns. With the light comes some little hope, though he is growing very, very cold, and he page 250wonders if he is dying. There is still a drizzle of rain. A man moves past him and he endeavours to call, but a rattle of machine-gun fire drowns his poor quavering voice and the runner plods on. It is the bitterest moment. He closes his eyes and begins to pray that he may die. Death might not be so cold. As the morning draws on his senses commence to dull, and grey ages pass until again he becomes conscious of all his misery. At last, about midday, a stretcher squad comes right to him. For a moment they are almost going to pass by, but his eyes flicker open and the parched lips move. At last! At last! At last! The journey back is agony, but there are voices and the touch of friendly hands, and at last when the stretcher is added to a long row at Kronprinz just at nightfall he is able to raise a twisted smile as the doctor dresses the wound and an orderly with a man's gentleness raises his head and holds him up while he sips down a mess-tin of hot tea. There's a night of pain, but it is heaven after the lonely, blasted swamp. Next morning, forty-eight hours after he was hit, six men start off with him, and after two hours they get him on to the duckboard track across the Hannebeek. By midday he is at the dressing station where there is hot food and warm blankets, and that night he is on a hospital train bound for England, and five years of operations, but with life ahead and the swamp below Passchendaele but a memory of shuddering horror. So the wounded came out.

But there were six hundred and fifty of our dead who never came back.