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Файл:The Great War. Part I
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THE GREAT WAR
this was so, for so insatiable are the demands of modern warfare
that already after eight months the whole of the regiments of the
original expeditionary force would have absolutely disappeared but
for the frequent replenishments, which were admirably supplied by
the central authorities. They had been far more than annihilated,
for many of the veteran corps had lost from one and a half times to
twice their numbers. The 1st Hants at this date had lost 2700 out
of an original force of 1200 men, and its case was by no means an
exceptional one. Even in times of quiet there was a continual toll
exacted by snipers, bombers, and shells along the front which ran
into thousands of casualties per week. The off-days of Flanders were
more murderous than the engagements of South Africa. Now and
then a man of note was taken from the Army in this chronic and
useless warfare. The death of General Gough, of the staff of the First
Army, has already been recorded. Colonel Farquhar, of the Princess
Patricia Canadians, lost his life in a similar fashion. The stray shell
or the lurking sniper exacted a continual toll, General Maude of the
14th Brigade, Major Leslie Oldham, one of the heroes of Chitral, and
other valuable offi cers being killed or wounded in this manner.
Battle of On April 17 there began a contest which was destined
to rage with great fury, though at intermittent intervals, for several
weeks. This was the fi ght for Hill 60. Hill 60 was a low ridge about
fi fty feet high and two hundred and fi fty yards from end to end,
which faced the Allied trenches in the Zillebeke region to the southeast of Ypres. This portion of the line had been recently taken over
by Smith Dorrien’s Army from the French, and one of the fi rst tasks
which the British had set themselves was to regain the hill, which
was of considerable strategic importance, because by their possession of it the Germans were able to establish an observation post
and direct the fi re of their guns towards any portion of the British
line which seemed to be vulnerable. With the hill in British hands it
321
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
would be possible to move troops from point to point without their
being overseen and subjected to fi re. Therefore the British had directed their mines towards the hill, and ran six underneath it, each
of them ending in a chamber which contained a ton of gunpowder.
This work, begun by Lieutenant Burnyeat and a hundred miners of
the Monmouth battalions, was very diffi cult owing to the wet soil. It
was charged by Major Norton Griffi ths and the 171st Mining Company Royal Engineers. At seven in the evening of Saturday, April
17, the whole was exploded with terrifi c effect. Before the smoke
had cleared away the British infantry had dashed from their trench
and the hill was occupied. A handful of dazed Germans were taken
prisoners and 150 were buried under the debris.
The storming party was drawn from two battalions storming of
the veteran 13th Brigade, and the Brigadier Wanless O’Gowan was
in general control of the operations under General Morland, of the
Fifth Division. The two battalions immediately concerned were the
1st Royal West Kents and the 2nd Scottish Borderers. Major Joslin, of the Kents, led the assault, and C Company of that regiment,
under Captain Moulton Barrett, was actually the fi rst to reach the
crest while it was still reeking and heaving from the immense IL
explosion. Sappers of the 2nd Home Counties Company raced up
with the infantry, bearing sandbags and entrenching tools to make
good the ground, while a ponderous backing of artillery searched
on every side to break up the inevitable counter-attack. There was
desperate digging upon the hill to raise some cover, and especially
to cut back communication trenches to the rear. Without an overcrowding which would have been dangerous under artillery fi re,
there was only room for one company upon the very crest. The rest
were in supporting trenches immediately behind. By half-past one
in the morning of the 18th the troops were dug in, but the Germans, after a lull which followed the shock, were already thickening
322
THE GREAT WAR
for the attack. Their trenches came up to the base of the hill, and
many of their snipers and bomb-throwers hid themselves amid the
darkness in the numerous deep holes with which the whole hill was
pocked. Showers of bombs fell upon the British line, which held on
as best it might.
At 3:30 A.M. the Scots Borderers pushed forward to take over
the advanced fi re trench from the Kents, who had suffered severely.
This exchange was an expensive one, as several offi cers, including
Major Joslin, the leader of the assault, Colonel Sladen, and Captains Bering and Burnett, were killed or wounded, and in the confusion the Germans were able to get more of their bombers thrown
forward, making the front trench hardly tenable. The British losses
up to this time had almost entirely arisen from these bombs, and
two attempts at regular counter-attacks had been nipped in the
bud by the artillery fi re, aided by motor machine-guns. As the sky
was beginning to whiten in the east, however, there was a more
formidable advance, supported by heavy and incessant bombing,
so that at half-past fi ve the 2nd West Ridings were sent forward,
supported by the 1st Bedfords from the 15th Brigade. A desperate
fi ght ensued. In the cold of the morning, with bomb and bayonet
men stood up to each other at close quarters, neither side fl inching
from the slaughter. By seven o’clock the Germans had got a grip
of part of the hill crest, while the weary Yorkshiremen, supported
by their fellow-countrymen of the 2nd Yorkshire Light Infantry,
were hanging on to the broken ground and the edge of the mine
craters. From then onwards the day was spent by the Germans in
strengthening their hold, and by the British in preparing for a renewed assault. This second assault, more formidable than the fi rst,
since it was undertaken against an expectant enemy, was fi xed for
six o’clock in the evening.
323
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
At the signal fi ve companies of infantry, three from the West
Ridings and two from the Yorkshire Light Infantry, rushed to the
front. The losses of the storming party were heavy, but nothing
could stop them. Of C Company of the West Ridings only Captain
Barton and eleven men were left out of a hundred, but none the less
they carried the point at which their charge was aimed. D Company
lost all its offi cers, but the men carried on. After a fi erce struggle the
Germans were ejected once again, and the whole crest held by the
British. The losses had been very heavy, the various craters formed
by the mines and the heavy shells being desperately fought for by
either party. It was about seven o’clock on the evening of the 18th
that the Yorkshiremen of both regiments drew together in the dusk
and made an organised charge across the whole length of the hill,
sweeping it clear from end to end, while the 59th and Company
Royal Engineers helped in making good the ground. It was a desperate tussle, in which men charged each other like bulls, drove their
bayonets through each other, and hurled bombs at a range of a few
yards into each other’s faces. Seldom in the war has there been more
furious fi ghting, and in the whole Army it would have been diffi cult
to fi nd better men for such work than the units engaged.
From early morning of that day till late at night the BrigadierGeneral 0’ Go wan was in the closest touch with the fi ghting line,
feeding it, binding it, supporting it, thickening it, until he brought it
through to victory. His Staff-Captain Egerton was killed at his side,
and he had several narrow escapes. The losses were heavy and the
men exhausted, but the German defence was for the time completely
broken, and the British took advantage of the lull to push fresh men
into the advanced trenches and withdraw the tired soldiers. This was
done about midnight on the 18th, and the fi ght from then onwards
was under the direction of General Northey, who had under him
the 1st East Surrey, the 1st Bedfords, and the 9th London (Queen
324
THE GREAT WAR
Victoria) Rifl es. Already in this murderous action the British casualties had been 50 offi cers and 1500 men, who lay, with as many of the
Germans, within a space no larger than a moderate meadow.
During the whole of the daylight hours of April 19 a furious
bombardment was directed upon the hill, on and behind which
the defenders were crouching. Offi cers of experience described this
concentration of fi re as the worst that they had ever experienced.
Colonel Griffi th of the Bedfords held grimly to his front trench, but
the losses continued to be heavy. During that afternoon a new phenomenon was observed for the fi rst time an indication of what was
to come. Offi cers seated in a dug-out immediately behind the fi ghting line experienced a strong feeling of suffocation, and were driven
from their shelter, the candles in which were extinguished by the
noxious air. Shells bursting on the hill set the troops coughing and
gasping. It was the fi rst German experiment in the use of poison
an expedient which is the most cowardly in the history of warfare,
reducing their army from being honourable soldiers to the level of
assassins, even as the sailors of their submarines had been made the
agents for the cold-blooded murder of helpless civilians. Attacked
by this new agent, the troops still held their ground.
Tuesday, April 20, was another day of furious Desperate shellfi re. A single shell upon that morning blew in a parapet and buried Lieutenant Watson with twenty men of the Surreys. The Queen
Victorias under Colonel Shipley upheld the rising reputation of the
Territorial troops by their admirable steadiness. Major Lees, Lieutenant Summerhays, and many others died an heroic death; but
there was no fl inching from that trench which was so often a grave.
As already explained, there was only one trench and room for a very
limited number of men on the actual crest, while the rest were kept
just behind the curve, so as to avoid a second Spion Kop. At one time
upon this eventful day a handful of London Territorials under a boy
325
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
offi cer, Woolley of the Victorias, were the only troops upon the top,
but it was in safe keeping none the less. This offi cer received the
Victoria Cross. Hour after hour the deadly bombardment went on.
About 7:30 in the evening the bombers of the enemy got into some
folds in the ground within twenty yards and began a most harassing
attack. All night, under the sudden glare of star shells, there were
a succession of assaults which tried the half-stupefi ed troops to the
utmost. Soon after midnight in the early morning of Wednesday,
April 21, the report came in to the Brigadier that the 1st Surreys
in the trenches to the left had lost all their offi cers except one subaltern. As a matter of fact, every man in one detachment had been
killed or wounded by the grenades. It was rumoured that the company was falling back, but on a message reaching them based upon
this supposition, the answer was, “We have not budged a yard, and
have no intention of doing so.” At 2:30 in the morning the position
seemed very precarious, so fi erce was the assault and so worn the
defence. Of A Company of the Surreys only 55 privates were left
out of 180, while of the fi ve offi cers none were now standing, Major Paterson and Captain Wynyard being killed, while Lieutenant
Koupell, who got the Cross, and two others were wounded. It was
really a subalterns’ battle, and splendidly the boys played up.
All the long night trench-mortars and mine-throwers played
upon them, while monstrous explosions fl ung shattered khakI fi gures amid a red glare into the drifting clouds of smoke, but still the
hill was British. With daylight the 1st Devons were brought up into
the fi ght, and an hour later the hill was clear of the enemy once
more, save for a handful of snipers concealed in the craters of the
north-west corner. In vain the Germans tried to win back a foothold. Nothing could shift that tenacious infantry. Field-guns were
brought up by the attackers and fi red at short range at the parapets
hastily thrown up, but the Devons lay fl at and held tight. It had been
326
THE GREAT WAR
a grand fi ght. Heavy as were the strokes of the Thor hammer of Germany, they had sometimes bent but never shattered the iron line of
Britain. Already the death-roll had been doubled, and 100 offi cers
with 3000 of our men were stretched upon that little space, littered
with bodies and red with blood from end to end. But now the action
was at last drawing to its close. Five days it had raged with hardly
a break. British guns were now run up and drove the German ones to
cover. Bombers who still lurked in the craters were routed out with
the bayonet. In the afternoon of the 21st the fi re died gradually away
and the assaults came to an end. Hill 60 remained with the British.
The weary survivors were relieved, and limped back singing ragtime
music to their rest-camps in the rear, while the 2nd Cameron Highlanders, under Colonel Campbell, took over the gruesome trenches.
It was a fi ne feat of arms for which the various brigadiers, with
General Morland of the Fifth Division, should have the credit. It
was not a question of the little mound important as that might be, it
could not justify so excessive a loss of life, whether German or British. Hill 60 was a secondary matter. What was really being fought
for was the ascendancy of the British or the Prussian soldier that
subtle thing which would tinge every battle which might be fought
thereafter. Who would cry “Enough!” fi rst? Who would stick it to
the bitter end? Which had the staying-power when tried out to
a fi nish? The answer to that question was of more defi nite military
importance than an observation post, and it was worth our three
thousand slain or maimed to have the award of the God of battles to
strengthen us hereafter.
This description may well be ended by the general order in
which Sir John French acknowledged the services of the troops
engaged in this arduous affair: “I congratulate you and the troops
of the Second Army on your brilliant capture and retention of the
important position at Hill 60. Great credit is due to Lieutenant-
327
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
General Sir Charles Ferguson, commanding Second Corps; MajorGeneral Morland, commanding Fifth Division; Brigadier-General
Wanless O’Gowan, commanding 13th Brigade; and Brigadier-General Northey, commanding 15th Brigade, for their energy and skill
in carrying out the operations. I wish particularly to express my
warmest admiration for the splendid dash and spirit displayed by
the battalions of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Brigades which took part
under their respective commanding offi cers. This has been shown in
the fi rst seizure of the position, by the fi re attack of the Royal West
Kents and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, and in the heroic tenacity with which the hill has been held by the other battalions of
these brigades against the most violent counter-attacks and terrifi c
artillery bombardment. I also must commend the skilful work of
the Mining Company R.E., of the 59th Field Company R.E., and 2nd
Home Counties Field Company R.E., and of the Artillery. I fully recognise the skill and foresight of Major-General Bulfi n, commanding
Twenty-eighth Division, and his C.R.E., Colonel Jerome, who are responsible for the original conception and plan of the undertaking.”
It will be noticed that in his generous commendation Sir John
French quotes the different separate units of Engineers as a token of
his appreciation of the heavy work which fell upon them before as
well as and during the battle. Many anecdotes were current in the
Army as to the extraordinary daring and energy of the subterranean
workers, who were never so happy as when, deep in the bowels of
the earth, they were planning some counter-mine with the tapping
of the German picks growing louder on their ears. One authentic
deed by Captain Johnston’s 172nd Mining Company may well be
placed upon record. The sapping upon this occasion was directed
against the Peckham Farm held by the Germans. Finding that the
enemy were countermining, a camoufl et was laid down which destroyed their tunnel. After an interval a corporal descended into the
328
THE GREAT WAR
shaft, but was poisoned by the fumes. An offi cer followed him and
seized him by the ankles, but became unconscious. A private came
next and grabbed the offi cer, but lost his own senses. Seven men
in succession were in turn rescuers and rescued, until the whole
chain was at last brought to the surface. Lieutenants Severne and
Williams, with Corporal Gray and Sappers Hattersley, Hayes, Lannon, and Smith, were the heroes of this incident. It is pleasant to add
that though the corporal died, the six others were all resuscitated.
It is with a feeling of loathing that the chronicler turns from
such knightly deeds as these to narrate the next episode of the war,
in which the gallant profession of arms was degraded to the level
of the assassin, and the Germans, foiled in fair fi ghting, stole away
a few miles of ground by the arts of the murderer. So long as military
history is written, the poisoning of Langemarck will be recorded as
a loathsome incident by which warfare was degraded to a depth
unknown Neuve among savages, and a great army, which had long
been and honoured as the fi nest fi ghting force in the world, became
in a single day an object of horror and contempt, fl ying to the bottles
of a chemist to make the clearance which all the cannons of Krupp
were unable to effect. The crime was no sudden outbreak of spite,
nor was it the work of some unscrupulous subordinate. It could
only have been effected by long preparation, in which the making
of great retorts and wholesale experiments upon animals had their
place. Our generals, and even our papers, heard some rumours of
such doings, but dismissed them as being an incredible slur upon
German honour. It proved now that it was only too true, and that it
represented the deliberate, cold-blooded plan of the military leaders. Their lies, which are as much part of their military equipment
as their batteries, represented that the British had themselves used
such devices in the fi ghting on Hill 60. Such an assertion may be left
to the judgment of the world.
329
III.
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
Stage I. The Gas Attack, April 22-30
Situation at Ypres – The poison gas – The Canadian ordeal –
The fi ght in the wood of St. Julien – The French recovery – Miracle
days – The glorious Indians – The Northern Territorials – Hard
fi ghting – The net result – Loss of Hill 60
IT may be remembered that the northern line of the Ypres
position, extending from Steenstraate to Langemarck, with Pilken
somewhat to the south of the centre, had been established and held
by the British during the fi ghting of October 21, 22, and 23. Later,
when the pressure upon the British to the east and south became
excessive, the French took over this section. The general disposition
of the Allies at the 22nd of April was as follows.
The Belgians still held the fl ooded Yser Canal up to the neighbourhood of Bixschoote. There the line was carried on by the French
Eighth Army, now commanded by General Putz in the place of
General d’Urbal. His troops seem to have been all either Colonial
or Territorial, two classes which had frequently shown the utmost
gallantry, but were less likely to meet an unexpected danger with
steadiness than the regular infantry of the line. These formations
held the trenches from Bixschoote on the canal to the Ypres-Poelcapelle road, two thousand yards east of Langemarck, on the right. At
this point they joined on to Plumer’s Fifth Corps, the Canadian Di-
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