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Chapter XXIV Of the Desolation Beyond Ypres and the Winter of Discontent

—Sir Philip Gibbs.

From the middle of November the New Zealanders were on the sector that fronted the Polygoneveld, holding the line at Cameron Covert and the Reutelbeek in front of Polderhoek Chateau and the division was disposed in depth from Dickebusch, up through Belgian Chateau at Ypres in Walker Camp and Halifax Camp, West Farm and Montreal, Forrester and Howe and Micmac, in the railway dugouts at Zillebeke, and from there to Polygon Wood and the Racecourse and the Butte and so to the forward areas, Jubilee Croft, Jolting Houses, Joist Farm, Cameron House, Blackwatch Corner, Jut Farm, and Veldhoek.

Skies were grey and the damp mists hung low. Ugly dreariness was the prevailing feature. Even the back areas were broken and very desolate. Dickebusch was half ruined and wholly dilapidated. What had not been smashed was all befouled by war. Men page 252lived in comfortless iron huts, dry and clean, but ugly; in old gunpits that were as ancient as the everlasting war, in which the smoke-blackened sandbags were rotting with age, and where the rats of a war generation knew little fear; and farther up in the captured pill-boxes, for these alone stood solid in the greasy sea of mud. Few of them had completely escaped the frightful explosions of the enormous shells that had burst upon them. Most were cracked somewhere or another and the foul swamp oozed in. Often beneath the broken floorboards were horrors unmentionable and a sickening stench rising. Yet these horrible places were packed with men who could find no other refuge in all the wide muck of desolation and who staggered in from working parties or patrol or listening post to the cramped space and the fetid atmosphere with the feeling that they were home. Toward the front the unburied dead lay very thickly—very many Scotch, and English and German—and the men who passed frequently on carrying parties or reliefs came to know the disfigured dead faces, the twisted bodies lying there, so pathetically neglected, so uselessly destroyed. And when they walked back over miles of duckboard, past millions of craters and smashed and broken things of all sorts, they saw other bodies and rough crosses, and not far from Polygon Butte a huge black cross scarred with shrapnel, round which was a great international cemetery. For here the Germans had buried their dead when the Polygon Veld was miles behind their line, still a green and pleasant field; and then when they were being driven back they hastily buried there the page 253men who fell within and about the cemetery; and after that the tide of English swept over it and round the great cross their dead were buried also; and after them came the Scotch and the Australians and the Canadians and last of all the New Zealanders—and so the area grew. But as the British guns had torn the German dead from their graves and smashed the crosses, so now the German guns tore the earth again. Dead men everywhere and the shadow of death over all! Was the whole thing as futile as this battlefield, where for months British and German boys had poured out their blood on blasted ridges for no tangible result—for mirage of victory and mirage of defeat? A few of the wiser ones began to see that it was so.

There is a limit to what men can endure and during the winter of 1917-18 this limit was very nearly reached. The morale of the British Army was very low. The Third Battle of Ypres after frightful expenditure of life had petered out in the muddy swamps that our own guns had made of the Stroombeek and the Hannebeek and the Reutelbeek. The Russian debacle had set free hundreds of thousands of German troops for the Western Front. The Italians had been routed with frightful losses. The battle of Cambrai which had begun so brilliantly had closed in defeat and nasty stories ran about of how it had been lost. And above all the German submarines were sinking the food-ships and the ships full of munitions and unless this drain was stopped the war would certainly be lost. Victory was very far away but defeat was near and possible. Mentally, page 254morally and physically ordinary men were coming to the end of their resources. Many talked of a drawn fight—not a few were hinting at defeat and some were questioning if after all there was much difference between the two.

Nevertheless even in the Ypres salient there were men whose resolution no hardship or danger could shake. Mud, filth, ugliness and the sordid squalor of the wide waste could not sour them. The naked, dirty horror of the whole bloody business could not break their spirit. They fought down the longing for home and the desire for beauty and freedom and life and set their faces steadfastly towards death if that should be the price of victory. In the darkness of the time they kept alight the flame of valour.

The main features of the winter were working parties and schools. The greater part of the sector consisted of territory won from the enemy in the fighting of the previous months and immense labour was devoted to the organization of defence systems, as it was almost certain that the enemy would attack with the coming of spring. Railways heavy and light were pushed farther forward and linked up with the tram-line sections. Plank roads were run in over the broken slippery surfaces, and miles of duckboard put down and netted. Reserve lines and switch lines were dug wherever there was sufficiently solid earth, and great tangled masses were cunningly strung in hidden valleys and blasted woods. Parties were continually out salvaging, for after much wastage the most rigid economy was now being exercised and even horseshoe nails and little scraps of rubber from page 255the tyres of the lorries were being picked up and used again.

An hour before dawn the company sergeant-major would be up and stirring the working party for the day out of bed. This was no easy job for the old gunpits were snug and warm and outside it was very black and freezing cold and human nature has always the tendency to roll over on to the other side despite sergeant-majors. At length by threats, cajolery, persuasion but mainly by the lure of pork and beans and bacon, the toilers of the day were mustered. They fell in with balaclava caps under their helmets, leather jackets over their tunics, mittened hands deep in great sheepskin gloves, small box respirator on chest, rifle and bandolier. They stamped up and down, their boots ringing on the frozen board until the light railway train came puffing and rattling along. All aboard! And away past Ypres, Birr Crossroads, and so on to the battlefield. A tramp of two or three kilometres along a corduroy road and then duckboard brought the party to its task for the day, which might be perhaps the running of a belt of wire between two little woods. At an engineer's dump the men halt and pick up bundles of iron standards or coils of barbed wire, and with these unwieldy burdens move to the line of the fence. The standards with their corkscrew ends are fairly easy to handle, and they are soon standing in long rows ready for the wire to be strung on.

Wire is abominable stuff to handle at any time, but especially so in the bitter cold, in mud and amongst tangled debris. It seems to possess that page 256demoniacal perversity commonly associated with errant swine. As the coil is swung round it catches in a man's clothing, the loosened strand flies up into the holder's face, and finally it is all dropped into the mud while he struggles to get one hand free to deal with the refractory loop. Gloves save the hands but make the handling of the wire four times as difficult. So they are taken off, and with blue and bleeding fingers the strands are looped into place. Old soldiers make a particular point of not putting out the wire. They inveigle new hands into this part of the business and content themselves with the easier and ever so much pleasanter task of carrying from the dump.

No one was ever particularly enthusiastic over working parties, which were looked upon as unmitigated evils to be avoided on all possible occasions. There was usually a good deal of "go slow" policy in evidence. Occasional black "coalboxes" bursting overhead, or the temporary activity of a German battery, caused an immediate scatter. Men very well known for their cool nerve in the line became surprisingly apprehensive of the possible effect of desultory shelling when out on working parties— particularly if a new and nervous officer showed signs of being sufficiently impressed to order a return home. At about half-time the officer in charge and the senior N.C.O. go the rounds with an issue of rum, and the workers thus refreshed carry on until midday when the work being finished, they march off in the direction of home. The most energetic or those who are very cold tramp all the page 257way home. The majority in small and friendly groups of half a dozen or so make along the duckboards to Hellfire and the Y.M.C.A. buckshee show, where cocoa and biscuits were dispensed freely. They salvage any wood lying about to keep the brazier fires going, and then, jumping aboard the train that comes rattling fussily along, they get back early in the afternoon. Many go off to the nearest Y.M. hut for afternoon tea, a yarn, a glimpse of the illustrated papers, and a comfortable smoke.

Before dark all are back. The braziers glow redly in the black pits and the yellow candle flames twinkle on packs or bunks. Hungry men rattle their dixies, waiting for the mess orderlies' call: "Come on there, tumble out!" And at once there is a joyous scramble to be first in the queue. "What is she to-night? How is she holding? Any chance of coming the double? What about a spud anyway? Go on, push on there! You've got your issue!" And so the jostling, goodnatured crowd are soon served. For a while there is quietness while the hot stew goes down, and then the conversation starts again over the bread and butter and jam.

After dinner men settle down for the evening. One, a black and white artist of some parts, works busily by the light of a guttering candle touching up a sketch of the "Crucifix of Polygon," near which he has been working for the last few days. It is a drawing somewhat crude in execution but full of power because of its utter realism and its accurate and detailed portrayal ugliness, the horror, the sadness, and the underlying hope of better things that, page 258in some dim and obscure fashion, lies underneath the terror of the present. One feels that after all the Cross still stands. The Continental edition of the Daily Mail has come up with the rations. It is read eagerly, and believed—with reservations. One man declaims a sonorous passage from Horatio Bottomley's John Bull. Another group sniggers over a stray copy of La Vie Parisienne that has been smuggled in from the officers' mess by a batman. One or two have pocket Testaments, and, strangely enough, there are even copies of the Labour Leader, George Lansbury's Herald, and, strangest of all perhaps, Dr Orchard's Crusader from Kingsweigh House Chapel. The pacifist parson and the Christian socialist have little following, but after the Daily Mail and John Bull it is refreshing to know that ideals have not utterly perished from the earth. Novels are in great demand, and it is a poor author who cannot get a reading. In one corner a couple of men are wrestling over a pocket set of chess. Many are playing cards, some writing letters, others squatting round the brazier smoking and yarning. An N.C.O. comes in with "orders" for the next day— and with the rum issue. The orders are listened to with attention, containing as they do the names of the working parties for the next day, while the rum is received with joy and drunk with eagerness. There is nothing now to wait up for. The brazier is smoking abominably, and everyone's eyes are full of smoke. Outside it is freezing hard, and if the crazy door is opened for more than a moment or two the cold night air rushes in and the pleasant heat van-page 259ishes as if by magic. One by one everyone curls up on the earthen floor or on the wire bunks, scientifically wrapped in every available garment. One by one the candles go out, the red flames from the brazier dance and flicker and throw weird shadows on the grimy walls. At last these also die away, and there is only a faint glow in the darkness; that also fades, and another day of war has passed.

Those not on working parties were mainly at the brigade schools where intensive courses of all kinds were conducted in bombing, musketry, gas, Lewis-gun, bayonet fighting, wiring, map reading, platoon and company drill, arms drill, some elementary tactics, and recreational training. The snow lay thickly on the hard ground. Men shaved before breakfast with, in many cases, extreme discomfort—and washed gingerly. The bugles blew for the fall in and they doubled to their places and stood for five minutes, ten minutes perhaps, while the CO. inspected the ranks—snow soaking into their boots, hands stiff with cold. Then, commencing with Slope arms! Order arms! Present arms! they proceeded through the usual ritual up to the most sacred rite of all—the mounting of a main guard. In the afternoon period work of a more practical nature was done.

At this time recreational training was coming into vogue. The reason was twofold. First the higher command had evidently noticed the growing war weariness of great masses of men and were anxious by any means possible to counter the depression. It was thought, and rightly so, that if the men could play more, the psychological effect would be good.

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The games introduced were partly for this purpose. If men were running about and laughing the growth of morbid feeling was likely to be checked. Then, too, many of the men were growing exceedingly clumsy even although they were perfectly fit and well. Nothing in trench warfare had to be done quickly. Men lay out in listening posts or stood sentinel in the line with little movement. Even on patrol they moved slowly, often with infinite care. All day they lounged or sat round. When in support or reserve they trudged backward and forward in heavy boots, carrying heavy loads through stretches of mud or along slippery miles of duckboard. So they did "round me nip" and played children's playground games often with surprising zest. Men's reactions to "school life" were very different.

Some of the best fighting men were exceptionally keen on the parade ground. The work was often not very practical, but it appealed in their case to and deep-seated love of ritual and ceremonial that is so deep seated in the race. Guard mounting with the right atmosphere can become an amazing ceremony when performed by those initiated not merely into its intricacies but into the spirit. It is the High Mass, the Sung Eucharist of the professional soldier. Other men, however, were not able to worship at such shrines and abhorred all endeavours to make soldiers of them. Many a man who in a hot corner would not hesitate to assume by sheer right of personality command of a platoon or company over the heads of all manner of superior officers showed a page 261strange diffidence in calling a section of eight men to attention. Or men who in the line were scrupulously careful about the care of bombs, S.A.A., the posting of sentries, and the care of their men's feet, blushed at the rebuke of sergeant-major instructors who had never seen a front line and who never intended to.

On 3 December 1st Canterbury and 1st Otago made an attempt to storm Polderhoek Chateau. Here the Germans had reinforced the cellars with an extraordinary thickness of concrete and turned every building into a fortress. The British guns had blown the chateau to pieces, but the only effect of this had been to heap the piles of loose bricks over the concrete and thus strengthen the defences by the addition of an excellent bursting plate. In medieval times maybe a great castle with massive walls and frowning towers had topped the height and dominated these ridges and hollows—but no fortalice of olden times had the strength of this mound of earth crowned with the shapeless heaps of smashed masonry. For the splintered trees of the park were laced with strands of wire, and though the surface of the heap was daily churned into a fresh outline by salvos of huge shells and a deluge of bombs, the concrete cellars were strong and unbroken and the machine-gunners, secure and unharmed, waited, alert and anxious, their fingers on the buttons of their guns, not knowing at what hour hell might be loosed against them.

It came at midday without warning. For, even as the barrage storm thudded and crashed overhead, the enemy saw the attacking waves sweep forward.

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From Polderhoek itself, from the ridge before Ghulevett, there burst a devastation of machine-gun fire. The smoke barrage that was to have screened the flank was blown away. Men fell rapidly, and most of the experienced officers and N.C.Os went down. The remainder were brave but inexperienced, and once the momentum of the first charge was lost the machine-guns gained the upper hand and there was no chance of further movement. The attack, despite some slight gain of ground, had failed, and its failure tended to intensify the gloom that was settling down on this ill-omened battlefield. The weary weeks dragged past with interminable working parties and occasional spells in the line. The frost broke and the rain came, and still the weariness continued, the everlasting trudging along weary miles of duckboard, the endless wiring and digging and carrying; miserable periods in sodden posts and filthy dugouts; and the increasing certainty of tremendous enemy attacks to come in the spring. The 4th Brigade was broken up, and the English divisions seemed to be smaller in number also. It seemed as though reserves were giving out and all the time men knew that crowded troop trains were moving across Germany from the east to the west, and that in a few weeks the storm would burst.