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Title: Pen Pictures of British Battles


Author: Various



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PEN PICTURES OF BRITISH BATTLES

Painted by Author
and Artist.






London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, Ltd.
1917.




CONTENTS.


                                                              PAGE
     I.--THE VICTORY OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS                   5
           _By Dr. Richard Wilson._

    II.--THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE                              11
           _By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle._

   III.--A GLIMPSE OF CANADA IN FLANDERS                      17
           _By Lord Beaverbrook._

    IV.--THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES                           23
           _By John Buchan._

     V.--THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND BANK                           29
           _By H. W. Wilson._

    VI.--THE CHARGE AT LOOS OF THE LONDON IRISH               39

   VII.--THE LANDING AT V BEACH, NEAR SEDD-EL-BAHR            43
           _By John Masefield._

  VIII.--THE COLDSTREAM GUARDS AT THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME     49
           _By Philip Gibbs._

    IX.--THE MOONLIGHT BATTLE FOR BAGHDAD                     53
           _By Edmund Candler._

     X.--THE BATTLE OF ARRAS                                  59
           _By Philip Gibbs._

    XI.--WARFARE UNDER WATER                                  67
           _By Rudyard Kipling._




EDITOR’S NOTE.


_Though Sir Walter Besant called War correspondents “the scene painters
of history,” it may be questioned whether any pen or brush, trained on
the land, sea and air battles of the present War, can depict more than
a corner of the great devastating drama._

_This little book, embracing extracts from famous books, may help the
reader to visualise some of the outstanding battles in which Britain
has played a not inconspicuous part; and if they inspire those still
fighting, and those behind them in support, with a firmer confidence
and a greater endurance--if, too, these records of undaunted heroism,
often against odds, enlighten readers in other lands as to the
character of British fighting men--their publication in this informal
style will be justified._

_Full acknowledgment is here made to the authors and publishers who
have kindly permitted quotation; and to the proprietors of two great
illustrated weekly papers who have lent for reproduction original
sketches appearing in their pages._

_April, 1917._




[Illustration: THE BRITISH VICTORY OFF THE FALKLANDS: FIRST STAGE OF
THE ACTION BETWEEN BRITISH BATTLE-CRUISERS AND THE GERMAN ARMOURED
CRUISERS.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_]


I.

THE VICTORY OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS.[A]

By RICHARD WILSON, Litt.D.

    [A] _From “The First Year of the Great War.” By Richard Wilson,
        Litt.D. (W. & R. Chambers.)_


The affair off Coronel put the heads of the British navy upon their
mettle, and within forty days it was followed by a counter-stroke,
complete and effective. Silently and with steady determination,
preparations were made to deal with the _Scharnhorst_ and her
companions; and the man who was entrusted with the work was
Vice-Admiral Sir F. C. Doveton Sturdee.

To the east of the southern portion of South America lies the British
group known as the Falkland Islands. Due east of the large island
called East Falkland, Sturdee’s squadron came within sight of Von
Spee’s cruisers, the British admiral having been helped in finding the
“quarry” by the clever wireless signalling of a lady and her servants
who lived on the islands, and who were afterwards presented with
valuable gifts by the British Admiralty as some slight acknowledgment
of their timely help.

After the battle off Coronel, the _Glasgow_, along with the battleship
_Canopus_, had put into the harbour of Port Stanley, in East Falkland.
The former vessel had been damaged, but she was quickly repaired; and
when Admiral Sturdee arrived from home, she took her place in his
squadron, her officers and men being eager to set things right with the
Germans. It was reported that Von Spee’s squadron was going to make
a raid on the Falklands; but when he came round Cape Horn he found
awaiting him eight British ships of war, and, so far as we know, this
was a complete surprise to him.

At about half-past nine in the morning the _Gneisenau_ and the
_Nürnberg_ drew near to Port Stanley Harbour with their guns trained
on the wireless station. Between them and the harbour was a long low
stretch of land running eastward, behind which lay the _Canopus_. The
surprise of the Germans must have been great when they were met by a
smart fire across this low-lying land at a range of about six miles!
The two ships stopped, considered, and turned away, hoisting their
colours, however, as they did so. About the same time the _Invincible_
sighted other hostile ships between nine and ten miles distant; and in
a short time the British squadron was moving from the harbour towards
the enemy’s five ships, which could be plainly seen to the south-east.
The day was fine, with a calm sea, a bright sun, a clear sky, and a
light breeze from the north-west.

The British vessels at once began a chase in extended order, and the
hearts of our men must have been deeply stirred by the admiral’s
simple signal, “God save the King!” One of the signallers afterwards
wrote: “It was taken up and flung far and wide through space by each
of the fleet in turn, until it seemed as though it would never cease.
I consider it a privilege to have been one of the few to bear the
signal.” A little after noon Admiral Sturdee came within suitable range
of the five enemy ships, and decided to attack with the _Invincible_,
the _Inflexible_, and the _Glasgow_. How the officers and crew of the
last-named vessel had longed for this happy moment!

The signal was given, “Open fire and engage the enemy,” and the
_Inflexible_ began the battle, followed a few minutes later by the
_Invincible_. This firing was at a range of about nine miles--no
opportunities for boarding here, cutlass in teeth, and pistols in both
hands!--but the British gunnery was so good that three of the German
ships turned away. Then the _Glasgow_, with the _Cornwall_ and the
_Kent_, gave chase. We shall follow their work when we have considered
that of the heavier craft.

The _Invincible_ engaged the enemy’s flagship, the _Scharnhorst_, and
the _Inflexible_ the _Gneisenau_, the fight being a running one, and
the range varying from about eight to nine miles. Before long the
German flagship took fire, lost one of her funnels, and slackened her
firing. “The effect of our fire,” writes Admiral Sturdee, “became more
and more apparent in consequence of smoke from fires, and also escaping
steam. At times a shell would cause a large hole to appear in her side,
through which could be seen a dull red glow of flame.” Yet the German
kept grimly on with her work.

The _Gneisenau_ now gamely faced the _Invincible_ and the _Inflexible_,
but about 5 o’clock she lost one funnel and was on fire in several
places. She continued, however, to reply to the British gunners with a
single gun, until, an hour later, she suddenly heeled over and sank.
Here is an entry in the diary of one of her officers: “5.10, Hit, hit!
5.12, Hit! 5.14, Hit, hit, hit again! 5.20, After turret gone. 5.40,
Hit, hit! On fire everywhere. 5.41, Hit, hit! Burning everywhere and
sinking. 5.45, Hit! Men dying everywhere. 5.46, Hit, hit!”

After this the officers had something else to do than make entries
in a diary. Boats had been lowered from the _Invincible_ and the
_Inflexible_, life-buoys and ropes were thrown into the water, and
about 300 men were saved, “including their captain--a tall man with a
black beard.”

Meanwhile the _Glasgow_ and the _Cornwall_ had fought and sunk the
_Leipzig_. Like the other German ships, she took fire fore and aft,
and as the shades of night were closing in she turned over on her port
side and disappeared. The _Cornwall_ began to lower boats when the
_Leipzig_ was settling down, but the British Captain leant over the
rail of the bridge and said, “It’s no good; she’s going.”

While this was going on the _Kent_ was dealing with the _Nürnberg_,
after a desperate chase with only a small amount of fuel to rely upon.
When the engineers had done their best and worked up the speed well
above the rate which the _Kent_ could do “officially,” they reported
that their coal was almost used up. Then the captain suggested that the
boats might prove useful in such a case! No sooner said than done! The
boats were promptly broken up, the pieces smeared with oil, and packed
by the stokers into the furnaces.

This use of the boats had suggested other means of providing fuel, and
soon the men were hurrying to the furnaces with officers’ armchairs,
chests, ladders, and anything which would burn. So the speed limit was
much further exceeded, the _Nürnberg_ was caught and sunk, but not
before she had put up a stiff fight. Fire was stopped on the _Kent_
when the German hauled down her colours, and every preparation was made
to save life. As the ship sank the British sailors saw a group of men
waving a German ensign fastened to a staff. Only five Germans were
rescued alive from the doomed ship.

Only one of the German ships, the fast cruiser _Dresden_, escaped from
the battle, the clouds which overcast the sky in the evening assisting
her in getting clear away. The darkness closed in, but near midnight
Admiral Sturdee received a message from H.M.S. _Bristol_ to the effect
that during the action two enemy transports had been destroyed near the
Falklands, their crews being removed before the ships were sunk. So
ended a memorable day in British naval history.




[Illustration: DESPERATE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHÂTEAU DE MONDEMENT DURING
THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_]


II.

THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE.[B]

By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

    [B] _From “The British Campaign in France and Flanders.” By Sir
        Arthur Conan Doyle. (Hodder & Stoughton.)_


On September 11 the British were still advancing upon a somewhat
narrowed front. There was no opposition, and again the day bore a
considerable crop of prisoners and other trophies. The weather had
become so foggy that the aircraft were useless, and it is only when
these wonderful scouters are precluded from rising that a general
realises how indispensable they have become to him. As a wit expressed
it, they have turned war from a game of cards into a game of chess. It
was still very wet, and the Army was exposed to considerable privation,
most of the officers and men having neither change of clothing,
overcoats, nor waterproof sheets, while the blowing up of bridges on
the lines of communication had made it impossible to supply the wants.
The undefeatable commissariat, however, was still working well, which
means that the Army was doing the same. On the 12th the pursuit was
continued as far as the River Aisne. Allenby’s cavalry occupied Braine
in the early morning, the Queen’s Bays being particularly active, but
there was so much resistance that the Third Division was needed to make
the ground good. Gough’s Cavalry Division also ran into the enemy near
Chassemy, killing or capturing several hundred of the German infantry.
In these operations Captain Stewart, whose experience as an alleged
spy has been mentioned, met with a soldier’s death. On this day the
Sixth French Army was fighting a considerable action upon the British
left in the vicinity of Soissons, the Germans making a stand in order
to give time for their impedimenta to get over the river. In this they
succeeded, so that when the Allied Forces reached the Aisne, which is
an unfordable stream some sixty yards from bank to bank, the retiring
army had got across it, had destroyed most of the bridges, and showed
every sign of being prepared to dispute the crossing.

Missy Bridge, facing the Fifth Division, appeared at first to be
intact, but a daring reconnaissance by Lieutenant Pennecuick, of the
Engineers, showed that it was really badly damaged. Condé Bridge was
intact, but was so covered by a high horse-shoe formation of hills upon
the farther side that it could not be used, and remained throughout
under control of the enemy. Bourg Bridge, however, in front of the
First Army Corps, had for some unexplained reason been left undamaged,
and this was seized in the early morning of September 13 by De Lisle’s
cavalry, followed rapidly by Bulfin’s 2nd Brigade. It was on the face
of it a somewhat desperate enterprise which lay immediately in front of
the British general. If the enemy were still retreating he could not
afford to slacken his pursuit, while, on the other hand, if the enemy
were merely making a feint of resistance, then, at all hazards, the
stream must be forced and the rearguard driven in. The German infantry
could be seen streaming up the roads on the farther bank of the river,
but there were no signs of what their next disposition might be. Air
reconnaissance was still precluded, and it was impossible to say for
certain which alternative might prove to be correct, but Sir John
French’s cavalry training must incline him always to the braver course.
The officer who rode through the Boers to Kimberley and threw himself
with his weary men across the path of the formidable Kronje was not
likely to stand hesitating upon the banks of the Aisne. His personal
opinion was that the enemy meant to stand and fight, but none the less
the order was given to cross.

September 13 was spent in arranging this dashing and dangerous
movement. The British got across eventually in several places and by
various devices. Bulfin’s men, followed by the rest of the First
Division of Haig’s Army Corps, passed the canal bridge of Bourg with
no loss or difficulty. The 11th Brigade of Pulteney’s Third Corps got
across by a partially demolished bridge and ferry at Venizel. They
were followed by the 12th Brigade, who established themselves near
Bucy. The 13th Brigade was held up at Missy, but the 14th got across
and lined up with the men of the Third Corps in the neighbourhood
of Ste. Marguerite, meeting with a considerable resistance from the
Germans. Later, Count Gleichen’s 15th Brigade also got across. On the
right Hamilton got over with two brigades of the Third Division, the
8th Brigade crossing on a single plank at Vailly and the 9th using
the railway bridge, while the whole of Haig’s First Corps had before
evening got a footing upon the farther bank. So eager was the advance
and so inadequate the means that Haking’s 5th Brigade, led by the
Connaught Rangers, was obliged to get over the broad and dangerous
river, walking in single file along the sloping girder of a ruined
bridge, under a heavy, though distant, shell-fire. The night of
September 13 saw the main body of the Army across the river, already
conscious of a strong rear-guard action, but not yet aware that the
whole German Army had halted and was turning at bay. On the right
De Lisle’s cavalrymen had pushed up the slope from Bourg Bridge and
reached as far as Vendresse, where they were pulled up by the German
lines.

It has been mentioned above that the 11th and 12th Brigades of the
Fourth Division had passed the river at Venizel. These troops were
across in the early afternoon, and they at once advanced, and proved
that in that portion of the field the enemy were undoubtedly standing
fast. The 11th Brigade, which was more to the north, had only a
constant shell-fire to endure, but the 12th, pushing forward through
Bucy-le-long, found itself in front of a line of woods from which there
swept a heavy machine-gun and rifle-fire. The advance was headed by the
2nd Lancashire Fusiliers, supported by the 2nd Inniskilling Fusiliers.
It was across open ground and under heavy fire, but it was admirably
carried out. In places where the machine-guns had got the exact range
the stricken Fusiliers lay dead or wounded with accurate intervals,
like a firing-line on a field-day. The losses were heavy, especially in
the Lancashire Fusiliers. Colonel Griffin was wounded, and five of his
officers with 250 men were among the casualties. It should be recorded
that fresh supplies of ammunition were brought up at personal risk by
Colonel Seely, late Minister of War, in his motor-car. The contest
continued until dusk, when the troops waited for the battle of next day
under such cover as they could find.

The crossing of the stream may be said, upon the one side, to mark
the end of the battle and pursuit of the Marne, while, on the other,
it commenced that interminable Battle of the Aisne which was destined
to fulfil Bloch’s prophecies and to set the type of all great modern
engagements. The prolonged struggles of the Manchurian War had prepared
men’s minds for such a development, but only here did it first assume
its full proportions and warn us that the battle of the future was
to be the siege of the past. Men remembered with a smile Bernhardi’s
confident assertion that a German battle would be decided in one
day, and that his countrymen would never be constrained to fight in
defensive trenches.

The moral effect of the Battle of the Marne was greater than its
material gains. The latter, so far as the British were concerned, did
not exceed 5,000 prisoners, 20 guns, and a quantity of transport. The
total losses, however, were very heavy.

Apart from the losses, the mere fact that a great German army had
been hustled across 30 miles of country, had been driven from river
to river, and had finally to take refuge in trenches in order to hold
their ground, was a great encouragement to the Allies. From that time
they felt assured that with anything like equal numbers they had an
ascendancy over their opponents.




[Illustration: WAR IN THE AIR: A DUEL OVER THE FIRING LINE.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_]


III.

A GLIMPSE OF CANADA IN FLANDERS.[C]

By LORD BEAVERBROOK.

    [C] _From “Canada in Flanders” (Vol. I.). By Sir Max Aitken.
        (Hodder & Stoughton.)_


The end of the month was marked by one or two very daring
reconnaissances by Lieutenant Owen, of the 7th (British Columbia)
Battalion, up the bed of the Douve River, and by a great aeroplane
battle.

The aeroplane battle occurred upon a morning warm and bright with
sunshine. The conditions were admirable for flying and observing, and,
as usual, a German Albatross took advantage of them. Soaring high
against the warm blue of the sky, over Bailleul, over the headquarters
of a division, over our brigades and trenches and back again, it
glinted like silver in the morning sun. The snow-white blobs of
bursting shrapnel from our anti-aircraft guns followed its graceful
sweeps and curves--followed and followed, but never caught it up; and
thousands of our men stared after it. But a more dramatic spectacle was
in store for the watchers on the brown roads and in the brown trenches.

A British machine appeared suddenly low against the blue, mounting
and flying out of the west. The men in the Albatross were evidently
so intent on their task of observing the landscape beneath them and
keeping well ahead of our blossoming shrapnel that they failed to
observe the approach of the British ’plane as soon as they should have
for their own good. They were heading west when they saw their danger,
and instantly the Albatross swerved round and sped towards home. But
the British flier had the heels of the German and the advantage of the
position. It circled and dipped, and down through the clear air aloft
came the rippling “tap-tap-tap” of the aërial machine-guns. Again and
again the enemy’s frantic efforts to escape were frustrated by the
skill and daring of the British pilot and the hedging fire of the
British guns. Suddenly the gun of the German ’plane jammed and ceased;
the pilot was hit and wounded; the Albatross commenced a rapid descent,
in which it was followed by the British ’plane to within 1,000 feet
of the ground. Then, under heavy shell-fire from German batteries the
victorious machine rose and flew away undamaged, and the unfortunate
Albatross struck the earth between the front and support trenches of
the 14th (Montreal) Battalion and turned turtle. The German pilot was
dead; the observer, slightly wounded, crawled to our support trenches
and surrendered. The German batteries kept up a hot fire of high
explosives and shrapnel on the machine with the object of smashing it
beyond hope of repair before the Canadians could salvage it. They made
several direct hits, but our men sapped out to the wreck and managed
to bring most of it in, piece by piece. Among the articles brought in
was the machine-gun that had jammed in the heat of the fight. This was
found to be a Colt gun. Closer examination proved it to be one of the
original guns of our 14th Battalion--to whose lines it had just made
such a dramatic return! The gun had been abandoned during one of the
desperate and confused fights of the Second Battle of Ypres half a year
before.

In these months of September and October great efforts were expended
on improving the line. Work in the front positions was done by the
occupying battalions, and the troops in reserve came up night after
night to assist their labours and to create new secondary positions
and drive through fresh communication trenches. Even the training of
new units was occasionally and rightly sacrificed to the performance
of this essential task. The weather was, on the whole, favourable for
these operations, with the exception of three days of rain early in
September and a wet week late in October. The 1st Division, long on
the ground and fortified by the experience of what good trenches mean
for comfort and safety, was pre-eminent in these exertions, as would
be proved by the trench-map with its continuous increase, month after
month, in the black and zigzag lines of new work. Each tiny scrawl on
the surface of such a map represents the labours of hundreds of men,
extended over many nights. Second and third lines grew apace, so that
a sudden attack of the enemy would still leave trenches to be held and
would reduce the German bite to mere nibbles at the forward trench.
The communication trenches are driven true and straight from well in
the rear, and up these the ration parties toil in safety night after
night under their burdens of food, water, ammunition, and R.E. material
to feed the front line. These parties know well enough the difference
between well-made lines and bad ones. Stooping under the heavy weights
as they struggle on through the dark, they will bless in army fashion
a smooth and dry surface underfoot and a sound high parapet which
protects them from the casual German shells which are searching for
them, or the intermittent whistle of the long-range bullet humming on
its errand in the dusk. Messengers or stretcher-bearers with their
burdens can move backwards or forwards even by day along the well-built
hollow, and all those who pass are protected both from the arrow that
flieth by night and the terror which walketh in the noonday. Very
different is the story of a badly-kept line. It finds carrying parties
struggling in, hours late, exhausted by wading through mud and water,
and delayed by continually climbing out and walking outside the trench
to avoid impassable sections. Here an unlucky shell or a casual bullet
may take its toll. The men struggle back with difficulty, arriving
hardly before the dawn, and with their period of supposed rest and
recuperation turned into the most arduous of labours. It is not too
much to say that the efficiency of a regiment or division can be tested
by a comparison between the state in which it takes over and that in
which it leaves its trenches.

The creation of secondary positions is as important as that of
communication trenches, and on this task the Canadian Corps worked
unsparingly throughout the autumn.

The disposition of a brigade is two, or on occasion three, battalions
in the front line and one or two in support or reserve trenches. But
in most cases even the leading regiments will not have their whole
strength in the firing trench. One or two companies lie close up in
support or reserve to reinforce any threatened point. The nearness of
these supports is a very present help in time of trouble, and gives
confidence to officers and men, who would be nervous if they knew that
no assistance was nearer than a mile away in distance and an hour in
time. But these lines must be dug under cover of dark, so the men
toiled with the spade through the nights of autumn and blessed the
dawn which put a term to their labours. Their record is written on
the scarred earth from St. Eloi down to Ploegsteert. Let us hope that
the corps which took their place in March was duly grateful for the
blessing of a well-constructed line.




[Illustration: YPRES AFTER BOMBARDMENT.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Sphere.”_]


IV.

THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES.[D]

By JOHN BUCHAN.

    [D] _From “The History of the War.” By John Buchan. (Thos.
        Nelson & Sons.)_


The present writer first saw Ypres from a little hill during the later
stages of the battle. It was a brilliant spring day, and, when there
was a lull in the bombardment and the sun lit up its white towers,
Ypres looked a gracious and delicate little city in its cincture of
green. It was with a sharp shock of surprise that one realised that it
was an illusion, that Ypres had become a shadow. A few days later, in
a pause of the bombardment, he entered the town. The main street lay
white and empty in the sun, and over all reigned a deathly stillness.
There was not a human being to be seen in all its length, and the
houses on each side were skeletons. There the whole front had gone, and
bedrooms with wrecked furniture were open to the light. There a 42-cm.
shell had made a breach in the line, with raw edges of masonry on both
sides, and a yawning pit below. In one room the carpet was spattered
with plaster from the ceiling, but the furniture was unbroken. There
was a Buhl cabinet with china, red plush chairs, a piano, and a
gramaphone--the plenishing of the best parlour of a middle-class home.
In another room was a sewing-machine, from which the owner had fled in
the middle of a piece of work. Here was a novel with the reader’s place
marked. It was like a city visited by an earthquake which had caught
the inhabitants unawares, and driven them shivering to a place of
refuge.

Through the gaps in the houses there were glimpses of greenery. A
broken door admitted to a garden--a carefully-tended garden, for the
grass had once been trimly kept, and the owner must have had a pretty
taste in spring flowers. A little fountain still plashed in a stone
basin. But in one corner an incendiary shell had fallen on the house,
and in the heap of charred débris there were human remains. Most of the
dead had been removed, but there were still bodies in out-of-the-way
comers. Over all hung a sickening smell of decay, against which the
lilacs and hawthorns were powerless. That garden was no place to tarry
in.

The street led into the Place, where once stood the great Church of
St. Martin and the Cloth Hall. Those who knew Ypres before the war
will remember the pleasant _façade_ of shops on the south side, and
the cluster of old Flemish buildings at the north-eastern corner.
Words are powerless to describe the devastation of these houses. Of
the southern side nothing remained but a file of gaunt gables. At the
northeast corner, if you crawled across the rubble, you could see the
remnants of some beautiful old mantelpieces. Standing in the middle
of the Place, one was oppressed by the utter silence, a silence which
seemed to hush and blanket the eternal shelling in the Salient beyond.
Some jackdaws were cawing from the ruins, and a painstaking starling
was rebuilding its nest in a broken pinnacle. An old cow, a miserable
object, was poking her head in the rubbish and sniffing curiously at a
dead horse. Sound was a profanation in that tomb which had once been a
city.

The Cloth Hall had lost all its arcades, most of its front, and there
were great rents everywhere. Its spire looked like a badly-whittled
stick, and the big gilt clock, with its hands irrevocably fixed,
hung loose on a jet of stone. St. Martin’s Church was a ruin, and
its stately square tower was so nicked and dinted that it seemed as
if a strong wind would topple it over. Inside the church was a weird
sight. Most of the windows had gone, and the famous rose window in the
southern transept lacked a segment. The side chapels were in ruins,
the floor was deep in fallen stones, but the pillars still stood. A
mass for the dead must have been in progress, for the altar was draped
in black, but the altar stone was cracked across. The sacristy was
full of vestments and candlesticks tumbled together in haste, and all
were covered with yellow picric dust from the high explosives. In the
graveyard behind there was a huge shell crater, 50 feet across and 20
feet deep, with human bones exposed in the sides. Before the main door
stood a curious piece of irony. An empty pedestal proclaimed from its
four sides the many virtues of a certain Belgian statesman who had been
also mayor of Ypres. The worthy mayor was lying in the dust beside it,
a fat man in a frock coat, with side-whiskers and a face like Bismarck.

Out in the sunlight there was the first sign of human life. A
detachment of French Colonial _tirailleurs_ entered from the
north--brown, shadowy men in fantastic weather-stained uniforms. A
vehicle stood at the cathedral door, and a lean and sad-faced priest
was loading it with some of the church treasures--chalices, plate,
embroidery. A Carmelite friar was prowling among the side alleys
looking for the dead. It was like some _macabre_ imagining of Victor
Hugo.

The ruins of old buildings are so familiar that they do not at first
dominate the mind. Far more arresting are the remnants of the pitiful
little homes, where there is no dignity, but a pathos which cries
aloud. Ypres was like a city destroyed by an earthquake; that is
the simplest and truest description. But the skeletons of her great
buildings, famous in Europe for 500 years, left another impression.
One felt, as at Pompeii, that things had always been so; one felt that
they were verily indestructible, they were so great in their fall.
The cloak of St. Martin was not needed to cover the nakedness of his
church. There was a terrible splendour about these gaunt and broken
structures, these noble, shattered _façades_, which defied their
destroyers. Ypres might be empty and a ruin, but to the end of time she
would be no mean city.

One of the truest of our younger poets, Rupert Brooke, who died while
serving in the Dardanelles, wrote in his last months a sonnet on the
consolation of death in war:--

    “If I should die, think only this of me:
       That there’s some corner of a foreign field
     That is for ever England. There shall be
       In that rich earth a richer dust concealed.”

In the salient of Ypres there are not less than a hundred thousand
graves of Allied soldiers, sometimes marked by plain wooden crosses,
sometimes obliterated by the _débris_ of ruined trenches, sometimes
hidden in corners of fields and beneath clumps of chestnuts. That
ground is for ever England; and it is also for ever France, for there
the men of Dubois died around Bixschoote and on the Klein Zillebeke
ridge. When the war is over this triangle of meadowland, with a ruined
city for its base, will be an enclave of Belgian soil consecrated as
the holy land of two great peoples. It may be that it will be specially
set apart as a memorial place; it may be that it will be unmarked, and
that the country folk will till and reap as before over the vanishing
trench lines. But it will never be common ground. It will be for us
the most hallowed spot on earth, for it holds our bravest dust, and
it is the proof and record of a new spirit. In the past when we have
thought of Ypres we have thought of the British flag preserved there,
which Clare’s Regiment, fighting for France, captured at the Battle
of Ramillies. The name of the little Flemish town has recalled the
divisions in our own race and the centuries-old conflict between France
and Britain. But from now and henceforth it will have other memories.
It will stand as a symbol of unity and alliance--unity within our
Empire, unity within our Western civilization--that true alliance and
that lasting unity which are won and sealed by a common sacrifice.




[Illustration: BATTLE OF JUTLAND: FIRST SIGHT OF THE ENEMY’S HIGH SEAS
FLEET.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_]


V.

THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND BANK.

By H. W. WILSON.


The chase and destruction of an enemy takes many hours. Nelson began
his battle at Trafalgar at noon, or soon after; the Germans took good
care not to engage before the afternoon was well advanced. There was
enough time to destroy a detachment, but not enough to complete the
destruction of a large fleet. The mist further diminished the advantage
which the British possessed in their heavy guns, and enabled the
Germans to count on using their numerous 6-in. weapons with success.

Contact with the enemy was obtained. At 2.20 p.m. Admiral Beatty
received reports from his light cruisers indicating the proximity of
the enemy, and at 2.35 the smoke of a considerable fleet was seen
to the E. A seaplane was sent up from a seaplane-carrying ship to
reconnoitre the enemy, and transmitted back the first reports about
3.30.

Admiral Beatty at once formed line of battle, steering E.S.E. at 25
knots, with the Fifth Battle Squadron 10,000 yards off to the N.N.W.
The enemy (five battle-cruisers under Vice-Admiral Hipper, with light
cruisers and destroyers) was now 23,000 yards distant. Admiral Beatty
seems to have decided that it would be unwise to wait till the Fifth
Battle Squadron could join up with him and form into line with his six
ships.

The enemy, on seeing him, had turned S. toward the German Battle Fleet,
which was steaming up from the S. some 50 miles off, and he followed.
At 3.48 Beatty opened fire at a range of 18,500 yards (or rather more
than 10½ land miles), and the enemy did the same. Six British ships
with broadsides of 32 13·5-in. and 16 12-in. guns were now shooting
at five German ships, whose broadsides were 16 12-in. and 28 11-in.
guns. Beatty slowly closed on the enemy till a distance of 14,000 yards
parted the squadrons; meanwhile the light cruisers were engaged with
craft of their kind.

It was in this preliminary action with the odds in our favour that two
of Admiral Beatty’s splendid battle-cruisers--the _Queen Mary_ and
_Indefatigable_--were destroyed.

The loss of these two ships reduced Admiral Beatty’s armoured ships to
four and his weight of metal to an approximate equality with the German
battle-cruiser squadron, which was still five ships strong, no single
vessel in it having as yet been put out of action. At 4.8, Beatty was
in some degree supported by the fire of the 15-in. guns in the Fifth
Battle Squadron, which opened at 20,000 yards--a long range in misty
weather--and the enemy’s fire seemed to slacken. A submarine attack was
beaten off by the vigilance and skill of the British destroyers, which
soon after 4 were flung in on the enemy in a great attack, meeting in
their impetuous charge a German light cruiser and 15 destroyers.

All through this encounter the battle-cruisers were still pounding
one another and rapidly nearing the German Battle Fleet. From 4.15 to
4.43 he reports that the fighting was “of a very fierce and resolute
character,” but at 4.18 the third enemy ship was seen to be on fire.
The haze had now thickened, and the enemy could only be dimly made out.
At 4.38 the German Battle Fleet emerged from the mist to the S.E., and
was seen and reported by the Second Light Cruiser Squadron, scouting in
advance, to Admiral Beatty, who at 4.42 turned in his course, steaming
N.W. instead of S.E., towards Admiral Jellicoe and the British Battle
Fleet.

The Germans turned in the same way, their battle-cruisers taking
station at the head of the enemy’s line and pursuing Beatty. As they
executed this turn, the Fifth Battle Squadron closed them, steaming
in the opposite direction, engaged them with all its guns, and then
turned and fell in astern of Beatty, who now had eight ships in line,
proceeding at a speed of something over 21 knots. The enemy’s battle
fleet was in action, and the Germans had concentrated in superior
force on a part of the British Fleet.

The range was 14,000 yards and the enemy was getting heavily hit, while
he was apparently not making many hits on the British ships. After
5, one of the German battle-cruisers--perhaps the _Lutzow_, which,
according to the enemy, received 15 or 16 heavy shells--left the line
damaged. At 5.10 the sixth ship in the German line--a Dreadnought--was
reported to have been hit by a torpedo, and it is just possible that
she sank, as a huge cloud of smoke and steam was seen just after where
she had been. The Germans were now edging off to the E., learning
either from Zeppelins or their light cruisers that the British Battle
Fleet was coming up to the N.W. Admiral Beatty reports that “probably
Zeppelins were present,” though they appear to have been seen only by
neutrals in the first stage of the battle.

The head of the German line at this part of the battle was getting
severely punished, and a second of the German battle-cruisers had
vanished, leaving only three enemy battle-cruisers in line. The first
stage of the battle was over. Beatty had led the Germans to the British
Battle Fleet, which was sighted at 5.56 10,000 yards away to the N.

The position of the Fleet was as follows:--Beatty, with four
battle-cruisers, and astern of him the four fast battleships of the
Fifth Battle Squadron, was now turning sharply eastwards to pass
across the head of the German Fleet and prevent it from edging E. and
getting away in that direction. This movement of his would have enabled
him to “cross the T” of the enemy’s line--_i.e._, to pass at right
angles across it, raking the ships as he passed, which is regarded as
the most advantageous position that can be obtained in battle--if the
enemy had not turned. N. of Admiral Beatty’s ships was the British
Battle Fleet, with three battle-cruisers under Hood on one wing, and
three or four armoured cruisers under Arbuthnot on the other. On a
line generally parallel to Beatty’s was the whole force of German
battle-cruisers (3) and battleships (22), slightly astern of him, so
that the German ships at the southern end of the line were out of the
battle--too distant to fire. The head of the enemy line was some 12,000
yards from him, and about 22,000 yards from the British Battle Fleet.

Beatty’s eastward turn compelled the enemy to turn, and enabled the
British Battle Fleet, if it desired, to move in behind the High Sea
Fleet and cut it off from its bases. To reinforce Beatty in these
critical moments, Hood steamed in fast with his three battle-cruisers,
and swung magnificently into position at the head of Beatty’s line.
There he received a terrific fire from the enemy, 8,000 yards away,
and a few minutes later the _Invincible_, his flagship, was struck
by the combined salvoes of the German Fleet and she sank. Three
battle-cruisers were gone, and of their combined crews of 2,500
men a mere handful were saved. Beatty at 6.35, about the time when
the _Invincible_ sank, turned S.E. A little earlier, Rear-Admiral
Arbuthnot, with three weak armoured cruisers, struck the German
Battle Fleet, which was apparently almost hidden in smoke. His
intervention prevented a dangerous German torpedo attack on the British
battle-cruisers, but in rendering this last service he perished.

The _Black Prince_ was very badly hit. The _Warrior_ was disabled,
and in extreme danger. Probably the German ships were attacking these
vessels with concentrated salvoes--battleships of the super-Dreadnought
class firing at pre-Dreadnought armoured cruisers. The German shooting
must have begun to deteriorate, as the _Warspite_ was quickly got under
control, and with but slight damage rejoined the Fifth Battle Squadron,
which was now taking station astern of Admiral Jellicoe’s Fleet.

At 6.17 this Fleet entered the battle. The First Battle Squadron was
the first to engage at 11,000 yards, closing the enemy slowly to 9,000
(which is very short range indeed, and would allow the Germans to use
their 6-in. guns). The light was very bad. The Germans were shrouded
in haze; their destroyers sent up thick clouds of coal smoke, which
obscured an atmosphere already choked with the fumes of bursting
shells, and the smoke from the numerous fires in the ships engaged.
From the van of the Battle Fleet never more than five German ships
could be seen, and from the rear never more than twelve. The British
constantly strove to close, but were eluded by the enemy, who utilised
destroyer attacks to cover his retreat. But, difficult though it was to
shoot with accuracy, Sir J. Jellicoe reports that in this phase of the
battle the enemy ships were repeatedly hit, and one at least was seen
to sink.

The _Marlborough_, in the First Battle Squadron, specially
distinguished herself, firing seven salvoes (if with all her guns
about 70 13·5-in. shell) at a battleship of the _Kaiser_ class; at
6.54 she was so unlucky as to be hit by a torpedo fired from a German
light cruiser, which she sank. She was the only British ship to suffer
in this way. A great cloud of smoke rose from her and she listed
violently, then recovered, and nine minutes later re-opened fire. At
7.12 she poured 14 salvoes with great speed upon a battleship of the
_König_ class, and drove her from the line.

The flagship, _Iron Duke_, at 6.30 engaged a Dreadnought of the
_König_ class in the German Fleet, hitting her at the second salvo,
which was a remarkable gunnery performance at a range of 12,000 yards
and in the clouds of smoke. The enemy turned away and escaped. The
other ships of the Fourth Battle Squadron were mainly engaged with
the German battle-cruisers. The Second Battle Squadron attacked the
German battleships, and also fired at a damaged German battle-cruiser,
from 6.30 to 7.20; at 7 p.m. the British Fleet turned S., and shortly
afterwards S.W. The battleship engagement closed about 8.20, when the
enemy disappeared in the smoke and mist. He lay to the W. of Admiral
Jellicoe’s Fleet, and orders were issued to the British torpedo craft
to attack him. About 8.20 Beatty pushed W. in support of the light
cruisers which had been ordered to locate the enemy’s position, and
came upon two battle-cruisers and two battleships, which he attacked at
a range of 10,000 yards. The leading German ship was struck repeatedly,
and turned away sharply with a very heavy list, emitting flames;
the _Princess Royal_ set a three-funnelled battleship (possibly the
_Helgoland_) on fire. A third ship was battered by the _Indomitable_
and _New Zealand_, and was seen heeling over, on fire, drawing out of
the line. Then about 8.38 the mist came down so thickly that the battle
was broken off, the enemy fleet being last seen by the larger British
ships about 8.38, steaming W.

At 8.40 a violent explosion was felt by the British Fleet. This was
probably caused by the destruction of a big ship.

Beatty steamed S.W. till 9.24, when having seen nothing more of the
enemy, he assumed that the Germans were to the N.W., and proceeded
N.N.E. to the British Battle Fleet. He says: “In view of the gathering
darkness, and the fact that our strategical position was such as to
make it appear certain that we should locate the enemy at daylight
under most favourable circumstances, I did not consider it proper or
desirable to close the enemy battle fleet during the dark hours.”




[Illustration: STORMING THE VILLAGE OF LOOS: HAND-TO-HAND FIGHTING IN
THE STREETS.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Sphere.”_]


VI.

THE CHARGE AT LOOS OF THE LONDON IRISH

(18th London).


A vivid account of an incident at Loos, which has become historic, was
given by one of the London Irish Regiment who was wounded during the
charge:--

“One set of our men--keen footballers--made a strange resolution; it
was to take a football along with them. The platoon officer discovered
this, and ordered the football to be sent back--which, of course, was
carried out. But the old members of the London Irish Football Club were
not to be done out of the greatest game of their lives-the last to some
of them, poor fellows--and just before Major Beresford gave the signal
the leather turned up again mysteriously.

“Suddenly the officer in command gave the signal, ‘Over you go, lads!’
With that the whole line sprang up as one man, some with a prayer, not
a few making the sign of the Cross. But the footballers, they chucked
the ball over and went after it just as cool as if on the field,
passing it from one to the other, though the bullets were flying thick
as hail, crying, ‘On the ball, London Irish!’ just as they might have
done at Forest Hill. I believe that they actually kicked it right into
the enemy’s trench with the cry, ‘Goal!’ though not before some of them
had been picked off on the way.

“There wasn’t 400 yards between the trenches, and we had to get across
the open--a manœuvre we started just as on parade. All lined up,
bayonets fixed, rifles at the slope. Once our fellows got going it was
hard to get them to stop, with the result that some rushed clean into
one of our own gas waves and dropped in it just before it had time to
get over the enemy’s trench.

“The barbed wire had been broken into smithereens by our shells so
that we could get right through; but we could see it had been terrible
stuff, and we all felt we should not have had a ghost of a chance of
getting through had it not been for an unlimited supply of shells
expended on it.

“When we reached the German trench, which we did under a cloud of
smoke, we found nothing but a pack of beings dazed with terror. In
a jiffy we were over their parapet and the real work began; a kind
of madness comes over you as you stab with your bayonet and hear the
shriek of the poor devil suddenly cease as the steel goes through him
and you know he’s ‘gone west.’ The beggars did not show much fight,
most having retired into their second line of trenches when we began
to occupy their first to make it our new line of attack. That meant
clearing out even the smallest nook or corner that was large enough to
hold a man.

“This fell to the bombers. Every bomber is a hero, I think, for he
has to rush on, fully exposed, laden with enough stuff to send him to
‘kingdom come’ if a chance shot or stumble sets him off.

“Some of the sights were awful in the hand-to-hand struggle, for,
of course, that is the worst part. Our own second in command, Major
Beresford, was badly wounded. Captain and Adjutant Hamilton, though
shot through the knee just after leaving our trench, was discovered
still limping on at the second German trench, and had to be placed
under arrest to prevent his going on till he bled to death.

“They got the worst of it, though, when it came to cold steel, which
they can’t stand, and they ran like hares. So having left a number
of men in the first trench, we went on to the second and then the
third, after which other regiments came up to our relief, and together
we took Loos. It wasn’t really our job at all to take Loos, but we
were swept on by the enthusiasm, I suppose, and all day long we were
at it, clearing house after house, or rather what was left of the
houses--stabbing and shooting and bombing till one felt ready to drop
dead oneself. We wiped the 22nd Silesian Regiment right out, but it was
horrible to work on with the cries of the wounded all round.”




[Illustration: BRITISH TROOPS IN ACTION ON THE GALLIPOLI PENINSULA.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_]


VII.

THE LANDING AT V BEACH, NEAR SEDD-EL-BAHR.[E]

By JOHN MASEFIELD.

    [E] _From “Gallipoli.” By John Masefield. (Heinemann.)_


The men told off for this landing were: the Dublin Fusiliers, the
Munster Fusiliers, half a battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, and the
West Riding Field Company.

Three companies of the Dublin Fusiliers were to land from towed
lighters, the rest of the party from a tramp steamer, the collier
_River Clyde_. This ship, a conspicuous seamark at Cape Helles
throughout the rest of the campaign, had been altered to carry and land
troops. Great gangways or entry ports had been cut in her sides on the
level of her between decks, and platforms had been built out upon her
sides below these, so that men might run from her in a hurry. The plan
was to beach her as near the shore as possible, and then drag or sweep
the lighters, which she towed, into position between her and the shore,
so as to make a kind of boat bridge from her to the beach. When the
lighters were so moored as to make this bridge, the entry ports were
to be opened, the waiting troops were to rush out on to the external
platforms, run from them on to the lighters, and so to the shore. The
ship’s upper deck and bridge were protected with boiler plate and
sandbags, and a casemate for machine guns was built upon her fo’c’sle,
so that she might reply to the enemy’s fire.

Five picket-boats, each towing five boats or launches full of men,
steamed alongside the _River Clyde_ and went ahead when she grounded.
She took the ground rather to the right of the little beach, some 400
yards from the ruins of Sedd-el-Bahr Castle, before the Turks had
opened fire; but almost as she grounded, when the picket-boats with
their tows were ahead of her, only 20 or 30 yards from the beach, every
rifle and machine gun in the castle, the town above it, and in the
curved, low, strongly trenched hill along the bay, began a murderous
fire upon ship and boats. There was no question of their missing. They
had their target on the front and both flanks at ranges between 100
and 300 yards in clear daylight, 30 boats bunched together and crammed
with men and a good big ship. The first outbreak of fire made the bay
as white as a rapid, for the Turks fired not less then 10,000 shots
a minute for the first few minutes of that attack. Those not killed
in the boats at the first discharge jumped overboard to wade or swim
ashore. Many were killed in the water, many, who were wounded, were
swept away and drowned; others, trying to swim in the fierce current,
were drowned by the weight of their equipment. But some reached the
shore, and these instantly doubled out to cut the wire entanglements
and were killed, or dashed for the cover of a bank of sand or raised
beach which runs along the curve of the bay. Those very few who reached
this cover were out of immediate danger, but they were only a handful.
The boats were destroyed where they grounded.

Meanwhile the men of the _River Clyde_ tried to make their bridge of
boats by sweeping the lighters into position and mooring them between
the ship and the shore. They were killed as they worked, but others
took their places; the bridge was made, and some of the Munsters dashed
along it from the ship and fell in heaps as they ran. As a second
company followed, the moorings of the lighters broke or were shot;
the men leaped into the water, and were drowned or killed, or reached
the beach and were killed, or fell wounded there, and lay under fire,
getting wound after wound till they died; very, very few reached the
sandbank. More brave men jumped aboard the lighters to remake the
bridge; they were swept away or shot to pieces. The average life on
those boats was some three minutes long, but they remade the bridge,
and the third company of the Munsters doubled down to death along it
under a storm of shrapnel which scarcely a man survived. The big guns
in Asia were now shelling the _River Clyde_, and the hell of rapid
fire never paused. More men tried to land, headed by Brigadier-General
Napier, who was instantly killed, with nearly all his followers.
Then for long hours the remainder stayed on board, down below in the
grounded steamer, while the shots beat on her plates with a rattling
clang which never stopped. Her twelve machine guns fired back, killing
any Turk who showed; but nothing could be done to support the few
survivors of the landing, who now lay under cover of the sandbank on
the other side of the beach. It was almost certain death to try to
leave the ship, but all through the day men leaped from her (with leave
or without it) to bring water or succour to the wounded on the boats
or beach. A hundred brave men gave their lives thus; every man there
earned the Cross that day. A boy earned it by one of the bravest deeds
of the war, leaping into the sea with a rope in his teeth to try to
secure a drifting lighter.

The day passed thus, but at nightfall the Turks’ fire paused, and the
men came ashore from the _River Clyde_, almost unharmed. They joined
the survivors on the beach, and at once attacked the old fort and the
village above it. These works were strongly held by the enemy. All had
been ruined by the fire from the Fleet, but in the rubble and ruin of
old masonry there were thousands of hidden riflemen backed by machine
guns. Again and again they beat off our attacks, for there was a bright
moon and they knew the ground, and our men had to attack uphill over
wire and broken earth and heaped stones in all the wreck and confusion
and strangeness of war at night in a new place. Some of the Dublins
and Munsters went astray in the ruins, and were wounded far from their
fellows, and so lost. The Turks became more daring after dark; while
the light lasted they were checked by the _River Clyde’s_ machine guns,
but at midnight they gathered unobserved and charged. They came right
down on to the beach, and in the darkness and moonlight much terrible
and confused fighting followed. Many were bayoneted, many shot, there
was wild firing and crying, and then the Turk attack melted away, and
their machine guns began again. When day dawned, the survivors of the
landing party were crouched under the shelter of the sandbank; they
had had no rest; most of them had been fighting all night; all had
landed across the corpses of their friends. No retreat was possible,
nor was it dreamed of, but to stay there was hopeless. Lieut.-Colonel
Doughty-Wylie gathered them together for an attack; the Fleet opened a
terrific fire upon the ruins of the fort and village, and the landing
party went forward again, fighting from bush to bush and from stone to
stone, till the ruins were in their hands. Shells still fell among
them, single Turks, lurking under cover, sniped them and shot them; but
the landing had been made good, and V beach was secured to us.

This was the worst and the bloodiest of all the landings.




[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME: THE COLDSTREAM GUARDS’ SPLENDID
CHARGE.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_]


VIII.

THE COLDSTREAM GUARDS AT THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME.[F]

By PHILIP GIBBS.

    [F] _From “The Battles of the Somme.” (Heinemann.)_


And now I must tell a little more in detail the story of the Guards in
this battle. It is hard to tell it, and not all can be told yet because
of the enemy. The Guards had their full share of the fighting, and of
the difficult ground, with strong forces against them. They knew that
would be so before they went into battle, and yet they did not ask
for better things but awaited the hour of attack with strong, gallant
hearts, quite sure of their courage, proud of their name, full of trust
in their officers, eager to give a smashing blow at the enemy.

These splendid men, so tall and proper, so hard and fine, went away as
one might imagine the old knights and yeomen of England at Agincourt.
For the first time in the history of the Coldstreamers, three
battalions of them charged in line, great solid waves of men, as fine
a sight as the world could show. Behind them were the Grenadiers, and
again behind these men the Irish.

They had not gone more than 200 yards before they came under the
enfilade fire of massed machine guns in trenches not previously
observed. The noise of this fire was so loud and savage that, although
hundreds of guns were firing, not a shot could be heard. It was just
the stabbing staccato hammering of the German Maxims. Men fell, but the
lines were not broken. Gaps were made in the ranks, but they closed up.
The wounded did not call for help, but cheered on those who swept past
and on, shouting “Go on, Lily-whites!”--which is the old name for the
Coldstreamers--“Get at ’em, Lily-whites!”

They went on at a hot pace with their bayonets lowered. Out of the
crumpled earth--all pits and holes and hillocks, torn up by great
gun-fire--grey figures rose and fled. They were German soldiers
terror-stricken by this rushing tide of men.

The Guards went on. Then they were checked by two lines of trenches,
wired and defended by machine guns and bombers. They came upon them
quicker than they expected. Some of the officers were puzzled. Could
these be the trenches marked out for attack--or other unknown trenches?
Anyhow, they must be taken--and the Guards took them by frontal assault
full in the face of continual blasts of machine-gun bullets.

There was hard and desperate fighting. The Germans defended themselves
to the death. They bombed our men, who attacked them with the bayonet,
served their machine guns until they were killed, and would only
surrender when our men were on top of them. It was a very bloody hour
or more. By that time the Irish Guards had joined the others. All the
Guards were together, and together they passed the trenches, swinging
left inevitably under the machine-gun fire which poured upon them from
their right, but going steadily deeper into the enemy country until
they were 2,000 yards from their starting place.

Then it was necessary to call a halt. Many officers and men had fallen.
To go farther would be absolute death. The troops on the right had been
utterly held up. The Guards were “up in the air” with an exposed flank,
open to all the fire that was flung upon them from the enemy’s lines.
The temptation to go farther was great. The German infantry was on the
run. They were dragging their guns away. There was a great panic among
the men who had been hiding in trenches. But the German machine gunners
kept to their posts to safeguard a rout, and the Guards had gone far
enough through their scourging bullets.

They decided very wisely to hold the line they had gained, and to dig
in where they stood, and to make forward posts with strong points.
They had killed a great number of Germans and taken 200 prisoners and
fought grandly. So now they halted and dug and took cover as best they
could in shell-craters and broken ground, under fierce fire from the
enemy’s guns.

The night was a dreadful one for the wounded, and for men who did their
best for the wounded, trying to be deaf to agonizing sounds. Many of
them had hairbreadth escapes from death. One young officer in the Irish
Guards lay in a shell-hole with two comrades, and then left it for a
while to cheer up other men lying in surrounding craters. When he came
back he found his two friends lying dead, blown to bits by a shell.

But in spite of all these bad hours the Guards kept cool, kept their
discipline, their courage, and their spirit. The Germans launched
counter-attacks against them, but were annihilated. The Guards held
their ground, and gained the greatest honour for self-sacrificing
courage which has ever given a special meaning to their name. They took
the share which all of us knew they would take in the greatest of all
our battles since the first day of July, and, with other regiments,
struck a vital blow at the enemy’s line of defence.




[Illustration: THE ADVANCE ON BAGHDAD: BATTLE ON THE DIALA RIVER.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Sphere.”_]


IX.

THE MOONLIGHT BATTLE FOR BAGHDAD.

By EDMUND CANDLER.


The last fighting before Baghdad is likely to become historic on
account of the splendid gallantry of our troops in the crossing of
the Diala River. After the action at Lajj the Turkish rearguard fell
back on Diala, destroying the bridge which crosses the stream at its
junction with the Tigris. We pushed on in pursuit on the left bank,
sending cavalry and two columns of infantry to work round on the
right bank, and to enter Baghdad from the west. Speed in following up
was essential, and the column attacking Diala was faced with another
crossing in which the element of surprise was eliminated. The village
lies on both banks of the stream, which is 120 yards wide. The houses,
trees, nullah, and walled gardens made it impossible to build a road
and ramps quickly and to bring up pontoons without betraying the point
of embarkation. Hence the old bridgehead site was chosen. The attack on
the night of the 7th was checked, but the quality of courage shown by
our men has never been surpassed in war. Immediately the first pontoon
was lowered over the ramp the whole launching party was shot down in a
few seconds. It was a bright moonlight, and the Turks had concentrated
their machine guns and rifles in the houses on the opposite bank.

The second pontoon had got into the middle of the stream, when a
terrific fusillade was opened on it. The crew of five rowers and ten
riflemen were killed and the boat floated down the stream. A third got
nearly across, but was bombed and sank. All the crew were killed. But
there was no holding back. The orders still held to secure the passage.
Crew after crew pushed off to an obvious and certain death. The fourth
crossing party was exterminated in the same way, and the pontoons
drifted out to the Tigris to float past our camp in the daylight
with their freight of dead. The drafts who went over were raised by
volunteers from other battalions in the brigade. These and the sappers
on the bank share the honour of the night with the attacking battalion.
Nothing stopped them, save the loss of the pontoons. A Lancashire man
remarked: “It is a bit hot here, but let’s try higher up,” but the
gallant fellows were reduced to their last boat. Another regiment,
which was to cross higher up, were delayed, as the boats had to be
carried nearly a mile across country to the stream. After the failure
of the bridgehead passage the second crossing was cancelled, but the
men were still game.

On the second night the attempt was pursued with equal gallantry. This
time the attack was preceded by a bombardment. Registering by artillery
had been impossible on the first day in the speed of the pursuit. It
was the barrage that secured us the footing--not the shells, but the
dust raised by them. This was so thick that you could not see your hand
in front of your face. It formed a curtain behind which ten boats were
able to cross. Afterwards, in clear moonlight, when the curtain of dust
had lifted, the conditions of the night before were re-established.
Succeeding crossing parties were exterminated, and pontoons drifted
away, but a footing was secured. The dust served us well. The crew of
one boat which lost its way during the barrage were untouched, but they
did not make the bank in time. Directly the air cleared a machine-gun
was opened on them, and the rowers were shot down, and the pontoon
drifted back ashore. A sergeant called to volunteers to get the wounded
out of the boat, and a party of twelve men went over the river bank.
Every man of them, as well as the crew of the pontoons, were killed.

Some 60 men had got over, and these joined up and started bombing
along the bank. They were soon heavily pressed by the Turks on both
flanks, and found themselves between two woods. Here they discovered
a providential natural position. A break in the river bund had been
repaired by a new bund built in a half-moon on the landward side. This
formed a perfect lunette. The Lancashire men, surrounded on all sides
but the river, held it through the night, all the next day, and the
next night against repeated and determined attacks. Those attacks were
delivered in the dark or at dawn. The Turks only attacked once in the
daylight, as our machine guns on the other bank swept the ground in
front of the position. Twenty yards west of the lunette there was a
thin grove of mulberries and palms. The pontoon was most vulnerable
on this side, and it was here that the Turkish counter-attacks were
most frequent. Our intense intermittent artillery fire day and night
on the wood afforded some protection. The whole affair was visible to
our troops on the south side, who were able to make themselves heard by
shouting. Attempts to get a cable across with a rocket for the passage
of ammunition failed.

At midnight on the 9th and 10th the Turks were on top of the parapet,
but were driven back. One more determined rush would have carried
the lunette, but the little garrison, now reduced to 40, kept their
heads and maintained cool control of their fire. A corporal was seen
searching for loose rounds and emptying the bandoliers of the dead.
In the end they were reduced almost to their last clip and one bomb,
but we found over 100 Turkish dead outside the redoubts when they
were relieved at daylight. The crossing on the night of the 9th and
10th was entirely successful. With our cavalry and two columns of
infantry working round on the right bank the Turks were in danger of
being cut off, as at Sanna-i-Yat. Before midnight they had withdrawn
their machine guns, leaving only riflemen to dispute the passage. The
crossing upstream was a surprise. We slipped through the Turkish guard.
He had pickets at both ends of the river salient where we dropped
our pontoons. But he overlooked essential points in it which offered
us dead ground uncovered by posts up and down stream. Consequently
our passage here lost us no lives. The other ferry near the bridge
was also crossed with slight loss, owing to a diversion up-stream.
The Turks, perceiving that their flank was being turned, effected a
general retirement of the greater part of their garrison between the
two ferries. Some 250 in all, finding us bombing down on both flanks,
surrendered. The upper crossing was so unexpected that one Turk was
actually bayonetted as he lay covering the opposite bank with his rifle.

By 9.30 on the morning of the 10th the whole brigade had crossed.
Soon after 11 the brigade was complete and the pursuit continued.
The Turks continued their rearguard action, and in the afternoon
there was fighting in the palm groves of Saida, and the Turks were
cleared with the bayonet, after artillery had combed the wood. The
main body was holding the El Mahomed position, one and a half miles
further north--a trench line running nearly four miles inland from the
Tigris. We attacked this in front, while another column made a wide
turning movement on the flank, and the enemy evacuated it at night.
On the morning of the 12th we entered Baghdad. Our force on the right
bank, after defeating the Turkish rearguard in two actions, reached
the suburb on the opposite side of the Bridge of Boats. A brigade was
ferried across in coracles, and at noon they hoisted the Union Jack on
the citadel. Meanwhile the cavalry continued the pursuit and occupied
Kazimain after slight resistance. Four damaged aeroplanes and 100
prisoners were taken, in addition to the 300 captured on the left bank.
The gunboats are still in pursuit of the enemy, who are reported to
be entrenching 16 miles north of Baghdad, covering the entrainment of
troops.




X.

THE BATTLE OF ARRAS.[G]

BY PHILIP GIBBS.

    [G] _From the “Daily Chronicle” and “Daily Telegraph.”_


To-day, at dawn, our armies began a great battle, which, if Fate has
any kindness for the world, may be the beginning of the last great
battles of the war. Our troops attacked on a wide front between Lens
and St. Quentin, including the Vimy Ridge, that great, grim hill
which dominates the plain of Douai and the coalfields of Lens and the
German positions around Arras. In spite of bad fortune in weather at
the beginning of the day, so bad that there was no visibility for the
airmen, and our men had to struggle forward in a heavy rainstorm, the
first attacks have been successful, and the enemy has lost much ground,
falling back in retreat to strong rearguard lines, where he is now
fighting desperately. The line of our attack covers a front of some 12
miles southwards from Givenchy-en-Gohelle, and is a sledge-hammer blow,
threatening to break the northern end of the Hindenburg line, already
menaced round St. Quentin. As soon as the enemy was forced to retreat
from the country east of Bapaume and Péronne, in order to escape a
decisive blow on that line, he hurried up divisions and guns northwards
to counter our attack there, while he prepared a new line of defence,
known as the Wotan line, as the southern part of the Hindenburg line,
which joins it, is known as the Siegfried position, after two great
heroes of old German mythology. He hoped to escape there before our new
attack was ready, but we have been too quick for him, and his own plans
were frustrated.

So to-day began another titanic conflict which the world will hold its
breath to watch because of all that hangs upon it. I have seen the fury
of this beginning, and all the sky on fire with it, the most tragic and
frightful sight that men have ever seen, with an infernal splendour
beyond words to tell. The bombardment which went before the infantry
assault lasted for several days, and reached a great height yesterday,
when, coming from the south, I saw it for the first time. Those of us
who knew what would happen to-day, the beginning of another series
of battles greater, perhaps, than the struggle of the Somme, found
ourselves yesterday filled with a tense, restless emotion, and some of
us smiled with a kind of tragic irony because it was Easter Sunday. In
the little villages behind the battle lines the bells of the French
churches were ringing gladly because the Lord had risen, and on the
altar steps the priests were reciting the splendid old words of faith.
“Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum. Alleluia” (“I have arisen and I am with
thee always. Alleluia”). The earth was glad yesterday. For the first
time this year the sun had a touch of warmth in it, though patches of
snow still stayed white under the shelter of the banks, and the sky was
blue and the light glinted on wet tree-trunks and in the furrows of the
new-ploughed earth. As I went up the road to the battle lines I passed
a battalion of our men, the men who are fighting to-day, standing in
hollow square with bowed heads while the chaplain conducted the Easter
service. Easter Sunday, but no truce of God. I went to a field outside
Arras and looked into the ruins of the cathedral city. The cathedral
itself stood clear in the sunlight, with a deep black shadow where its
roof and aisles had been. Beyond was a ragged pinnacle of stone, once
the glorious Town Hall, and the French barracks and all the broken
streets going out to the Cambrai road. It was hell in Arras, though
Easter Sunday.

The bombardment was now in full blast. It was a beautiful and devilish
thing, and the beauty of it, and not the evil of it, put a spell upon
one’s senses. All our batteries, too many to count, were firing, and
thousands of gun flashes were winking and blinking from hollows and
hiding-places, and all their shells were rushing through the sky as
though flocks of great birds were in flight, and all were bursting over
the German positions with long flames which rent the darkness and waved
sword-blades of quivering light along the ridges. The earth opened, and
great pools of red fire gushed out. Star shells burst magnificently,
pouring down golden rain. Mines exploded east and west of Arras and in
the wide sweep from Vimy Ridge to Blangy southwards, and voluminous
clouds, all bright with a glory of infernal fire, rolled up to the sky.
The wind blew strongly across, beating back the noise of the guns, but
the air was all filled with the deep roar and slamming knocks of the
single heavies and the drum fire of the field guns.

The hour for attack was 5.30. Officers were looking at their wrist
watches as on a day in July last year. The earth lightened. A few
minutes before 5.30 the guns almost ceased fire, so that there was a
strange and solemn hush. We waited, and pulses beat faster than the
second-hands. “They’re away,” said a voice by my side. The bombardment
broke out again with new and enormous effects of fire and sound. The
enemy was shelling Arras heavily, and black shrapnel and high explosive
came over from his lines, but our gunfire was twenty times as great.
Around the whole sweep of his lines green lights rose. They were
signals of distress, and his men were calling for help.

It was dawn now, but clouded and storm-swept. A few airmen came out
with the wind tearing at their wings, but could see nothing in the
mist and driving rain. I went down to the outer ramparts of Arras. The
suburb of Blangy seemed already in our hands. On the higher ground
beyond our men were fighting forward. I saw two waves of infantry
advancing against the enemy’s trenches, preceded by our barrage of
field guns. They went in a slow, leisurely way, not hurried, though
the enemy’s shrapnel was searching for them. “Grand fellows,” said
an officer lying next to me on the wet slope. “Oh, topping!” Fifteen
minutes afterwards groups of men came back. They were British wounded
and German prisoners. I met the first of these walking wounded
afterwards. They were met on the roadside by medical officers,
who patched them up there and then before they were taken to the
field hospitals in ambulances. From these men, hit by shrapnel and
machine-gun bullets, I heard the first news of progress. They were
bloody and exhausted, but claimed success. “We did fine,” said one of
them. “We were through the fourth lines before I was knocked out.”
“Not many Germans in the first trenches,” said another, “and no real
trenches either after shelling. We had knocked their dug-outs out, and
their dead were lying thick, and the living ones put their hands up.”
All the men agreed that their own casualties were not high, and mostly
wounded.

                                        _The Next Day._

By three in the afternoon yesterday the Canadians had gained the whole
of the ridge except a high strong post on the left, Hill 145, which
was captured during the night. Our gunfire had helped them by breaking
down all the wire, even round Heroes’ Wood and Count’s Wood, where it
was very thick and strong. Thélus was wiped utterly off the map. This
morning Canadian patrols pushed in a snowstorm through the Farbus Wood,
and established outposts on the railway embankment. Some of the bravest
work was done by the forward observing officers, who climbed to the top
of Vimy Ridge as soon as it was captured, and through a sea of heavy
barrage reported back to the artillery all the movements seen by them
on the country below.

In spite of the wild day, our flying men were riding the storm and
signalling to the gunners who were rushing up their field guns. “Our
60-pounders,” said a Canadian officer, “had the day of their lives.”
They found many targets. There were trains moving in Vimy village, and
they hit them. There were troops massing on the sloping ground, and
they were shattered. There were guns and limbers on the move, and men
and horses were killed. Beyond all the prisoners taken yesterday by the
English, Scottish and Canadian troops, the enemy losses were frightful,
and the scenes behind his lines must have been and still be hideous in
slaughter and terror.

The Battle of Arras is the greatest victory we have yet gained in this
war and a staggering blow to the enemy. He has lost already nearly
10,000 prisoners and more than half a hundred guns,[H] and in dead and
wounded his losses are great. He is in retreat south of the Vimy Ridge
to defensive lines further back, and as he goes our guns are smashing
him along the roads. It is a black day for the German armies and for
the German women who do not know yet what it means to them. During last
night the Canadians gained the last point, called Hill 145, on the Vimy
Ridge, where the Germans held out in a pocket with machine guns, and
this morning the whole of that high ridge, which dominates the plains
to Douai, is in our hands, so that there is removed from our path the
great barrier for which the French and ourselves have fought through
bloody years. Yesterday, before daylight and afterwards, I saw this
ridge of Vimy all on fire with the light of great gunfire. The enemy
was there in strength, and his guns were answering ours with a heavy
barrage of high explosives.

    [H] Increased to 19,343 prisoners and 257 guns on 2nd May.

This morning the scene was changed as by a miracle. Snow was falling,
blown gustily across the battlefields and powdering the capes and
helmets of our men as they rode or marched forward to the front.
But presently sunlight broke through the storm-clouds and flooded
all the countryside by Neuville-St. Vaast and Thélus and La Folie
Farm up to the crest of the ridge where the Canadians had just fought
their way with such high valour. Our batteries were firing from many
hiding-places, revealed by the short, sharp flashes of light, but
few answering shells came back, and the ridge itself, patched with
snowdrifts, was as quiet as any hill of peace. It was astounding to
think that not a single German stayed up there out of all the thousands
who had held it yesterday, unless some poor wounded devils still
cower in the great tunnels which pierce the hillside. It was almost
unbelievable to me, who have known the evil of this high ridge month
after month and year after year and the deadly menace which lurked
about its lower slopes. Yet I saw proof below, where all the Germans
who had been there at dawn yesterday, thousands of them, were down in
our lines, drawn up in battalions, marshalling themselves, grinning at
the fate which had come to them and spared their lives.




[Illustration: THE GREAT EXPLOIT OF E. 11: TORPEDOING AN ENEMY VESSEL
OFF CONSTANTINOPLE.

_Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_]


XI.

WARFARE UNDER WATER.[I]

BY RUDYARD KIPLING.

    They bear, in place of classic names,
      Letters and numbers on their skin.
    They play their grisly blindfold games
      In little boxes made of tin.
    Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin,
      Sometimes they learn where mines are laid
    Or where the Baltic ice is thin.
      That is the custom of “The Trade.”

    [I] _“Sea Warfare.” By Rudyard Kipling. (Macmillan.)_


No one knows how the title of “The Trade” came to be applied to the
Submarine Service. Some say the cruisers invented it because they
pretend that submarine officers look like unwashed chauffeurs. Others
think it sprang forth by itself, which means that it was coined by
the Lower Deck, where they always have the proper names for things.
Whatever the truth, the Submarine Service is now “the Trade”; and if
you ask them why, they will answer: “What else could you call it? The
Trade’s ‘the trade,’ of course.”

It is a close corporation; yet it recruits its men and officers from
every class that uses the sea and engines, as well as from many classes
that never expected to deal with either. It takes them; they disappear
for a while and return changed to their very souls, for the Trade
lives in a world without precedents, of which no generation has had
any previous experience--a world still being made and enlarged daily.
It creates and settles its own problems as it goes along, and if it
cannot help itself no one else can. So the Trade lives in the dark and
thinks out inconceivable and impossible things, which it afterwards
puts into practice.


_Four Nightmares._

Who, a few months ago, could have invented, or, having invented, would
have dared to print such a nightmare as this: There was a boat in the
North Sea who ran into a net and was caught by the nose. She rose,
still entangled, meaning to cut the thing away on the surface. But a
Zeppelin in waiting saw and bombed her, and she had to go down again at
once, but not too wildly or she would get herself more wrapped up than
ever. She went down, and by slow working and weaving and wriggling,
guided only by guesses at the meaning of each scrape and grind of the
net on her blind forehead, at last she drew clear. Then she sat on
the bottom and thought. The question was whether she should go back
at once and warn her confederates against the trap, or wait till the
destroyers, which she knew the Zeppelin would have signalled for,
should come out to finish her still entangled, as they would suppose,
in the net. It was a simple calculation of comparative speeds and
positions, and when it was worked out she decided to try for the double
event. Within a few minutes of the time she had allowed for them, she
heard the twitter of four destroyers’ screws quartering above her;
rose; got her shot in; saw one destroyer crumple; hung round till
another took the wreck in tow; said good-bye to the spare brace (she
was at the end of her supplies), and reached the rendezvous in time to
turn her friends.

And since we are dealing in nightmares, here are two more--one genuine,
the other, mercifully, false. There was a boat not only at, but _in_
the mouth of a river--well home in German territory. She was spotted,
and went under, her commander perfectly aware that there was not
more than five feet of water over her conning-tower, so that even a
torpedo-boat, let alone a destroyer, would hit it if she came over. But
nothing hit anything. The search was conducted on scientific principles
while they sat on the silt and suffered. Then the commander heard the
rasp of a wire trawl sweeping over his hull. It was not a nice sound,
but there happened to be a couple of gramophones aboard, and he turned
them both on to drown it. And in due time that boat got home with
everybody’s hair of just the same colour as when they had started!

The other nightmare arose out of silence and imagination. A boat had
gone to bed on the bottom in a spot where she might reasonably expect
to be looked for, but it was a convenient jumping-off, or up, place for
the work in hand. About the bad hour of 2.30. a.m. the commander was
waked by one of his men, who whispered to him: “They’ve got the chains
on us, sir!” Whether it was pure nightmare, an hallucination of long
wakefulness, something relaxing and releasing in that packed box of
machinery, or the disgustful reality, the commander could not tell, but
it had all the makings of panic in it. So the Lord and long training
put it into his head to reply: “Have they? Well, we shan’t be coming
up till nine o’clock this morning. We’ll see about it then. Turn out
that light, please.”

_He_ did not sleep, but the dreamer and the others did, and when
morning came and he gave the order to rise, and she rose unhampered,
and he saw the grey, smeared seas from above once again, he said it was
a very refreshing sight.

Lastly, which is on all fours with the gamble of the chase, a man was
coming home rather bored after an uneventful trip. It was necessary for
him to sit on the bottom for awhile, and there he played patience. Of a
sudden it struck him, as a vow and an omen, that if he worked out the
next game correctly he would go up and strafe something. The cards fell
all in order. He went up at once and found himself alongside a German,
whom, as he had promised and prophesied to himself, he destroyed. She
was a mine-layer, and needed only a jar to dissipate like a cracked
electric-light bulb. He was somewhat impressed by the contrast between
the single-handed game 50 feet below, the ascent, the attack, the
amazing result, and when he descended again, his cards just as he had
left them.


_The Exploit of E 11._

E 11 “proceeded” in the usual way, to the usual accompaniments of
hostile destroyers, up the Straits, and meets the usual difficulties
about charging-up when she gets through. Her wireless naturally takes
this opportunity to give trouble, and E 11 is left, deaf and dumb,
somewhere in the middle of the Sea of Marmara, diving to avoid hostile
destroyers in the intervals of trying to come at the fault in her
aerial. (Yet it is noteworthy that the language of the Trade, though
technical, is no more emphatic or incandescent than that of top-side
ships.)

Then she goes towards Constantinople, finds a Turkish torpedo-gunboat
off the port, sinks her, has her periscope smashed by a six-pounder,
retires, fits a new top on the periscope, and at 10.30 a.m.--they must
have needed it--pipes “All hands to bathe.” Much refreshed, she gets
her wireless linked up at last, and is able to tell the authorities
where she is and what she is after.

       *       *       *       *       *

In due time E 11 went back to her base. She had discovered a way of
using unspent torpedoes twice over, which surprised the enemy, and she
had as nearly as possible been cut down by a ship which she thought
was running away from her. Instead of which (she made the discovery at
3,000 yards, both craft all out) the stranger steamed straight at her.
“The enemy then witnessed a somewhat spectacular dive at full speed
from the surface to 20 feet in as many seconds. He then really did turn
tail and was seen no more.” Going through the Straits she observed
an empty troopship at anchor, but reserved her torpedoes in the hope
of picking up some battleships lower down. Not finding these in the
Narrows, she nosed her way back and sank the trooper, “afterwards
continuing journey down the Straits.” Off Kilid Bahr something
happened; she got out of trim and had to be fully flooded before she
could be brought to her required depth. It might have been whirlpools
under water, or--other things. (They tell a story of a boat which once
went mad in these very waters, and, for no reason ascertainable from
within, plunged to depths that contractors do not allow for; rocketed
up again like a swordfish, and would doubtless have so continued till
she died, had not something she had fouled dropped off and let her
recover her composure.)

An hour later: “Heard a noise similar to grounding. Knowing this to be
impossible in the water in which the boat then was, I came up to 20
feet to investigate, and observed a large mine preceding the periscope
at a distance of about 20 feet, which was apparently hung up by its
moorings to the port hydroplane.” Hydroplanes are the fins at bow and
stern which regulate a submarine’s diving. A mine weighs anything from
hundredweights to half-tons. Sometimes it explodes if you merely think
about it; at others you can batter it like an empty sardine tin and it
submits meekly; but at no time is it meant to wear on a hydroplane.
They dared not come up to unhitch it, “owing to the batteries ashore,”
so they pushed the dim shape ahead of them till they got outside Kum
Kale. They then went full astern, and emptied the after-tanks, which
brought the bows down, and in this posture rose to the surface, when
“the rush of water from the screws together with the sternway gathered
allowed the mine to fall clear of the vessel.”

Now a tool, said Dr. Johnson, would have tried to describe that.


  _Printed in Great Britain by Eyre & Spottiswoode, Ltd.,
  East Harding Street, London, E.C.4_




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected.



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