B00D2VJZ4G EBOK (29 page)

Their machine guns swept us with bullets, and some of our new men wavered; this was their first experience in the War. The colonel rallied them and ordered the section I was in charge of to rush a pillbox that was holding us up. We rushed straight at it. The Huns threw a flare bomb in our midst and mowed us down with machine-gun bullets. Of my section of ten, five were killed and four wounded.

I felt as if a stone had hit my leg and spun round. Two bullets had gone through my thigh, but they were not dangerous. Other bullets passed through my clothes without touching me. As I lay I heard that the colonel was badly wounded, and another section had captured the pillbox while we drew the fire.

I made my way back, and, resting awhile, fell asleep, to be wakened by a German touching my shoulder. For the moment I thought I was captured, but found that he was the prisoner. He helped me back about three miles to the main road, and assisted me into a passing lorry. I turned to thank him, but he was gone.

After passing through the base hospital and Whalley Range Hospital I was sent to Seaham Hall, one mile from home. I mended very quickly, had a jolly two weeks’ leave, and was sent to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps Command Depot at Tipperary, where I found the Southern Irish very bitter against the British troops.

After a short spell there, I was passed A1 and transferred to Sheerness, where, after a severe course of training, I left for active service again, rejoining the Yeoman Rifles in January 1918. We went to Italy, which was very quiet, our chief casualties being caused by vino.

Early in March we arrived back in France, and, to the sorrow of all ranks, the Yeoman Rifles were disbanded. As the various detachments marched away to other battalions veterans of many actions wept. They marched away with heads erect and smiling faces as we shouted our ‘Good-byes,’ but the tears were showing through their smiles. A few of us were transferred to the Machine Gun Corps.

On March 21st, 1918, the German offensive commenced and we were rushed up the line to Achiet-le-Grand.

I retained my job as runner, and was with Battalion Headquarters. News came through that all in front had perished, and I was detailed with another runner to go forward and discover the position of the enemy. Our commanding officer gave each of us a revolver and instructions that if necessary we had each to shoot five Germans and then ourselves. He gave us each a drink of whisky, and as we left our chaps shook hands with us and looked as if they thought us doomed.

Our journey was uneventful for a while. Shells fell occasionally; then we saw hazy figures, then a tank, and found them to be British troops. The tank officer suspected us as spies and would give us no information. We reached a wood and found some of our machine-gun companies. Things had been very bad, but were now quiet. The troops in the line had suffered heavily, and Brigade Headquarters were manning the trenches.

We got such information as we could and were shelled freely on our return journey, having found our big adventure as tame as a Sunday-school treat.

We found our camp deserted and our equipment left. Our headquarters had evidently left hurriedly, as a half-bottle of whisky and some rum were left in the mess. We soon disposed of this, donned our packs and left to find our headquarters. We found them in a trench. The C.O. was pleased with our report and sent us to rest.

We were soon disturbed and sent to Divisional Headquarters with a message. As we returned we met the British Army in retreat. Moving forward keeping to the side of the road we were passed by galloping artillery, staff cars, and infantry, swearing and shouting as they rushed backward. The retirement was ‘according to plan,’ but we had a feeling that we were losing the War.

When we got back to our trench everything was quiet. The returning troops had all passed and the enemy had not yet reached us. We just stayed there, knowing we had no reinforcements and that for some miles back the country was deserted, that the Huns were feeling their way towards us, and that we might expect some trouble that night. While we were awaiting the attack, the regimental sergeant-major sent me back for some water. I found water and a store of whisky. I returned with some of each.

Just then we observed the enemy approaching over a ridge some 700 yards away. They advanced in open formation and appeared to be assembling in the hollow where our camp had been. We kept up a steady fire and took things comfortably as their shells passed over us.

Quite suddenly German cavalry, which had assembled behind a wood about 300 yards away, charged us. This was a new experience, and my heart jumped. We fired rapidly and wiped them out, shooting the fallen riders as they endeavoured to crawl away. After a lull more cavalry attacked from the right. One of our tanks appeared from nowhere and, assisted by our machine guns, soon turned them.

As dusk approached we sent out a patrol. They never returned, and a second patrol, consisting of a drunken major and myself, was sent out. We wandered about aimlessly when a hut window, about 600 yards in front, lit up. The major ordered me to put that light out. In the dark I pointed my rifle in the direction of the light and fired. The light went out, and I surmised that some German, having lighted his cigarette, had blown out the match. On our return the major swanked about me as being the ‘best shot in the British Army.’

We were then ordered to withdraw to the new line some 12 kilometres back, where the enemy advance was finally stopped. We moved up behind Ypres, where it was my privilege to instruct the first American runners in the line, although they first objected to being taught by ‘a boy.’

On leaving the line we were sleeping in a hut when I suddenly felt horribly afraid and told the others, who laughed at me. I got up and dressed, and had just lain down when a shell hit the hut. We lit candles and found, in the next partition, two medical orderlies, one almost blown to pieces and his friend wounded. In the room at the other side the colonel’s servant was dead, and in the next hut some were killed and many wounded. As we carried one man up, I saw the wounded orderly dying bravely. Smoking a cigarette, he told the medical officer to dress those who would live. He died in the ambulance shortly afterwards. There was a gaping hole in my steel helmet, a piece of shrapnel in my towel, and the hut was riddled, but I was untouched.

Soon after this our big push that was to end the War started. We kept the enemy on the move and talked excitedly when the first rumours of the Armistice came through. On the morning of November 11th I was with a section in the front, and had orders to harass the Hun until 11 a.m. when hostilities would cease. At eleven o’clock we halted at an estaminet and amazed the landlady by demanding beer and shouting ‘Le guerre finis.’

Following the Germans next day to make sure that they were retiring, we met frightened figures in strange clothing – men of the Allied Armies, fearing and starving, staggering towards freedom. Some died by the roadside, dead on the day of their delivery from a living death, turned out by an enemy without any provision for their safe return.

Corporal Robert William Iley enlisted in 21st (Service) Battalion King’s Royal Rifle Corps (Yeoman Rifles), November 20th, 1915. Transferred, to 41st Battalion Machine Gun Corps about March 19th, 1918. Wounded, September 20th, 1917. Awarded Military Medal, June 1917. Mentioned in Sir Douglas Haig’s Despatches, April 9th, 1917. Demobilized, January 1919
.

The individual who finally sank his identity under number S/41250 of the Gordon Highlanders could not by any stretch of imagination have been called brave. Nevertheless he joined the khaki throng. And he did so voluntarily, though conscription was in force. He had received a protection certificate under the Military Service Acts unsought, being in a protected occupation. He was, in fact, a London policeman.

Then a journey north to Scotland by night, with the whole of the Highlands a vast sea of white.

At the Regimental Depot the conscripts – and the old swaddies used the term quite often – were required to wait outside the dining-hall until the Depot Staff, time-serving soldiers, and men returned unfit from the B.E.F. were seated. Then the orderly sergeant gave ‘Go’ and the conscripts were at liberty to enter and take seats below the salt.

There was the good corporal who trained them. He had Gaelic and would cast a disapproving eye over his squad. ‘Holy – !’And an acid stream, descriptive of their shortcomings, would flow. One of the missing words was perhaps the most obscene that can be uttered.

Musketry training and draft leave and that glorious journey to France for the great adventure – full of hope, expectation, and wonder. And so by the Bull Ring of Etaples of happy memory(!); by the rose-covered chateau at the Divisional Reinforcement Camp, with its placid stream running through the grounds and dragon-flies darting to and fro in the sunlight. And the rumble of the guns heard for the first time.

Trenches in a quiet sector on the Somme, ‘Drumming up’ in a mess tin, using for fuel wood cut finer than matches in order not to cause smoke. Gargantuan feeds of bully beef and pork and beans, fried up in a biscuit-tin lid, with a candle and a piece of sand-bag for fire!

A movement north to take part in a big battle.

Ypres, city of the lowlands. What memories does the name conjure up! The Salient! Dyed with the blood of men who faced the hell that existed there right through the War. A dark night, with the pale moon beaming fitfully between the flying scud of the clouds. Under the shadow of what had been a convent and the walls of the stately Cloth Hall! All quiet. One could nearly feel the presence of the ‘Old Contemptibles’ of 1914; could almost see their ghosts as they, perhaps, smiled approval on their successors.

A day by Hell Fire Corner, plastered the while with shrapnel, H.E., and incendiary shells. No sleep. Thunder of guns continuously until parade. Onward by Wilde Wood. The sky was cloudy and obscured the moon. A phantom host flitting through the black night. And so across the Ypres battlefield with its dead, its debris, and its horrible stench. Past some old gun-pits. The moon gleamed fitfully for a few moments and there was a vision indescribable in its naked horror. Pieces of metal that once were cannon; and, if good Krupp steel had been so shattered, what of the humans who served the steel? Heads, legs, arms, trunks, pieces of rotting flesh, skulls that grinned hideously, bones cleaned by exposure, lay about in hopeless riot. And so to No Man’s Land.

Two hours’ sleep, then the thunders of an intensive artillery barrage. 5.50 a.m. – over! Men falling. Ahead a burn shown on the map as being 30 inches or 3 feet wide, but found to be a morass 50 feet wide. Wading through mud waist deep, with kilts floating on the surface like water-lilies. Midway over, when the searchlights from the pillboxes swept the countryside and the vicious spit of the machine guns was heard. Many fell, killed outright or to suffer the horrible torture of suffocation beneath the mud. You cannot help them; you must push on. A stretch of firm ground and signs of daylight coming up. You see a line of stumpy tree-trunks that, dimly, you realize is the objective. You creep up. A wild melee; stabbing with a bayonet. A gushing of blood from many wounds (oh! the nauseating smell of freshly spilled human blood in quantity), and then a cry of ‘Kamerad!’ and a whine for mercy. Unheeded, for all the enemy died.

Stuck in the mud for four days. Shelled and sniped from the front; sniped and bombed from the air. Casualties every hour. Ten counter-attacks for the lost ground before nightfall on the first day. And all broken up and withered away by our artillery and rifle-fire.

No sleep. Then on the fourth night came relief. Staggering out to a rest billet and dropping exhausted. A feed of bacon, bread and butter, and tea. Real hot tea, scalding; plenty of it, and you rejoice – until you remember you’re eating dead men’s rations beside your own, for without the dead men there would be no plenty.

Holding on at Joy Ride and Crucifix Street. Built up of German dead. Skulls peering hideously; mute decaying arms and legs jutting out at every step you took along the trench. Then badgered about practising attacks in diamond formation, in depth, on woods and in open country which were destined to be delayed for many months

In again at the fag-end and to help consolidate such gains as remained after Cambrai. Bovis Trench. Doubtless in appearance something akin to what we shall find Hades when, in due season, such as meet their just deserts reach there. An absolute shambles. The ground twisted and torn; shell and trench-mortar holes everywhere. Trench walls crumbling; on all sides evidence of decay, but fairly dry. Then on the first. night snow, which changed, through sleet, to hard rain, and morning light found 18 inches of the finest mud one could wish to see. Black, oozing, liquid, penetrating. It stayed and clung in deep and abiding affection, soaking through boots and rubber capes. Counter-attacks by Jerry for the lost ground; raids and counter-raids; general conditions so appalling and losses so heavy that the Brass Hats took compassion and gave relief after four days.

Relief on Christmas Eve after a spell of eighteen days, on eleven of which battle hardly ceased by day or night, though officially activity was defined as ‘engagements of no importance.’

Into the line on January 26th, 1918, and ‘right sector,’ ‘support trenches’ and ‘left sector’ in turn, changing at six-, three- and six-day intervals. On the night of March 17th a maelstrom of hell in the shape of British artillery in action from Ypres to Cambrai. Outside news none. Wild rumours of heavy enemy successes in the south, of which confirmation was forthcoming in the way of German Verey lights appearing much farther behind our backs on each succeeding night. The front line untenable. Shelled from the front and from a point seven miles in rear. An evacuation to cut the angle out. Then, as the enemy attack came north, desperate attempts by him to take our ground. Harassing attacks day and night. Then, on the evening of the 27th, a curious lull – an absolute and awe-inspiring silence.