1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [107]
It was Captain Foster’s routine to call Brigade Headquarters, to see what was needed, any instructions and information. He came back and he said, ‘This will interest you. Some of the infantry sentries on forward observation say at night time, just as it was getting dusk, they could hear reports of these iron clangs, metallic clanging, and then the news went around that Jerry was setting up a blacksmith’s shop in the front line and would the Yorkshire Hussars find out.’ So out we went. Our password was ‘Yorkshire’, that was the call, and the answer was ‘Hussar’. Well, no German of the highest intelligence would ever expect to meet a cavalryman in No Man’s Land, would they? So that was the password. Well, we were told on this particular night, up at Ypres, to find out if there was any substance in this claim of the infantry about this metallic clanging.
Well, they must have known that there was a small English patrol along that particular sector and the buggers were waiting for us. I remember very well, Captain Foster drawing on an envelope and saying, ‘This is where we’re going to be, lads.’ He said, ‘It’s only a farm track across the Ypres to Poelcapelle Road.’ Captain Foster and Tommy Armond went over first. I’m in the middle on my own, with Arthur Hutton and big Heslop behind. I didn’t get across it because some bugger coughed! We knew it wouldn’t be an animal, it was a man, and we knew it was a German, and immediately one or two bombs went over from our lads. Well, when I heard this cough, I knew what to do straight away, because the arrangement was, if there’s anybody coughs, throw a bomb where that sound came from. That was my first occasion where I had to throw a bomb and kill people.
Captain Foster and Tommy Armond scurried back as quick as a flash to get away from it and when the Very light went up there were about thirty buggers there waiting for us!
It was the luckiest escape in the world. You know, when you’re in a position like that you lose all sense of direction. You’ve got to lie quiet for a bit and just wonder in what direction to turn – whether you should about turn, or go left, or go right – because you’re all confused. Anyway, we all finished up safe and sound back in our own trenches. We could easily have bloody walked into the German trenches!
As it was we were near enough to hear that clanging as plain as a pikestaff, and about four or five days after that they let the gas off.
And there had been other warnings. There was talk that the Germans had already used gas against the French on the Champagne front, but nothing had been heard of it through official channels. But there was other evidence which could not so easily be dismissed. As far back as the end of March the French Tenth Army in the sector north of Ypres reported that they had captured a German prisoner who had been unusually forthcoming under interrogation, pouring out details of preparations for a gas attack. The man had been nervous and eager to mollify his captors, and the French dismissed his ramblings out of hand and did not consider them worth passing on. Two weeks later another prisoner captured in the same sector had told the same story. He gave precise information, meticulous descriptions of the cylinders, fifty-three inches long and filled with chlorine gas. He described how the German soldiers had been trained in their use, showed exactly where the cylinders had been dug in and where the attacks would be launched. He was even carrying one of the respirators which had been issued to protect the German soldiers against the lethal fumes. His story was convincing. But, conferring together, British and French Intelligence Officers, weighing the matter up, concluded that it was a little too convincing. The German had been too easily captured. He had virtually walked into the French lines. Might he not have been sent on purpose?* It might easily be a devious Teutonic ruse to mislead the allies, to persuade them to withdraw troops from the ‘danger zone’ and allow the