1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [144]
Eventually I caught up with the battalion in an orchard and there was a Quartermaster Sergeant there with his battalion stores. He was giving the stuff away – all of his battalion’s rations! He said he hadn’t seen his Battalion for three days so we might as well have the stuff. I remember him handing out the tins of Maconochie rations and also big gross boxes of Bryant and May’s matches. The Colonel spoke to us while we were resting and said that the Germans had sprung a gas attack and might do it again. He told us, if that happened we should piss on a handkerchief and tie it round our mouths. He said that would do the trick. Then we got orders to move and we started off towards the front. The Connaughts were already in the front line and we were going into support. When we arrived, a few of the boys still had the stuff they’d got from the Quartermaster, but most of us had chucked it away long before.
The Lahore Division was a mixed bag. There were tall Pathans from the north-west territories around Peshawar and Rawalpindi, stocky Gurkhas from the highlands of Nepal, bearded Sikhs from the Punjab. There were soldiers from Bhopal, men of the Frontier Force and, fighting alongside them in their British battalions, Irishmen in the Connaught Rangers, Merseysiders in the King’s Liverpools, Scots in the Highland Light Infantry, a Lancashire contingent in the Manchesters, and the Londoners of the Royal Fusiliers. Together they were to launch out from the northern wall of the salient against the German line on Mauser Ridge. And they were to do more than capture it. Advancing with the French troops on their left and Hull’s force of ‘odd detachments’ on their right, they were to batter on and push the Germans back to Langemarck, while the French, advancing from just east of the canal, were to capture Pilckem village on the way.
In the course of the morning Sir John French took the trouble to telephone a personal message of encouragement to Second Army Headquarters. The Commander-in-Chief wished it to be known that he had no doubts about the successful outcome of the offensive as the enemy could not be ‘very strong or numerous, as he must have lost heavily and be exhausted’. These optimistic words did nothing to relieve Smith-Dorrien’s anxiety, and there certainly was no time to pass them on to the troops. It was now twenty minutes past eleven and, if all had gone well, even the tail-end of the Lahore Division should now be moving into position ready to deploy.
Major F. A. Robertson, 59th Scinde Rifles, Frontier Force, Lahore Div.
We had orders to make a counter-attack in the direction of St Julien. I had recently been through a course of bombing and had been told to take command of the bomb party of my regiment, but I had no time to put the men through their paces before we marched. Those were the days of frequent changes in the pattern of bombs. As we prepared to deploy I served out the Battye bombs to the sepoys and they looked at them with dismay. I asked them what was wrong and at last a young Sikh remarked, ‘But, Sahib, we have never seen a bomb with a fuse like this before! We’re used to lighting ours with matches.’ So that was a pleasant situation, I must say, when we were just going into action!
It was a bad start, but there was nothing to be done except to give the hastiest of demonstrations and advice, and to hope for the best.
It took a long time to spread the troops of three brigades into formation. They were still well back from the start-line but, apart from the three battalions in the lee of Hilltop Ridge, they were well within