1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [161]
Our life is very strange. We have enough meat now to last us a long time because my men killed a calf they found abandoned and wandering along the street. We have bread too. There is no longer a baker in the town but we have the key to his house and there’s plenty of flour so, this afternoon, my men managed to bake some bread in his oven.
8 May Towards seven o’clock in the morning the shelling started up furiously – deafening crashes of big guns and the constant whistling of shrapnel shells. While I was praying in the chapel there was an enormous bang and a shell demolished the best part of the neighbouring building which was newly built. Nevertheless, my men arrived with three bodies, one of them a woman found in the Café Reubens. We thought we’d be here for a long time but suddenly I heard that permission to stay in the town had been withdrawn and we were ordered to leave before six o’clock in the evening. The police showed me a telegram saying that the evacuation must be completed with no exceptions whatever. Three of my men, who had gone out to bury the bodies, did not return so I went out to look for them. It was truly terrible! All the time shrapnel was exploding above the town. Four horses lay bathed in their own blood in the Grand’ Place at the corner of the rue de Lille and all along the length of the rue au Beurre we could see bloodstains everywhere, but not a living soul. Everything is in flames, nothing but ruins and it’s rare to see a whole wall standing among the heaps of brick and rubble. Hardly a cellar has not been broken into and there are many strong-boxes forced open and tossed among the debris. The houses that have escaped the fire are all holed and splintered, at the mercy of the four winds, ripe for pillage. It is truly the abomination of desolation.
I searched in vain for my men, for they had been arrested by the police and taken forcibly to Poperinghe.
The shells that rained that day on Ypres were not directed at the few defiant civilians still lurking in the ruins. It was the start of a new offensive.
Creeping forward within a stone’s throw of the new allied line the Germans were able to judge that it was crude and sketchy, that its defences were weak, and it was easy to tell from the sparse bombardments that the British were short of shells and heavy guns. And there in front of them was Ypres, almost within spitting distance. The Germans still lacked troops, but the retirement had given them new heart. Surely with one more push Ypres would fall into their hands.
It was 8 May, and that same morning General Plumer sent an order to the troops around the salient. It urged them to hold the line tenaciously and, at all costs, to avoid the necessity of calling for reinforcements. In the light of ‘the big scheme further south’ there would be no one to spare to help them out of trouble.
It was Plumer’s first official order as Commander of the Second Army. Thirty-six hours earlier Smith-Dorrien had at last been forced into resignation. In a personal letter to the Commander-in-Chief he had pointed out, in tones of injured dignity, that the evident lack of trust in him ‘constituted a weak link in the chain of command’ and that for the general good, it might be better if he were to serve elsewhere. It was delivered on the morning of 6 May and, although his letter was addressed personally to Sir John French, Smith-Dorrien did not receive the courtesy of a personal reply, or even an acknowledgement. That evening a curt order arrived from GHQ, instructing him to hand over command of the Second Army to General Plumer and to return to England.*
Chapter 20
The morale of the Germans was high. On 6 May they had finally pushed the allies off Hill 60, with another devastating gas attack. Now they were ready to launch a fresh attack which they believed might secure Ypres itself. They intended to attack all round