1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [163]
Since the British retirement the Germans had made good use of their time. With the advantage of the newly won ridges and a hinterland of dead ground they had moved up large quantities of supplies – tools, wire, timber for revetments – and although their new trenches were not yet constructed to their customary standard of perfection, they had built strongpoints at intervals along the ridge, from the corner of the Menin Road which British Tommies had cheerily christened Clapham Junction to the ruins of Westhoek village, and across the open to the high ground above Frezenberg a mile beyond it. And they had sited them carefully to command the British trenches and everything that moved behind. There were guns well dug in and concealed in the woods close behind their line – in Clonmel Copse, in Nonnebosschen Wood, in Inverness Copse where so recently Jock Macleod had enjoyed his alfresco lunch with the hospitable French and where the gilt chairs and flamboyant clock salvaged from the chateau were doubtless now adorning the dug-out of German gunners.
The Patricias were still tired, for their time out of the line – and less than a mile behind – had been too short to restore men stunned by the ferocity of the bombardment that had decimated the Battalion, and too short to stiffen it with reinforcements. A draft of new men had arrived with Hamilton Gault, newly returned from hospital in England, but there were far too few to begin to fill the gaps. Even the Colonel was gone, shot by a sniper during the ‘rest’. Major Gault was now in command but there was no officer above the rank of lieutenant to assist him. Battalion headquarters was only an apology for a dug-out – a few rough boards thrown over part of the second-line trench a hundred yards behind the first – but Princess Patricia’s colours were there and they did a good deal to hearten Gault crouching with the signallers, and hoping against hope for the best.
If the Patricias’ trenches were badly placed they were marginally better off than the 28th Division on their left. Their position, bulging slightly forward to form the true apex of the new salient, ran across open ground on the forward slopes of the Frezenberg Ridge where they had no cover at all, for trenches could only be sited for concealment if there was high ground behind them where observers could direct bombardments on to No Man’s Land at the first sign of an attack. But there was no high ground behind, no more ridges for observation, no concealed artillery positions, few enough guns and not nearly enough ammunition.
On the flat land beyond Frezenberg village the 1st Suffolks were in the line and Signaller Harry Crask was at Battalion Headquarters in one of the dug-outs hastily constructed near the straggling stream they called the Hannebeek. It was Colonel Wallace’s own dug-out and it was not much of a place but from what Crask was able to gather he was a good deal better off than the men in the trenches in front. They were having a miserable time. The battalion had gone into the trenches on 17 April, and the battle had begun on the very day they were due for relief. They had been on the go ever since, attacking, counter-attacking, growing weaker in strength after each costly encounter. Shelling had also taken its toll and the Suffolks now were a pale shadow of the sun-bronzed battalion of Regulars which just a few months ago had quit garrison duties in Egypt to sail for Europe and the war. On that morning of 8 May there were fewer than four hundred of the originals left, and long before nightfall the Battalion would have ceased to exist.
But a company of Cheshires had been sent