• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1843 0

the light of the disappointing results and the heavy cost, it would be best, even now, to cut their losses. The decision was postponed, and postponed again. The question of supplies was a major problem – and particularly of supplies of ammunition. Scarce as they were, was it wise to split them? In the second week of May, when the Gallipoli force was battling for Krithia, when the soldiers on the western front were attacking Aubers Ridge, when hopes were pinned on the result of these two battles thirteen thousand miles apart, the lack of ammunition had stymied them both. If the eighty thousand shells fired at Aubers Ridge had been available for the attack on Krithia the troops on Gallipoli might well be in possession of Achi Baba, if not the whole peninsula. And if the shells that were fired on Gallipoli in the first two weeks since the landing had been available at Aubers Ridge, it was not entirely impossible that the troops on the western front would have broken through to open the road to Lille.

After what, in the circumstances, had been a profligate expenditure of ammunition in the battle for Ypres and the attacks on Aubers Ridge and Festubert, ammunition was scarcer than ever. On 28 May, after the battles in north and south had petered out, Sir John French was forced to order the First Army to limit its operations to ‘small aggressive threats which will not require much ammunition or many troops’.

East of Ypres the line had settled down. But it had settled down to the disadvantage of the British Army. The Germans had captured the whole of the Bellewaerde Ridge and north of the Menin Road their front line was established well down the slope. From their observation posts behind it the skeleton of Ypres was in full view and, although the battle had died down, the guns never ceased to shell it and the ruins shivered and shook and tumbled, crumbling a little more with every explosion. Ypres was a dead city, but now that the civilians had cleared out it was also a happy hunting-ground for the troops in the line nearby. Looting was strictly forbidden by the Army on pain of severe penalties but, since the goods left behind in the half-ruined houses were there for the taking, when they could be of no possible use to their departed owners and were likely to go up in smoke with the next explosion, why should a provident Tommy not help himself? His philosophy was as clear as his conscience, aptly summed up in the shoulder-shrugging phrase picked up from the French: ‘C’est la guerre.’ In recent months fate, in the shape of ‘la guerre’, had not been particularly kind, and now that she was doling out a crumb or two to set against a soldier’s normal tedious lot, it was only right to take it in the same spirit as he put up with leaking billets, miserable trenches, inadequate rations and the persistent attentions of the enemy.

The first fortunate scavengers, exploring prosperous dwellings through holes conveniently blasted in their walls, had quickly become connoisseurs of fine wines and expensive cigars, and some entrepreneurs among the engineers and transport drivers with handy wagons at their disposal, had managed to remove sufficient bottles from the cellars to set up a profitable sideline with shopkeepers in surrounding villages.

Capt. B. McKinnell.

Tuesday 1st June. We had to go and inspect trenches, so Thin, the Adjutant, Dickie, Rennison, Graham and self rode off on horseback. Got a great send-off, the last three being anything but accomplished horsemen; Graham’s last steed had been a donkey, and it was only my third ride. We had a most painful hour’s ride and then a mile and a half walking across country, where we were shelled twice. We left the huts at 2.30 and got back to where we left our horses at 9 p.m., having had a bad shaking with shells en route on the way back. Going through the village of Kemmel we met ‘Buster’ Birkett, who was looking for a wine shop, the one and only within miles and miles. We all found it and had the best of claret (possibly and very probably ‘salvage’ from Ypres) at two francs a bottle. All