1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [221]
All stores have been issued and we are waiting to march off. Hope we win! Unfortunately the Huns must know almost everything, as it has been so widely discussed. I am beginning to suspect it is done with an object. Sacrifice a brigade here and push hard somewhere else. However we are going to justify our existence as Terriers and men – we middle-class businessmen! God Save the King!
Early in the afternoon the Liverpool Scottish marched out of camp on their way to the line. The field cookers had gone ahead and McFie had arranged for them to halt on the far side of Ypres to give the men a hot meal while they waited for darkness to cover the last mile of their progress to the front. He had been on the go since early morning, riding with his wagons to the dump near the transport line, checking long lists in the Lieutenant-Quartermaster’s office, drawing supplies, seeing that they were speedily stowed in the wagons and properly sorted out when they returned. By the time Y Company had breakfasted the stores had been set out at intervals along one side of the field. McFie had detailed extra men to help and two of them stood by each pile to hand out the goods, while Y Company paraded to receive them in a long crocodile, moving along the field, a platoon at a time. As one man remarked when he got to the end, they were loaded like blooming Christmas trees’. Every man was issued with two extra bandoliers of ammunition to be slung cross-wise across each shoulder, two empty sandbags, a waterproof sheet and a day’s extra ration in addition to his iron ration to be stuffed into his haversack. The trench-stores had been seen to. There were hand-grenades to issue to the company bombers, wire-cutters to distribute, and shovels to be carried up to the front by one unlucky platoon. It all took a long time. Then there were overcoats to be rolled and stowed on a wagon, and packs to be dumped, for Y Company was to go into action in ‘light order’. At last it was finished, dinners were served, and Y Company was ready to go.
They lined up on the road to take their place in the battalion, and McFie went to stand at the fence to wave them off. They were in high spirits. Even before they got well into their stride mouth organs had been produced and some of them were singing as they went by. They broke off to wave and shout as they passed the quartermaster. ‘We’ll bring you a souvenir, QM. What’ll it be?’ ‘We’ll bring you back a Hun or two to cook for breakfast!’ ‘Keep the cookers going. Quarters, we’ll be back soon’, then, Are we down-hearted?’ and the obligatory answering roar – ‘NO!’ It may have been bravado but they gave every indication of being glad to go. Marching at the head of the column, smiling as he returned the Quartermaster’s salute, Bryden McKinnell was to all appearances as happy as his men. There was no time now, on the eve of the battle, to brood on the thought he had recently confided to his diary: ‘Will I see next Wednesday at 10 p.m.?’ It was Tuesday evening and at ten o’clock, as darkness began to deepen, they moved into trenches in front of Y wood. The ‘special job’ was to recapture the Bellewaerde Ridge. It was an important objective in itself but the attack had a secondary purpose which, in the view of the Commander-in-Chief, was of the utmost importance – to divert the attention of the Germans from an important assault on Givenchy in the First Army sector some thirty miles to the south. The attack on Bellewaerde was referred to as ‘a minor operation’.
The British front line now lay across the longest arm of the Y-shaped copse north of the Menin Road and ran across open ground to bisect the wood that lay immediately south of the Ypres-Roulers railway. It was a long