1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [224]
Sandy Gunn was U Company’s hero of the day. Sandy had left his native Caithness two years ago to enrol as a medical student at Aberdeen University. He was now a lance-corporal and although he was no athlete and was not even officially a company runner, he had run like the furies across the dangerous shell-swept ground to take messages back and forward. It was a dangerous job and a man had to move fast and take his chance, but even on his last trip when the Germans had recovered and were spraying machine-gun fire in every direction from the trenches up the hill, Sandy spared a thought for his thirsty comrades and, although it slowed him down considerably, he brought back a gallon can of water to slake their thirst. Later, although they were pleased that Sandy had been Mentioned in Dispatches, there wasn’t a single man who didn’t firmly believe that he deserved at least a DCM.*
The new line was consolidated – and at least it had been advanced a short way. They had paid a heavy price for it in this ‘minor operation’. The attack on Givenchy had been equally expensive and only partially successful but, like the men who had fought at Bellewaerde, no one among the survivors doubted that they were still on the winning side.
The rest of the 8th Brigade moved up to join U Company in the trenches beyond Y wood to take over the captured line and the remnants of the 9th and 7th Brigades were relieved late in the evening. The Quartermaster had been waiting for many hours for Y Company to come back.
CQMSR. S. McFie.
Towards evening we packed up rations for the trenches and set out for a place on the other side of Ypres where we expected to be able to hand them over to our men. Outside the town, shells were dropping rather uncomfortably near the road, but we reached the chateau used for a dressing station, which was our destination, without accident. There we waited, and as we waited men of ours stumbled haltingly down the road to have their wounds dressed. We did not believe their stories! Only one officer, possibly two, was left. So-and-so is killed, so-and-so wounded. The total strength of the battalion could not be more than ninety, and so on.
After a time, orders came that the Regiment would be relieved and that rations were therefore not needed, but that the camp was to be pitched at once in readiness for the return of the men. We hurried back and found the shelters and tents all pitched and set to work to prepare a good reception for the boys. A friend at home had sent me about thirty fine boxes of delightful biscuits, so I put them in the tents, a box for every five men. We set out the letters and parcels, candles, food, and prepared tea and pea soup on the cookers. Of my own company a hundred and thirty men had gone to the trenches and I was ready to feast them all when they came back.
At last we heard the distant sound of pipes and after a while there passed through our gate a handful of men in tattered uniforms, their faces blackened and unshaved, their clothes stained red with blood, or yellow with the fumes of lyddite. I shouted for Y Company. One man came forward! It was heart breaking.
Gradually others tottered in, some wounded, all in the last stages of exhaustion, and when at last I went to lie down at about 5.30 a.m., I had only twenty-five of my hundred and thirty who had gone out thirty-six hours before.
I fancy there was a great deal of bungling. At drill an attack can be practised in an hour that in real warfare should take two days, and I fear that in their eagerness our men rushed forward much too far and much too quickly. It is terrible! The Regiment is practically wiped out.
The whole of the 3rd Division had suffered badly. The 9th Brigade alone had lost seventy-three of their ninety-six officers,