1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [242]
Β Company was in support and their OC, Cavendish, when he learned that our front line was lost, suggested that we should there and then build a barricade in the communication trench – for we still expected that the Boche would come on. So my small party set to, using sandbags from the side of the trench and it was rather ticklish work when it came to the upper part of the barricade, because the Boche was firing shrapnel very accurately and there were a lot of rifle and machine-gun bullets flying about.
But the men in the support trenches behind us were having a worse time – they were being heavily bombarded. We continued to stand by our barricade. I borrowed a rifle and tried to do a bit of sniping and we could see the Boche throwing up the earth in our front line. It now looked as if he were going to stay there! About an hour and a half later Mac came back with the grievous news that Michael Scrimgeour (commanding 3 Platoon) had been killed while reorganising his men in the wood. He also began to fuss about my wound, and eventually gave me a direct order to go back to the dressing station. I had to go – and that was the last I saw of poor MacAfee. He was killed that afternoon leading his men in the counter-attack.
The immediate small-scale counter-attacks were only partly successful. Despite the unexpectedness and horror of the attack the survivors rallied, and men of the 7th King’s Royal Rifle Corps, who had been attacked in their turn, charged back into the carnage, into the stench of oil and smoke and burnt flesh, and fought across the charred bodies of their comrades to wrench back the remnants of part of the trench-line they had lost on the fringes of the attack.
By some miracle the Germans had stopped to consolidate and, at least for the moment, they made no attempt to press on. There was time to reorganise. Time to send for help.
News of the disaster spread quickly.
Major S. H. Cowan.
30th July. On the way to 8th Brigade about 8 a.m., Hart and I were stopped. No traffic through Ypres – and why? Roads had to be kept clear for troops on their way to make a counterattack. But where? Hooge, he thought! The first thing was to impress on the sentry that being an officer of the Corps Staff (which was a lie!) I was not affected by the order. That was quickly accomplished. And now to think. Well, I knew that our Corps had shifted a little southward leaving one of Kitchener’s divisions to the 6th Corps who now embraced Hooge – and I had my own opinion of that Division.
Arrived at 8th Brigade, and Hoskyns told me the truth and we had a swearing trio with Macready (Staff Captain). The facts were: we had been booted out, not only from the biggest hole in Belgium which cost Hoskyns four hundred good men and me six weeks of anxiety, but right off the top of the knoll we’d always had and which we had fortified on all sides, and right back into the edge of the wood itself! The stories were: an attack by liquid fire, etc. etc. But none of us know of a spray that can throw twenty yards and every bomber can do thirty. The inference is that the whole blessed lot were caught half asleep, fell into a panic and ran. A real bad show. And the worst of it was that at the bottom of our hearts we could not feel very much surprised. But I know that if the 8th Brigade had been left there it would not have happened.
Later we had fine view of the bombardment for a counterattack – which we learnt later, failed. We were not a cheery party by any means.
It was hardly fair. No troops on earth could have stood fast, engulfed in clouds of oily fumes, scorched by jets of searing flame. No measure of experience, no infinite amount of courage, no steadfastness of resolution could