1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [3]
I have been blessed with colleagues over the years who have given unstintingly of their time, interest and support. Some are mentioned above. Tony Spagnoly is always available for interesting discussion and gave much appreciated help with the maps; and John Woodroff, my military researcher, deserves my warmest thanks for answering a million queries on corps, divisions, battalions and individual soldiers – plus many other topics – and he very occasionally took as long as five minutes to come up with the answer.
Last, but by no means least, I must thank my stalwart assistant Sandra Layson, not just for her competence and efficiency, but for her bright presence, her sharp appreciation, her support and sympathy – evidenced by the occasional tear over the ‘sad bits’ – and for a great deal of extremely hard work.
Lyn Macdonald
London, 1993
List of Maps
The Western Front 1915
The Front, Ypres to Vimy 1915
The Battle of Neuve Chapelle
Neuve Chapelle: German positions, 11 March
Neuve Chapelle: The line at the end of the battle
The Ypres Salient 22 April 1915
Ypres: The Gas Attack
Ypres: The Salient after Retirement
Ypres: Bellewaerde and Frezenberg Ridge
Aubers Ridge
The Eastern Mediterranean
The Gallipoli Peninsula
Gallipoli: Helles and the Southern Sector
Gallipoli: Gully Ravine, 28 June 1915
Gully Ravine: Final line 5 July
Gallipoli: Anzac
Gallipoli: Suvla Bay and Anzac
The Battle of Loos
Loos, 26 September
Loos, 14 October
Part 1
‘We’re here because we here, because we’re here…’
Oh, the rain, the mud, and the cold
The cold the mud and the rain.
With weather at zero it’s hard for a hero
From language that’s rude to refrain.
With porridgy muck to the knees
With the sky that’s still pouring a flood,
Sure the worst of our foes
Are the pains and the woes
Of the rain, the cold and the mud.
Robert Service
Chapter 1
Across the chill wasteland that was Flanders in winter the armies had gone to ground. During the short hours of murky daylight, rifles occasionally crackled along some stretch of the line. From time to time a flurry of rooks, startled by a shot that ricocheted through a wood, rose cawing from the trees to wheel in the grey sky. Here and there, when some half-frozen soldier drew hard on his pipe, as if hoping its minuscule glow might keep out the cold, a stray puff of smoke would rise to mingle with the ground-mist that lay most days above the bogs and ditches. In Flanders, where the merest rise counted as a ridge and the smallest hill was regarded as a mountain, vantage points high enough to give a bird’s-eye view were rare, but on a quiet day even a vigilant observer standing almost anywhere above the undulating length of the front line would have been hard pressed to detect any sign of life and, apart from the odd burst of desultory fire, any evidence that the trenches were manned at all.
On the British side the fire was desultory because bullets were too precious to waste, and also because the soldiers were disinclined to shoot. Nineteen fifteen had swept in on the back of a gale, and high winds and violent rainstorms continued to torment the men in the trench line for day after dreary day. Peering across the parapet, enveloped in a clammy groundsheet that mainly served to channel the rain into rivers that trickled into his puttees and seeped downwards to chill his feet, contemplating the ever-worsening state of the rifle that rested on the oozing mud-filled sandbags, the last thing a soldier wished to do was foul the barrel by firing it if he could help it. Cleaning the outside was bad enough, and no sensible soldier was belligerent enough to wish to spend hours cleaning the bore for the sake of a few pot-shots in the general direction of the enemy.
Such belligerence as there was at present was largely