Amabel Williams-Ellis

THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES

The night of July 30 was dark and wet, and towards morning a fine mizzling rain blurred the outlines of the star shells that lit up the lines. Along fifteen miles of front the English and German guns had roared against each other all night.

The waiting men shivered in their wet assembly trenches.

About three o’clock on the morning of the 31st there was a lull in the firing. A low soaking blanket of Scotch mist had crept up and lay heavily enfolding the opposing armies. Zero hour was drawing near. All along the front, men were feeling for the little footholds above the fire-step.

At 3.50 the streaming darkness was rent along the seven miles of attack. Thermite and blazing oil flared out, and such a barrage as had not yet been crashed upon the enemy’s line, and infantry and Tanks scrambled and lurched in the darkness in and out of shell-holes over the torn and slimy ground.

The German front line fell at once along the whole seven miles. Until nearly eight o’clock men and Tanks could hardly get through the mud fast enough to come to grips with the enemy. On each Corps front there were many machines that got ditched on the enemy front line as they nosed about here and there, seeking to mop up lurking machine-gun nests and snipers.

There some of them remained stuck fast, not having seen the main body of the enemy at all, so immediate had been his retreat.

His artillery was, however, active enough, and as the Tanks floundered or stuck utterly in the mud, his guns and his low-flying aeroplanes took steady toll.

All morning we pressed on, the enemy Command patiently conserving the power of its armies.

The doings of a group of Tanks belonging to the 3rd Brigade give an extraordinarily good idea of this part of the action. They were fighting on the 19th Corps front.

Another very gallant action was fought by a Tank crew also belonging to this Battalion.

They started the battle in a Tank named “Ca’ Canny” under command of Lieutenant H.P.M. Jones, who was killed near Wilde Wood. The crew carried on under command of Corporal Jenkins until about 11 p.m., when the Tank “bellied” hopelessly. Corporal Jenkins withdrew his Lewis guns and crew, and, placing some of them on the top of the Tank and some on the ground, kept up an effective fire on the enemy, who were then attempting a small counter-attack.

He then transferred his men to another Tank, “Clyde,” whose crew had all been wounded. They fought this Tank for a further two hours, but at about three o’clock “Clyde,” too, stuck in the mud and proved inextricable. He and his crew then returned on foot to their Battalion Rallying Point.

With the 18th Corps, the 1st Brigade Tanks were on several occasions signalled for by fairly distant parties of infantry, who proceeded to “set” them at strong points that were giving trouble. This system worked extremely well, and had a particularly impressive moral effect on the enemy. Several occasions are recorded on which enemy garrisons did not wait for the Tank which had been thus “whistled up” to get near enough to fire, but surrendered as soon as they saw it coming.

Our advance had continued for about ten hours, that is, till nearly three in the afternoon, when our enterprise seemed to have succeeded.

As early as nine in the morning we held the whole of our second objective north of Westhoek.

By the afternoon we had entered St. Julien, Frezenberg and the Pommern Redoubt, and had taken the crossings of the Steenbeek and Stirling Castle.

Glencorse Wood and Inverness Copse had proved more difficult, but even here we held a footing on the ridge.

We had “riven the oak,” we were now to feel the force of the rebound.

That afternoon in a downpour of rain the enemy counter-attacked along the fronts of all three Corps. There was a fierce struggle, in which in many instances Tanks were able to do a good deal of execution.

We were shelled out of St. Julien. North of it we withdrew to the line of the Steenbeek, and we were obliged to fall back from all but the western outskirts of Westhoek.

All afternoon we slowly lost ground, yet when night fell we could still boast a battle well begun. It was, after all, never meant to be a one-day attack, and to-morrow we should start well. We had everywhere taken and held our first objective, that is, the low muddy ridge from which the enemy had so closely threatened the original Ypres arena.

The second flat valley and the higher ridge from Passchendaele to Staden now lay before us.

At least we were in a good position for to-morrow’s attack. Mr. Buchan thus in effect analyses our gains:

Along two-thirds of our line of attack we held our first objectives. On half of the remaining third we had only fallen just short of our final objective. On the remaining sixth we had even slightly exceeded our final objective. We had besides taken 6000 prisoners and a quantity of machine-guns.

II

All that night the enemy counter-attacked us doggedly, resolved upon driving us down again. All night we fought to keep what we had won, and prepared the redoubled blow that we meant to deliver next day.

That blow was destined never to be struck. The wind that brought the rain blew out our hopes of victory.

It was nearly a fortnight before the 5th Army could again attack.

The disappointment of the Higher Command was acute; acute, too, were the physical and mental miseries suffered during that fortnight by the Tank Corps and all the other arms engaged.

Their magnificent efforts, their sacrifices, were of no avail. There they lay day after day, drenched by the inexorable rain, those in the forward area half choked in the rising streams of liquid mud.

It was in no sunny frame of mind that the 5th Army Headquarters Staff read the verdict of the three Corps upon the day’s work done by the Tanks.

The three Summaries were agreed that the courage and perseverance shown by Tank personnel had been admirable.

One Corps, however, had given way thoroughly to the spirit of the time. They practically reported that Tanks had been of no use to any one, and moreover that they were never likely to be. With the 30th Division they had been unable to deal with certain machine-gun emplacement; with the 24th they had been late, they always drew enemy shell-fire; and with the 8th Division one Tank had even lost direction and been reported as firing on our own men.

Another Corps had found Tanks helpful, and said all they could for them.

Tanks had greatly assisted the Gordons and Black Watch at Frezenberg, they had dealt effectively with concrete dug-outs; with the 55th Division they had broken the wave of an enemy counter-attack at Winnipeg, and everywhere their moral effect on the enemy had been of great assistance. Twenty-four Tanks had been put out of action by bad going or shell-fire.

A third Corps with fewer machines had in many cases reached their objective without being held up. The Tanks had in these cases merely followed the infantry, but they reported that without Tanks the capture of the strongly wired position of Alberta would have cost the 39th Division dear, and that on the Steenbeek near Ferdinand Farm the enemy, who had bolted at the mere sight of a Tank, had been “dealt with” at ease with a machine-gun by infantry of the 51st Division.

Upon these Summaries and upon later failures the Commander of the 5th Army was subsequently to base a generally unfavourable report upon Tanks.

The report may be condensed into a simple syllogism:—

He added to this, that being no longer a surprise to the enemy, he considered that Tanks had lost their moral effect, and had no value used in masses.

This report was not officially presented for some weeks, but the Higher Tank Command must early have perceived the drift of affairs. The events of the first day and the manner in which those events were interpreted gave only too much data to the prophetic spirit. The junior Tank personnel knew little of what was going on. Like Burns’s mouse, they were only touched by the present, the throwing away of what had cost them so many weeks of toil. To the Higher Tank Command was reserved Burns’s own fate:

What would be the results of the initial ill-success of the battle, and of the further Tank failures which seemed only too probable when an advance which had begun so ill was continued, after perhaps two or three inches more rain?

How were the final arbiters, G.H.Q. and the War Cabinet, going to regard such failures? Tanks had been employed under grotesque conditions, and after all, they had failed in common with every other arm. Were the events of the next few weeks to be disastrous enough to consign them irrevocably to Bottomless Perdition?

At best their hopes of expansion would most probably be nipped. Their establishment would be reduced, and Tanks would be used in petits paquets again, by ones and twos as they had been in the past, because, once more, there would never be enough machines for an effective action.

As the days wore on, and the rain continued (at the rate often of an inch a day), one of these alternative fates seemed inevitable.

The gloomy surmises of the Tank Headquarters Staff were only too well founded. The authorities were in fact suffering from one of the worst cold fits which the pilots of the Tank Corps at home and abroad ever endured.

Tank Corps Headquarters heard it all. They knew well enough that in well-informed but irresponsible London circles the remark, “I hear the Tanks are going to be abolished,” was a common one; that often in such gossip circumstances of person and date would be added.

For all this they had no certain refutation. If only Tanks could even now do something that would catch the eye of authority. Some little “show” exploit. Something that would at least make a summary condemnation unlikely. The battle would have to be continued some day. Tanks would have to play their part, but in that intolerable swamp was it likely that they would do anything except engulf themselves—literally and metaphorically—yet deeper than before?

There, however, lay the Tanks’ best hope. Chance and their own exertions might bring them a success even in Flanders.

III

Thirty-six Tanks belonging to the 1st Brigade had remained in Army Reserve. On August 16, the weather having been less wet for a day or two, the first and most considerable of a series of renewed attacks was to be made.

Twelve Tanks were to co-operate with the infantry on the Langemarck-St. Julien front.

On the night of the 13th the Tanks began to move up. The roads were already congested with other traffic, and the Tanks were not to be allowed to make use of them.

The infantry attacked, and after the action a nest of pill-box strongholds north-east of St. Julien still remained untaken.

Like most of these little fortresses, they had been extremely skilfully placed. An unwary advance would be trapped in their wire just within convenient range of their machine-guns.

They were so small, scattered, and well concealed as to be almost impossible targets for heavy guns, and as they were built of reinforced concrete at least three feet thick, the ordinary high-explosive shell thrown by a field gun had no effect upon them.

This particular nest consisted of four pill-boxes of more than average size.

Three of them were hidden in the ruins of farmsteads. That in the Mont du Hibou was manned by a garrison of about eighty men, and the Cockcroft was still more strongly held. Triangle Farm and Hillock Farm were slightly smaller. It was essential that they should be taken, and General Sir Ivor Maxse, commanding the 18th Corps, was informed by the Brigadiers concerned that their capture would probably cost us 600 to 1000 casualties. He and Colonel Baker-Carr (commanding 1st Brigade of Tanks) then considered the possibility of a Tank attack.

Colonel Baker-Carr, admirably undismayed by the dismal events of the 16th, optimistically guaranteed the fortresses at half the estimated cost to the infantry, and the attack was arranged. One innovation he specially asked for. There was to be no shelling, but he was to be granted the concealment of a smoke barrage. Having once decided to entrust the affair to the Tanks, General Maxse was zealous to give them every possible chance of success and did not hesitate to modify his orders to suit their considered demands. Only twelve Tanks were to be employed, and they and their infantry were to use the roads for as far as these served them. Colonel Baker-Carr decided to form a composite Company from “G” (7th) Battalion under the command of Major Broome.

The resulting action, small as were the numbers engaged, will ever find a place in the annals of the Tank Corps.

The four strong points were triumphantly captured.

At 4.45 a.m. on the morning of August 19, the artillery isolated the doomed strongholds in clouds of dense smoke.

The action had been carefully rehearsed. Two Tanks were to be used against each pill-box, and they were to take them in rear, so striking where the forts were most vulnerable, and at the same time cutting off the garrison’s retreat.

Just before six o’clock the enveloping manoeuvre was complete, and the first pill-box—Hillock Farm—fell, nearly all its garrison having fled.

At 6.15 two Tanks reached the Mont du Hibou, and fired forty rounds from their 6-pounder guns into the back door of the stronghold. Sixty of the garrison fled, of whom about half escaped or were shot down, and the rest surrendered to the infantry as soon as it came up.

Triangle Farm fell ten minutes afterwards. The garrison had put up a fight against the Tanks and our infantry killed them all, mostly with the bayonet.

At the Cockcroft the attacking Tank40 got ditched within fifty yards of its victim. But at sight of it the garrison of over 100 “withdrew.” The Tank and its infantry immediately opened fire with their Lewis guns, and more than half the fugitives fell.

In one of the strong points we found a German officer who had been hanged by his men.

The St. Julien attack, as it was afterwards called, proved a sufficient counterblast to the 5th Army report.

The friends of the Tank Corps made the most of it. It was a brilliant little exploit, and once brought to notice, the casualty figures pleaded too loudly to be ignored.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that it was in some measure to the Tanks which won the little Battle of St. Julien that the Tank Corps owed the opportunity of winning the Battle of Cambrai.

IV

From August 22 till October 9, by which time hope of British success at Ypres had been more or less abandoned, the Tanks fought in about a dozen minor actions. They made almost as many more unavailing attempts to fight. Like the rest of the Army, they spent much vain labour and knew the weariness of much frustrated effort. They made elaborate and toilsome movements in preparation for attacks which were never launched. They struggled night after night to get up to some battle which eventually had to take place without them. Tanks had now invariably to move upon the roads, as the ground between had finally and definitely been reduced to impassable swamp. The roads naturally formed standing targets for the German gunners. We lost heavily in men and machines. General Elles had originally estimated that one machine in two would get into effective action. Now, in view of the appalling ground conditions, he revised this, only reckoning on one machine in ten getting into effective contact with the enemy. This modest estimate was as a matter of fact seldom exceeded.

Whenever Tanks did get into action, however, they usually did well, though rarely decisively, in spite of the standard of extraordinary courage which was steadfastly maintained by the crews.

The briefest review of most of these depressing little engagements is all that need be given. They were remarkable for nothing except the heroic patience shown day after day by every arm of our attacking forces.

On August 22 a minor attack was launched by all three Corps. Small parties of Tanks fought with each.

With the 2nd Corps in Glencorse Wood four Tanks of the 2nd Brigade were of some service, and did considerable execution.

With the 19th Corps eighteen Tanks of the 3rd Brigade were used on the off-chance of their being able to reach the objectives. The going was more than ordinarily atrocious, the whole of the Frezenberg-Zonnebeke road having been shot away. One Tank fought a very remarkable action, engaging the enemy near “Gallipoli” for sixty-eight hours.

With the 18th Corps twelve Tanks of the 1st Brigade headed an attack on BÜlow Farm, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and other strong points. They proved useful, and several Tanks were in action for longish periods.

Two things are remarkable about this operation: first, that every Tank which ventured to leave the road instantly bellied. One was “drowned” in six or seven feet of water.

Secondly, the remarkable way in which they affected enemy moral. In several instances parties of the enemy surrendered at the sight of them. Prisoners in their examination said that they could have held up infantry, but “felt helpless against Tanks.”

Next day, on August 23, four 2nd Brigade Tanks went into action near Inverness Copse. The operation had had to be undertaken in a hurry, liaison was bad, and the attack a failure.

On August 26 four Tanks fought with the 33rd Division in the neighbourhood of Jerk House (near Glencorse Wood). The morning was misty, and an enemy shell unfortunately exploded a dump of smoke bombs just behind our lines. The attack was a failure. That night an inch of rain fell, and four Tanks which were to have operated with the 14th Division next day, August 27th, never reached their starting-point. Thirteen men were wounded and an officer killed on the way up.

Nearly three weeks elapsed before Tanks were again in action, and several battalions from the 2nd and 3rd Brigades were moved back to a new training area near Arras. A certain number of “Replacement Tanks” were issued to remaining battalions. The 1st Brigade stood ready in case they should be wanted at short notice, but no attacks of any sort were launched, probably partly on account of weather, and partly because a section of the 5th Army front was in process of transfer to the 2nd Army.

By the middle of September the relief had been completed, and again we endeavoured to press on.

On September 20 a fairly successful assault was made along the whole line. 2nd Brigade Tanks took part near Inverness Copse, and 1st Brigade Tanks near Triangle and Wurst Farms. But the ground being known to be unusually appalling in both areas, they had been given minor parts. These parts they played with fair success, and they undoubtedly scared the enemy a good deal. On the 18th Corps front 3rd Battalion Tanks had rather better luck.

The efforts made by the crews to get to the battle at all were superhuman.

Trees had been felled across the road by the enemy, resting breast high on their branches and the tall stumps from which they were not completely severed. At Wurst Farm also this kind of obstacle had been opposed to the Tanks—the butts of the trees lying obliquely and at a slope, forming a barrier very difficult to surmount.

If one leading machine got into difficulties struggling in the dark through or over these obstacles, the whole string of Tanks behind would be hung up, the deep swamps on either hand making it impossible to leave the road.

The Tanks, however, arrived, and are reported to have “inflicted many casualties.”

On September 26 fifteen Tanks operated near Zonnebeke Village. The attack was not a success, though the Tanks did a great deal of good work.

On October 4 took place the last two actions of this battle in which Tanks succeeded in playing a part. The first was fought by twelve Tanks of the 1st Brigade, who had the honour of taking part in the capture of Poelcapelle. It was a most successful little attack, and after reducing three strong points which guarded the outskirts, the Tanks hunted through the main street and out beyond the village.

In the other action four Tanks of the 1st Battalion were to take part in an attack upon Juniper Cottage on the line of the Reutelbeek.

Not only was this, like the other, a successful little action, it was ennobled by affording the background to one of the most patiently courageous actions of the War.

It was on October 4 that Captain Robertson fell upon completing a service for which he was posthumously awarded the V.C.

Tanks and infantry were to endeavour to cross the Reutelbeek and drive the enemy from the positions which they held on the further bank.

There was only one bridge over the marshy stream. If, in the half-light of the early morning and in the confusion of battle, they missed this crossing-place, their one chance of success was gone.

Captain Robertson, the officer commanding the section of Tanks, early realised that here lay the crux of the little operation for whose success he was responsible. For three days and nights he and his servant, Private Allen (subsequently awarded the D.C.M.), went carefully backwards and forwards over the ground under heavy fire, taping the routes for the Tanks.

Working without a break, this task took him until half-past nine on the night before the action.

It was time to get the machines up.

He started out at once again with his Tanks. The weather was dark and misty, and from inside a Tank it was impossible to see the way over the heavily shelled ground. Captain Robertson therefore walked ahead; they reached the assembly point in good time, and at 6 a.m. on October 4 he led them into action.

In imagining the rest of the story we are to remember that Captain Robertson had already been continuously under fire and without sleep for three days and nights.

The roads and every other landmark had all been wiped out by the shelling, but the bridge still stood. Captain Robertson still led his Tanks on foot, facing besides the shells an intense close-range machine-gun and rifle fire. He must have known that to go forward on foot means certain death.

He and his convoy were by now well ahead of the infantry. Still he led his Tanks on, carefully and patiently guiding them at a foot’s pace towards their objective.

They reached the bridge, and one by one the Tanks crossed over. He led them on towards a road that would take them straight up to the enemy positions, the machine-gun fire growing more and more intense as they advanced.

They reached the road, and as they reached it, Captain Robertson at last fell, shot through the head.

But the Tanks went on, and succeeded in their mission. The object for which Captain Robertson had so deliberately sacrificed his life was achieved.

The 2nd and 3rd Brigades had by now gone back to Arras to refit their machines, and to replenish their ranks. The 1st Brigade, however, made two more efforts to take part in the fighting. The battle was by now recognised as a serious British check. The Germans’ “elastic tactics” and the weather had together delayed us for so long that they had defeated us.

We had inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, and had in the act suffered still more severely ourselves.

Our hopes of clearing the coast were gone.

At the end of ten weeks we had achieved gains which had been on the programme for the first fortnight.

The whole plan of campaign had to be reconsidered, and to take Passchendaele must now be our ultimate ambition.

On October 7 two Tanks were to operate ahead of their infantry and endeavour to capture two fortified farms. Halfway to their objective a derelict Tank blocked the way, and the two advancing machines became ditched on trying to make a dÉtour. By the time they had been unditched it was too late to go on.

On the 9th eight Tanks were to have attacked strong points on the Poelcapelle Road. At midnight on the night of the 8th-9th they started for their objectives.

The road was everywhere encumbered with blown-up limbers and the bodies of dead teams.

Large shell-holes had been blown in it.

The Tanks managed to get on as far as the Poelcapelle cross-roads, but the enemy then began to shell the road heavily. The leading Tank ditched in a new shell-hole, the second Tank as it waited to pass was set on fire by a direct hit.

These two wrecks formed a complete barrier to the advance of the rest of the column.

No way being found by which the surviving Tanks could circumvent the obstacle, and the shelling having grown hotter, it was decided to return.

But they had not gone far on the return journey when they discovered that on the way up the last machine of the column had somehow fouled an old derelict Tank. The remaining machines were trapped, and could neither go forward nor back.

The efforts of their crews proved vain, and they were all five lost, some being hit by enemy shells and the crews killed or wounded, and some ditched in vain efforts to make their escape across country.

The enemy continued to shell the road, which was one we were obliged to use, and it was a work of extreme hazard and difficulty to clear it of the wrecks by which it was completely blocked.

The work was, however, performed. Every night for a week Major G.L. Wilkes,42 the 1st Brigade Engineer, used to go up the road as far as he could in a Tank. Then he would get out and work till morning. Most of the wrecks he blew up, some he and his small party of men were able to tip over into the swamp.

The scene on the first of these expeditions is thus described by an engineer officer who accompanied him:

So ended the tragedy of October 9, the last of a series of hopeless adventures.

A few Tanks were later moved up to a new railhead, with the hope that better weather might enable them to take part in the final attack on Passchendaele, the attack which was to end the Flanders offensive. But the weather did not mend, and it was without the help of Tanks that by a final effort the heights of Passchendaele were stormed and taken in the first week of November. We held our gains. The high ground was ours, the weary armies might rest, and the tragic nightmare of the Third Battle of Ypres was over at last.

When time brought the verdict of the Official Despatch upon the work of the Tanks, it was neither an unjust nor an unkindly one:—

It was not to be long before the Corps had an opportunity of proving their worth indeed.