Amabel Williams-Ellis

THE BATTLE OF MESSINES AND THE “HUSH” OPERATION

I

In many battles in which Tanks later took part, two or more Tank Brigades would be associated. But the Battles of Arras and Messines belong, the former to the 1st and the latter to the 2nd Brigade exclusively.

The 2nd Brigade had been formed exactly like the 1st.

That is to say, a nucleus of Somme “Tank Veterans” had been reinforced by picked volunteers from the other branches of the Service. Like the 1st Brigade they trained in France, in the Bermicourt area. The unknown author of the 2nd Battalion history gives an amusing account of this training in which sports of all kinds, rugger, soccer, snow fights, boxing and swimming, helped in the “edification” as well as the more serious courses.

One feature of the period was, as usual, a shortage of instructional machines.

Dummy Tanks were therefore used for several practice attacks. The dummies were made of wood and canvas and were carried from within by their crew of seven.

The account goes on to relate the delightful keenness of the men, and how their interest in their training was so great that such serious contretemps as getting in late for tea “were regarded as nothing.”

The 2nd Brigade was to be equipped with Mark IV. Tanks as soon as a supply was available.

The first batch of machines arrived in France towards the end of April.

The Mark IV. Tank was an improved Mark I., and did not differ very materially from its predecessor in design.

These were, briefly, the principal improvements:

First, its armour was of a special steel which was impervious to the German armour-piercing bullet.

Secondly, the sponsons were of a better pattern. In the Mark I. they had to be completely unshipped whenever the Tank was moved by rail; in the Mark IV. they were so constructed that they could be “pushed in” sufficiently for railway transport.

Thirdly, a new and heavier design of track rollers and links was introduced.

Fourthly, danger from fire was reduced by the petrol tank (protected, of course, by special armour-plates) being outside and at the back of the machine.

There were also other minor improvements in armament, and the total weight of the Tank was slightly reduced.

Such was the weapon which was to be first tried at Messines, and such was the unit which was at the same time to make its dÉbut.

II

The Battle of Messines did not prove one in which Tanks were able to show to any particular advantage; this not because of adverse conditions, but because of the battle’s very success. It was throughout an extremely well-planned little action, and would probably have been perfectly successful even without the co-operation of Tanks.

An expert military critic has said of it:

It was perhaps a little hard on the 2nd Brigade, who fought throughout with particular gallantry, that more of the laurel could not fall to them.

For not only was the 2nd Brigade’s maiden battle notable for gallantry in the field, but also for the very high standard of the Staff work—the administrative arrangements indeed long remaining the model for subsequent Tank operations.

So inspiring a little action was it, so well planned and executed in every stage, that the 2nd Brigade themselves felt that they had been privileged in playing even a relatively minor part in such an assault.

Though Tanks proved useful in several phases of the battle, Tank Commanders are the first to attribute the successes of the day to the artillery, the tunnelling companies and the infantry.

They had early established particularly cordial relations with the infantry, and it is said that a Maori Unit of the 2nd Anzac Corps gave expert help to the 2nd Tank Battalion in camouflaging its machines.

Messines was to be a prelude to a more considerable attack in the Ypres Salient. The village of Messines itself and the Wytschaete Ridge were to be taken, thus securing the British Right for the Ypres attack, and depriving the enemy of dominating ground.

The advance was to be a very short one, and the rÔle of the Tanks was to be subsidiary to that of gunners, sappers and infantry.

Land Mines were to be a special feature of the action. The explosion of twenty of these containing over a million pounds of ammonal was to be the signal for attack on the morning of June 7.

Some of the mines had been ready for more than a year, and we had constructed nearly five miles of galleries. The Germans too had not been idle.

At the time of our attack we knew that the enemy was driving a gallery leading to our Hill 60 mine. By careful listening we judged that if our offensive were launched on the date arranged the enemy’s counter-mine would just fail to reach us. He was, therefore, allowed to proceed.

Altogether seventy-two Mark IV. Tanks were to be employed, and, the lesson of Arras having been learnt, twelve Mark I. and Mark II. Tanks had been converted into supply machines. Each of these was able to bring up sufficient petrol, ammunition and other stores to replenish five fighting Tanks.

Forty Tanks were to cross the parapet at zero hour and the rest of the Tanks were to be held in reserve.

They were to be distributed as follows:—

To the North: twelve Tanks were to work with the 10th Corps, whose objective was the Oosttaverne line.

In the Centre: sixteen Tanks were attached to the 9th Corps, who were to capture Wytschaete.

To the South: twenty Tanks were to fight with the 2nd Corps, who were to take Messines and a strong point named Fanny’s Farm, the reserves pushing on to capture the Oosttaverne line in the second phase of the attack.

The weather had been fine and hot for nearly three weeks before the battle, and a heavy thunder shower which fell on June 6 hardly laid the dust which had hung for weeks in a hazy curtain over the approach roads.

The Tanks were as usual moved up during the night before the action. It was very dark, with heavy thunder clouds hiding the moon.

Zero hour was to be at dawn.

Somewhere north of Wytschaete a German dump had caught fire, and the red flames streamed up against the pale summer sky.

It grew lighter, and our aeroplanes and balloons began to go up, dark against the dawn.

Our unusual activity in the air did not escape the watchful enemy, and his suspicions were soon thoroughly aroused.

He began to send up rockets calling for barrage fire, and soon his guns were responding with growing emphasis.

At seven minutes past three our artillery stopped, and the rattle of machine-guns stood out in the comparative silence.

There was a pause. A low rumbling was heard. The earth rocked and quivered until with a prolonged and rending crash a screen of fire rose where the German front lines had been.

Masses of earth were hurled skywards, and as they rose gleamed for a moment purple and gold in the first rays of the sun. They writhed and shifted, fantastically swaying, and shot through with flames. Balls of fire were hurled in every direction, and the air quivered and vibrated with the shock. Before the tortured earth could fall again, down came the stunning roar and crash of the British barrage; and Tanks and infantry were over the parapet.

By 7 a.m. the Anzacs were in Messines, and both Tanks and infantry had reached Fanny’s Farm by noon, their day’s objective gained.

One Tank working with the 2nd Corps reached its final objective (at a distance of about two miles) in an hour and forty minutes.

A Tank led the Ulstermen and the Southern Irish of the 9th Division into Wytschaete.

By about three o’clock three Tanks had reached Oosttaverne, and they patrolled the ground beyond the village till their accompanying Welsh and West Country troops came up.

By nightfall we held our final objective everywhere, and had besides captured 7300 prisoners and 67 guns, 94 trench mortars and a very large number of machine-guns.

All through the night of the 7th-8th the Germans launched small hastily organised counter-attacks, and in repelling one of these, chance enabled three Tanks to play a curious and useful part.

Three of the Tanks, which had helped in the capture of Oosttaverne, had ultimately got ditched near a place named Joye Farm.

It was impossible to extricate them in the darkness, and the crews stood by, hoping to get them out as soon as it was light again.

Meanwhile towards morning word came that the Germans were going to counter-attack.

In the position in which the Tanks lay, the crews were able to train their 6-pounders against the enemy, who had been seen massing in the Wanbeke Valley. As the Lewis guns could not be brought to bear, they were dismounted, and the rest of the crews operated them from neighbouring shell-holes.

The attack did not develop as early as had been expected, but when it came it was in force.

From about 6.30 onwards the enemy repeatedly attempted to advance, raking the Tanks with a hail of armour-piercing bullets, which, however, failed to penetrate.

They were driven off every time with heavy loss, until at 11.30 a.m. our artillery opened and dispersed them with barrage fire.

III

The failure of their armour-piercing bullets against the Mark IV. must have proved something of a disappointment to the enemy.

It is curious to trace the effort which the Germans made to keep up with our development of the Tank.

For once, we had moved first, and the enemy was always to be a lap behind.

No sooner had he discovered how effective was his “K” bullet against the Mark I. Tank, than we confronted him with the Mark IV., against which it was powerless.

The Germans always had rather hazy ideas as to the capabilities and habits of our current Tank. They had had ample opportunity of examining two Tanks which lay derelict in their lines on the Somme, yet until the Battle of Arras they believed that Tanks were largely dependent on the use of roads, and that therefore pits and other obstacles in roads must form a useful anti-Tank defence.

It was not till the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917 that he was to discover by chance the one effective weapon against Tanks. That is to say, Direct Fire by field guns.

The “Hush” Operation
I

Before it was decided to fight the enemy at Messines there had been an idea of an attack near Lens, and most of the reconnaissance for such a battle had been carried out.

Like many another battle of the War, it was never fought, and remained only the shadow of an operation.

Of all these shadows and projected attacks, the one which had attracted more interest than any other was in active preparation while the 2nd Brigade was fighting at Messines.

This was the revised and abridged version of the famous “Hush” operation, that is, of the projected attack on the Belgian coast.

The first time such a notion had been suggested was in the spring of 1916, and elaborate plans were then made for a surprise landing in and near Ostend.

But we were obliged to co-operate with the French, and to fight instead on the Somme. The First Battle of the Somme, however, developed into a “slogging match” and lasted through the rest of that campaigning season.

Next year the idea was again brought up. This time Tanks were to take part. The scheme was a less ambitious one, and the landing was to be effected between Ostend and the Allied line about Nieuport. A special detachment of Tanks was located at Erin, and started training for the difficult manoeuvre of climbing the sea wall which here protects the coast. This training was carried out as secretly as possible, and it was given out that its object was the surmounting of some of the Lille fortifications, a figment which for long satisfied the minds of the curious.

The problem to be solved was an exceedingly complex one.

The mere landing of Tanks on an open beach is no light matter. When that beach is heavily defended by an alert and resourceful enemy, when it is commanded and enfiladed by a concentration of artillery of all calibres concealed amongst the dunes, and when in addition the shelving beach is crowned by a steep sea wall of concrete, a landing would seem to have but small chance of success. Still, there was a chance, and the stake at hazard being a big one, big risks might be cheerfully accepted.

The general plans for the enterprise having been approved in the highest quarters, were then very carefully worked out down to the smallest details by a little band of experts, prominent amongst whom were Admiral Bacon, Lieut.-Colonel Philip Johnson, and Major Hotblack.

The whole of the projected landing was elaborately staged, and long and patiently rehearsed—the Tanks playing the lead in what the whole various cast hoped was to be a really notable success.

Immense pontoons 600 ft. in length were specially built to carry the landing parties—armies in little with representatives almost of every arm and branch except the cavalry.

These strange craft were to be lashed between a couple of monitors, and so pushed across the channel and up the beach at certain selected points, points that exhaustive air reconnaissance and photography at all states of the tide had indicated as most suitable.

Actual trials of the pontoons and their monitor escorts were made in the secret waters of the Thames, and officers of the Tank Corps would suddenly disappear on unknown missions, to reappear as suddenly with no memory as to where they had been or what they had seen in the interval.

The sea wall itself might well have been designed as a special defence against sea-borne hostile Tanks, its smooth concave face and projecting coping making it absolutely unscalable by an honest Tank.

The wall was of recent construction, and by a fortunate chance the Belgian architect who had designed it had escaped to France with all his drawings.

From his plans an exact reproduction of a length of the wall was made.

There in the experimental ground it stood, perfectly smooth, and worst of all, ending at the top in a curl-over coping.

At least, however, the engineers now knew the extent of their problem.

In the first place, the Tanks had to get up somehow, and in the second place, when they were up they had to help haul up guns and transport lorries.

After “trying on” various devices, the Tanks at last adopted what was practically a portable ramp for the occasion.

The Tank, until it reached the sea wall, carried it well in the air on a long spar supported by wire hawsers.

Then the ramp was lowered on to the pair of little wheels with which it was fitted. On these the Tank pushed it up the incline, wheelbarrow fashion, until further progress was stopped by the coping.

The two wheels were then immediately shed, and steel spikes on the under side of the work were driven into the concrete by the weight of the Tank, which now, disengaging itself, proceeded to climb up its own scaling ladder which it had thus placed in position. But the lorries and guns had still to be provided for.

The angle formed by the inclined plane and the level ground above the retaining wall was a sharp one.

Besides, it must be understood that the inclined plane used by the Tanks fitted in under the concrete lip. At the point of junction between the ground and the inclined plane there was, therefore, a considerable bump. Both the acuteness of the angle and this “bump” made it necessary to adopt some less back-breaking device for the four-wheeled vehicles. A strong gangway, like a see-saw, was therefore employed, and up this they were hauled, the weight of the gun or lorry gently tipping the board down when it passed the balancing point.

But the landing was never made, and for this many elaborate explanations have been put forward.

Two circumstances seem, however, sufficient to explain the apparent withdrawal of our hands from the plough.

The first was what seemed a trivial attack which the Germans made on July 10.

It will be remembered that the Belgian inundations stretched inland opposite Nieuport, almost from the mile-wide belt of dry ground next the sea which was formed by the sand dunes. Through these dunes cut the river Yser, and near the coast we held both banks of the river. When the time came, General Rawlinson could have moved his troops forward freely over the numerous bridges which had been made, to join hands with the landing party for whom he had so long been waiting.

In the dune and polder country trenches were impossible, and our defence here consisted of breastworks built in the sand.

Now it had been abundantly and constantly proved throughout 1915 and 1916 that any advanced trench system could be taken at any time by the side which was prepared to mass sufficient troops and guns for the purpose.

The Germans could have stretched out their hands at any moment for this bit of coast.

They chose not to grasp it until they imagined that our plans, whatever they might be, were complete, and when their attack would probably cause us the maximum of inconvenience. Therefore, it was on July 10 that, after a tremendous bombardment, they attacked the position in overwhelming force. Our defence was gallant but vain, and by the evening the Germans had captured the northern part of our bridgeheads.

It is true that we succeeded in holding Nieuport itself, but the loss of even the small strip of ground to the north of it rendered the assembly of troops in that area for our own attack, which was to co-operate with the coast landing, almost impossible.

The second and more weighty circumstance was the fatal slowness of our main advance at Ypres.

In the next chapters we shall consider these tragic months, whose slow passage swept away so many schemes and hopes, and made unfruitful so much thought and labour.

Enough that the “Hush” operation was swept silently away with the rest. As late as the beginning of October, however, the men who had planned so cunningly, whose minds had surmounted so many difficulties, still hoped that their work might not prove barren.

But by the middle of the month it had become clear that the landing could not take place, and the end of October the special Tank detachment was finally disbanded.