Amabel Williams-Ellis

THE FLANDERS CAMPAIGN—PREPARATIONS FOR THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES

The Third Battle of Ypres represented the remaining fragment of what was to have been a great and extensive campaign. It was the stump of a tree shorn down to shoulder height and bare of leaves and branches.

One circumstance after another had postponed the execution of the large design. Troops which had been earmarked for it had had to be diverted to other parts of the front.

We had had to put it off to co-operate more closely with the French, and certain other obstacles had arisen, the full story of which has not even yet been told.

The Battle of Messines was over by June 12, but it was considered that if an attack in the strongly fortified Ypres Salient was to have a real chance of success, it must be an attack in force, a regular full-dress battle, for which the preparations were then held to be necessarily extremely elaborate.

About six weeks were therefore to elapse before the attack was launched. Once launched, however, the attackers must gain their objectives rapidly. That was essential to the plan.

The Russian front was crumbling. Germany was bringing troops and guns westward. We should soon be face to face with an enemy so strongly reinforced that our chance of victory in an attack would be slight.

Not only must we hasten because we faced an enemy whose strength would be increasing daily, but because we were to attack in Flanders, and the summer would be far spent before we could complete our preparations.

The enemy’s lines lay on the slopes of the semicircle of low hills that overlook Ypres. Behind him lay another swampy valley, which rose again to another slightly higher crescent of hills.

In the inner arena lay the ruins of Ypres, and, set in the marshy levels and immediately overlooked by the first semicircle of hillocks and more distantly by the second, lay our lines.

Across this terrain two great armies had faced each other for nearly three years.

The Salient was, after Verdun, the most tortured of the Western battlefields. Constant shelling of the low ground west of the ridges had blocked or diverted the streams and the natural drainage, and turned it into a sodden wilderness.

If August was a wet month, as it had been the year before for the Battle of the Somme, our chance of success was scanty.

However, the previous shelling of the ground was as nothing compared with the bombardment which we now intended to inflict.

Every corner of the enemy’s ground was to be drenched with our fire.

II

The enemy had for long been in no doubt of our intentions. The coming battle was much discussed in Germany.

General von Armin (Commander of the German 4th Army) was to remain strictly on the defensive.

He was to “put in time,” to “poke,” in fact, until the big movement of troops from the East should have thoroughly reconstituted the Western Front.

We were to be allowed to waste our time and our forces in petty gains of unimportant territory, and to eat our hearts out in the slough.

To this end, and because the waterlogged soil of Flanders did not allow of the making of another Siegfried Line, the enemy had devised a new tactical method.

Directly the theory of this method is understood, many of the once puzzling circumstances of this battle become comprehensible.

It involved the use of but one comparatively new contrivance, the “pill-box.” The “pill-box,” first seen at Messines, was a small concrete fort. Sometimes it only stood up a yard or two above the ground. More often it stood well up, concealed within the ruins of a derelict farm.

It held a garrison of anything up to thirty or forty men, and bristled with machine-guns.

The tactics themselves in which the pill-boxes figured are admirably described by Mr. Buchan:

The thoroughness and success with which this plan was carried out may be read in the story of Glencorse Wood, of St. Julien, and of many another bitterly fought “Minor Action.”

In the meantime, the enemy watched us from his vantage ground, and day and night harassed us with his shelling, his aerial bombing, and his gas.

III

On our side the preparations for a formidable attack continued steadily.

It was a problem which in some sectors proved insoluble, and troops and working parties had to come up night by night into the forward area, going back far behind the lines at dawn.

Like their fellows of every other arm, members of the Tank Corps carried out their battle preparations under conditions of peculiar difficulty.

But the 1st Brigade of Tanks had something more than indiscriminate harassing fire and “area shoots” to trouble them.

The enemy had obtained information of our tankodrome in Oosthoek Wood from a British prisoner, who was either a garrulous fool or a very treacherous knave.

A soldier belonging to a certain infantry regiment, had betrayed every detail of the whereabouts of the Tanks of the 1st Brigade, and of the programme of their movements. A German document was captured setting forth the whole of this creature’s evidence and explaining its value and significance. The official account of this murderous piece of treachery was periodically read out on parade to all Tank units, and formed the text of many discourses on the vital importance of strict secrecy and high moral. The name of this man will for ever have a sinister sound for all who served in the Tank Corps.

Fortunately for us, the Germans seem to have but half believed his story—at any rate, the shelling to which they thereafter periodically subjected the secret tankodrome was, though accurate, never so heavy as such an important target would have seemed to warrant. Perhaps the Germans, having no illusions as to what fighting in Flanders meant, and being reasonably alive to the natural limitations of Tanks, scouted the idea of a Tank attack being possible or being even seriously contemplated. Be that as it may, they certainly failed to act on the very valuable information given them in anything like an adequate way.

Still, after some days of well-directed shelling and bombing, it was decided to withdraw the whole of the personnel from Oosthoek Wood, and to lodge them in camps in the plantations just north of ChÂteau Lovie, where the Headquarters of the 1st Brigade was already established.

Hither, too, had come the Advanced Headquarters of the Tank Corps, the original intention of occupying a most eligible house in the town of Poperinghe being given up, in view of the inconvenience caused by the periodic shelling of the place and the consequent interruption of communications.

The advance Reconnaissance party had spent some weeks in the town, and had been considerably annoyed by frequent and accurate high-velocity shelling.

The concentration of personnel which thus came about seemed inconvenient enough at first, but turned out most usefully, and liaison between the Brigade and its battalions had never been so good.

There were forward dumps to be established with the aid of the supply Tanks.33

Very special preparations had to be made in order to bring the Tanks within striking distance of the enemy. The roads were reserved for lighter traffic. The enemy shelling was too heavy for railway making to be possible beyond the detraining camps at Oosthoek Wood.

Tentative attempts to push the line further on were constantly made, and as constantly detected and discouraged by the enemy.

The Tanks must have some sort of independent routes of their own over the innumerable small waterways that must be crossed.

The Kemmelbeke, the Lambardtheke, and in some places the Yser Canal, all lay in the way. Miles of rough causeways over the marshes had to be built; splinter-proof shelters for the various advanced Headquarters, and, further back, camps, Tank “stables,” storage sheds, kitchens and so forth, had all to be constructed.

Such a programme of work was beyond the unaided power of the Tank Corps, and therefore the 184th Tunnelling Company was allotted to the Corps, one section to each Brigade.

Much of the canal bridging and of the track making was done under fire, shrapnel, gas and H.E.

Often a series of shells, bursting on the newly laid causeway would undo a day’s work in a few minutes. Half the time the men had to wear gas-masks, and almost always they worked knee-deep in liquid mud or in the oozy bed of some little “beke.”

Yet in no instance did the 184th Tunnelling Company fail to carry out the work allotted to it.

One very ingenious piece of mechanism for use on the Tank itself had been evolved at Central Workshops in view of the Flanders mud. This was the “Unditching Beam.” It was a massive baulk of teak, iron shod at the ends, and having heavy chains whereby it might be secured to the tracks when it was needed.

Its length was somewhat greater than the width of the Tank over its tracks, and therefore ordinarily it was carried lengthwise along the back of the machine.

Its battle position was across the Tank, where it rested on the raised guide-rails which served to lift it clear of the conning-tower, the silencer and the other excrescences above the armoured back.

To these guide-rails it was secured by special holdfasts to prevent it from breaking adrift when the Tank pitched or rolled amongst the shell-holes.

When the Tank got “bellied,” these holdfasts had to be released and the drag-chains attached to the tracks by one of the crew climbing out on to the roof—the feat being one of some danger when in the near presence of the enemy.

The beam having been duly attached, the differential gear would be locked and the clutch released, when the revolving tracks would carry the beam over the nose of the Tank, from which it would dangle by its two track-chains until dragged beneath the Tank itself.

If the ground proved loose and boggy beyond a certain point, the beam would merely be dragged under the Tank to come up again behind, clogged and dripping with mud and leaving the “ditched” Tank still wallowing on its belly.

Sometimes Tanks would thrash away with their unditching beams until their vain efforts to struggle out of some quaking quagmire on to better ground overheated the engines or caused the machine to settle down so hopelessly in the oozing mud as to be flooded out.

Save on the very worst ground, however, the unditching beam proved a most effective contrivance, and but little could have been done in the Ypres fighting without it.

IV

The Reconnaissance Side had also been busy during the weeks of preparation.

To facilitate the movement of Tanks over the battlefield a new system was made use of, by which a list of compass bearings from well-defined points to a number of features in the enemy’s territory was prepared, thus enabling direction to be picked up.

This system was to prove invaluable when, later, the tides of battle had obliterated all the nearer landmarks, and men wandered hopelessly lost in the increasing desolation.

The Reconnaissance Officers’ methods of observation did not differ from those they had employed at Arras.

They used artillery O.P.’s, they flew over the enemy lines, a “supply of prisoners” for special examination was allotted to them, they talked to refugees, they observed, made and annotated maps, and drew many panoramas, and made detailed raised maps in plasticine.

By early July they had collected a great mass of information that was not only vitally important to the Tank Corps, but also of great use to the other arms.

Very carefully constructed from information collected from all sources, a huge sand model was laid out by the 19th Corps in Oosthoek Wood. Every hillock or depression, every road, railway, trench, stream, ruin, spinney, or other landmark, was faithfully reproduced to scale. The miniature trenches were formed in lengths of cast concrete, the trees were represented by little evergreen bushes, and real water lay in the pools and shallows of the Lilliputian Steenbeek.

The model covered nearly an acre—a man to the same scale would have been about the size of a normal mouse.

At one side of the model was a high wooden platform raised on a scaffolding and reached by a ladder, and from this point of vantage this Ypres Salient in little could be overlooked and memorised as from a kite balloon.

For several weeks before the day appointed for the battle, the platform was almost constantly occupied by groups of officers. Indeed, it was seldom unoccupied during daylight from the time it was erected to the eve of the great attack, and round and across the model perpetually wandered little groups of officers and N.C.O.’s with maps and notebooks and orders—discussing, pointing, explaining. Generals personally conducted their immediate subordinates over the mimic battlefield, whilst N.C.O.’s were coached by their Company Commanders.

From a liaison point of view the model was invaluable. Individual Tank Commanders there met the infantry officers with whom they were actually to fight, and would walk and talk over “the ground” together, until they were perfectly clear about their own and each other’s rÔles, routes, objectives and time-tables, after which mutual esteem and confidence would be cemented and reinforced at the dinner table.

In this and similar ways a close and cordial entente was established between the Tanks and their partners the infantry, and there were many battlefield incidents that showed vividly how much success depended on this personal liaison and good fellowship.

V

There was to be nothing novel in our general plan of assault.

Tanks were everywhere to be auxiliary, and were to be employed to deal with strong points and for “mopping up” behind the infantry.

There was, however, one great improvement in the method of using them.

They were to be used in definite “waves.” That is to say, supposing thirty-six Tanks were to be employed on a sector where the Germans had established the usual three lines of defence, twelve Tanks would start at zero and be used to take the first objective. Meanwhile, the second wave would have been advancing, and as soon as the first objective had been taken by the first wave, the second wave would pass through them and on to the second objective. The third party of twelve would advance in the same way—a wave to each objective.

The method did not, as a matter of fact, have a good trial on this occasion, for, in the first place, the Tanks’ first objective was only the infantry second objective; and as we have seen, the enemy did not this time employ his usual method of three set lines at all.

Altogether three Brigades of Tanks were to be employed with the 5th Army.

Tank Brigade Commanders were to keep in touch with Corps Commanders, Tank Battalions were to act with Divisions, Tank Companies (twelve fighting Tanks) with Brigades, and individual Tanks with Battalions.

The three Brigades were to be distributed as follows:—

The main objective was to be the Broodseinde Ridge.

The ground in this area was broken by swamps and woods; only three approaches were possible for Tanks, and these formed dangerous defiles.

The main objective was to be a section of the Gheluvelt-Langemarck line.

On the 19th Corps front the valley of the Steenbeek was in a terrible condition, innumerable shell-holes and pools of water existed, the drainage of the Steenbeek having been seriously affected by the shelling.

They were to seize the crossings of the Steenbeek and establish posts beyond it.

On the 18th Corps front the ground between our front line and Steenbeek was cut up and sodden. The Steenbeek itself was a difficult obstacle, and the only good crossing was at St. Julien, thus forming a dangerous defile.

Thirty-six Tanks belonging to the 1st Brigade were held in Army Reserve.

Such was the battle order of the Tanks.

Zero was fixed for 3.30 a.m. on July 31. By the last week in July misty weather with often a drizzle of rain at night had set in.

Our preparations were complete, but it was perhaps not without a certain anxiety that our commanders awaited the issues of the engagement.

By none might such an uneasiness have been felt with better reason than by General Elles.

The Army had staked much upon a gamble, but at least it had not been forced to stake its prestige. General Elles must have been conscious that the very existence of the Tank Corps might hang upon the fortunes of the coming attack.