Malcolm MacPhail's Great War Page 6

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, on my account,’ I grumbled.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Banting replied. ‘Knowing you Canucks feel most comfortable in the great outdoors, I first asked about a shell-hole. Unfortunately, they all appear to be taken at the moment.’ I saw Banting was wrestling to maintain the guileless look he’d assumed.

  ‘I think you’d better call me Mac,’ I said. ‘Only my friends treat me this well.’

  ‘Alright, Mac. Before you get too comfortable though…’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’d worry too much about that. I hope I can return the favour sometime.’

  ‘Well, that’s something to look forward then,’ said Banting. ‘In the meantime, we’re taking a patrol up near the front lines. Do you want to come?’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  We passed through the Menin Gate. It was the sole exit from the north of the city, a fact the Germans were well acquainted with. Consequently, that made it one of their favoured targets. Haste might have been warranted, but the going was slow as the road was heavily congested with marching soldiers and an endless procession of pack animals, carts, and vehicles. I’d offered to drive. Banting had turned me down – something about not knowing the way. Danger aside, my stomach was happy his pedal foot was temporarily tamed. And it gave me a chance to look around, although I was shocked by what I saw. The city I remembered, the attractive, prosperous looking one of early 1915, and later the shell-torn version of the spring and summer of 1916, was now completely obliterated. Of the great Cloth Hall and the Cathedral, only eerie skeletons of stone remained, jutting out as lonesome reminders of what had been. Even the ruins were ruined. Ypres had been razed to the ground and piles of grey stone, and the odd timber, were all that testified that this once, incredibly, had been a vibrant city.

  As we exited the Vauban ramparts I looked by chance to my side.

  ‘It’s still there,’ I exclaimed. ‘Who’d have guessed?’

  ‘What’s still where?’

  ‘The straw in the lions’ mouths, or hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘Oh, you mean that tale about the Germans not returning until the lions ate the straw?’ said Banting. The Germans briefly occupied the city in 1915. When they left, the townsfolk had put straw in the mouths of the two lions that sat astride this gap in the ramparts. The superstition was that the Germans wouldn’t return, until the lions had eaten the straw.

  ‘Yeah, exactly. Seems to have worked so far,’ I said.

  ‘And here I thought we were the ones keeping the Germans out. Now it turns out to be the lions…’

  Compared to my trip from the station it took an eternity to make the 2 ½ mile journey to the village of Zonnebeke. It was a blessing in disguise as it gave my innards a much-needed respite. The narrow dirt road was not only clogged with troops, animals and other vehicles, but pockmarked with shell-craters that the engineers were labouring furiously to repair; almost as furiously as the Germans were endeavouring to create new ones. I was fortunate Fritz took a well-deserved rest of his own during our journey. It left me with little to do but look out the window, not that there was much to see.

  Once out of Ypres and its carpet of stone, the landscape became a veritable wasteland, a dark tribute to the war-making skills of man and the cruelties of nature. Of the little copses of trees, the farmhouses, the hamlets and whole villages I recalled, nothing remained. At most, a disfigured tree stump, or a fencepost now and again, to provide a reference on the endless horizon and every so often, the remains of a tank or a truck or, once, the unmistakable corpse of a horse sunk awkwardly into the muck. The grey sky hung like a blanket low over the battlefield. From the ground wisps of black and white smoke curled upwards as the occasional shell landed. As far as the eye could see the ground was mottled with craters. Even from the road I could make out the water that filled them. I couldn’t imagine there was another place on earth to rival this in its misery.

  We arrived just outside the village, or the little that remained of it, unspeaking, still slightly awed by what we’d seen. I opened the car door, pleased to get out. As I inhaled my first breath of open air in the Salient I gasped in disgust, quite loudly I think, for Banting quickly asked, ‘Are you okay?’

  It hadn’t smelled particularly fresh in the car, but I’d written it down to my Aussie friends and a tough few weeks. However, an awful stench now overwhelmed me and I put my hands on my knees and my head down deep, and I felt like I was going to retch. Thankfully the feeling passed. But the smell remained; a nauseating mixture of earthy tones from the dampness and the mud blended with the acrid sweetness of cordite from the guns, the oniony stench from the traces of mustard gas still lingering in shell-holes, and the putrid odour of decaying bodies, excrement and God knows what else. It was the smell of hell itself.

  To keep my mind off the smell I turned to Banting. ‘Those guns there,’ I asked. ‘Are they to be used tomorrow?’

  ‘As far as I know, why?’

  I pointed to the small stack of shells lying on the ground beside each of the three 18-pound field guns that were lined up not far from each other. ‘They won’t be shooting long with that miserly pile,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘I know, but we haven’t had much time. And, as you might have noticed, it’s like pissing in the wind to get a shell up here.’

  I was going to point out that the single timbers on which the guns were mounted wouldn’t hold them for long. Not when they began firing. And particularly not in this mire. But in a flash of tact I didn’t think I had, I bit my tongue. It was probably all they could lay their hands on, I thought solemnly.

  In a group of perhaps a dozen we headed off along the single wooden duckboard, westwards, in the direction of Tyne Cottage, only a speck on the map. Banting had told me their 9th Brigade would attack from there, tomorrow at dawn. I was thankful to be walking on solid ground. How the best part of a three-thousand-man brigade would make it along this narrow wooden pathway, in short order, in the early hours of the morning prior to the attack, was another matter.

  After we walked in single file, in silence, for almost twenty minutes, a large group of soldiers came walking towards us. Seeing as how they were carrying stretchers, I stepped off the duckboard with one foot to allow them easier passage. I regretted it instantly. My foot sank away into the mud up to my knee. Somehow, I didn’t lose my balance, but my boot and leg were sucked into the glutinous earth and were not leaving of their own accord.

  ‘She’ll be right, sir, just give me your arm.’

  An Australian private had come to my rescue. After a lot of exertion on his part, and grunting on mine, my leg – boot and all – came free with one great ploop.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, as I pulled myself together. ‘This isn’t any old ordinary mud you have here.’

  ‘No, that it isn’t, that’s for sure,’ he replied. ‘I’ve seen men sink right away in it and that’s no joke. I’d keep to the duckboards if I was you, Captain.’

  I thanked him again, also for his advice, and we moved on. I could see it was a considerable relief to the platoon sergeant. He was undoubtedly counting the seconds we stood immobile out in this ocean of sludge. Not that the chances of surviving a shell were any greater when moving than not, at least I never thought so. It may have felt differently to him.

  From a distance I heard a mournful braying. As we approached I saw the poor beast. Its legs were swallowed by the mire all the way up to its belly and it was straining terribly to pull itself from the quicksand. The mule had strayed inadvertently from the planks of the timber road that crossed our little path, perhaps from the shock of a shell exploding nearby. Weighted down by the shells on her back, she had sunk quickly into the soft viscous mud bath that Flanders fields had become.

  As we neared, I saw the driver pulling frantically at the reins of the animal, as distraught as the beast itself. We passed and I saw he was English; I couldn’t make out his unit. He was crying, tears pou
ring unashamedly down his face. The mule was fixated on him, her big eyes bulging in terror and he spoke softly trying to reassure her – or was it himself. I wanted to stop. Instinctively, I knew the futility of doing so. Our troop marched remorselessly on and so did I. In despair and embarrassment, I turned my head away. I could feel my eyes welling. My legs marched, with a mind of their own, mechanically onwards.

  We arrived, not long after, at what I took to be Tyne Cottage. It proved to be nothing more than a ramshackle barn that was somehow, miraculously, half intact. Scattered around it were a collection of five or six concrete pill-boxes, all heavily pitted by artillery and small arms fire. I could see the Aussies were using the largest one as a dressing station. Astonishingly, the rain had ceased, and there was a row of men on stretchers neatly lined up beside each other on the ground outside, waiting to be attended. Banting’s division took the position only last week. The fight had been a fierce one.

  I looked around to see where Banting was, and I spotted him conferring with a couple of officers. They were all bent over a table and looked to be studying a map. Occasionally, one would straighten his back and gesture forwards with his hand, while talking animatedly, as if describing a feature of the torn landscape in the direction of Passchendaele. As I watched, the gesticulating became more and more frenzied. I walked over, curious as to what they were discussing.

  ‘Fuck me dead! The bloody Poms were supposed to be further. How could they not know where they were? Are they blind? Damnit! What a complete cock-up!’

  I was surprised to hear Banting doing the cursing. Until now I’d never seen him in anything other than upbeat good spirits.

  Tentatively, I called out: ‘Hey, Dan!’ As I drew nearer, I said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d mind translating that last thunderstorm?’

  He waved me over and stabbed his finger at the map. ‘The 66th Division were supposed to be here, after that mess of an attack two days ago. Instead,’ he moved his finger down the map to illustrate, stabbing another point repeatedly with his finger with such ferocity I could hear it, ‘…they’re here… 200 fucking yards further back. And to top it off, they hadn’t even figured it out after two bloody days! Imbeciles. Our patrols only discovered where they really were this morning.’

  ‘And?’ I asked cautiously, not completely grasping why 200 yards was bothering him so.

  ‘AND,’ he said. He was in quite a lather. ‘That means the artillery are going to have to adjust their barrage in the first crucial minutes. Instead of moving their sights 100 yards ahead, every eight minutes, now they’re going to have to do it in four. Otherwise, the 9th Brigade’s attack in this stretch will fall behind the rest. That leaves the infantry with precisely half the time to cover the same distance, but in this same stinking mud. If they hope to keep pace behind the barrage, that is. You know as well as I do, if they don’t keep pace, they’ll get blown to bits when the Jerries run back to their guns. What a monumental cock-up!’

  CHAPTER 6

  12th of October, 1917

  The Ramparts, Ypres, Belgium

  Everyone at the Aussie headquarters in the Ypres ramparts was on edge. The initial reports from the battle were coming in. At first, an excited optimism permeated the air as ground was steadily won. We knew that the cost would be terrible. But as the afternoon wore on the pace slowed. Then came the shocking news that the 9th Brigade, and soon others, were retreating.

  Aside from cursing, and my ears were ringing from the expletives, there was nothing to be done. I saw it first in their downcast eyes as the news dribbled in. By nightfall, drenched in water and mud, exhausted and dazed by their ordeal, the first survivors arrived at headquarters. The battle was lost and with it my last dash of hope. Courage had taken them far, but the Australians were a spent force.

  The next afternoon, when I cautiously inquired, Banting told me they had less than 4,500 men in fighting form – barely six battalions out of a force of twelve. Of the New Zealanders I heard only a little. It was more than enough to know they were equally battered. Later, one of the Australians, in a whispered aside, confided that the Kiwis had suffered their worst loss of the war – by far. I figured I knew all too well how they felt.

  By day’s end the final terrifying casualty toll from the attack on the twelfth was tallied. It was another slaughter. Between the Kiwis and the 3rd Australians some 6,000 men were lost, and there were surely thousands more killed and wounded on each side of the seven-mile wide advance. To make matters infinitely worse, Passchendaele and its ridge were still firmly in the hands of the German Fourth Army’s Gruppe Ypern. Unless Haig reconsidered, the inevitable loomed.

  14th of October, 1917

  Hazebrouck, France

  When the shouting started, I glanced surreptitiously around the room. It was a select gathering. There was Major-General Watson, the commander of the 4th Division, accompanied by a lieutenant-colonel I didn’t know; Currie’s chief of staff Brigadier-General Radcliffe together with a stiff-looking major and, of course, Lieutenant-Colonel Hore-Ruthven. And then there was me, outranked as usual and, once again, out-dressed.

  Despite the best efforts of an enthusiastic, pimply-faced private deep in the catacombs of the Australians’ HQ, getting the mud, and especially the stink, out of my uniform hadn’t been an unmitigated success. I figured my best strategy was to stay out of the way. If you’re looking to avoid stray shrapnel, it’s always prudent to keep your head well down. I wasn’t formally invited to the conference – and gate-crashing this kind of event wasn’t done – but Lipsett had asked me to attend yesterday when he called. ‘Come and give me a report. I won’t be far from Ypres, and you might as well sit in on the conference while you’re there,’ he told me. So here I was, in Hazebrouck, where the 4th Canadian Division had its newly installed headquarters.

  Normally, this was a pretty self-assured bunch. Now they were all sitting stiffly erect in their chairs like junior cadets, unspeaking. Their eyes, and mine, were fixated on the plain white wooden door at the end of the room. Behind it, a volcano had erupted.

  General Currie was raging. ‘PASSCHENDAELE,’ he roared. ’What’s the good of it? Let the Germans have it, keep it, rot in it! Rot in the mud!’

  My heart sank. This didn’t sound good. The others looked grim.

  Naturally, Currie had been out to see for himself. That was the problem with making the effort to reconnoitre, most times you didn’t like what you saw. Come to think of it, that was perhaps why General Monash and his colonel hadn’t bothered. I most definitely didn’t like what I saw. If only Field-Marshal Haig had taken the time; it might have saved us all a lot of trouble.

  Currie continued, ‘There is a mistake somewhere. It must be a mistake! It isn’t worth a drop of blood!’

  I could only imagine how Lipsett was coping; he’d been singled out for this private chat. For that, most in the room were rather grateful, regardless what their jealous looks said five minutes earlier. Whatever Lipsett was saying seemed to be working, as we didn’t hear “old Guts n’ Gaiters” erupt again.

  The men had given him the nickname. At first, I thought it was a wink and a nod to the old expression of “guts for garters”, so I asked a veteran sergeant. He explained, in more detail than I cared to hear, how 19th century serial killers in London used their victims’ guts to make garters, before eventually letting drop that the nickname referred to the general’s pear-shaped figure and straight-laced discipline. I was relieved when he finished.

  I arrived a little before eight-thirty, shaken by the drive and the emotions of the past couple of days. Early this morning I said my farewells to Dan and my new Australian friends, and wished them well. Under the circumstances there was little else I could say.

  The Australians had kindly lent me a car and driver. I could have sworn it was the same mud-splattered Ford I sat in earlier; certainly, the hand imprint in the passenger side door looked vaguely familiar. As to the driver, I’d gone out of my way to assure Banting that he was far too busy to e
ven contemplate driving me to Hazebrouck. Having neatly side-stepped that hazard, I was feeling rather pleased at how diplomatically I handled it. That was not long before I realized that I’d actually thrown myself in front of a bus – in the form of a fast-talking private from Perth who, making precious few concessions to his pale and silent co-pilot, endeavoured to set a new land speed record in the Ypres-to-Hazebrouck run. I’d barely staggered into the headquarters building, after a rushed ‘see-ya, mate’ followed by a spray of gravel, when General Lipsett saw me and waved. He immediately ushered me into a small room along with Lieutenant-Colonel Hore-Ruthven.

  Once seated, Lipsett stared at me. Then slowly and without making any attempt to conceal it, he inspected me from top to bottom. ‘Well, MacPhail, at least you won’t have to worry about messing up your uniform,’ he said cryptically. Hore-Ruthven was crinkling his nose, but didn’t say anything. Then Lipsett got down to business. He wanted to know everything. This wasn’t a moment for diplomacy and, in all honesty, I’d had my fill of diplomacy for the morning. So, I told him.

  I told him about the rushed preparations, the lack of shells and guns, the poor communication and inadequate logistics. I told him of guns sinking helplessly into the sludge because there weren’t enough timbers to make a stable firing platform, of shells disappearing without exploding because the fuses weren’t designed for the blubber, and of the bravery of men going into battle, exhausted before they even got to their starting lines. I even told him about commanders conducting a battle on a field they’d never seen, relying, almost as if it were by osmosis, on a single strand of telephone cable. I didn’t leave much out. Hopefully I hadn’t overdone it.

  When I was finished, the general furrowed his brow, looked thoughtful, and then asked but a single question: ‘The battlefield, the mud – is it really as bad as you say?’