Malcolm MacPhail's Great War Read online

  The massive, ungainly, twin-engine Gothas were an altogether different story from the other aeroplanes. They were slow and their sheer size made them a target even these lads ought to be able to hit. Which is why they typically attacked at night. Of course, if you missed, or your pea-shooter failed to bring it down, you had a considerable problem. A single Gotha carried fourteen 60-pound pineapples. That was enough to level the privates’ little barricade several times over and most of the camp with it.

  Without any bombing machines to fend off, the privates and the corporal were primarily concerned with monitoring the approach road to camp. I noticed from their faces they had spotted something. Shortly thereafter, I heard it as well. It was a large staff car approaching at speed, a Vauxhall D-type and it positively glinted. That could mean only one thing.

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ I said, straightening to attention. ‘Well, lads! Here’s your chance to show your spit and polish.’ We all saluted, suitably smartly, as the car crunched past on the gravel track heading towards the centre of the camp. I could see clearly through the back windows and I blinked when I glimpsed the by now all too familiar, mottled grey-white moustache; it was Field-Marshal Haig. What’s he doing here? I wondered. This was supposed to be a conference of the Corps commanders; nobody had said anything about Haig attending. Thankfully he appeared to have left his stiff-necked colonel at home.

  ‘I’ll leave you to your Gothas, then. Good luck, but hopefully you won’t be needing it,’ I said to the Lewis gun squad. I prepared to hasten over to the largest of the wooden barracks, where the action was palpably heating up. This time they saluted crisply. In good spirits they called out, ‘Good-bye, then, sir.’

  As I approached the barracks, I saw a familiar face from the division and I called out to him. He pivoted, hesitating as he made out my face, and then waved exuberantly. His name was McAvity. For a long while I’d mischievously spread the word, to great hilarity, that he was a dentist fleeing a malpractice suit. Finally, in a burst of exasperation, involving my teeth and the threat of his fist, he convinced me that wasn’t the case. Of course, he being a major, I would have immediately taken his word for it, anyhow. Since then we’d become quite friendly. That was just as well. He was not only my superior officer, we worked together far too often to be at loggerheads.

  ‘Malcolm,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘As it happens, Sir Malcolm,’ I replied, with a salute, ‘I too have been invited – sort of. As usual, I’m not entirely sure why. I briefed Lipsett yesterday.’

  Malcolm was a name that had some pedigree in our division. It began with our old commanding officer, Major-General Malcolm Mercer. He’d been killed at Mount Sorrel. Major Malcolm McAvity was the second, and I was the third. I just had to make it to major to give it the ring it deserved. My elaborate report, notwithstanding, I don’t think I’d scored many points with the general last night. An attack was simply going to require meticulous preparation and stolid perseverance. I think Lipsett had hoped for more from me.

  ‘I presume the whole thing is still on?’ I asked cautiously, knowing the answer even before the words passed my lips.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said McAvity.

  ‘Do you know who I just saw arriving?’ I asked. Without awaiting a reply, I added, ‘Haig. That’s right, Sir Douglas himself.’

  ‘That pretty much seals it, I’d think. I don’t think the field-marshal would make the effort to come up here, merely to say “Sorry chaps, thanks for the splendid efforts, but I’m calling it off”.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I replied. I’d concluded the exact same thing ten minutes ago when I saw his Vauxhall glide by. Hope was a funny thing, though. You clung to it even when there was none.

  ‘One thing you might not know about, MacPhail, are the conferences on the 16th,’ he said provocatively. Who knew what and when, had become a bit of a game for us – we’d been away from the front lines for far too long.

  ‘Oh, you mean a week ago, at Corps HQ and Anzac HQ, when General Plumer came to visit?’

  ‘Right. But do you know what he and Currie discussed?’

  ‘No, not offhand,’ I said, unhappy to be in the dark and curious as to what he would say.

  ‘As it happens, I was at Corps HQ at the time. I also happened to speak with a lieutenant-colonel who heard it all.’

  ‘Well, spit it out man,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a war to fight!’

  ‘Alright. Apparently, Currie pleaded with Plumer to convince Haig to call it off. He warned him that there’d be 16,000 casualties. Can you imagine? 16,000! That’s twice the size of Fredericton.’ McAvity was from New Brunswick. He was right, it was a stunning number.

  ‘And then?’ I asked.

  ‘Plumer was quite sympathetic. He really seems to be a decent general. But the orders were plain, according to Plumer,’ he said resignedly. And then with real feeling, ‘God-damn Haig!’

  I pursed my lips and slowly exhaled. I didn’t know how old Guts ‘n Gaiters came up with 16,000 casualties, but it was a depressing number.

  We chatted a while longer and then decided to move inside before the conference began. It wouldn’t have been particularly auspicious if the field-marshal and half-a-dozen generals were promptly on time, while the captain and the major were too preoccupied with each other to be punctual.

  General Lipsett spotted us immediately. He summoned us over with a flick of his head. He was talking to Batty Mac, the commander of the 1st Division, General Macdonell.

  After excusing himself, he said, ‘I was curious when you two might deign to present yourselves.’ As always with the general, it was never entirely clear whether it was a question or a statement. Likely both, knowing him.

  ‘We were discussing the field-marshal’s sudden arrival, sir,’ I said. Convincing Lipsett was not unlike breaching the German lines, in both cases it didn’t do to vacillate.

  ‘The field-marshal? You mean Field-Marshal Haig?’ he asked, in a puzzled tone.

  ‘Yes, exactly, sir. He arrived forty minutes ago,’ I said, suddenly full of bravado.

  ‘Ah-ha,’ he said slowly, and then paused, thinking about the implications of what I’d said. ‘It’s a good thing the two of you are purportedly in intelligence. Otherwise, I might be tempted to assume this was a clever feint to cover for the fact you’ve been gossiping like old women, and forgot the time.’

  There was no pulling the wool over Lipsett’s eyes.

  10 a.m. came and went with no visible sign of the Corps Commander or his mysterious guest. I could feel the raised eyebrows – this was more than a little unorthodox, particularly with a stickler like Currie. Minutes later, the eyebrows went through the ceiling as the field-marshal, cane in hand, marched into sight, with Currie following on his heels.

  Their faces spoke volumes. That was an over-worn expression, at least to my ears, and beloved of my mother. I can’t say I’d ever encountered a clearer example than with these two. The field-marshal looked as resolute and aloofly unperturbed as ever, while Currie had the tense features, narrow eyes and pursed mouth of a man who’d chomped on an under-ripe lemon, or more precisely, I guessed, a mud-locked Flemish village.

  After the briefest of introductions from Currie, Haig began to speak. ‘Gentlemen, circumstances have arisen that render it imperative that Passchendaele Ridge must be taken at all costs. I know the Canadian Corps can take it, and my mission here is to ask the Corps Commander to do so. I feel I should tell you he was opposed to doing so.’ Castle Mountain (aka General Currie) standing beside him didn’t bat an eyelash. ‘I have been able to meet his objections and to agree to what he considers necessary. I may say he has demanded an unprecedented amount of artillery to cover your advance; and this I have promised. I would like to explain why this attack must be made and perhaps someday in the future I may be able to do so. At present, I simply ask you to take my word for it. The necessity is imperative.’

  I still had my qualms, but it was a classy gesture. The commander-in-chief w
as as close to God on Earth as most of us would ever know, yet he’d come here in person to ask the Corps to take Passchendaele. He obviously knew a thing or two about motivating men, if not strategy, I thought sourly.

  Haig remained the entire conference, a polite observer to the detailed, but remarkably abbreviated briefing and discussion led by Currie with uncharacteristic verve. Then he departed, with the customary fanfare, to inspect our immensely popular battleground model.

  When I was ten there was nothing I loved to do more than play with my set of intricately-detailed lead soldiers, made by W. Britain, out in the garden behind our house. I would have died for a sandbox like this one – so I could understand the inherent attraction.

  I waited around with McAvity outside as the generals and staff officers climbed into their respective staff cars and raced off. General Lipsett had offered me a drive back to Canal Bank. I was more than happy to accept, though I quickly realized that in the pecking order of Lipsett, Hore-Ruthven, and McAvity, MacPhail was destined to join the chauffeur in the front seat.

  The shortage of intact real estate being as it was in the Ypres area, the division had moved into the Kiwis’ old digs yesterday, mildew and all. As a seasoned inhabitant of the bunker, I’d astutely taken advantage of the confusion as one HQ moved out, and another in, to lay claim to one of the better rooms to bunk in. It was a classic fog of war manoeuvre, as I explained later to Sergeant Smith, though his eyes fogged over when I mentioned von Clausewitz.

  ‘So, that’s that,’ I said to McAvity, before we left.

  ‘It would look that way,’ he replied.

  ‘Shame, though, that Currie didn’t demand an unprecedented amount of booze to accompany that artillery,’ I said. ‘Or perhaps that’s to be our reward?’

  CHAPTER 9

  26th of October, 1917

  Assembly area 1,000 yards northeast of Gravenstafel, Belgium

  Cold was a state of mind, I kept telling myself, but my homespun logic was having precious little impact; being half-asleep wasn’t helping matters. Stamping my feet, and rubbing my arms to get the circulation going, I felt like an eighty-five-year-old in a blizzard. It was the sort of coldness that only high humidity can cause. The kind that doesn’t hit you like a brick wall, but works by stealth, seeping unfelt through your clothing until, finally, when they’re saturated, it reaches your bones – and then doesn’t leave. While it wasn’t truly raining I could have swum laps in the mist. They say Eskimos have more than twenty different words for snow and I imagine the Belgian vocabulary must be equally rich when it comes to rain.

  It was pitch dark and the luminous dial on my Borgel indicated that it was approaching 4.05 a.m. – I’d meticulously synchronised my watch as instructed – and the last soldiers were being lined up in the assembly areas to have their gear checked and the plans explained one final time. NCOs were circulating through the ranks. Through lack of sleep or shaky nerves, some had forgotten to attach their muzzle protectors, or weren’t standing where they should be. They were being reminded about it in no uncertain terms, with whispered shouts unleashed only inches from their faces. The battle I’d been dreading was about to begin.

  Then it began to rain. As usual, rain was a description that didn’t cover it by half. The barrage of water that was coming down made our own feeble attempts at barrages seem just that. ‘Well, boys, welcome to Wipers,’ I heard a corporal grumble to his platoon. A few, the veterans who’d made it through Vimy Ridge and the Somme, grunted indifferently. The others looked on, apprehensively, in silence. They had heard the stories ever since the rumour got out we might be heading here and knew that the rain was only the beginning.

  Cleverly, somebody had decided to fix ZERO hour at a less predictable time than at dawn a few minutes after the hour or the half-hour. That constituted the standard attack drill. The Germans, not being entirely dim-witted, had long since picked up on this quaint practice and, as the sun prepared to rise, would regularly shell the front on the hour and the half hour hoping to catch-out a force mustering to attack. It was a tactic that had worked more than once. Absurdly, it had taken our side an indecently long time to figure out that their side had our side completely figured out. To me it seemed pretty simple, but the gears of the BEF ground slowly.

  Our guns went off together, timed perfectly to the minute, if not the very second, in a great deafening crescendo of noise; the ground positively rumbled under our feet. There were an impressive 235 of them, of all calibres, dedicated to the division’s front alone. Behind us the flashes they created illuminated the skies as if dawn were breaking, colouring the low hanging clouds in a sinister, moving potpourri of yellows, oranges, and reds. In the light of the explosions, and through the streaming rain, I could make out criss-crossed streams of bullets from the heavy Vickers belt-fed machine guns – each pumping out 500 rounds a minute into targets far out in front. It was 5.40 a.m. on October 26th, 1917. The attack had begun.

  The officers and NCOs were shouting now, marshalling their troops, even as they began moving forward, anxious to keep to their timetables and under the curtain of iron falling 150 yards ahead. It would move in precisely eight minutes, leapfrogging 50 yards ahead and, after four minutes do it again until the objective was taken, or they had run out of shells. Naturally, I knew there were many others responsible, yet I felt strangely content my advice to Currie had been noted.

  I imagined a similar scene must be playing out along the entire front. To the left of the Corps, the British 63rd Royal Navy Division was to advance simultaneously, to protect our flank from counter-attacks and the dreaded enfilade fire: machines guns raking our troops from the side. To our right, the 1st Anzac Corps would do the same.

  The British Army must be a lot more pressed than was generally known if they were drafting in the Navy to do their dirty work. Understandably, some army-types might call it pure genius.

  The thrust of the Corps was a broad swath on both sides of the Ravebeek – in the shape of a V – heading directly to Passchendaele. As Currie had succinctly described, almost two weeks earlier in Hazebrouck, we were the prong to the left of the Ravebeek. Our attack would run up the crest and along both slopes of the pill-box infested Bellevue Spur. This would be the widest part of the advance, requiring two of our three brigades to attack along a long 1000-yard front. It was ground I knew all too well after days spent reconnoitering it; I swore I knew every miserable yard. To our right, and on the other side of that bloated creek, the 10th Brigade from the 4th Division would fight its way to the ridge top and then along the main ridge towards the village.

  Despite the conditions, the first minutes of the advance were progressing well. There were few signs of a German response. They certainly couldn’t have been sleeping with the racket the artillery boys were making. I turned and began my journey back to the Capitol.

  Those farcically named ruins in the mud, a mile or so from Gravenstafel, lent a semblance of shelter and, more critically, well-connected telephone wires to the 9th Brigade. The brigade had its headquarters there.

  Thanks to the well-prepared infantry track, it was only a short walk back to Gravenstafel. There, a car stood waiting to take me and a couple of other drenched souls to headquarters.

  When we arrived, there were half a dozen officers and other ranks in the main bunker. The voices were calm. Somehow, that made me only more aware of the sense of excitement, the same nervous tension I’d felt with the Australians as their attack began to unfold. The Brigade commander, Brigadier-General Hill, was energetically explaining something to a major from one of his battalions. I slipped over to listen. He was bent over the table, which occupied a good portion of the available space, and was pointing at the map that occupied most of it.

  ‘Our observation post confirmed the report from the artillery observers. Our troops are entering them,’ he was saying. I looked closer and could see his finger rested on the pill-box concentration just below the crest of the ridge closest to us. That was very good news; it was o
nly 6.30 a.m. Fifty minutes in and we were well on our way to the red line denoting the first phase objective.

  In the hour that followed, the first reports from the field trickled in. I began to see cautious smiles replacing the anxious looks from earlier. In desperation the Germans were shelling their old positions on the Spur, but large groups of prisoners were arriving. The frowns returned momentarily as a wounded officer was brought in. He reported stiff resistance on the Spur’s right slope. Heavy machine-gun fire from the fortified Crest Farm machine-gun nests on the main ridge were holding them up. Crest Farm was on the far right side of the Ravebeek, close to Passchendaele. But then came the welcome signal: the 4th Division had taken all their objectives. They were pushing patrols out to Crest Farm.

  Around eight o’clock, a young signals private barged noisily into the room and we all looked up. From the sight of him I knew his tidings were not what any of us wanted to hear. ‘Sir,’ he said, addressing the general and drinking in huge gulps of air, ‘The 58th and most of the 43rd are back at their jumping-off lines!’ The Boche artillery and machine-gun fire were driving them back.

  ‘Damn and double damn,’ shouted the Brigadier. As curses go I’ve heard worse, but I understood Hill’s anxiety all too well. His two battalions formed the centre of the attack. Without them the advances of the 8th Brigade on the left and the 10th on the far right, would be at grave risk. The entire attack was in the balance. If matters didn’t improve, and quickly, not just Lipsett, but Currie himself would be having his guts for garters.

  The General looked around the room like a caged animal until his eyes alit on me. ‘You, Captain,’ he called, impatiently waving me over.

  ‘MacPhail, sir,’ I replied. In fact, I’d already introduced myself to him earlier this morning as I had to all the others.