Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1168 page)

F.-M. Earl Kitchener’s appointment to Colonel of the Battalion in succession to F.-M. Earl Roberts was marked on the 12th in the following telegram from Earl Kitchener:

The C.O. replied:

On the 13th December a further draft of 100 men and three officers arrived under Captain Mylne; the other officers being Lieutenant Antrobus who was wounded exactly a month before, and Lieutenant Hubbard. This brought the Battalion’s strength to 800 with the following officers: Major the Hon. J. Trefusis, C.O.; Captain Lord Desmond FitzGerald, Adjutant; Lieutenant C. A. S. Walker, Transport Officer; 2nd Lieutenant L. Straker, Machine-gun Officer; Captain A. H. L. McCarthy, Medical Officer; Captain Rev. Father Gwynne, Chaplain; Lieutenant H. Hickie, Quartermaster. No.1 Company, Captain E. J. Gough, Lieutenant L. Hargreaves, 2nd Lieutenant A. C. Innes. No. 2 Company, Captain E. Mylne, 2nd Lieutenant H. S. Keating, 2nd Lieutenant F. H. Witts. No. 3 Company, Captain P. L. Reid, 2nd Lieutenant P. H. Antrobus, 2nd Lieutenant Hon. H. V. Harmsworth, 2nd Lieutenant H. Marion-Crawford. No. 4 Company, Lieutenant G. Gough, Lieutenant G. Hubbard, 2nd Lieutenant Lee.

Lieutenant C. A. S. Walker had to go to hospital with bronchitis and Lieutenant Antrobus took over from him.

Major Arbuthnot (Scots Guards) arrived on the 14th December with Queen Alexandra’s presents to the Battalion which were duly issued to selected officers, N.C. O.’s, and men, but at the time, the Battalion was under two hours’ notice to move either to support an attack then being delivered by the Third Division upon the wood at Wytschaete, or “for any other purpose.” The attack was not a success except in so far as it pinned the enemy forces to one place, but the Battalion was not called upon to help. It lived under “short notice” for a week which naturally interfered with extended route-marches or training. Companies were sent out one by one to dig in the water-logged soil and to extemporise means of keeping their feet out of the water by “blocks of wood made in the form of a platform at the bottom of the trenches.” Thus laboriously is described the genesis of what was later to grow into thousands of miles of duck-board, plain or wired.

Meantime, between the 20th and 22nd of December the fierce and unsatisfactory battle of Cuinchy, the burden of which fell heavily on our devoted Indian troops, had been fought out on a front of half-a-dozen miles from south of the Béthune Canal to Festubert. Nothing had been gained except the all-important issue — that the enemy did not break through. There was a long casualty-list as casualties were then counted, and the Indian Brigades were withdrawn from their wrecked and sodden trenches for a little rest. The Guards Brigade was ordered to relieve them, and on the 22nd marched out from Meteren. The Herts Territorial Battalion (to be honourably and affectionately known later as “The Herts Guards”) led that first march, followed by the 2nd Coldstream, 1st Battalion Irish Guards, the 3rd Coldstream, and the 2nd Grenadiers. They billeted at Béthune where, on the 23rd December, the 2nd Coldstream in support, they took over their share of the Indian trenches near Le Touret between Essars and Richebourg L’Avoué, and on Christmas Eve after tea and the distribution of the Christmas puddings from England, the Battalion, with the Hertfordshires relieved the 4th Dogras, 6th Jats, and 9th Gurkhas. It is recorded that the Gurkha, being a somewhat shorter man than the average Guardsman, the long Irish had to dig their trenches about two feet deeper, and they wondered loudly what sort of persons these “little dark fellas” could be.

The Christmas truce of 1914 reached the Battalion in severely modified form. They lay among a network of trenches, already many times fought over, with communications that led directly into the enemy’s lines a couple of hundred yards away. So they spent Christmas Day, under occasional bombardment of heavy artillery, in exploring and establishing themselves as well as they might among these wet and dreary works. In this duty Lieutenant G. P. Gough and Lieutenant F. H. Witts and six men were wounded.

Earl Kitchener, their Colonel, sent them Christmas wishes and the King’s and Queen’s Christmas cards were distributed. Their comfort was that Christmas night was frosty so that the men kept dry at least.

Boxing Day was quiet, too, and only four men were wounded as they dug in the hard ground to improve their communications with the 2nd Coldstream on their left. Then the frost broke in rain, the clay stuck to the spade, the trenches began to fill and a deserter brought news of an impending attack which turned out to be nothing more serious than a bombing affair which was duly “attended to.” Some of our own shells bursting short killed one man and wounded six. Princess Mary’s gifts of pipes, tobacco, and Christmas cards were distributed to the men and duly appreciated.

The impossibility of keeping anything free from mud forced them to reduce their firing-line to the least possible numbers, while those in support, or billets, made shift to clean rifles and accoutrements. The days went forward in rain and wet, with digging where water allowed, and a regular daily toll of a few men killed and wounded.

On the 30th December Captain Eric Gough was killed by a stray bullet while commanding his Company (No. 1) and was buried next day in a cemetery a few miles along the Béthune–Richebourg road. He had been Transport Officer since the Battalion left London in August, but had commanded a company since the 21st November, and was an immense loss to the Battalion to which he was devoted. Lieutenant Sir G. Burke and 2nd Lieutenant J. M. Stewart came from England on the same day and were posted to No. 1 Company now commanded by Lieutenant L. Hargreaves.

The Diary ends the year with a recapitulation more impressive in its restraint than any multitude of words

La Bassée To Laventie

THEY
were not disappointed. New Year’s Day was marked by the flooding out of a section of forward trenches, and by experiments with a trench-mortar, from which 2nd Lieutenant Keating and some Garrison gunners threw three bombs at an enemy digging-party a couple of hundred yards away. This is the first reference to our use of trench-mortars in the young campaign. The enemy retaliated next day by bombing from their real trench-mortars, at a distance of seven hundred yards, the small farm-house where Battalion Headquarters lay. The bombs could be seen “coming at a very steep angle, but the house was only once hit.” Daylight showed the work of the Irish trench-mortar to have been so good — it had blown a gap in the German trench — that they continued it and inflicted and observed much damage.

They were relieved on the 3rd January by the King’s Royal Rifles and got to billets near Vieille Chapelle late that night. A London Gazette announced that the Distinguished Conduct Medal had been awarded No. 2535 Sergeant C. Harradine; No. 1664 Corporal C. Moran; No. 4015 Private W. Moore (since killed in action); No. 2853 Lance-Corporal W. Delaney. Also “the new decoration called the Military Cross” had been awarded to Lieutenant the Hon. H. W. Gough.

The Battalion, as a whole, had its reward for the past ten days when the Brigadier expressed his approval of the work of the Guards Brigade “and especially that of the Irish Guards.”

Cleaning and refit, classes in bomb-throwing (both by hand and from rifles) under the Engineers and an elementary machine-gun class under 2nd Lieutenant Straker, filled in the week; but the most appreciated boon at Vieille Chapelle was some huge tubs in which the men could be boiled clean. Father Gwynne held service in the roofless shell-wrecked church, long since wiped out.

They took over trenches from the Worcesters on the 8th with a cold knowledge of what awaited them; for the Diary notes, the day before: “Another wet day, which will probably completely fill trenches on the left of the new line with water.” But it did not fill them more than two feet deep, though the whole line was afloat, and in the communication-trenches seven men got stuck in the mud; one of them was not extricated for six hours. The relief took six and a half hours in pouring rain, with one man killed and two wounded. The front line of the Guards Brigade was held by the 3rd Coldstream on the right, the 2nd Coldstream in support; one Company of the 2nd Grenadiers in the centre, and the rest of the Battalion in support; the Irish Guards on the left, the Herts Territorials in support. The Grenadiers relieved their front company every twenty-four hours, the others every fortyeight. This meant that Battalion C.O.’s had to spend most of their time in the front line studying what was, in effect, the navigation of canals.

On the 9th January, for example, the water averaged three feet in the trenches and, as that average rose, it was decided to leave a few strong posts in comparatively dry positions and withdraw the others along the Rue du Bois into the destroyed village of Richebourg L’Avoué. Luckily, the enemy, not two hundred yards away, had his own troubles to attend to and, despite his lavish flares and musketry-fire, our men were extricated, bodily in some instances, with but 3 killed and 2 wounded.

On the 10th January the Herts Regiment relieved them, and the whole Battalion billeted at Richebourg St. Vaast. Casualties from small-arm fire had been increasing owing to the sodden state of the parapets; but the Battalion retaliated a little from one “telescopicsighted rifle” sent up by Lieutenant the Earl of Kingston, with which Drill-Sergeant Bracken “certainly” accounted for 3 killed and 4 wounded of the enemy. The Diary, mercifully blind to the dreadful years to come, thinks, “There should be many of these rifles used as long as the army is sitting in trenches.” Many of them were so used: this, the father of them all, now hangs in the Regimental Mess.

Then trench-feet and rheumatism developed, and in forty-eight hours fifty men had to be sent to hospital for one form or other of these complaints.

A draft of a hundred fresh men arrived between the 11th and 12th of January with six officers: Captain P. S. Long-Innes, 2nd Lieutenants F. F. Graham, J. R. Ralli, R. B. H. Kemp, D. W. Gunston (Derek) and J. T. Robyns. Economy in officers and men was not yet possible; for when an officer was not in the front line he had more than all he could do to look after what comforts were obtainable for the men. Yet concessions were made to human weakness; for when the Battalion returned to its trenches on the 12th an order was received and, to some extent, obeyed that “men were not to stand in the water for
more than twelve hours at a time
.” This called for continuous reliefs of the platoons, as it took a man most of his rest in billets to scrape himself moderately clean. To save the labour of portage through the mud, each man was given two days’ supplies when he went into the trenches, plus some dry tea and a couple of tins of maconochie to heat up over the braziers. The idea worked satisfactorily; for the days of the merciless air-patrols had yet to come; and the braziers flared naked to heaven while the Irish “drummed up,” which is to say, stewed their tea or rations on them.

The hopeless work of improving positions in soil no stiffer than porridge was resumed, and the “telescopicsighted rifle,” in the hands of Sergeant-Major Kirk and Drill-Sergeant Bracken, who were later congratulated by the G.O.C. Second Division, continued its discreet and guarded labours among the enemy. Only 1 man was killed and 1 wounded on the 13th January, and the night of that easy day passed off quietly, “the enemy occupying himself chiefly with singing songs or playing on mouth-organs.” Here and elsewhere he was given to spasms of music for no ascertainable reason, which the Irish, who do not naturally burst into song, rather resented. Between morceaux he sent up many coloured flares, while our working-parties silently completed and christened by the name of “Gibraltar” a post to command a flooded gap in the oozy line.

They were relieved on the 15th January by the Highland Light Infantry of the 3rd Brigade (Lahore Division) which was taking over the line held by the 4th (Guards) Brigade. The Battalion went back to Brigade reserve billets at Locon.
¹

Their last week in the trenches had cost them 82 casualties including sick, but it is worth noting that, at this time, Captain McCarthy, the Medical Officer, by issuing mustard mixed with lard for the men to rub on their feet, had in three days got the better of the epidemic of “trench” or, as they were then called, “swollen” feet.

It was while in reserve that 2nd Lieut. Keating, Bombing Instructor and in charge of the trench-mortars, lost his life and 13 men were wounded owing to the premature explosion of an old-type fused bomb with which he was instructing a class. Second Lieutenant Keating was buried next day in the cemetery near Le Touret, where many Guardsmen were already laid, and his epitaph may worthily stand as it was written — ”A very capable officer, always ready to undertake any task however difficult or dangerous.”