The great war, 1914-1918, a brief sketch

15–24 August 1914

Battle of Cer

RUSSIAN CAMPAIGNS 53

Russians and by the heroic little Serbian army (first at Shabatz on the Drina, sometimes called the Battle of the Jadar, August 19, 20), called in German help. The Germans reorganized the Austrian army, and it was, no doubt, much com- pensation to them that they were able both to save their ally and then to drive the poor Russians gradually back out of all Poland and all Lithuania. Roumania, indeed, with half a million soldiers, declared for the Allies in August 1916, but she did so, and we encouraged her to do so, wholly in reliance on Russian help. Without that help she was between the devil and the deep sea, between Hungarians and Turks, and, as it proved, Russia was unable to send her any serious help, and Roumania thus became more a make- weight than an advantage to the Allies. Yet she remained quite loyal, though her army was reduced to five divisions.

26 August 1914

Battle of Le Cateau (1914)

JOFFRE'S STRATEGY 17

behind and Kluck had again failed on the 25th to envelop either Haig or Smith-Dorrien, though these had to separate and march one each side of the impenetrable Mormal Forest, Haig had only to stand a sharp night attack at Landrecies and was able to continue his retreat to the River Oise, while Smith-Dorrien, acting on his own responsibility, made early on the 26th his immortal stand at Le Cateau. He had three to one in artillery and seven to three in men against him. Some of his divisions (he had the 3rd, 4th, and 5th, the 19th Infantry Brigade, and one cavalry division) had suffered severely in the previous fighting, so we may per- haps allow him 60,000 fighting men with which to hold up 130,000. If Mons had proved the marvellous accuracy of our rifle fire, Le Cateau was the birthday of our new field artillery. The enemy from the first had shown himself as- tounded and horrified at both, as well as at our cohesion and discipline during a sullen, prolonged, and unwilling retreat for which our men could see no cause. We lost perhaps 8,000 men in that battle, but we made Kluck pay two for one in losses, and most marvellous of all was the way in which Smith-Dorrien, early in the afternoon, drew off in reasonably good order to continue his retreat towards Saint- Quentin. This was a feat of tactics hitherto believed to be impossible, and reflects the highest credit on the general who dared and did it. After the battle our men ' walked till 1 a.m., slept in the rain till 3 a.m., and then walked on most of the next

RETREAT CONTINUED 23

day ' ; the victors of Le Cateau (for it had the effect of a British victory) marched 25 miles before dawn of the 27th, and early on the 28th reached the Oise at Noyon ; Haig had just reached the same river at La Fere. Both corps were safely across the Aisne by the 31st.

RETREAT CONTINUED 23

From the hour of Le Cateau, our prospects had improved ; ' things began to straighten them- selves out, ' roads and halting-places ? were marked out beforehand, rations arrived, transport kept touch. A French army was brought up to cover our left towards Amiens ; another on our right made a splendid and effective counter-attack on Biilow on the Oise. The German pursuit, if pursuit it could be called, seems to have been not only timorous in execution, but uncertain in aim, as Kluck's next two moves will show. He crossed the Somme at PeVonne on the 28th, drove the French on the 29th out of Amiens (which he actually occupied for some hours) on to the Paris road, and thus appeared to be threatening the British line of communications with Havre, our sea-base ; in fact all the Channel ports might soon be in danger, and wild rumours reached our reinforcements waiting at Havre of German cavalry scouts having been seen advancing thither ; British guns with broken

RAPID ADVANCE 177

ber 6. Were there any men with Byng and Rawlin- son, in that terrible fight under torrents of rain, who had stood there in the sunshine with Smith- Dorrien on August 26, 1914 ? The peasants around were now telling us terrible tales of German cruelty to the wounded men who had been left behind as we fell back that afternoon. On the fourth day of this Second Battle of Le Cateau the Canadians at last entered Cambrai, and by the 13th the enemy was making his last stand on the Selle. His retreat in the centre had made the Laon plateau untenable, for it cut the main railway upon which the Germans there had depended for their supplies, and the French at last re-entered the fortress-rock of Laon on the 13th.

22 April – 25 May 1915

Second Battle of Ypres

YPRES 35

The key of the position was a little medieval city, whose name will be for ever immortal, and for ever associated with the old British Army, which saved it and perished in the task — the city of Ypres. If Ypres had fallen nothing could have saved the Channel ports, and from Calais and Boulogne the enemy's big guns would have made shipping pretty uncomfortable in the Straits of Dover. This, then, is the significance of the ' First Battle of Ypres,' and the turning-point of that four weeks of battle came on October 31, when the German onrush was stayed a few miles eastward of the city. To attempt any connected description of this battle day by day would be a task far be- yond my powers. To the few survivors the whole thing now appears as a series of nightmares galloping at racing speed through their memories.

FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES 37

The first brunt of the fighting at Ypres fell about October 19 on Rawlinson with the 7th Division and 3rd Cavalry Division, which force (perhaps to bluff the enemy) was paraded as a ' Fourth Army Corps.' They were ordered to force a passage to Menin, to secure the crossing of the Lys, but were met by German forces too great to allow them to get more than half-way. Yet when Sir Douglas Haig with the First Army Corps reached Ypres on that same 19th it is pretty clear that Sir John French was still contemplating the carrying out of the great turning movement in the direction of Ostend. What is not clear is at what date he

FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES 39

The actual ramparts of Ypres, vast eighteenth- century masses of earth faced with brick and surrounded by a wide moat, would no doubt be impervious to shells, but this would not save the buildings and the men behind them from shelling. To hold a city nowadays you must hold and en- trench a considerable strip outside it, and it was the narrowness of the strip that we were eventually able to hold on the east and south which made the First (and likewise the Second) Battle of Ypres so terrible. But avSpes yap 7ro\t? ical ov reixv • Sir John French at least knew that the best, i.e. the most British, method of defence was by counter-attack, and accordingly he began by counter-attacking at

LAST DAYS OF YPRES I 43

I do not mean to imply that the First Battle of Ypres ended on October 31 ; indeed it lasted for a full fortnight more. But the greatest danger was over ; the enemy never seriously improved upon the line he had won on the last day of October, in spite of repeated attacks on all our positions from Zonnebeke to Hollebeke. On November 6 and 7 the attacks from the south were particularly fierce, and on November n, simultaneously with

22–25 November 1915

Battle of Ctesiphon (1915)

ADVANCE TOWARDS BAGDAD 69

(2) defending what they have dug. Our famous attack, then, at the Battle of Ctesiphon (November 22-25) was one of the most daring deeds of the whole war. We broke through the first Turkish line of defence, but actually had not enough men or enough cartridges to hold it when it had been occupied. Of the 11,000 British and Indian troops who went into action on those days 4,200 were killed, wounded, or missing.

SIR STANLEY MAUDE 83

The British Government was awakened by the disaster of Kut, took the whole organization of Mesopotamia out of the hands of the Indian Govern- ment, superseded the Commander-in-Chief in India, and chose Sir Stanley Maude, who had already greatly distinguished himself on the Tigris, to take over the task of avenging Ctesiphon and Kut. Completely new stores, equipment, guns, and trans- port were provided, including a fleet of river steamers ; and a railway was begun from Basra upwards. The fertile districts were sown with corn and vegetables, and embankments were built against floods. All this went on at an amazing rate through the summer and autumn of 1916, and Maude made no move till the end of the year. When he did move it was in a series of fierce little jumps forward, always with one foot ready to leap back if he thought too great losses would be

SIR STANLEY MAUDE 83

Still, once he was awake to what Maude was doing, the Turk put up a very fine defence of Kut, Decem- ber 13, 1916 — February 24, 1917 ; it fell on the latter day. By March 6 Maude was on the old battlefield of Ctesiphon, and a three days' battle, 8th to nth, had to be fought before we got into Bagdad — we had made no miles of advance in fifteen days. By the end of April we held the railway north from Bagdad as far as Samarra, seventy more miles up the Tigris. Maude wisely refused to expose his men too much during the heat of summer, but he kept the Turks awake by small raids, both towards the Russian frontier and towards the Euphrates. In that summer a German soldier, Falkenhayn, took over the command of the Turkish armies and fixed his headquarters at Aleppo, ready to strike either against Maude or against a new danger that was threatening him from Egypt via Palestine and Syria. He finally decided to contest the latter advance in greater force than the former.

31 July – 10 November 1917

Battle of Passchendaele

YPRES 35

The key of the position was a little medieval city, whose name will be for ever immortal, and for ever associated with the old British Army, which saved it and perished in the task — the city of Ypres. If Ypres had fallen nothing could have saved the Channel ports, and from Calais and Boulogne the enemy's big guns would have made shipping pretty uncomfortable in the Straits of Dover. This, then, is the significance of the ' First Battle of Ypres,' and the turning-point of that four weeks of battle came on October 31, when the German onrush was stayed a few miles eastward of the city. To attempt any connected description of this battle day by day would be a task far be- yond my powers. To the few survivors the whole thing now appears as a series of nightmares galloping at racing speed through their memories.

FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES 37

The first brunt of the fighting at Ypres fell about October 19 on Rawlinson with the 7th Division and 3rd Cavalry Division, which force (perhaps to bluff the enemy) was paraded as a ' Fourth Army Corps.' They were ordered to force a passage to Menin, to secure the crossing of the Lys, but were met by German forces too great to allow them to get more than half-way. Yet when Sir Douglas Haig with the First Army Corps reached Ypres on that same 19th it is pretty clear that Sir John French was still contemplating the carrying out of the great turning movement in the direction of Ostend. What is not clear is at what date he

FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES 39

The actual ramparts of Ypres, vast eighteenth- century masses of earth faced with brick and surrounded by a wide moat, would no doubt be impervious to shells, but this would not save the buildings and the men behind them from shelling. To hold a city nowadays you must hold and en- trench a considerable strip outside it, and it was the narrowness of the strip that we were eventually able to hold on the east and south which made the First (and likewise the Second) Battle of Ypres so terrible. But avSpes yap 7ro\t? ical ov reixv • Sir John French at least knew that the best, i.e. the most British, method of defence was by counter-attack, and accordingly he began by counter-attacking at

LAST DAYS OF YPRES I 43

I do not mean to imply that the First Battle of Ypres ended on October 31 ; indeed it lasted for a full fortnight more. But the greatest danger was over ; the enemy never seriously improved upon the line he had won on the last day of October, in spite of repeated attacks on all our positions from Zonnebeke to Hollebeke. On November 6 and 7 the attacks from the south were particularly fierce, and on November n, simultaneously with