.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 49540
   :PG.Title: Days to Remember
   :PG.Released: 2017-07-28
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: John Buchan
   :DC.Creator: Henry Newbolt
   :DC.Title: Days to Remember
              The British Empire in the Great War
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1922
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

================
DAYS TO REMEMBER
================

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      DAYS TO REMEMBER

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      THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN
      THE GREAT WAR

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      BY

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      JOHN BUCHAN

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      AND

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      HENRY NEWBOLT

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      THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.
      LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
      TORONTO, AND PARIS

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      First Impression 1922
      Second Impression 1923
      Third Impression 1925
      Fourth Impression 1925
      Fifth Impression 1928
      Sixth Impression 1935
      Seventh Impression 1937

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   CONTENTS

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   PART I.

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   INTRODUCTORY.

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   CHAPTER

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I.  `THE CAUSES OF THE WAR`_
II.  `A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE WAR`_
III.  `THE TURN AT THE MARNE`_

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   PART II.

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IV.  `THE WORCESTERS AT THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES`_
V.  `THE CANADIANS AT THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES`_
VI.  `THE TAKING OF LOOS`_
VII.  `DELVILLE WOOD`_
VIII.  `THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES`_
IX.  `THE TANKS AT CAMBRAI`_
X.  `THE SOUTH AFRICANS AT MARRIÈRES WOOD`_
XI.  `THE BATTLE OF THE LYS`_
XII.  `THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE`_
XIII.  `THE BEGINNING OF THE END`_
XIV.  `THE AUSTRALIANS AT MONT ST. QUENTIN`_
XV.  `THE LAST BATTLE`_


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   PART III.

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   THE "SIDE SHOWS".

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XVI.  `THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI`_
XVII.  `THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI (continued)`_
XVIII.  `THE DEPARTURE FROM GALLIPOLI`_
XIX.  `THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM`_
XX.  `ALLENBY'S GREAT DRIVE`_

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   PART IV.

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   THE SILENT SERVICE.

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XXI.  `THE SILENT SERVICE`_
XXII.  `CORONEL`_
XXIII.  `THE FALKLANDS`_
XXIV.  `MYSTERY SHIPS`_
XXV.  `JUTLAND`_
XXVI.  `THE BRITISH SUBMARINE SERVICE`_
XXVII.  `THE BRITISH SUBMARINE SERVICE (continued)`_
XXVIII.  `THE MERCANTILE MARINE AND FISHING FLEETS`_
XXIX.  `ZEEBRUGGE`_


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   PART V.

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   BEHIND THE LINES.

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XXX.  `BEHIND THE LINES AND AT HOME`_

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   PART VI.

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   VICTORY.

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XXXI.  `THE LAST DAY`_
XXXII.  `LOOKING BACKWARD`_

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   LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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   PORTRAITS.

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`Field-Marshal Sir John French`_ (Earl of Ypres)

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`Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig`_ (Earl Haig of Bemersyde)

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`Marshal Foch`_

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`Field-Marshal Sir Edmund Allenby`_ (Viscount Allenby of Megiddo)

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`Admiral Sir John Jellicoe`_ (Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa)

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`Admiral Sir David Beatty`_ (Earl Beatty of the North Sea)

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`Field-Marshal Earl Kitchener`_


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   MAPS.

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`The Critical Day in the First Battle of Ypres`_

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`The Second Battle of Ypres`_

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`Battle of Loos: Advance to Loos and Hill 70`_

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`Battle of the Somme: Longueval and Delville Wood`_

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`Cambrai: the Advance of the Infantry Divisions`_

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`The Second Battle of the Marne.`_

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`First Stages of the last Allied Offensive`_

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`The Landing Beaches at Gallipoli`_

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`Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula`_

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`Palestine: the Decisive Battle`_

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`Battle of Coronel`_

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`Battle of the Falkland Islands—First Phase`_

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`Battle of the Falkland Islands—Second Phase`_

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`Battle of the Falkland Islands—Last Phase`_

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`Battle of Jutland: Track Chart`_

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`Zeebrugge.`_

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`The Front on the Eve of the Allied Offensive, and on
the Day of the Armistice`_





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.. _`THE CAUSES OF THE WAR`:

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   PART I.

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   INTRODUCTORY.

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   DAYS TO REMEMBER.

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   CHAPTER I.

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   THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.

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It is never easy to fix upon one cause as the origin of a
great war, and the war of 1914 was the outcome of several
causes combined.  For twenty years there had been growing
up in Europe a sense of insecurity; the great Powers had
become restless and suspicious of one another, and one Power,
Germany, was seriously considering the possibility of some
bold stroke which would put her beyond the reach of rivalry.
Germany, since her victory over France in 1870, had become
a very great and rich nation; she had spread her commerce
over the world; and she was anxious to create an empire
akin to those of Britain and France.  But she began the task
too late in the day; she could succeed only at the expense
of her neighbours.  The ambition of Germany was, therefore,
one perpetual source of danger.

Another danger was her nervousness, which frequently
accompanies ambition.  There was an alliance between
France and Russia, and a growing friendliness between
Britain and France, and Germany feared that her rivals
were combining to hem her in and put a stop to what she
considered her natural development.  Russia had fallen very
low after the war with Japan, but was rapidly recovering
both in wealth and armed strength.  France was making
strenuous efforts to increase her army, so that she should
not be at a disadvantage as compared with the far greater
population of Germany.  Britain had no ambitions of
conquest; her aim was the peaceful development of her Empire.
But that was an oversea Empire, and she required a large
navy; and the size of this navy seemed to Germany to be a
menace to her future.

The result was that in the summer of 1914 the rulers of
Germany had decided that some great effort must soon be
made; they must put their land in such a position that for
the future it would have no cause to dread the aggression, or
even the rivalry, of other Powers.  If they delayed too long
they feared that the growing wealth of Russia and the
increased military strength of France would make such an
effort for ever impossible.

On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand,
the heir to the Austrian throne, was murdered, along with
his wife, in the little Bosnian town of Serajevo.  Austria
had long been jealous of the movement towards unity among
the Slav peoples in the Balkans, with Serbia at their head,
and she believed, or pretended to believe, that the murder
had been connived at by the Serbian Government.  Germany,
for reasons of her own, was equally desirous to
see the power of the Balkan states diminished.  She had
a grandiose design of extending her influence eastward
through Constantinople to the Persian Gulf, with Turkey
as her ally or her tool, and planting a German outpost on
the flank of our Indian Empire; and a strong Serbian
kingdom, or a union of Slav peoples, would effectually bar
the way.  With the approval of Germany, therefore, Austria
sent an ultimatum to Serbia, demanding certain concessions
which would have made Serbia no longer a sovereign
state.  Serbia, while willing to grant most of the demands,
was compelled to refuse others, and Austria promptly
declared war.

Russia now interfered in support of Serbia, and mobilized
her armies on her southern frontiers.  Every attempt was
made by the statesmen of Western Europe, and notably
by the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, to limit
the quarrel and to persuade Austria to listen to reason.
Germany, however, had no desire for a peaceful settlement.
She induced Austria to refuse all mediation, and presently,
after a peremptory request to the Tsar to demobilize, she
declared war upon Russia.  Russia and France were allies,
and war with France followed naturally within twenty-four
hours.

The position of Britain had become extremely difficult
She had no formal alliance with France, but in her own
interests she could not allow her nearest neighbour to be
crushed, and the balance of power in Europe to be entirely
changed.  Britain had never seriously considered the
possibility of a European war, and was extremely averse from
interfering in a quarrel in which she had no direct concern.
She might well have hesitated till it was too late to act with
effect, or have blundered into some foolish compromise with
Germany.

The situation was saved by Belgium.  The German scheme
of attack on France was based upon a sudden invasion from
the north, and for this a march through Belgium was
essential.  The neutrality of Belgium had long before been
guaranteed by all the great Powers, but Germany argued
that her necessity must override the law of nations, and
demanded a passage through Belgium.  This was refused.
The invasion of Belgium accordingly began on Sunday,
the 2nd August, and this outrage determined the policy of
the British Government and the British people.

On Monday, the 3rd August, Sir Edward Grey announced
that the fleet and the army had been mobilized, and that
Britain proposed to defend with the sword her treaty
obligations to Belgium.  That evening an ultimatum was sent to
Germany demanding her immediate withdrawal from
Belgium; next day we were at war with Germany.  On the
same afternoon the German Imperial Chancellor made a
speech defending his violation of Belgian neutrality.  "He
who is threatened, as we are threatened, can have but the
one thought—how he is to hack his way through."  The
German Government had believed to the last that Britain
would remain neutral, and her entry into the conflict for a
moment dashed their zeal for war.  "The British change
the whole situation," the Emperor told the United States
Ambassador.  "An obstinate nation!  They will keep up
the war.  It cannot end soon."

Britain had no great military force to throw into the
balance, such as the armies of France and Russia.  Her
small regular army was little more than a garrison for
her Oversea Dominions, and her Territorial Force was
intended for home defence.  But Lord Haldane, when Secretary
for War, had foreseen the possibility of a Continental
struggle, and had prepared plans by which an Expeditionary
Force of about 100,000 men could be placed on the
Continent of Europe in a very short time.  This force was,
for its size, probably the most expert army in the world.
It took its place on the left of the French line, and,
though small in comparison with the mighty levy of France,
it was fated to play a leading part in the first decisive
battles.

Behind the regular army was our second line of defence,
the Territorials, nominally 300,000 strong.  But it was very
certain that as soon as war was declared the whole manhood
of Britain would be called upon, and that many hundreds
of thousands of young men would be eager to serve.  Lord
Kitchener was appointed Secretary for War, and under his
direction recruiting began.  Before Christmas nearly two
millions of our men were under arms.

But Britain's main weapon was her navy, which was by
far the strongest in the world.  After that came her wealth
and her great manufacturing capacity, by which she could
supply the munitions of war required both for her own
forces and for those of her allies.  If her navy could dominate
the seas, then her commerce would go on as before, while
that of Germany would cease, and her troops and those of
her allies could be moved about the world at her pleasure.
"He who commands the sea," as Francis Bacon said long
ago, "hath great freedom."

Germany was prepared for a war which she had always
foreseen, and had the greater strength; but if the Allies did
not suffer an early defeat, their strength was certain to
grow with every month, while that of Germany must decline.
But if the Allies were thus to grow in power they must be
able to maintain free communications with the outer world
and with one another, and for this they must rely on the
supremacy of the British fleet.

In the very first days of war events happened which proved
that the German Emperor was right in dreading the entry
of Britain into the struggle.  The British Empire overseas
awoke to action like a strong man from slumber, and there
began an epic of service which was to grow in power and
majesty up to the last hour of the campaign.  No man can
read without emotion the tale of those early days in August,
when from every quarter of the globe there poured in appeals
for the right to share in Britain's struggle.

The great free nations of the Empire—Canada, South
Africa, Australia, and New Zealand—prepared to raise and
send troops, and the smallest Crown colonies made their
contributions in money or supplies.  India, whom Germany
believed to be disloyal, at once agreed to send two infantry
divisions and one cavalry brigade, and all the native rulers
and princes placed their resources at the King-Emperor's
call.  Almost every Indian chief offered personal service in
the field.

This rally of the Empire aroused a sense of an immense
new comradeship which stirred the least emotional.  The
British Commonwealth had revealed itself as that wonderful
thing for which its makers had striven and prayed—a union
based not upon laws and governors, but upon the deepest
feelings of the human spirit.  The effect of the muster was
not less profound upon our ally across the Channel.  No
longer, as in 1870, did France stand alone.  The German
armies might be thundering at her gates, but the ends
of the earth were hastening to her aid, and the avenger was
drawing nigh.





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.. _`A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE WAR`:

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   CHAPTER II.


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   A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE WAR.

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Germany had foreseen and prepared for just such a conflict
as now began, and was able to put into the field in the West
larger forces than those of France and Britain combined.
These forces were also better trained and better supplied
with transport, artillery, and machine-guns.  Her plan was
to defeat France and Britain in the first month, and then to
turn her main armies against Russia, for she assumed that
Russia would be slow to mobilize her gigantic numbers.
But if the first attack on France should fail the situation
would be changed, and Germany would be compelled to fight
on two fronts at once, the East and the West.

If the conflict was protracted Germany would lose the
advantage of numbers, for then the greater united manpower
of the Allies could be trained for the field, and if the
British navy continued to rule the seas those new armies
could be supplied and moved at the Allies' will.  Moreover,
though Germany could produce most of the necessaries of
life and the apparatus of war within her own borders, yet
the Allied control of the sea would cut her off from certain
vital kinds of war material.

The Great War falls therefore into three stages.  At
the start Germany, with the advantage of surprise and
long preparation, embarked on a war of movement in the
hope of immediate victory.  She failed in this, and the
campaign then became a siege in which the Allies sat round
her entrenched stronghold.  That vast stronghold embraced
half of Europe and part of Asia; it could produce most
things that it needed, and carry on its normal life.  Brilliant
sallies were made, which more than once nearly dispersed
the besiegers; but, nevertheless, for three and a half years
the Teutonic Powers were as the garrison of a beleaguered
city.  Then came the short, last stage, when the outworks
of the fortress crumbled, and the Allies pressed in and forced
the garrison to surrender.

Germany began the war with Austria as her ally.  Within
three months she had been joined by Turkey, and by the end
of the first year of war Bulgaria mustered on her side.  The
Allies at the start were France, Britain, Russia, Belgium,
Serbia, and Japan; in May 1915 Italy joined them, and in
August 1916 Rumania.  Before the end Portugal and Greece,
among the European Powers, were added; the United States
of America joined in April 1917; and in the last year of the
war there were altogether eleven Powers in Europe, Asia,
and America on their side.  The main battles were fought
on the Continent of Europe, and the main belligerents, from
start to finish, were the European nations.  The accession
of America, however, was vital for the Allied victory, as it
counterbalanced the failure of Russia, which, after the
revolution in March 1917, rapidly went to pieces and dropped out
of the fighting line.

Before telling of any special incidents of the great struggle
it is desirable to have before our minds a general bird's-eye
view of the whole war.  Germany's first plan of an
immediate conquest was defeated by France and Britain at the
First Battle of the Marne in September 1914.  She made a
second attempt upon the shores of the English Channel,
which was foiled before Ypres in November of the same year.
After that her policy was to stand on the defensive in the
West and to aim at the destruction of Russia.  In this,
during 1915, she nearly succeeded.  The Russian armies
were driven out of Poland, but they established their line
during the autumn, and Germany's ambitious strategy had
once more failed.

In 1916 the Allies were ready for a combined advance,
Germany was aware of their policy, and tried to anticipate
it by her great attack on Verdun in February of that year—a
battle which was fiercely contested for months, and finally
ebbed away about midsummer.  By that time Austria's
attack on Italy had also failed and the Allied advance begun.
The Russians won great successes in Galicia, and the British
and French on the Somme dealt the German armies a blow
from which they never really recovered.  In Rumania, on
the other hand, Germany had a temporary success; but by
the close of 1916 it was clear to her commanders that unless
some miracle happened the war would end with an Allied
victory during the following year.

That miracle happened, in the form of the Russian
revolution in the spring of 1917.  Thereafter Germany was
able to get rid of the war on her eastern frontier and to
throw all her strength against the West.  During that spring
and summer she staved off the French and British attacks
at Arras, at Ypres, and on the Aisne, and in the autumn of
1917 she was ready to begin her own offensive.  Her first
blow was directed against Italy, whom she drove back fifty
miles from the Isonzo to the Piave, with immense losses.
In March 1918 she struck her great blow in the West.  With
a large superiority in men and guns, she attacked the British
at St. Quentin, and forced them to retreat almost to the
gates of Amiens.

It was a success, but only a limited success, and with
this last stroke her energy began to ebb.  Foch was now
Commander-in-Chief of the Allies, and with great skill he
maintained a stubborn defensive till such time as he had
gathered strength for a counter-attack.  Meantime the new
armies of America were arriving in France at the rate of
10,000 a day.  In July Germany struck her last blow on
the Marne in a frantic effort to reach Paris.  That blow was
likewise warded off, and three days later the Allied
counter-offensive began.

Then in a series of great attacks all the prepared German
defences were broken down.  By the early days of October
Turkey and Bulgaria had been defeated in the East, and the
surrender of Austria followed before the end of the month.
Finally, on November 11, 1918, Germany herself was forced
to sue for an armistice in order to save her armies from
destruction.  An armistice was granted, but its terms
involved an unconditional surrender to the will of the Allies.

The episodes contained in the following chapters have
been chosen as examples of the achievements of Britain and
her Oversea Dominions in the Great War.  They are notable
episodes, which stand out from the day-to-day routine of
the fighting.  They are exploits, each of which materially
contributed to Germany's defeat.  But the qualities which
they reveal in the men who shared in them were not
confined to those men; they are typical qualities, and were
possessed in no less degree by hundreds of thousands of men
who fought in obscurity, but whose unrecorded service was
equally the cause of victory.  A war is won not only by the
shining deeds of the few, but also by the faithfulness of the
many, though it is the brilliant deeds which stand out most
clearly in the world's memory and become the symbols and
memorials of all the unrecorded faithfulness.

Most of the chapters belong to the attacks during the time
of siege warfare, for it was by those attacks that the heart
was taken out of the enemy.  But we must not pass over
the marvellous story of how Germany was reduced to a state
of beleaguerment, and why she did not succeed in her first
plan and win in a war of movement.  The reason of this was
a great battle, in which France played the chief part, but
in which the small British army had also an honourable share.
Before we begin our record, then, let us look at the stand on
the Marne which wrecked the first hope of a German victory
in the war.





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.. _`THE TURN AT THE MARNE`:

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   CHAPTER III.


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   THE TURN AT THE MARNE.

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Germany, as we have seen, began the war in the West with
larger forces than those of France and Britain.  She had
also prepared definite plans of action, most of which she had
managed to conceal from her opponents.  General Joffre,
the French Commander-in-Chief, was aware of her main
intention—to outflank the French left wing by a drive through
Belgium; but he did not guess how strong the enemy right
wing would be, or how wide its wheel.  His own plan was to
strike first, and to attack the enemy's left and centre in
Lorraine and in the Ardennes, where he supposed the German
front would be relatively weak.

He was wrong, for he had under-estimated the number
of trained divisions which Germany could place at once in
the field.  His attacks were repulsed both in Lorraine and
in the Ardennes.  At the same moment he found that the
German right wing, sweeping round through Belgium, was
double the strength he had expected.  He hurried up troops
to meet it, but at Charleroi his Fifth Army was beaten, and
the British on its left were compelled to retreat along with
it.  The result was that on Monday, August 24, 1914, all
the armies of the Allies were falling back from the northern
frontiers.  The men did not know what had happened; but,
weary and bewildered, they kept their discipline.  That
the retirement was achieved without serious losses was a
proof of the stoutheartedness of the armies of France and
Britain.

Joffre was now compelled to make a new plan.  He had
to find reserves, and these would take time to collect; he
could not get reinforcements brought up to his armies in
time, so the armies must fall back to the reinforcements.
For nearly a fortnight the retreat went on.  Notable
exploits were performed by every army, and the record of the
retreat from Mons contains the fine defensive battle fought by
the British at Le Cateau.  The Allies lost heavily in the
retirement, but it enabled them to reach their supports, while
the enemy had weakened his strength by his long advance.
On the 4th September the Allies, who at the start had been
outnumbered, were now slightly more numerous than the
Germans.

On that day, the 4th September, Joffre halted the retreat.
He was now ready to turn and strike back.  The enemy
forces lay in a huge arc 200 miles wide and 30 deep—from
the eastern skirts of Paris to Verdun.  On the German
right was Kluck, who had led the great wheel through
Belgium, and next to him in order towards the east were the
armies under Bülow, Hausen, the Duke of Wurtemberg, and
the Imperial Crown Prince.  Beyond the Meuse lay the
detached German left wing, under the Crown Prince of
Bavaria, threatening Nancy.  The German plan was for
Kluck to turn the left, and Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria the
right, of the French line, while their centre broke the French
centre in Champagne.

.. _`FIELD-MARSHAL SIR JOHN FRENCH`:

.. figure:: images/img-015.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: FIELD-MARSHAL SIR JOHN FRENCH (EARL OF YPRES).

   FIELD-MARSHAL SIR JOHN FRENCH
   (EARL OF YPRES).

The Allies had been forced into a difficult position.  From
the south of the Marne their line extended to Verdun,
consisting of the British Army under Sir John French, and the
armies of Franchet d'Esperey, Foch, Langle de Gary, and
Sarrail; while facing the Bavarians at Nancy were the armies
of Castelnau and Dubail.  In the meantime a new French
army, the Sixth, had been formed, and this, under Maunoury,
lay on the extreme left, covering Paris, and was thus in a
position to threaten Kluck's right flank and rear.  Joffre's
new plan was to strike hard with his left, on the flank of the
invader, and for this purpose he had gravely thinned the rest
of his front so as to strengthen the forces of Maunoury and
Franchet d'Esperey.  It was a great hazard, for if the
Bavarians forced the gate of Nancy the French right would
be turned, and if the German centre broke through the
weak French centre the battle would be lost, whatever
happened on the French left.

It was one of the moments of crisis on which the world's
history depends.  The captains who were to win the war
for the Allies were all in the field—Foch with an army,
Haig with a corps, Pétain and Mangin and Allenby with
divisions.  Joffre told his men that on the coming fight
depended the salvation of their country, and every private
in the ranks felt the gravity of the hour.  France was
fighting on the old ground where, long centuries before, the Hun
invasion had been rolled back by Theodoric the Visigoth,
and the spirit of her men was kindled to a flame.

The First Battle of the Marne was won not, as many believed,
by any single exploit, but by the faithful performance
of its duty by each section of the long-drawn line.  Let us look
first at the French right flank in Lorraine.  There the battle
began on the 4th September, and three days later came the
crisis when, by the slenderest margin, the enemy failed to
break Castelnau on the ridge called the Grand-Couronné.
The Kaiser himself was a spectator of the fight, for Germany
had counted on forcing the pass; but by the 8th she had
failed, and by the 9th Castelnau had firmly barred the gate.

The French centre, under Foch, Langle de Gary, and
Sarrail, had a longer period of trial.  Sarrail, at Verdun,
was all but broken on the 8th, and was compelled to fall
back to the west bank of the Meuse.  All through the 9th
and 10th the desperate struggle continued, and by the
evening of the last day the French general was preparing
for retreat.  Suddenly, however, he found the attack ebbing,
and by the 12th the enemy was mysteriously withdrawing.
Farther west Langle de Gary had his worst moment on
the 8th; on the 9th he received reinforcements which eased
his position, and on the 10th he too felt the strange
weakening of the enemy.  The left centre under Foch had the
sternest fight of all.  He had against him the bulk of Bülow's
and Hausen's armies, and on the 8th he found his flanks
turned and his whole front split into gaps.  Nevertheless
he prepared to attack on the 9th with his last ounce of
strength.  All that day his centre and right were falling back
before the enemy's thrust, but he still persevered in his
purpose and marched the single division he could muster
to the point where he thought he could strike with the
greatest effect.  The blow was never delivered, for on the
evening of the 9th the apparently triumphant advance halted
and ebbed.  Like Sarrail and Langle de Gary, Foch, having
resisted to the limit of human endurance, discovered that the
enemy was miraculously disappearing.

The cause of the miracle was the doings of the French left
wing.  Joffre had hurled Maunoury on Kluck's flank and
rear, while Sir John French and Franchet d'Esperey attacked
in front.  Kluck met the threat with vigour and resolution.
He formed front to flank, as the phrase goes—that is, he faced
round to what had been his wing—and in the three days'
fighting all but defeated Maunoury.  On the night of the 7th
the outflanking French left found itself outflanked in turn,
and its attack turned into a desperate defence.  But on the
9th came salvation.  Kluck's manoeuvre had left a gap of
30 miles between himself and Bülow, and into this gap were
pouring the British force and that of Franchet d'Esperey.
Suddenly Maunoury discovered that certain villages in front
of him were evacuated, and his airmen told him of enemy
convoys moving to the north.  At 1 p.m. that day Bülow
began his retreat, and Kluck was forced to follow suit.  Sir
John French and Franchet d'Esperey had pierced the enemy
front, and the retreat of the German right caused the retreat
of all the German armies.  They fell back to a line along
the Aisne, through Champagne, and down the east bank of
the Meuse—a strong line, which for four years was never
really broken.  But, none the less, it was a retreat.

The First Battle of the Marne may well rank as the greatest,
because the most critical, contest of the war.  It was decisive
in the sense that it defeated Germany's first plan of campaign.
She had hoped for a "battle without a morrow"; but the
battle had been fought and the morrow was come.  She
was now compelled to accept the slow war of entrenchments,
and to see every week bringing her nearer to the condition
of a beleaguered city.  The immediate cause of victory was
Maunoury's flank attack, which opened the way for the
British and Franchet d'Esperey.  But without the daring
strategy of Foch and the stubborn endurance of Langle de
Gary and Sarrail—above all, without Castelnau's epic
resistance at Nancy—the chance in the West could not have been
seized, and the Marne might have realized Germany's hopes.
It was in a sense the last battle of the old régime of war, a
battle of movement and surprise and quick decisions; it was
fought and won not by the army as a military machine but
by the human quality of the soldier.  In the last resort the
source of victory was the ancient and unconquerable spirit
of France.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WORCESTERS AT THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART II.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center large bold

   THE WESTERN FRONT.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV.

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE WORCESTERS AT THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES.

.. vspace:: 2

The Battle of the Marne defeated the great plan of the
Germans, and their next object was to hold what they had won.
The line to which they had retired was open to attack on the
west, as was also that of the French, and hence there came a
period of rapid movement on both sides, each attempting to
outflank the other.  It became a "race for the sea," and
ended only when the entrenched lines on either side reached
the Belgian coast.  The enemy then attempted to break
through the left of the Allied front, and to seize the Channel
ports, so as to threaten the British lines of communication.
He transferred large numbers of his best troops to the north;
between Armentiéres and the sea he had a total of 402
battalions of infantry and an immense superiority of guns.
Two hundred and sixty-seven battalions were all that the
Allies could fling into the gap, and their cavalry were
outnumbered by two to one.

Germany struck at various points; but being checked at
Arras and on the sea-coast, she made her main effort in the
last week of October against the British Army, which held the
salient east of the city of Ypres.  The battle, which is known
as the First Battle of Ypres, began on the 21st of the month,
and the crisis came on the 29th, when General von Fabeck
attacked with a "storm group" of specially selected
regiments.

On Saturday, the 31st October, after a furious bombardment,
it seemed that the end had come.  For eleven days our
little army had been holding its own against impossible odds.
At the point of the Salient, north of the Menin road, lay the
2nd and 1st British Divisions, and south of them the 7th
Division and Byng's cavalry.  The men were very weary
and their ranks terribly thinned.  The 7th Division had
fought for nearly two days on a front of 8 miles against forces
of four times their number.  The desperate character of the
fighting was only fully known when the losses came to be
reckoned up.  That division had 44 officers left out of 400,
and 2,336 men out of 12,000.  The 1st Brigade of the 1st
Division had 8 officers left out of 153, and 500 men out of
5,000.  The 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers, to take one battalion,
was reduced to 70 men commanded by a junior subaltern.
That is the price which must be paid for fighting one against
four.  Major Bellenden in *Old Mortality* considered one to
three the utmost possible odds, and "never knew any one
who cared to take that except old Corporal Raddlebanes."  At
the First Battle of Ypres the British Army would have
welcomed the Major's odds as a relief.

On that Saturday morning things had grown very desperate.
The 1st and 3rd Brigades of the 1st Division were
driven out of Gheluvelt, our line gave way, and soon after
midday we were back among the woods towards Veldhoek.
This retirement uncovered the left of the 7th Division, which
was then slowly bent back towards the Klein Zillebeke
ridge.  The enemy was beginning to pour through the Gheluvelt
gap, and at the same time pressed hard on the whole arc
of the Salient.  We had no reserves except an odd battalion
or two and some regiments of cavalry, all of which had
already been sorely tried during the past days.  Sir John
French sent an urgent message to General Foch for reinforcements
and was refused.  At the end of the battle he learned
the reason.  Foch had none to send, and his own losses had
been greater than ours.

.. _`The Critical Day in the First Battle of Ypres`:

.. figure:: images/img-023.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: The Critical Day in the First Battle of Ypres.

   The Critical Day in the First Battle of Ypres.

Between 2 and 2.30 p.m. Sir Douglas Haig, commanding
the 1st Corps, was on the Menin road watching the situation.
It seemed impossible to stop the gap, though on its northern
side some South Wales Borderers were gallantly holding a
sunken road and galling the flank of the German advance.
He gave orders to retire to a line a little west of Hooge and
stand there, though he well knew that no stand, however
heroic, could save the town.  He considered that a further
retirement west of Ypres might be necessary, and with this
Sir John French agreed.

The news grew worse.  The headquarters of the 1st and
2nd Divisions at Hooge Chateau had been shelled.  The two
commanders had been badly wounded and six of the Staff
killed.  Brigadiers took charge of divisions, and during that
terrible afternoon officers were commanding any troops that
happened to be near.  It looked as if fate had designed to
lay every conceivable burden on our breaking defences.

And then suddenly out of the mad confusion came a
strange story.  A breathless Staff officer reported that
something odd was happening north of the Menin road.  The
enemy advance had halted.  Then came word that our 1st
Division was re-forming.  The anxious generals could scarcely
believe their ears, for it sounded a sheer miracle; but presently
came the proof, though it was not for months that the full
tale was known.

This is what had happened.  Brigadier-General the
Hon. Charles FitzClarence, V.C., commanding the 1st (Guards)
Brigade in the 1st Division, had sent in his last reserves, and
had failed to fill the gap in our line.  He then rode off to the
headquarters of the 1st Division to explain how desperate
was the position.  But on the way, at the south-west corner
of the Polygon Wood, he stumbled upon a battalion waiting
in support.  It was the 2nd Worcesters, who were part of the
right brigade of the 2nd Division.  FitzClarence saw in them
his last chance.  They belonged to another division, but it
was no time to stand on ceremony.  Major Hankey, who
commanded them, at once put them under FitzClarence's
orders.

The rain had begun and the dull wet haze of a Flanders
autumn lay over the sour fields and broken spinneys between
Hooge and Gheluvelt.  The Worcesters, under very heavy
artillery fire, advanced in a series of short rushes for about
1,000 yards between the right of the South Wales Borderers
and the northern edge of Gheluvelt.  There they dug
themselves in, broke up the German advance into bunches, opened
a heavy flank fire, and brought it to a standstill.  This allowed
the 7th Division to get back to its old line, and the 6th Cavalry
Brigade to fill the gap between the 7th and 1st Divisions.
Before night fell the German advance west of Gheluvelt was
stayed, and the British front was out of immediate danger.

That great performance of an historic English county
regiment is one of the few instances in any campaign where
the prompt decision of a subordinate commander and the
prowess of one battalion have turned the tide of a great
battle.  It was the crucial moment of the First Battle of Ypres.
Gheluvelt was lost, but the gap was closed, and the crisis was
past.  Eleven days later FitzClarence fell in the last spasm
of the action—the fight with the Prussian Guard.  He had
done his work.  Ypres was soon a heap of rubble, and for
four years the Salient was a cockpit of war, but up to the
last hour of the campaign no German entered the ruins of the
little city except as a prisoner.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CANADIANS AT THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CANADIANS AT THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES.

.. vspace:: 2

The Salient of Ypres was to be a second time the scene of
a heroic stand against hopeless odds.  In April 1915 the
front of the Salient was held by the French on the left, the
Canadian Division and the British 28th Division in the
centre, and the 27th Division on the right.  On the 20th the
Germans suddenly began the bombardment of the town with
heavy shells.  It was a warning to the British Command,
for all their roads of supply for the lines of the Salient ran
through Ypres, and such a bombardment must herald an
attack on some part of their front.

The evening of Thursday, the 22nd, was calm and pleasant,
with a light, steady wind blowing from the north-east.  About
6.30 our artillery observers reported that a strange green
vapour was moving over the French trenches.  Then, as the
April night closed in and the great shells still rained upon
Ypres, there were strange and ghastly scenes on the left
between the canal and the Pilkem road.  Back through the
dusk came a stream of French soldiers, blinded and coughing,
and wild with terror.  Some black horror had come upon them,
and they had broken before a more than human fear.  Behind
them they had left hundreds of their comrades stricken or
dead, with horrible blue faces and froth on their lips.

The rout surged over the canal, and the roads to the west
were choked with broken infantry and galloping gun teams
lacking their guns.  Most of the French were coloured troops
from Africa, and in the early darkness they stumbled upon the
Canadian reserve battalions.  With amazement the Canadians
saw the wild dark faces, the heaving chests, and the lips
speechless with agony.  Then they too sniffed something in
the breeze—something which caught at their throats and
affected them with a deadly sickness.

.. _`The Second Battle of Ypres`:

.. figure:: images/img-027.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: The Second Battle of Ypres.

   The Second Battle of Ypres.

The immediate result of the stampede was a 5-mile breach
in the Allied line.  The remnants of the French troops were
thrown back on the canal, where they were being pushed
across by the German attack, and between them and the left of
the Canadians were five miles of undefended country.  Through
this gap the enemy was pouring, preceded by the poisonous
fumes of the gas, and supported by heavy artillery fire.

The Canadian front was held at the moment by the
3rd Brigade under General Turner on the left and the 2nd
Brigade under General Currie on the right.  The 1st Brigade
was in reserve.  The 3rd Brigade, on which the chief blow
fell, had suffered from the gas, but to a less degree than the
French.  With his flank exposed General Turner was forced
to draw back his left wing.  Under the pressure of the four
German divisions the brigade bent backwards till its left
rested on the wood east of the hamlet of St. Julien.  Beyond
it, however, there was still a gap, and the Germans were
working round its flank.

In that wood there was a battery of British guns, and
the Canadians counter-attacked to save the guns and find
some point of defence for their endangered flank.  Assisted
by two battalions from the 1st Brigade they carried the wood.
A wilder struggle has rarely been seen than the battle of that
April night.  The British reserves at Ypres, shelled out of
the town, marched to the sound of the firing, with the strange
sickly odour of the gas blowing down upon them.  The roads
were congested with the usual supply trains for our troops
in the Salient.  All along our front the cannonade was severe,
while the Canadian left, bent back almost at right angles,
was struggling to entrench itself under cover of counter-attacks.
In some cases they found French reserve trenches
to occupy, but more often they had to dig themselves in where
they could.  The right of the German assault was already in
several places beyond the canal.

The Canadians were for the most part citizen soldiers
without previous experience of battle.  Among their officers
were men from every kind of occupation—lawyers, professors,
lumbermen, ranchers, merchants.  To their eternal honour
they did not break.  Overwhelmed by superior numbers of
men and guns, and sick to death with the poisonous fumes,
they did all that men could do to stem the tide.  All night
long with an exposed flank they maintained the gossamer
line of the British front.

Very early in the small hours of Friday morning the first
British reinforcements arrived in the gap.  They were a
strange mixture of units, commanded by Colonel Geddes
of the Buffs—to be ever afterwards gloriously known as
Geddes's Detachment.  But our concern for the moment is
with the Canadians.  The reinforcements from the 1st Brigade
counter-attacked, along with Geddes's Detachment, early
on the Friday morning.  Meantime the Canadian 3rd Brigade
was in desperate straits.  Its losses had been huge, and its
survivors were still weak from the effects of the gas.  No
food could reach it for twenty-four hours.  Holding an acute
salient, it was under fire from three sides, and by evening was
driven to a new line through St. Julien.  The enemy had
succeeded in working round its left, and even getting their
machine-guns behind it.

About 3 o'clock on the morning of Saturday, the 24th,
a violent bombardment began.  At 3.30 there came a
second gas attack.  The gas, pumped from cylinders, rose
in a cloud which at its greatest was 7 feet high.  It was
thickest close to the ground, and filled every cranny of the
trenches.  Instinct taught some of the men what to do.
A wet handkerchief wrapped round the mouth gave a little
relief, and it was obviously fatal to run back, for in that
case a man followed the gas zone.  Its effect was to produce
acute bronchitis.  Those smitten by it suffered horribly,
gasping and struggling for breath, and in many cases becoming
temporarily blind.  Even 1,000 yards from the place of
emission troops were afflicted with violent sickness and
giddiness.  Beyond that distance it dissipated itself, and
only the blanched herbage marked its track.

That day, the 24th, saw the height of the Canadians'
battle.  The much-tried 3rd Brigade, now gassed for the
second time, could no longer keep its place.  Its left fell back
well to the south-west of St. Julien.  Gaps were opened in
its front, and General Currie's 2nd Brigade was now left in
much the same position as that of the 3rd Brigade on the
Thursday evening.  About midday a great German attack
developed against the village of St. Julien.  The remnants
of the 13th and 14th battalions—the Royal Highlanders
of Montreal and the Royal Montreal Regiment—could not
be withdrawn in time, and remained—a few hundred men—in
the St. Julien line, fighting till far on in the night their
hopeless battle with a gallantry which has shed eternal
lustre on their motherland.  Not less fine was the stand
of the 8th Battalion (the 90th Winnipeg Rifles) in the 2nd
Brigade at the very point of the Salient.  With its left in the
air it held out against crazy odds till reinforcements arrived.

The battle was now passing from the Canadians' hands.
On the Saturday the 3rd Brigade was withdrawn, and the
2nd followed on the Sunday evening.  But on the Monday
the latter, now less than 1,000 strong, was ordered back to
the line, and to the credit of their discipline the men went
cheerfully.  They had to take up a position in daylight and
cross the zone of shell-fire—no light task for those who had
lived through the past shattering days.  That night they were
relieved, and on Thursday, the 29th, the whole division was
withdrawn from the Salient, after such a week of fighting as
has rarely fallen to the lot of any troops of the Empire.

The Canadian Division was to grow into an Army, and to
win many famous triumphs before the end of the war.  But
in the hectic three days between Thursday, the 22nd April,
and Monday, the 26th, when the Second Battle of Ypres was
decided, the soldiers of Canada performed an exploit which no
later achievement could excel.  Three battalion commanders
died; from the 5th Battalion only ten officers survived; five
from the 7th; seven from the 8th; eight from the 10th.  Of
the machine-gun men of the 13th Battalion thirteen were left
out of fifty-eight, and in the 7th Battalion only one.  Attacked
and outflanked by four divisions, stupefied by a poison of
which they had never dreamed and which they did not understand,
with no heavy artillery to support them, they endured
till reinforcements came, and they did more than endure.
After days and nights of tension they had the vitality to
counter-attack, and when called upon they cheerfully returned
to the inferno which they had left.  If the Salient of Ypres
will be for all time the classic battle-ground of Britain, that
blood-stained segment between the Poelcappelle and Zonnebeke
roads will remain the holy land of Canadian arms.

With the Canadians must rank the men of Geddes's
Detachment.  They were eight battalions, picked out from
anywhere in the line—the 2nd Buffs, half of the 3rd Middlesex,
half of the 2nd Shropshires, the 1st York and Lancaster,
the 5th Royal Lancaster, the 4th Rifle Brigade, the 9th Royal
Scots, and the 2nd Cornwalls.  Their instructions were to
hold the gap on the Canadian left and bluff the enemy.  The
leading half-battalions were thrown in in twos and threes
into the gap, and had to keep up the appearance of an offensive,
while the other half of each battalion dug a new line.  The
duty of the attacking halves was to get as far forward as
possible before they fell, and to try not to fall before evening.

All the day of Friday, the 23rd, without guns and
without supports, about 2,000 men covered a gap 8,000 yards
wide and held up the victorious Germans.  Behind them the
remaining 2,000 dug the new line, which was to hold fast till
the end of the war.  Of the half-battalions concerned in this
marvellous bluff but little was left.  One company of the
Buffs entirely disappeared.  The men of the 1st York and
Lancaster lay all day in their firing lines—immovable, for every
one was dead or wounded.  The Cornwalls lost all their
officers but one, and all their men but ninety-five.

But they succeeded.  Colonel Geddes was killed by shellfire
on the 28th April, when he was withdrawing his men, but
he died knowing that his task had been accomplished.  The
Second Battle of Ypres lasted far on into May, but the enemy
failed on that day, Friday, the 23rd—St. George's Day—when
the road to Ypres was barred by two Canadian Brigades
and a handful of British regulars and Territorials.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TAKING OF LOOS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TAKING OF LOOS.

.. vspace:: 2

The battle of Loos, which began on Saturday, September 25,
1915, was part of the first combined Allied offensive.  It
was remarkable among other things because it saw the
first appearance in a great battle of the troops of the New
Armies raised in response to Lord Kitchener's appeal, and
in it more than one new division gained a reputation which
made their names become household words.

The battle, though it won much ground for the Allies,
failed to break the German front.  But it shook that front
to its foundations, and indeed at one point came very near
to being a decisive victory.  It is the story of that point with
which this chapter is concerned—the attack of the Scottish
15th Division against the village of Loos.  The 15th was a
division remarkable for physique and spirit, but as yet
untried in war, for it had only been some three months in
France.  The men were of every trade, rank, and profession,
and drawn from all Scotland, both Lowlands and Highlands.
On its left was an old regular division, the 1st, and on its right
the 47th—a London Territorial Division.  The orders of the
15th were to take Loos and the height beyond, known as Hill
70, which looked down upon the northern suburbs of Lens.

Saturday, the 25th, was a drizzling morning, with low
clouds and a light wind from the south-west.  The attack
of the division was made by the 44th Brigade on the right
and the 46th on the left, with the 45th Brigade in reserve.
At ten minutes to six gas was discharged from our front,
but the breeze caused it to eddy back from the hollow round
Loos and trouble the left brigade.  There Piper Laidlaw
of the King's Own Scottish Borderers mounted the parapet
and piped his men forward to the tune of "Blue Bonnets over
the Border."

.. _`Battle of Loos: Advance to Loos and Hill 70`:

.. figure:: images/img-033.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Battle of Loos.—Advance to Loos and Hill 70.

   Battle of Loos.—Advance to Loos and Hill 70.

At 6.30 whistles blew and the leading battalions left
the trenches.  We are concerned particularly with the attack
of the 44th Brigade, which had the 9th Black Watch and the
8th Seaforths in front, the 7th Camerons in support, and the
10th Gordons following.  A wild rush carried the Highlanders
through the whole German front line.  Below in the hollow
lay Loos with the gaunt Colossus of the mining headgear,
which our men called the Tower Bridge, striding above it.
In front of the village was the German second line, about
200 yards distant from the crest of the slope.  Its defences
were strong, and the barbed wire, deep and heavy, had been
untouched by our artillery, except in a few places.

After winning the first line the attack was rapidly
reorganized, and our men went hurtling down the slope.  They
had a long distance to cover, and all the time they were
exposed to the direct fire of the German machine-guns; but
without wavering the line pressed on till it reached the wire.
With bleeding faces and limbs and torn kilts and tunics the
Highlanders forced their way through it.  These decent
law-abiding ex-civilians charged like men possessed, singing and
cheering.  One grave sergeant is said to have rebuked the
profanity of his men.  "Keep your breath, lads," he cried.
"The next stop's Potsdam."

At 7.30 the second line was theirs, and a few minutes
later the 44th Brigade was surging through the streets of
Loos.  Here they had the 47th Londoners on their right,
and on their left their own 46th Brigade, and they proceeded
to clear up the place as well as the confusion of units
permitted.

But the Highlanders had not finished their task.  It was
not yet 9 o'clock, Loos was in their hands, but Hill 70, the
gently sloping rise to the east of the village, was still to be
won.  The attacking line re-formed—what was left of the
Black Watch and Seaforths leading, with the 7th Camerons
and 10th Gordons.  Now, the original plan had been for the
attack to proceed beyond Hill 70 should circumstances be
favourable, and though this plan had been modified on the
eve of the battle, the change had not been explained to all
the troops, and the leading battalions were in doubt about
their final objective.  The Highlanders streamed up the hill
like hounds, with all battalion formation gone, the red tartans
of the Camerons and the green of the Gordons mingling in
one resistless wave.  All the time they were under enfilading
fire from both south and north; but with the bayonet
they went through the defences, and by 9 o'clock were on
the summit of the hill.

On the top, just below the northern crest, was a strong
redoubt, destined to become famous in succeeding days.  The
garrison surrendered—they seemed scarcely to have resisted—but
the Highlanders did not wait to secure the place.  They
poured down the eastern side, now only a few hundreds strong,
losing direction as they went.  They had reached a district
which was one nest of German fortifications.  The Highlanders
were far in advance of the British line, with no supports
on south or north; in three hours they had advanced
nearly four miles, and had reached the skirts of the village
called Cité St. Auguste.

The colonel of a Cameron battalion took command on
Hill 70, now strewn with the remnants of the two brigades,
and attempted to recall the pursuit, which was lost in the
fog and smoke of the eastern slopes, and to entrench
himself on the summit.  But very few of the Highlanders
returned.  All down the slopes towards Lens lay the
tartans—Gordon and Black Watch, Seaforth and Cameron—like the
drift left on the shore when the tide has ebbed, marking out
a salient of the dead which, under happier auspices, might
have been a living spear-point thrust into the enemy's heart.

The rest of the doings of the 15th Division—how they
held the line of Hill 70 for forty-eight hours longer till they
were relieved by the Guards—does not belong to this story.
Our concern is with that wild charge which from the beginning
was foredoomed to failure, for the Highlanders had no
supports except the divisional reserves.  The Guards were
then 11 miles away, and the two New Army divisions which
were brought up—divisions which later on won great glory—were
then only raw recruits.  The brilliant advance was not
war, but a wild berserk adventure—a magnificent but a
barren feat of courage.

.. _`36`:

And yet, looking back from the vantage ground of four
years of campaigning, that madness of attack had in it the
seeds of the Allies' future success.  It was the very plan
which Ludendorff used against them with such fatal effect
in March 1918.  Of what did those German tactics consist?
Highly-trained troops attacked various sections of the front,
found weak spots, summoned their reserves by special signals,
and forced their way through.  In this way the front was
not only pierced, but crumbled in long lengths.  The
Highlanders at Loos were the first to employ this deadly process,
which the French called "infiltration."  They were picked
troops beyond question; but there was no serious plan to
follow up their success, and no support provided.  Yet, even
as it was, that lonely charge struck fear into the heart of
the whole German line from Douai to Lille.  There was no
prophetic eye among us which could see what was implied by
it, and it was set down as a glorious failure.  Four years
later, when we had learned all that the enemy could teach
us, the same method was applied by the master hand of
Foch to break down in turn each of the German defences.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DELVILLE WOOD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   DELVILLE WOOD.

.. vspace:: 2

The Battle of the Somme was the first great British attack
to be made with ample supplies of guns and shells, and
continued, not for days or weeks, but for months.  Slowly we
pressed forward to the crest of the ridges between the Somme
and the Ancre, and we know from Ludendorff's own
confession that we then dealt a blow at Germany's strength
from which she never recovered.  The third stage of that
great battle, which won many miles of the German second
position, began on July 14, 1916.  The one serious check was
on the right wing, where it was necessary to carry the village
of Longueval and the wood called Delville in order to secure
our right flank.  There the South African Brigade entered for
the first time into the battle-line of the West, and there they
won conspicuous renown.

The place was the most awkward on the battle-front.  It
was a salient, and, therefore, the British attack was made
under fire from three sides.  The ground, too, was most
intricate.  The land sloped upwards to Longueval village, a
cluster of houses among gardens and orchards around the
junction of two roads.  East and north-east of this hamlet
stretched Delville Wood, in the shape of a blunt equilateral
triangle, with an apex pointing north-westwards.  The place,
like most French woods, had been seamed with grassy rides,
partly obscured by scrub, and along and athwart these the
Germans had dug lines of trenches.  The wood had been for
some days a target for our guns, and was now a maze of
splintered tree trunks, matted undergrowth, and shell-holes.
North, north-east, and south-east, at a distance of from 50
to 200 yards from its edges, lay the main German positions,
strongly protected by machine-guns.  Longueval could not
be firmly held unless Delville was also taken, for the northern
part was commanded by the wood.

On the 14th July two Scottish brigades of the 9th
Division attacked Longueval, and won most of the place;
but they found that the whole village could not be held
until Delville Wood was cleared.  Accordingly, the South
Africans—the remaining brigade of the division—were
ordered to occupy the wood on the following morning.  The
South African Brigade, under General Lukin, had been raised
a year before among the white inhabitants of South Africa.
At the start about 15 per cent. were Dutch, but the
proportion rose to something like 30 per cent. before the end of
the campaign.  Men fought in its ranks who had striven
against Britain in the Boer War.  Few units were better
supplied with men of the right kind of experience, and none
showed a better physical standard or a higher level of
education and breeding.

Two hours before dawn on the 15th July the brigade
advanced from Montauban towards the shadow which was
Delville Wood, and the jumbled masonry, now spouting fire
like a volcano, which had been Longueval.  Lieutenant-Colonel
Tanner of the 2nd South African Regiment was in command
of the attack.  By 2.40 that afternoon Tanner reported to
General Lukin that he had won the whole wood with the
exception of certain strong points in the north-west, abutting
on Longueval and the northern orchards.

But the problem of Delville was not so much to carry
the wood as to hold it.  The German counter-attacks began
about 3 o'clock, and the men who were holding the fringe
of the wood suffered heavy casualties.  As the sun went
down the enemy activity increased, and their shells and
liquid fire turned the darkness of night into a feverish and
blazing noon; often as many as 400 shells were fired in a
minute.  The position that evening was that the north-west
corner of the wood remained with the enemy, but that all
the rest was held by South Africans strung out very thin
along its edge.  Twelve infantry companies, now gravely
weakened, were defending a wood a little less than a square
mile in area—a wood on which every German battery was
accurately ranged, and which was commanded at close
quarters by a semicircle of German trenches.  Moreover,
since the enemy had the north-west corner, he had a covered
way of approach into the place.

All through the furious night of the 15th the South Africans
worked for dear life at entrenchments.  In that hard soil,
pitted by unceasing shell-fire, and cumbered with a twisted
mass of tree trunks, roots, and wire, the spade could make
little way.  Nevertheless, when the morning of Sunday,
the 16th, dawned, a good deal of cover had been provided.
At 10 a.m. an attempt was made by the South Africans and
a battalion of Royal Scots to capture the northern entrance
to the wood.  The attempt failed, and the attacking troops
had to fall back to their trenches, and for the rest of the day
had to endure a steady, concentrated fire.  It was hot, dusty
weather, and the enemy's curtain of shells made it almost
impossible to bring up food and water or to remove the
wounded.  The situation was rapidly becoming desperate.
Longueval and Delville had proved to be far too strongly
held to be over-run at the first attack by one division.  At
the same time, until these were taken the object of the battle
of the 14th had not been achieved, and the safety of the
whole right wing of the new front was endangered.  Longueval
could not be won and held without Delville; Delville
could not be won and held without Longueval.  Fresh troops
could not yet be spared to complete the work, and it must
be attempted again by the same wearied and depleted
battalions.  What strength remained to the 9th Division must
be divided between two simultaneous objectives.

That Sunday evening it was decided to make another
attempt against the north-west corner.  The attempt was made
shortly before dawn on Monday, the 17th July, but failed.
All that morning there was no change in the situation; but
on the morning of Tuesday, the 18th, an attempt was made
to the eastward.  The Germans, however, in a counter-attack,
managed to penetrate far into the southern half of
the wood.  The troops in Longueval had also suffered
misfortunes, with the result that the enemy entered the wood
on the exposed South African left.

.. _`Battle of the Somme: Longueval and Delville Wood`:

.. figure:: images/img-040.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Battle of the Somme.—Longueval and Delville Wood.

   Battle of the Somme.—Longueval and Delville Wood.

At 2.30 that afternoon the position was very serious.
Lieutenant-Colonel Thackeray, of the 3rd South African
Regiment, now commanding in the wood, held no more than
the south-west corner.  In the other parts the garrisons had
been utterly destroyed.  The trenches were filled with
wounded whom it was impossible to move, since most of
the stretcher-bearers had themselves been killed or wounded.

That evening came the welcome news that the South
Africans would be relieved at night by another brigade.
But relief under such conditions was a slow and difficult
business.  By midnight the work had been partially carried
out, and portions of the 3rd and 4th South African regiments
had been withdrawn.

But as at Flodden, when

   |          "they left the darkening heath
   |  More desperate grew the strife of death."

The enemy had brought up a new division, and made
repeated attacks against the South African line.  For two
days and two nights the little remnant under Thackeray still
clung to the south-west corner of the wood against
impossible odds, and did not break.  The German method of
assault was to push forward bombers and snipers, and then
to advance in mass formation from the north, north-east,
and north-west simultaneously.

Three attacks on the night of Tuesday, the 18th, were
repelled with heavy losses to the enemy; but in the last of
them the South Africans were assaulted on three sides.  All
through Wednesday, the 19th, the gallant handful suffered
incessant shelling and sniping, the latter now from very close.
It was the same on Thursday, the 20th; but still relief tarried.
At last, at 6 o'clock that evening, troops of a fresh division
were able to take over what was left to us of Longueval
and the little segment of Delville Wood.  Thackeray marched
out with two officers, both wounded, and 140 other ranks,
gathered from all the regiments of the South African Brigade.

The six days and five nights during which the South
African Brigade held the most difficult post on the British
front—a corner of death on which the enemy fire was
concentrated from three sides at all hours, and into which fresh
German troops, vastly superior in numbers, made periodic
incursions, only to be broken and driven back—constituted
an epoch of terror and glory scarcely equalled in the
campaign.  There were other positions as difficult, but they were
not held so long; there were cases of as protracted a defence,
but the assault was not so violent and continuous.

Let us measure it by the stern test of losses.  At
midnight on the 14th July, when Lukin received his orders,
the brigade numbered 121 officers and 3,032 men.  When
Thackeray marched out on the 20th he had a remnant of
143, and the total ultimately assembled was about 750.  Of
the officers, 23 were killed or died of wounds, 47 were wounded,
and 15 were missing.  But the price was not paid in vain.
The brigade did what it was ordered to do, and did not yield
until it was withdrawn.

There is no more solemn moment in war than the parade
of men after a battle.  The few hundred haggard survivors
in the bright sunshine behind the lines were too weary and
broken to realize how great a thing they had done.  Sir
Douglas Haig sent his congratulations.  The Commander of
the Fourth Army, Sir Henry Rawlinson, wrote that "In
the capture of Delville Wood the gallantry, perseverance,
and determination of the South African Brigade deserves
the highest commendation."  They had earned the praise
of their own intrepid commanding officers, who had gone
through the worst side by side with their men.  "Each
individual," said Tanner's report, "was firm in the
knowledge of his confidence in his comrades, and was, therefore,
able to fight with that power which good discipline alone
can produce.  A finer record of this spirit could not be found
than the line of silent bodies along the Strand,[#] over which
the enemy had not dared to tread."  But the most impressive
tribute was that of their Brigadier.  When the remnant
of his brigade paraded before him, Lukin took the salute
with uncovered head and eyes not free from tears.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] The name of one of the rides in the wood.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES.

.. vspace:: 2

The Third Battle of Ypres was in many ways the sternest
battle ever fought by British troops.  It was not a defence,
like the two other actions fought at Ypres, but an attack.
It was an attack against the success of which the very stars
in their courses seemed to fight.  Everything—weather,
landscape, events elsewhere on the front—conspired to
frustrate its purpose.  It was undertaken too late and continued
too long; but both errors were unavoidable.  All the latter
part of it was a struggle without hope, carried on for the
sake of our Allies at other parts of the line.  To those who
fought in it, the Third Battle of Ypres will always remain
a memory of misery and horror.

The British scheme for the summer of 1917 was an offensive
against the enemy in Flanders, in order to clear the
Belgian coast and turn the German right flank in the West.
It was a scheme which, if successful, promised the most
far-reaching results; but to be successful a beginning must be
made as early as possible in the summer, when the
waterlogged soil of Flanders became reasonably dry.  But the
whole plan was altered for the worse at the beginning of the
year.  The first stage, the Battle of Arras, began too late
and, through no fault of the British Command, lasted too
long.  It was not till June that Sir Douglas Haig was able
to begin operations in Flanders and make his preliminary
attack upon Messines, and it was not till the end of July
that the great battle was begun in the Ypres Salient.  By
that time the revolution which began in Petrograd in March
had broken up the Russian armies and prepared the way
for the triumph of Bolshevism; Russia was in ruins, and
Germany was moving her troops rapidly from the East to
the West.  The battle was, therefore, a struggle against
time—against the coming of enemy reserves and of the
autumn rains.

The famous Salient of Ypres had, during three years,
been drawn back till the enemy front was now less than
two miles from the town.  For twelve months that front
had been all but stationary, and the Germans had spent
infinite ingenuity and labour on perfecting their defences.
In the half-moon of hills round the town they had view-points
which commanded the whole countryside, and especially the
British lines within the Salient.  Any preparations for attack
would therefore be conducted under their watchful eyes.
Moreover, the heavy waterlogged clay of the flats where our
front lay was terribly at the mercy of the weather, and in
rain became a bottomless swamp.  Lastly, the enemy was
acutely conscious of the importance of holding his position,
and there was no chance of taking him by surprise.

.. _`FIELD-MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG`:

.. figure:: images/img-045.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: FIELD-MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG (EARL HAIG OF BEMERSYDE).

   FIELD-MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG
   (EARL HAIG OF BEMERSYDE).

If the British were to succeed at all they must succeed
quickly.  The high ground east of the Salient must be won
in a fortnight if they were to move against the German bases
in West Flanders and clear the coast.  This meant a
gamble against the weather, for the Salient was, after Verdun,
the most tortured of the Western battlefields.  Constant
shelling of the low ground west of the ridges had blocked
the streams and the natural drainage, and turned it into a
sodden wilderness.  Weather such as had been experienced
the year before on the Somme would make of it a morass
where transport could scarcely move, and troops would be
exposed to the last degree of misery.  Moreover, the "tanks,"
which had been first used on the Somme the year before,
and had done wonders at Arras in breaking through barbed
wire and silencing machine-guns, could not be used in deep
mud.  Whatever might be the strength and skill of the
enemy, it was less formidable than the obstacles which nature
herself might place in the British path.

But the German commanders were no despicable antagonists.
In Flanders the nature of the ground did not
permit of the kind of defence which they had built on the
Somme.  Deep dug-outs and concrete trenches were impossible
because of the waterlogged soil, and they were
compelled to employ new tactics.  Their solution was the
"pill-box."  This was a small concrete fort situated among the
ruins of a farm or in some piece of shell-torn woodland,
often raised only a yard or two above the ground-level, and
bristling with machine-guns.  The low entrance was at the
rear of the pill-box, which held from eight to forty men.
Such forts were easy to make, for the wooden or steel
framework could be brought up on any dark night and filled with
concrete.  They were placed with great skill, and in the
barbed-wire defences alleys were left so that an unwary
advance would be trapped and exposed to enfilading fire.
Their small size made them a difficult mark for heavy guns,
and since they were protected by concrete at least 3 feet
thick they were impregnable to ordinary field artillery.

The enemy's plan was to hold his first line—which was
often a mere string of shell craters—with few men, who would
fall back before an assault.  He had his guns well behind,
so that they would not be captured in the first rush, and
would be available for a barrage if his opponents became
entangled in the pill-box zone.  Lastly, he had his reserves
in the second line, ready for the counterstroke before the
attack could secure its position.  Such tactics were
admirably suited to the exposed and contorted ground of the
Salient.  Any attack would be allowed to make some advance;
but if the German plan worked well this advance would be
short-lived, and would be dearly paid for.  Instead of the
cast-iron front of the rest of the battleground, the Flanders
line would be highly elastic, but after pressure it would spring
back into position with a deadly rebound.

The action began on 31st July, and resulted at first in a
brilliant success.  But with the attack the weather broke,
and so made impossible the series of blows which we had
planned.  For a fortnight we were compelled to hold our
hand; till the countryside grew drier, advance was a stark
impossibility.

The second stage began on 16th August, and everywhere
fell short of its main objective.  The ground was sloppy
and tangled; broken woods impeded our advance; and the
whole front was dotted with pill-boxes, against which we
had not yet discovered the proper weapon.  The result was
a serious British check.  Fine brigades had been hurled in
succession against a solid wall, and had been sorely battered.
They felt that they were being sacrificed blindly; that every
fight was a soldier's and not a general's fight; and that such
sledge-hammer tactics could never solve the problem.  For
a moment there was a real wave of disheartenment in the
British ranks.

Sir Douglas Haig took time to reorganize his front and
prepare a new plan.  Sir Herbert Plumer was brought
farther north, and patiently grappled with the "pill-box"
problem.  He had them carefully reconnoitred, and by directing
gun fire on each side enabled his troops to get round their
undefended rear.  Early in September the weather improved,
the mud of the Salient hardened, and the streams became
streams again, and not lagoons.

On 20th September the third attack was launched, and
everywhere succeeded.  It broke through the German
defence in the Salient, and won the southern pivot, on which
the security of the main Passchendaele Ridge depended.
Few struggles in the campaign were more desperate or
carried out on a more gruesome battlefield.  The maze of
quagmires, splintered woods, ruined husks of pill-boxes,
water-filled shell-holes and foul creeks, which made up
the land on both sides of the Menin road, was a sight which
to most men must seem in the retrospect a fevered
nightmare.  The elements had blended with each other to make
of it a limbo outside mortal experience and almost beyond
human imagining.

But successful though the advance was, not even the
first stage of the British plan had been reached.  During the
rest of September and October, however, attack followed
attack, though the main objective was now out of the
question.  It was necessary to continue the battle for the sake
of our Allies, who at the moment were hard pressed in other
areas; and, in any case, it was desirable to complete the
capture of the Passchendaele Ridge so as to give us a good
winter position.

The last stages of this Third Battle of Ypres were probably
the muddiest combats ever known in the history of war.
It rained incessantly, sometimes quieting to a drizzle or a
Scots mist, but relapsing into a downpour on any day fixed
for our attack.  The British movements became a barometer.
Whenever it was more than usually tempestuous it was
safe to assume that some hour of advance was near.  The
few rare hours of watery sunshine had no effect upon the
irreclaimable bog.  "You might as well," wrote one observer,
"try to empty a bath by holding lighted matches over it."

On the 30th October our line was sufficiently far advanced
for the attack on Passchendaele itself.  On that day the
Canadians, assisted by the Royal Naval Division and London
Territorials, carried much of the Ridge, and won their way
into the outskirts of Passchendaele village.  Some days of
dry weather followed, and early in the morning of 6th
November the Canadians swept forward again and carried
the whole main ridge of West Flanders.  By this achievement
the Salient, where for three years we had been at the
mercy of the German guns, was no longer dominated by the
enemy position.

The Third Battle of Ypres was strategically a British
failure; we did not come within measurable distance of
our main purpose.  But that was due to no fault of
generalship or fighting qualities, but to the malevolence of the
weather in a country where the weather was all in all.  We
reckoned upon a normal August, and we did not get it.
The sea of mud which lay around the Salient was the true
defence of the enemy.

Ypres was to Britain what Verdun was to France—hallowed
soil, which called forth the highest qualities of her
people.  It was a battleground where there could be no
retreat without loss of honour.  The armies which fought
there in the Third Battle were very different from the few
divisions which had held the fort during the earlier struggles.
But there were links of connection.  The Guards, by more
than one fine advance, were recompensed for the awful
tension of October 1914, when some of their best battalions
had been destroyed; and it fell to Canada, by the victory
of Passchendaele, to avenge the gas attack of April 1915.
when only her dauntless two brigades stood between Ypres
and the enemy.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TANKS AT CAMBRAI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TANKS AT CAMBRAI.

.. vspace:: 2

During the Battle of the Somme a new weapon had
appeared on the Allied side.  This was the Tank (so called
because some unrevealing name had to be found for a device
developed in secret).  It was a machine shaped like a
monstrous toad, which mounted machine-guns and light artillery,
and could force its way through wire and parapets and walls,
and go anywhere except in deep mud.  Its main tactical
use was to break down wire entanglements and to clear out
redoubts and nests of machine-guns.  When first used at the
Somme the Tanks won a modified success, and in the following
spring at Arras they fully justified themselves.  Presently
they began to develop into two types, one remaining heavy
and slow and the other becoming a "whippet," a type which
was easy to handle and attained a fair speed.  Ultimately, as we
shall see, they were to become the chief Allied weapon in
breaking the enemy front, and also to perform the historic task of
cavalry and go through the gaps which the infantry had made.
In September 1917, while two British Armies were fighting
desperately in the Ypres Salient for the Passchendaele Ridge,
Sir Julian Byng's Third Army, on the chalky plateau of
Picardy, was almost idle.  An observer might have noticed
that General Hugh Elles, the commander of the Tank Corps,
was a frequent visitor to Sir Julian's headquarters at Albert.
The same observer might have detected a curious self-consciousness
during the following weeks at Tanks headquarters.
Tanks officers, disguised in non-committal steel
helmets and waterproofs, frequented the forward areas of the
Third Army.  Tanks motor-cars seemed suddenly to shed
all distinguishing badges, and their drivers told lengthy
and mendacious tales about their doings.  Staff officers of
the Tanks were never seen at any headquarters, but
constantly in front-line trenches, where, when questioned, they
found some difficulty in explaining their business.  At the
headquarters of one Tanks brigade there was a locked room,
with "No Admittance" over the door, and inside—for the
eye of the possible enemy spy—a quantity of carefully marked
bogus maps.  Some mystery was being hatched, but, though
many hundreds suspected it, only a few knew the truth.

On the 20th October it had been decided to make a
surprise attack towards Cambrai, and to prepare the way for
the infantry by Tanks instead of guns.  The Third Battle
of Ypres had brought the reputation of these machines very
low.  They had been used in the bottomless mud of the
Salient, where they had no chance of being successful, and the
generals in command had reported adversely on their merits.
It was argued that they could not negotiate bad ground, that
the ground on a battlefield must always be bad, and that,
consequently, they were of no use on the battlefield.  The
first statement was doubtful, and the second false; but
certainly if all battles had been like the Third Battle of Ypres
the conclusion would have been justified.

At Cambrai the Tanks were on their trial.  It was their
special "show," and if they failed now they would fail for
good.  Their commander, General Elles, took no chances.
With three brigades of Tanks he was to break through the
enemy's wire, cross the broad trenches of the Hindenburg
Line, and open the way towards Cambrai for the two Army
Corps following.  The enemy defences were the strongest
in the West.  There were three trench lines, each of a width
extending to 15 feet, and with an outpost line thrown
forward as a screen.  In front of the main line lay barbed wire
at least 50 yards wide, which sometimes jutted out in bold
salients flanked by machine-guns.  It was calculated that to
cut that wire with artillery would have taken five weeks and
cost twenty millions of money.  The trenches were too wide
for an ordinary Tank, so immense bundles of brushwood
were made up, which a Tank carried on its nose and
dropped into the trench to make a crossing.  Each bundle,
or "fascine," weighed a ton and a half, and it took twenty
Chinese coolies to roll one of them through the mud.

The attack was to be a surprise, and therefore there was
to be no preliminary bombardment.  Secrecy was so vital,
and the chances of discovery so numerous, that the
commanders spent anxious days prior to the 20th November.
Flotillas of Tanks were assembled in every possible place
which afforded cover, notably in Havrincourt Wood.  The
Tank is not a noiseless machine, and it says much for the
ingenuity of the Third Army that the enemy had no inkling
of our business.  A single enemy aeroplane over Havrincourt
might have wrecked the plan.  On the night of the 18th an
enemy raid took some of our men prisoners, but they must
have been very staunch, or the German Intelligence Service
very obtuse, for little appears to have been learned from
them.  The weather favoured Sir Julian Byng.  The days
before the assault had the low grey skies and the clinging
mists of late November.

In the dark of the evening of the 19th the Tanks nosed
their way from their lairs towards the point of departure,
going across country, since the roads were crowded, and
running dead slow to avoid noise.  That evening General
Hugh Elles issued a special order announcing that he proposed
to lead the attack of the centre division in person, like an
admiral in his flagship.  At 4.30 on the morning of the 20th
a burst of German fire suggested that the enemy had
discovered the secret, but to the relief of the British commanders
it died away, and the hour before the attack opened was
dead quiet.

.. _`Cambrai: the Advance of the Infantry Divisions`:

.. figure:: images/img-053.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Cambrai—the Advance of the Infantry Divisions on November 20.

   Cambrai—the Advance of the Infantry Divisions on November 20.

Day dawned with heavy clouds that promised rain before
evening.  At 6 o'clock a solitary gun broke the silence.
It was the signal, and from just north of the Bapaume road
to the hamlet of Gonnelieu in the south, a stupendous
barrage crashed from the British line.  The whole horizon was
aflame, and volcanoes of earth spouted from the German
lines.  Wakened suddenly from sleep, and dazed with the
gun-fire, the enemy sent up star shell after star shell in
appeal to his artillery; but, as he strove to man his trenches,
out of the fog of dawn came something more terrible than
shells—the blunt noses of 350 Tanks tearing and snapping
the wire and grinding down the parapets.  The instant
result was panic.  In a few minutes the German outposts
fell; presently the main Hindenburg Line followed, and
the fighting reached the tunnels of the reserve line.  By
half-past 10 that also had vanished, and the British infantry,
with cavalry close behind, was advancing in open country.

General Elles, in his flagship "Hilda," was first in the
advance, and it was reported that he did much of his observing
with his head thrust through the hatch in the roof, using
his feet on the gunner's ribs to indicate the direction of
targets.  The "Hilda" flew the flag of the Tank Corps;
that flag was several times hit, but not brought down.  Comedy
was not absent from that wild day.  One member of a Tank
crew lost his wig as his head emerged from the man-hole,
and the official mind was racked for months with the problem
whether this came under the head of loss of field equipment, of
a limb, or clothing.  Nor was heroism wanting on the enemy's
side.  The British official dispatch records one instance.
"Many of the hits upon our defences at Flesquières were
obtained by a German artillery officer who, remaining alone
at his battery, served a field-gun single-handed until killed
at his gun.  The great bravery of this officer aroused the
admiration of all ranks."

The trial of the Tanks was over.  The Battle of Cambrai
did not realize to the full the expectations of the British
Command.  Great successes were won, but our reserves were
too scanty to maintain them, and before the battle died
away we lost much of the ground we had gained.  But of
the success of the Tanks there was no question.  They stood
forth as the most valuable tactical discovery of the
campaigns, the weapon which enabled a commander-in-chief to
obtain the advantage of surprise and to attack swiftly and
secretly on new fronts.  It was this weapon which, in the
hand of Foch, was destined to break in turn each section of
the German defences, and within a year from Cambrai to
give the Allies victory.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SOUTH AFRICANS AT MARRIÈRES WOOD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SOUTH AFRICANS AT MARRIÈRES WOOD.

.. vspace:: 2

In the spring of 1918, owing to the Russian Revolution,
the Germans were able to concentrate all their strength in
the West.  Their aim was to break the Allied front by
separating the French and the British before the United
States of America could send her armies to the field.  The
attempt came very near success.  The first blow fell on
Thursday, 21st March; by the Saturday evening Sir Hubert
Gough's Fifth Army was in retreat, and it seemed as if
nothing could save Amiens.

The South African Brigade was part of the 9th Division,
on the extreme left of the Fifth Army.  It was in action
from the first hour of the battle, and for two days, at the
cost of some 900 casualties, it prevented a breach opening
up at the worst danger-point—the junction of the armies
of Byng and Gough.  On the Saturday it was given a short
time in reserve, but that afternoon it was again called into
the fight.  That evening General Tudor, commanding the
9th Division, visited its Brigadier, General Dawson.  The
9th Division was holding an impossibly long line, and both
its flanks were in the air.  The South Africans were
instructed to withdraw after dark to a position just west of
the Arras-Péronne road and the village of Bouchavesnes.
The orders were that this line was to be held "*at all
costs.*"  Dawson accordingly began to withdraw his men about
9.45, and by 3 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, the 24th,
the brigade was in position in the new line.

When the Sunday dawned the two regiments of South
Africans were holding a patch of front which, along with
Delville Wood, is the most famous spot in all their annals.
The ground sloped eastward, and then rose again to another
ridge about a thousand yards distant—a ridge which gave
the enemy excellent posts for observation and machine-gun
positions.  There were one good trench and several bad
ones, and the whole area was dotted with shell-holes.
Dawson took up his headquarters in a support trench some three
hundred yards in rear of the front line.  The strength of
the brigade was about five hundred in all.  Dawson's only
means of communication with divisional headquarters was
by runners, and he had long lost touch with the divisional
artillery.

It was a weary and broken little company which waited
on that hilltop in the fog of dawn.  During three days the
five hundred had fought a score of battles.  Giddy with lack
of sleep, grey with fatigue, poisoned by gas and tortured
by the ceaseless bombardment, officers and men had faced
the new perils which each hour brought forth with a fortitude
beyond all human praise.  But wars are fought with the
body as well as with the spirit, and the body was breaking.
Since the 20th of March, while the men had received rations,
they had had no hot food or tea.  Neither they nor their
officers had any guess at what was happening elsewhere.
They seemed to be isolated in a campaign of their own,
shut out from all knowledge of their fellows and beyond the
hope of mortal aid.

Soon after daylight had struggled through the fog the
enemy was seen massing his troops on the ridge to the east,
and about 9 o'clock he deployed for the attack, opening
with machine-gun fire, and afterwards with artillery.
Dawson, divining what was coming, sent a messenger back to
the rear with the brigade records.  He had already been
round every part of the position, and had disposed his scanty
forces to the best advantage.  At 10 o'clock some British
guns opened an accurate fire, not upon the enemy, but upon
the South African lines, especially on the trench where
brigade headquarters were situated.  Dawson was compelled
to move to a neighbouring shell-hole.  He sent a man on
his last horse, followed by two runners, to tell the batteries
what was happening, but the messengers do not seem to have
reached their goal, and the fire continued for more than an
hour, though happily with few casualties.  After that it
ceased, because the guns had retired.  One of our heavies
continued to fire on Bouchavesnes, and presently that, too,
became silent.

It was the last the brigade heard of the British artillery.

Meantime the enemy gun-fire had become intense, and
the whole position was smothered in dust and fumes.  Men
could not keep their rifles clean because of the debris filling
the air.  The Germans were now some 750 yards from our
front, but did not attempt for the moment to approach closer,
fearing the accuracy of the South African marksmanship.
The firing was mostly done at this time by Lewis guns, for
the ammunition had to be husbanded, and the men were
ordered not to use their rifles till the enemy was within 400
yards.  The Germans attempted to bring a field-gun into
action at a range of 1,000 yards, but a Lewis gunner of the
1st Regiment knocked out the team before the gun could be
fired.  A little later another attempt was made, and a
field-gun was brought forward at a gallop.  Once again the fire
of the same Lewis gunner proved its undoing.  The team
got out of hand, and men and horses went down in a struggling
mass.

This sight cheered the thin ranks of the defence, and
about noon came news which exalted every heart.  General
Tudor sent word that the 35th Division had arrived at
Bray-sur-Somme, and had been ordered to take up position 1,000
yards in rear of the brigade.  For a moment it seemed as
if they still might make good their stand.  But the 35th
Division was a vain dream; it was never during that day
within miles of the South Africans.  Dawson sent back a
report on the situation to General Tudor.

It was the last communication of the brigade with the
outer world.

At midday the frontal attack had been held, an attack
on the south had been beaten off, and also a very
dangerous movement in the north.  The grass was as dry as
tinder.  The enemy had set fire to it, and, moving behind
the smoke as a screen, managed to work his way to within
200 yards of our position in the north.  There, however,
he was again checked.  But by this time the German thrust
elsewhere on the front was having successes.  Already the
enemy was in Combles on the north, and at Péronne and
Cléry on the south.  The 21st Division on the right had gone,
and the other brigades of the 9th Division on the South
African left were being forced back.  At about 2.30 an officer,
with some 30 men, began to withdraw on that flank, under
the impression that a general retirement had been ordered.
As they passed headquarters, Major Cochran and Captain
Beverley, with Regimental Sergeant-Major Keith of the
4th Regiment, went out under a concentrated machine-gun
fire to stop them.  The party at once returned to the firing
line, and were put into shell-holes on the north flank.
Unhappily Cochran was hit in the neck by a machine-gun
bullet and died within three minutes.

Early in the afternoon Dawson attempted to adjust his
remnant.  The enemy now was about 200 yards from his
front, and far in on his flank and rear.  Major Ormiston took
out some 25 men as a flank-guard for the left, in doing which
he was dangerously wounded.  All wounded men who could
hold a rifle were stopped on their way to the dressing-station
and sent back to the front line, and in no single instance did
they show any reluctance to return.  Ammunition was conserved
with noble parsimony, and the last round was collected
from those who had fallen.  But it was now clear that the
enemy was well to the west of the brigade, for snipers' fire
began to come from the rear.  Unless the miracle of miracles
happened, the limit of endurance must be reckoned not in
hours but in minutes.  For the moment the most dangerous
quarter seemed to be the north, and Lieutenant Cooper of
the 2nd Regiment, with 20 men, was sent out to make a
flank-guard in shell-holes 100 yards from brigade
headquarters.  The little detachment did excellent work, but
their casualties were heavy, and frequent reinforcements
had to be sent out to them.  Lieutenant Cooper himself was
killed by a fragment of shell.

As it drew towards 3 o'clock there came a last flicker of
hope.  The enemy in the north seemed to be retiring.  The
cry got up, "We can see the Germans surrendering," and
at the same time the enemy artillery lengthened their range
and put down a heavy barrage 700 yards to the west of the
brigade.  It looked as if the 35th Division had arrived, and
for a little there was that violent revulsion of feeling which
comes to those who see an unlooked-for light in darkness.
The hope was short-lived.  All that had happened was that
the enemy machine-guns and snipers to the west of the
brigade were causing casualties to his own troops to the
east.  He therefore assumed that they were British
reinforcements.

About this time Lieutenant-Colonel Heal, commanding
the 1st Regiment, was killed.  He had already been twice
wounded in the action, but insisted on remaining with his
men.  He had in the highest degree every quality which
makes a fine soldier.  I quote from a letter of one of his
officers: "By this time it was evident to all that we were
bound to go under, but even then Colonel Heal refused to be
depressed.  God knows how he kept so cheery all through
that hell; but right up to when I last saw him, about five
minutes before he was killed, he had a smile on his face and
a pleasant word for us all."

All afternoon the shell-fire had been terrific.  A number of
light trench-mortars were also firing against the north-east
corner of our front and causing heavy losses.  The casualties
had been so high that the whole line was now held only by a
few isolated groups, and control was impossible.  About
4 o'clock Christian made his way to Dawson and told him that
he feared his men could not hold out much longer.  Every
machine-gun and Lewis gun was out of action, the ammunition
was nearly gone, the rifles were choked, and the breaking-point
of human endurance had been reached.  The spirit was
still unconquered, but the body was fainting.

Dawson had still the shadow of a hope that he might
maintain his ground until dark, and then fight his way out.
Like all good soldiers in such circumstances, he was harassed
by doubts.  The brigade was doomed; even if the struggle
could be protracted till dusk, only a fragment could escape.
Had he wished to withdraw he must have begun in the early
morning, as soon as the enemy appeared, for once the battle
was joined the position was a death trap.  He had orders
from the division to hold his ground "at all costs"—a
phrase often given a vague meaning in war, but in this case
taken literally.  He wondered whether the stand might be
of value to the British front, or whether it was not a useless
sacrifice.  He could only fall back for comfort on his
instructions.  He wrote thus in his diary: "I cannot see that
under the circumstances I had any option but to remain
till the end.  Far better go down fighting against heavy
odds than that it should be said we failed to carry out our
orders.  To retire would be against all the traditions of the
Service."

Some time after 4.15, enemy masses appeared to the
north-east of brigade headquarters.  It was the final attack,
for which three fresh battalions had been brought up, and the
assault was delivered in close formation.  There were now
only 100 South Africans, some of them already wounded.
There was not a cartridge left in the front line, and very few
anywhere except in the pistols of the officers.  Had they had
ammunition they might have held even this last attack;
as it was, it could be met only by a few scattered shots.
The South Africans had resisted to the last moment when
resistance was possible; and now they had no weapon.
The Germans surged down upon a few knots of unarmed men.
Dawson, with Christian and Beverley, walked out in front of a
group which had gathered round them, and was greeted by
the Germans with shouts of "Why have you killed so many
of us?" and "Why did you not surrender sooner?"  One
man said, "Now we shall soon have peace," at which Dawson
shook his head.  Before he went eastward into captivity he
was allowed to find Cochran's body and rescue his papers.

In all that amazing retreat, when our gossamer front
refused to be broken by the most overwhelming odds, no
British division did more nobly than the 9th.  It held a crucial
position in the line, and only by its stubborn endurance was
a breach between Gough and Byng prevented.  Among the
brigades of the 9th, the chief brunt was borne by the South
African.

Let us take the testimony of the enemy.  During the
German advance, Captain Peirson, the brigade major of
another division, was taken prisoner.  When he was examined
at German headquarters an officer asked him if he knew the
9th Division; for, said he, "we consider that the fight put
up by that division was one of the best on the whole of your
front, especially the last stand of the South African Brigade,
which we can only call magnificent."  In the course of his
journey to Le Cateau Captain Peirson was spoken to by many
German officers, all of whom mentioned the wonderful resistance
of the South Africans.  There is a still more striking
tribute.  On the road to Le Cateau a party of British officers
was stopped by the Emperor, who asked if any one present
belonged to the 9th Division.  "I want to see a man of that
division," he said, "for if all divisions had fought as well as
the 9th I would not have had any troops left to carry on the
attack."

It was no piece of fruitless gallantry.  Dawson, as he was
tramping eastwards, saw a sight which told him that his
decision had been right, and that his work had not been in
vain.  The whole road for miles east of Bouchavesnes was
blocked by a continuous double line of transport and guns,
which proved that the South Africans had for over seven
hours held up not only a mass of German infantry, but all the
artillery and transport advancing on the Bouchavesnes-Combles
highway.  Indeed, it is not too much to say that on
that feverish Sabbath the stand of the brigade saved the
British front.  It was the hour of Von der Marwitz's most
deadly thrust.  While Gough was struggling at the Somme
crossings, the Third Army had been forced west of Morval
and Bapaume, far over our old battle-ground of the First
Battle of the Somme.  The breach between the two armies
was hourly widening.  But for the self-sacrifice of the brigade
at Marrières Wood and the delay in the German advance at
its most critical point, it is doubtful whether Byng could ever
have established that line on which, before the end of March,
he held the enemy.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BATTLE OF THE LYS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BATTLE OF THE LYS.

.. vspace:: 2

By 6th April 1918 the great German thrust towards Amiens
had failed, and for the moment the gate of the Somme was
closed.  The city was under fire, the enemy was before its gates,
but his strength was exhausted and he could not advance.
Therefore his chief plan—of separating the French and the
British—had come to nought.  Brought to a standstill, he
cast about for a diversion, for he could not permit the battle
to decline into a stalemate, since he was fighting against time.
His main purpose remained the same, but he sought to
achieve it by a new method.  He would attack the British
elsewhere, on some part of the front where they were
notoriously weak, and compel Foch to use up his reserves in its
defence.  Then, when the Allied resources had shrunk, he
would strike again at the weakened door of Amiens.  On the
German side the operation was meant to be merely subsidiary,
designed to prepare the way for the accomplishment of the
main task farther south.  They proposed to choose a
battle-ground where even a small force might obtain important
results.  But so stoutly did the meagre British divisions resist
that the enemy was compelled to extend the battle well into
May, to squander thirty-five of his fresh divisions, and to
forfeit for good his chance of final victory.

The new battle-ground was the area on both sides of the
river Lys, between the La Bassée Canal and the Wytschaete
Ridge.  The German Staff knew that our front line had
already been thinned to supply ten divisions for the struggle
in the south, and at the moment it was weakly held, mainly
by troops exhausted in the Somme battle.  The enemy Staff
chose their ground well.  They had the great city of Lille
behind them to screen the assembly.  Certain key-points,
such as Béthune and Hazebrouck, lay at no great distance
behind the British front.  The British communications were
poor, while the German were all but perfect.  If the enemy
could break through at once between La Bassée and Armentières
and capture Béthune, he could swing north-westward
and take Hazebrouck and the hills beyond Bailleul, and so
threaten the Channel Ports, on which the British armies
depended for supplies.

The attack began on Tuesday, 9th April.  A Portuguese
division south of the Lys was driven in at the first thrust,
and through the gap the enemy streamed in.  At a quarter-past
ten that morning he was more than a mile to the rear
of the division holding the left of the gap, which was accordingly
compelled to retreat.  On the right of the gap, covering
Béthune, lay the 55th West Lancashire Division.  The story
of the Lys is a story of the successful defence of key-points
against critical odds, and Givenchy, where the men of West
Lancashire stood, was most vital, for unless it fell Béthune
could not be taken, and unless Béthune were captured at
once the enemy attack would be cramped into too narrow a
gate.  The 55th Division did not yield though outnumbered
by four to one.  They moved back their left flank but they
still covered Béthune, and their right at Givenchy stood like a
rock.  By noon the enemy was in the ruins of Givenchy;
in the afternoon the Lancashire men had recovered them;
in the evening they were again lost, and in the night retaken.
This splendid defence was the deciding event in the first stage
of the battle.  It was due, said the official report, "in great
measure to the courage and determination displayed by our
advance posts.  Among the many gallant deeds recorded of
them, one instance is known of a machine-gun which was
kept in action although the German infantry had entered the
rear compartment of the pill-box from which it was firing,
the gun team holding up the enemy by revolver fire from the
inner compartment."

Next day, 10th April, a new German army attacked north
of the Lys, captured Messines, and was pouring over the
Wytschaete crest.  But at Wytschaete stood the 9th Division,
which we have previously seen in action on the Somme at
Marrières Wood.  There its South African Brigade had been
completely destroyed, but a new one had been got together,
and this second showed all the heroism of the first.  That
night they retook Messines, and during the evening cleared
the Wytschaete Ridge.  That stand saved the British northern
flank and gave its commander time to adjust his front.
For thirty hours the Germans were held up on that ridge,
and when they finally advanced the worst danger was past.

The situation was still most critical.  The French were
sending troops, but with all possible resources utilized we
were still gravely outnumbered, and the majority of the men
were desperately weary from the Somme battle.  On the
11th Sir Douglas Haig issued an Order of the Day, in which
he appealed to his men to endure to the last.  "There is no
other course open to us than to fight it out.  Every position
must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement.
With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our
cause, each one of us must fight on to the end."  Not less
solemn was Sir Arthur Currie's charge to the Canadian Corps
before they entered the battle.  "Under the orders of your
devoted officers in the coming battle you will advance or
fall where you stand, facing the enemy.  To those who fall I
say, 'You will not die, but will step into immortality.  Your
mothers will not lament your fate, but will be proud to have
borne such sons.  Your names will be revered for ever and
ever by your grateful country, and God will take you unto
Himself.'"  It is a charge which has the noble eloquence of
Cromwell or Lincoln.

Within a week it seemed as if the enemy had succeeded.
On the evening of 15th April the Germans entered Bailleul,
and the next day we withdrew from the ground won in the
Third Battle of Ypres to a position a mile east of that town.
By the 17th the enemy was in both Meteren and Wytschaete,
and this meant that the northern pillar of our defence had gone.
The next step for the Germans was to seize Mont Kemmel,
the highest ground between them and the Channel, and a
position which would presently give them Hazebrouck.

The 17th and 18th of April were perhaps the most critical
days of the whole battle.  The enemy had reached his greatest
strength, and the British troops were not yet reinforced at any
point within sight of security.  On the 17th the Germans had
failed in an attack on the Belgians north of Ypres, and next
day they failed no less conclusively in a movement on Béthune.
This gave us a breathing space, and by the morning of Sunday,
the 21st, French troops had taken over the defence of Mont
Kemmel, and we had been able to relieve some of the divisions
which had suffered most heavily.

That day saw the end of the main crisis of the battle.
Mont Kemmel was lost and regained more than once, but
the enemy was quickly becoming exhausted, and his gains,
even when he made them, had no longer any strategic value.
By the end of April he had employed in that one area of the
line thirty-five fresh divisions, and nine which had been already
in action.  These troops were the cream of his army, and could
not be replaced.  Moreover, an odd feature had appeared
in the last stages of the Lys battle.  In March the enemy had
succeeded in piercing and dislocating the British front by
a new tactical method applied with masterly boldness and
precision, the method which has been described as
"infiltration."[#]  But as the Lys battle dragged on the Germans
seemed to have forgotten these new tactics, and to have fallen
back upon their old methods of mass and shock.  The reason
was that the new tactics could only be used with specially
trained troops, and with fresh troops; they put too great a
strain on weary divisions and raw levies; therefore, as the
enemy's losses grew, his tactics would deteriorate in the same
proportion.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] See p. 36.

.. vspace:: 2

If we take 5th May as marking the close of the Battle of
the Lys, we may pause to reflect upon the marvels of the
forty-five preceding days, since the enemy torrent first broke
west of St. Quentin.  More history had been crowded into
their span than into many a year of campaigning.  They had
seen the great German thrust for Amiens checked in the very
moment of success.  They had seen the last bold push for
the Channel Ports held up for days by weak divisions which
bent but did not break, and finally die away with its purpose
still far from achievement.  In those forty-five days divisions
and brigades had been more than once destroyed as units,
and always their sacrifice had been the salvation of the
British front.  The survivors had behind them such a record
of fruitful service as the whole history of the war could scarcely
parallel.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE.

.. vspace:: 2

The First Battle of the Marne meant the frustration of
Germany's main battle purpose, and the disappearance for ever
of her hope of a complete and decisive victory.  The Second
Battle of the Marne in July 1918 was the beginning of
Germany's defeat.  In both battles the armies of Britain
contributed to victory, but in both battles, as was right and
proper, the main work was done by the French, and with
them lies the chief glory.

In March Haig had been forced back to the gate of Amiens,
and Foch, at last appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the
Allies, had for nearly a month looked into the eyes of defeat.
But slowly the tide ebbed.  Foch was able not only to repel
the German assaults but to nurse and strengthen his own
reserves.  In spite of the desperate crises on the Lys and the
Aisne midsummer found him rapidly growing in strength.
And as the Allies grew, so the enemy declined.

.. _`MARSHAL FOCH`:

.. figure:: images/img-069.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: MARSHAL FOCH.

   MARSHAL FOCH.

For the first time Foch had the advantage of numbers,
and by June there were more than half a million Americans in
France.  Moreover, he had devised an answer to the German
tactics, and in his new light tanks he had a weapon which
would give him the advantage of surprise.  But like a great
and wary commander, he waited till the enemy had struck
yet again, so that he might catch him on the rebound.
Germany still maintained her confidence.  Her press announced
that unless the American army could swim or fly it would
never arrive in Europe—that at the best the men of the
United States were like the soldiers of a child's game, made
of paper cuttings.  The battle staged for July was to bring
the Germans to Paris.  One army was to strike east of Rheims
and cut the railway from Paris to Nancy.  Another was to
press across the Marne.  When Foch had hurried all his forces
to the danger points a third army would break through at
Amiens and descend on the capital from the north.  Then the
British would be finally cut off from the French, the French
would be broken in two, and victory, complete and indubitable,
would follow.

The enemy was so confident that he made no secret of his
plans, and from deserters and prisoners Foch learned the main
details long before the assault was launched.  The French
general resolved to play a bold game.  He borrowed a British
corps from Haig, and he thinned the Amiens section so that
it was dangerously weak.  His aim was to entice the enemy
south of the Marne, and then in the moment of his weakness
to strike at his undefended flank.

At midnight on Sunday, 14th July, Paris was awakened by
the sound of great guns, and knew that the battle had begun.
At 4 a.m. on the 15th the Germans crossed their parapets.
The thrust beyond the Marne was at once successful, for it
was no part of Foch's plan to resist too doggedly at the
apex of the salient.  On a front of 22 miles the Germans
advanced nearly three.  But the attack east of Rheims was
an utter failure.  Gouraud's counter-bombardment dislocated
the attack before it began, and with trifling losses to himself
he held the advance in his battle zone, not losing a single gun.
In the west the Americans stood firm, so that the enemy
salient could not be widened.  These were the troops which,
according to the German belief, could not land in Europe
unless they became fishes or birds.  The inconceivable had been
brought to pass—"Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane."

In two days the German advance had reached its limit—a
long narrow salient south of the Marne, representing a
progress at the most of 6 miles from the old battle-front.  The
time had now come for Foch's counterstroke.  He had
resolved to thrust with all his available reserves against the
weak enemy flank from Soissons southward.  There, in the
shelter of the woods of Villers-Cotterets, lay the army of
Mangin, who first won fame at Verdun.

The morning of the 18th dawned after a night of
thunderstorms and furious winds.  There was no gunfire on the
French side, but at 4.30, out from the shelter of the woods
came a great fleet of French light tanks, and behind them on
a front of 35 miles the French and American infantry crossed
the parapets.  Before the puzzled enemy could realize his
danger they were through his first defences.

The advance of the 18th was like a great bound forward.
The chief work was done by Mangin's left wing, which at
half-past 10 in the morning held the crown of the Montagne de
Paris, on the edge of Soissons.  All down the line the Allies
succeeded.  Sixteen thousand prisoners fell to them and some
50 guns, and at one point Mangin had advanced as much
as 8 miles.  Foch had narrowed the German salient, crumpled
its western flank, and destroyed its communications.  He had
wrested the initiative from the Germans and brought their
last offensive to a dismal close.

He had done more, though at the time no eye could pierce
the future and read the full implications of his victory.
Moments of high crisis slip past unnoticed.  It is only the
historian in later years who can point to a half-hour in a
crowded day and say that then was decided the fate of a
cause or a people.  As the wounded trickled back through
the tossing woods of Villers-Cotterets, spectators noted a
strange exaltation in their faces.  When the news reached
Paris the city breathed a relief which was scarcely justified
with the enemy still so strongly posted at her gates.  But the
instinct was right.  The decisive blow had been struck.
When the Allies breasted the Montagne de Paris that July
morning they had, without knowing it, won the Second
Battle of the Marne, and with it the war.  Four months earlier
Ludendorff had stood as the apparent dictator of Europe; four
months later he and his master were fleeing to a foreign exile.

.. _`The Second Battle of the Marne.`:

.. figure:: images/img-072.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: The Second Battle of the Marne.

   The Second Battle of the Marne.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BEGINNING OF THE END`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

.. vspace:: 2

The attack on the German flank on the morning of 18th
July had put an end to the enemy's hope of an advance on
Paris, and had forced him to assume the defensive.  But in
this he still persevered.  His plan now was to defend the line
of the Aisne, in the hope that the French would break their
teeth on it, and that the battle would then decline into a
fruitless struggle for a few miles of trench, like the other
actions of the long siege warfare.  He hoped in vain.  Foch
had no mind to waste a single hour in operations which were
not vital.  As early as 23rd July the Allies' great scheme for
the autumn battles was framed, and on Thursday, 8th August,
Sir Douglas Haig opened the attack.

Foch's plan was to give the enemy no rest.  He was
like a swordsman who avoids his antagonist's sledge-hammer
blows, who with lithe blade pinks him again and again and
draws much blood, who baffles and confuses him, till the
crushing weight of his opponent has been worn down by
his own trained and elastic strength.  It was his business to
wear down the enemy continuously and methodically by a
series of attacks on limited fronts, aiming at strictly limited
objectives, and to keep him ceaselessly harassed over the
whole battle-ground.  The campaign had developed like
a masterly game of chess.  From 21st March to 18th July
Foch had stood patiently on the defensive.  From 18th
July to 8th August he had won back his freedom of action,
cleared his main communications, and hopelessly dislocated
the German plan.  From 8th August to 26th September it was his
task to crumble the enemy's front, destroy the last remnant
of his reserves, force him beyond all his prepared defences,
and make ready for the final battle which would give victory.

On 8th August Haig's striking force was the British Fourth
Army, under Sir Henry Rawlinson, and part of the French
First Army, under General Debeney.  The front of attack
was east of Amiens, astride the valleys of the Avre, the Luce,
and the Somme.  Haig's immediate aim was to free his
communications—that is, to push the enemy out of range of the
main railways behind his front—as the French had done on
the Marne, and to this end the enemy must be driven out of
range of Amiens.

The preparations for the attack were most cunningly
concealed, and infinite pains were taken to make the surprise
complete.  By an elaborate piece of "camouflage" the enemy
was induced to believe that an attack in Flanders was
preparing.  The Canadians, who, along with the Australians,
were the principal British attacking troops, had been secretly
brought down from the north a few days before, and only
came into line just before the battle.  For the action Sir
Douglas Haig had accumulated not less than 400 Tanks, many
of the light "whippet" type and most of the newest pattern.
He was to employ Foch's tactics in their purest form.  There
was to be no artillery bombardment except just at the moment
of advance; the ground had been perfectly reconnoitred from
the air; the objectives to be secured were ambitious but
strictly defined; and the troops to be used were among the
*corps d'élite* of the army.

In the first week of August much rain fell, and on the
night of the 7th a heavy mist hung over the ground.  Just
before daybreak on Thursday the 8th an intense bombardment
was opened, so intense that the enemy's defences
disappeared as if wiped out by a sponge.  Four minutes later
the bombardment stopped, and the Tanks and infantry moved
forward.  Rawlinson advanced at 4.20 a.m.; Debeney some
twenty minutes later.

Success was immediate and continuous.  The Canadians
and Australians, pressing along the two great Roman highways
to St. Quentin and Roye, marched steadily towards their
final objectives, and these they reached long before noon.
The enemy was completely surprised.  At one place the
Tanks captured an entire regimental mess at breakfast.  At
another the whole staff of a division was seized.  In some
villages the Germans were taken in their billets before they
knew what had happened, and parties of the enemy were
actually made prisoners while working in the harvest field.
The Canadian cavalry passed through the infantry and
captured a train on the railway line near Chaulnes.  Indeed,
that day the whole British cavalry performed miracles,
advancing 23 miles from their point of concentration.

.. _`First Stages of the last Allied Offensive`:

.. figure:: images/img-076.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Map showing the ground regained and the New Front reached in the First Stages of the last Allied Offensive.

   Map showing the ground regained and the New Front reached in the 
   First Stages of the last Allied Offensive.

This success at the beginning of the last battle of the
war was due partly to the brilliant tactical surprise, partly
to the high efficiency of the new Tanks, and also in some
degree to the evident deterioration in the quality of the
German infantry in that part of the front.  The enemy
machine-gunners did not display their old tenacity.  The
Allied casualties were extraordinarily small, one Canadian
division, which was in the heart of the battle, losing only
100 men.  It was very clear that the fortitude of the German
line was ebbing, and this more than any other fact
disturbed the minds of its commanders.  Ludendorff has
recorded in his Memoirs that after the battle of 8th August
he realized that Germany was beaten.

The Tanks played a brilliant and dramatic part in the
day's success.  One Tank captured a village single-handed, and
its wary commander solemnly demanded a receipt for the
village before he handed it over to the Australians.  But the
chief performance of the day was that of the "whippet"
Tank "Musical Box," commanded by Lieutenant C. B. Arnold,
and carrying as crew Gunner Ribbans and Driver Carney.
This Tank started off at 4.20 a.m. in company with the others,
and when she had advanced the better part of 2 miles
discovered herself to be the leading machine, all the others
having been ditched.  She came under direct shell-fire from
a German field battery, and turned off to the left, ran diagonally
across the front of the battery at a distance of 600 yards,
and fired at it with both her guns.  The battery replied with
eight rounds, fortunately all misses, and the Tank now
managed to get to the battery's rear under cover of a belt
of trees.  The gunners attempted to get away, but "Musical
Box" accounted for them all.

If a Tank can be said to go mad, this Tank now performed
that feat.  She started off due east straight for Germany,
shooting down Germans whenever she saw them.  The
Australian infantry were following her, and for some time
she was also in touch with two British cavalry patrols.
Seeing a party of the enemy in a field of corn, she charged down
upon them, killing three or four.  She found a patrol of our
cavalry dismounted and in trouble with some Germans on
a railway bridge, so she made for the bridge and dispersed
the Germans.  She moved still farther east, and approached
a small valley marked on Lieutenant Arnold's map as
containing German hutments.  As she entered the valley the
Germans were seen packing their kits and beginning to move,
and "Musical Box" opened fire.  There was a general flight,
but this did not prevent her guns from accounting for a
considerable number.  She now turned a little to the left across
open country, firing at retreating German infantry at ranges
of from 200 to 600 yards, and being heavily fired on by rifles
and machine-guns in reply.  Unfortunately she was carrying
petrol tins on her roof, and these were perforated by the hail
of bullets, so that the petrol ran all over the cab.  The great
heat from her engines and guns, which had been in action
for nine or ten hours, made it necessary at this point for the
crew to breathe through their box-respirators.

It was now about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and "Musical
Box" was still moving east, shooting at anything she could
see, from motor transport to marching infantry, and getting
heavily peppered in return.  At last Lieutenant Arnold was
compelled to withdraw the forward gun.  The fumes and
the heat were stifling, but the crew managed to endure it
till suddenly the gallant "Musical Box" was struck by two
heavy shells following close one upon the other, and the
cab burst into flames.  Carney and Ribbans reached the door
and collapsed.  Lieutenant Arnold was almost overcome, but
managed to get the door open and fall out upon the ground.
He was then able to drag out the other two men.  Burning
petrol was running on to the ground where they were lying,
and the clothing of all three was on fire.  They struggled
to get away from the petrol, and while doing so Carney
received his death wound.  The enemy were now approaching
from all quarters, and, having been thoroughly scared,
they not unnaturally treated the two survivors somewhat
roughly.

Lieutenant Arnold and Gunner Ribbans, badly burned,
incredibly dirty, half-suffocated, and fainting with fatigue,
were led off into captivity, after having completed such an
Odyssey of devastation as perhaps befell no other two men
in the war.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE AUSTRALIANS AT MONT ST. QUENTIN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE AUSTRALIANS AT MONT ST. QUENTIN.

.. vspace:: 2

Close to the spot where the South Africans made their great
stand in the retreat of March 1918, it fell to the lot of troops
from another of our Dominions to perform an almost miraculous
exploit in the advance eastward to victory.  By 30th August,
as we have seen, the tide had fully turned.  All the British
armies were pressing back the enemy over the old Somme
battlefield, and that enemy was struggling desperately to
hold on to key positions long enough to enable him to
retire in good order to the Hindenburg Line, where he hoped
to stand on the defence over the winter.  But these key
positions were now being rushed too fast to permit of an
orderly retreat, and so the Hindenburg defences proved of
no avail, and before the end of October the Germans were
a defeated army.

Of all the key positions the strongest was that of Mont
St. Quentin, which commanded the old town of Péronne
on the north.  Péronne, as readers of Sir Walter Scott will
remember, was the scene of some of the adventures of Quentin
Durward.  It had fallen into British hands in March 1917,
when the Germans first retired to the Hindenburg Line.  It
had been lost in the great enemy onslaught of the following
March.  It was a very strong place, defended on the south
and west by the links of the marshy Somme, and on the
north by the low ridge called Mont St. Quentin, which
provided superb gun positions.  The place was held by one of
the best of the German Divisions brought up from the reserve,
the 2nd Prussian Guards.  Their orders were to maintain it
at all costs, for unless Mont St. Quentin was held, Péronne
would fall, and if Péronne fell it would be a very battered
remnant that would struggle back to the main Hindenburg
Line.

Sir Henry Rawlinson, the commander of the British
Fourth Army, believed that the fight for Péronne would be
long and difficult, and he entrusted it to the Australian
Corps, who were unsurpassed for their fighting quality by
any army in the world.  This corps now performed the
impossible, and in a single day's fighting, and with few
losses, swept the enemy from Mont St. Quentin, took Péronne,
and shook the German II. Army to its foundations.  Sir
Henry Rawlinson has described their exploit as the finest
single action in the war.

No man who once saw the Australians in action could
ever forget them.  In the famous landing at Gallipoli, in a
dozen desperate fights in that peninsula, in the fight for
Pozières during the First Battle of the Somme, at the Third
Battle of Ypres, and in the action at Villers-Bretonneux just
before the final advance, they had shown themselves
incomparable in their fury of assault and in reckless personal
valour.  They had more than gallantry; they had a perfect
discipline and a perfect coolness.  As types of physical
perfection they have probably not been matched since the time
of the ancient Greeks—these long, lean men, with their slow,
quiet voices, and often the shadows of great fatigue around
the deep-set, far-sighted eyes.

Their first task was to cross the Somme—no easy task,
since Mont St. Quentin commanded every reach of it.  Sir
John Monash, the Australian commander, decided not to
attempt to force the river south of the town; but in the
darkness of night a brigade of the 2nd Australian Division
managed to cross and seize the German trenches at Cléry.
This placed two of the three Australian Divisions of attack on
the east of the river, directly under the ridge of St. Quentin.
General Rawlinson visited the Australian headquarters that
evening, and whetted their keenness by frankly expressing
his disbelief in their success on the morrow.  "You think
you are going to take Mont St. Quentin with three battalions!
What presumption!  However, I don't think I ought to
stop you.  Go ahead and try."

Very early on the morning of 31st August the Australian
2nd Division lay just under the ridge, with the 3rd Division
on its left, and on its right the 5th Division south of the
Somme.  The plan was that the 2nd Division should take
Mont St. Quentin, while the 3rd Division completed the
capture of the high ground towards Bouchavesnes on the north,
and the 5th Division passed troops across the river for the
assault on Péronne.  There were no Tanks to assist the
infantry, and very few heavy guns, for the men had marched
far ahead of the artillery.

At 5 a.m. on the 31st, while the morning was still quite
dark, the 5th Brigade of the 2nd Division opened the attack.
It advanced straight up the hill with the bayonet, and at
8 a.m. Sir John Monash was able to report to General
Rawlinson that his men had obtained a footing on Mont
St. Quentin.  All day the heroic brigade beat off desperate
counter-attacks, and by nightfall it still maintained its
position.

Meantime the 14th Brigade from the 5th Division crossed
the Somme, and passed through the 2nd Division area for
the assault on Péronne, for Monash had determined that the
right course was to take the defences of the town by a rush
while they were still being organized by the enemy.  The
14th Brigade had a march of 7 miles before it could be
in position to deploy for the attack.  It was ten hours on
the road, and reached its jumping-off ground in the darkness
of the night.  There it had on its left the 6th Brigade of the
2nd Division, whose business was to complete the capture
of Mont St. Quentin.

The final success came on 1st September.  The 6th Brigade
advanced well over the crest of Mont St. Quentin, and that
fortress was now wholly in British hands.  The 14th Brigade
took Péronne.  Ever since the attack of 8th August it had
been the misfortune of that brigade to be the reserve unit
of its Division, and therefore it had not shared in any serious
fighting; but this day it made up for lost opportunities.
"You see," said one company commander, "we had been
trying to buy a fight off the other fellows for a matter of
three weeks, and that day we got what we had been looking
for, so we made the most of it."

Meantime the 3rd Division, on the left, completed the
capture of the Bouchavesnes spur.  By 3rd September the
whole of the Péronne area was in British hands, and the
enemy was in headlong retreat.  It was clear that he could
find no resting-place short of the main Hindenburg Line,
and a month later Sir Douglas Haig proved that not even in
that position was there an abiding sanctuary.

The actual capture of Mont St. Quentin was achieved by
two brigades.  It was a straightforward fight with the
bayonet—the cream of the British Army against the cream
of the enemy.  For so resounding a success it was singularly
economical of human life; on the hill itself nearly 2,000
prisoners were taken at the expense of some 200 Australian
casualties.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LAST BATTLE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LAST BATTLE.

.. vspace:: 2

By the 25th of September the German armies were back on
the great line devised by Hindenburg in the autumn of 1916.
The one chance left to them was to hold out there during
the winter, in the hope that they might be able to bargain
with the Allies.  If the Allies attacked, there were two
sections which Ludendorff viewed with anxiety.  One was his
left wing on the Meuse, where, if the Allies broke through,
the Hindenburg Line would be turned on its flank.  The
other was the German centre from Douai to St. Quentin,
the main Hindenburg Line, which was not only the fortress
where he hoped to pass the winter, but the one protection
of the great railway from Lille by Valenciennes to Mezières,
on which his whole position depended.  He therefore laboured
to keep his left and centre as strong as possible; for, in spite
of his experience in August and September, he could not
conceive the possibility of an assault on every section.

For Foch this was to be the crowning battle of the war.
If he could break through the German centre, and at the
same time turn the German left, defeat would stare the enemy
in the face, and there would be victory long before Christmas.
If the Americans on the Meuse succeeded, they would make
retreat imperative; but if Haig in the centre succeeded,
he would make retreat impossible, and disaster must follow.
The British were assigned the most difficult part.  They had
to attack in the area where the enemy defences were most
highly organized and his forces strongest.  If the Hindenburg
Line held, the German courage might yet recover, and
a new era of resistance begin.  Haig's armies had already
borne the heaviest share of the summer fighting, and every
division had been sorely tried.  Yet the attempt must be
made, for it was the essential part of the whole strategy,
and the measure of difficulty was the measure of the honour
in which Foch held the fighting qualities of his British
allies.

In deciding to make the attack, and to break the Hindenburg
Line at one blow, Sir Douglas Haig stood alone.  So
difficult seemed the operation that the British Government
were in the gravest doubts, and left the burden of
responsibility upon the Commander-in-Chief.  Even the French
generals hesitated.  The movement was undertaken on Sir
Douglas Haig's initiative; he bore the whole burden of it;
and therefore to him belongs the main credit of what was
destined to be one of the decisive actions of the war.

Foch began on his right flank, and on 26th September
the American army attacked on the Meuse.  Next day, the
27th, Haig struck towards Cambrai.  The two main defences
of the Hindenburg Line were the Canal du Nord, and,
behind it, the Scheldt Canal, the latter forming the outwork
of the system.  The principal German trenches were on
the east bank; but on the west bank lay advanced posts,
skilfully placed.  In one section the canal passed through
a tunnel 6,000 yards long, connected by shafts with the
trenches above.  In another part it lay in a deep cutting,
the sides of which were honeycombed with dug-outs.  The
fortified zone was from 5 to 7 miles wide, and culminated
on the east in what was known as the Beaurevoir Line,
strongly wired double-trench lines of the same type as those
on the western side.

On the 27th the Third Army under Byng, and the First
Army under Horne, attacked on the left, crossed the Canal
du Nord, and by the evening had reached the edge of the
Scheldt Canal.  Next day that canal had been partially
crossed, and Cambrai was menaced from two sides.  These
events roused acute apprehension in the mind of the German
Staff.  The crossing of the Canal du Nord by Tanks on the
backs of Tanks, and the passing of the Scheldt Canal at its
northern end, had shaken their confidence in the outer
Hindenburg defences.  Next day, the 29th, came Haig's crowning
blow.  He struck at the strongest part, and it crumbled
before him.

The attack was made by Rawlinson's Fourth Army.
For two days his guns had not been silent; the enemy's
garrisons were forced into tunnels and deep dug-outs, and
the transport of food and ammunition was made all but
impossible.  The Germans were, therefore, in a state of
confusion and fatigue when Haig attacked at 10 minutes to 6
on the morning of Sunday, the 29th.

This action was one of the greatest of the campaign,
whether we regard the difficulties to be faced or the strategic
value of the gains.  Ludendorff was fighting for his last
hope, and he had warned his men accordingly.  One captured
order reminded his troops that "Our present position is our
winter position."  Another ran: "There can be no question
of going back a single step further.  We must show the
British, French, and Americans that any further attacks on
the Hindenburg Line will be utterly broken, and that that
Line is an impregnable rampart, with the result that the
Entente Powers will condescend to consider the terms of
peace which it is absolutely necessary for us to have before
we can end the war."  Germany was already busy with
peace proposals, and she had nothing to bargain with except
these defences in the West.

The key of the position was the angle of the Scheldt Canal
where it bent east, with the village of Bellenglise in its bend,
for if the canal were forced there the defences on either side
would be turned.  The work was entrusted to the 46th
Division of North Midland Territorials, which had a long and
brilliant record in the war.  Theirs was an amazing
performance.  The canal before them was some 50 to 60 feet
wide, the water in some parts being as much as 10 feet deep.
and in others a mere trickle.  It was a morning of thick fog
when behind the tornado of the barrage the Midlanders,
carrying life-belts and mats and rafts, advanced to the attack.
Since parts of the canal were impassable, the crossing had to
be made on a narrow front.  Swimming or wading, and in
some cases using foot-bridges which the enemy had left
undestroyed, they passed the canal west and north of
Bellenglise, swarmed up the farther bank, and took the German
trenches beyond.  Then, fanning out, they attacked in rear
the positions to the south, capturing many batteries still in
action.  That day this one Division took over 4,000 prisoners
and 70 guns.

It was the same everywhere else on the British front.
The main Hindenburg defences had been breached, and all
next day the Fourth Army pressed through the gap.  The
greatest battle of the war was now approaching its climax,
and the whole 250 miles of front, from the Meuse to the sea,
were ablaze.  Ludendorff could not have withdrawn even if
he had wished it.  By 7th October Haig had broken through
all the front Hindenburg Line, and was pressing upon the last
defences.  The time was therefore ripe for a great
movement on the broadest possible front, which would destroy
the whole zone.  For, in the words of the official dispatch,
"Nothing but the natural obstacles of a wooded and
well-watered country lay between our armies and Maubeuge."

The great movement was begun by Haig early on Tuesday,
8th October.  It was a wild, wet, autumn morning when
Byng at 4.30 and Rawlinson at 5.10 attacked on a 17-mile
front, while a French army extended the battle 4 miles
farther south.  The enemy resisted desperately, but nothing
could stay the rush of the Allied infantry and the deadly
penetration of their Tanks.  By the evening Haig had
advanced between 3 and 4 miles, and the Hindenburg zone
was no more.  The enemy was falling back to the Oise and
the Selle, and for the moment his organization had been
broken.  Every road converging on Le Cateau was blocked
with transport and troops, and our cavalry were galloping
eastward to confuse the retreat.

Sir Douglas Haig's battle, which ended on the 10th
October, may be considered the determining action in the
campaign, and it has been described by Foch as "a classic
example of military art."  It had no defect either of plan
or of execution.  The enemy was fairly and clearly defeated
in a field action.  Foch had played on the whole front a
crescendo of deadly music, and the enemy's strategic position
was now so desperate that no local stand could save him.
There was talk at the time of a German retreat to the Meuse.
but it was an idle dream.  Long before her broken divisions
could reach that river Germany would be upon her knees.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART III.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center large bold

   THE "SIDE SHOWS."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI.

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI.

.. vspace:: 2

Early in 1915 it seemed to the British Government that,
since there were no longer any flanks to be turned on the
Western front, the lines in France and Flanders were settling
down to a siege and a war of positions.  They therefore looked
elsewhere for some more promising area of battle, since, if
the front door of a fortress is barred, there may be an entrance
by a back door.  The place which promised best was the
narrow straits called the Dardanelles, which led from the
Ægean into the Sea of Marmora, and so to Constantinople.
There full use could be made of the British fleet.  The
capture of the Straits would involve the fall of the capital, and
this might drive Turkey out of the war.  Success there
would bring over to our side the hesitating Balkan neutral
states.  It would open the road for Russia to import
munitions of war, and to export her accumulated supplies of
wheat.  Lastly, Russia was being hard pressed, and had
appealed to the Western Allies for aid, and her request could
not be refused.

Accordingly, it was decided to make an attempt upon the
Dardanelles.  The first effort was made by ships alone.  But
the Turks had powerful forts on both sides of the straits
which could not be destroyed by naval guns.  It was clear
that the Dardanelles could not be opened until the Gallipoli
Peninsula on the north side was captured.  Unfortunately,
the naval attack had forewarned the enemy, and he had
enormously strengthened his position on the Gallipoli heights.

The forces put at Sir Ian Hamilton's disposal for the
enterprise were the 29th Division of regulars and Territorials,
two divisions from Australia and New Zealand, the Royal
Naval Division, and a French brigade.  Of these troops only
the 29th Division had had any experience in war.  Sir Ian
Hamilton decided that the only possible landing-places were
the beaches at the south-west end of the Peninsula, and
another beach at Gaba Tepe, some distance up the northern
side.  His aim was, by landing at the point, to fight his way
to Krithia village, and carry the Achi Baba ridge, while the
Australians from Gaba Tepe could turn the right wing of
the Turkish defence.  Once the Achi Baba heights were
captured the Straits would be ours.

The day originally fixed for the attempt was 23rd April.
But on the 20th a storm rose which for forty-eight hours
lashed the Ægean.  On the 23rd it abated, and that afternoon
the first of the black transports began to move out of
Mudros harbour.  Next day the rest of the force followed,
all in wild spirits for this venture into the unknown.  They
recalled to one spectator the Athenians departing for the
Sicilian expedition, when the galleys out of sheer
light-heartedness raced each other to Ægina.

The morning of Sunday, the 25th, was one of those
which delight the traveller in April in the Ægean.  A light
mist fills the air before dawn, but it disappears with the sun,
and all day there are clear skies, still seas, and the fresh,
invigorating warmth of spring.  At the butt end of Gallipoli
there are five little beaches, originally nameless, but now
for all time to be known by the letters affixed to them on
the war maps of the British Army.  Beginning from the left,
there is Beach Y, and, a little south of it, Beach X.
Rounding Cape Tekke, we reach Beach W, where a narrow valley
opens between the headlands of Tekke and Helles.  Here
there is a broad semicircular stretch of sand.  South of Helles
is Beach V, a place of the same configuration as Beach W,
but unpleasantly commanded by the castle and village of
Sedd-el-Bahr at its southern end.  Lastly, inside the Straits,
on the east side of Morto Bay, is Beach S, close to the point
of Eski Hissarlik.  The landing at Gaba Tepe, on the north
side of the peninsula, was entrusted to the Australian and
New Zealand troops; that at the Helles beaches to the
29th Division, with some units of the Naval Division.  It
was arranged that simultaneously the French should land
on the Asiatic shore at Kum Kale, to prevent the Turkish
batteries from being brought into action against our men
at Beaches V and S.

Let us assume that an aeroplane enabled us to move up
and down the shores of the peninsula and observe the progress
of the different landings.  About one in the morning the
ships arrive at a point 5 miles from the Gallipoli shores.
At 1.20 boats are lowered, and the troops line up on the decks.
Then they embark in the flotillas, and steam pinnaces begin
to tow them shorewards in the hazy half-light before dawn.
The Australians destined for Gaba Tepe are carried in
destroyers which take them close in to the shore.

The operations are timed so that the troops reach the
beaches at daybreak.  Slowly and very quietly the boats
and destroyers steal towards the land.  A little before 5
an enemy's searchlight flares out.  The boats are now in
shallow water under the Gaba Tepe cliffs, and the men are
leaping ashore.  Then comes a blaze of rifle-fire from the
Turkish trenches on the beach, and the men who have
landed charge them with the bayonet.  The whole cliff
seems to leap into light, for everywhere trenches and caverns
have been dug in the slopes.  The fire falls most heavily on
the men still in the boats, who have the difficult task of
waiting as the slow minutes bring them shoreward.

The Australians do not linger.  They carry the lines on
the beach with cold steel, and find themselves looking up at
a steep cliff a hundred feet high.  In open order they dive
into the scrub, and scramble up the loose yellow rocks.
By a fortunate accident their landing is farther north than was
intended, just under the cliffs of Sari Bair.  At Gaba Tepe
the long slope would have given the enemy a great advantage
in defence; but here there is only the 40-foot beach and then
the cliffs.  He who knows the Ægean in April will remember
those fringed sea walls and bare brown slopes.  From a
distance they look as arid as the Syrian desert, but when the
traveller draws near he finds a paradise of curious and
beautiful flowers—anemone, grape hyacinth, rock rose,
asphodel, and amaryllis.  Up this rock garden the
Australians race, among the purple cistus and the matted creepers
and the thickets of myrtle.  They have left their packs at
the foot, and scale the bluffs like chamois.  It is an
achievement to rank with Wolfe's escalade of the Heights of
Abraham.  Presently they are at the top, and come under the
main Turkish fire.  But the ground gives good cover, and
they set about entrenching the crest of the cliffs to cover the
boats' landing.  This is the position at Sari Bair at 7 a.m.

As we journey down the coast we come next to Beach
Y.  There at 7 a.m. all is going well.  The 1st King's Own
Scottish Borderers and the Plymouth battalion of the Naval
Division, landing at a place which the enemy thought wholly
impracticable, have without difficulty reached the top of
the cliffs.  At Beach X things are even better.  The *Swiftsure*
has plastered the high ground with shells, and the landing
ship, the *Implacable*, has anchored close to the shore in six
fathoms of water.  With scarcely a casualty the 2nd Royal
Fusiliers have gained the cliff line.

.. _`The Landing Beaches at Gallipoli`:

.. figure:: images/img-095.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: The Landing Beaches at Gallipoli.

   The Landing Beaches at Gallipoli.

There has been a harder fight at Beach W, between Tekke
and Helles, where the sands are broader.  The shore has been
trenched throughout, and wired and mined almost to the
water's edge, and in the scrub behind are hidden the Turkish
snipers.  Though our ships have bombarded the shore for
three-quarters of an hour, they cannot clear out the enemy,
and do not seem to have made much impression on the wire
entanglements.  The first troops have landed to the right
under the cliffs of Cape Helles, and have reached the top,
while a party on the left has scaled Cape Tekke.  But the
men of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers who landed on the shore
itself have had a fiery trial.  They suffered heavily while
still on the water, and on landing came up against unbroken
lines of wire, while snipers and concealed machine-guns
rained death on them.  Here we have had heavy losses,
and at 7 a.m. the landing has not yet succeeded.

The case is more desperate still at Beach V, under
Sedd-el-Bahr.  Here, as at Beach W, there are a stretch of sand,
a scrubby valley, and flanking cliffs.  It is the strongest of
the Turkish positions, and troops landing in boats are
exposed to every type of converging fire.  A curious expedient
has been tried.  A collier, the *River Clyde*, with 2,000 men of
the 2nd Hampshires, 1st Dublin Fusiliers, and 1st Munster
Fusiliers on board, and eight boat-loads towed by steam
pinnaces, approached close to the shore.  The boat-loads—the
rest of the Dublin Fusiliers—suffered horribly, for when
they dashed through the shallows to the beach they were
pinned to the ground by fire.  Three lines of wire
entanglements had to be forced, and a network of trenches.  A
bank of sand, 5 or 6 feet high, runs at the back, and under
its cover the survivors have taken shelter.  In the steel side
of the ship doors have been cut, which open and disgorge
men into the lighters alongside, like some new Horse of
Troy.  But a tornado of shot and shell rained on her, and of
the gallant men who leaped from the lighters to the reef and
from the reef to the sea, very few reached the land.  Those
who did have joined their fellows lying flat under the
sand-bank on that beach of death.  At Beach S, in Morto Bay,
all has gone well.  Seven hundred men of the 2nd South
Wales Borderers have been landed from trawlers, and have
established themselves on the cliff tops at the place called
De Totts Battery.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI (continued)`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI (*continued*).

.. vspace:: 2

Let us go back to Sari Bair and look at the position at
noonday.  We are prospering there, for more than 10,000
men are now ashore, and the work of disembarking guns
and stores goes on steadily, though the fire from inland is
still deadly.  We see a proof of it in a boat full of dead men
which rocks idly in the surf.  The great warships from the
sea send their heavy shells against the Turkish lines,
sea-planes are "spotting" for them, and wireless stations are
being erected on the beach.  Firing from the ships is not
easy, for the morning sun shines right in the eyes of the
gunners.  The Royal Engineers are making roads up the
cliff, and supplies are climbing steadily to our firing line.
On the turf of the cliff top our men are entrenched, and are
working their way forward.

Unfortunately the zeal of the Australians has outrun
their discretion, and some of them have pushed on too far.
They have crossed three ridges, and have got to a fourth
ridge within sight of the Straits.  In that broken country
such an advance is certain death, and the rash attack has
been checked with heavy losses.  The wounded are being
brought in, and it is no light task getting them down the
cliffs on stretchers, and across the beach and the
bullet-splashed sea to the warships.  Remember that we are holding
a position which is terribly conspicuous to the enemy, and
all our ammunition and water and food have to be dragged
up these breakneck cliffs.  Still, the first round has been
won, Indian troops are being landed in support, and we are
firmly placed at Sari Bair.

As we move down the coast we find that all goes well at
Beach X, and that the troops there are working their way
forward, but that at Beach Y the Scottish Borderers are
being heavily counter-attacked and are making little progress.
The *Implacable* has knocked out of action a Turkish battery
at Krithia which gave much annoyance to our men at Beach
X.  At Beach W we have improved our position.  We have
cleared the beach and driven the Turks out of the scrub at
the valley foot, and the work of disembarking men and
stores is proceeding.  Our right wing—the 4th Worcesters—is
working round by the cliffs above Cape Helles to enfilade
the enemy who are holding Beach V, where our men are still
in deadly jeopardy.

The scene at Beach V is strange and terrible.  From the
deep water the *Cornwallis* and the *Albion* are bombarding the
enemy at Sedd-el-Bahr, and the 15-inch shells from the *Queen
Elizabeth* are screaming overhead.  The Trojan Horse is
still lying bow on against the reefs, with her men unable to
move, and the Turkish howitzers playing on her.  If a man
shows his head he is picked off by sharpshooters.  The troops
we have landed lie flat on the beach under cover of the sand
ridge, unable to advance or retreat, and under a steady
tornado of fire.  At Beach S things are satisfactory.

Meantime the French landing at Kum Kale has achieved
its purpose.  Originally timed for 6 a.m., it did not take place
till 9.30.  They had a skirmish with the Turks, partly on
the height at Kum Kale, and partly on the Trojan plain.
Then they advanced along the swell of ground near the
coast as far as Yeni Shehr.  Next evening they re-embarked
and joined our right wing at Beach S.  They took 500
prisoners, and could have taken more had there been room
for them in the boats.  The Turk, who showed himself a
dauntless fighter, surrendered with great good-humour when
the game was up.  He had no crusading zeal in the business.

As darkness fell on that loud Sabbath, the minds of the
Allied Staff may well have been anxious.  We had gained
a footing, but no more, and it was but a precarious lodgment.
The complexity and strength of the enemy's defence far
surpassed our expectation.  He had tunnelled the cliffs, and
created a wonderful and intricate trench system, which took
full advantage of the natural strength of the ground.  The
fire from our leviathans on the deep was no more effective
against his entrenched positions than it had been against
the forts of the Straits.

Let us resume our tour of the beaches about 10 o'clock
on the morning of the 26th.  At Sari Bair the Australians
are facing a counter-attack.  It lasts for two hours, and is
met by a great bombardment from our ships.  The end
comes when, about noon, the Australians and New Zealanders
advance with the bayonet, and drive back the enemy.  But
all that day there is no rest for our troops, who are perfecting
their trenches under a deluge of shrapnel.  Their flanks are
indifferently secured, and they have but the one landing-place
behind them, from which their front line is scarcely
1,000 yards distant.  They are still clinging precariously to
the coast scarp.

At Beach Y things have gone badly.  Our men there had
advanced during the Sunday afternoon, and had been
outflanked and driven back to the cliff edge.  The Scottish
Borderers lost their commanding officer and more than half
their men.  It was decided to re-embark and move the
troops to Beach X, and as we pass the retreat is going on
successfully under cover of the ship's fire.  At Beach X there
has been a hard struggle.  Last night we were strongly
attacked there, and driven to the very edge of the cliffs,
where we hung on in rough shelter trenches.  This morning
we are advancing again, and making some way.

At Beach W, too, there has been a counter-attack.  Yesterday
afternoon our right wing there, which tried to relieve
the position on Beach V by an enfilading attack on the
enemy, got among wire, and was driven back.  During the
night the Turks came on in force, and we were compelled to
fling our beach parties into the firing line, bluejackets and
sappers armed with whatever weapons they could find.  This
morning the situation is easier, we have landed more troops,
and are preparing to move forward.

At Beach V the landing is still in its first stage.  Men are
still sheltering on the deadly beach behind the sandbank.
We have gained some positions among the ruins which were
once Sedd-el-Bahr, but not enough to allow us to proceed.
Even as we look a final effort is beginning, in which the
Dublin Fusiliers and the Munster Fusiliers distinguish
themselves, though it is hard to select any for special praise
among the splendid battalions of the 29th Division.  It
continues all morning, most gallantly directed till he fell by
Lieutenant-Colonel Doughty-Wylie of the Headquarters Staff,
and about 2 p.m. it is successful.  The main Turkish trenches
are carried, the debris of the castle and village are cleared,
and the enemy is in retreat.  The landing can now go forward,
and the men, who for thirty-two hours have been huddled
behind the sandbank, enduring torments of thirst and a
nerve-racking fire, can move their cramped limbs and join
their comrades.

By the morning of Tuesday, the 27th, all the beaches—except
Beach Y, which had been relinquished—were in
working order, and the advance could proceed.  Next morning
it began, and by the evening of the 28th we had securely
won the butt of the peninsula, and our front ran from 3
miles north-west of Cape Tekke to a mile north of Eski
Hissarlik.

So ended the opening stage of the Gallipoli campaign—the
Battle of the Landing.  It was a fight without a precedent.
There had been landings—such as Abercromby's at Aboukir
and Wolfe's at the cove west of Louisburg—fiercely contested
landings, in our history, but none on a scale like this.  Sixty
thousand men, backed by the most powerful navy in the
world, attacked a shore which nature seemed to have made
impregnable, and which was held by not inferior numbers
of the enemy, in positions prepared for months, and
supported by the latest modern artillery.  The mere problem of
transport was sufficient to deter the boldest.  Every rule
of war was set at nought.  On paper the thing was impossible,
as the Turkish army orders announced.  According to the
text-books no man should have left the beaches alive.  We
were fighting against a gallant enemy who was at his best in
defence and in this unorthodox type of battle.  That our
audacity succeeded was due to the unsurpassable fighting
quality of our men—the Regulars and Territorials of the
29th Division, the Naval Division, and not least to the dash
and doggedness of the Australasian corps.  The Gallipoli
campaign was to end in failure, but, whatever be our
judgment on its policy or its consequences, the Battle of the
Landing must be acclaimed as a marvellous, an unparalleled
feat of arms.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE DEPARTURE FROM GALLIPOLI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE DEPARTURE FROM GALLIPOLI.

.. vspace:: 2

By September 1915 it was clear that the Gallipoli expedition
could not succeed.  All summer the hopeless struggle had
continued for the heights of the peninsula.  In July
reinforcements arrived, and in August these new divisions,
together with the Anzacs,[#] made an attack, that of the left
wing at Suvla Bay being designed to turn the enemy flank.
This supreme effort failed.  There was no chance of further
reserves, for the entry of Bulgaria into the war meant that
the Allies must send troops to Salonika to help Serbia if
possible, and in any case to protect the northern frontier of
Greece.  Only one course was possible—to get off the peninsula
as best we could.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] So called from the initial letters of the first
Australasian Corps—"Australian and New Zealand Army Corps."

.. vspace:: 2

After much discussion it was decided to evacuate the
positions at Suvla and Anzac, and to retain those at Cape
Helles.  Nearly everybody concerned in the matter assumed
that this would entail a heavy loss.  Many estimated it at 15
per cent., and the most hopeful were prepared for the loss of
at least one division.  An embarkation in the face of the
enemy had always meant a stiff rearguard fight and many
casualties.

On the 8th December Sir Charles Monro, who was then in
command of the British troops in the Ægean, issued orders
for evacuation.  The difficulties were enormous.  It was a
question of embarking not a division or two, but three
army corps; it was impossible to move them all at once
with the available transports; there must be a gap between
the operations, and this meant that the enemy would
probably be forewarned of the later movements.  Moreover,
a lengthy embarkation put us terribly at the mercy of the
winter weather.  Even a mild wind from the south or
south-west raised a swell that made communication with the
beaches precarious.

The plan was to move the war material, including the
heavy guns, by instalments during a period of ten days,
working only at night.  A large portion of the troops would
also be got off during these days, certain picked battalions
being left to the last.  Everything was to be kept normal
during the daylight, and every morning before daybreak
the results of the night's work must be hidden.  Success
depended upon two things mainly—fine weather and secrecy.

From the 8th December onward the troops, night after
night, watched the shrinkage of their numbers.  There was a
generous rivalry as to who should stay till the last—a proof
of spirit, when we remember that every man believed that
the rearguard was doomed to death or capture.  Soon only
those in the prime of health and strength were left; all the
weak and sickly had gone aboard the transports, which
nightly stole in and out of the moonlit bays.  Soon the
heavy batteries had gone.  Then the field guns began to
disappear, leaving only enough to keep up the daily pretence
of bombardment.  It was an eerie business for the last
battalions as they heard their protecting guns rumbling
shoreward in the darkness.  Then the horses and motor-cars
were also shipped, and by Friday, the 17th December, very
few guns were left.  To the Turkish observers the piles of
boxes on the beaches looked as if fresh supplies had been
landed and we were preparing to hold the place indefinitely.

The weather was warm and clement, with light moist
winds and a low-hanging screen of cloud.  Coming in the
midst of an Ægean winter it seemed to our men a direct
interposition of Providence.  It was like the land beyond
the North Wind, which Elizabethan mariners believed in,
where he who pierced the outer crust of the Polar snows
found a country of roses and eternal summer.  No fisherman
ever studied the weather signs more anxiously than did the
British commanders during these days.  Hearts sank when
the wind looked like moving to the west.  But the weather
held, and when the days fixed for the final embarkation
arrived, the wind was still favourable, skies were clear,
and the moon was approaching its full.  Nature had joined
the daring conspiracy.

On Saturday, the 18th December, only a few picked battalions
held the Suvla front.  The final embarkation had been
fixed for the two succeeding nights.  The evening fell in a
perfect calm.  The sea was still as a mill-pond, and scarcely
a breath of wind blew in the sky.  Moreover, a light blue
mist clothed all the plain of Suvla, and a haze shrouded the
moon.  At 6 p.m. the crews of the warships went to action
stations, and in the darkness the transports stole into the
bay.  Not a shot was fired.  In dead quiet, showing no lights,
the transports moved in and out.  Every unit found its
proper place.  By 1 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, the 19th,
the bay lay empty in the moonlight.

That Sunday was one of the most curious in the war.
Our lines looked exactly as they had done during the past
four months.  We kept up our usual fire and received the
Turkish answer, but had any body of the enemy chosen
to attack they would have found the trenches held by a
mere handful.  There were 20,000 Turks on the Suvla and
Anzac fronts, and 60,000 in immediate reserve.  Had they
known it, they had before them the grand opportunity of
the campaign.  Night again fell with the same halcyon
weather.  The transports—destroyers, trawlers, picket boats,
every kind of craft—slipped once again into the bay, and
before midnight the last guns had been got on board.  By
3.30 a.m. the last of the troops were on the beach, and long
before the dawn broke all were aboard.  One man had been
hit in the thigh by a bullet, but that was the only casualty.

.. _`Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula`:

.. figure:: images/img-105.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

   Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

The operations at Anzac were conducted on the same
lines.  The beaches at Suvla were 5 miles from the enemy
and open to observation; at Anzac, in places they were
less than 2 miles distant, but were concealed from view
under the steep seaward bluffs.  Some of our gun positions
there were on dizzy heights, down which a gun could only be
brought part by part.  The work was brilliantly performed.
On the Saturday night three-fifths of the entire force were
got on board the transports.  On Sunday night the rest
were embarked, with two men wounded as the total casualties.
By 5.30 a.m. on Monday morning the last transports moved
away from the coast, leaving the warships to follow.

Then on the 12 miles of beach, from Suvla Burnu to Gaba
Tepe, there was seen one of the strangest spectacles of the
campaign.  The useless stores left behind had been piled
in great heaps on the shores and drenched with petrol.
Before the last men left parties of Royal Engineers set time
fuses.  About 4 a.m. on the Monday morning the fires were
alight, blazing most fiercely near Suvla Point.  As the beach
fires flared up, the enemy, thinking some disaster had befallen
us, shelled the place to prevent us extinguishing the flames.
The warships shelled back, and all along that broken coast
great pillars of fire flared to heaven like giant beacons in
some strife of the Immortals.  Up to 8 o'clock picket boats
were still collecting stragglers; by 9 a.m. all was over, and
the last warship steamed away from the coast which had
been the grave of so many high hopes and so many gallant men.

We were just in time.  That night the weather broke,
and a furious gale blew from the south which would have
made embarkation impossible.  Rain fell in sheets and
quenched the fires, and soon every trench at Suvla and
Anzac was a torrent.  Great seas washed away the landing
stages.  The puzzled enemy sat still and waited.  He saw
that we had gone, but he distrusted the evidence of his eyes.
History does not tell what fate befell the first Turks who
penetrated into our empty trenches, or what heel first tried
conclusions with the hidden mines.

The success—the amazing success—of the Suvla and Anzac
evacuation made the position at Cape Helles more difficult.
No one believed that a similar performance would be possible
there after the enemy had been so fully warned; but on the
27th December it was decided to evacuate Helles, and the
work went on during the last days of the month and the first
week of the new year.  On Friday, January 7, 1916, there
was a Turkish attack, which the few men remaining managed
to repel.  Next day, Saturday, the 8th, was calm and fine,
and all was ready for the final effort.

About 4 o'clock in the afternoon the weather changed.
A strong south-westerly wind blew up; by 11 p.m. it increased
to a gale of 35 miles an hour.  This storm covered our
movements from the enemy, but it nearly made retirement
impossible.  On some beaches the piers were washed away and no
troops could be embarked.  Nevertheless by 3.30 the last
men were on board.

All night the Turks gave no sign, but when the transports
had moved off the stores left behind were fired simultaneously
by time fuses.  Red lights instantly burned along the enemy
lines, and a bombardment began which continued till sunrise.
The Turks proclaimed that the retreat had been attended
with desperate losses and great captures of guns.  The claim
was an absurd falsehood.  We blew up and left behind the
ruins of seventeen old worn-out pieces.  Our total casualties
at Helles amounted to one man wounded.

To avoid the disastrous consequences of a defeat is, as
a military operation, usually more difficult than to win a
victory.  There is less chance of the high spirit of the attack,
for such is the generosity of the human spirit that safety is
less of an incentive to effort than the hope of victory.  To
embark so great an army secretly and without loss in
mid-winter was an extraordinary achievement.  It was made
possible only by an almost miraculous series of favourable
chances, and by the perfect organization and discipline of
our men.  We had failed at Gallipoli, but we had escaped the
worst costs of failure.  We had defeated the calculations of
the enemy and upset every precedent.

Across the ribbon of the Dardanelles, on the green plain
of Troy, the most famous war of the ancient world had been
fought.  The European shores had now become a no less
classic ground of arms.  If the banks of Scamander had seen
men strive desperately with fate, so had the heights of Achi
Baba and the loud beaches of Helles.  Had the fashion
continued of linking the gods with the strife of mankind, what
strange myth might not have sprung from this rescue of the
British troops in the teeth of winter gales and uncertain seas I
It would have been rumoured, as of old at Troy, that Poseidon
had done battle for his children.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM.

.. vspace:: 2

At the outset of the war the conquest of Egypt was an
important aim of the Turkish Government and their German
masters.  But early in 1915 the Turkish invasion was scattered
on the banks of the Suez Canal, and hopes of an easy victory
were shattered.  Nevertheless, the defence of Egypt remained
an anxious problem for Britain.  That country was the base
both for Gallipoli and for Mesopotamia, and moreover, as
Moltke pointed out long before, was the key of Britain's
Eastern possessions.  It was soon realized that Egypt could
not be properly defended on the Canal, but only on the
Palestine frontier, beyond the Sinai Desert.

During 1915 and 1916 Turkey and Germany projected
many schemes for an Egyptian invasion, and the British
generals in Egypt were no less busy.  If the war was to be
carried into Palestine railways and water pipes must be laid
across the desert.  Slowly the British front crept eastward.
The Turks were defeated in various desert battles, and in
the spring of 1917 the British army crossed the frontier of
Palestine.

The British purpose had somewhat changed.  The offensive
had been substituted for the defensive.  So far as possible
it was desired to do in Palestine what Sir Stanley Maude was
doing in Mesopotamia—to pin down large Turkish forces,
and so alarm Turkey about the safety of certain key points
in her territory that she would demand aid from Germany
and thus confuse the plans of the German General Staff.

The land from the Wadi el Arish—the ancient "River of
Egypt"—to the Philistian Plain had for 2,600 years been a
cockpit of war.  Sometimes a conqueror from the north or
the south met the enemy in Egypt or in Syria, but more
often the decisive fight was fought in the gates.  Up and
down the strip of seaward levels marched the great armies
of Egypt and Assyria, while the Jews looked fearfully down
from their barren hills.  In the Philistian Plain Sennacherib
smote the Egyptian hosts in the days of King Hezekiah, only
to see his army melt away under the stroke of the "angel
of the Lord."  At Rafa Esarhaddon defeated Pharaoh, and
added Egypt and Ethiopia to his kingdoms.  At Megiddo,
or Armageddon, Josiah was vanquished by Pharaoh Necho,
who in turn was routed by Nebuchadnezzar.  At Ascalon,
during the Crusades, Godfrey of Bouillon defeated the
Egyptians, and 150 years later that town fell to the Mameluke
Sultan after the battle of Gaza.  In this gate of ancient feuds
it now fell to Turkey's lot to speak with her enemies.

But at first the British advance was checked.  In March
and April 1917 two battles were fought at Gaza—two frontal
attacks which failed.  During the summer Sir Edmund
Allenby was appointed to the chief command, and slowly and
patiently he perfected his plans.  He saw that a direct attack
on Gaza was likely to fail, but far to the east he observed a
weak point in the enemy front where the town of Beersheba
constituted a detached and separate defensive system.  If
Beersheba could be taken, the whole Gaza position could be
turned on the flank.

Beersheba was duly taken at the end of October 1917,
and on the 7th November Gaza followed.  The enemy suffered
severely, and was in full retreat, almost in flight.  Sir
Edmund Allenby's objective was now Jerusalem, and his
problem was less one of manoeuvres than of supply.  His
troops would advance just as fast as water and food could
be brought up behind them.

.. _`FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY`:

.. figure:: images/img-111.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY (VISCOUNT ALLENBY OF MEGIDDO).

   FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY
   (VISCOUNT ALLENBY OF MEGIDDO).

The advance was made in two main directions—one from
Hebron due north towards Bethlehem; the other by the
coastal plain, aiming at the junction where the Jerusalem
railway joined the main line to Damascus.  The Turkish
army was split into two parts, retreating in different directions.
Though Enver came from Constantinople and Falkenhayn
from Aleppo it was difficult for them to devise a defence.
Allenby seized Jaffa, and then swung eastward into the
Judæan highlands.  Now the progress became slow, while
squalid little villages, whose names are famous throughout
the whole Christian world, fell to the British troops.  On the
30th November the British line had the shape of a sickle,
with the centre of the curve flung far forward towards
Jerusalem, and it was necessary to bring up the handle, which
consisted of the cavalry and infantry which were at Hebron.
By the 7th these had taken Bethlehem, and by the 8th
British troops were before Jerusalem on the south and west,
and within a mile and a half of its walls.

The Turkish garrison did not await the attack.  In the night
preceding Sunday, the 9th December, the day of the festival
of the Hanookah, which commemorates the recapture of the
Temple by Judas Maccabæus, detachments of broken Turkish
soldiers poured in at the western or Jaffa Gate, while an
outgoing stream flowed eastward across the valley of Jehoshaphat.
Early in the morning the enemy sent out a white flag
of surrender, and before noon British patrols were in the city.

Two days later Sir Edmund Allenby entered by the Jaffa
Gate.  Close by was the breach made in the walls to admit
the German Emperor when he made his foolish pilgrimage in
1898.  Far different was the entry of the British general.  It
was a clear, bright day, and the streets and housetops were
thronged with black-coated, tarbushed Syrians and Levantines,
picturesquely-clad peasants from the near villages, and
Arabs from the fringes of the desert.  There was no display
of bunting and no bell-ringing or firing of salutes.  On foot,
accompanied only by his Staff, the commanders of the French
and Italian detachments, and the military attachés of France,
Italy, and the United States, he was received by the newly
appointed Military Governor of the city, and a guard
representing all the nationalities engaged in the campaign.  He
turned to the right into the Mount Zion quarter, and at
the Citadel, at the base of the ancient Tower of David, his
proclamation was read to the people.

Then he quietly left the city.  Yet no conqueror had
ever entered it with more prestige.  For centuries there had
been current an Arab prophecy that a deliverer should come
from the West, and in 1898 the people of Palestine had asked
if the Kaiser was indeed the man.  But the prophecy foretold
that such would not be the manner of his coming, for the true
saviour would bear the name of a Prophet of God, and would
enter Jerusalem on foot, and that he would not appear till
the Nile flowed into Palestine.  To the peasants of Judæa
the prophecy now seemed to be fulfilled, for the name of the
English general was in Arabic "the Prophet," and his men
had come into the land bringing with them the waters of
Egypt.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ALLENBY'S GREAT DRIVE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   ALLENBY'S GREAT DRIVE.

.. vspace:: 2

The capture of Jerusalem on December 9, 1917, left a
curious military situation.  The Turkish army was split into
two parts, with its right wing north-east of Jaffa and its left
to the north and east of Jerusalem, and between these lay a
patch of rocky country without communications.  Clearly
the next step for Allenby was to cross to the east of the
Jordan and cut the Hedjaz railway, with the assistance of
the Arab army from the south.  If traffic on this railway were
interrupted the Turkish forces in Arabia would be at his
mercy.

But first he had to secure his advanced bases at Jaffa
and Jerusalem.  This work was done before the close of the
year.  He then turned his attention to safeguarding his right
flank by driving the enemy beyond the Jordan.  Jericho fell
to the Australians on the 1st February, and the move eastward
across the river began.  It proved, however, unexpectedly
difficult.  The promised Arab assistance was not forthcoming
in time, and early in May the British troops, except for a
bridge-head garrison, were again on the west side of Jordan.
Allenby for a time was compelled to hold his hand.  The
grave situation in France made it necessary for him to
reorganize his forces, for all white troops that could be spared
were ordered to the Western front.  In their place he received
cavalry and infantry from Mesopotamia and India.

We come now to what must rank as one of the most
dramatic tales in the whole campaign—an exploit undertaken
at the precise moment when its chances were brightest and
its influence on the general strategy of the war most
vital—an exploit, moreover, which was perfectly planned, perfectly
executed, and overwhelming in its success.  The little
campaign which began three years before on the banks of the
Suez Canal had grown slowly to a major operation.  In face
of every difficulty the Allies had crept forward, first across
the Sinai Desert, then, after long delays, through the Turkish
defences of the south, and then in a bold sweep to the gates
of the Holy City.

This campaign had always been fought with only the
margin of strength which could be spared from the greater
contests in the West.  But it had moved patiently to its
appointed end, for it was carried on in the true tradition of
those dogged earlier wars of Britain which had created her
Empire.  Our feet might be stayed for a season, or even retire,
but in the long run they always moved forward.  The Last
Crusade was now approaching its climax, and the Crusaders
were such as would have startled the souls of St. Louis and
Raymond and Richard of England, could they have beheld
that amazing army.  For only a modest portion of it was
drawn from the Western peoples.  Algerian and Indian
Moslems, Arab tribesmen, men of the thousand creeds of
Hindustan, African negroes, and Jewish battalions were among
the liberators of the sacred land of Christendom.

In September 1918 the Turkish armies of Syria held a
front from the coast north of Jaffa through the hills of Ephraim
to a point half-way between Nablus and Jerusalem, and thence
to the Jordan, and down its eastern bank to the Dead Sea.
On the right lay the VIIIth Turkish Army, in the centre
the VIIth, and east of Jordan the IVth.  Far on their left
flank they were threatened by the Arabs under Sherif
Feisal and Colonel T. E. Lawrence.  Allenby's plan was to
defeat the enemy west of Jordan, and so either to isolate or
compel the retreat of the IVth Army.  The communications
of the Turkish centre and right wing were poor, and if their
front could be broken and our cavalry sent through, it was
possible that these might be cut.  Allenby therefore thinned
his front elsewhere, and concentrated his main energies on
breaking up the VIIIth Army in the Plain of Sharon, and
thus opening the route for his cavalry.

At 4.30 on the morning of the 19th September British
cavalry attacked and won an immediate victory, sweeping
through the enemy's defences in the Plain of Sharon.  The
VIIIth Army was in utter rout, pouring along the northern
roads, while the main body of our cavalry was riding for
Esdraelon to cut them off.  That night the VIIth Turkish
Army was also pressed back in the centre.  By noon that day
the leading troops of our cavalry were 18 miles north of their
old front line; that afternoon they were through the barrier
of the Samarian hills; and early next morning they reached
Nazareth, and all but captured the German commander-in-chief.
On the night of the 20th one cavalry division reached
Beisan, 80 miles from their starting point, and so shut the
last outlet from the south.  In thirty-six hours the trap had
been closed.  Every track and road was choked with the rout.
Camps and depots were in flames, and our airmen steadily
bombarded each section of the retreat.

There now remained only the IVth Army, east of the
Jordan.  Till the third day of the battle it had shown no signs
of moving, but on the morning of the 23rd it began a leisurely
retreat.  Meantime the British had joined hands with Feisal's
Arabs, and pressed the fugitives along the Hedjaz railway.
The game was now wholly in Allenby's hands.  His next step
was to move on Damascus, and so intercept what was left of
the IVth Army in its northward flight.  On the afternoon
of the 25th, the 4th Cavalry Division moved out of Beisan
on its 120 miles' ride, and the Australian Mounted Division
followed next day by the northern route.  On the 30th
British cavalry lay 12 miles south-west of Damascus, and all
the northern and north-western exits had been closed.  At 6
o'clock on the morning of the 1st October the British and
Arabs entered the city.

.. _`Palestine: the Decisive Battle`:

.. figure:: images/img-117.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Palestine—the Decisive Battle.

   Palestine—the Decisive Battle.

It was the twelfth day from the opening of the attack.
Three Turkish armies had melted away, over 60,000 prisoners
and between 300 and 400 guns were in Allenby's hands, and
the dash for Damascus had destroyed the faintest possibility
of an enemy stand.  All that remained was a mob of 17,000
Turks and Germans, fleeing north without discipline or purpose.

Of the many brilliant episodes of those marvellous twelve
days, perhaps the most brilliant was the converging movement
of the British Desert Corps and Feisal's Arabs on the most
ancient of the world's cities.  Damascus had been an
emporium when Tyre was young, and she was still a mighty city
centuries after Tyre had become a shadow.  Rich in holy
places, she had one shrine of peculiar interest for this last
crusade.  Within her walls lay the tomb of Saladin, the
greatest of those who fought in Palestine in the battle of Asia
against Europe.  One of Feisal's first acts was to remove
the tawdry bronze wreath with which the German Emperor
in 1898 had seen fit to adorn the sleeping-place of the great
Sultan.

Allenby did not rest upon his laurels.  On the 8th he was
in Beirut, on the 11th in Baalbek.  The next and last stage
was Aleppo, that mart through which in the Middle Ages the
wealth of Asia flowed to Venice and the West.  A cavalry
division went forward, and on the 26th October entered the
town.  Patrols advanced 15 miles farther, and occupied Muslimie
railway junction.  This last was a fitting conclusion to a great
exploit, for it meant the cutting of the Bagdad railway,
the line which was to link Berlin with the Persian Gulf and
threaten our Indian Empire.  Four days later Turkey signed
the Armistice which was her surrender.  Bulgaria had already
laid down her arms, Austria was on the eve of collapse,
and Germany was left without allies, and with her front
crumbling before Foch and Haig.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SILENT SERVICE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART IV.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center large bold

   THE SILENT SERVICE.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI.

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SILENT SERVICE.

.. vspace:: 2

The British Navy earned during the war the title of "The
Silent Service," and the phrase needs a word of comment,
for it is full of meaning.  There has always been a feeling
in the Service that sea-power is the one thing vitally necessary
to the safety of the Empire, and that so long as this is being
maintained the less talk about it the better; for where the
life of nations is daily and hourly in trust, all advertisement
is unworthy and all description inadequate.  Then the Great
War came, and the landsmen, who form the bulk of our people
all over the world, naturally wished to know how the Sea
Service was handling the affair; but the rule of silence still
held.  For the Navy, besides their old tradition, had now the
reason of policy on their side; operations at sea can be,
and must be, kept secret to a degree which is not possible
in a land campaign.  To inform the public at home would
be to take the chance of being overheard by the enemy.

Moreover the work of the Navy is so multifarious, so
technical, and so far-sighted in its aims, that by far the greater
part of it would always be difficult to grasp.  The ordinary
news-reading citizen must be content to judge of it by its
results, and he is not always capable of doing even that.
Neither in this country, nor in the Dominions overseas, still
less in the outer world, has the supreme importance or the
decisive achievement of our naval Service been realized.
Yet to those who understand, the influence of sea-power on
history has never been so conclusively demonstrated.  In this
war, as in the war of a hundred years before, it was from
first to last our ships that lay between a military despot and
the domination of the world.

To prove this it is only necessary to make a plain statement
of the tasks which the British Navy had to undertake
in August 1914, to mark the fact that a failure in any one
of them would have involved the ruin of the Allied cause;
and to remember that no such failure occurred.  The gigantic
scope of the effort may then be seen; but even then only
by those whose vision is wide enough to survey the whole world
at once as one vast field of conflict.

First, then, our Fleet undertook to blockade the enemy;
to drive his commerce from the seas; to stop his sea-borne
supplies, especially foodstuffs, cotton—the raw material of
explosives—and munitions of all kinds; also to disable his
credit by the stoppage of his export trade.

Secondly, the protection of our own commerce necessitated
the control of all the seas of the world.  The Atlantic was our
main avenue of supply, but we had also to maintain and guard
the routes to and from Australia, New Zealand, India, and
China; and a Northern Patrol was necessary to ensure the
passage from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the north of
Russia.

Thirdly, the enemy's main naval force had to be put out
of action: that is to say, the North Sea must be effectively
controlled by a Grand Fleet capable of dealing with the
German High Sea Fleet.

Fourthly, the transfer of enemy troops across the sea
must be made impossible; and, in particular, strong flotillas
and secondary fleets must be maintained on our own coasts
as a guard against possible attempts at invasion.

.. _`ADMIRAL SIR JOHN JELLICOE`:

.. figure:: images/img-123.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: ADMIRAL SIR JOHN JELLICOE (VISCOUNT JELLICOE OF SCAPA).

   ADMIRAL SIR JOHN JELLICOE
   (VISCOUNT JELLICOE OF SCAPA).

Fifthly, the transport of our own troops and of those of
our Allies must be covered from attack.  Under this head
alone there were included before the end a number of
simultaneous operations entirely beyond example in the history
of war.  An army of some six millions was passed oversea
from the British Isles, from India, from Australia, and New
Zealand (and at last more millions from America) to France,
to India, to Africa (East and West), to Egypt and Palestine,
to Gallipoli and Salonika.

Sixthly, the supplies to all these forces, and to most of
them simultaneously, had to be maintained for more than four
full years and on a scale hitherto unimagined.

Seventhly, in several campaigns the Navy had to co-operate
in the military operations, notably in Gallipoli, in
battles near the Belgian coast, and in the attack on the
fortified harbour of Zeebrugge.

These seven heads cover every recognized department
of naval war; but it must be added that when this latest war
changed its character and became an unrestricted submarine
campaign, new developments were necessary and were
immediately carried out.  Under the second and third of the
above headings, an entirely new fleet of mine-sweepers, trawlers,
and anti-submarine patrols had to be provided, manned, and
equipped, to secure the safety both of our ships of war and
of our mercantile marine.

It will be seen that these tasks, taken altogether, formed
a work of which only one Power in the world was capable;
while taken separately they appear plainly as seven threads
upon every one of which the fate of the common cause
depended absolutely.  The effort of the Allies in this war was
distinguished first by the early heroism of the Belgian, Serbian,
and Russian troops; then by the long and desperate endurance
of the French, British, and Italian armies; finally, it was
reinforced by the large contingent of late-comers from America,
and carried to victory by the supreme genius of Foch.  But
behind and beneath all these lay another force, scarcely thought
of at the time, and since almost forgotten, though to it they
all owed the very possibility of their military existence.
During those four years the British Fleet never ceased to
carry great armies over sea; to sweep every ocean clean, and
guard the territories along their shores; to shut up the hostile
Empire within an impassable barrier.  In a word, it retained
every day and every night, from the first hour of the war
to the last, that control which was the most vital condition
of success.

In so doing it suffered some losses and achieved stirring
successes, of which one or two are related in the pages
which follow.  But it must always be remembered that these
are but incidents; the business of the British Navy is the
right use of the sea, and not conquest or display.  For it,
therefore, victory is not the affair of a day here or a day
there, however rousing to the blood: it lies rather in what
is neither spectacular nor resounding—in the monotonous
but manifold perfection of an indispensable service.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CORONEL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   CORONEL.

.. vspace:: 2

The battle of Coronel will always have a peculiar interest
for us: there is a mystery about it which can never be finally
cleared up.  At the outbreak of war a British admiral, Sir
Christopher Cradock, was in charge of a large and important
area off the coast of South America.  It was his business to
keep this area clear of the enemy squadron under Admiral
Graf von Spee, which was much stronger than his own, but
was believed to be scattered on the trade routes.  In the end
Cradock found the enemy squadron united and in much
superior force.  He instantly attacked, and went down in
the action, with two of his ships.

The problem is to ascertain what were his motives for this
swift decision to fight against overwhelming odds.  Not a
man in the flagship survived, and we must do the best with
what evidence we have before us.  We know the admiral's
general idea of the work he had to do; we know what his
instructions were, what force he asked for and what was
given him; we know the speed and gun-power of the enemy
ships, and what he as an experienced commander must have
thought of them.  Finally, we know the nature of the choice
which was open to him; and in face of all this the mystery
remains.

The key to it probably lies in the character of the man
who had to make the decision; and from this point of view
the story is a fine one.  While every one is free to form an
opinion on the facts, the judgment of those who knew Cradock
best is the simplest and the most favourable one.  A certain
margin of discretion must be allowed to every admiral in
time of war; and at the moment of crisis a man of powerful
character and vision may go even further, and take the
great responsibility of departing from the line of strict
obedience to orders.  To Cradock's friends it seems clear
that he saw himself and his squadron as representing the
prestige of his country in combat with a superior force which
might be disabled, if it could not be destroyed; he saw that
duty might be fulfilled, and honour and success attained,
though victory should be impossible.  So he hunted his great
enemy both skilfully and fearlessly, but relied at a pinch
rather on courage than on caution.

From the outbreak of war the German China Squadron,
as we now know, was never wholly dispersed: Spee detached
ships from time to time to the coast of South America, but
remained himself with the strongest part of his force in the
Pacific, where he was heard of only at intervals.  He might
possibly be intending to go westwards and raid the Indian
Ocean, as the *Emden* actually did.  He moved, in fact, on
Samoa, but when he arrived there on September 14, 1914,
he found Apia already safe in the hands of the New Zealanders,
and not a ship in the harbour.  He left again for Suvarov
Island, coaled in the Society Islands, bombarded the French
capital Papieté on the 22nd September, and appeared to be
making for South America; he might be thinking of a dash
through the Magellan Straits to attack our trade on the
eastern coast.

The British Admiralty knew the danger of this.  Spee's
two principal ships—the *Scharnhorst* and the *Gneisenau*—were
fast ships and well armed, with prize gunnery crews.  To
hunt them satisfactorily a pair of battle-cruisers were required,
and these could not well be spared from the Grand Fleet.  The
*Indefatigable* was therefore ordered out from the Mediterranean,
with the fast cruiser *Defence*; but the Cabinet refused to
spare the *Indefatigable*, and the *Canopus*, an old and slow
battleship, with 12-inch guns, was sent, with the *Defence* to follow.
Admiral Cradock was ordered to concentrate meanwhile at the
Falkland Islands, with his flagship, the *Good Hope*, the cruisers
*Monmouth* and *Glasgow*, and some ships of inferior armament.

The *Canopus* was a whole week late in arriving.  Cradock
was most anxious to prevent Spee from coming round the Horn
to raid the east coast, and he feared that if he kept the old
12-knot battleship with him he might be too late to bar the
enemy's passage.  In this crisis he took his first great risk:
he sent the *Canopus* by the shorter way, through Magellan's
Straits, and took the weaker ships boldly round the Horn.
Spee, however, was not in the south; he had spent six days
in concentrating at Easter Island, and was at this moment
making for the island of Mas-a-Fuera, 500 miles west of Valparaiso.

Cradock now had the *Canopus* with him again.  His instructions
were that he was not expected to act without her;
but her slow speed continued to hamper him in carrying out
his definite orders to search for the enemy and destroy them.
He accordingly ordered the *Defence* to join him from the east
coast, where she had been sent by the Admiralty, and went
north in the meantime to find the cruiser *Leipzig*, which was
believed to be in front of him, operating alone.  Unfortunately
the *Canopus* was once more in need of repairs, and had
to be left behind for twenty-four hours.

.. _`Battle of Coronel`:

.. figure:: images/img-129.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Battle of Coronel.

   Battle of Coronel.

The two squadrons, British and German, were now, without
knowing it, in the act of converging upon one another.
Each admiral believed himself to be in pursuit of a single
ship, for, while Cradock was after the *Leipzig*, Spee was in chase
of the *Glasgow* (Captain Luce), who had been sent on to Coronel
on the west coast with a message.  The force of the opponents
was as follows: Admiral von Spee had two powerful ships,
the *Scharnhorst* (flagship) and the *Gneisenau*, each of 11,420
tons, armed with eight 8-inch and six 6-inch guns; and their
gunners were of high repute.  His other ships, the *Leipzig*,
*Dresden*, and *Nürnberg*, were light cruisers, each carrying ten
4-inch guns.  Against these Cradock had the *Good Hope*, a
twelve-year-old cruiser of 14,000 tons, armed with two
9.2-inch guns; the cruiser *Monmouth*, with 6-inch guns only;
the *Glasgow*, a light fast cruiser, with two 6-inch and ten 4-inch
guns, and the auxiliary cruiser *Otranto*, which was not
sufficiently armed to take part in an action.  He knew, as well
as any one living, what was the meaning of these figures,
and he must have been hoping that the *Canopus*, with her
12-inch guns, would rejoin him before he met his enemy.

The *Glasgow* despatched her message from Coronel, and at
2.30 p.m. on the 1st November she rejoined her squadron.
Cradock was still steaming north when, at 4.40, she sighted
and reported to him the *Scharnhorst*, *Gneisenau*, and *Leipzig*,
visible to the east.  He had found the ship he was chasing,
but he had found her in company with her powerful consorts;
and the *Dresden* and the *Nürnberg* were, in fact, also
present, though they were not yet in sight.

Cradock had but a few minutes in which to make his
decision.  Was he to fight or run?  Even the three enemy
ships which were in sight were more than a match for his
own.  His two big guns might make a few lucky hits, but
they could not keep down the fire of eight times their number,
laid by prize gunners with the choice of range and position.
To fight was highly dangerous; yet the alternative evidently
looked to him still less attractive.  The enemy was nearly
due east; the *Canopus* was coming up slowly from the south,
250 miles away; if he were to turn and run he might be able
to join her in nine hours or even in eight.  But Spee had
the position of advantage inshore; he would be racing down
the shorter side of the triangle, and with his 23 knots could
overtake the *Monmouth* for certain, and possibly cut in
between the others and the *Canopus*.  During the chase he
would have a fighting light for three hours, and after that
a moonlight equally to his advantage.

We cannot tell whether Cradock weighed these considerations
anxiously, or whether he instinctively felt that the
tradition of the Navy would be more injured by his flight
than by his own defeat and death.  He does not seem to
have hesitated.  At 5.10 p.m. he signalled to his squadron
to concentrate on the *Glasgow*—the ship nearest the enemy—and
attempted to cross Spee's line so as to gain the inshore
position.  The German admiral, however, kept away successfully,
and at 6.18 Cradock made a wireless signal to the
*Canopus*, giving his position, and adding, "I am going to
attack enemy now."

At 7 o'clock the sun set, and Spee, having now every
advantage of light, opened fire at 12,000 yards.  The *Good Hope*
in reply made a hit or two, but her forward 9.2 gun was soon
knocked out, and the ship set on fire.  The *Monmouth* was
also burning within three minutes.  The *Glasgow* was engaged
by both the *Leipzig* and the *Dresden*, but was saved by the
German smoke which drifted towards her.  With the sunset
glow behind them, our ships were a fair target, while the
British gunners could no longer see anything but the flash
of the enemy's guns.  Both the *Good Hope* and the *Monmouth*
were continually on fire, and at 7.45 the flagship blew up with
an explosion which sent up flames 200 feet high.  By 8
o'clock the *Monmouth* too was silenced and sinking in the
heavy seas; as the moon rose the German ships could just be
seen closing on her.

Captain Luce, left alone with the *Glasgow* and the *Otranto*,
had now to face the most painful duty of his life.  His ship
had been hit by only five shells out of the six hundred aimed
at her, and he was in a position to make use of her superior
speed by going to warn the *Canopus* of the danger towards
which she was heading.  He steered north-west into the
darkness, intending to turn south as soon as he was out of
sight.  The *Monmouth's* men were all crowded on her
quarterdeck, and they cheered the *Glasgow* as they saw her going
away—a cheer that should never be forgotten when the tale is
told.  At 9.20 firing was heard again, and from the *Glasgow*
seventy-five flashes were counted—"No doubt," says Captain
Luce, "the final attack on the *Monmouth*."  She went down,
like the *Good Hope*, with all hands.

So ended Cradock's forlorn hope, and the mystery of it
will remain with us.  One thing is certain, that whatever
was the motive for his decision, it could not have been a
discreditable one—a man does not fling away his command,
his professional chances, and his own life out of sheer
recklessness.  We may safely infer, then, that Cradock was
attempting the best that was possible for his country at the
hazard of everything that he valued most.  For this he took
the final responsibility of disobeying his orders; and for this
he paid the full price.  It is difficult to think him wrong,
and not difficult to hold him justified.  He gave something
to the enemy, but far more to his own Service.  When
darkness fell on Coronel, Spee's triumph had but thirty-seven
days to run.  The tradition of Cradock's unflinching devotion
will last as long as the British Navy; and it is by such
traditions that sea power is built and sustained.  Naval
supremacy will never be won or kept by the consistent
refusal of unequal fights.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FALKLANDS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FALKLANDS.

.. vspace:: 2

News of Coronel was received by the Admiralty on the 4th
November; it was given to the public unofficially on the 5th
and officially on the 17th.  By that time the counterstroke
had been not only prepared, but launched.  Speed and
secrecy were an urgent necessity, for the Falkland Islands,
a valuable coaling-station with a wireless installation and a
fine double harbour, were certain to be in danger from the
victorious enemy.  The population numbered only 2,000,
mostly Scottish shepherds, and the inhabitants of the capital,
Port Stanley, proposed to abandon the town and take refuge
on the moors.  But on the 8th November the *Canopus* and
the *Glasgow* ran in on their way north, and on the 12th the
*Canopus* returned with orders to remain and defend the
coaling-station.  Captain Grant grounded his ship on the
harbour mud, disguised her by dazzle-painting, and made her
into a fort.  The work took three weeks.

In the meantime the new Board of Admiralty were taking
action on the plan originally proposed by their predecessors.
The Grand Fleet had now been reinforced, and could spare
the battle-cruisers *Invincible* and *Inflexible*.  These two ships
came round to Devonport on the 8th November for repairs.
On the 9th Admiral Sturdee was appointed Commander-in-Chief
in the South Atlantic and Pacific—from Pernambuco to
China.  The service in hand demanded perfect secrecy and
perfect efficiency: a sudden and irresistible counterstroke
was to be delivered, and the two principal ships were to be
returned immediately with unimpaired fighting value.  It
was a mission offering unique powers and responsibilities.

The admiral had all the qualities necessary for success
and one gift more—that of complete and invariable good
fortune.  He was to concentrate either off the Panama
Canal or the islets known as the Abrolhos Rocks far down
towards Rio, according as he could best guess at Spee's
intentions.  He guessed right, and chose the latter rendezvous,
where, on the 26th, he met Admiral Stoddart with the
*Carnarvon*, *Cornwall*, *Defence*, *Kent*, *Bristol*, and *Orama*.

.. _`Battle of the Falkland Islands—First Phase`:

.. figure:: images/img-134.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Battle of the Falkland Islands—December 8. First Phase—8 a.m.

   Battle of the Falkland Islands—December 8.
   First Phase—8 a.m.

On the same day, as it happened, Spee was moving south
from St. Quentin Bay for an attack upon the Falklands, and
Sturdee was receiving final orders to base himself upon the
Falklands and search for Spee round the Horn.  The meeting
was therefore certain; but the fate of Port Stanley
depended on the race between the two opposing squadrons.
Fortune again favoured Sturdee: he was delayed at first
by false reports, but Spee lost four full days in capturing
and plundering a British collier.  When he appeared off the
Falklands in the early morning of the 8th December, Sturdee
had already been nearly eighteen hours in harbour, and his
ships had been busily coaling all night.

When Spee was sighted from Port Stanley his arrival was
a surprise to the British squadron.  The battle-cruisers had
not yet received their full supply of coal.  But their oil supply
was untouched, and by the admiral's foresight steam had been
ordered at half an hour's notice for the *Kent* and the *Inflexible*,
and at two hours' for the rest.  The signal to prepare
to weigh and to raise steam was made at 8.14 a.m.  The
*Gneisenau* and the *Nürnberg*, after sheering off at a couple of
salvos from the *Canopus*, came on again at 9.30 to attack the
*Kent* and the *Glasgow*, who were already on guard outside the
harbour.  The German ships were immediately recalled—their
admiral may not have known yet that the battle-cruisers
were there; but the report he received convinced him that he
was in the presence of a superior force, and must therefore avoid
action if possible, in accordance with German naval orders or
tradition.  He was a brave and chivalrous commander, and it
was his misfortune that he was not at liberty to stand in to
the harbour mouth and fight his enemy at close range while
the squadron was coming out ship by ship.  His own armour
was superior to that of the battle-cruisers, and his guns were
effective up to 13,000 yards; he could not have avoided
destruction, but he could certainly have inflicted serious
damage.

Instead of acting thus, he signalled to raise steam and
steer east with all speed.  The battle-cruisers were now out
of harbour, and visible to him; the *Glasgow* and the *Kent*
were ahead, keeping touch, and Admiral Sturdee made the
signal for "General Chase."  The five German ships were hull
down on the horizon, but the sky was clear; there was a light
breeze and a calm sea; visibility was at its maximum: a
combination fatal for the pursued.  More fatal still was the
character of the pursuer: a scientific seaman and tactician,
a commander spirited and self-confident, cool and decisive.
There would be difficulties from wind and smoke, and from
the differences in the speed of his ships; but Admiral Sturdee
had his chance before him, complete though not perfect, and
he would grasp it with no uncertain hand.

.. _`Battle of the Falkland Islands—Second Phase`:

.. figure:: images/img-136.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Battle of the Falkland Islands—December 8. Second Phase—11 a.m.

   Battle of the Falkland Islands—December 8. 
   Second Phase—11 a.m.

He began by taking the battle-cruisers ahead at 26-½
knots; then slowed down, cleared for action, and piped the
men to dinner at 11.30 as usual; changing course at the same
time to converge upon the enemy.  At 12.20 he increased to
25 knots, and opened fire on the *Leipzig*, now within 15,000
yards.  She was soon on fire, and at 1.20 turned away
south-west with the *Nürnberg* and the *Dresden*.  Admiral von Spee
was dividing his squadron, in hope of saving some part of it.
But Admiral Sturdee had foreseen this move.  Without any
fresh signal, the *Glasgow*, the *Kent*, and the *Cornwall* at once
followed the light cruisers; Captain Luce was to have the
honour of a separate action to himself, while the
battle-cruisers and the *Carnarvon* held on after Spee.

The main action began with an experimental stage; the
German ships concentrated their fire on the *Invincible*, but
could not reach her.  On the other hand, her smoke was
smothering the *Inflexible*.  At 2.5 Sturdee began to close, and
Spee, covered by his own smoke, turned to starboard, and
went off at full speed after his light cruisers.  By 2.45 he was
again overtaken.  He then turned to port, and reduced the
range; he had decided that the time was come to do what
damage he could before the inevitable end.

He opened fire with every gun he had; but here, as in
the fight of the *Sydney* against the *Emden*, and afterwards at
Jutland, the German gunners, though highly trained, could
not long keep their accuracy under British fire.  The duel was
practically decided in the first ten minutes: the *Gneisenau*
was badly hit by the *Inflexible*, the *Scharnhorst* was set on
fire and lost a funnel; both were staggering and smoking
desperately.  Sturdee seized his advantage, turned eighteen
points, and crossed their wake; under his raking fire the
*Gneisenau* listed till her 6-inch guns could no longer fire, the
*Scharnhorst* lost all her funnels and all her port guns.  Spee
turned gallantly to bring his fresh broadside to bear, but at
4.0 his flagship ceased fire suddenly, and lay down on her
beam ends; soon she heeled over, her stern rose steeply, and
she went down head foremost.  Admiral Sturdee's chivalrous
dispatch records that Admiral von Spee's flag was flying to
the last.

None of the sinking crew could be saved, for the *Gneisenau*
was still fighting.  The three British ships concentrated on her
from three sides; at 5.8 her forward funnel fell, and her fire
slackened; at 5.15 she hit the *Invincible* with a single shell;
at 5.30 she turned round and stopped dead.  At 5.40 she
ceased firing, and hauled down one of her two flags; at 5.50,
while her three enemies were rushing in at 20 knots to save
life, she lay down on her beam ends very suddenly and
plunged.  Of her complement of 800, some 200 were still
alive, and nearly all of these were rescued: 166 recovered;
14 who died of exhaustion were buried next day with full
military honours.

Sturdee's next thought was for Captain Luce and his
ships.  He gave them his own news by wireless, and asked
for theirs.  The *Glasgow* replied that she and the *Cornwall*
were over 70 miles to the south, and the *Kent* out of sight
and hearing of them.  It seemed not impossible that the
*Nürnberg* had disposed of her by throwing mines overboard
during the chase.  But this was not so; Sturdee's good fortune
was not to be broken.  The *Dresden*, it is true, evaded him,
but only because her superior speed and 12 miles' start enabled
her to abandon her squadron when she pleased.  The other
two light cruisers fought gallantly, but failed to escape
destruction.  In their flight they separated, and the two defeats
must be separately described.

When the *Dresden* decided to run out of action at 27 knots,
after the first turn away, Captain Luce wasted no time in
chasing her, but laid himself alongside of the *Leipzig*, the rear
ship, in hope of tempting her consorts to fall back to her
support.  His manoeuvre was to close her repeatedly, engaging
with his forward 6-inch gun, and forcing her to turn her
broadside to reply.  Each time she did so, the *Kent* and the
*Cornwall* drew nearer, till at 3.36 they could attack the
*Nürnberg* and the *Leipzig* respectively.  The *Dresden* refused to
turn back: she disappeared into the mist, not to be seen
again till March 1915, when she surrendered and blew up
after a five minutes' action with the *Kent* and the *Glasgow*,
who had caught her at anchor.

The *Nürnberg* now turned away east, pursued by the *Kent*;
the *Cornwall* began to hit the *Leipzig*, who was already
engaged with the Glasgow.  Captain Luce, having here the
superior speed, turned right round and passed under his enemy's
stern, raking her with his fresh broadside; then circled round
the *Cornwall*, and came again into action ahead of her.  At
6.0, after nearly two hours of such tactics, he gave the order
to close; at 6.35 he received the admiral's wireless message of
victory; at 7.17 he saw his own opponent silenced and burning
furiously.  He waited half an hour for her surrender, and
then opened fire again.  At that she burned green lights, and
he at once lowered his boats.  Five officers and thirteen men
had been rescued, when the blazing *Leipzig* turned over to
port and sank.

.. _`Battle of the Falkland Islands—Last Phase`:

.. figure:: images/img-139.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Battle of the Falkland Islands—December 8. Last Phase.

   Battle of the Falkland Islands—December 8. 
   Last Phase.

The *Kent's* success was of a different kind.  Normally she
had but 23-½ knots of speed to the *Nürnberg's* 25; but her
engine-room department by consummate skill and energy
forced their lame duck to a speed which at the end of nearly
four hours brought her within 12,000 yards of her enemy.
Both ships opened fire, the *Kent* receiving one hit and making
two.  The *Nürnberg* then burst two of her boilers, and dropped
to 19 knots, turned eight points to port, and engaged with
her broadside.  Captain Allen accepted the challenge, ran on,
and placed the *Kent* before her beam at 6,000 yards.  By 6.10
he had her burning and almost silenced; he ran on again,
and raked her at 3,500 yards, destroying all her guns forward.
At 6.30 she was silent and motionless.  A few more shots,
and she hauled down her flag.  Captain Allen hastily repaired
and lowered two of his damaged boats; but before they
could reach her the *Nürnberg* turned over and sank.  Twelve
of her men were found, but only seven survived.

Commander Wharton of the *Kent* has memorably described
the final scene.  "It was strange and weird, all this
aftermath, the wind rapidly arising from the westward, darkness
closing in, one ship heaving to the swell, well battered,
the foretop-gallant mast gone.  Of the other, nothing to be
seen but floating wreckage, with here and there a man clinging,
and the 'molly hawks' (vultures of the sea) swooping
by.  The wind moaned, and death was in the air.  Then
see!  Out of the mist loomed a great four-masted barque
under full canvas.  A great ghost-ship she seemed.  Slowly,
majestically, she sailed by, and vanished in the night."  The
battle-cruisers' fight had been visited, earlier in the day, by
the same ghost-ship; manned, it might easily be imagined,
by phantom seamen of the Nelsonian age.

Not since that age, and seldom even then, had so impressive
a victory been won at sea: it was not a defeat of the
enemy, it was his annihilation.  Admiral Sturdee had seized
all his opportunities, surmounted all his difficulties, and
attained all his objects; he was even able to return his most
valuable ships to the Grand Fleet practically intact and in
the shortest possible time.  It may be added that in a fine
dispatch he showed once more how a British admiral writes of
his enemy's fate and of his own achievement.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MYSTERY SHIPS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   MYSTERY SHIPS.

.. vspace:: 2

It was towards the end of 1914 that the German Admiralty
conceived the idea of blockading the British Isles by means
of a submarine fleet.  The enterprise was a difficult one;
for the pursuit and capture of commerce a submarine is
very ill fitted.  A frail boat with a small crew cannot afford
to hold up and examine a ship on the surface; still less to
put a prize crew on board and send the captured vessel into
port.  It was therefore decided that to carry out the
blockade merchant ships must be sunk without examination and
without warning.  If crews, passengers, or even neutrals
perished in this process, the "blame," says Admiral Scheer,
"would attach to those who despised our warnings."  No
civilized power had ever before threatened to kill non-combatants
on logical principles of this kind, and as soon as it
was seen that the German Admiralty were attempting to
carry out their murderous intentions it became necessary to
devise means of destroying their U-boats wherever they could
be found.

They were accordingly hunted by destroyers, by trawlers,
by submarines, and by airships and seaplanes; they were
destroyed by gun fire, by mines, by nets, by torpedoes, and
by depth charges, and all these were used with the greatest
skill and success.  Of all the hunting methods, perhaps the
most attractive to the English sporting instinct was that
of the Mystery Ships, or Q-boats.  This was at first merely
the use of a simple trap, but was developed by the genius of
a single man into an entirely novel campaign of the most
heroic kind.

The Special Service ship or Q-boat of 1915 was a tramp
or collier with a concealed armament for the decoying and
destruction of submarines.  The first success was achieved
on July 25, 1915, when one of them, the *Prince Charles*
(Lieutenant W. P. Mark-Wardlaw), was pursued and shelled
by U36, near North Rona Island.  Her crew abandoned
ship, leaving their gunners concealed on board.  The U-boat
thereupon closed; but when she was within five hundred
yards of her apparently helpless prey, the British guns were
suddenly unmasked, and the submarine sank under their
fire, leaving fifteen of her crew to be rescued by the victors.

It was about this same time that a young lieutenant-commander
named Gordon Campbell put to sea in charge of the
Special Service ship *Farnborough*, formerly a collier, and now
manned from the Mercantile Marine and Royal Naval Reserve.
For six months the cruise was unsuccessful, but in the spring
of 1916 the *Farnborough's* look-out at last sighted a U-boat,
which, after firing a torpedo at her, broke surface within
1,000 yards, and summoned the supposed tramp with a shot
across her bows.  Lieutenant-Commander Campbell, who had
trained his crew to a perfect knowledge of the game they
had to play, stopped the ship, blew off steam ostentatiously,
and ordered a "panic abandon ship."  The U-boat came
nearer, and reopened fire.  Lieutenant-Commander Campbell,
who was still concealed aboard his ship, then hoisted the
white ensign and unmasked his guns.  With twenty-one
shots from her 12-pounders the *Farnborough* drove the U-boat
under water, then steamed full speed towards her with depth
charges, and when she reappeared mortally wounded, sent
her to the bottom with five more rounds at point-blank range.

Three weeks afterwards the *Farnborough* had the good
fortune to be attacked by another U-boat, with whom she
fought a surface action at a range of nearly 1,000 yards,
disabling her at the second shot, and finally blowing her up.

The Germans quickly perceived the deadliness of this
new method, which made every attack on a merchant vessel
a possible disaster for the U-boat, and their press was
instructed to complain of the unscrupulousness of an enemy
who used disguised ships and took the attacker by surprise.
Commanders of U-boats were instructed to use greater
caution in approaching their victims, and it soon became
evident to Commander Campbell that they would no longer
venture to come near a live ship.  He determined to tempt
them with a wounded one.

When his new ship, Q5, was attacked by a U-boat early
in 1917, he manoeuvred intentionally to get her torpedoed.
The crew then abandoned ship as before, while Commander
Campbell and his gunners lay hidden in the water-logged
vessel, watching until the timid enemy should venture to the
surface to finish her off.  It took the U-boat twenty minutes
to make up her mind.  She then came up within 300 yards,
and approached to fire a second torpedo, with her captain
visible on his conning-tower.  The first shot fired from Q5
took off his head, and the boat was then completely shattered;
one officer and one man were picked up alive.  Q5, with water
in her engine-room, boiler-rooms, and holds, then signalled for
help, and was taken in tow by Lieutenant-Commander
W. W. Hallwright of the *Laburnum*, with the assistance of the
*Narwhal*, the *Buttercup*, and the trawler *Luneta*; after a night of
heroic exertions and great danger she was brought safely into
port.  Commander Campbell received the Victoria Cross.  Of
his officers and crew he wrote: "They may almost be said
to have passed through the supreme test of discipline.  The
chief engineer and the engine-room watch remained at their
posts and kept the dynamos going until driven out by water.
They then had to hide on top of the engine-room.  The guns'
crews had to remain concealed in their gun-houses for nearly
half an hour, where we could feel the ship going down by the
stern.  At that time it appeared touch and go whether the
ship would sink before we sank the enemy."

Four months afterwards Campbell and his men were out
again, in the Special Service ship *Pargust*, and were again
successful in being torpedoed.  This time the U-boat, after
some hesitation, came within 50 yards, and was so much
injured by the *Pargust's* fire as to be incapable of submerging.
Her crew made tokens of surrender, but when Commander
Campbell ceased fire, attempted to make away upon the
surface.  The *Pargust*, of course, could not follow, but by a
lucky shot she exploded a torpedo aboard the U-boat and
destroyed her, saving only two of her crew.  She was then
herself towed into port by the *Crocus*.  This time the Victoria
Cross was given to Lieutenant R. N. Stuart, D.S.O., R.N.R.,
and to Seaman William Williams, D.S.M., R.N.R., to be
worn on behalf of the whole ship's company.

Captain Campbell's next command was the Special
Service ship *Dunraven*, disguised as an armed British merchant
vessel.  She was zigzagging at eight knots in rough water,
when a U-boat opened fire upon her at 5,000 yards.  Captain
Campbell ran up the white ensign, and returned the fire
with a 2-½-pounder, intentionally firing short, and making
terrified signals for the U-boat's benefit.  Then, as the shells
fell closer, he let off a cloud of steam to indicate boiler trouble,
and ordered a "panic abandon ship."  The Germans now
became more confident, and began to make hits; one shell
exploded a depth charge on the *Dunraven's* poop, and blew
Lieutenant Charles Bonner, D.S.C., R.N.R., out of his control
station.  The U-boat then ceased fire, and came past within
500 yards; but she was partly hidden by the smoke from
the *Dunraven's* burning poop, and though Captain Campbell
knew that his magazine and depth charges must explode
sooner or later, he decided to trust his men and wait until
the enemy gave him a better chance.

The U-boat kept him waiting just too long.  She was
passing the *Dunraven's* stern, when the poop blew up, hurling
the 4-inch gun and the gun's crew into the air, and starting
the "open fire" buzzers at the guns.  The U-boat was hit,
but not fatally, and at once submerged.  Captain Campbell
hastily collected his wounded, turned hoses on to the burning
poop, where the magazine was still intact, and signalled to
an approaching warship to keep away and deflect traffic,
as his action was not yet ended.  The second stage was begun
by the enemy torpedoing the *Dunraven* abaft the engine-room.
Captain Campbell at once ordered a "Q abandon
ship"—that is, he left his guns visible and pretended that
the concealed gunners were now leaving after being
detected.  The ship continued to burn, and the submarine
circled cautiously round, shelling her for forty minutes,
then submerged again.

Captain Campbell had still two torpedoes left, and both
of these he fired at the submarine.  One just missed her
head, and the other passed two feet abaft her periscope.  He
had now lost his last chance of a kill, and signalled urgently
for assistance, preparing at the same time for a last fight
with a single gun.  The American vessel *Noma* came up
immediately, followed by the *Attack* and the *Christopher*.
The U-boat was driven off, the fire extinguished, and the
ship taken in tow by the *Christopher*.  During the night it
was found necessary to take off her crew and her wounded,
and the *Dunraven* was sunk at last by a British gunshot.

In reporting this action Captain Campbell brought specially
to notice the extreme bravery of Lieutenant Bonner,
who received the Victoria Cross, and the 4-inch gun's crew,
to whom the same honour was given.  "Lieutenant Bonner,
having been blown out of his control by the first explosion,
crawled into the gun hatch with the crew.  They there
remained at their posts with a fire raging in the poop below,
and the deck getting red hot.  One man tore up his shirt
to give pieces to the gun's crew to stop the fumes getting
into their throats; others lifted the boxes of cordite off the
deck to keep it from exploding; and all the time they knew
that they must be blown up, as the secondary supply and
magazine was immediately below.  They told me afterwards
that communication with the main control was cut off, and
although they knew they would be blown up, they also knew
that they would spoil the show if they moved, so they
remained until actually blown up with their gun.  Then
when, as wounded men, they were ordered to remain quiet
in various places during the second action, they had to lie
there unattended and bleeding, with explosions continually
going an aboard, and splinters from the enemy's shell-fire
penetrating their quarters.  Lieutenant Bonner, himself
wounded, did what he could for two who were with him in
the wardroom.  When I visited them after the action they
thought little of their wounds, but only expressed their
disgust that the enemy had not been sunk.  Surely such bravery
is hard to equal."

It may be added that such bravery is still harder to
defeat.  The discipline and devotion which the genius of this
commander had imparted to his ship's company, when
added to the long-descended seamanship and enterprise of
our Service, proved too much for the unscrupulous courage
and mechanical skill of the enemy.  It cannot be doubted that
in any imaginable war at sea the same qualities would produce
the same result; for the mystery, after all, lay rather in the
men than in the ships.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`JUTLAND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   JUTLAND.

.. vspace:: 2

On May 30, 1916, the Grand Fleet put to sea for one of
its periodical sweeps.  Admiral Jellicoe had information
which gave him some hope that the enemy might at last
be caught in the North Sea; and in fact, on the morning of
the 31st, the German High Sea Fleet did come out, in ignorance
of Jellicoe's move, but in "hope of meeting with separate
enemy divisions."  Admiral Scheer had with him the Battle
Fleet of fifteen dreadnoughts and six older ships, with three
divisions of cruisers, seven torpedo flotillas, and ten zeppelins;
and in advance of these was a squadron of five battle-cruisers,
under Admiral Hipper, with his own cruisers and destroyers.
Advancing towards Hipper was the British Battle-Cruiser
Fleet under Admiral Beatty—the *Lion*, *Princess Royal*, *Tiger*,
*Queen Mary*, *Indefatigable*, and *New Zealand*—with the Fifth
Battle Squadron under Rear-Admiral Evan-Thomas—the *Barham*,
*Valiant*, *Malaya*, and *Warspite*; and in front of these
were three light-cruiser squadrons under Commodore
Goodenough, with four destroyer flotillas.  Behind, and at a
considerable distance, to avoid alarming the enemy too
soon, came Admiral Jellicoe with the main fleet—twenty-four
dreadnoughts in six divisions abreast of each other,
and each in line ahead.  He had with him also the Third
Battle-Cruiser Squadron, three squadrons of cruisers, and
three destroyer flotillas.

The light cruiser *Galatea* first sighted enemy ships at
2.20 p.m.  Soon she reported the smoke of a fleet, and at
3.31 Beatty sighted Hipper and formed his line of battle.
At 3.48 the action began at 18,500 yards, Hipper racing back
towards his fleet and Beatty pursuing.  The firing on both
sides was rapid and accurate; in twelve minutes the leading
ships on both sides had been seriously hit; six minutes more
and a salvo, which reached her magazine, destroyed the
*Indefatigable*.

The Fifth Battle Squadron now drew up and came into
action.  Immediately afterwards the enemy sent fifteen
destroyers and a light cruiser to attack with torpedoes.
They were met by our twelve destroyers, who fought with them
a most gallant battle within the main battle, repulsing them
and forcing their battle-cruisers to turn.  The *Nestor*, the
*Nomad*, and two enemy destroyers were sunk; the battle-cruisers
swept on, and the action was resumed.

The enemy's gunners now seemed to be losing their first
accuracy, and at 4.18 the third ship of the German line was
burning.  But a few minutes later a salvo struck the *Queen
Mary* in a vital part abreast of a turret; in one minute the
ship was gone, and the *Tiger*, her next astern, passed over the
place where she had been, without seeing any sign of her
but smoke and falling debris.  Admiral Beatty had lost two
of his six battle-cruisers, and his flagship was damaged; but
his tactics and his fighting spirit were in no way disturbed.

Twelve minutes later he was cheered by Commodore
Goodenough reporting the German Battle Fleet.  He had
found the enemy at last in the open, and his business now
was to draw them on towards the Grand Fleet.  He recalled
his destroyers and turned his whole force northward.  Hipper,
still steering south, fought him for a few minutes as they
passed one another on opposite courses, and then turned
north to follow him.  The whole German fleet was now in
line; but Beatty, having the superior speed, was able to
overlap their head and keep their tail out of action.  He
engaged their five battle-cruisers with his own four,
supported by the *Barham* and the *New Zealand*, while the *Malaya*
and the *Warspite* were hammering their leading battleships.

.. _`ADMIRAL SIR DAVID BEATTY`:

.. figure:: images/img-149.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: ADMIRAL SIR DAVID BEATTY (EARL BEATTY OF THE NORTH SEA).

   ADMIRAL SIR DAVID BEATTY
   (EARL BEATTY OF THE NORTH SEA).

The Grand Fleet was now rapidly approaching, and
Admiral Jellicoe had to prepare for the extremely difficult
manoeuvre of joining battle with an enemy of whose position
he was not fully informed.  Gun-flashes were reported at
6.5 on the starboard bow, but the only ships visible were
the *Lion* and other battle-cruisers steering east in thick mist.
The admiral lost no time; at 6.8 he ordered two torpedo
flotillas to his port front and one to starboard; then, after
receiving a further report from Admiral Beatty, at 6.16 he
ordered his six divisions of battleships to deploy eastwards,
forming on the port wing column.  He thus threatened to
cut off the enemy from his base, and in order to close him the
more quickly the deployment was made by divisions instead
of in succession.  The movement was entirely successful.
At the same time the battle-cruisers were getting clear to
the south and east, and Admiral Evan-Thomas's four ships
were forming astern of the fleet.  They did this under fire,
but without serious interference; the *Warspite*, whose helm
jammed, was for a few moments carried over towards the
enemy, but the German gunnery was no longer steady
enough to hit her.

.. _`Battle of Jutland: Track Chart`:

.. figure:: images/img-151.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Battle of Jutland.—Track Chart.

   Battle of Jutland.—Track Chart.

For the Germans the horizon was now filled with an
unending line of British ships, and the sight, as their own
officers said, "took the heart out of the men."  They were
already "utterly crushed" by the masterly way in which
Admiral Jellicoe had brought his huge fleet into action, and
they saw that Admiral Beatty was outflanking them by "a
model manoeuvre, a performance of the highest order."[#]
Their line bent away, first to the east, and then to the south,
suffering heavily as it turned, and making not a hit in return.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] Captain von Hase.

.. vspace:: 2

They had, however, inflicted some losses on the British
cruisers while the battleships were deploying.  Rear-Admiral
Sir Robert Arbuthnot, who had chased the light cruiser
*Wiesbaden* (with the *Defence*, *Warrior*, and *Black Prince*) and
crippled her between the lines, came under fire from two
German battle-cruisers, and was blown up with the *Defence*,
while the *Warrior* and the *Black Prince* were badly hit.
Rear-Admiral Hood, too, met his fate; he had been scouting far to
the south with the *Invincible*, *Inflexible*, and *Indomitable*, and
was returning north to take station at the head of Beatty's
line.  He executed this manoeuvre in grand style, and at
once engaged the gigantic *Derfflinger*, hitting her repeatedly;
but after two minutes of hard pounding a big shell blew up
the *Invincible's* magazine, and she sank with her admiral.

But by this time the action between the main fleets had
been virtually lost and won.  The German battleships at
the head of Admiral Scheer's line had suffered severely
under the fire of the British rear divisions and were turning
away south, while their battle-cruisers were in even worse
plight.  Two minutes after the *Invincible* sank, the *Lutzow* was
no longer able to keep station, and Admiral Hipper was
compelled to transfer his flag.  But his difficulty was to find a
sound ship; his next astern, the *Derfflinger*, had lost her
wireless and was gaping with a hole 20 feet square in her bows;
the *Seydlitz* had also lost her wireless, and had shipped several
thousand tons of water.  After being some time in a destroyer,
the admiral went aboard the *Moltke*, and sent the *Derfflinger*
to lead the line, with only the *Von der Tann* to follow.

Half dead though these three remaining ships were, their
hardest task was yet before them.  Admiral Scheer was in
a desperate position, outmanoeuvred and outfought, with
the Grand Fleet in the act of forming line between him and
his base; and he is entitled to all credit for the plan which
he adopted to secure his escape from total destruction.  At
7.12 he ordered Hipper to attack Beatty in hope of breaking
his encircling movement, and three minutes afterwards sent
his destroyers to hold Jellicoe's line with a torpedo attack,
while he got away his crumpled battle fleet to the westward.
These tactics cost him dear, but he was successful in increasing
his distance and withdrawing his battleships from the fire
which must speedily have overwhelmed them.

In the torpedo attack not less than twenty of his torpedoes
were seen to cross the British line.  All were avoided, for
Admiral Jellicoe, acting on principles adopted by the
Admiralty some time before, ordered his ships to turn away
two or more points as soon as the attack was seen.  When
it was over they at once turned back towards the enemy, but
Admiral Scheer had by that time disappeared westward into
the mist.  Of his twenty-one battleships twelve had been
seriously damaged, and their united fire had made but a
single hit on the twenty-six British battleships which engaged
them—a hit which wounded three men in the *Colossus*.

The gallant Hipper suffered even more severely.  He had
no sooner started his attack on Beatty when the *Derfflinger*
met more than her match in the *Lion*.  In eight minutes she
is reported by her chief gunnery officer, Captain von Hase,
to have received twenty 15-inch shells, which destroyed
turret after turret, carried away her fire control and chart-house,
and set her on fire fore and aft.  With only two heavy
guns left, she drew off and went after her fleet, followed by the
*Von der Tann* only.  The *Seydlitz* and the *Moltke* had already
left the line under cover of the smoke from the burning *Lutzow*.
The light was now failing fast; the *Lion* was still hunting, but
could no longer find her prey.  In spite of some heavy
hits, her admiral and his command were insatiable, and even
disappointed.  But they had, in fact, achieved a day's
fighting which is without a parallel—a battle-cruiser victory
complete in itself.

Touch was now lost between the two fleets, and Admiral
Jellicoe had to consider his dispositions for the night.  He
had completely succeeded in interposing between the enemy
and their base, and his object was to bar their retreat and
secure a final action next day.  He therefore placed his
battleships to the south in four columns a mile apart, his
destroyers 5 miles to their rear, with the battle-cruisers and
cruisers to the west, and two light-cruiser squadrons farther
north and south.  Finally, at 9.30, he sent the mine-laying
flotilla leader, *Abdiel*, to lay a minefield towards the Horn
Reef—a precaution which resulted in several explosions
among enemy ships during the night.

The German commander-in-chief was well aware that
in a daylight action he could expect nothing but destruction.
He resolved on a rush for home in the dark, and here again
he has the credit of a right decision and a right method.
He sent his ships to make their way through in detachments.
Some three or four light cruisers first ran into our destroyers,
slightly damaged the *Castor*, received a torpedo hit, and
vanished.  Another group of cruisers attacked our Second
Light Cruiser Squadron at very short range, inflicted heavy
casualties on the *Dublin* and the *Southampton*, and disappeared,
but with the loss of the light cruiser *Frauenlob*.  The
destroyer *Sparrowhawk* was sunk in action with a third group
of cruisers, and a little later the *Tipperary*.  At midnight some
battleships passed near the same flotilla, and one, the *Pommern*,
was torpedoed and sunk.  Another battleship squadron
followed soon after, and sank the destroyer *Ardent*.

At 1.46 a.m. the Twelfth Flotilla, farther north, sighted
six Kaiser battleships and attacked them.  Captain Stirling,
in the *Faulkner*, torpedoed one, and some time later
Commander Champion, in the *Nomad*, hit another; but the
Germans claim that both the wounded ships reached port.  The
Ninth Flotilla lost the *Turbulent*, rammed by a large unknown
vessel; but at 2.35 the destroyer *Moresby*, of the Thirteenth
Flotilla, attacked four *Deutschland* battleships and torpedoed
one.  Lastly, it is believed that the *Black Prince*, who had
been crippled hours before, was seen for a moment under
the searchlights and guns of a number of enemy ships, who
sank her at once.  All this battle by night was fought under
the most desperate conditions, the horror of darkness and
the glare and crash of sudden death alternating for five
hours; but it was far more ruinous to the German fleet
than to the British.

When day broke, Admiral Jellicoe formed his fleet in
line ahead and turned north; at 5.15 he called in the
battle-cruisers; at 6 a.m. he sighted his cruisers, and at 9 the
destroyers rejoined.  He had now all his force in hand,
except the Sixth Division of six battleships under Admiral
Burney, whose flagship, the *Marlborough*, had been hit by a
torpedo and was now being sent home under escort to be
repaired.  This, however, was no cause for delay, and Admiral
Jellicoe patrolled the battle area till noon, in search of
the enemy, moving first north, then south-west, and finally
north by west.

It was clear that Admiral Scheer had no intention of
further fighting.  He had a zeppelin out scouting, and
admits that she reported to him the position of the British
fleet.  But he was in no condition to move.  He had
inflicted on us a loss of three battle-cruisers, three armoured
cruisers, and eight destroyers; while of his own ships one
battleship, one battle-cruiser, four light cruisers, and five
destroyers had been sunk.  But his effective force had been
diminished out of all proportion to ours; his battle-cruisers
were in no condition to fight; he had discovered that the
whole squadron of pre-dreadnoughts were unable to lie in
a modern line of battle, while six of the remaining fifteen
were unfit to be anywhere but in dock; of his eleven light
cruisers ten had been hit, and four of them sunk.  He had,
in short, no fleet to make a fight with; whereas Admiral
Jellicoe had available twenty-six powerful battleships, all but
four of them untouched, six battle-cruisers out of nine, and
all his light forces, except three cruisers sunk and three
hard hit.

More fatal still, then and for ever, was the injury to the
moral stamina and tradition of the German fleet.  In that
one day they passed from the militant to the mutinous state
of mind, and their commander knew it.  As Captain Persius
wrote afterwards in the *Berliner Tageblatt*: "The losses
sustained by our fleet were enormous, in spite of the fact
that luck was on our side; and on June 1, 1916, it was clear
to every one of intelligence that this fight would be, and must
be, the only one to take place.  Those in authority have
often admitted this openly."  The Kaiser did his best to
shout our victory down, and he was seconded, though more
feebly, by German admirals who knew better.  But the High
Sea Fleet had failed completely to challenge the control of
the sea, and henceforth degenerated towards the final surrender.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BRITISH SUBMARINE SERVICE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BRITISH SUBMARINE SERVICE.

.. vspace:: 2

The war record of the British submarine service is unique;
the difficulties and dangers which our men faced and
overcame were such as no other navy has attempted.  The patrol
of the shallow Belgian coast and the hunting down of U-boats
was a very different task from torpedoing merchant vessels
or hospital ships without warning; and the campaigns in
the Marmora and the Baltic were conducted under conditions
which had no parallel elsewhere.

A glance at the map will show that the Marmora was not
only distant from the British naval base, but that the only
line of approach was of an uncommonly formidable character.
The channel of the Dardanelles is narrow and winding, with
a strong tide perpetually racing down it, and setting strongly
into its many bays.  It was, moreover, protected by forts
with powerful guns and searchlights and torpedo tubes, and by
barrages of thick wire and netting; it was also patrolled
constantly by armed ships.  Yet all these defences were evaded
or broken through with marvellous courage and ingenuity;
for nearly a year a succession of brilliant commanders took
their boats regularly up and down the passage, and made
the transport of Turkish troops and munitions first hazardous
and finally impracticable.  Two battleships, a destroyer, and
five gunboats fell to them, besides over thirty steamers, many
of which were armed, nine transports, seven ammunition
and store ships, and no less than 188 sailing ships and dhows
with supplies.  It is hardly necessary to add that in no case
was violence done to neutrals or non-combatants.

The first officer to take a British submarine up the
Dardanelles was Lieutenant Norman Holbrook.  It was in
December 1914 that his attempt was made, and after equipping
his boat, B11, with ingenious devices for jumping obstacles,
and running several preliminary trials, he trimmed and dived
for Sedd-el-Bahr at the moment when the searchlights were
extinguished at dawn.  Rather more than four hours after
his start he had passed the Straits and was at last able to put
his periscope above water.  He found his fortune at the same
moment.  There, on his starboard beam, was a large two-funnelled
vessel, painted grey, and flying the Turkish ensign.
At 600 yards he fired his starboard torpedo, and dipped for
a few seconds.  An explosion was heard.  B11 came quietly
to observation depth again of her own motion, and her commander,
still at his periscope, saw the grey ship firing a number
of guns.  His boat dipped again, but he got her up once more,
and this time saw his enemy, the battleship *Messudiyeh*, silent,
and sinking slowly by the stern.  He turned for home, dived
into the channel, and ran along the bottom at full speed;
came up to take his bearings, dived again, and by 2 p.m. had
cleared the exit.  In ten hours he had proved all the
possibilities of a novel campaign.  He had forced the
strongly-barred channel, surprised and sunk a battleship in broad
daylight, and returned to report, though he had gone up
without information and come down with a damaged compass.
Of the boats which followed in the spring and summer
of 1915, the most famous were E14 (Lieutenant-Commander
E. Courtney Boyle); E11 (Lieutenant-Commander M. E. Nasmith);
E12 (Lieutenant-Commander K. M. Bruce);
E7 (Lieutenant-Commander Cochrane); E2 (Commander
David Stocks); and K1 (Lieutenant Wilfred Pirie).  In
efficiency all these surpassed everything which had been thought
possible of submarines.  Their cruises lasted from a fortnight
at first to thirty days later, and finally to forty and
even forty-eight.  During this time they would run 2,000
miles and more, with no resources for supply or repairs
beyond what they carried on board.  When Commander Boyle
brought E14 back to her base in August after her third
cruise, she had done over 12,000 miles since leaving
England, and had never been out of running order—a record for
which her chief engine-room artificer, James Hollier Hague,
was promoted to warrant rank.

It is impossible to relate here the adventures, the
ingenuities, and the brilliant service which these seven
commanders reported in the bald and convincing style of the
British Navy.  One example only can be given—a typical and
not an exceptional one.  Lieutenant-Commander Nasmith
took E11 up for the first time in May 1915, in succession
to Commander Courtney Boyle, who had just returned,
leaving the Turks under the belief that the Marmora was
infested by a whole flotilla of submarines.  By a curious
combination of activity and accident, Lieutenant-Commander
Nasmith at once confirmed this legend.

On his second day out he "dived unobserved into
Constantinople," and torpedoed a Turkish gunboat; five hours
later he stopped a small steamer, whose crew did a "panic
abandon ship," capsizing all their boats as they were put
out.  An American gentleman then appeared on the upper
deck and conversed amicably, after which he was sent ashore,
and the ship, being found to contain a Krupp gun and
ammunition, was cleared and sent to the bottom.  Two heavily
laden store-ships were then attacked.  One was sunk and
the other driven ashore.  Under a hurricane of fire from the
shore batteries, the submarine dived and got away towards
the Bosphorus.  At Galata there was a panic; all shops
were closed, troops were disembarked from transports,
re-embarked, and again landed.  The effect was redoubled next
day when the American gentleman returned to tell his story.
Probably he had inquired the number of the British
submarines on the ground, and had been misunderstood to be
asking for the number of the boat he was aboard; for he
reported—and the news ran through Constantinople—that
there were eleven of our boats in the Marmora, holding up
all ships going to the Dardanelles.  And E11 did in fact
achieve this result.  Transports lay idle in the Golden Horn,
and as the one real boat and her ten imaginary consorts
patrolled the Marmora, Turks and Americans wondered
where they had their base, and how it had been prepared
in hostile waters.

In August E11 was on duty once more, hunting in couples
with E14.  Commanders Boyle and Nasmith rendezvoused
on the 6th, and concerted a plan for shelling troops next day
on the land route to Gallipoli.  This operation was very
successful; in less than three hours E11's 12-pounder twice
broke up columns on the coast road.  On the following day
Commander Boyle destroyed a 5,000 ton supply steamer
with torpedo and gun-fire, while Commander Nasmith sank
the battleship *Haireddin Barbarossa*.  This ship was passing
north-east of Gallipoli, escorted by a destroyer.  E11 was
skilfully brought into position on her starboard beam, and two
torpedoes got home amidships.  The *Barbarossa* immediately
took a list to starboard, altered course towards the shore,
and opened a heavy fire.  But within twenty minutes a large
flash burst from her fore part, and she rolled over and sank.

The Turks attempted to conceal the details of this
catastrophe; but they confided to Mr. Einstein of the American
Embassy that a gunboat perished with *Barbarossa*, and
one of two transports which she was convoying, while the
other ran aground.  They added that the attack was made
by six submarines, who completely surrounded the battleship
and her convoy.  Commander Nasmith afterwards sank
a large collier and two more transports, and then turned his
attention again to cutting the enemy's communications by
land.

His lieutenant, D'Oyly Hughes, volunteered to take the
most dangerous part in an attack on the Ismid railway.  A
raft was put together behind Kalolimno Island, capable of
supporting one man, and carrying his equipment and a charge
of explosives.  With this Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes was to
reach the shore, and blow up the railway line, or, if possible,
the viaduct.  The risk involved not only the volunteer but
E11 herself, for so long as he had still a chance of returning,
she could not quit the neighbourhood, or even conceal
herself by submerging.

At 2 a.m. Commander Nasmith took the boat inshore till
her nose just grounded, within three feet of the rocks, where
there were cliffs on each side high enough to prevent her
conning-tower from being seen.  Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes
dropped into the water and swam off, pushing his raft
towards a spot about 60 yards to the left.  Besides his
demolition charge he had only a revolver, a bayonet, an
electric torch, and a whistle.  He found a landing place, scaled
the cliff, and prowled along the railway with his heavy charge
till he was brought up by the sound of voices; three Turks
were sitting by the side of the line.  He laid down his
guncotton, and made a wide detour to inspect the viaduct,
roused a small farmyard on his way, and was again stopped
by finding a number of men working a stationary engine
at the near end of the viaduct.

He crept back to his gun-cotton, and decided to blow
up a low brickwork support over a small hollow, only 150
yards from the men, but a spot where real damage could be
inflicted.  He muffled the pistol for firing the fuse, but on
so still a night it made a very loud noise.  The three Turks
heard it, and instantly started to chase their enemy down
the line.  Lieutenant Hughes had but one chance—to find
his way to the shore and swim off.  To gain time, he turned
and fired at his pursuers; they stopped to return his fire,
and he distanced them, gained the shore, and plunged into
the water.  As he did so he heard with joy the sound of a
heavy explosion, with the crash of fragments hurled into the
sea.  The railway line was effectively cut; but he was
three-quarters of a mile from the bay where E11 was lying hid.

He swam out to sea, and after going some 500 yards
blew a long blast on his whistle; but the boat failed to hear
him.  Day was breaking—the time of waiting for him must
be short.  He swam ashore again, rested on the rocks, and
plunged in once more.  One by one he had to throw away
pistol, torch, and bayonet.  At last he rounded the point
and his whistle was heard; but at the same moment shouts
and rifle fire came from the cliffs above.  The boat backed
out towards him, determined to save him at any cost.

But now came the most trying part of his adventure.
In the early morning mist the bow, the gun, and the conning-tower
of the submarine appeared to the distressed swimmer
to be three small rowing-boats advancing towards him, and
manned, of course, by enemies.  He turned back, swam
ashore, and tried to hide himself under the cliffs.  But he
was still cool and clear-headed, and after climbing a few
feet looked back and realized his mistake.  One last swim of
40 yards, and he was picked up almost exhausted.  He had
run hard for his life and swum a mile in his clothes.  "5.5
a.m.," says E11's log, "dived out of rifle fire, and proceeded
out of the Gulf of Ismid."

She ended her cruise with a brilliant week's work; fought
an action with three armed tugs, a dhow, and a destroyer,
evading the destroyer, and sinking two of the other ships
by gun-fire; torpedoed two large transports; bombarded
the magazine and railway station at Mudania; battered the
viaduct for an hour; and on her return down the Dardanelles
passed the obstacles without assistance or misadventure.
Her final cruise was in November and December, when she
was out forty-eight days, and sank forty-six enemy ships.
Her last companion, E2, was recalled two days later, and the
campaign was over.





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.. _`THE BRITISH SUBMARINE SERVICE (continued)`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BRITISH SUBMARINE SERVICE (*continued*).

.. vspace:: 2

The first of our submarine voyagers in the Baltic was
Lieutenant-Commander Max Horton, in E9.  He distinguished
himself in the early months of the war by sinking a
German light cruiser and a destroyer in the North Sea.  In
January 1915 he entered the Baltic, sank a destroyer on the
29th, a transport on 11th May, and on 5th June another
transport and another destroyer.  On 2nd July he torpedoed
the *Pommern*, a 13,000 ton battleship, with 11-inch guns.  He
was then joined by E1 (Commander N. F. Laurence), and
on 22nd August by E8, whose log contains the best account
of the long, intricate, and dangerous voyage out.

Commander Goodhart started in E8 on 18th August,
with 1,500 miles of adventure between him and his new base
at Reval.  He passed warily up the Skagerrack, avoiding
the central line of traffic, and diving once under a whole
fleet of steam trawlers.  At 7 p.m. he came to the surface
again, rounded the Skaw at full speed, and entered the
Kattegat.  In the fading light several merchantmen were
seen going north; the shore and island beacons began to
twinkle one by one—Hamnskau, Vinga, Skaw, Trindelen,
Anholt.  But the night was short; by 3 a.m. he must dive
again and lie on shoal ground while traffic passed above him.
At 5.25 he ventured up, but was put down quickly by a
steamer; to be seen might rouse a hunt.  At 7 he came up
again and did a survey of l-½ hours in a friendly mist, then
down again, to crawl at 3 knots till 1 p.m., when he was off
the entrance to the Sound.

Here he must choose between going forward submerged,
or waiting for darkness and attempting the channel on the
surface.  He decided to continue his dive into the Sound
and wait for night inside.  He went in at 50 feet, came up
to 21 feet to verify his position, down again to 50, and altered
course to pass through the northern narrows.  At 4.10 p.m. he
was east of Helsingor Light; at 5.20, after another observation,
he went to bottom in 11 fathoms, to wait for darkness.
At 8.15 p.m. he rose to the surface; the Danish shore
was bright with many lights, the Swedish shore all dark.
He steered south-westward on the surface, altering course
to avoid being seen by two destroyers which were going north
along the Danish shore at a great pace; but now one of
them suddenly turned south and stopped.  E8 ran on, but
into still more dangerous waters.  The lights of Copenhagen
were bright, and a searchlight was working from Middle
Ground Fort; now and again it swept across the submarine.
Then came several fishing boats, then two red lights moving
south, close over to the Danish shore.  There was nothing to
show that E8 had been seen, and she headed boldly for
Flint Channel.

Off Malmo the shorelights were dazzling, and it was
extremely hard to fix a position.  There were also many
fishing boats about, each carrying two bright lights.
Commander Goodhart ordered the boat to be trimmed down,
with upper deck awash, and proceeded with one engine
only, at 7 knots.  He steadied his course through Flint
Channel, passing at least twenty vessels with white lights,
and one making searchlight signals in the air.  No sooner
had these been avoided by changing course than a tramp
came along, showing first a green light and then three white
ones.  She seemed to have anchored; but now two other
vessels had to be dodged, and then the ship with the
searchlight.  Immediately afterwards, when just north-east of the
lightship's three vertical red lights, E8 was viewed at last;
a small torpedo boat sighted her as she was creeping by
within 200 yards.

The hunt was up; the enemy showed red and green
flares, and altered course to chase.  E8 dived, and struck
"very strong bottom" at 19 feet, and immediately afterwards
at 14 feet.  A succession of bumps brought her to a
stop.  It was 11.40 p.m.  After an anxious quarter of an
hour Commander Goodhart decided to rise to the surface.
On his starboard quarter was the Drogden lightship, ahead
of him a large destroyer or small cruiser—the ship which had
been signalling with searchlight.  She was only 200 yards
away, but the commander trimmed his boat deep, and stole
past.  This took four minutes, and he then found another
destroyer right ahead, and within 100 yards.  He could but
dive; the boat struck bottom at 16 feet heavily, carrying
away all blades of the starboard propeller.  The pursuers
could be heard overhead.

Life was now a matter of minutes and feet.  The boat
was still moving; at 12.15 a.m. she was at 18 feet, and
bumping badly; at 12.19 the commander stopped her and
came silently to the surface.  The destroyer was still close
on his starboard beam, and in one minute he had dived
again as slowly as he dared; mercifully the water deepened
as E8 glided away.  She seemed to be escaping; but at
2.10 a.m. she struck bottom again, and when she ventured
up after an hour, there again was the destroyer on her port
beam.  Happily this time she got down without being seen,
and when she came up again at 7.15 there was nothing in
sight.

But the danger was not over yet.  E8 was nearly out
of breath; her battery was running very low.  After diving
again to avoid a steamer and afterwards a destroyer,
Commander Goodhart decided to find a good depth, and lie at
the bottom till darkness gave him a chance of recharging.
For eight long hours E8 lay like a stone in 23 fathoms.
When she came up three or four vessels were patrolling close
by, and the moon was too bright.  She tried again, but
was again put down by a shadowy destroyer to the
southward.  At last, ten minutes before midnight, she found a
bit of quiet sea where she could take breath.

But only for two hours; daylight comes early in northern
waters.  At 2 a.m. Commander Goodhart dived again, and
lay long in 17 fathoms, spending his time in studying the
chart.  He was now well out of the Sound, and clear of the
Swedish coast.  Right ahead was the island of Bornholm,
and if that could be passed successfully, the Baltic lay open
beyond, a long voyage still, but a less crowded thoroughfare.

At 9 a.m. he came to the surface for three hours.  By
noon he was not far west of Ronne, and as he wished to make
sure of getting past Bornholm unobserved, he decided to
remain on the bottom till dark, then slip by and recharge
his batteries for a long run north by daylight.  By 7 p.m. he
was on his way; by sunrise on the 21st he was passing
the east coast of the great island of Gotland.  At 9.2 p.m. he
dived for a light cruiser, which passed over him; at 10
he returned to the surface and ran past the entrance to the
Gulf of Riga and the island of Oesel.  By 1 a.m. on August
22nd he had to dive for daylight, but at 3 he came up again,
and ran ahead at full speed.  At 8.30 a.m. on August 23rd
he sighted Dagerort ahead, and joined Commander Max
Horton in E9, passed with her and a Russian destroyer into
the Gulf of Finland, and by 9 p.m. secured E8 in Reval
harbour.  Within twenty-four hours he had docked and
overhauled her, replaced her broken propeller, and reported
her ready for sea.

Of the warships sunk by E8 and her consorts, and of
their blockade of the German traffic in the Baltic, there is
no need to speak.  Their feats of war, brilliant as they were,
formed only a minor part of the glory of their intricate and
perilous voyages in a hostile sea.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MERCANTILE MARINE AND FISHING FLEETS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE MERCANTILE MARINE AND FISHING FLEETS.

.. vspace:: 2

Among the great deeds of the war there is one which, though
hardly to be described in detail, ranks in truth among
the greatest of all.  It is a collective deed: the conduct of
the whole British Mercantile Marine and the Fishing
Fleet—Services not less worthy than the professional Navy and
Army to represent the "decent and dauntless people" of
these islands.  It had been prophesied before the war that
after three ships had been sunk by enemy submarines no
merchantman would put to sea.  The prophet, though himself
a naval man, can have known little of the resourcefulness
of his own Service, and still less of the temper of his
fellow-countrymen.

During the four years of the war, British commerce was
never held up by any unwillingness of our seamen to face
gun-fire or torpedo: skippers, engineers, and deck hands
who had had three, four, or five ships sunk under them
were constantly asking to be employed again before their
clothes were dry.  Seventeen thousand of them died in the
9,000,000 tons of shipping that we lost; yet not a man among
the survivors drew back.  On the contrary, it must be
recorded that the enemy owed much of his success to the
habitual and imperturbable confidence of the British skipper
in his own ship and his own judgment.  The men of the
Mercantile Marine and Fishing Fleets also took their full
share in the work of defending our coasts and hunting down
their lawless and cruel enemies; and in this work they showed
every quality of a great Service.  It was in no empty form of
words that the King honoured the memory of "that great
company of our men, who, though trained only to the peaceful
traffic of the sea, yet in the hour of national danger gave
themselves, with the ancient skill and endurance of their
breed, to face new perils and new cruelties of war, and in
a right cause served fearlessly to the end."  Of this skill,
endurance, and fearlessness, recorded in a thousand terse
and unpretentious logs, an example or two may be picked
almost at random.

In 1915, when the U-boat war was still a new experience,
a sharp little double action was fought by two armed smacks,
the *Boy Alfred* and the *I'll Try*, against two German
submarines.  The British boats were commanded by Skipper
Walter S. Wharton and Skipper Thomas Crisp, and were out
in the North Sea, when they sighted a pair of U-boats coming
straight towards them on the surface.  The first came within
300 yards of the *Boy Alfred* and stopped.  Then followed an
extraordinary piece of work, intelligible only to the German
mind.  The U-boat signalled with a flag to the *Boy Alfred* to
come nearer, and at the same time opened fire upon her with
rifles or a machine-gun, hitting her in many places, though by
mere chance not a single casualty resulted.

Skipper Wharton's time had not yet come; he was
neither for submission nor for a duel at long range; he risked
all for a close fight.  He first threw out his small boat, and
by this encouraged the U-boat to approach nearer.  She
submerged and immediately reappeared within a hundred
yards.  A man then came out of the conning-tower and hailed
the *Boy Alfred*, giving the order to abandon ship, as he
intended to torpedo.  But Skipper Wharton had now the range
he desired—the hundred yards hammer and tongs range so
dear to Nelson's gunners—and instead of "Abandon ship"
he gave the order "Open fire."  His man at the 12-pounder
did not fail him; the first round was just short, and the second
just over, but having straddled his target, the gunner put his
third shot into the submarine's hull, just before the conning-tower,
where it burst on contact.  The fourth shot was better
still: it pierced the conning-tower and burst inside.  The
U-boat, with her torpedo unfired, sank like a stone, and a
significant wide-spreading patch of oil marked her grave.

In the meantime the second enemy had gone to the east of
the *I'll Try*, who was herself east of the *Boy Alfred*.  He was
still more cautious than his companion, and remained submerged
for some time, cruising around the *I'll Try* with only a
periscope showing.  Skipper Crisp, having a motor fitted to his
smack, was too handy for the German, and kept altering course
so as to bring the periscope ahead of him, whenever it was
visible.  The enemy disappeared entirely no less than six
times, but at last summoned up courage to break surface.
His hesitation was fatal to him—he had given the smack
time to make every preparation with perfect order and
coolness.  When he appeared suddenly at last, his upper deck
and conning-tower were no sooner clearly exposed than
Skipper Crisp put his helm hard over, brought the enemy on
to his broadside, and opened fire with his 13-pounder gun.
At this moment a torpedo passed under the smack's stern,
missing only by 2 feet, then coming to the surface and running
along past the *Boy Alfred*.  It was the U-boat's first and last
effort; in the same instant, the *I'll Try* fired her only shot.
The shell struck the base of the conning-tower and exploded,
blowing pieces of the submarine into the water on all
sides.

The U-boat immediately took a list to starboard and
plunged bows first; she disappeared so rapidly that the
smack's gunner had not even time for a second blow.  The *I'll
Try* hurried to the spot, and there saw large bubbles of air
coming up, and a wide and increasing patch of oil.  She
marked the position with a Dan buoy and stood by with the
*Boy Alfred* for three-quarters of an hour.  Finally, as the
enemy gave no sign of life, the two smacks returned together
to harbour.  Their skippers were both rewarded for their
excellent work; Skipper Wharton, who had already killed
two U-boats and had received the D.S.C. and the D.S.M. with
a bar, was now given a bar to the D.S.C.  Skipper Crisp
already had the D.S.M., and now received the D.S.C.

In another of these fishermen's fights it was the trawl
itself which actually brought on the battle at close quarters
and made victory possible.  One day in February 1915 the
trawler *Rosetta*, Skipper G. A. Novo, had gone out to fish,
but she had on deck a 6-pounder gun ingeniously concealed.
She joined a small fleet of four smacks and two steam trawlers
some 45 miles out, and fished with them all night.  Before
dawn a voice was heard shouting out of the twilight: it
came from one of the steam trawlers.  "Cut your gear away,
there's a submarine three-quarters of a mile away; he's sunk
a smack and I have the crew on board."  "All right, thank
you," said Skipper Novo; but to get away from the enemy
was precisely what he did not want to do.  For some fifteen
minutes he went on towing his trawl, in hope of being attacked;
but as nothing happened, he thought he was too far away
from the smacks, and began to haul up his trawl.  He was
bringing his boat round before the wind, and had all but the
last twenty fathoms of the trawl in, when the winch suddenly
refused to heave any more, and the warp ran out again about
ten fathoms—a thing beyond all experience.  "Hullo!"
said the skipper, "there's something funny."  He jumped
down off the bridge and asked the mate what was the reason
of the winch running back.  "I don't know, skipper; the
stop-valve is opened out full."  The skipper tried it himself;
then went to the engine-man and asked him if full steam was
on.  "The steam's all right."  "Then reverse winch!" said
the skipper, and went to give a hand himself, as was his
custom in a difficulty; the hauling went on this time, all but
to the end.

Suddenly the mate gripped him by the arm.  "Skipper,
a submarine on board us."  And there the enemy was, a bare
hundred yards off on the starboard quarter.  "Hard a-starboard,
and a tick ahead!" shouted the skipper, and rushed
for the gun, with the crew following.  The gun was properly
in charge of the mate, and he got to it first; but the brief
dialogue which followed robbed him of his glory.  "Right,
skipper," he said, meaning thereby "This is my job."  But
in the same breath the skipper said "All right, Jack, I got
him! you run on bridge and keep him astern."  The *Rosetta's*
discipline was good; the mate went like a man, and the
skipper laid the gun.

He was justified by his success.  The enemy was very
quickly put out of action, being apparently left altogether
behind by the hurricane energy of Skipper Novo.  From the
moment of breaking surface less than sixty seconds had gone
by when the *Rosetta's* gun found the target.  The U-boat was
250 feet long and only 300 feet away; every shot was a
hit.  The fourth caused an explosion, and flames shot up 4
or 5 feet above the submarine.  Evidently she could no
longer submerge, and she attempted to make off on the
surface.  But Skipper Novo was right in his estimate of his
own chance—he had "got him."  His fifth, sixth, seventh,
and eighth shots were all direct hits on the receding target,
and at the eighth the enemy sank outright.

The *Rosetta* then spoke the smack *Noel*, which had been
close to her during the action, and now confirmed all her
observations.  There was no doubt that the U-boat had been
the obstruction which was tangled in the trawl.  She had
carried it all away, and in order to get clear had been obliged
to come to the surface, without knowing where she might find
herself, and there she had met her appropriate fate.

A third of these fights was a miniature fleet action, with
an epic sound about it.  In the Downs, and in the first
twilight of a November morning, three of his Majesty's armed
drifters—the *Present Help*, the *Paramount*, and the *Majesty*—were
beginning their daily sweep for mines, when Skipper
Thomas Lane of the *Present Help*, which was spare ship at the
moment, sighted an object a mile distant to the eastward.  As
day was breaking, she was quickly marked for a German
submarine—a huge one, with two big guns mounted on deck,
one a 4-inch and one a 22-pounder.  Nevertheless the *Present
Help*, the *Paramount*, and the *Majesty* opened fire at once with
their 6-pounders, not standing off, but closing their enemy,
and continuing to close her under heavy fire, until they were
hitting her with their own light guns.  Even our history
can hardly show a grander line of battle than those three
tiny ships bearing down upon their great antagonist; and
although U48 did not fall to their fire, her surrender was due
in the first instance to their determined onset.

It was the *Paramount* who took and gave the first knocks;
her searchlight was shot away, and in reply she succeeded in
putting one of the enemy's guns out of action.  In the
meantime, and none too soon, the *Present Help* had sent up
the red rocket.  It was seen by two other armed drifters,
the *Acceptable* and the *Feasible*, who were less than 2 miles off,
and by H.M.S. *Gipsy*, who was 4 miles away.  Skipper Lee, of
the *Acceptable*, immediately sang out "Action," and both boats
blazed away at 3,000 yards range, getting in at least one hit
on the enemy's conning-tower.  At the same moment came
the sound of the *Gipsy's* 12-pounder, as she rushed in at full
speed.

The U-boat had started with an enormous and apparently
overwhelming advantage of gun-power.  She ought to have
been a match, twice over, for all six of our little ships,
but she was on dangerous ground, and the astounding resolution
of the attack drove her off her course.  In ten minutes
the drifters had actually pushed her ashore on the Goodwin
Sands—the *Paramount* had closed to 30 yards.  Drake himself
was hardly nearer to the Spanish galleons.  Then came the
*Gipsy*, equally determined.  Her first two shots fell short,
the third was doubtful, but after that she got on to the target,
and the enemy's bigger remaining gun was no match for her
12-pounder.  After two hits with common pointed shell, she
put on eight out of nine lyddite shells, smashed the German's
last gun and set him on fire forward.  Thereupon the U-boat's
crew surrendered and jumped overboard.

It was now 7.20 and broad daylight.  Lieutenant-Commander
Frederick Robinson, of the *Gipsy*, gave the signal to
cease fire, and the five drifters set to work to save their
drowning enemies.  The *Paramount*, who was nearest, got
thirteen, the *Feasible* one, and the *Acceptable* two.  The
*Gipsy's* whaler was got away, and her crew, under Lieutenant
Gilbertson, R.N.R., tried for an hour to make headway
against the sea, but could not go further than half a mile,
the tide and weather being heavily against them.  They
brought back one dead man, and one prisoner in a very
exhausted condition; afterwards they went off again and
collected the prisoners from the other ships.  Later came the
procession back to port—a quiet and unobtrusive return, but
as glorious as any that the Goodwins have ever seen.  Full
rewards followed, and the due decorations for Skippers
Thomas Lane, Edward Kemp, and Richard William Barker.
But their greatest honour was already their own—they had
commanded in victorious action his Majesty's armed drifters
the *Present Help*, the *Paramount*, and the *Majesty*.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ZEEBRUGGE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   ZEEBRUGGE.

.. vspace:: 2

During the years 1916 and 1917 the Belgian ports of
Zeebrugge and Ostend had become more and more important to
the Germans as a base for their submarines.  Their loss would
be, as Admiral Scheer said, "a very disagreeable blow to
the U-boat campaign."  It was in November 1917 that the
British Admiralty first planned a blow against these ports,
but the favourable opportunity did not present itself until
April 23, 1918.  In the meantime, the Allies had succeeded
in bringing the last German offensive to a standstill, and
there was much anxiety as to its possible renewal.  The blow
struck by the Navy on St. George's Day was therefore a most
timely one, for it not only increased Admiral Scheer's difficulties
but resounded over the world as a daring feat of arms and a
proof of unbroken national spirit.

The difficulties of the proposed attack were enormous,
and real imagination was needed to cope with them.  The
coast was defended by batteries containing in all 120 heavy
guns, some of them of 15-inch calibre.  A battery of these
was emplaced upon the Mole at Zeebrugge—a solid stone
breakwater more than a mile long, which held also a railway
terminus, a seaplane station, a number of large sheds for
personnel and material, and, at the extreme seaward end, a
lighthouse with searchlight and range-finder.  The attacking
force would also have to reckon with the batteries on shore,
the troops who would reinforce the defenders on the Mole,
and the destroyers which were lying in the harbour.  It was
not, of course, proposed to take and hold works so strongly
defended; but an attack was indispensable, for the enemy's
attention must be diverted from the block-ships, which were
to arrive during the fight off both ports and sink themselves
in such a position as to impede the passage of U-boats.

The offensive then was directed against Zeebrugge, and
the plan of attack was to be the seizure of the Mole by a
landing party.  They must be strong enough to overrun it,
capture the big guns, and keep off enemy reinforcements by
destroying the railway viaduct which connected it with the
shore.  Then, when the block-ships had been sunk, the men
must be re-embarked and brought away.

For the fighting itself there was little need to be
over-anxious; the real problem was concerned with the difficulty
of approaching, throwing the men ashore, and getting them
away again without the transports being sunk by the enemy's
fire.  Nothing could be left to luck or the inspiration of the
moment, and the conditions of success were extremely severe.
First, the attacking ships must effect a complete surprise,
and reach the Mole before the guns of the defence could be
brought to bear upon them.  The enemy searchlights must
therefore be blinded, as far as possible, by an artificial fog
or smoke-screen; but again this must not be dense enough
to obscure the approach entirely.  Secondly, the work must
be done in very short time, and to the minute, for though the
attack might be a surprise, the return voyage must be made
under fire.  The shore batteries were known to have a
destructive range of 16 miles; to get clear of the danger zone
would take the flotilla two hours.  Daylight would begin by
3.30 a.m.; it was therefore necessary to leave the Mole by
1.30; and as, for similar reasons, it was impossible to arrive
before midnight, an hour and a half was all that the time-table
could allow for fighting, blocking, and re-embarking.  To do
things as exactly as this, a night must be chosen when wind,
weather, and tide would all be favourable.  The difficulty
of finding so precise an opportunity caused four months'
delay—the expedition had in fact twice started and been compelled
to put back: once it had actually come within 15 miles of
the Mole.

The attack was conducted by Vice-Admiral Roger Keyes,
commanding at Dover; the force employed was a large and
composite one, and required masterly handling.  The Ostend
expedition, though highly difficult and dangerous, was an
affair of blocking only, and was comparatively simple; but
for Zeebrugge there were needed, besides the principal ships,
a fleet of smoke-boats for making fog, motor launches for
showing flares and bringing off men in difficulties, monitors
for engaging the batteries, and destroyers for looking after the
enemy ships in harbour; lastly, there was an old submarine,
C3, to be used as a self-propelling mine for the destruction of
the viaduct.  The landing on the Mole was to be made from
the *Vindictive* (Captain A. Carpenter), an old light cruiser of
5,720 tons, and she was to be accompanied by two old ferry-boats
from the Mersey, the *Daffodil* and the *Iris*; the three
destroyers were the *North Star* (Lieutenant-Commander
K. C. Helyar), the *Phoebe* (Lieutenant-Commander
H. E. Gore-Langton), and the *Warwick*, flying the Admiral's flag.

The success which resulted was due not to fortune but
to foresight, and to the accurate timing of the work of the
various units employed.  As the flotilla advanced the smoke-screen
craft and motor-boats dashed ahead, laid their screens,
drove in the enemy ships, and made it possible for the
transports to approach the Mole.  The Ostend force parted
company at the agreed point, and the monitors opened fire on
the shore batteries.  Precisely at midnight the *Sirius* and the
*Brilliant* arrived at Ostend, and at Zeebrugge the *Vindictive*,
emerging from the thick fog of smoke into the brilliant light
of German flares, saw the end of the Mole within 400 yards
of her.  She ran alongside at full speed, and returned the fire
of the big guns with her 6-inch and 12-pound armament.

.. _`Zeebrugge.`:

.. figure:: images/img-177.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Zeebrugge.

   Zeebrugge.

To grapple the Mole was very difficult; the outer wall was
high and there was a heavy swell rolling the ships.  The *Iris*
was ahead; but the *Daffodil*, being close astern of the *Vindictive*,
was able to push her into place with her bows and hold her
there most gallantly.  The *Vindictive* ran out the "brows" or
high gangways with which she was specially fitted, and the
storming parties were ready to land.  At this moment a shell fell
among them and killed Colonel Bertram Elliot of the Marines,
while Captain Henry Halanem, who was commanding the
bluejackets, fell to machine-gun fire.  But their men were
unchecked.  They rushed upon the brows, which were tossing
and crashing on the wall, and with all their heavy
accoutrements, bombs, and Lewis guns, cleared the leap down the
steep fall to the floor of the Mole, and began fighting their way
along it under cover of a barrage from the ship's howitzers.
The *Iris* meantime was grappling the Mole farther ahead,
with dearly bought success; the *Daffodil's* men jumped across
to the *Vindictive* and joined her storming party.

The charge was irresistible; the batteries were taken,
the dug-outs cleared, the hangars fired, the store-sheds blown
up, and those of the enemy who escaped into a destroyer were
sent to the bottom in her by a bombing attack from the
parapet.  All this was done in fifteen minutes; then followed
a tremendous explosion at the shore end of the Mole.  The C3,
manned by half a dozen officers and men under Lieutenant
R. D. Sandford, R.N., had made straight for the piles of the
viaduct under the searchlights of the enemy, who seem to
have thought that she was bent on passing through to attack
the ships in the harbour, and was therefore sure to be trapped
among the struts and piles.  Then, when they saw her crew
reappear in a tiny motor-boat they opened fire with
machine-guns; but they had only wounded and not disabled their
quarry, for immediately C 3 exploded and destroyed the
viaduct and all upon it, cutting off the Mole from communication
with the shore.  Lieutenant R. D. Sandford, with his
five companions, was picked up by a steam pinnace
commanded by his brother, Lieutenant-Commander Sandford,
and brought away safely.  Both as tactics and as a moral
reinforcement their exploit was of the highest value.

Ten minutes afterwards the block-ships, the *Thetis* (Commander
R. S. Sneyd), the *Intrepid* (Lieutenant Stuart Bonham-Carter),
and the *Iphigenia* (Lieutenant V. W. Billyard-Leake),
were seen rounding the lighthouse and heading for the entrance
of the canal.  The *Thetis* was leading, and received the
concentrated fire of the enemy; she ran aground on the edge of the
channel and was sunk partially across it, signalling to her
consorts, as she went down, to avoid the nets which had
fouled her own propeller.  The *Intrepid* and the *Iphigenia*
thereupon passed straight up the canal to a point at which
they were two or three hundred yards inside the shore lines
and actually behind the German guns on the Mole.  They
were then blown up and sunk across the channel, and their
crews took to the boats and got away out to sea, where they
were eventually taken on board the destroyers.

An hour had now passed and the work was done.  Even
the lighthouse had been sacked, for Wing-Commander Brock,
who was in charge of the smoke-screen operations, had not
only led the charge into the big gun battery, but had made
a special objective of the range-finder in the lighthouse top
and came down laden with an armful of spoil.  He was last
seen lying desperately wounded under the parapet wall of the
Mole; but this was not reported until afterwards, and his fate
remained uncertain.  The siren was shrieking the recall,
half drowned by the noise of gun-fire; it was twenty minutes
before the word could be given to cast off.

The *Vindictive*, the *Iris*, and the *Daffodil* got away at full
speed, and the German salvos followed them with remarkable
regularity, but always a few yards behind; the ships were
soon covered too by their own smoke.  Of the three destroyers
two came safely off; the third, the *North Star*, was sunk by
gun-fire near the block-ships, but her men were brought away
by the *Phoebe*.  Of the motor-boats (under command of Captain
R. Collins) many performed feats of incredible audacity
at point-blank range, and all but two returned.  The
co-operation of all forces was from first to last beyond
expectation and beyond praise; a mortal enterprise could hardly
come nearer to perfection, whether of foresight, daring, or
execution.

During the Zeebrugge attack the wind shifted and blew
the smoke off shore.  This helped to cover the retirement,
but at Ostend it caused a partial failure of the blocking
operations.  Commodore Hubert Lynes successfully laid his
smoke screen, and sent in the *Sirius* and the *Brilliant* to be
sunk between the piers of the harbour mouth.  But the enemy
sighted and sunk the motor-boats and their guide lights;
the block-ships missed the entrance and were blown up
2,000 yards to the east.  The Germans, to guard against a
renewal of the attempt, removed the buoy at the entrance
and kept a patrol of nine destroyers in the harbour.  But
on the night of 9th May, Commodore Lynes took in a larger
flotilla, and this time the *Vindictive* herself was the block-ship.
In spite of fog and darkness her commander (Godsal, late of
the *Brilliant*), piloted by Acting-Lieutenant Cockburn in a
motor-boat, ran her 200 yards up the channel and then
ordered her to be sunk.  He died in the act, but the work was
completed by Lieutenant Crutchley and Engineer-Lieutenant
Bury.  The losses were heavy, for the Germans had a fair
target; but even when day broke the nine destroyers made
no attempt at a counterstroke, and the expedition returned
triumphant.

This whole attack was a legitimate enterprise planned only
for a definite and practical purpose, but in the result it proved
a greater affair than had been foreseen: the moral effect of
so splendid a feat of arms came as a timely gift from the
Navy to the Allied cause.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BEHIND THE LINES AND AT HOME`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART V.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center large bold

   BEHIND THE LINES.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXX.

.. class:: center medium bold

   BEHIND THE LINES AND AT HOME.

.. vspace:: 2

"We are fighting," said Lord Curzon in July 1918, "seven
distinct campaigns ourselves—in France, Italy, Salonika,
Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt, and we have
raised 7,000,000 men.  We have been the feeder, clothier,
baker, armourer, and universal provider of the Allies."

The achievement of Britain in the war cannot be judged
only from her successes in the field.  In 1914 she set herself
resolutely to prepare a great fighting-machine which would
not only be superior to that of Germany, but which would
also serve the needs of all the Powers who fought by her
side.  It was the perfection of this machine, built up through
four patient and laborious years, which enabled her in the
final war of movement to deliver the succession of blows which
led to victory.

Take first the numbers of enlisted men.  In August 1914
the British land forces were made up of 250,000 Regulars,
200,000 trained Reserves, and 250,000 partly-trained
Territorials.  Lord Kitchener asked for 100,000 volunteers, and
these were enrolled in less than a fortnight.  In one day
30,000 enlisted.  By July 1915 there were 2,000,000 men in
arms.  In May 1916 the King announced that over 5,000,000
men had enrolled voluntarily in the army and the navy.  In
August 1918, 8,500,000 men were enrolled in the armed forces
of the Crown.

The navy, in August 1914, had 145,000 officers and men
and a tonnage of 2,500,000.  Four years later the figures
were 450,000 men and 8,000,000 tons.  In one month in the
year 1918 British warships travelled 1,000,000 sea miles in
home waters alone, and in the same period auxiliary vessels
travelled 6,000,000 miles, or 250 times the circuit of the globe.
During the war the British navy transported 20,000,000 men,
of whom only 2,700 were lost by enemy action; 2,000,000
horses and mules, 25,000,000 tons of explosives, 51,000,000
tons of oil and fuel, and 130,000,000 tons of food and other
materials.  All this was done while fighting a constant
warfare against enemy submarines.

The work of the British people at home in supplying
munitions was one of the main factors in the enemy's defeat.
The Ministry of Munitions was formed in June 1915, and soon
became the largest of the Government departments, controlling
the iron, steel, engineering, and chemical trades, and
employing 2,500,000 men and 1,000,000 women.  Over
10,000 firms worked for it, and Government factories
increased from three in 1914 to 200 in 1918.  In 1918 the figure
of the first year of war in the production of certain classes of
ammunition was multiplied four hundred times, and in the
production of guns forty times.  During the Battle of the
Somme in 1916, Britain issued every week to her armies in
France an amount of ammunition equal to the entire stock
available for her land service at the outbreak of war; and
during the last battles of 1918 the volume of shells fired was
more than double that expended in the Battle of the Somme.
All the railways of Britain were taken over by the State, and
from October 1916 materials for thousands of miles of track,
over 1,000 locomotives, and many thousands of wagons
were shipped to various theatres of war, in spite of the fact
that more than 170,000 railwaymen had been released for
service with the army.

.. _`FIELD-MARSHAL EARL KITCHENER`:

.. figure:: images/img-185.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: FIELD-MARSHAL EARL KITCHENER.

   FIELD-MARSHAL EARL KITCHENER.

The business of an army in the field is not merely to fight,
or rather, its chief task, fighting, is only possible if there
is a first-class organization behind the lines.  How
brilliant and complete that organization was towards the close
of the struggle would take a volume to expound.  In France,
for example, the British Army had its own Forestry
Department, and produced from French forests over 2,000,000 tons
of timber.  It was its own farmer, and in 1918 it saved the
crops of 18,000 French acres, harvesting them at night.  It
did its own tailoring and boot-making.  It did all its mending
of every kind, and it saved broken and derelict material to
be remade in the factories at home.  It did its own catering,
and there never was a war in which men and horses were
better fed—a remarkable feat when we remember that provision
had to be made for men of different races and tastes—curry
for the Indians, nut-oil for the Chinese, and coffee for the
American soldiers.  It did its own banking, insurance, and
printing.  Its transport service was a miracle.  In 1914 the
Expeditionary Force landed in France with 40,000 horses
and a few hundred lorries, while its railway transport was
managed by the French.  In 1918 it ran its own railways,
and it had 500,000 horses and mules, 33,500 lorries, 1,400
tractors, and 15,800 motor-cars.  It did the business of
almost all the trades on earth, and did it with exactness,
economy, and an amazing flexibility, so that whenever a
new call was necessitated by the strategy of the generals, it
was fully and promptly met.

The war was therefore a united effort of the whole British
people.  In Cromwell's day the start of one battle was
delayed because it got mixed up with a fox hunt.  Even
in the Napoleonic wars there were thousands of families in
England which lived remote from the struggle, and readers
of Jane Austen's novels would not gather from their placid
narrative that her country was involved in a European
campaign.  But between 1914 and 1918 every aspect of national
life and every branch of national thought was organized for
the purposes of the war.  Hospitals sprang up in every town
and in hundreds of country districts.  Articles of food were
controlled to release shipping for war purposes.  The country
enormously increased its own food supply, and some 4,000,000
acres of pasture were brought under tillage.  The whole
nation was rationed, so that rich and poor alike shared in
the sacrifice.  Schoolboys spent their holidays working on
the land, and the women of Britain, in munition factories,
in land work, and in a thousand other employments, made
noble contribution to the common cause.  In 1918 there were
at least 1,500,000 more women working than before the war,
and the tasks on which they were engaged were those which
had hitherto been regarded as work which could only be
performed by men.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LAST DAY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART VI.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center large bold

   VICTORY.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXI.

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LAST DAY.

.. vspace:: 2

By the first days of November 1918 the war was won.  In
October both Turkey and Bulgaria had been beaten to
the ground.  On the 4th of November Austria capitulated.
Ludendorff had resigned, the German Emperor had sought
refuge at Army Headquarters from the troubles of his
capital, the German navy had mutinied, and a revolution
was beginning in Berlin.  Foch was on the eve of his last
step in the West.  The Americans were moving on Sedan.
Haig was in the position of Wellington on the eve of Waterloo,
when he raised his hat as a signal for "Everything to
go in."

On 1st November Valenciennes fell.  On 4th November
Haig attacked on the 30 miles between that city and the
Sambre.  Twenty British divisions scattered thirty-two
German divisions, taking 19,000 prisoners and more than
450 guns.  That day broke the enemy's resistance.  Henceforth
he was not in retreat but in flight, and the two wings of
his armies were separated for ever.  There remained only
the 50 miles between Avesnes and Mezières as an avenue of
escape for all the German forces of the south, and Foch was
preparing to swing his right wing north of Metz to close the
last bolt-hole.  If a negotiated armistice did not come within
a week there would be a compulsory armistice of complete
collapse and universal surrender.  That day Germany
appointed delegates to sue for peace.

On the 8th, Rawlinson occupied Avesnes and Byng reached
the skirts of Maubeuge.  The first week of that month of
November the weather was wet and chilly, very different
from the bright August when British troops had last fought
in that region.  The old regular forces which in 1914 had
then borne the shock of Germany's first fury had mostly
disappeared.  Many were dead, or prisoners, or crippled for
life, and the rest had been dispersed through the whole
British army.  The famous first five divisions, which had
made the Retreat from Mons, were in the main composed of
new men.  But there were some who had fought steadily
from the Sambre to the Marne and back again to the Aisne,
and then for four years in bitter trench battles, and had
now returned, after our patient fashion, to their old
campaigning ground.  Even the slow imagination of the British
soldier must have been stirred by that strange revisiting.
Then he had been marching south in stout-hearted bewilderment,
with the German cavalry pricking at his flanks.  Now
he was sweeping to the north-east on the road to Germany,
and far ahead his own cavalry and cyclists were harassing
the enemy rout, while on all the eastern roads his aircraft
were scattering death.

On the 7th the line of the Scheldt broke.  On the 8th
Condé fell, and on the 9th the British Guards entered
Maubeuge.  On the 7th Pershing and the Americans had reached
Sedan.  On the 10th the British left was approaching Mons,
and the centre was close on the Belgian frontier.  These
were feverish days both for victors and vanquished.
Surrender hung in the air, and there was a generous rivalry
among the Allies to get as far forward as possible before it
came.  Take, for example, the 8th Division of the British
First Army.  On the 10th November one of its battalions,
the 2nd Middlesex, travelled for seven hours in buses, and
then marched 27 miles, pushing the enemy before them.
They wanted to reach the spot near Mons where some of them
had fired some of the first British shots in the war; and it is
pleasant to record that they succeeded.

.. _`The Front on the eve of the Allied Offensive, and on the day of the Armistice`:

.. figure:: images/img-193.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: The Front in July on the eve of the Allied Offensive, and on the day of the Armistice, November 11, 1918.

   The Front in July on the eve of the Allied Offensive, and on the day 
   of the Armistice, November 11, 1918.

Meantime, in Germany, the revolution had begun.  On
Saturday the 9th, a republic was declared in Berlin, and
throughout the country, in every State, the dynasties fell.
On Sunday the 10th, the Emperor left the Army Headquarters
at Spa, crossed the Dutch frontier, and sought
refuge in a friend's house at Amerongen.  The Imperial
Crown Prince, like his father, found sanctuary in Holland.
The German delegates left Berlin on the afternoon of Wednesday
the 6th, and on the 8th met Foch and petitioned for an
armistice.  They received his terms, and communicated them
to Spa and Berlin.  On the night of Sunday, 10th November,
the terms were accepted, and at 5 o'clock on the morning
of Monday, 11th November, the armistice was signed.  The
acceptance of the terms meant the surrender of Germany to
the will of the Allies, for they stripped from her the power
of continuing or renewing the war.  It was an admission of
her utter defeat in the field.

The morning of Monday, 11th November, was cold and
foggy, such weather as the year before had been seen at
Cambrai.  The Allied front was for the most part quiet,
only cavalry patrols moving eastwards in touch with the
retreat.  But at two points there was some activity.  The
Americans on the Meuse were advancing, and the day opened
for them with all the accompaniment of a field action.  At
Mons, on the Sunday night, the Canadians were in position
round the place, fighting continued during the night, and
at dawn the 3rd Canadian Division entered the streets and
established a line east of the town, while the carillons of the
belfries played "Tipperary."  For Britain the circle was now
complete.  In three months her armies had gained seven
victories, each greater than any in her old wars; they had
taken some 190,000 prisoners and 3,000 guns, and they had
broken the heart of their enemy.  To their great sweep
from Amiens to Mons was due especially the triumph which
Foch had won, and on that grey November morning their
worn ranks could await the final hour with thankfulness and
pride.

The minutes passed slowly along the front.  An occasional
shell, an occasional burst of fire, told that peace was
not yet, but there were long spells of quiet, save in the
American area.  Officers had their watches in their hands,
and the troops waited with the same grave composure with
which they had fought.  Men were too weary for their imaginations
to rise to the great moment, for it is not at the time
of a crisis, but long afterwards, that the human mind grasps
the drama.  Suddenly, as the watch-hands touched 11,
there came a second of expectant silence, and then a curious
rippling sound which observers, far behind the front, likened
to the noise of a great wind.  It was the sound of men
cheering from the Vosges to the sea.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LOOKING BACKWARD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   LOOKING BACKWARD.

.. vspace:: 2

The greatness of the contest is not easy to realize, for it was
so much the hugest war ever fought in the history of humanity
that comparative tests fail us.  During its four years
it took from the world a far heavier toll of life and wealth
than a century of the old Barbarian invasions had done.
More than 8,000,000 men died in battle, and the casualties
on all fronts were over 30,000,000.  If we add deaths from
disease and famine it cannot have cost the population of the
globe less than 20,000,000 dead, and as many more maimed
and weakened for life.  At least 40,000 millions sterling of
money were spent by the nations in the direct business of
war.  Let it be remembered that this devastation was
wrought not in the loose society of an elder world, but in
one where each state was a highly-developed thing, and
depended for some necessaries upon its neighbour, and where
myriads of human souls could only support life so long as
the machine of civilization performed its functions smoothly
and securely.

We can best grasp the immensity of the struggle by
attempting to grasp the immensity of the battleground.  Such
a task is for the imagination only, for the soldier saw only
his little area, and no man's first-hand experience could cover
all the many fields.  An observer on some altitude in the
north, like the Hill of Cassel, on some evening in September
1918, could look east and note the great arc from the dunes
at Nieuport to the coalfields about Lens lit with the flashes
of guns and the glare of star-shells, and loud with the mutter
of battle.  That was a line of 50 miles—far greater than any
battlefield in the old wars.  Had he moved south to the ridge
of Vimy he would have looked on another 50 miles of an
intenser strife.  South, again, to Bapaume, he would have
marked the wicked glow from Cambrai to the Oise.  Still
journeying, from some little height between the Oise and the
Aisne he would have scanned the long front which was
now creeping round the shattered woods of St. Gobain to
where Laon sat on its hill.  From the mounts about Rheims
he might have seen Gouraud's battle-line among the bleak
Champagne downs, and from a point in the Argonne the
trenches of the Americans on both sides of the Meuse, running
into the dim wooded country where the Moselle flowed
towards Metz.  Past the Gap of Nancy, and southward along
the scarp of the Vosges, went the flicker of fire and the
murmur of combat, till the French lines stretched into the
plain of Alsace, and exchanged greetings with the sentinels
on the Swiss frontier.  Such a battle-ground might well have
seemed beyond the dream of mortals, and yet it was but part
of the whole.

A celestial intelligence, with sight unlimited by distance,
would have looked eastward, and, beyond the tangle of the
Alps, witnessed a strange sight.  From the Stelvio Pass in
the Alps to the Adriatic ran another front, continuous through
glacier-camps and rock-eyries and trenches on the edge of
the eternal snows, to the foothills of the Lombard plain,
and thence, by the gravel beds of the Piave, to the lagoons
of Venice.  Beyond the Adriatic it ran, through the sombre
hills of Albania, past the great lakes, where the wild-fowl
wheeled at the unfamiliar sound of guns, beyond the Tcherna
and Vardar and Struma valleys to the Ægean shores.  It
began again, when the Anatolian peninsula was left behind,
and curved from the Palestine coast in a great loop north
of Jerusalem across Jordan to the hills of Moab.  Gazing
over the deserts, he would have marked the flicker which
told of mortal war passing beyond the ancient valleys of
Euphrates and Tigris, up into the wild Persian ranges.  And
scattered flickers to the north would have led him to the
Caspian shores, and beyond them to that tableland running
to the Hindu Kush which was the cradle of all the warring
races.  Still farther north, his eyes would have seen the
lights of the Allies from the Pacific coast westward to the
Urals and the Volga, and little clusters far away on the shore
of the Arctic Sea.

Had the vision of our celestial spectator been unhindered
by time as well as by space, it would have embraced still
stranger sights.  It would have beheld the old Allied Eastern
front, from the Baltic to the Danube, pressing westward,
checking, and falling east; breaking in parts, gathering
strength, and again advancing; and at last dying like a
lingering sunset into darkness.  Behind would have appeared
a murderous glow, which was the flame of revolution.
Turning to Africa, it would have noted the slow movement of
little armies in west, and east, and south—handfuls of men
creeping in wide circles among the Cameroons forests till
the land was theirs; converging lines of mounted troopers
among the barrens of the German South-West territory,
closing in upon the tin shanties of Windhoek; troops of all
races advancing through the mountain glens and dark green
forests of German East Africa, till, after months and years,
the enemy strength had become a batch of exiles beyond
the southern frontier.  And farther off still, among the isles
of the Pacific and on the Chinese coast, it would have seen
men toiling under the same lash of war.

Had the spectator looked seaward, the sight would have
been not less marvellous.  On every ocean of the world he
would have observed the merchantmen of the Allies bringing
supplies for battle.  But in the North Atlantic, in the
Mediterranean, and in the English Channel and the North Sea
he would have seen uncanny things.  Vessels would disappear
as if by magic, and little warships would hurry about
like some fishing fleet when shoals are moving.  The
merchantmen would huddle into packs, with destroyers like lean
dogs at their sides.  He would have seen in the Scottish
firths and among the isles of the Orkneys a mighty navy
waiting, and ships from it scouring the waters of the North
Sea, while inside the fences of Heligoland lay the decaying
monsters of the German fleet.  And in the air, over land and
sea would have been a perpetual coming and going of aircraft
like flies above the pool of war.

The observer, wherever on the globe his eyes were turned,
would have found no area immune from the effects of the
contest.  Every factory in Europe and America was humming
by night and day to prepare the material of strife.  The
economic problems of five continents had been transformed.
The life of the remotest villages had suffered a strange
transformation.  Far-away English hamlets were darkened
because of air raids; little farms in Touraine, in the Scottish
Highlands, in the Apennines, were untilled because there
were no men; Armenia had lost half her people; the folk
of North Syria were dying of famine; Indian villages and
African tribes had been blotted out by plague; whole
countries had ceased for the moment to exist, except as
geographical names.  Such were but a few of the consequences
of the kindling of war in a world grown too expert
in destruction, a world where all nations were part one of
another.

.. vspace:: 2

The war was an Allied victory, but let us be very clear
what that means.  It delivered the world's freedom from a
deadly danger, and, though the price was colossal, the cause
was worthy.  But its positive fruits must be sought
elsewhere—in that impulse to international brotherhood caused
by the revulsion from the horrors of international strife,
and the war's vindication of the essential greatness of our
common humanity.  Its hero was the ordinary man.  Victory
was won less by genius in the few than by faithfulness
in the many.

The horrors of the four years sickened the world of war,
and made thinking men realize that some other way than
this monstrous folly must be found of settling disputes
between peoples.  A League of Nations was one of the first
articles of peace, and the League then founded has already,
in spite of hindrances and setbacks, and the opposition of an
all too narrow patriotism, made itself a power in the world.
If civilization is to endure the League must prosper, for the
world cannot stand another such carnival of destruction.
The League means the enforcement of law throughout the
globe, so that the nations as regards each other shall live
in that state of orderly liberty which a civilized power
ensures for its citizens.  That purpose, as we have learned
from bitter experience, is not a dream of idealism, but the
first mandate of common-sense.

No honest sacrifice can be made in vain.  In war sacrifice
is mainly of the innocent and the young.  This was true of
every side.  Most men who fell died for honourable things.
They were inspired by the eternal sanctities—love of country
and home, comradeship, loyalty to manly virtues, the
indomitable questing of youth.  Against such a spirit the
gates of death cannot prevail.  We may dare to hope that
the seed sown in sacrifice and pain will yet quicken and bear
fruit to the purifying of the world, and in this confidence
await the decrees of that Omnipotence to whom a thousand
years are as one day.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium

   THE END.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center small white-space-pre-line

   PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
   THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS.

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::