October 16, 1917
Fictions spread by picture cards
The documents we find on prisoners always include a lot of letters and picture postcards, some of the latter showing the efforts made to keep up the spirits of the German people and to impress neutrals. One popular card is intended to demonstrate the abundance of food in Germany. It shows a young man in civilian costume, who looks like a cinema actor, seated alone at a table loaded with dainties, especially sausages and butter, while he cuts a huge slice from a large fat ham at his elbow. Whatever the effect of this picture may be on neutrals, it must be tantalizing to the troops at the front, for we learn that among the new drafts there are a great number of cases of hunger typhus. It must be rather hard on a hungry man in the trenches to have sent him this picture of an unappetizing-looking civilian of the third-class dandy type, surrounded by all the things, fat and greasy, that the German soul loves.Another series extols the feats of the German Navy bombarding the English coasts. One picture shows a German battleship with, a mile or two away, the cliffs of Dover all wreathed in smoke. There is lovely sunshine and peaceful seas, and no sign of a British ship or a British shell. As efforts of imagination they are superb.
German soldiers also still carry with them considerable quantities of manuals instructing them how to behave when they have got to captured England and have the people at their mercy. Both the spelling and the English idiom are peculiar, but the instructions are exhaustive for every emergency. They tell the soldier how to insist on having his trousers mended immediately, and how to tell the Mayor that he is being taken as a hostage for the good behaviour of his people. They tell the conquering soldier how to make the village blacksmith shoe his horse and how to requisition the same village for “900 sausages” or to impose a fine of “Five Hundred Pounds sterling” on any place whose inhabitants are detected hiding food. One can hardly suppose the German soldiers now expect to use these manuals in England, and the only reasonable supposition is that they carry them in the hope that they will be useful when surrendering. But what a blow to Germany’s hopes that they should come to be put to such a use.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-10-14/register/mutinous-spirit-of-bavarians-ww8b066pg
October 14, 1917
Mutinous spirit of Bavarians
Rain, rain, rain! That is the whole story of the last two days. There have been glimpses of sunshine, and these short spells may bring thin comfort to the men out there in the swamps and shell holes, but they do very little towards drying the ground. You might as well try to empty a bath by holding lighted matches over it.Movement on either side has been practically impossible, even in the daytime. We have seen signs as if the enemy was preparing for counter-attack, but nothing has developed. We have been consolidating — if such a word can be used where the whole world is liquid — the ground recently won. It is impossible not to wonder whether these last 10 days of intermittent storms, which have reduced all the low ground in the battle area to a morass, have not put an end to the fighting season.
From prisoners we are getting interesting information about the depression and rebelliousness in Germany, which are reflected in the behaviour of the Reichstag and the mutiny in the German Navy. The officers captured are well aware of the naval mutiny, and they do not conceal how much the same spirit has spread in the Army. The spirit is especially bad in the Bavarian units, which until recently had been the best element in the German Army. Certain Bavarian units were on the southern part of the front, and were served with winter clothing, from which they inferred that they were going either to Russia or the Italian front, and either prospect was welcome to them. The severity of our blows here, however, necessitated a change of plans and they were hurried up to the Ypres front. With the greatest difficulty the officers restrained the men from open mutiny. They were insubordinate on the march, and when one officer ventured to order them not to straggle he was greeted with shouts of “Sauhund”. Another officer tells how he dared not speak to them or he would have been shot.
The way this officer came to be taken prisoner was significant. It was by one of his own shells that he was wounded, the same shell killing another man and wounding a third. An orderly and a stretcher bearer picked him up and, in spite of his protests, instead of carrying him back brought him straight over to us and surrendered.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-10-13/register/battle-of-the-ridge-w5qgjsrrc
OCTOBER 13, 1917
Battle of the ridge
Desperate fighting still rages along the Passchendaele Ridge and in the swamp wilderness below. Soon after midnight it commenced to rain in torrents, and the wind blew with almost hurricane strength. In spite of the conditions, we pushed forward at half-past 5 this morning, while it was only half light. How far we have gone is yet uncertain.Along the stricken roads batches of prisoners are coming down. We hear that some of our men have reached a point close on the edge of Passchendaele itself. Whether it is possible to stay there, unless their comrades on the left can force their way through the morasses of the Ravenbeek, it is impossible to say.
I have talked with many of the men who came back from this morning’s fighting. Muddied beyond description, with clothing torn, haggard, dragging a wounded leg, nursing a shattered arm, or with torn face, from which the blood has soaked the tunic’s front, they are stout-hearted beyond words. Their own wounds hardly seem to interest them, but only what their pals did, and how “the boys” were going. At a forward dressing station, I found a Padre who said to me: “God, how the Germans must admire and fear these men!” They arrive at a dressing station having limped, it may be, for three hours through the unspeakable slime and horrors. There tenderness and care — and no praise can be too high for the devotion of the officers and men of the RAMC — and hot tea and coffee and food and things to smoke await them. Save for the mud and blood upon them, they might be casual customers at a tea-shop in London as the colour comes back to their young faces. And, save a few who remain too hurt and dazed to talk, they laugh and exchange reminiscences of the morning.
Our men had more chance to use the bayonet today than often comes to them. One man with a broken forearm told me how he had seen his pal kill one German with the bayonet and then charge another, when at that moment, a great shell exploded and British and German together disappeared. At some places batches of the enemy surrendered without fighting, and a sergeant told me he saw another sergeant go quite alone for a party of 30 or so of the enemy with the bayonet and the whole party dropped their weapons and held up their hands.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-sag-in-the-line-685z65r26
october 12, 1917
The sag in the line
Although we had won our objectives north and south of the advance yesterday, there was a sag in the centre of the line where the general line — so far as there is a general line in this extraordinary warfare — was in places short of it.I spent a large part of the day with certain Yorkshire troops. The story of their advance is typical of that part of the field where we did not wholly succeed. No man started to attack that morning who was not already weary and soaked, covered with slime from falling into shell-holes, and chilled with standing hip-high in icy water. At the appointed time the half-frozen men went out into the fog and slime. Floundering, wading, and hauling each other along, amid bursting shells and a storm of machine-gun bullets, the Yorkshiremen went through the slough close behind our barrage. It was more than an hour’s hard work to force their way across those four or five hundred yards to the first gentle rise to a ridge on the top of which the village of Passchendaele is in full view, some 2,500 yards away.
We, who stay behind and follow over battlefields after they have been won, can only roughly picture those little groups of men thrusting on through all the loathsome mess of the ground, against the storm of bullets, with their hearts set only on getting at the enemy. By the evening we knew only that at points along our line our men reached the farthest point set for their advance. Then the night shut down, and worse, far worse, than any shell-fire were the storm and cold, out in those waterlogged shell holes. For a time no transport, or carrying parties with supplies, could get up to the advanced posts, though Heaven knows they tried. Making progress through ever-deepening mire, carrying burdens, was impossible. Slowly, as morning came, as “mopping-up” troops pushed steadily on, so that all the ground behind them was secure, a definite line began to shape itself. It was not upon the final objective, but it was about two-thirds of the way towards it. Somehow, the gallant little groups which had pushed through to the final line were called back, or came back of their own accord, and a new continuous position was formed with which communication could be maintained and which supplies could reach. That is our line now.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wading-to-victory-h7dhvzsb0
october 11, 1917
‘Wading’ to victory
Yesterday I told how, under truly appalling conditions, we and the French had pushed forward and dealt the Germans another heavy blow. Territorially, it appears today that, from mere stress of weather, our gain is less large than it was. How bad the conditions are at the front it is not easy to make plain to people who cannot see them. The ground is reduced to powder if it be dry, or pulp if it be wet, all being pounded to one dismal waste of shell holes and splintered debris. The shells have everywhere driven through the thin earth layer to the underlying water, till such areas as are not actual lagoon are a standing marsh of deep craters, separated only by shelving banks of mud. Across this our men went yesterday after days of storm and bitter cold, soaked and chill and weary. They went in the grey of dawn and in the teeth of machine-gun and rifle fire, which whipped the slime and water everywhere around them. I do not know how heroism could do more or men be put to a sterner test. From one end of the line to the other there was no sign of hesitation. They waded ankle-deep or knee-deep. They went up to their waists in shell-holes and struggled through, or they sank to their necks and were helped out by comrades.Out in the wilderness and swamps so difficult was it to tell direction that not a few of our wounded started to make their way towards the German lines, and but for the enemy flares, they would have gone into German hands. It is possible that some may have done so. The highest praise is given by everyone to the gallantry of the stretcher-bearers, who had an appalling task endeavouring to get wounded men out of the mud and shell holes and carrying them back. Not a few gave up their lives, and all seem to have worked with the greatest heroism.
After a wet morning the weather at the moment is better, and there is hope of its clearing. But no words can do justice to the terrible conditions under which this advance was made or to the difficulties which our men had to overcome in winning and holding the ground. The Germans have brought the use of machine-gun fire to perfection. Their artillery on this front is also formidable. If our victory was not complete, it was only because human bravery could not make it so.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-10-10/register/battlefield-of-mud-6087w0990
October 10, 1917
Battlefield of mud
The weather for several days has been very bad, and last night it was terrible. Until midnight, when it began to clear, sheets of rain, driven by a bitter north-west wind, swept over the battle area. There was no shelter in the half-submerged land but shell-holes, which were pools of icy water. After the rain ceased, the night continued intensely cold, and when the time came to go forward a thick, dank mist overlay the entire landscape. Everywhere the low-lying lands were studded with concrete defences, sometimes in single blockhouses, sometimes in groups, making veritable fortresses. In such land, the pill-boxes, sunk for three-quarters their height below the surface, are never wholly dry inside, but in them the German troops had shelter from the storm. Some of the shelters were broken by artillery fire, but many were unhit. None offered a really stubborn resistance.Below here, on all the rest of the front, were British troops, chiefly stout English County regiments. The French, in their small Mesopotamia between the streams, had, perhaps, the worst ground, but the going on the whole front was execrable, and all had to share in the hardships and discomfort of the bitter weather. Many of our wounded, coming back today, are caked in mud from head to foot. Often there was no question of walking, but only wading, where every shell-hole made a pond deep enough to drown a tired man. Not a few of our troops, after a sleepless night, were extremely fatigued before the attack began.
All the men coming back agree that the mud in the valley of the Ravenbeek was very bad, and their appearance confirms all they say. The advantage of cheerfulness, however, is on our side. One man came back today hilariously nursing his sixth wound in this war, it being the eleventh time he had been over in attack. A characteristic incident again is that of a Fusilier, who found a German, a mere youth, in his way. The boy fired at him from a few yards with his rifle, and wounded our man in the arm, and when the Englishman looked at him and found he was so young he had not the heart to kill him, so he made the other drop his weapon and brought him back a prisoner. Not many Germans fought to such close quarters, though here and there one hears of bayonets being used.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-10-09/register/air-attacks-on-germany-v0rd0c63d
october 9, 1917
Air attacks on Germany
Now that we have a pronouncement from General Smuts on behalf of the Government that a system of “reprisals” will be put into immediate operation, it is interesting to traverse the possibilities of an aerial offensive behind the German frontier. There is no doubt that we can do this thing more thoroughly than the Germans have been doing it. We have a great many advantages that our enemies have not, and, in addition, we have an infinitely bigger target. As in many other innovations in this war, the German has led in aerial offensives behind the front. Where we have been willing to stretch our chivalry to its uttermost, they have been always active in bombing towns that have been in no way connected with the offensive movements of our armies. The Germans used gas first, and we followed reluctantly. Our reluctance did not however, interfere with the effectiveness of our gas when it was once used, nor did it stultify the efforts of our chemists and scientists in their researches. It is now commonly known that the German gas, bad as it is, is in no way as terrible as ours. No one knows this better than do our enemies, and prisoners all testify to the terrible effects of our gas shells and gas clouds. So it is that the British public can now rest certain that any aerial offensive carried out in retaliatory spirit by our airmen will not fall behind the efforts of the Germans.There have always been men in our air services who have said that they but wanted the chance to bomb German towns to show what could be done in this direction. We are fortunate in having not only the best pilots for the purpose, but we have without doubt the best machines. Indeed, it is owing to an unhappy mistake that the Germans are able to send their Gothas to England. Early in 1917 the Germans were inadvertently made a present of one of the latest and certainly the largest machines we had ever built. It landed at Laon in an undamaged condition, and from it the big enemy raiders which come over London were designed. If these machines are kept, say, 20 miles behind our front line in France they can raid with ease such towns as Essen, Cologne, Limburg, Coblenz, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Freiburg. Indeed, the whole of the most densely populated part of the Rhine valley is vulnerable.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-10-06/register/the-victory-of-broodseinde-c83795755
October 6, 1917
The victory of Broodseinde
The battle on Thursday morning on the Passchendaele Ridge and its approaches is unquestionably the most important British victory of the year. It marks the culmination of the operations on the Ypres front during the past two months.The battle of Broodseinde had results which could not have been foreseen when it was planned. Not only did it give us firm possession of the vital observation positions for which Sir Douglas Haig has so long been striving, but it shattered the most powerful counter-attack which the Germans have prepared since the fight for the ridges began.
The British Army in the West has often had bad luck in the weather and in other ways, but on Thursday the luck (or the intelligence?) seems to have been all on our side. The enemy had not expected that the offensive would be resumed so soon. They had assembled five divisions, one just arrived from the Russian front. They hoped to retake Zonnebeke and the Polygon Wood, and to spoil our chance of establishing ourselves astride the Passchendaele Ridge. Unfortunately for them we had timed our advance just a few minutes before their own, and our terrific artillery fire broke their formations. They suffered heavily, and the rapid assault of our infantry appears to have completed their demoralization.
Our Special Correspondent says that Bruges can now be seen quite plainly. The enemy have lost all the Gheluvelt Ridge except the short spur on which stand the ruins of the village of that name. They have lost the southern half of the Passchendaele Ridge, save only the low spur containing the village of Becelaere. As to the northern half of the ridge, our forces are within 2,500 yards of the village of Passchendaele, which should soon be untenable.
Nothing else remains to the Germans except the Keiberg spur and the isolated height of Moorslede, and when they have been deprived of these — as we hope may soon be the case — they will be wholly in the plains. Whether their ejection comes soon or late, our object is already served. The crest of the ridge, as Sir Douglas Haig said in his bulletin, “gives observation eastward.” It does indeed, for it overlooks the Belgian plain, and we have the satisfaction of knowing that there are no heights beyond to conquer.
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