1915: The Death of Innocence Page 24
The Germans were not above employing devious tactics, particularly in the field of propaganda, which frequently backfired despite their best intentions and their desire to adopt a virtuous stance which would impress neutral nations with the justice of their cause. Two days after the capture of the second prisoner and on the very day of the British assault on Hill 60, the German newspapers carried a virulent story, dripping with righteous indignation, which categorically stated that the British had committed the unspeakable crime of using poison gas against defenceless German troops, thus contravening not only the laws of war but the unwritten laws of civilisation itself. It was a cover story, designed to justify the fact that the Germans themselves were planning to use the illegal weapon in an attack which they hoped would be seen at home and abroad as ‘retaliation’. It was reported by Reuter, noted in London and disregarded, if they ever heard of it, in France – although General Plumer had passed on the French report to his Divisional Commanders ‘for what it is worth’!
The Germans hoped that their new secret weapon would be worth a great deal. Their chemists had been working on it for a long time, and it was weeks since the first experimental cylinders had been dug into position. All that was lacking were the favourable winds that would carry the gas across to the British lines and the Ypres salient had been selected because, according to German meteorologists, the wind in springtime invariably blew in a south-westerly direction. A steady breeze was what was needed. If the wind were too strong the gas would be too quickly dissipated, if it blew in sudden gusts it would be just as ineffectual, and worse, if it suddenly changed direction there was no saying what the result might be.
As the weeks passed, and the wind disobligingly continued to blow from the wrong direction, the German Command began to be seriously worried. Too many people were in on the secret. Special troops, rudely referred to as ‘Stinkpionere’, had been instructed and trained to operate the gas cylinders, and, since it took eight men to carry one, hundreds of troops had slogged for many nights to carry the cylinders and the cumbersome ancillary apparatus to the line. Thousands of respirators had been manufactured locally in occupied Belgium where spies abounded, and now that they had been issued to soldiers in the Ypres sector, rumour was spreading like wildfire along the line and heavy hints that something interesting was in the offing were carried back to Germany by soldiers home on leave and also in optimistic letters from the front. Musketier Pieter Amlinger wrote home:
Within the next week we can expect to launch a large offensive between Bixschoote and Langemark. Follow the news bulletins closely. The great offensive about which you wrote is a fact and with some luck there may be peace at the end of May. We also have a ‘Dicke Bertha’ at our back whose loud voice – although not so beautiful – will be there to support us.
The ‘Big Bertha’, like the other heavy guns that would support the German attack, was all too necessary, for the German troops on the northern stretch of the western front were still vastly outnumbered by the allies. But the Germans had been heartened by the outcome of the battle of Neuve Chapelle and regarded the failure of the British to push home their initial success as a sign of weakness which could be turned to advantage. But success depended on surprise. As the weeks passed, as the gas attack was continually postponed, as more and more people were let into the secret, the German Commanders grew increasingly edgy. If the allies got wind of their plans, if they were able to take precautions against the gas, all would be lost.
The use of gas was essential to the Germans’ plan, for they were well aware that, against superior numbers, the front could not be broken by their infantry alone. They had studied the lessons of siege warfare and they planned a step-by-step advance. First the front-line troops would be overwhelmed by gas. Then the artillery would pound their lines and, pounding behind them simultaneously, would so reduce the salient and pulverise resistance that the Germans, advancing little by little, inexorably pressing on to the next limited objective, would gradually walk over the demoralised enemy and win the day. Pieter Amlinger was not the only German soldier shivering in the wind that so persistently blew from the north who genuinely believed that, when it turned, and before another month was out, he would be marching back to the Fatherland and that the war would be over and well and truly won. Hope was in the air.
Signals were arranged, code words decided on, guns and ammunition in undreamed of quantities brought up to the German front. This was to be an all-out effort. But the obdurate wind still blew from the north, and the German Command, champing on the bit as April dragged on, had to content themselves with ranging the heavy long-distance guns that were brought from the Belgian coast to swell the weight of the attack. They ranged them on Ypres.
The small city of Ypres was far from being the backwater it was to become in later years, when its importance relied largely on its notoriety as a focal point of the war. Tourists, in the modern sense, were few but its fame was widespread and it was a mecca for lovers of art and architecture. Fine buildings lined the streets, erected by a rich and cultured bourgeoisie, rare tapestries and paintings hung in the Cloth Hall. Pilgrims came too, for Ypres had become a noted religious centre in devout Catholic Flanders. There were two important monasteries not far away and several convents in the precincts of the town itself – the ‘Black’ sisters, the Poor Clares, and the convent of the Irish nuns who ran a private school for young ladies. But the school had closed down, the nuns had been evacuated, and the cubicles and dormitories where generations of virginal schoolgirls had slept and giggled were now inhabited by the heretical kilted soldiers of the 9th Royal Scots who, to their wry and lewd amusement, were billeted in the convent. Bill Hay was one of them, but it was an annoymous private of Β Company who recorded their impressions.
Our first tour of inspection degenerated into a hunt for souvenirs. We ransacked the bare attic rooms into which the Sisters had evidently gathered everything in great haste. One brought back in triumph a branching brass candlestick, another a crucifix and a small image of the Madonna – the most impossible things were secreted in packs to be quietly got rid of when we realised the folly of it. One or two lingered longer over the papers and ledgers strewn about the floor – the daily housekeeping of seventy or eighty years written in a clear, fine old-world hand touched us to the quick. What a peaceful, sequestered life, and what an awakening and an end! At first there was a sort of awed feeling at being in a convent, and we thought wonderingly of the schoolgirls and nuns who had lived their quiet life within these very walls. It showed us something of the convulsion into which Belgium had been thrown.
But how comfortable we were! A sacrilegious bunch of kilted heretics! The days we lay in the high-walled garden in the sun – the afternoon teas we gave when some of us struck it lucky with parcels. Even with fatigues – and we were out every night nearly – we had a slack time, for they were properly worked in two shifts, from eight to twelve and twelve to four, and we dug near the town. If anything we worked harder knowing relief was sure after four hours. And there were no bullets and no shells, only the far-off lights and crackle and grumble in the distance. Our unanimous decision was that fatigues at Ypres were a picnic.
We slept or lazed in the forenoon, and in the afternoon we strolled in the town. Walks by the canal, omelette and chip teas, shopping, patisserie-tasting, lace-buying, exploring the Cloth Hall ruins – all these we found time for in glorious weather, and very homely and pleasant it all was. We thought a lot of the gay little town where we had our happiest days since leaving home. For it was gay and full of people, the market square lined with booths on one side in front of the larger shops, although in the back streets there were shell-torn roofs and battered houses. And the Cloth Hall towering over it all, a gaunt and empty ruin, but every chipped and battered stone was eloquent, and its pinnacles still proudly cut into the sky.
In its symbolically battered state the Cloth Hall seemed to take on a grandeur it had not enjoyed since the days when Ypres was the centre
of the rich Flanders wool trade, and since the wool trade had diminished lacemaking had taken its place. On fine summer days before the war, at open doors and windows all over the town, the ladies of Ypres, lace cushions on their laps, gossiped in the sun as their nimble fingers and flying bobbins worked the fine lace whose beauty rivalled even the coveted lace of Brussels. Their work was in demand all over the world and there were no fewer than twelve lace brokers in Ypres who bought up the lace, distributed it, and grew rich on the proceeds. One of them was Aimé van Nieuwenhove.
This gentleman was not a native of Ypres. He had started his career as a dashing young cavalry officer but fate had brought him to Ypres to its famous cavalry school and there he had met and married Clotilde Brunfaut, daughter of a prosperous lace merchant. Now he was a prosperous lace merchant himself, owner of a fine old house on the Rue de Lille which he had painstakingly renovated over the years, the father of two children, a prominent citizen of the town, a local politician, and one of the public-spirited men who had been co-opted on to the Comité Provisoire to safeguard the welfare of Ypres after the town council was evacuated. Long ago, when things had looked bad at the end of the previous October, he had sent his own wife and family to safety in Paris. But van Nieuwenhove himself stayed on and conscientiously recorded in his daily diary the trials that befell the little town he had come to love. On 20 April, the Germans began to range their heavy guns on Ypres.
Aimé van Nieuwenhove.
20 April Calm until 11 a.m. While I was at the post office counter a dozen shells fell all of a sudden. I took shelter right away in the cellars and went out at mid-day to see what had happened. When I got to the garden I ascertained that a shell had fallen in Lapierre’s shops and had destroyed part of the wall that separated them from my garden. A second and third had landed in the garden of M. Desaegher, one against the wall of Mlle Duval’s kitchen, the other beneath the carriage porch. When the first shell arrived Marie our washerwoman was in the wash house and dived into our cellar for shelter, where I found her very upset when I got back. The damaged wall belonged to Lapierre, but until it could be repaired, I was obliged myself to block up the hole with planks in order to prevent the English soldiers from getting into our premises.
At two o’clock in the afternoon I attended a meeting of the commission charged with paying the indemnity to support the refugees in the town. We met in the police headquarters building until 4.30, during which time eight huge shells fell on the town. When I came out of the meeting, our uncle, Auguste Liebaert, came to tell me that one of the shells that fell this morning hit the roof of his house and had destroyed one of the rooms. He was terribly upset and emotional. I advised him to go and spend the night in the post office cellars, then to go and find a temporary refuge at Poperinghe. Many more people are leaving the town again and it’s as deserted as it was in November. We have no more newspapers and are isolated from the rest of the world. Everywhere there is a feeling of discouragement and, for my part, I’m well aware that my nerves are no longer as strong as they proved to be during the first bombardments.
21 April I went to see the house of my uncle, who had spent a very bad night in the cellars, even though the night was quiet. Not being able to find a car anywhere to take him to Poperinghe, I advised him to take a porter and set off on the Vlamertinghe road, where, by offering a tip, he might be picked up by one or other of the ambulances. This he did.
At mid-day we learned that the eight big shells that arrived yesterday afternoon from the direction of Staden were 380 mm in diameter. This news threw consternation among my friends and it decided some of them to leave the town in case more of the same arrived. Seven civilians were killed on Monday and ten yesterday, besides that, more than a hundred English soldiers and many more wounded. Nevertheless today is reasonably calm. As for the bombardment, only a few shells were heard.
The Germans were ranging their big guns, still waiting impatiently for the wind to change and for the chance to launch their offensive.
The chance came next day on 22 April – but it was well into the afternoon before the wind shifted direction and began to blow gently towards the south-west. The timing was far from ideal. By the time the messages could be passed along the line, by the time the troops could be alerted and in position, there would not be many hours of daylight left. Ideally the gas should have been released in the morning leaving a long day for the German infantry to advance and press home the advantage and dig in by nightfall. But they had waited so long, they had postponed the attack so often, that when the wind turned in the afternoon of 22 April, the chance was too good to miss. The decision was taken. The codeword ‘Gott strafe Engelland’ was passed along the line. The assault troops were warned and moved into position, the special troops stood by the cylinders ready to open the cocks, the signal rockets were fired. 222 – ‘Everything is ready for the attack.’ 301 – ‘Fair Wind.’ 333 – ‘Get the troops ready to advance.’ There had been several false alarms, and these preliminary signals had been sent up before – always followed by the dispiriting 6666 – ‘Attack Cancelled.’ But this time the front-line German commanders, watching the flares and counting with bated breath, at last saw the signal they had been waiting for. 8888 – ‘Open the gas containers.’ The men of the ‘Stinkpionere’ pulled on their masks, bent over the cylinders, adjusted the long nozzles that would carry the gas into the wind, and wrenched open the cocks that would release it.
The attack came north of Ypres on the left of the salient and it fell in an awkward place, on the shoulder of the line where the Canadians joined hands with the French in front of Poelcapelle, and all across the French front to the Franco/Belgian boundary on the canal near Steenstraat. The Canadian Division had been holding the line for a matter of days, the French were in the process of changing over and their 45th Regiment had just moved into the line and had barely settled down. It was a regiment composed of French Colonials – native troops from North Africa – and it was on them that the full force of the gas cloud descended. At first, it looked as if it were going to envelop the Canadians. Two companies of the 48th Highlanders were in the front line and from his observation post in front of St julien Gunner Jim Sutton had a bird’s eye view.
It had been a quiet day, almost balmy for late April and, although a few shells had fallen in Ypres, away to the right behind them, only an occasional explosion or short burst of machine-gun fire had disturbed the monotonous routine of daytime in the trenches. It was almost five o’clock in the afternoon, the sun still shone, a pleasant light breeze had sprung up blowing, for once, towards the southwest, and as the soldiers, yawning and stretching, drummed up an early evening cup of tea, some of them were looking forward to nightfall and the prospect of being relieved at the end of their stint in the trenches. The guns of the 9th Canadian Battery were in action east of the village of St Julien on the edge of the Steenbeek stream, and the willow trees that bordered it provided perfect camouflage. Earlier in the day Gunner Jim Sutton had been sent forward to the observation post in front of Poelcapelle to take the place of Signaller-Corporal Lister who had been taken ill. The day had been not without incident for, earlier in the morning, a stray shell had broken the telephone line that connected the observation post with the guns and Sutton had spent most of the morning laboriously tracing the break. He found it eventually in the cemetery just north of St Julien and, squatting between the headstones of long-defunct villagers, mended it and made his way discreetly back to his post. For the rest of the day there had been so little doing that Major McDougall had sent the observing officer and another signaller back to the guns. Together Sutton and the Major whiled away the afternoon, looking out from time to time, from their position behind the Canadian trenches, towards the German front line but, as the pleasant afternoon drew on, with no real expectations that anything untoward was likely to happen. It was almost five o’clock and Jim Sutton was sweeping the German line through binoculars from the roof of a shell-battered farmhouse when he spotted the yell
ow cloud that rose from the German trenches and slowly drifted towards the British positions. He called to McDougall, ‘Take a look at this, sir. There’s something funny going on.’ The German artillery opened as he spoke and began to pound the line. Major McDougall yelled back above the noise and Sutton leapt to the telephone to warn the guns and pass on the Major’s orders to open fire on all targets right and left of the Poelcapelle road. He was only just in time. A moment later both telephone lines were cut but, as they anxiously watched, as the cloud drifted closer and closer to their own trenches, the British guns began to reply, the wind shifted and the cloud which had threatened to engulf the Canadians drifted north and rolled across the front of the Algerian Division, joining with others to form a high impenetrable wall of yellow-green smoke. The unfortunate Algerians had no chance. From their position above the gas cloud Sutton and his officer, staring aghast, could hardly have heard the screams, the gasping and choking as the gas cloud rolled across the troops – but they saw the panic – saw that the Algerians were running for their lives, throwing away rifles as they staggered and stumbled, dazed and terrified, away from the lethal fumes.
Jim Keddie, of the 48th Canadian Highlanders, saw it all from the trench a little way behind the front where Η Company was in support. It was his thirty-fourth birthday. He had no means of celebrating, but before they moved forward to take over the front line in the evening Jim was hopeful that the post corporal would deliver a birthday parcel from his mother in Jedburgh in Scotland. Although he had emigrated to Canada some fifteen years ago and was to all intents and purposes a Canadian, Mrs Keddie had never failed to remember his birthday. Now that he was serving with the Canadian Army in France and nearer home, the old lady was hoping at long last to have a sight of her eldest son when his turn came round for leave. Jim was equally keen to get home to his native Jedburgh and had spent much of his birthday in happy contemplation of a warm welcome. It was fortunate for the Canadians that the capricious wind had changed but, even so, the troops on the extreme left of the division on the right of the luckless French Colonials, got more than a whiff of it.