Ypres Re-Visited

Earlier this week, en route to Brussels, my colleague availed himself of the opportunity to visit the small town of Poelcappelle which, in 1917, formed part of the Third Battle of Ypres (known as Ieper to Flemish speakers).

No building or tree in and around Poelcappelle survived the Great War.  The artillery bombardments, combined with inordinately heavy rains during the battle, reduced the countryside to a sea of mud and water-filled craters of considerable depth.

In these conditions, troops were subjected to artillery shells, sniping and heavy enemy machine-gun fire.

By the conclusion of the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917, British casualties during the Battle were estimated as approaching 300,000, in a conflict that became synonymous with the grinding and bloody misery of trench warfare.

My colleague’s late father was still a teenager when he fought at the Battle of Poelcappelle and, by then, he was a veteran both of the Battle of the Somme of 1916 and the Battle of Arras, earlier in 1917. It was not until he reached his 60s that he started a family.

Fortunately, he maintained a detailed archive and record of his experiences, including extensive correspondence and the original trench maps identifying the objectives of the campaigns.

From these, my colleague was able to discover — within 100 yards or so — the  approximate location where his father was shot in both legs on 12th October 1917. My colleague removed several samples of soil, placing them into a jam-jar as a keepsake from a battle that occurred nearly 95 years ago.

When that event occurred, the young man was a Captain in the Household Battalion — the infantry battalion of the Household Cavalry. The objective, which commenced at 05.25hrs, was to advance 750 yards to the line of the Requete Farm.

On Wednesday 10th October, the Battalion strength was 15 officers and 498 other ranks. The men had been without proper sleep for days, had been soaked through by heavy rains, subjected to intensely cold and windy conditions and heavy shelling for 24 hours. By the close on Friday 12th, casualties amounted to 13 officers and 348 other ranks, severely depleting the Battalion’s strength. Total casualties for the period 4th-13th October were 13 officers and 394 other ranks.

Captain V Cazelet (later awarded the MC for his part in the battle) takes up the story, as published in the Westminster Gazette Jan 1918:

It was Wednesday 10th October and no one had slept since Sunday—some not then.

In the morning of 11th October….the shelling began. It went on most of the day. At about 4am, I got our orders – 24 items – to be read, digested and explained to the men before dark and no one allowed to stand up (writer’s note: in case they became visible to the enemy)…..It was, of course, impossible for everyone to get acquainted with the plan of attack.

The night of 11th/12th Oct “began the most awful night I ever remember….It was quite impossible to describe, the shell holes, craters and mud being beyond all belief dreadful.  I took the Company to somewhere near the right place, as I thought, and then I had to hurry off to a conference at Battalion HQ at 9pm. Before I left, I told the Corporal-Major to get a party and go to our HQ and draw the water and rum.

Our conference lasted an hour. There were at least twelve people in a tiny pillbox deep in mud and no one could move any way. Zero hour to be at 05.25 and we were to be in our places two hours before. Then after the conference there were the usual “Good luck, old chap,” “Take care of yourself,” The very best of luck.” Everyone knew we should not all meet again—in fact, of the company commanders present, one was killed, two wounded and I remained.

On the way back to his Company, he continues:

…After much wandering with my runner I hit upon the Corporal-Major still trying to find the way to Battalion HQ to get the water and rum. I joined him and together we wandered and wandered about, going all over the place. Imagine my feelings—in No Man’s Land, with no guide—never knowing when we might run into the Boches—pouring rain every now and then—hopelessly lost and with the knowledge of the morning in front of us. At last we struck a railway line and, joy of joys, I met O.W. who led me to the Company.

Having got there, I determined to find my way to Battalion HQ as I thought the men must, above all things, get their rum…Now you may think me a fool, but I lost my way again and yet I cannot understand how, but lost it I did and for the second time I experienced those awful feelings of absolute destitution. Remember, we had not slept for three nights and also the walking was as rough as it could be. It was about one in the morning now and the men were dog-tired but on we plodded for another two hours.

Where we went I don’t know but we eventually got a guide who put us on the right track….Just at that moment the rain came on, bitter, blinding rain and to crown all things a shell landed right in the middle of a group of men and wounded ten, four being stretcher-bearers. It seemed that the acme of hell on earth had come. No stretcher-bearers, ten wounded men in the wet groaning for help, the company all mixed up….One poor man, I remember, kept yelling for help.

And after zero hour:

…There seemed to be no opposition in front of us but our right seemed to have disappeared altogether. Just then the enemy put down his barrage – luckily behind us, but a few howitzers fell among us and one, sadly enough, close up to O.W. and myself. It blew us all over and I heard him say “It’s got me.” I feared it had. It had gone right through his steel helmet and reached his skull – his servant was also wounded just by us. I waited a few minutes by his side, trying to get him to speak but I saw he was obviously breathing his last, so I left him to his servant and went on with the battle. A more gallant, noble English gentleman never breathed….

On 26th October, 1917, my colleague’s father received this letter in hospital from his Squadron Quartermaster Corporal, from No 3 Company:

Sir,

I have the honour to acknowledge your letter of the 20th, received today. Before writing about the company, may I hope and trust that your wounds are not of a serious nature and that you will soon be convalescent and able to enjoy the rest you have so well earned.

It is indeed a very sorrowful and painful duty to have to write about such good men being killed. I am sure it will be rather a shock to you to learn that not one officer or NCO came from the line of attack, truly a sad thing. I lament the death of Mr Beechcroft, who was sniped after the objective was gained. C of H Terrell, as will be seen, was killed. He was last seen far ahead of anybody throwing bombs at one of their strongpoints. Buckingham had a bad shell wound high up the thigh, which fractured it.  Johnson had rather a serious one in the arm. Westbrook and Page were not so badly hit and I understand from the statements made by men that all the remaining wounded will get through it all right.

I am sure you will be pleased to hear that Warner (stretcher bearer) has been recommended for the MM.

Capt Camberwell of No 1 Company is Company Commander now and is trying to get the men of the draft up to the standard of efficiency as it was when you had the Company. I need hardly tell you that we have been on the move practically the whole time since the Battalion came out and have reached so far as the College Commune in the same locality as when we left for Flanders.

A few promotions have been made. Burrows has been appointed C of H. Ptes Waite, Judge and Tweddale have been appointed L/Cpls.

A great number of men who came back with the Company have been compelled to go sick. Chapman, Mayes, Tann who, by the way, had a bullet wound through the neck and did not know it but thought it was a boil. He said so. The remainder are going on in the usual way and I think ready for another smash in.

I cannot explain anything about the missing. One always feels more anxious about them than the killed, as their fate seems so much more unfortunate.  I may add that the Regimental Corporal Major (JWS Wright) very nearly got took prisoner and it is very amusing to hear his graphic description of how he evaded the terrible hun.

You will be pleased to learn that Mr Butler has rejoined. Mr De Geijer is still with us and Mr Duffy, who came with the draft.  We are working 3 platoon to the Company, the four survivors on No 12 joining No 10 platoon, their names are Francis, Welch, Whale and Gammon.

Now, Sir, I hope I have not rambled on too far and that you wont tire ‘ere you get this far. I will close now, wishing you everything that is good. I hope you will soon be out of hospital and I am afraid it is too much for one to hope for, that is back again with us.

With the best of luck and good health.

I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant.

W. Martin

SQMC.

(98 casualties, including those missing in action, were then listed according to their platoons within the No 3 Company).

Although nine tanks had been sent into the battle, not one was able to proceed through the mud, many sinking into the ground and the others picked off by the enemy artillery.

Perhaps the final comment on the Third Battle of Ypres should go to WHA Groom, taken from his book Poor Bloody Infantry:

Perhaps no normal infantryman who has been through a 1917 Passchendaele attack would ever be quite the same again. this was the battlefield of battlefields which exposed the ultimate degradation of fighting and man’s inhumanity to man….It seems superfluous to write any more about that ghastly battlefield and words are so ineffectual. for me the one word is obscene and it was obscene to the nth degree.

Notes

1. Captain Cazalet was awarded the MC for his part in the Battle of Poelcappelle. Many were convinced he would receive the VC.  When the VC was instituted during Queen Victoria’s reign, it became a condition that no member of the Household Cavalry would receive the award because such valour was accepted as normal from its members.

Capt Cazalet became a Conservative MP in 1924. In 1939, he volunteered for service again and, in 1940, became appointed liaison officer between the British Government and the Free Poles, headed by General Sikorski, with whom he travelled extensively, visiting Canada, the USA and the Soviet Union.  He died on 4th July 1943 in a Liberator bomber, just as it left Gibraltar on the way back to the UK. The death has been surrounded by controversy and many believe General Sikorski was assassinated.

Sikorski refused to accept the Soviet version relating to the murder of 20,000 Polish officers and, equally, opposed the prospect of Soviet expansionism and encroachment into Poland after the War.  His determination was a cause for division between the Russian and Western Governments.  Very few British intelligence documents have, to this day, been declassified.

In a recently declassified briefing paper dated January 24, 1969, to the British Cabinet Secretary, Sir Burke Trend, Sir Robin Cooper, a former pilot employed in the Cabinet Office, wrote, after reviewing the wartime inquiry’s findings: “Security at Gibraltar was casual, and a number of opportunities for sabotage arose while the aircraft was there.” Sir Robin added: “The possibility of Sikorski’s murder by the British is excluded from this paper. The possibility of his murder by persons unknown cannot be so excluded.” The inquiry’s finding about the jammed airplane controls, he wrote, seemed plausible. “But it still leaves open the question of what—or who—jammed them. No one has ever provided a satisfactory answer.” It is worth noting that the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service’s counterintelligence for the Iberian Peninsula from 1941 to 1944 was Kim Philby, the Soviet double agent who would defect in 1963 and later claim to have been a double agent since the 1940s. Before 1941, Philby had served as an instructor with the Special Operations Executive, an organization specializing in sabotage and diversion behind enemy lines.

2. My colleague, who sought to begin his adult life with a Commission in the Guards, later had his military career terminated on account of his membership, at school, of the National Front in the 1970s—even though his discharge papers described his conduct as “exemplary”.  Several Peers of the Realm, the ex Deputy Head of MI6, the late Alan Clark MP and others campaigned to have the decision reversed. Alan Clark stated the decision had been made at a political level and amounted to a petty retribution and vindictiveness.  Recently, my colleague was listed by Nick Griffin MEP as ‘vermin’.

3 Photos: taken from private collection.