World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
high ground on the right to strike between the Lancashire men of the
55th Division and the Scottish troops of the 15th on their right. It was
decided to withdraw to a better defensive line, and 160 Lancashire
Fusiliers got into Schuler Farm, and held it against heavy odds in order
to cover this movement. They stayed there, using machine-guns and rifles
until only thirty of them were left standing, and all around them were
dead and dying. Their work was done, for they had held out long enough
to protect the withdrawing lines, and the thirty survivors decided to
fight their way back through an enemy fast closing in upon them. So they
left the farm, and of the thirty ten reached the new line. Since then
the enemy has made repeated attacks from the high ground on the right,
and especially against the Pommern Redoubt, but every time he has been
cut up by the fire of our guns and rifles. I hear that this afternoon he
is again massing for another attempt, according to the orders given to
the German troops that they must get back all the ground they have lost,
and at all costs, by August 3, which is to-day.
I have already told in a general way in previous dispatches how the
Scots of the 15th Division farther south than the Lancashire men fought
their way up to the Frezenberg Redoubt, coming under a blast of
machine-gun fire from a neighbouring farm until they captured its
garrison, and then going on to two other enemy redoubts. They had the
same trouble as the Lancashire men with these concrete forts, but
attacked them with stubborn courage, and put them out of action. One of
my good friends was wounded in front of one of these emplacements in
command of his battalion of 8/1Oth Gordons, and it was by an odd chance
that I saw him as he lay wounded in a casualty clearing-station a few
hours later. "I hear my men have done well," he said. They did as well
as they have always done in many great battles, and not only well, but
wonderfully, and they went as far as they were allowed to go, and held
on in their old grim way when things were at their worst. The whole line
of the Scottish troops below the Langemarck-Zonnebeke road was attacked
at two in the afternoon, or thereabouts, and their advanced line
gradually withdrew under a fierce fire. At six o'clock the enemy
slightly penetrated the advance line, driving the Gordons back a hundred
yards, but the Camerons drove them out and away. This was on a front to
the east of St.-Julien and south of Zonnebeke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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