World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
I told yesterday how some of our English battalions took Langemarck like
this, leaving many comrades bogged, wounded, and spent, but crawling
round the concrete houses, over the old cellars of the village and
routing out the Germans who held them with machine-guns. At the
blockhouse on the way up, called Au Bon Gîte, an oblong fort of concrete
walls ten feet thick, the Germans bolted inside as soon as they saw our
men, slammed down an iron door, and for a time stayed there while our
bombers prowled round like hungry wolves waiting for their prey. Later
they gave themselves up because our line swept past them and they had no
hope.
In another place of the same kind, called Reitre Farm, from which came a
steady blast of machine-gun fire, our men made several desperate rushes
and at last, when many lay wounded, a machine-gunner of ours got close
and thrust the barrel of his weapon through a slit in the wall and swept
the inner chamber with a flood of bullets.
There were savage fights in some of the dark cellars of Langemarck
between men who would not surrender and men who would not turn back, and
men who fell heavily against other men and knew that in these
underground holes it must be their life or the other's, and the quicker
the better. They fought their way beyond Langemarck yesterday, and on
the left of our advance we hold to-day all the ground that was taken,
which follows the curve of the Langemarck-Gheluvelt line, dug and wired
by months of labour according to the orders of the German command,
afraid of our coming menace, and now blotted out. The fighting all about
this ground was by groups of English soldiers, in some cases without
officers, and in some cases led by privates with a sense of leadership
and fine, stern courage. They were Royal Fusiliers, Lancashire
Fusiliers, Middlesex, Guernseys, and other battalions of the 29th
Division, the Light Infantry battalions of the 20th Division, the
Yorkshires, Lancashires, South Staffords, Lincolns, and Borderers of the
11th Division, and the Oxfords, Gloucesters, and Berkshires of the 48th
Division. So things happened on the left of the battle. All ground was
gained as it had been planned, and all held, and many hundreds of
prisoners were taken, though that is not the best proof of success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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