World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The prisoners I saw to-day were shaken men. Most of them were young
fellows of twenty-one, belonging to the 1916 class, and there were none
of the youngest boys among them. But they were white-faced and haggard,
and looked like men who had passed through a great terror, which indeed
was their fate. They belonged mostly to the 207th Prussian Division, and
had suffered before the battle from our great shell-fire, which had
caused many casualties among their reliefs and ration parties. Many
other prisoners belonged to the 121st Division. I can only give this
glimpse or two of the crowded scenes and the many details of to-day's
battle. To-morrow there will be time perhaps to write more, giving a
deeper insight into this day of good success, which is cheering after so
much desperate fighting--over the same fields, although never to so far
a goal.
* * * * *
SEPTEMBER 21
In spite of many German counter-attacks yesterday and many vain and
costly attempts to counter-attack to-day, we hold all the ground gained
by our men yesterday, except at one or two strong points, after their
victorious progress. This morning when I went again among the men who
have been fighting--there was a blue sky over the rags and tatters of
the City of Ypres, and behind the tall, solitary tree-stumps on the
ridge that goes up to Polygon Wood by way of Glencorse Copse, and all
the air was filled with the song of many aeroplanes--all that I learned
yesterday about the battle was made more certain by the narratives of
these young soldiers, who are proud and glad of what they call a real
good show. The wounded men walking down over the wide stretch of fields,
which are still under gun-fire, weak with loss of blood, suffering the
first pain of their wounds, and shaken by their experiences under shells
and machine-gun fire, spoke with a quiet enthusiasm of the day's
success, and said "It was easy" behind such a colossal barrage as our
guns rolled in front of them. Some of them in their eagerness went too
fast for the barrage in order to chase the enemy, and I have met
Australians here and there and some men of the Welsh Regiment, who
fought farther south, wounded because they ran in front of the
barrage-lines, and were caught in our shell-splinters. But that was a
rare episode, and along the whole line of attack the men followed the
moving walls of shells, vast shells that fling up masses of earth like
suburban villas, and the smaller shells that fell like confetti, all
glinting in the wet mist, and felt sure that the enemy in front of them,
would have lost all his fight when they reached his hiding-places, if
any lived. Many Germans died on that ground, so that the shell-holes
between the blockhouses are wet graves in which their bodies lie, and
many of the blockhouses which resisted so long in former attacks are
smashed, or at least so battered that the garrisons inside were dazed
and demoralized by the fearful hammering at their walls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account