World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
picture of war would be hopelessly untrue if it left out the other side.
One enthusiasm of the Australians was about the English soldiers who
fought on their right, the Yorkshire boys and others who went through
Inverness Copse. Again and again yesterday I heard them loud in praise
of the Tommies.
"By gosh, they'll do for me! They went ahead in grand style. They
couldn't be stopped anyhow, though they came up against a durned lot of
machine-gun fire. They were just fine."
Far north of all this, above the Zonnebeke, were the Londoners of the
58th Division and the Highlanders of the 51st Division, and, as I have
already written in previous messages, they had severe fighting and had
to bear the brunt of great counter-attacks. The ground in front of the
London Territorials was bad and difficult--bad because it was
intersected with swamps and cut up by weeks of shell-fire, and horribly
difficult because of a ridge rising up on the left to the German strong
point of Wurst Farm.
The London boys swung left in order to attack Wurst Farm, and, avoiding
a frontal assault, worked left-handed all the time till they reached the
ridge, and then rushed the blockhouse from the rear. The garrison was
surprised and caught. They fought desperately, but the Londoners
overpowered them. The surviving Germans complained bitterly, and said it
was impossible to use their machine-guns on every side at once. "It is
not a fair way of fighting," said a German officer, and the Londoners
laughed and said, "Not half!" and "I don't think!" and other ironical
words.
In a big dressing-station up there they captured two doctors and sixty
men, of whom many were wounded. The German doctors said, "Have you any
wounded we can help? We are not fighting men." And they made themselves
useful, and were good fellows.
Down in the valley the Londoners came face to face with a party of
Germans who showed fight, but the Londoners--little fellows some of
them--walked through them and over dead bodies who had fallen before
their rifle-fire. There was a lot of musketry both then and afterwards
when the enemy counter-attacked, and they fired like sharpshooters. Down
below them and almost behind them the line dropped away to the fort of
Schuler Farm, where the enemy still held out. "There are a lot of Boches
down there," said an officer on the brigade staff of the London
Territorials. "No," said the brigade major, and then: "Yes, and, by the
Lord, there's a German officer staring at me. The blighter is telling
one of his men to take a pot at me. See!" The brigade major ducked down
his head as a bullet flattened against the blockhouse wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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