The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b The First BattalionKipling, Rudyard
History
The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b The First Battalion
Kipling, Rudyard
Great Britain. Army. Irish Guards -- History; World War, 1914-1918 -- Regimental histories -- Great Britain
His last words to them were that
they were to “play the game” and not to revenge his death on the Hun.
On the afternoon of the 6th October, which was cold and misty, the
Germans pushed a patrol through the wood and our standing-patrol went
out and discovered one German under-officer of the 64th (Imperial
Jäger Guards) dead, and the rifle of another man.
The enemy sent out no more patrols. Men had grown to be cunning
among the timber, and noticed every tree they moved under. When the
Coldstream relieved the Battalion that night, one of our patrols
found a felled tree had been carefully placed across their homeward
path by some unknown hand--it might have been the late Jäger
under-officer--who had expected to attack the patrol while it was
climbing over the obstacle.
On the 7th the Battalion rested in Soupir all day, and on the 8th
Lieutenant G. Brooke’s body was brought in from Braisne and buried in
Soupir cemetery.
The 9th was a quiet day except for an hour’s shelling, and a good
deal of cheering from the German trenches in the evening, evidently
in honour of the fall of Antwerp. It annoyed our men for the reason
that they could not retaliate. Our guns had not a round to throw away.
THE MOVE TOWARD THE SEA
The opposing lines had been locked now for close upon a month and,
as defences elaborated themselves, all hope of breaking-through
vanished. Both sides then opened that mutually outflanking movement
towards the west which did not end till it reached the sea. Held up
along their main front, the Germans struck at the Flanders plain, the
Allies striving to meet the movement and envelop their right flank as
it extended. A British force had been sent to Antwerp; the Seventh
Division and the Third Cavalry Division had been landed at Zeebrugge
on the 7th October with the idea of helping either the Antwerp force
or co-operating with the Allied Armies as circumstances dictated.
Meantime, the main British force was being held in the trenches of
the Aisne a hundred and twenty miles away; and it seemed good to
all concerned that these two bodies of British troops should be
consolidated, both for purposes of offence, command and, by no means
least, supply, on the Flanders flank covering the Channel. There
were obvious dangers in moving so many men from high ground across a
broad river under the enemy’s eye. It could only be effected at night
with all precautions, but as the western pressure developed and was
accentuated by the fall of Antwerp, the advantage of the transfer
outweighed all risk. Our cavalry moved on the 3rd October by road
for Flanders, and a few days later the infantry began to entrain for
St. Omer. The Second Corps was the first to leave, the Third Corps
followed, and the First was the last.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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