THE GUNNERS' HELL
232
The Vpres Times.
The Steenbeek, 1917^-THiRD Battle of Ypres.
Then let us sing the chorus, boys,
And give it three times three,
Here's the Gunrjer and the Driver
Of the Royal Artillery."
-Old Regimental Song HaltAction Front
The name Steenbeek conjures up many feelings in the mind of the Gunner whose
fate it was to take part in the Great Battle of Flanders, 1917—-sadness at the great gaps
left among old friends and tried comrades mingling with pride at the way they played
their part. Probably now though, Warm and comfortable, clean and well fed, neat and
trim, the muddy, infinitely weary, shivering images of himself and his companions will
fade away, and he will contemplate the triumphs rather than the cost. He may be conscious
of great deeds accomplished, but when they were carried out they were, like most great
deeds, performed unconsciously. It is a curious fact that though one may now recognise
those acts as great sacrifices at the altar of patriotism, and may record them in order to
inspire those who come after, they'.were met at the time as the ordinary daily routine,
and the commanders never had to make appeals. There were no Agincourt exhortations,
but merely unemotional and prosaic copies of operation orders. When an artillery
commander visited a battery which had just lived through some nerve-shattering period,
during which there had been no rest or sleep, but only the continued visitation of death,
and when he stopped at some half-buried gun, beside which stood the remnants of a
detachment, the N.C.O. in charge, or if none were left, a simple gunner, would spring up to
attention and cheerfully give his report. The latter would have smiled if he had been
accused of greatness.
By the Steenbeek the gun detachments worked for victory and although their
minds might well have been appalled, their hearts never quailed, and the possibility of
defeat was never even contemplated. When the task appeared superhuman, they played
the superman. A brigade or battery commander might have had misgivings as to the
chances of success of an enterprise, but he never had misgivings as to the attemptfor
whatever the demand, the gun detachments could be relied on to give of their best. They
might sink with their guns in the mud, but they would have fired the barrage. Before
the war it would have been deemed madness to put human nerve to such tests of endurance
and now, looking back, the work of the men can only be contemplated with amazement.
Though many of the causes which induced a man cheerfully and uncomplainingly
to go through such tests elude ussome will say the instinct of self-preservation was the
strongest, others the pride of courage or the power of disciplinethere is one which
certainly actuated the Gunner with no uncertain note, and that was his love of helping a
comrade. Whatever his own sufferingsand what they were in that vile and sorrowful
country,
Where all the face of nature seems a monstrous septic sore,
Where the bowels of earth hang open, like the guts of something slain,
And the rot and wreck of everything are churned and churned again."
reads like a page from Dante's' Infernohe knew that his palin front was bearing
an equal share, and he would not leave him in the lurch. Whatever might happen, the
infantry soldier should hear overhead the comforting sound of his own shells. Sometimes
the front line of infantry literally stuck in the mud and found it humanly impossible to
Reproduced by permission from the Royal Artillery War Commemoration Book (Messrs.
G. Bell and Sons, Ltd.).
