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The Ypres Times.
made several excursions to the Salient. Well as I thought I knew the ground this butt
was the only spot I could positively identify. Every other landmark had completely
disappeared. Of Hooge Chateau not a trace could be found, nor of Herentage Chateau,
a fine modern country house on the right of the road half way between Hooge and Gheluvelt.
All round this Chateau and away to the south as far as Hill 60, the country was densely
wooded. Running through these woods to Zwarteleen was what was known in 1914 as
the Brown Roadafterwards, I think, called Green Jacket Ride. Some of the hardest
fighting in the First Battle of Ypres took place along this road. At one time both sides
held the road simultaneously, we facing East and the Germans facing West. Our
right and their right actually touching with only a flimsy barricade between us. There
were many peculiar situations during the War, but I doubt if anything quite equalled this.
Our Brigade Headquarters were in a small house just on the edge of the Wood about
300 yards from the Brown Road. This house was afterwards known as Rudkin House.
That it was in a fairly exposed spot is proved by the fact that the Brigadier and his
Brigade Major had no less than seven horses killed there in a week. Later on in the
War, of course, we should not have dreamt of keeping our horses so far forward, but in
those daj'S we still clung to the idea that we were engaged in open warfare, and might
require our horses at any moment. Nor had we then learnt the supreme importance of
keeping a Headquarters concealed from the enemy. Staff Officers and Orderlies were
continually riding up to the house, horses were tied up outside, and there was a continual
bustle and coming and going which must have been plainly visible to the enemy's F.O.O.'s.
That this was so is evidenced by the fact that on the 17th of November a heavy bombard
ment was opened on the house which was completely destroyed in a very few minutes. In
1918 I made a special expedition to try and find this house, but quite failed to locate it.
The whole face of the country had completely altered. Gone were the thick fir woods,
gone was the Brown Road, and Zwarteleen village was completely engulfed in the craters
of Hill 60. There was not a single landmark by which the position of the house could
be identified. Another peculiarity, and one which made identification still more difficult,
was the fact that the complete destruction of the trees laid bare features which had
hitherto been hidden by the woods. I never realised, until I went back after the trees
had been destroyed, the existence of the long ridge near Shrewsbury Forest which was
such a dominant feature of the landscape later on in the War.
From our little house by the side of the road we witnessed one of the finest episodes
of the battle worthy to be ranked with the charge of the Worcesters, viz., the counter
attack of the Household Cavalry Brigade, so well described in The Times article. The
attack started from the road just below our house, and was made in the general direction
of Mount Sorrel, at that time in the middle of a thick wood. The attack was pushed up
to the very edge of the wood, but to the best of the writer's belief none of the attackers
ever actually got into the woods. Though the attack did not succeed in regaining the
lost ground it gave us breathing time and an opportunity of constituting a new line, which,
as The Times article says, we succeeded in holding until the end of the battle, though how
we managed to do this has always been a mystery to the writer. Our trenches in those
days were of the most primitive description usually short lengths of fire trench not
connected with each other, holding about a dozen men each, and in many cases only deep
enough to give cover to men kneeling, no dug outs, no communication trenches, no second
line. The trenches along the Brown Road in the wood were to some extent protected
owing to the fact that the front edge of the wood had become an impenetrable jungle of
fallen trees brought down by the heavy shelling and impassable to friend and foe alike.
But there was no protection of this sort for trenches in the open, and nearly all the right
of our line from Observatory RidgeI quote its later nameto Zwarteleen were so
situated. Nothing but sheer grit and the determination to hang on at all costs saved this
part of the line. A STAFF OFFICER OF 1914.
