116
The Ypres Times.
before of the approach of the new German Fourth Army, under the Duke of Wiirtemberg,
which was pouring down on him from the direction of Courtrai. Of the new .Sixth Army,
under Crown Prince Rupprecht, which was converging from the east, striking from the
area north of and around Eille towards our right from above Armentières to ha Bassée
of this he had only the most shadowy information. But, happily, the Germans' intelligence
was no more complete than ours. They had expected to find an open Allied flank some
where in the air about Bethune. When they came upon an established lineestablished
in many places less than 40 hours beforethey knew not what was behind it. They never
knew that along that thin-drawn front squadrons of dismounted cavalry were pretending
to be brigadesa couple of weak battalions were holding divisional fronts. When a
handful of new troopstwo or three companies or a hundred men—were thrust into a
widening gap to make a counter-attack, the Germans imagined the on-coming weight of
great bodies of fresh reserves. Several times," Falkenhayn has written, it seemed
as though it only needed perseverance in the offensive to obtain complete success how
near we actually were to it has since been made sufficiently plain." With what a sense
of humiliation he must have written that! For then he knew that all that had been
opposed to him were seven British infantry divisions and three cavalry divisionsa
force which might have been expected to hold ten miles of line, but which was extended
on a front which at the greatest reached to 36 miles, and was never less than 25 a con
temptible army indeedThe more the story of the battle is analysed and written about,
the more amazing it will appear and the affair of the 2nd Worcesters was typical.
A legend has grown up that the arrival of the Worcesters at the critical moment
was more or less of an accidentthat Brigadier-General FitzClarence, V.C., somehow
happened to stumble on them where they were waiting behind Polygon Wood with
nothing to do, and beggêd them to come to his aid. ft was not in the least likely that a
battalionor even a platoonof troops would have been overlooked or left in idleness
that day.
The fact is that certain unitsnamely, the 2nd Grenadier Guards, 2nd Coldstream
Guards (of the 4th Guards Brigade), with the 2nd Worcesters and 2nd Oxford and
Bucks B.I. (of the 5th Infantry Brigade)had been constituted into what was nominally
a Second Divisional Reserve. As they were about all the reserves that Haigor French,
for that matterhad, they might as well have been called a Corps, or even an Army,
Reserve. From a position behind Polygon Wood they were being drawn upon with the
utmost economy wherever supports were critically needed. One company (Company
"A") of the Worcesters had already been used earlier in the day to help FitzClarence's
Brigade in the Gheluvelt area. That morning the Germans had thrown eight battalions
into the attack on Gheluvelt, which was held by the troops of the extreme right of the
1st Division, the left of the tired 7th Division being on their righteight battalions against
the equivalent of two. The left of the 7th Division was pressed back by weight of
numbers, and the troops of thè 1st DivisionRoyal Welch and South Wales Borderers
had their flank exposed, and, after desperate fighting, were forced, about 2 p.m., to give
way. Gheluvelt was in the enemy's hands, and his road to Ypres and the coast open.
Then it was that FitzClarence went off to call on the remaining three companies of
the Worcesters. That they belonged to another Division, the 2nd, was immaterial.
Deploying in a little wood by Polderhoek Chateau, they charged with the bayonet the right
flank of the advancing Germans, threw them into confusion, drove them back, and
recaptured the lost trenches, holding them until the broken line could be reconstituted.
The Worcesters, in the three companies, had three officers wounded and 120 other
ranks killed, wounded, and missing not a heavy toll to pay for the saving of the Empire.
It was a gallant incident, if no more gallant, probably, than a hundred others in the long
course of the battle and its fame will live in history as one of the critical incidents of the
whole war.
Any adequate account of the First Battle of Ypres would demand a volume. For
a month that "thin straggling line of tired-out British soldiers," as Sir John French
