Lord RawlinsonRecollections.
The Ypres Times
183
ning was an infernal splendour. It was when the mines were touched offseventeen of
them.
Out of the dark ridges of Messines and Whitesheet," and ill-famed Hill Co, there
gushed enormous volumes of scarlet flame, spilling over into fierce coloitr, sky high, so
that all the countryside was illumined by red light. The earth quaked so that our waiting
riien were thrown to the ground before they scrambled up and went forward to the German
lines with flocks of aeroplanes high above them, and close ahead the most devastating
barrage of bursting shells ever seen on our Western Front; Red rockets rose here and
there from the German linesdistress signals to their gunnersand then died down.
Clouds of smoke drifted over the upheaved earth and mingled with the morning mist
and made a bank of fog hiding our advancing men and the agony of the enemy. The
Germansmostly Bavarians and Saxonswere stunned and shaken. Some of their
machine-gunners fought with great bravery and there was heavy fighting in some of the
trenches by men who stood among their mangled dead.
The New Zealanders reached and captured Messines in an hour and forty minutes
after the moment of attack. The IrishNationalists and Ulstermen not divided in politics
ön this field of battlevied with each other in gallantry and sacrifice, and stormed their
Way up to Wvtschaete, where they captured the ruins of the White Chateau after
hard fighting. The English troops of the 19th, 41st, 47th, and 23rd Divisions advanced
along a line, including Battle Wood, south of Zillebeke.
After the-high ground had been gained an order passed along to all the batteries.
Horses were standing by. They were harnessed to the guns. Then half way through
the battle the old gun-positions were abandoned, after two and a half years of stationary
warfare in the Ypres Salient. The drivers urged on their horses. They drove at a gallop
past old screens and camouflaged places where men had walked stealthily in the years
now past, and dashed up the slopes. The infantry stood by to let them pass and from
thousands of men, hot and dusty and parched, who were waiting to go forward in support
of the first waves of assault, there rose a hoarse following cheer which swept along the
track of the gunners and went with them up to the ridge, where they unlimbered and got
into action again.
Our casualties for the da\r of battle were about 10,000 and we called them light, as
they were amazingly compared with other battles before and later, not so complete as
this, not so well organised, not so effective. It is ancient history now, though many
who read these Words saw those mines go up and walked across that ground and peered
into the craters like pits of hell which had been opened out by high explosives. A great
victorybut we don't want others like it in the history of men.
PHILIP GIBBS.
Sir,A few recollections of Lieut.-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, and the IV Corps
during the period that led up to the first battle of Ypres, may be of interest to your
readers.
At the beginning of October, 1914, General Rawlinson was in command of the
4th Division on the Aisne, when he received orders to proceed to Belgium, and take
command of the IV Corps on its arrival from England. Starting at 4 a.m. on the 4th,
with his brother "Toby" Rawlinson, the Duke of Westminster, Col. Joe Laycock, and
driven by Borritt, the owner of the Rolls in which he travelled, he arrived at Dunkerque
at 6 p.m. on the same day. On the 5th he went on to Bruges, and thence to Antwerp
to confer with Mr. Winston Churchill. On the 7th he was back at Bruges, where the
7th Division under Major-General T. Capper joined him, followed by the 3rd Cavaliy
Division (Byng) on the 9th.
