The Scots Guards in the Salient
140
THE YPRES TIMES
to give to friends such as one of my colleagues who wrote to me from the home
front that the stress of war was such that he had not seen butter for a fortnight
nor handled a racquet for three weeks. People have repeated to themselves the
quotation so often, They also serve who wait that they really believe that their
war was more or less on a par with that of the infantry. It is up to intelligent
men (and it is quite likely that the most intelligent were forcibly kept at home or
at the base) to form a judgment on that question. These Letters give a
description of infantry war-service which bears all the stamp of truth and absence
of varnish. No reader can fail to recognize that this is the case. They introduce
him also, in an intimate way, to officers differing widely in type and with men
hailing from very divergent walks in civil life both in town and country.
If the reader wants quantity rather than intimacy he will find more fighting in
this book than in half a dozen other records of the Western Front put together.
By a Field Ambulance M.O.
YPRES, 1914, '17Langemark, 1914GheluveltNonne BosschenPilckem,
PoelcappellePasschendaele, these are the battle honours of the Scots
Guards, gained during the First and Third Battles of Ypres.
The 2nd Battalion, having landed with the 7th Division at Zeebrugge, arrived
in Ypres on October 14th, closely followed by the 1st Battalion from the Aisne on
October 21st, 1914.
Throughout this desperate battle both battalions fought on the Menin Road,
where after the first few days the casualties were so severe and the number of men
available to stem the enemy attacks were so small, that the war diaries treat with
individual companies and even platoons rushed up at a moment's notice to fill
threatened gaps.
The 2nd Battalion, defending the area south of the road, eventually lost two
companies with the Commanding Officer in Kruiseik on October 26th, when the
flanks having been overwhelmed, they stood to the last man and the last round.
The remnants, withdrawing to Gheluvelt with the 1st Battalion on their left, with
stood the attack on the 29th and were relieved on November 6th, having had 26
officers and 647 men killed and wounded in three weeks.
The 1st Battalion, engaged on the 29th in the defence of Gheluvelt, held their
ground despite the annihilation of two companies, but on the 31st were forced to
withdraw owing to enemy penetration on their right. Entrenching again east of
Veldhoek, the Battalion withstood heavy shelling for two days without relief. On
November nth the attack of the Prussian Guard was preceded by three hours'
intense bombardment, and the front line being lost everywhere, the battalion came
out of action that night with one officer and thirty-nine men.
Thirteen hundred and seventy-seven was the total of the casualties suffered by
the two battalions in four weeks.
In March, 1916, both battalions, now in the Guards Division, returned to the
