The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade | Page 6

believe, French
or English cavalry on its left.
Saturday afternoon was spent in studying the ground in our front and
looking to the approaches and the arrangements for the Brigade. Our
front was of course well covered, but there were numerous little matters

to be seen to and a certain amount of confabulation with the Divisional
Staff, which lived in the midst of a perpetual va-et-vient at the railway
station at Dour. Our horses were picketed out in M. Durez's garden and
the grubby little fields close by, and the Signal section and all the
vehicles were stowed away there as best could be arranged; but all was
enclosed, cramped, and unhandy, and the difficulty was to get a clear
space anywhere. I walked with M. Durez in the evening to a tiny
mound in his garden, from which he assured me a good view could be
got; but although the sunset and colouring through the haze was rather
picturesque, one couldn't see much. Durez was very apprehensive about
his family and himself, and was most urgent in his inquiries as to what
was going to happen. I could not tell him much beyond the rumour that
the German force in front was reported not to be very big, and I advised
him to stick it out as long as he could; but he was restless, with good
reason as it turned out, and settled next day to take himself and his
family away whilst there was yet time.
Aug. 23rd.
Next morning I got orders to go with Lieut.-Col. Tulloch, the
Divisional Commanding Royal Engineer, to select a defensive position
and entrench it. We got into a car, and went buzzing about in front of
Boussu and round to the right as far as Wasmes; but I never saw such a
hopeless place. There was no field of fire anywhere except to the left,
just where the railway crossed the Boussu road, where, strange to say,
the country opened out on to a "glacis-like" slope of stubble. Going was
bad, up broken little roads over ground composed of a bewildering
variety of slag-heaps 40 to 150 feet high, intersected with railway lines,
mine heads, chimneys, industrial buildings, furnaces, and usines of all
sorts, and thickening into suburbs consisting of narrow winding little
streets and grubby little workmen's houses. Here and there were open
spaces and even green fields, but nowhere could a continuous field of
fire be obtained. The only thing was to select various points d'appui
with some sort of command, and try and connect them up by patches of
entrenchments; but even this was very difficult, as the line was so long
and broken that no unity of command was possible, and the different
patches were so separated and so uneven, some having to be in front of

the general line and some in rear, that they often could not flank or
even see each other.
At about midday several cyclists came riding back in a great hurry from
the Canal, saying they had been attacked by a big force of cavalry and
been badly cut up; that they had lost all their officers and 20 or 30 men
killed, and the rest taken prisoners. This was hardly a good beginning,
but it eventually turned out that the grand total losses were 1 officer
(Corah of the Bedfords) slightly wounded, 2 men killed, and 3 missing.
Shortly after this the first German gun was heard--at 12.40 P.M. I timed
it--and for the rest of the afternoon there was intermittent bombardment
and numerous shell-bursts in the direction of the Canal, some of it our
own Horse Artillery, but mostly German.
When we had roughly settled on our line, I shouted to a crowd of
curious natives who had come out to watch us, and did not seem
particularly friendly--as they were not at all sure that we were not
Germans--to get all their friends together with pickaxes and shovels
and start digging entrenchments where we showed them. It was Sunday
afternoon, and all the miners were loafing about with nothing to do.
The idea rapidly caught on, and soon they were hurrying off home for
their tools, whilst we got hold of the best-dressed and most
authoritative-looking men and showed them what we wanted done. It
was scratch work, in more senses than one, as we had no time to lose
and could not superintend, but had to tear from one point to another,
raising men and showing them where the lines were to go, how deep
the trenches were to be made, which way the earth was to be thrown,
and all the rest of it.
On our way round we came also upon some batteries of field artillery,
disconsolately wending their way through the narrow streets, and with