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Updated: August 7, 2024
A few days were spent in Divisional Reserve at Oblinghem during which time all the officers and several non-commissioned officers were sent to the trenches at Festubert or Richebourg for instruction by the Regular battalions which were holding the line.
I continued to film the scenes. First came Ploegsteert, Fromelles, and Aubers Ridge. Then we crossed to Neuve Chapelle, Festubert, La Bassée and Loos. Town after town, village after village, were passed over, all of them in ruins. From above the trenches, like a splash of white chalk dropped into the middle of a patch of brown earth.
It was to force the British to concentrate on the exposed line between Festubert and Givenchy, north of the canal, and then to turn the British right by the German forces in their new position just south of the canal, thus calling for simultaneous action on both sides of the canal.
Right after this terrible scrap at Ypres came Givenchy and Festubert, and then we held the line at Ploegsteert for a whole year, fighting fiercely at St. Eloi, and stopping them again at Sanctuary Wood. In the summer of 1916 fourteen thousand of us went down before German cannon, but still they did not break our lines. This was known as the third battle of Ypres.
Then if you try to pierce the northern haze, beyond that ruined tower, you may follow in imagination the course of the Yser westward to that Belgian coast where Admiral Hood's guns broke down and scattered the German march upon Dunkirk and Calais; or if you turn south you are looking over the Belfry of Bailleul, towards Neuve Chapelle, and Festubert, and all the fierce fighting-ground round Souchez and the Labyrinth.
We visited the various filling points of water carts and gradually drew nearer the front line trenches. Turning down one arm of "the tuning fork" a forked road near Festubert, we came upon an advanced dressing-station. A little to our left was a grey pile of bricks and rubble, all that remained of the village of Festubert.
No serious damage was done, however, and we were relieved the following night by a Territorial battalion of Highlanders. On the 26th General French, having attained for the moment the immediate object in view, ordered a curtailment of the bombardment and a consolidation of all positions won, and the Battle of Festubert came to an end.
For me it was interesting because it was one of the few times I had ridden just behind our trenches, which at the moment were just north of the road and were occupied by the Bedfords. In a day or two we returned to Festubert, and Cadell gave me a shake-down on a mattress in his billet gloriously comfortable.
One hot morning in mid June we received a telegram from the Surgeon General to investigate a water supply complained of in the Festubert region. A premonition seized me that I was going to be killed, for the battery to be visited was in a very "unhealthy" spot. So I made a new will, and wrote a letter of farewell, to be posted in case of accident.
One night we found that our first Canadian brigade was going into the trenches at Festubert without the chemical necessary to saturate their gas masks, which had just been issued to the soldiers; we succeeded in borrowing 500 pounds from a wide-awake army corps and took it down in the car to an advanced dressing station which the brigade would have to pass.
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