The First Battle of Ypres officially lasted from 19th October to 22nd November 1914 and was in effect a series of bloody engagements set amidst the bleak and dreary landscape of northern Belgium with the mediaeval town of Ypres as a backdrop.

 

Fighting on the Aisne had petered out at the end of September with the Allies holding their own and now the war took on a different character as both sides tried desperately to find a way through the other’s defences, probing ever northward for a gap that would allow one to outflank the other.  What became known as The Race for the Sea, would be the last time until the German breakthrough in March 1918, that the armies of the Western Front would have so much freedom of movement.  As the opposing forces chased each other northward, they stamped out their claim to the land they left behind them in the zig-zag entrenchments that above all else would characterise fighting on the Western Front.

 

By the time Reg Pimble joined his battalion in France on 5th September, they were heartily sick of marching away from the enemy and glad of the opportunity to finally strike a blow back on The Marne.  Pimble was another old hand; a Gloucestershire Regiment man since 1904 who’d been recalled to the 1st battalion on 5th August 1914.  He’d arrived in France on the 27th of that month, only two weeks after the battalion had disembarked at Havre but already it had been an eventful fortnight.  Arriving at Haulchin, some ten kilometres south east of Mons on the 23rd, the 1st Gloucesters had Stood-To all day on the northern edges of the village only to receive orders at 7am the following morning to retire.  They had then commenced the 200 mile march to the Marne and it was at Rozoy, on 5th September that Pimble, amongst a draft of 100 men, joined his footsore colleagues.  This was the first reinforcement that the battalion had received since leaving England and with it came an inadequate supply of shirts, socks and boots which was nevertheless gratefully received by a number of the men, the condition of whose boots had reduced them to marching in bare feet.

 

Now though, they were in Flanders, rushed to prevent the Kaiser’s armies from breaking through at Ypres.  On the 23rd October they’d successfully repelled determined German attacks north of Langemarck and re-claimed trenches recently taken by the enemy.  Terrible casualties had been inflicted on the advancing Germans, but the 1st Division, to which the 1st Gloucesters belonged, had also suffered heavily.  By the time it was relieved on the morning of the 25th, the Division had suffered fourteen hundred casualties over the previous few days’ fighting.

 

Four days later, they were back in the thick of it, thrown into the Battle of Gheluvelt and suffering further casualties.  Even when they had withdrawn to Inverness Copse on the 1st of November the men from the Cotswolds had been shelled mercilessly and suffered a further seventy five casualties during the relief.  The battalion was now reduced to just 240 other ranks and they badly needed a rest.

 

The next few days however, were hardly what they had in mind.  On November 2nd there were further casualties: three officers and fifty eight other ranks; some of these caused by rounds from the British artillery which was unaware, during the ebb and flow of battle that the ground they were shelling was back in Allied hands.  On the 3rd November, 200 reinforcements arrived.  “These numbers,” recorded the author of the 1st Gloucesters’ battalion diary later, “were particularly welcome after the previous week’s casualties and greatly helped to put fresh life into the Regiment.”  On 5th November however, having been rushed back into the line and ordered to hold it for twenty four hours at all costs, the battalion had suffered a further forty one casualties from artillery fire which completely destroyed many of the trenches and buried a number of the men.

 

The 6th was spent re-organising the battalion, a task completed only just in time for there was a fresh emergency south at Zillebeke.  The Germans had pushed back the French troops holding that part of the line and were threatening to break through.  Leaving at four in the afternoon, the Gloucesters had arrived at their new positions north of the village of Zwartelen in darkness and amid much confusion.  The frontage the battalion occupied was lengthy, too large really for an already depleted battalion which nevertheless did its best by dividing the line up roughly into sectors and posting batches of men to them.  What few officers remained were distributed amongst the scattered outposts as effectively as their limited numbers allowed.

 

“7th November,” says The Official History, “was misty and marked the definite commencement of winter weather: mud henceforth seriously interfered with operations and cold at night made sleeping in the open difficult, if not impossible.”  Certainly, there had been little sleep for Reg Pimble and his pals on the eastern edges of Zwartelen and in the woods further to the north.  Now as the morning advanced, the order to assist the neighbouring 22nd brigade in a counter attack on the left had been cancelled because it was just too foggy to see where they were firing.  The 22nd brigade however, had pushed ahead and secured its objectives, reporting back that the trenches opposite the Gloucesters were empty.   Orders were issued for an immediate advance and for the enemy trenches to be seized, the rest of the 3rd brigade would provide support.

 

Reg Pimble would later write in Nurse Oliver’s album:

 

A trouble’s a ton

A trouble’s an ounce

A trouble is what you make it

It isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts

But just - how did you take it

 

The battalion pushed forward in two lines but no sooner had they emerged from Zwartelen than they were met with intense rifle and machine gun fire from German troops still holding on to some of the houses in the village.  “The whole advance,” continues the battalion diarist, “had been far too hurried and no definite orders had ever been given.  Officers and men were much too exhausted to do more than clear a few of the houses.  Most of the men had to lie down in the open all day and only a few could get back to the trenches they had dug the night before.”  At roll call that night, only three officers and 213 men answered their names.  Private 7480 Pimble, R was not one of them; shot twice, he’d received his Blighty wound and would not return to Flanders. Eight days later, John Thomas got his Blighty wound too.

 

Private John Thomas would probably have been the first to admit that he didn’t have a model service record.  What he did have though, was a campaign medal from the 1901 South African war, won before he’d even enlisted with the regular army.  Prior to Haldane’s Army Reforms of 1908, The Militia had existed as a constitutional force of local men established to serve at Home.  Each Militia battalion was centred on the regimental depot and had a full time training staff of regular army NCOs and officers.  Men signed on for six years and had to complete six weeks’ training during which they received a small bounty plus normal army rates of pay.  Each year there was a further commitment to 28 days’ training again at full Army pay rates.  For Thomas, and thousands of young men like him, joining the Militia, presented him with an opportunity to try out Army life without the full time commitment which that entailed.  On the outbreak of war with South Africa in 1901, the Militia became full time and Thomas had volunteered to serve abroad, fighting alongside the regular soldiers in The South Staffordshire Regiment.  If his mind hadn’t already been set on a career in the army before The Boer War, by the time he returned to England with some real combat experience under his belt, it was now.  In January 1902 he’d gone along to the Recruiting Office in Birmingham and enlisted with the South Staffordshire Regiment. 

 

It had begun quite well.  Steady progress in an uneventful year at home had seen him appointed lance corporal after just two months and he seemed to have adapted to full time life in the Army.  It was in 1903 when it had all started to go wrong.  In January there had been ‘an incident’, recorded on his military history sheet as ‘misconduct’ and resulting in the loss of stripe. The following month, perhaps still smarting from his demotion, he’d gone absent without leave from the depot.  His bid for freedom hadn’t lasted long.  Within three weeks he was in civil custody and ten days later had been tried by a District Court’s Martial for desertion and losing his equipment by neglect.  He’d been sentenced to 56 days’ imprisonment with hard labour and had also forfeited all former service.

 

On 15th May, his sentence served, he’d returned to duty but on 6th June, by now heartily sick of army life, and under orders for foreign service, he’d deserted for three days.  At his subsequent second District Court’s Martial at the end of the month, Thomas had again been charged with desertion, again forfeited all former service (which by now only amounted to 22 days anyway) and been sentenced to six calendar months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

 

By the time he returned to duty in December though, he appears to have undergone a change of heart and now threw himself wholeheartedly into army life.  In May 1904 he was posted to the 1st battalion and in August was granted permission to extend his service to eight years with the colours.  That same October he was posted to the second battalion and had spent the next three years in India, during which time he was granted a Good Conduct badge and elected to have his former forfeited service restored on completion of three years’ clear entries in the Regimental Defaulter book.  In 1910, after a further three years’ soldiering in South Africa he’d returned to Birmingham and married Eleanor Brown.  Two years later, their daughter Kathleen had been born.  In January 1914, twelve years after he’d enlisted with the South Staffordshire Regiment he was placed on the Army Reserve. 

 

“There was plenty to do” recorded Brevet Major Dent in his diary in August 1914, (and recorded for public posterity in The History of The South Staffordshire Regiment in 1923), “in putting on the finishing touches and shaking down the Reservists, many of whom had not soldiered for six years, and were not used to the new rifle and equipment.  We went for route marches, fired on the range and did Fire Direction.  The men were very cheerful; most of them spoke well of their employers who, in many cases, were given or had promised to give their wives a liberal allowance during their absence.  The general opinion was that the war would be over by Christmas.”

 

While Thomas and the other Reservists like him were being ‘shaken down’ in England, the battalion set sail for France aboard the “Irrawaddy”, sharing the passage across with men from the 1st King’s (Liverpool) Regiment and arriving at Le Havre on 13th August, just nine days after war had been declared.  The following month, his soldiering skills having been brushed up sufficiently, Private Thomas had joined them as part of a draft.  Arriving in France on September 11th, he had joined the battalion just as the battle to push the Germans out of their positions on the high ground north of the Aisne was being launched.

 

“There is something very terrible in being shelled by guns several miles away in a position from which it is impossible to make use of the rifle” recorded Brevet-Major Dent from his billet in Moussy a couple of days into the battle.  “To have to sit still all day and wait for shells to come is a great test of morale.  There is no romance in sitting doing nothing and waiting to be blown sky high by a product of machinery.”

 

The fighting on the heights above The Aisne had swiftly been followed by what would later be called, “The Race To The Sea”.  With a fresh German advance down the coast from Ostend, the British line had extended further towards the sea beyond Ypres as both sides sought to be the first to reach the channel ports.  On October 17th the 1st British Army Corps was rushed up from Moussy and on the 23rd, the battalion had attacked at Pilkem.  Four days later Thomas and the South Staffords had moved up to a position facing the Passchendaele Ridge and over the next fortnight the men had see-sawed back and forth as British attack was met by German counter attack and heavy bombardment.

 

“We have been hard at it hard and fast for three months without a break,” wrote Corporal Smith of the 2nd South Staffs in a letter published in The Walsall Observer in November 1914.  “When the Germans have the cheek to attack us we knock spots off them and send them back a few hundred short of what they stared with.  Three regiments of the Kaiser’s favourites – The Prussian Guards straight from Berlin - were sent to smash our line but we smashed them instead.  Physically, they were a fine lot of men – every one a six footer – but we settled them.  Our generals call us the Staffordshire iron men, but we have smashed up all the enemy we have been against.”

 

During the period 1st to 9th November, the 2nd South Staffords was holding the most advanced line of the British Army and were constantly shelled.  At places, the British line was no more than forty five yards away from the German front line and by now their ranks were quite severely depleted and the men were in need of relief. 

 

“This terrific fight, lasting from October 20th until November 17th” recorded The History of The South Staffordshire Regiment, “in which the British were opposed by Germans in the proportion of eight to one, will go down in history as one of the most remarkable contests of the war… Even the Germans admitted the brilliance of the British achievement, and in their official statement of the battle of Ypres, assert that they were under the impression that at least four British corps were opposed to them, with special Machine Gun Corps; when, as a matter of fact, only two Corps were in France, and of machine guns there were only two to a battalion.  What misled the Germans in thinking that we had so many machine guns was the wonderfully maintained rapid rifle fire of our men, all veterans, who had become perfected in this art.”

 

The problem was that by now, there were a good deal fewer veterans than there had been in August 1914.  The fighting at Mons, on The Aisne and at Ypres had exacted a heavy toll on the battalions that had taken part.  Having missed out on Mons, John Thomas had played his full part in The Aisne and at Ypres and had emerged from both without a scratch.  He must have been congratulating himself on having come through unscathed when he was wounded while waiting to be relieved at Becelaere by the 139th French Regiment on 15th November.  Shot through the left thigh, transferred to a hospital in France and then shipped back to England when well enough to travel, it was an ignominious end to his army career.