To give you a understanding of what it was like during the First Battle of Ypres I include this excerpt from my grandfather's journal. The entire journal is included in my recently released book, "The Great Promise".
October 20th
The battery marched to the city of Poperinghe and once again we were in Belgium. It was an awful sight to see all of the refugees streaming into Poperinghe from the outlying towns and villages; they were trying to keep ahead of the rapidly advancing enemy. I happened to stop to pat a pretty little child on her head and gave her some biscuits that I had in my pocket. The poor little mite was simply starving. Within a minute I was surrounded by starving children. I emptied my pockets and haversack. Then, with a couple of chums, we collected all the biscuits and Bully Beef in the battery and gave them to the women and children.
It was pitiful to see the children struggling to get at us. It was even a harder job to keep away the hungry Belgian men because we didn’t have anything for them. We had given the women and kiddies everything we had in the food line. That night we bivouacked outside the town.
October 21st
Before dawn we marched towards the village of Langemarke. As we approached the village it was being heavily shelled.
I, and a couple of others, reconnoitered the area for some time, and failed to find a good position for an observation post. Finally two gun sections took up positions in the rear of the church.
I went with the remaining section through the village. As we passed we saw lots of wounded French soldiers in the open by the churchyard. My section dropped into action by the railway, and again, we attempted to find an observation station. I stopped by a deserted powerhouse that I thought could be used. Later I, along with the remaining battery staff, were ordered to regain the two sections at the rear of the church.
As we went towards the railway crossing, a shell burst in the center of the road, about 30 or 40 yards ahead of us. This all occurred as we galloped past the church wall. Fortunately the shrapnel struck the wall, otherwise it would have been right among us.
I galloped past the spot where I had seen the wounded Frenchmen just two hours before. The whole lot was dead and in pieces. It was a horrible sight.
We rejoined the guns without mishap. George Millington and I were ordered to lay our wire to a large deserted convent near our infantry. As we ran the wire we were sniped at pretty hard by Germans hidden in houses to our left; one missed me by inches. The next morning I went back to the spot, found the bullet, and saved it as a souvenir.
October 22nd
George and I laid our wire to the convent. We described it as heavenly, for it was well-stocked with provisions. We found biscuits, butter, and jam, George and I had a good feast and brought some away with us for the battery.
It got pretty warm getting back to the guns. The enemy sniped at us across a large scarred field.
While waiting for us to set up good communications, two signalers dug a shallow trench by the edge of the field. They amused themselves by putting their hats on a flagpole, raising them until the crown of the hat was just above the crest of the trench. Tempting the Germans to shoot at them proved to be an amusing diversion.
We fired hard all morning. The enemy replying on the village did grand shooting on the church, where shell after shell passed through the steeple. Finally the church caught fire and was soon one mass of flames. The clock steeple collapsed with a crash; it was a dramatic sight. It seemed that they wanted to get at our battery for they shelled the fellows in front and behind our wagon line, wounding a few men and killing some horses.
Fortunately for those of us at the guns, only a few men were wounded. Our infantry was forced to retire, so we requested an infantry escort of 100 men for our guns. All they could send us was one platoon of 20 men.
At dark, George Millington (“Old George”) had gone along the wire to forage for food. While he was gone bullets were very plentiful. Eight of us clutched to our little trench, waiting for him to get into communication and return with the spoils.
Things seemed to quiet down for about half an hour when suddenly the Germans played a machine gun dead on us. We thought they had us. Although we did not know it, the infantry was on our left. They had moved while we were waiting for George.
As the infantry took care of the machine gun, I heard strange rustling sounds in the bushes on the other side of the stream. For a moment I thought it was some of the German snipers getting in our rear. I crawled very cautiously on my hands and knees along the stream to a small bridge crossing. I found after no little time that the sound I had heard was caused by some rabbits that our chaps released from an adjoining farm. It was amusing to think about it afterwards but not at the time.
Old George returned, loaded with goods. When I mentioned the machine gun and the rabbit stalking he said, “Blast the guns and rabbits, and have a bit of this strawberry jam, Old China. It’s the goods.” I declined the food for I was too dry to eat.
Nothing drinkable was to be had except the water in the stream and that was dirty. The rest of the night passed rather quietly. In the morning, out of desperation, I was compelled to drink some of the stream water.
