Note 8 — SUMMARY OF WAR HONOURS, 1914–1919.

In his book, “From Bapaume to Passchendaele,” Sir Phillip Gibbs thus depicts the situation. Ed.

“It is idle for me to try to describe this ground over which the London men and the Artists had to attack. Nothing that I can write will convey remotely the look of such ground and the horror of it. Unless one has seen vast fields of barren earth, blasted for miles by shell-fire, pitted by deep craters so close that they are like holes in a sieve, and so deep that the tallest men can drown in them when they are filled with water, as they are now filled, imagination cannot conceive the picture of this slough of despond. The London men had to wade and haul out one leg after the other from deep sucking bog as though in glue, and sank above their waists. A rescue party led by a Sergeant-Major could not haul out men, breast-high in the bog, until they had surrounded them with duck-boards and fastened ropes to them. Our barrage went ahead, the enemy’s barrage came down, and from the German blockhouses came a chattering fire of machine guns, and in the great stretch of swamp they struggled.

And not far away from them, but invisible in their own trouble among the pits, the Artists’ Rifles, Bedfords, and Shropshires were trying to get forward to other blockhouses on the way to the rising ground beyond the Paddebeeke. The Artists and their comrades were more severely tried by shell-fire than the Londons. No doubt the enemy had been standing at his guns through the night ready to fire at the first streak of dawn, which might bring an English attack. A light went up and instantly there roared a great sweep of fire from heavy batteries and field guns; 4.2’s and 5.9’s fell densely and in depth and this bombardment did not slacken for hours. It was a tragic time for our men, struggling in the slime with their feet dragged down. They suffered but did not retreat: no man turned back but either fell under the shell-fire or went on.”

And in a subsequent letter he wrote:—

“The London Regiment and the Royal Fusiliers fought this battle, and not far from them were the Artists’ Rifles—the dear old ‘Artists,’ who, in the old volunteer days, looked so dandy in their grey and silver across the lawns of Wimbledon. They suffered yesterday in hellish fire, and made heavy sacrifices to prove their quality. It was a fight against the elements, in league with the German explosives, and it was a frightful combination for the boys of London and the clean-shaven fellows of the Naval Brigade.”