10 
LAND 6? WATER 
December 5, 1918 
The Last Battles — and After 
By Captain R. A. Scott-James, M.C. 
A FEW months after the beginning of the war — I 
think it was February-, 1915 — I had a talk with 
an officer who had just returned, wounded, from 
the front. He had been in the Ypres sector. 
He liad often looked out across the German lines 
to that road which runs through Gheluvclt to Menin. In 
those days the transport moved freely along the road in the 
full ^view of our observers. The long avenue of trees was 
still an avenue. 
Often in the last two years I have recalled his words. 
"The Road to Menin" has been like the refrain of a song 
which dreamy soldiers (if ever there were such things !) might 
have been repeating through interminable years of stale- 
mated They did not, of course. They gave up that sort of 
song. "Tipperary" became obsolete, till the Belgians re- 
vived it a few days ago. But many times, during last year, 
from an observation post on Hill 63 I have looked at Corn- 
mines and Werwieg, and the factories of Tourcoing and 
Roubaix ; and from Mount Kemmel the upper tips of Halluin 
and Menin churches were just visible. Between those towns 
and us, the wilderness ! 
The incredible, the hateful wilderness ! If we advanced 
we only advanced into more wilderness. We took Wytschaete 
and Messines, and from any but the most prosaic military 
point of view it was a barren harvest. Messines village con- 
tained only brick and concrete dug-outs, and those much 
the worse for wear. I discovered bits of a pave road buried 
under a wild crop of weedy turnips. The charred stumps of 
great trees have sometimes been useful when we were des- 
perately hard up for fuel. It was the same with Gheluvelt, 
Passchendaele, Zonnebeke — we conquered places which were 
not places at all— villages indistinguishable from the rest of 
the wild— mere map co-ordinates, names. The further we 
advanced — ^the further we got away from civilisation — the 
greater the tract of bleak, featureless, shell-crater country 
between ourselves and normal humanity. 
But to get to decent houses, to luxurious billets, by going 
forward, to reach civilisation on the other side — how remote 
that seemed last March, and April, and May ! Had the 
people over there, in the back of beyond, got two eyes, and 
a mouth, and a nose ? Could the Belgians and French in 
Courtrai and Tourcoing bear any distant family resemblance 
to the Belgians and French of Poperinghe, Cassel, Bethune ? 
But I have recently been living in a sort of palace — in 
Courtrai. I have been many miles beyond the Scheldt. 
And I have just come far back again; and am writing this, 
as it turns out, actually in Menin. 
The Miracle 
The whole transformation scene happened in an incredibly 
short time — in six weeks, which seemed like six months, so 
full it was of incident and change. On September 28th we 
were still back behind Wytschaete Ridge and Messines. It 
is true the Boche had already moved from Vailleul, Steen- 
werck, Merville, and Estaires, and even from the now devas- 
tated top of Kemmel Hill. And he had moved from this 
salient not merely to "shorten his line," as the critics say, 
but more especially because he could not stick the deadly 
ravages of our "harassing fire" — that continuous, nightlv 
shelling of roads and tracks which the heavy artillery on the 
whole British front maintained without a night's cessation 
from March 21st till near thecnd of September— a feat possible 
only to the British Army, with its almost unlimited supplv 
of shells. 
But on September 29th we made a battle of it — the Belgians 
and the British together. Our guns started firing before 
dawn, and at breakfast time the enemy was out of range. 
We pushed on as far as broken tracks would permit, and 
found that the infantry had already pressed the Germans 
beyond our reach. For a fortnight we, and the rest of the 
Army on that sector, laboured among the shell-holes. For 
the British there were only two available roads from Ypres — 
the Zonnebeke and Menin roads. 4t intervals the enemy 
had blown mine-craters, and for some days we had to pass by- 
crazy plank tracks which the engineers laid down on either 
side. Day and night an endless procession of horse and lorry 
transport filed up and down these greasy, treacherous ways. 
Material for building dug-outs was not to be thought of, and 
all that could be "scrounged" in this part of the world was 
scrounged long ago. For some days we endured inter- 
mittent hostile shelling and rain under caiwas bivouacs 
near a place known as Terhand — in advance of the Field 
Artillery, as we have often been in the battles of this year. 
But there was one immensely cheering prospect. Going 
into the front line — ^an indiscriminate region occupied only 
by patrols — I found houses. It is true they were roofless and 
broken, but they were recognisably houses ; and Dadizeele, 
behind our lines, was definitely a village, with a church spire 
that Was still a spire. One more battle, and it was certain 
that we should penetrate to the back of beyond, to good 
roads, to villages, possibly even to civilian • inhabitants. 
"To-morrow," we said, on the evening of October 13th, as 
we sat in a wet hole in the ground working out our barrage 
programme, " we will dine in a house, and sit in arm-chairs, 
and salute the villagers." 
And that very nearly came true. When the din of our 
early morning bombardment was beginning to die down, and 
the gas with which the enemy had tried to«choke us and the 
fumes of H.E. were mostly dispersed, and the Field Artillery 
were limbering up and advancing in one direction, whilst in 
the other direction squads of German prisoners were trudging 
along carrying the British wounded, I managed to slip past 
in my car and get forward by a road which the horse-transport 
had overlooked. In the recent front line lay the German 
dead — all with that stark, abandoned, scattered appearance 
which killed men have — and a little further on, dead horses, 
monstrously obstructing the road. (Horses die so easily — 
the least flesh wound seems to kill them.) Skirting a mine- 
crater on the Roulers-Menin highway, I got on to a clear, 
excellent road, and was able to speed on among cultivated 
fields, past cottages and farms intact, right into the, as yet, 
scarcely touched village of Moorseele. Just beyond, the 
infantry were pausing for an interval in the advance, and the 
crackle of rifles and machine-guns showed where they were. 
Not far off I found a good place for the guns, with perfect 
flash cover, a furnished farmhouse and dry barns, and a 
large chateau adjoining, with flower-gardens and neat lawns. 
We lived there for a week, and had it not been for one shell 
we should have had no casualties. 
During that week the war went easily for us. At long 
range we fired across the Lys River, helping the Pioneers 
when they constructed pontoon-bridges ; and we fired the 
next night, when the infantry crossed easily, meeting with 
little opposition. And from time to time we were exposed 
to minor hazards when one or two of us went forward to 
select advanced positions which, owing to the rapid retire- 
ment of the enemy, we never occupied. 
The civilians were very soon in evidence. Some had gone 
down into their cellars during the battle ; others had been 
sent eastwards by the Germans, but were turned loose as 
soon as the retreat became a rout. They emerged, first, in 
small numbers — dazed, frightened creatures — a^onished at 
seeing khaki uniforms instead of the familiar, all-potent grey. 
Their deference to us, during the first day or two, was exces- 
sive ; they had become accustomed, these poor village folk, 
to subservience. They had long given up expecting that 
the distant sound of guns would draw appreciably nearer to 
them, and they had been fatalistically accustoming them- 
selves to the circumstances of a subject people. 
Soon they began to arrive in crowds in Moorseele. From 
all the villages up to the confines of Courtrai they began to 
set out towards this central village. Some walked hurriedly, 
bare-headed, dishevelled ; others put on their best clothes, 
and pushed their beds, their wardrobes, their cutlery, and 
their babies in wheelbarrows and handcarts. They arrived, 
an immense crowd, in Moorseele. One party turned up at 
our billets, and was fed by our gunners. Others were fed by 
other units. Some sort of central authority was improvised, 
and a kitchen was set going, and lorries began taking them 
off indiscriminately to Poperinghe— on the other 'side of the 
wild. All sorts of queer provisional arrangements were 
made, and sooner or later Belgian officials began to turn up, 
and I do not know exactly what thev did. At any rate, 
orders were finally issued by the corps that, as far as possible, 
civilians were to be left in the districts where they were 
found, and should only be removed when the exigencies of 
battle made it dangerous for them to remain. 
As each new family arrived in Moorseele, the waiting 
crowd raised cheers. Bewildered, as they werf, they were 
immensely relieved at the great event that had come to pass. 
Th6y soon lost their reserve and became communicative. 
