At Ypres with Best-Dunkley | Page 2

this time our interests (and, perhaps, our fears!) were centred upon one man, the unpopular Colonel who, few of us guessed in those days, was destined to win the V.C. on "the day," going down in a blaze of glory which should ever associate his name with that battle. With that "day," which was for many of us the end of all earthly troubles and hopes and fears, or, at any rate, an end for many months, the story reaches its natural termination.
In these pages I give to the public, for what they are worth, my own personal impressions of the people and things I saw and with whom I came into contact. I hope I have revealed the late Colonel Best-Dunkley to the public just as he was--as he appeared to me and as he appeared to others. I believe that in this I am doing right. "Paint me in my true colours!" exclaimed Cromwell to Lely. That is all that any hero--and Best-Dunkley was certainly a hero--can conscientiously ask. And I am sure it was all Best-Dunkley himself would ever have asked. He was a brilliant young man, endowed with a remarkable personality. It is right that his memory should be preserved; and if his memory is to be preserved it must be the memory of the Best-Dunkley we knew.
The battalion which Best-Dunkley commanded has, since his death, achieved great things and acquired great fame under the still more brilliant leadership of his successor, Colonel Brighten; but we must never forget that it was Best-Dunkley who led it on the glorious day of Ypres and that it was the tradition which he inspired which has been one of the strongest elements of esprit de corps in the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers. All who served under Best-Dunkley remember the fact with a certain amount of pride, however unfavourably his personality may have impressed itself upon them at the time--for "All times are good when old!"
I am fully aware of the many imperfections of this book; but if it succeeds at all in vividly recalling to those who were in the Ypres Salient in 1917 the atmosphere of that time, and if it should encourage others to risk a similar venture, I shall feel amply rewarded.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD vii
I OFF TO THE FRONT 1
II THE PRISON 26
III ENTER BEST-DUNKLEY 49
IV MILLAIN 57
V THE MARCH 63
VI THE GENERAL'S SPEECH 77
VII THE VALE OF ACQUIN 81
VIII BACK TO THE SALIENT 103
IX BILGE TRENCH 113
X THE RAMPARTS 128
XI MUSTARD OIL 136
XII THE CITY AND THE TRENCHES 146
XIII RELIEF 164
XIV WATOU 168
XV THE DAYS BEFORE 179
XVI THE BATTLE OF YPRES 187
APPENDICES
I MURRAY AND ALLENBY 227
II THE INFANTRY AT MINDEN 229
III GENERAL RAWLINSON AND OSTEND 230
IV EDWARD III AND THE ORDER OF THE GARTER 231
V GOLDFISH CH?TEAU 233

AT YPRES WITH BEST-DUNKLEY

CHAPTER I
OFF TO THE FRONT
I had been to France before--in 1916, during the Battle of the Somme--but not as an officer; in 1916 I was a private in the Royal Fusiliers, and I had received orders to return to "Blighty" in order to proceed to an officer cadet battalion at Gailes, in Ayrshire, before I had been able to see what a front-line trench was like. So this, then, was my first experience of war--my "baptism of fire." I had seen and heard those magnificent bombardments up the line in 1916, and had gazed with awestruck admiration upon the strange horizon far away from my tents at Boulogne and ��taples, wondering what it must be like to be amongst it all, and expecting to be amongst it all in the course of a day or two; but, as I have already observed, I was recalled to England, and was not destined to be amongst it until the following summer. But now, at last, the experience, the great adventure to which I had been looking forward so long, was to be mine. I was gazetted a second-lieutenant in the 5th (Territorial) Lancashire Fusiliers on March 1, 1917; on March 26, I reported for duty with the 5th (Reserve) Lancashire Fusiliers at South Camp, Ripon, where I spent some unpleasant weeks amongst snow and mud; from Ripon the unit proceeded to Scarborough, where I rejoined it after having spent a couple of weeks in hospital, with tonsillitis, at the former place. Shortly after this, I received orders to proceed overseas, and returned to my home in Middleton Junction to spend my embarkation leave.
That leave was spent in the happy way in which all such leaves were spent during the Great War, terminating with a visit to the Gaiety, in Manchester, in conjunction with my father and mother, where we saw a most enjoyable comedy entitled "The Two Miss Farndons."
I bid farewell to my parents on Victoria Station at 10.35 that evening--Friday, May 25, 1917; and I then proceeded to