Account compiled from the personal papers of Lt. Col. Enoch Beard DSO; and "At Messine with the Muddies" an unpublished personal memoir by Captain William O'Brien MC (by kind permission of his estate); and various letters/accounts from the Mudcaster Observer (1917) with thanks to Mudcaster Local Studies Librarian, Terence Reeves MBE.
"Prior to the attack at Messines, I had been impressed by the thorough preparations for the assault. The men had enjoyed a period of much-needed rest before a stiff 'sharpener' in the form of practical training. It was obvious to all ranks that this attack had been planned with intelligence and, above all, with the emphasis on gaining valuable ground at the minimum cost in casualties.
"Of course, the existence of the tunnels leading to our mines under the German positions had been kept a closely guarded secret and it was not until we had taken out assault positions, some five hours before the attack, that I was given permission to outline the work of the engineer tunnelling companies to officers below the rank of Major.
"Our Divisional Commander, Major General Andrew Shaw DSC, DSO., deserves mention here for the way in which he and his staff, so often derided by those who have no knowledge of the difficulties facing those in senior commands, planned our part in the assault down to the finest detail. In the event, their efforts paid a handsome dividend." Memoirs of Lt. Col. E. Beard. (1927)
"Some 30 minutes before the show began, I was granted permission to explain that our comrades in the tunnelling companies were planning to give the Boche on the ridge a surprise they would never forget.
"The men were delighted to learn of the series of mines which, we were assured, would devastate the Boche positions and enable us to make an inexpensive advance onto this strategically important are aof high ground.
"As the seconds ticked away towards that momentous event, I shared a swig of whiskey with 2nd Lt. Hartley, who, like me, had been wounded during the debacle at the Somme almost a year before.
"Hartley was in fine form and wished me the 'the best of luck' before re-joining his platoon. I must add that the overall mood of the men was one of confidence. Their was none of the amateurish bravado which had been present prior to the Somme but these men felt they knew both their job and their duty and were willing to do both to the best of their ability.
"The final seconds before the mines exploded went by excruciatingly slowly. I must admit that my greatest fear was that some failure would occur and that all the months of work underground would be wasted.
"Of course, I had no need to harbour such doubts of our wonderful REs. History will record that the series of explosions achieved evrything that could be hoped for. I count myself priviledged to have been a witness at this incredible event." Captain W. O'Brien.
Contemporary letter from Mudcaster Observer.
Dear Sir - There are many who, lying awake in London on the morning of Thursday, June 7th, will tell you that they heard the mighty explosions at Messines.
I am proud to tell the people of Mudcaster that the men of their own 7th (S) Bn. Royal Mudshire Rifles not only saw and heard this awesome spectacle, but in its aftermath advanced in the most gallant fashion to secure a stunning victory for our cause.
Could a contrast more wonderful be imagined ?
The sleeping city, the summer's day just dawning; the lights grown pale in our street, but here and there a waggon lumbering to market — millions of sleepers-who had forgotten the war.
And across yonder !
An army of many thousands but not one of them sleeping. A flat country with low ridges of shabby hills and poor woods, and wide roads once of pave, and-brooks and canals that suggested swamps. To the north the battered town of Ypres, where there stands little but ruins ; to the south the famous "Plug Street" Wood, wherein so many have died that we may live. And behind all this line the activity of a thousand factories ; trains moving, guns massing, troops here, troops there, Staff officers at the gallop, bayonets glistening, the guns moving ceaselessly. The very air seems terrible in its stillness. There is not a man of all those regiments who does not know that this was a fateful hour.
It was an hour for which we have long waited perhaps since the autumn of 1914, when for days together the fate of our Empire hung in the balance and gallant men saved the Channel ports by what now seems a miracle of human courage and endurance.
No victory more complete has been won for us than the one gained on he morning of June 7th. And it was a victory for which we had been preparing through the years. To the civilian the thing will seem incredible. He has heard with but faint understanding that our engineers Had been undermining the Messines Ridge and the hills about it almost since the days of the Second Battle of Ypres.
Tunnelling patiently, a great army had been at work. No less than six hundred tons of high explosives were secreted beneath the Germans, who imagined that they held us in all security. And at ten minutes past three on the morning of that Thursday they, were fired together, with an effect beyond the power of any pen to describe.
There had been a stormy night of summer; fitful thunder and a sky of .lowering clouds. The moon showed faintly, as through a veil ; the air was heavy and dark. Through it all our guns boomed, and the Germans sent up their star-shells, and great flames showed upon a horizon of shadows.
For all that, it was hardly an intense bombardment, and about three o'clock it ceased suddenly and a dead silence fell. Men waited, they hardly knew for what. For three years the harvest had been sown, and this was the instant of reaping.
When the crash came the bravest trembled. The very ground seemed to be opening at their feet. Hills were thrown into the air; trees blown sky-high ; guns and men and concrete all buried together. A day of doom might have dawned, and the Last Judgment come upon mankind. Never were such flames seen upon any horizon. The sounds were like nothing to which human ears had yet listened. And even those who knew could leap up from the ground to cry, "An earthquake ! "
We had fired the mines at last, had blown Hill 60 into the ewigkeit — had set the Battle of Messines going with a vengeance.
No sooner was it done than every one of our massed batteries opened tire, and the air became red with flames and: the horizon with fire. Beyond us was the great curtain before the day-dawn, scarred by a thousand jets of light — a jig- saw of lightning flashes and acrid iridescence, and all that fearful writing which the finger of Destiny sets down with a pen dipped in-the well of death. As the day broke, and the zenith warmed to the sunlight, we saw below it such pillars of smoke, a loom so many coloured, a devastation so overwhelming, that the eye almost feared to look upon it.
But we knew that our men were up and out by this time — the splendid Irish from the North, and the South, the New Zealanders, the Australians, and the staunchest of the English and at their forefront the men of the Mudshires.
Here and there, to be sure, the fighting was stiff enough. Machine-gun emplacements at Wytschaete, more than one cunning dug-out, wherein scattered bands had escaped the holocaust, held up brave men for the instant — but never for the hour.
"You cannot keep them back," said one fellow officer to me.
It was a true saying. The men absolutely hurled themselves at the enemy ; while as for Fritz, back he comes by the hundred presently — Bavarians, Prussians, Wurtembergers — to the same common "cage."
We had five thousand before nightfall, and fully seven thousand by Sunday, June 10th. They sang, they shouted, they did hot hide their joy. But speak to them of the inferno from which they have escaped, and then watch their faces !
They stammer when they try to tell you how the ground beneath them was cleft suddenly: by some mighty force beyond all imagination terrible. They have stories of guns actually shattered to fragments, of whole companies of men buried in a twinkling, of regiments that had disappeared as absolutely as though they had never been.
Happily, our casualties are relatively few.
By nightfall we were down the other side of the ridge and had taken the village of Oosttaverne. Our total front was one of 18,000 yards, and we have penetrated, says the staff, to a depth of five miles. The Ypres salient is no more. Never again, we hope, will the German gunners look down upon us from the Messines Ridge. The work of the splendid heroes of 1914-15 is consummated at last.
I trust this short account will be acceptable for publication in your widely read journal. May I finally, on behalf of all ranks, thank the people of Mudcaster for their continued and unstinting support of their very own battalion.
I remain, Sir, your humble servant.
Lt. R. Langley-Baston
7th R. Mudshire Rifles.
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