*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68038 ***

WITH OUR ARMY IN FLANDERS

[Illustration:

  _From the drawing by Georges Scott._
  _Reproduced from “L’Illustration” by kind permission._

_Silent Ypres._]




  WITH OUR ARMY
  IN FLANDERS

  BY

  G. VALENTINE WILLIAMS


  LONDON
  EDWARD ARNOLD
  1915

  _All rights reserved_




  TO

  THE BRITISH SOLDIER




PREFACE


In the words of the Chief of the Italian General Staff, the war
correspondent is the link between that part of the nation that fights
and that part which is watching--“a noble and fertile mission, as
great as any mission ever was, and as necessary, too, for no army can
long and resolutely march to victory if it has not the support and
enthusiasm of the whole country behind it.”

As the accredited correspondent of the _Daily Mail_ at the General
Headquarters of Field-Marshal Sir John French, I have spent the greater
part of the past six months with the British Army in Flanders. I have
seen for myself the life and work of our army in the field. I have
visited in person the trenches along practically our whole front. I
have talked with our organizers of victory from the Commander-in-Chief
downwards to the man in the saphead ten yards from the enemy.

This book is the result. It was written in the field, under the
Censorship. That familiar phrase, “Passed by Censor,” stands at the
foot of every chapter in the manuscript, as it will stand at the foot
of this preface. To that part of the nation which is watching at home
I could, in fulfilment of my mission, have offered a more detailed
narrative of the life of that other part that is fighting in Flanders,
did not considerations of military necessity stand in the way. But,
apart altogether from the question of patriotism, the large measure of
trust which the army has, in most instances, extended to the writer
has made me the more anxious to respect a privileged position, and to
eschew anything calculated to afford to the enemy the least information
of value. My endeavour has rather been to present a picture of the life
of our army in Flanders built up out of a series of impressions, to
reveal the soul of the army as it has been unbared to me in the actual
conditions of warfare.

If I should not seem to paint war as terrible or our task in Flanders
as stupendous as it is, you must set it down to the army’s contagious
habit of making the best of things. The army knows that, man for man,
it is more than a match for the German. It knows that, given a lead,
it can draw upon resources which, both physically and mentally, are
better than anything the Germans have now remaining. With unconcealed
impatience it looks to the Government at home to increase our machinery
of war until, in this respect as well, we can claim superiority over
our redoubtable and unscrupulous foe.

I have praised freely--and God knows there is enough to praise out
here!--and if my criticism is sparing, it is solely because military
criticism in the mouth of an accredited war correspondent acquires
a weight in the eyes of the enemy that gives it the value of direct
information.

I am anxious to express my gratitude to the Editor of the _Daily Mail_,
who has generously allowed me to reproduce some of the admirable
photographs in my book, and to M. René Baschet, _Directeur-Gérant_ of
the very excellent French weekly, _L’Illustration_, for his courtesy in
permitting me to reprint M. Georges Scott’s striking sketch of “Silent
Ypres.”

  G. VALENTINE WILLIAMS.

  IN THE FIELD,
  _September, 1915_.




  CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                   PAGE

  I. OF OUR ARMY IN THE FIELD                  1

  II. THE  WAR OF POSITIONS                   21

  III. THE  FIGHT FOR THE SALIENT             46

  IV. SILENT YPRES                            97

  V. BILLETS IN THE FIELD                    117

  VI. CASTLES IN FLANDERS                    139

  VII. G.H.Q.                                151

  VIII. THE CHIEF                            169

  IX. INTO  THE FIRING-LINE                  188

  X. THE COMRADESHIP OF THE TRENCHES         213

  XI. THE PRINCE OF WALES                    234

  XII. THE GUARDS IN FLANDERS                245

  XIII. THE ARBITERS OF VICTORY              264

  XIV. CHILDREN OF THE RAJ                   280

  XV. T.F.                                   300

  XVI. THE  EYES OF THE ARMY                 319

  XVII. ENTER THE NEW ARMY                   337




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  SILENT YPRES                                     _Frontispiece_

  PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR                        _Facing page_   1

  A CORNER OF A TRENCH WITH A TRAVERSE ON
  THE EXTREME LEFT                                 ”    ”      24

  THE WAR OF BOMB AND KNIFE; FRENCH SOLDIERS WITH MASKS
  AND STEEL HELMETS                                ”    ”      28

  A BURSTING MINE                                  ”    ”      34

  MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES     ”    ”      49

  BILLETS IN THE FIELD: THE BRITISH SOLDIER
  AND HIS PEASANT HOSTS                            ”    ”      126

  CRICKET AT THE FRONT                             ”    ”      132

  A SCENE AT A BASE                                ”    ”      160

  “THE CHIEF”                                      ”    ”      170

  UNDER THE EYE OF “THE CHIEF”--TROOPS MARCHING PAST SIR
  JOHN FRENCH AT THE FRONT                         ”    ”      180

  IN A GERMAN TRENCH                               ”    ”      202

  GERMAN PRISONERS                                 ”    ”      230

  BIG SHELL EXPLODING ON A ROAD IN FRANCE--GERMAN
  SOLDIERS IN FOREGROUND                           ”    ”      266

  INDIAN CAVALRY IN A FRENCH VILLAGE               ”    ”      288

  INDIAN INFANTRY ON THE MARCH                     ”    ”      296


[Illustration:

  _Elliott & Fry phot._

MR. G. VALENTINE WILLIAMS.]




WITH OUR ARMY IN FLANDERS




CHAPTER I

OF OUR ARMY IN THE FIELD


All wars present a series of contrasts. Is not war itself the greatest
of all contrasts of life? The antithesis of Man at Peace and Man at War
is one with which the poets and artists have familiarized mankind all
through the ages. And so, though we are in the thirteenth month of the
overwhelming change which this, the greatest of all wars, has wrought
in our lives, I find, on sitting down to record my impressions of the
life and work of the British Army in the field, that I am continually
reverting to the perpetual, the confounding contrast between the world
at peace and the world at war.

Never were contrasts so marked as in this war. To cast the mind back
a twelvemonth is like looking back on one’s early childhood. “This
time last year!...” How often one hears the phrase out here, with
recollections of last year’s glorious, golden Ascot, of distant,
half-forgotten strife about Ulster, of a far rumbling, as yet
indistinctly heard, in the Balkans, where swift and sudden death was
preparing for that sinister Prince whose passing plunged the world into
war.

“This time last year ...”--City men use the phrase. _They_ were then
the top-hatted strap-hangers of Suburbia, their thoughts divided
between their business, their families, their hobbies. _Then_ the
word _Territorial_ might raise a laugh at a music-hall; on Saturday
afternoons soldiering was a pleasant relief from the office grind,
and in summer afforded a healthful open-air holiday. London was full
of Germans. We all knew Germans, and in our insular way toadied to
the big fry and ridiculed the small, holding our state of military
unpreparedness to be the finest tribute to our pacific aims, and
making fun of the German, his steadfastness of purpose, his strict
national discipline, his thrift. We welcomed at our tables the
vanguard of the German army of invasion, the charming, salaried spies
of the Embassy who made their way everywhere in that loose-tongued,
light-thinking cosmopolitan crowd that in London passes for society,
and the humbler secret agents, the waiters who in the trenches in
Flanders are now turning their knowledge of our tongue to profitable
account. We had German clerks, nice, well-spoken, cheap--cheap labour
covers a multitude of sins!--hard-working young fellows who lived
in boarding-houses at Brondesbury or Lancaster Gate, according to
their means, and who, over their port after Sunday dinner, exchanged
assurances with the “_dummen Engländern_” of the mutual esteem
entertained by England and Germany for each other.

“This time last year ...”--Aldershot, its ugly barrack buildings
standing out hard in the brilliant sunlight, went peacefully about
its routine pursuits of war. Maybe the stray bullet that was destined
to put a premature end to the splendid career of General John Gough,
best beloved of Aldershot Staff officers, had not yet been cast. The
army officer went in mufti save in the intervals of duty; the general
public had never heard of General Sam Browne and his famous belt. At
the Curragh, still seething with the bubbles of the Ulster whirlpool
which had swept John French from the War Office, the training went on
as before. The machine-gun was still a weapon preeminently of experts,
not common to the army at large, its paramount usefulness as an added
strength to the forces not yet realized.

“This time last year ...”--polo at Ranelagh, where neither of the
immortal Grenfell twins, the Castor and Pollux of our glorious army,
saw Black Care that sits behind the horseman, cricket at Lord’s,
throngs at Boulter’s Lock, lunchings and dinings and dancings
innumerable....

“This time last year ...”--joyful holidays at Blackpool, New Brighton,
or the Isle of Man at hand for the workers of the north, the brief
relaxation from the loom, the spindle, the mine, the shipyard. All the
life of England, in fine, ran along in its accustomed groove. We made a
great deal of money; we spent a great deal more; we played our games;
we talked them to the exclusion of topics of vital national importance;
we rocked ourselves with dreams of universal peace based on political
cries, such as “Two keels to one,” or the “pacific policy of the German
Emperor.” One of the leading pacificist societies was arranging a great
international peace congress at Vienna.

All at once, in a few hours of a hot August night, with great crowds
waiting breathlessly in Whitehall, with a mob surging and singing round
Buckingham Palace, it was swept away. The old life stopped. The new
life began. Slowly, haltingly, as is our wont, we realized we were at
war, though the process of mobilization was hindered by such idiotic
cries (never was a people so swayed by cries as the British!) as
“Business as usual!” the contraption of the astute City man who would
save what business there was to save at the expense of the army, a
catchword that kept the able-bodied young man at the counter measuring
out yards of ribbon when he should have been shouldering a rifle at
the front. Business as usual, indeed, when nothing was as usual in the
world, when the Hun was halfway through Belgium, blasting his path
with Titan howitzers larger than any the Allies possessed, and with
machine-guns which he elected and made to be the primary weapon of the
war, firing villages as he went to light up his work of murder and
rapine! Business as usual when our little Expeditionary Force had not
even set foot on the ships destined to transport it to France!

“This time last year ...”--the men who use the phrase to me are in the
trenches now, Aldershot and Curragh regulars, City men in the famous
London Territorial regiments, miners and factory hands and workers from
all over the country, in the horse or foot or artillery or air corps
or supply services. Every time I pass a regiment on the roads here, or
meet one in the trenches, I find myself wondering what most of them
did in civil life, what they would look like in civilian clothes.

“All wars are abnormal” is a saying of Sir John French. Though the
civilized world must now perforce accept as a normal state of things
the organized slaying which is going on right across Europe and over a
good part of the rest of the world. I for one cannot bring my mind to
adapt itself to the spectacle of the British people in arms as I see it
day by day on all sides of me in this narrow but all-important wedge of
the allied battle-line, where the ultimate fate of the British Empire
will be sealed. The mind boggles at almost every one of the great
stream of fresh impressions which pour in upon it in an irresistible
torrent every day, the sea of English faces surging down a white ribbon
of Flemish road, the unfamiliar sound of our mother tongue in settings
which you intuitively know demand the smooth flow of French, the plain
wooden cross over a simple grave which, without realizing it, you
automatically accept as containing the mortal remains of a man you
loved or admired, or maybe even disliked, one who had made his name
in England, not in this bloody business of war, but at the Bar or in
politics or in the City, at polo or at golf or football.

No, war is not normal, as all nations, except the Germans, know. It is
abnormal in the events it produces as in the passions and virtues it
engenders. Particularly it is abnormal to the British, strangest of all
peoples, quick at a bargain and keenly sensible, singularly lacking in
intuition, absorbed in business, slow to move, slow to mistrust, now,
after basking in the sunshine of decades of peace (the Boer War hardly
disturbed the national life of the country), saved only from the fate
of Belgium by the ever-sounding sea that has stood so often between
England and her enemies.

Yet, while following the fortunes of our army in the field, I have
often found myself pondering the fact whether, after all, war is such
an abnormal thing to this great host of ours, Britishers of all stamps
and from every clime drawn to the fighting-line by the same high ideal.
The world, I grant you, has never seen so many men of Britain arrayed
for battle on their own or any other soil. Yet we were once a military
nation. The whole history of these lands of Picardy and Flanders, where
our army is now fighting, during the past six centuries proclaims it.
Since the days of the third Edward to the present time Englishmen have
fought at intervals in these richly cultivated fields. The bones of
many a fair-haired, straight-backed bowman of England are crumbling
beneath the smiling plains through which our trenches run in a long
winding line.

The country is replete with souvenirs of our military past, of the
Black Prince, of Henry V., of the Duke of York, of Marlborough. There
are houses still standing in Ypres, despite German “frightfulness,”
which witnessed the burning of the suburbs of the ancient capital of
Flanders by the English and the burghers of Ghent in 1383. Half an
hour’s motor drive from General Headquarters of our army in France will
take you to the field of Agincourt, where, 500 years ago, King Harry
and his archers struck a brave blow for England.

I went to the field of Agincourt. It was a pious pilgrimage. As
another son of England with England’s fighting men in Picardy, I wanted
to stretch forth a hand across that gulf of 500 years, and say to those
stout English bowmen, who from their native shires followed their
knights and squires across the sea, “It is well. We are carrying on.
You may rest in peace.” I wanted to tell them in their graves beneath
the warm grass ablaze, as I saw it, with buttercups and daisies and the
gentle speedwell, that theirs was a clean fight that had left no bitter
memories, that the gentlemen of France who fought so valiantly at
Agincourt are with us to-day in spirit as surely as their descendants
are with us in the flesh; that, like the Dickons and Peterkins and Wats
of Agincourt, our men in Picardy and Flanders are brave and steadfast
and true till death.

A little grove of trees enclosing a great crucifix planted in a solid
base of brick is the only memorial on the battlefield. On a slab of
stone affixed to the plinth the inscription runs:

 25 OCTOBER, 1415.

 C’EST ICI QUE NOS VAILLANS GUERRIERS ONT SUCCOMBÉ. LEUR ESPÉRANCE EST
 PLEINE D’IMMORTALITÉ. LA PRIÈRE POUR LES MORTS AFIN QU’ILS SOIENT
 DÉLIVRÉS DE LA PEINE QU’ILS SUBISSENT POUR LEURS FAUTES EST UNE SAINTE
 ET SALUTAIRE PENSÉE. CETTE CROIX A ÉTÉ ÉRIGÉE PAR VICTOR MARIE LÉONARD
 MARQUIS DE TRAMECOURT ET MADAME ALINE MARIE CÉCILE DE TRAMECOURT, SON
 ÉPOUSE, À LA MÉMOIRE DE CEUX QUI AVEC LEURS ANCÊTRES ONT PÉRI DANS LA
 FATALE JOURNÉE D’AGINCOURT.

 PRIEZ POUR EUX.

There were woods on either side of the battlefield, possibly occupying
the site of the woods in which our archers of Agincourt waited for
the French. But there was no visible means of following the course
of the fight from the conformation of the ground. A friendly peasant
who was passing, and who proved to be the holder of some of the land,
vouchsafed the information that the curé knew all the details of the
battle. But the curé was in church.

The slab at the foot of the crucifix--the Calvary, the peasants
call it--was covered with inscriptions cut in the stone or written
in pencil. The dates showed that almost every one had been written
since the outbreak of the war. They were martial and inspiring in
tone. Most of them were the work of French soldiers quartered in the
neighbouring villages, and they had signed their names, with the
surname first, in approved military style, followed by the number of
regiment and company. “_Hommage à nos braves Alliés! Vive la France!_”
ran one. “_Dieu protège la France!_” was another, with the more prosaic
addition, “_Mort aux Boches!_” “_Vive Joffre! Vive l’armée!_” ran a
third. It was signed “_Une petite Française_.” Though Agincourt and
the brave men who died there are remembered, the feud it stood for is
forgotten. “_C’est bien changé maintenant!_” said the peasant at my
side. Not only did the inscriptions on the stone attest that: they
were also the eloquent expression of the great national revival which
has been incorrectly summarized in the phrase, “_The New France_,” but
which is in reality only the reawakening of a nation that led the world
until it suffered the sordid pettiness of politics to carry it away
from the true path of national greatness.

Maybe many of the bowmen sleeping under the green grass of Agincourt
would recognize the speech of the army that is fighting in France
to-day. Every accent, every burr and brogue, every intonation and
inflexion, which one may meet with between Land’s End and the Hebrides,
between the Wash and the Bay of Galway, may be heard in the ranks of
our great volunteer army, in its way unique amongst the armed hosts
standing in the field.

Englishmen travel but little in their own country. I am no exception
to the rule, though I can plead in excuse a long period of service
abroad as a newspaper correspondent. But a morning spent among the
troops of the great army which has sprung from our little Expeditionary
Force is equivalent to a six weeks’ tour of the British Isles. Going
from regiment to regiment, you pass from county to county, with its
characteristic speech, its colouring, its fetishes, its customs. At
the end of my first day with the army, as long ago as last March,
when reinforcements came very slowly, and a Territorial Division was
a thing to take guests to see, “to write home about,” as the saying
goes (though in this case the Censor would probably intervene), I felt
that I had seen the microcosm of Britain, this Empire so vast, so
widespread, so heterogeneous, that its essence has never been distilled
before.

One of the most fascinating things to me about our army in France
are the variations of speech. I have sometimes closed my eyes when a
battalion has been marching past me on the road, and tried to guess,
often with some measure of success, at the recruiting area of the
regiment from the men’s accents or from their tricks of speech.

Take the Scottish regiments, for instance. I have little acquaintance
with the dialects of Scotland, but my ear has told me that the speech
of almost every Scottish regiment, save such regiments as the Gordons
and the Black Watch, that attract men from all over the United Kingdom,
differs. I spent a most fascinating half-hour one morning with a
handful of Glasgow newsboys serving in a famous Scottish regiment
that wears the trews. Their speech was unmistakably the speech of the
Glasgow streets, and their wits were as sharp as their bayonets. I told
them they were newsboys, and newsboys they were, or of the same class,
van-boys and the like. I visited the Cameron Highlanders--what was left
of their Territorial battalion--after the second battle of Ypres, and
heard, in the speech of Inverness-shire, their story of the battle.
Many of them speak Gaelic. One of their officers confided to me that
during the battle, requiring two men to go down to the rear, the wires
being cut, to ascertain the whereabouts of the brigade headquarters, he
selected two notorious deer poachers as likely to have their wits about
them. How many poachers of the red deer of Sherwood or the New Forest
were there not at Agincourt?

Leaving the red tartan of the Camerons and getting back to the trews,
I remember an afternoon spent with the shattered remnants of the
Scottish Rifles, about 150 men all told led out of action at Neuve
Chapelle by a Second Lieutenant of Special Reserve. The Cameronians,
which is the official title of the regiment, recruit in Lanarkshire and
Aberdeenshire, and their speech was, I presume, the speech of those
parts, for it was an accent--a Scottish accent--different from any
other I had heard from the other Scotsmen out here.

It is a gratifying task, this identification of dialects. I have heard
two sappers “fra’ Wigan” engaged in a lively argument with two privates
(from Cork) of the Leinster Regiment, in whose trench the two gentlemen
“fra’ Wigan” were operating. A London cockney, say, from one of the
innumerable battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, would have understood
less of that conversation if it had been carried on in German, but
only a little less. During the Battle of Ypres two privates of the
Monmouthshire Regiment, who were talking Welsh, were pounced upon by
two prowling Southerners from one of the Home Counties, and carried off
to Brigade Headquarters as German spies. What with Welsh miners talking
Welsh and Cameron Highlanders Gaelic, the broad speech of the Yorkshire
_Geordies_, the homely burr of the 3rd Hussars and other regiments
recruited in the West Country, the familiar twang of the cockneys, the
rich brogue of the Irish regiments, the strong American intonation
of the Canadians, a man out here begins to realize of what composite
layers our race is formed.

Of that race our army in the field is the quintessence. The voluntary
system may collect the scallywags, but it primarily attracts, in
circumstances like those of to-day, that brand of Englishman who has
done everything worth doing in England’s history “for conscience’
sake.” There was a theory freely ventilated at the front at one time to
the effect that the first of the new armies raised by Lord Kitchener
would not be of the same material, morally and physically, as the
succeeding ones, owing to the fact that, on the outbreak of the war,
many men flocked to the colours because they had lost their employment.
The second and third armies, it is alleged, being principally composed
of men who, having taken a few months to wind up their affairs, had
joined alone from a high feeling of duty to their country, would be
of a better stamp. This theory does not hold water. Everyone who has
seen the men of the new armies at the front has been alike impressed by
their fine physique, their magnificent military bearing, their smart,
soldierly appearance. “They’re all right” is the verdict. No body of
troops in an army in the field wants higher praise than this.

Everybody who is anybody is at the front. Never was there such a place
for meetings as Flanders. The Strand is not in it. My own experience
is that of everybody else. One finds at the front men one has lost
sight of for years, old friends who have dropped away in the hurry of
existence, chance acquaintances of a Riviera _train de luxe_, men one
has met in business, men who have measured one for clothes. Often I
have heard my name sung out from the centre of a column of marching
troops, and a figure has stepped out to the roadside who, after my mind
has shredded it of the unfamiliar uniform, the deep brown sunburn, the
set expression, has revealed itself as old Tubby Somebody whom one had
known at school, or Brown with whom one had played golf on those little
links behind the Casino at Monte Carlo, or the manager of Messrs. Blank
in the City.

Fortune, the fair goddess, has high jinks at the front. I wanted to
find a relation of mine, a sergeant in a famous London regiment,
and wrote to his people to get the number of his battalion and his
company. When the reply came I discovered that the man I wanted was
billeted not a hundred yards from me in the village, in which the War
Correspondents’ Headquarters were situated, where he had come with
the shattered remnant of his battalion to rest after the terrible
“gruelling” they sustained in the second battle of Ypres. At the front
one constantly witnesses joyous reunions, brother meeting brother in
the happy, hazardous encounter of two battalions on the road or in the
trenches. The very first man I met on coming out to the front was a
motorcar driver whose father had particularly asked me to look out for
his boy. I discovered that he was the man appointed to drive me!

What is it that has knit this great and representative body of the
British people into one splendid harmonious whole, capable of gallantry
and tenderness such as Homer sang, of steadfast endurance which
Leonidas in Elysian fields must contemplate smiling through tear-dimmed
eyes? We know that there is a deep strain of idealism in our race,
lying far below a granite-like surface of cynical indifference, of
frigid reserve. But who should have suspected its existence in the
crowd of underground strap-hangers and tramway passengers, in the
noonday throngs pouring out of the factories and workshops, in all that
immense mass of workaday, civilian England from which our firing-line
in France is now being fed? You cannot go among our soldiers in the
field without becoming conscious of the fact that, beneath their
unflagging high spirits, their absolute indifference to danger, their
splendid tenacity, there burns an immense determination of purpose, an
iron determination to set wrong right. For in the mind of the British
soldier, who wastes no time over the subtleties of high politics, the
world is wrong as long as the German is free to work his own sweet will
in it.

Humour is probably the largest component part of the spirit of the
British soldier, a paradoxical, phlegmatic sense of humour that comes
out strongest when the danger is the most threatening. A Jack Johnson
bursts close beside a British soldier who is lighting his pipe with one
of those odious French sulphur matches. The shell blows a foul whiff of
chemicals right across the man’s face. “Oh dear! oh dear!” he exclaims
with a perfectly genuine sigh, “these ’ere French matches will be the
death o’ me!” A reply which is equally characteristic of the state of
mind of the British soldier who goes forth to war is that given by
the irate driver of a Staff car to a sentry in the early days of the
war. The sentry, in the dead of night, had levelled his rifle at the
chauffeur because the car had not stopped instantly on challenge. The
driver backed his car towards where the sentry was standing. “I’ll ’ave
a word with you, young feller,” he said. “Allow me to inform you that
this car can’t be stopped in less than twenty yards. If you go shoving
that rifle of yours in people’s faces someone will get shot before this
war’s over!”

There is a great strain of tenderness in the British soldier, a great
readiness to serve. Hear him, on a wet night in the trenches, begrimed,
red-eyed with fatigue, chilled to the bone, just about to lie down for
a rest, offer to make his officer, tired as he is, “a drop of ’ot tea!”
Watch him with German prisoners! His attitude is paternal, patronizing,
rather that of a friendly London policeman guiding homeward the
errant footsteps of a drunkard. Under influence of nameless German
atrocities of all descriptions the attitude of the British soldier
in the fighting-line is becoming fierce and embittered. Nothing will
induce him, however, to vent his spite on prisoners, though few Germans
understand anything else but force as the expression of power. They
look upon our men as miserable mercenaries whose friendliness is simply
an attempt to curry favour with the noble German _Krieger_; our men
regard them as misguided individuals who don’t know any better.

The great strain of tenderness in the British soldier comes out most
strongly in his attitude of mind towards the wounded and the dead.
No British soldier will rest quiet in his trench whilst there are
wounded lying out in front, and the deeds of heroism performed by men
in rescuing the wounded have been so numerous in this war that it has
been found necessary to restrict the number of Victoria Crosses awarded
for this class of gallant action. No British soldier will lie quiet
while our dead are unburied. Men will expose themselves fearlessly to
recover the body of a comrade and give it decent burial.

A friend of mine in the Cavalry gave me a striking account of a burial
service he conducted thus on the Marne. A shrapnel burst right over
him and his troop, but by great good luck only one man was killed.
The troop was on the move, and it was necessary to bury the man at
once. No military funeral this, with the chaplain reciting, “I am the
Resurrection and the Life ...” and a firing-party rigid at attention;
but a handful of men scraping a shallow hole in the earth, whilst
others removed the dead man’s identity disc and effects and equipment.
There was no time for prayer, but, my friend said, it was one of the
most pathetic ceremonies he had ever attended. They were a rough lot
in his squadron, but they showed a great tenderness as they laid the
still form in its stained khaki in the ground. “Oh dear! pore ole Jack
gorn to ’is last rest!” This and similar ejaculations came from the
little group standing at the graveside, the rest of the squadron, with
stamping horses, waiting a little distance away. “Now then, chaps,
’ats orf!” cried a veteran private, an old scamp of a soldier who had
re-engaged for the war. The men bared their heads reverently as the
poor body was laid in the chill earth. Someone produced a rough cross
made out of an ammunition-box, with the man’s name and regiment written
on it in indelible pencil, the grave was filled in, the cross set up,
and the squadron proceeded on its way.

The line of fighting of the British Army is marked by these crosses,
now gradually being replaced by that admirable organization, the
Graves Commission, which identifies graves and furnishes them with
properly inscribed crosses as a permanent identification. Our men do
the rest. Troops always look after graves in the vicinity of their
billets, plant them with turf and flowers, or, in the case of Catholic
soldiers, with statues or holy pictures from the ruined churches which
are so plentiful in the fighting zone.

What is the spirit of the British Army in the field? I have been asked.
How was it inculcated, and how is it maintained? And I would reply
that the spirit of our army is the spirit of our public schools, for
it was inculcated and is maintained by the Regimental Officer, himself
the product of our public schools. In saying this I do not mean that
the British Army is dominated by an aristocratic caste. I mean that
its spirit of courage, self-sacrifice, loyalty, and public-spirited
obedience is the spirit upon which the whole of our public school
system is based, a great commonwealth in which no man is for the party,
but all are for the State.

The Regimental Officer, who has blazed for himself an imperishable
trail of glory in this war, has cherished and fostered this feeling.
His spirit of quiet, unostentatious courage, of uncomplaining devotion
to duty, of never-failing thoughtfulness for the other man, the
new-comer, “the fellow who’s a bit rattled, don’t you know?” carries
on the tradition of our forefathers who fought with Marlborough and
Wellington and Raglan. It is an eminently English spirit. That is why,
no doubt, despite the expansion of our little Expeditionary Force into
a great democratic host, our new armies have slipped it on with their
tunics and their belts, so that the spirit of the new is the spirit of
the old.

When this war is over I shall hope to see a monument erected in London,
in the most prominent site that can be found, that the honour may be
greater, with the plain inscription, “To the Regimental Officer, 1914.”
Let it be white like his escutcheon, of marble like his fortitude, and
in size vast and overwhelming and imposing like the pile of heroic
deeds he has amassed to his credit in all our wars. German organization
may have given the German armies high-explosive shells innumerable
and machine-guns galore to break our bodies, and asphyxiating gases
to stop our breath; they have no weapon to break the spirit of the
Regimental Officer, which is the spirit of his men, the spirit of the
army. The German Army is inspired by a magnificent military tradition,
but it seems to linger principally in the regulars, and to be present
only in a diminished form in the officers and men of the Reserve, the
_Landwehr_, and the _Landsturm_. For the spirit of the German Army is
artificial, the atmosphere of a military caste. The spirit of our army
is the spirit of England that sent Drake sailing over the seven seas,
that gave our greatest sailor that far-famed “Nelson touch”; it is the
vivifying breath of the greatest Empire that the world has ever seen.

“Gentlemen, hats off!” as Napoleon said at the grave of Frederick the
Great--hats off to the Regimental Officer. The military correspondent
of _The Times_ sounded a sane note, in the midst of the great clamour
about the shortage of shells, when he bade us remember the value of
good infantry, dashing in the attack, steady on the defensive. The
Regimental Officer is the soul of our infantry. No matter that he is a
boy, or that he is out from home but a few weeks, his sergeants will do
the technical part of the job if needs be. But the Regimental Officer
will show them all how to die.

Lord Wolseley used to tell how, standing on the parapet of the
earthworks before Tel-el-Kebir, he saw a shell, a huge, clumsy
projectile, hurling through the air before him. In an instant the
question flashed across his mind whether it was the duty of the
Regimental Officer to preserve his life usefully for the battalion, or
to take a risk and give the men an example in indifference to danger.
The shell answered the question for him by passing him by and bursting
innocuously behind him. But I know what Wolseley’s, what any Regimental
Officer’s answer would have been: “Stay where you are and take your
chance!”

Revolutionary changes have been wrought in the army in everything,
save in its spirit, since the outbreak of the war. We have come to
rely on heavy artillery and high-explosive shells and machine-guns;
we count our men by the hundred thousand where we counted them by the
thousand before. The Territorial, the raw recruit, have proved their
metal in the fiercest fire; the Canadian has not belied the reputation
of our fighting race. Caste restrictions in the army have been swept
away; exclusive regiments are now exclusive only to the incompetent.
That jealously guarded, poorly paid, and, if the truth were told,
rather ill-considered little army that the British people kept to
fight its battles before August, 1914, has been swallowed up in the
millions of Britons who have heard the country’s call. But the soul
of the army marches on unchanged, with the same self-sacrifice, the
same willing obedience, the same admirable discipline. The soul of the
army is enshrined in the Regimental Officer. In the remoteness and
the obscurity of the trenches and the billets he goes about his work
quietly and without fuss, in the same way as he performs the deeds that
win him distinction, in the same way that he goes to his death. His men
worship him. His Brigadier trusts him. “The Regimental Officer,” said a
General to me, “by God, he’s the salt of the earth!”




CHAPTER II

THE WAR OF POSITIONS


The Germans have a mania for phraseology. Their language lends itself
to it, capable, as it is, of accumulative word-building and every
kind of permutation. “German is a code, not a language,” has been
very justly said. Theirs is the pigeon-hole brain in which everything
is ticketed with its precise label, and classified under its own
particular head. I have been often amused to find them carrying this
habit of theirs into military matters. Thus, a German in a letter home,
describing an attack on his trench, says that the warning passed along
was: “_Höchste Alarmbereitschaft_” (_highest alarm-readiness_).

In the same way they describe trench warfare as the “_Stellungskrieg_,”
the _war of positions_. It was from a German prisoner that I first
heard this expression, a big, fair Westphalian captured at Neuve
Chapelle, with whom I had some conversation in the train that was
taking him and some 500 of his comrades down to Havre to embark for
England. I did not at first grasp what he meant by his continual
references to the “_Stellungskrieg_,” and asked him what the phrase
signified. “‘_Stellungskrieg_,’” he said, “you know, what followed the
‘_Bewegungskrieg_’” (_the war of movements_).

The German mind again! “The war of movements!” What a priceless phrase
to flash in the eyes of a blindly credulous people! The phrase has the
inestimable advantage of being entirely vague. It does not say _which
way the movements went_. I tested my prisoner on this point. He was
quite positive that the Bewegungskrieg stopped and the _Stellungskrieg_
set in by virtue of the carefully laid plans and ripe decision of the
Great General Staff, and not of military necessity imposed on the
Fatherland by the Allies. “Everybody knows,” a German-Swiss paper
“kept” by the German Government cried the other day, “everybody knows
that there never was a battle of the Marne!” That is the conviction
of all German soldiers who did not take part in that disastrous and
unforgettable retreat.

But this German phrase “_Stellungskrieg_” is a very accurate
description of the great stalemate on the western front which we, more
vaguely, term “trench warfare.” It is, indeed, a constant manœuvring
for positions, a kind of great game of chess in which the Germans,
generally speaking, are seeking to gain the advantage for the purposes
of their defensive, whilst the Allies’ aim is to obtain the best
positions for an offensive when the moment for this is ripe. It is
a siege in which we are the besiegers, the Germans the besieged. I
adhere to this view despite the great German thrusts against the
Ypres salient. Both these were comparable to sorties _en masse_ from
a fortress, and in both instances, although the besieged were able to
push the besiegers a little farther away from them, they failed to
achieve their object, which was to break the lines of investment, and,
if possible, cut off and surround part of the besieging forces.

The situation on the Western front, at least as far as the British line
is concerned, for only of that am I competent to speak, represents
siege warfare in its highest expression. The opponents face one another
in endless lines of trenches winding in and out of the mostly flat
country of Flanders, following the lie of the ground or the positions
captured or lost in one or other of the great battles which from time
to time break the monotony. By monotony I mean only the sameness of
life and not inaction. For work never ceases on either side. It is not
sufficient to capture, consolidate, and hold a position. The general
situation must be reviewed in relation to the ground gained. Its
possible weaknesses and the opportunities it offers for strengthening
the adjacent positions must be studied. Trenches must be joined up with
those captured, redoubts constructed to counteract a danger threatening
from some point, and communication trenches dug to afford safe and
sheltered ingress to and egress from the new position.

The ground is under ceaseless survey. A move by the enemy calls for
a counter-move on our part. A new trench dug by him may be found
to enfilade our trenches from a certain angle, and while by the
construction of new traverses or the heightening of parapet and
parados, the trench may be rendered immune from sniping, a fresh trench
will be dug at a new angle, or a machine-gun brought up to make life
sour for the occupants of the new German position, and force them in
their turn to counter-measures.

Anyone who saw the trenches at Mons or even, much later, the trenches
on the Aisne, would scarcely recognize them in the deep, elaborate
earthworks of Flanders with the construction of which our army is
now so familiar. At Mons our men sought shelter in shallow ditches
dug in the ground, the entrenchments of field-days in the Chiltern
Hills. In Flanders the trenches are dug deep into the soil, and built
up with sandbags high above the ground-level, plentifully supplied
with traverses to localize the effect of bursting shells. Very solid
affairs, too, these traverses are, great masses of clay firmly bound
together with wire-netting and topped with sandbags--stout sacks filled
with earth--that can be relied upon to stop a bullet.

Trenches must not be too wide, or they would afford too broad a target
to bullets and shells, yet they must be spacious enough to allow
comparative freedom of movement to their inmates to pass swiftly from
place to place in the event of a sudden attack. They must be roomy
enough for the men holding them to live therein with a fair measure of
comfort, with places for dug-outs where the men off duty may sleep,
and where the officers, who are never off duty, properly speaking, in
the trenches, may have their meals and snatch a few hours of slumber
between times. There must be safe storage-places for such dangerous
wares as ammunition, bombs, fuses, and flares, and specially prepared
emplacements for the machine-guns. Sanitation, on which the lives of
thousands depend, must also have its special arrangements.

[Illustration:

  _Underwood & Underwood phot._

A CORNER OF A TRENCH WITH A TRAVERSE IN THE EXTREME LEFT--NOTE
OFFICER’S GAS HELMET.]

The flooring of the trench must be boarded--sometimes in marshy places
with two or three layers of planks--against the wet, with “grids”
laid across. In the winter not even pumps sufficed to keep the trenches
dry. Sandbags, disembowelled by the continual patter of bullets, must
be constantly renewed. A stray shell, plumping through the timber and
earth roofing of a dug-out, may do damage that will take three days (or
rather nights, if the fatigue-party is in view of the enemy by day)
to repair. Then the access to the trenches is a question requiring
constant attention and unremitting labour.

Men in the firing-line roundly declare they would rather be in the
front trench than in the area behind the lines. Both sides attempt to
embarrass the bringing-up of reliefs and supplies by shelling the roads
and communication trenches leading up to the firing-line. Of course,
nothing is ever allowed to interfere with the sending-up of reliefs
or food, but the shells that crash daily, mostly towards evening,
behind the lines claim their toll of life. It is to guard against this
promiscuous shelling, against snipers posted in coigns of vantage in
the enemy lines, and against spent bullets that come whinneying over
from the front (gallant John Gough, most beloved of Generals, was
struck and mortally wounded by a stray bullet at a long distance from
the firing-line, in a spot that was believed to be entirely safe), that
communication trenches are necessary.

The amount of work that some of these communication trenches represent
is simply incredible. Going up to some trenches in the Ypres salient, I
remember, I came across a short patch of road, 200 yards of it at the
outside, which was well in view of the enemy and over which shrapnel
burst from time to time, whilst bullets skimmed over it the live-long
day. To avoid this dangerous area a communication trench had been dug
in the fields bordering the road, and threaded its way in and out of
the corn and the poppies for fully a mile before it again rejoined the
road, which by this had wound out of view of the Germans. In many parts
of the line there is a walk of a mile and a half through communication
trenches up to the firing-line.

All these trenches have to be as deep as a man’s waist, and many as
a man’s height. Most of them must have a timber flooring to make
them passable in wet weather, and sometimes little bridges have to
be constructed to cross the innumerable irrigation ducts and ditches
which seam the fertile fields in the region of our army. There must
be hundreds of miles of planks in our trenches in Flanders. If you
consider that each plank has to be cut and fashioned to fit in its
place, after the trench itself has been dug deep enough to be lined,
you can form some kind of estimate of the enormous amount of labour
which has gone to the welding of our line. As I have trudged down
communication trenches behind the regimental guide taking me up to
the firing-line, I have often had a sort of mental vision of a vast
mountain of energy, as it were, a great sea of sweat and blood,
representing the toil and lives expended in the digging of these deep,
secure cuttings which are the straight paths leading to the glory of
the fighting-line.

I do not think it would be going too far to say that these modern
trenches are impregnable to direct assault. Indeed, the experience of
the war of positions has been to show that neither side can succeed
on the offensive unless the trenches have been destroyed, and not
always then. Well protected in their deep earthworks, the men with the
magazine-rifle and the machine-gun can beat off even such tremendous
attacks _en masse_ as the Japanese essayed with success, though at
awful cost, in the siege of Port Arthur. As long as the trenches endure
they are impregnable. Their impregnability only vanishes when they
cease to exist, when they have been destroyed by shell-fire.

Three epochs of war meet in the war of positions. We have returned to
methods and weapons of war which in our proud ignorance we thought
to have discarded from our military experience for ever. The short
broad knife of the primitive savage, the bomb and sap of the soldiers
of Wellington, the machine-gun and heavy howitzer of the scientific
inventor of the twentieth century, are the weapons of this war, a
combination of brute force and man-slaying machinery which is surely
a crowning dishonour to our civilization. In this siege warfare the
magazine-rifle, which we believed to be the last word in military
progress, has fallen from its place. High explosive, either in giant
shells hurled from enormously powerful guns or concealed in mines
in the bowels of the earth, to shatter the enemy in his skilfully
contrived positions, the bomb and knife for the infantry who sweep
forward to complete his discomfiture cowering in his battered trench,
the automatic rifle and machine-gun to mow down survivors still
holding out in their redoubts, with machine-guns playing on the
captured position--these are _die Forderung des Tages_, the demand of
the moment, in a phrase of Prince Bülow’s which was once a political
catchword in Germany.

This siege warfare is a war of force against force, the force of
machinery dealing ponderous, mighty blows against a wall of steel,
smashing, smashing, smashing, always in the same place, until the line
is bent, then broken, then the force of man coming into play in a wild
onrush of storming infantry, with their primitive passions aflame,
surging forward amid clouds of green and yellow and red smoke, bombing
and slashing their way through the breach their machines have made.
Not the strategist but the engineer is trumps in this warfare, this
Armageddon in which, for all our vaunted civilization, we have returned
to the darkness of the Dawn of Time.

What I have written of the trenches above will suffice to show,
I think, that only the methods of siege warfare--that is, heavy
guns and mines--can be used against them with any hope of success.
High-explosive shells in unlimited quantities are necessary to keep
the hammer pounding away at one given spot. To break a path for our
infantry through the weakly held German trenches round Neuve Chapelle
we had many scores of guns pouring in a concentrated fire on a front
of 1,400 yards for a period of thirty-five minutes. In the operations
round Arras the French are said to have fired nearly 800,000 shells in
one day. Even this colossal figure was surpassed by the expenditure
of high-explosive shells by the German and Austrian armies in their
successful thrust against Przemysl. Our bombardment at Neuve
Chapelle was, in the main, effective, though barbed-wire entanglements
in front of part of the German trenches were not cut, and heavy
casualties were thus caused to the infantry when they advanced. For
the most part, however, we found the German trenches obliterated, the
little village a smoking heap of ruins, and those Germans who survived
dazed and frightened amid piles of torn corpses. If this enormous
concentration of guns was required to blast a path of 1,400 yards with
a thirty-five minute bombardment, what a gigantic concentration of
artillery, what a colossal expenditure of ammunition, will be required
to drive a wedge several miles deep through positions which the Germans
have spent three seasons in strengthening and consolidating!

[Illustration:

  _From “J’ai Vu.”_

THE WAR OF BOMB AND KNIFE: FRENCH SOLDIERS WITH MASKS AND STEEL
HELMETS.]

I make bold to prophesy (fully aware how dangerous this practice is
in military matters) that, when the moment arrives for a resolute
offensive in the West, the preliminary bombardment will not be a
question of minutes or even of hours, but of _days_ on end, an endless
inferno of fire and steel and smoke in which no man will live. For this
is a war of extermination.

My friend and colleague (if he will allow me to style him thus),
“_Eye-Witness_,” remarked in one of his letters from the front on the
bizarre circumstance that, during the lulls in the operations, the
principal fighting went on in the air and beneath the ground. Sapping,
which has played so notable a part in the war of positions, aims at a
local effect as contrasted with bombardment, which covers a much wider
area. Sapping, however, possesses the prime and obvious advantage
that it can go forward without the enemy’s knowledge, whereas anything
like a heavy bombardment will always awake the enemy’s suspicions, and
enable him to prepare for the attack which he guesses to be impending.

Secrecy is the essence of sapping. The army does not like talking about
its mines. You will never find in an official _communiqué_ anything
but the vaguest indication as to the region in which “we made a sap,
laid a mine, and destroyed the enemy’s position.” An important branch
of sapping and mining is the listening for the sound of the enemy’s
subterranean operations in special “listening galleries” running out at
intervals from the main sap. A precise indication of the locality where
a mine was exploded, or rather of the trench from which the shaft of
the sap was sunk, might not only intimate to the enemy that our sappers
and miners were active in that particular sector, but might give him
valuable assistance in testing the efficacy of any special apparatus
or means he employs for listening underground. As far as human
foresight may judge, this book will appear before the war has reached
its conclusion, and therefore I must refrain, as in the case of much
else I should like to write, but may not under the eye of my friend
the Censor, who will scan these pages, from enlarging on the splendid
daring, the amazing resourcefulness, and the inexhaustible endurance of
our sappers and miners in their subterranean galleries.

I went down one of our mines one night. The proceeding was irregular,
I believe, and if I had applied for permission through the official
channel I make no doubt that it would have been refused. Incidentally,
I was nearly shot on emerging, but that is another story. I was
spending the night in our trenches, and in the course of an
after-dinner stroll my host, the Captain in command of this particular
section, asked me if I would care to see “our mine.” Considerations of
the Censorship impel me to abridge what follows up to the moment when
I found myself in a square, greasy gallery, with clay walls propped up
by timber baulks leading straight out in the direction of the German
trenches. Guttering candles stuck on the baulks at intervals faintly lit
up as strange a scene as I have witnessed in this war.

Deep in the bowels of the earth a thick, square-set man in khaki
trousers and trench boots, a ragged vest displaying a tremendous
torso all glistening with sweat, was tipping clay out of a trolley,
and gently chaffing in quite unprintable English of the region of
Lancashire a hoarse but invisible person somewhere down the shaft. I
crawled round the quizzer, slipping on the greasy planks awash with
muddy water on the floor of the gallery, and found myself confronted
by another of the troglodytes, a man who was so coated with clay that
he appeared to be dyed khaki (like the horses of the Scots Greys) from
top to toe. I asked him whence he came, so different was he, in speech
and appearance, from the black-haired, low-browed Irishmen watching at
the parapet of the trench far above us. “A coom fra’ Wigan!” he said,
wiping the sweat from his forehead with a grimy hand, and thus saying
he turned round and made off swiftly, bent double as he was, down the
low gallery.

I followed, the water swishing ankle-deep round my field-boots.
The air was dank and foul, the stooping position became almost
unbearable after a few paces, one slipped and slithered at every
step. At intervals side-galleries ran out from the main sap, unlit,
dark, and forbidding--listening posts. After a hundred paces or so a
trolley blocked the way. Behind it two men were working, my taciturn
acquaintance and another. The latter was hacking at the virgin earth
with a pick, the former was shovelling the clay into the trolley.
Heavens, how these men worked! Their breath came fast and regular, they
spoke not a word; one heard only the hack, hack, of the pick and the
dull smack of the earth-clods as they fell into the trolley. There was
no overseer there to harry them, no “speeder-up” to drive. They were
alone in their sap, working as though life depended on it (as maybe it
did). Good for Wigan, wasn’t it?

I had not been out of that mine for more than a minute when an electric
lamp flashed in my eyes, and an excitable young man, who held an
automatic pistol uncomfortably near my person, accosted me thus: “I beg
your pardon, sir”--it occurred to me that the pistol accorded ill with
this polite form of address--“but may I ask what you were doing down
_my_ mine?” My friend, the Captain, rushed forward with an explanation
and an introduction, the pistol was put away, and the sapper
subaltern--all credit to him for his vigilance!--was easily persuaded
to come along to the dug-out and have a drop of grog before turning in.

That night I heard much of mining, its perils and its humours--of
mine-shafts blocked by tons of earth dislodged by shells; of thrilling
races underground, when the pick of the enemy sapper could be clearly
heard and our men had to pile on every ounce of energy to get their sap
finished and the mine laid before the German was “through” with his;
of hand-to-hand fights with pick and shovel in cramped places in the
dark when two saps meet. Through all the yarns appeared, bright as the
flares that shone out above the trench-lines while we sat and talked,
the young officer’s intense pride in his men, these stout North of
England miners “doing their bit” in the bowels of the earth.

One story which made us laugh was the story of the subaltern fresh
out from home. He was a keen young officer, as they all are, “smart
as paint,” as Long John Silver would say, and full of zeal. One night
he came to the dug-out of the sapper officer who was supervising the
digging of a mine in this particular section of the line.

“You must get up at once,” he whispered in his ear, in a voice hoarse
with excitement; “it is very important. Lose no time.” The sapper had
gone to his dug-out worn out after several sleepless nights, and was
very loth to sally forth into the cold and frosty air. “It is a mine, a
German mine,” said the subaltern fresh out from home; “you can see them
working through the glasses.” The sapper was out in a brace of shakes,
and hurriedly followed the subaltern along the interminable windings
of the trenches. In great excitement the subaltern led him to where a
telescope rested on the parapet. “Look!” he said dramatically. The
sapper applied his eye to the glass. There was a bright moon, and by
its rays he saw, sure enough, figures working feverishly about a shaft.
There was something familiar about it, though--then he realized that
he was looking down his own mine. The wretched youth who had dragged
him from his slumbers had forgotten the windings of the trench. This,
and much else, the sapper pointed out with great forcefulness before
he went back to resume his broken rest, leaving the young officer
pondering over the coarse language of the Royal Engineers!

Vermelles is the best example I have seen of the important rôle that
sapping plays in this siege warfare. Indeed, this little village, which
the French wrested from the Germans by sapping along and blowing it up
house by house, is renowned along the entire front of the Allies as a
kind of exhibition model of fighting typical of the war of positions.
Vermelles is in the Black Country of the North of France, five miles
south-east of Béthune, a pretty little village lying on a small ridge
running up from a fertile plain. The French Tenth Army, under General
Maud’huy, advancing after the failure of the great German thrust
against Arras in October, found their passage barred at Vermelles
by the Germans, whose machine-guns, their muzzles thrust out of the
cellar openings of the houses, held them up at the very entrance to
the village. A French frontal attack from the western approaches to
the place failed with heavy loss, and tentative attempts from the
flanks to carry the village by assault were fruitless. Every house was
a German stronghold, bristling with machine-guns, defended by deep
trenches, and linked up by telephone with the _poste de commandement_,
which was installed in the cellars of the Château of Vermelles under
the front steps.

[Illustration:

  _“Daily Mail” phot._

A BURSTING MINE.]

To visit Vermelles, as I was privileged to do, is to get an
object-lesson of the methods of the new French Army, that wonderful
weapon of efficiency which has emerged finely tempered, pliant, and
sharp from the furnace of those first disastrous months of war. Never
was the painstaking thoroughness of the French mind seen to better
advantage than in the patient and elaborate operations which culminated
in the two centres of German resistance in Vermelles, the brewery and
the château respectively, being squeezed in a pair of pincers, as it
were, and crushed. The French, recognizing that the German machine-guns
made a direct attack practically hopeless, sapped their way under each
German stronghold in turn, and, having made a breach, rushed in with
bomb and bayonet, and made good the position, afterwards sapping on to
the next.

I found practically every house in Vermelles roofless, every window
broken, every wall pierced with loopholes and pitted with shell-holes
and bullet-marks. There were long, narrow trenches innumerable, marking
the line of the French saps, and ending in deep, wide craters where the
explosion had taken place and opened a passage for the French infantry.
Four bleak walls surrounding an immense tumulus of rubbish were all
that was left of the château, whose grounds were literally honeycombed
with trenches in all directions. The Germans made their last stand
here, holding in turn the two high red-brick walls surrounding the
château grounds until the French, by means of a sap more than 100 yards
long, blew a breach and rushed the place.

I saw this mine. It starts in the white chalky soil of some kind of
garden outside the château wall. This same white soil nearly proved the
undoing of the assailants, for the Germans in the château “spotted” the
French operations by the high white piles of clay thrown up from the
mine almost level with the top of the wall, and our Allies were forced
to explode the mine before the operation was quite complete. However,
it did its work well. Two huge craters were made right beneath the
wall, the masonry of which was blown apart in great chunks, which were
still lying about when I visited the spot. The last German resistance
was broken. Vermelles was captured. There will be many Vermelles in
this war before the Hun is beaten to the ground.

The trench mortar and the bomb have become essential weapons of the
war of positions. Both weapons of the past, they seem strangely out of
place beside such modern man-slaying instruments as the machine-gun and
the magazine-rifle. But they have come in response to the demand of a
unique situation because the weapons which military experts believed
to represent the last word in progress in their profession no longer
sufficed. Handier to manipulate than a field-gun, because much smaller
in bulk, of short range, the trench mortar, throwing a heavy bomb
filled with high-explosive, might at least blow in a part of a trench
which, as I have shown, in the ordinary way is impregnable to direct
assault. There are all kinds of trench mortars, from modern specimens
to rudimentary kinds of catapults, knocked together by inventive
officers or men in their spare time. The French, I believe, have
actually used mortars taken from old fortresses of the days of Vauban.

Of all the ills attendant on the life of the men in the trenches I know
of none more trying to the nerves than these trench mortars. As they
are fired at close range from the enemy’s trench, which may be anything
from 30 to 300 yards away, one has no warning of their coming. You hear
a sudden report mingled with a kind of screech, and the rush of a heavy
body through the air, then a deafening explosion, with a spout of earth
and clouds of black smoke and a rain of fragments of iron and earth
for yards around. The bombs thrown by the big mortars allow you about
two seconds--the interval between the impact and the burst--in which
to take cover. The small bombs, on the other hand--which our men call
“sausages”--burst on impact, without warning.

Just as the men in the trenches in the winter months adapted their
costume to suit the trying climate (rather to the horror of some
military martinets out here!), so these weapons of trench warfare have
been evolved by the men in the firing-line. The revival of bombing
began when a British soldier, to while away an idle moment, put some
high-explosive and a lighted fuse in a discarded bully-beef tin, and
pitched it into the German trench opposite him. In his way the British
soldier is as handy as the blue-jacket, and the long days of the winter
monotony produced all kinds of inventions in the way of mortars and
bombs, which led to the scientific development of this mode of warfare.
A Territorial officer was discovered making all manner of ingenious
bombs and trench appliances in his spare time. He was taken out of the
trenches and installed in an empty school, and when last I heard of him
had a regular factory turning out bombs for the firing-line.

Bombing is very tricky work. Your bomb must be safe as long as it is in
your possession. Nor must it be liable to explosion if dropped after
the safety-catch has been removed. That is why bombs are provided
with time-fuses. Some nicety of judgment is required to hurl them so
that they will explode on impact or immediately afterwards. If the
time-fuse has still a second or so to burn when the bomb falls in
the enemy trench, a resolute man will pick it up and fling it back,
with disastrous consequences to the bomber. Therefore bombers must be
trained. The training is extremely simple, but it is essential, and I
look forward to the time when every soldier who comes out to France
from home will have gone through a course of bombing just as he has
gone through a course of musketry. The work of experimenting with bombs
and of training in bombing has claimed many victims in our army behind
the firing-line, but the blood thus shed has not been spilt in vain,
for by every account the bombing companies now attached to each brigade
are of invaluable assistance.

In the war of positions the bombers seem to be obtaining the chances
for winning imperishable glory that in the _Bewegungskrieg_ fell to
the lot of the gunners. The bombers have their motto already, as
unalterable as the rule of the sea. “The bombers go first!” Private
Appleton, of the bombing company of the 16th (Vancouver) Battalion of
the Canadian Division, consecrated the phrase in a _beau geste_ which
is the spirit of our bombers incorporate. The battalion was attacking
a German stronghold known as The Orchard, situated south-east of
Festubert, during the successful advance of the First Army on May 20.
Just in front of the position a grave and unlooked-for obstacle was
encountered in the shape of a deep ditch with a thick hedge on the
other side. Many scrambled across the ditch, and at the only opening
in the thick-set hedge an officer wanted to lead the way. Then spake
Private Appleton, girded about with bombs. “Excuse me, sir,” he said,
“bombers must go first!”

So the bombers went first. That is the rule of the game. When the
first line of German trenches has been captured in an attack, up come
the bombers, their bombing aprons lined with pockets (like the skirt
of a lady shop-lifter), jogging as they trot along, and plunge, bombs
uplifted to fling, into the narrow communication trenches where, behind
the first traverse, Death, in grey-green dress, is lurking. The path
of the bombers is starred with golden deeds. V.C.’s and D.S.O.’s and
D.C.M.’s and M.C.’s reward their prowess sometimes, but more often
their recompense has been a few feet of brown earth in Flanders and a
corner for ever green in the memory of their fellows.

The bomb goes with the knife. The bayonet fixed on the rifle is too
long for the _corps-à-corps_ in a narrow trench. When a German trench
has been obliterated by a bombardment or an exploded mine and the
infantry rush forward, there is no time for the niceties of bayonet
drill. You want to get at your man and kill him before he can recover
from his shock. The French infantry have been known to fling aside
their rifles when the charge sounds, and hurl themselves on the Germans
with their bayonets alone or with clasp-knives, or even with knives of
their own manufacture.

Lord Cavan, who for many months commanded the famous Guards Brigade
in the war, told me of an Irish Guardsman who killed a dozen or so of
Germans with a spade. The Irishman was going up a narrow communication
trench when a German rushed out round a traverse. The Guardsman shot
him with the last cartridge in his magazine. He was so cramped for
space that he did not know whether he could spare time to load again,
as he knew that other Germans were behind the first. So, quick as
thought, he called to a comrade who was working on the parapet of the
trench above him. “Show us your spade here, Mike!” The other handed
down his spade just as a second German came round the traverse. The
Guardsman promptly felled him with a blow that would have killed an ox,
and went on “slipping it across them” (as he would have said himself)
as fast as they emerged. I believe that in this way he actually
accounted for ten or more Germans. The rifle and bayonet will play
their part again when the time comes for an advance over a broad
front. For the rush through a narrow breach the knife and bomb are the
weapons.

Siege warfare will not be the last word in this war. Opinions vary,
but for me there will be no peace of the kind that will banish the
German peril for generations to come unless the German lines can be
broken and the enemy hurled back in disorder from the North of France
far back into Belgium, and maybe beyond. Once the German line is
pierced, if only the breach be wide and deep enough, we return to the
_Bewegungskrieg_, which is the only kind of fighting in this war for
which both sides have a standard of comparison in previous campaigns,
and for which consequently the Germans are better equipped than the
Allies.

The weapon of the _Bewegungskrieg_, as we learnt in the fighting at
the outset of the war, and of the _Stellungskrieg_ as well, as often
as the armies have “got moving,” is undoubtedly the machine-gun.
The machine-gun, or, generally speaking, the automatic gun that
fires several hundred shots a minute, is, I believe, the principal
contribution which this war is destined to make to military science.
Just as the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 introduced the needle-gun, and
the Franco-Prussian War the _chassepot_ rifle, and the South African
War was the war of the magazine-rifle, so the present war will be
known as the war of the automatic gun. When the German General Staff
sits down to write its official history of the Great War, it will be
able to attribute the greater part of the success that German arms may
have achieved to its foresight in accumulating an immense stock of
machine-guns, and in studying the whole theory and tactics of this
comparatively new weapon before any other army in the world became
alive to its paramount importance.

When Germany went to war she is believed to have had a very large
supply of machine-guns in her army. They were assembled together in a
Machine-Gun Corps, on the principle of our Royal Artillery, and the
machine-guns were attached to divisions and brigades, with their own
divisional and brigade commanders on the same lines as our divisional
artillery. I do not know how many machine-guns the British Army
possessed, but it was a negligible quantity, somewhere about two per
battalion. We had studied the handling and mechanism of the gun and its
tactical employment, but had not accustomed the army generally to its
usage. Our machine-guns are attached to battalions, and may on occasion
be handed over by the brigade to the brigade machine-gun officer for a
special emergency. In the German Army, however, the machine-guns are at
the immediate disposal of the Division Commander, just as the artillery
is. Their utility is thus greatly enhanced, for, instead of being
operated according to strictly local requirements, their disposition is
governed by the needs of the general situation. An example will best
illustrate the value of the German system.

The war correspondent of the _Frankfürter Zeitung_, attached to the
German General Headquarters in the West, in a despatch dealing with
the operations of the German Army cavalry (_Heereskavallerie_) during
the advance on Paris and the retreat from the Marne, mentions that a
_Jäger_ battalion, sent out to check the British advance, was able to
put _no fewer than twenty-one machine-guns_ into line on a front of
1,000 yards against a single British battalion, which as a result was
practically destroyed.

The machine-gun has been of priceless advantage to the Germans in
this war. If they made good use of it during their advance through
Belgium towards Paris, they came to rely almost entirely upon it
when their advance was checked and they found themselves called
upon to remain on the defensive for many months on end. In all the
campaigns of this war it has been the same story. On the western and
eastern fronts, in Gallipoli, in Africa, the machine-gun has been the
deadliest foe of the attacking force, _because the German, possessing
this weapon in far greater numbers than his opponent, has been able
by its means to increase the fire-power of his battalions to such a
point as to give him actually the effect of superior numbers_. As the
offensive is the Allies’ only key to success, our salvation lies in
the machine-gun, which Sir Ian Hamilton, in his historic Dardanelles
despatch, lachrymosely calls “that invention of the devil”--thousands
of machine-guns--but also the automatic rifle.

The only factor that furnishes anything like a certain basis for
calculation as to the date of the conclusion of the war is the number
of fighting-men available for each of the different belligerents. Of
all the supplies required for making war, the supply of men is limited.
The Germans recognized this sooner than any of their opponents. In the
machine-gun they had a machine that does the work of many men. They
reckoned that a machine-gun in a trench on the Western front would
release at least a score of men for one of their great thrusts in the
Eastern theatre of war. They took measures accordingly.

Time and time again we came up against this deadly weapon. The only bar
that stood between us and Lille on that fateful March 10, after the
capture of Neuve Chapelle, were the German strongholds, bristling with
machine-guns, along the Moulin de Piètre Road and the fringe of the
Bois de Biez. On the Fromelles ridge, at La Quinque Rue, at Hooge in
May and June, it was the German machine-guns that stemmed our further
advance after our first objectives had been gained and beat us to
earth, while the German heavy artillery were getting the range of the
new positions and the bombers were creeping forward to drive us back.

The machine-gun is the multiplication of the rifle. The Vickers
gun fires up to 550 shots a minute. This is also about the average
performance of the German gun. To silence this multiplication of
fire you must outbid it, you must beat it down with an even greater
multiplication. This is where the difficulty comes in for an attacking
force. The machine-gun, with its mounting and ammunition and spare
parts, is neither light in weight nor inconspicuous to carry. When the
infantry has rushed a trench after the preliminary bombardment, the
machine-guns have to be carried bodily forward over a shell and bullet
swept area, where the machine-gun detachment is a familiar and expected
target for the German marksmen. This is where the automatic rifle is
destined to play a part--a part so decisive, in my opinion, as may win
the war for us.

The automatic rifle is a light machine gun. In appearance it
resembles an ordinary service rifle, with rather a complicated and
swollen-looking magazine. It is not water-cooled like the machine-gun,
but air-cooled, and is therefore not absolutely reliable for long
usage, as it inevitably becomes heated after much firing. It will fire,
however, up to 300 odd shots a minute, and can be regarded as the
ideal weapon for beating down German machine-gun fire and checking the
advance of bombers while the heavier but more reliable machine-guns are
coming up.

Its mechanism is extremely simple. It can be carried at a good pace
over a distance of several hundred yards by a single man, and it is
not distinguishable from the ordinary rifle except at fairly close
range. It is my conviction that the automatic rifle is the key to the
machine-gun problem, which has hitherto proved of such insurmountable
difficulty to the Allies in the different theatres of war.

It has been said that we hold our trenches with infantry, the French
with their 75-centimetre guns--“the black butchers,” as my friend, Mr.
George Adam, calls them in his admirable book “Behind the Scenes at
the War”--but the Germans with machine-guns. The more machine-guns we
have--and this view is fully upheld by the new Ministry of Munitions at
home--the thinner we can make our front line in the trenches, and the
more men we shall accordingly have at our disposal for an offensive at
one or more points.




CHAPTER III

THE FIGHT FOR THE SALIENT


I.

THE CAPTURE AND LOSS OF HILL 60.

The grass has grown up thick and long about the little graves strung
out in a great semicircle about Ypres, marking the line of the famous
salient, in the defence of which so many thousands of Britons and
Frenchmen cheerfully laid down their lives. Spring and summer have
smiled on the wooded and undulating plain about the ruined towers of
Ypres, and the profusion of wild flowers, the wealth of green foliage,
which their gentle caress has brought forth, has so transformed the
land that the awful battle-pictures these green pastures have seen now
seem like a far-off dream.

With wise strategy we drew in the horns of the Yser salient on May 3,
and fell back to the position we now hold, at the beginning of August,
from the Yser Canal, north of Ypres, through Wieltje, Verlorenhoek, and
Hooge, back to the foot of Hill 60, and thence down to St. Eloi. Thus
a great part of the battlefield, which was the scene of the tremendous
struggle lasting from April 17 until May 13, is now in German
hands--St. Julien, sacred for ever in the Empire’s history in memory
of Canadian gallantry there; St. Jean, where the gallant Geddes died;
Zonnebeke, where, by the light of candles stuck in beer-bottles, those
gallant doctors, Ferguson and Waggett--Waggett, the throat specialist
of Harley Street, now Major Waggett, R.A.M.C.--in the cellars of the
ruined houses worked for hours over the wounded, and brought them
safely away.

Yet I have contrived to visit in person many corners of the battlefield
of Ypres, sometimes a day or two after the great contest had raged
itself out. On the _chaussée_ by the Yser Canal, north of Ypres, I have
seen the humble graves, many of them nameless, in which the poor French
victims of the first great gas attack were laid to rest, their rusting
rifles and blood-stained uniform close at hand. I have stood in the
emplacements of our guns about Ypres amid the putrefying carcasses of
horses and piles of empty shell-cases. I have walked through trenches
dug across the battlefield where, through fissures in the ground, one
yet might see the dead, buried as they died, in uniform.

I have looked upon the hill of St. Eloi--the Mound of Death--that
tumulus of glory of the Princess Pat.’s. I have seen the brown and
scarred top of Hill 60, where in the yawning craters rent by our mines
2,000 Britons and Germans are yet lying awaiting the Last Trump, where
shells and bullets have stripped the trees of their last leaf, and
where chlorine gas has stained the herbage yellow.

I have talked with the Generals who directed the fight, who spoke
eagerly of its strategy and tactics, and of the undying heroism of our
men. I have spoken with the humble privates, whose only recollection
of this classic struggle is of long marches over the hard and galling
_pavé_ of the Belgian roads, of such an inferno of shell-fire as no
man ever dreamt of before, of hours spent, hungry and thirsty, with
nerves benumbed, in narrow trenches where comrades cried sharply “Oh!”
and “Ah!” as fragments of shell or bullets struck them, where dead men
sprawled around, where wounded sighed and died, where one fired and
loaded and fired and “stuck it,” because, avowedly, one wouldn’t go
back for no bloody German--in reality, because one was British.

I have been among the Canadians who went through the gas horror with
a gallantry that made the Empire ring. I have talked with soldiers
to whom, but five days out from England, the hell of fire that swept
the salient night and day was their first taste of war, and with
veterans fresh from the fight on whose breasts the discoloured medal
ribbons spoke of former service in the field. From all I have seen
myself and all I have heard from others, my mind has focussed so
sublime a spectacle of heroism, of pluck undaunted by adversity, of
resourcefulness never foiled by confusion, that I have felt impelled to
try my hand at painting the picture of that battle which history will
set down as one of the crucial struggles of the war.

[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES.

(_From “The Times,” by kind permission._)]

The second battle of Ypres has been called the second German thrust for
Calais. It may have become so in the upshot; it was not at the outset.
There is no doubt that the Germans were preparing an offensive, the
main object of which was to test the efficacy of their asphyxiating
gas, one of their great devices of “frightfulness” with which the
German Government, through its newspapers and its agents, was wont
to make our flesh creep. Their offensive was certainly in the nature
of an experiment, and it seems probable that the large number of
troops which, as my friend and colleague, Mr. James Dunn, _Daily Mail_
correspondent at Rotterdam, a week before the battle, warned us, were
being transported through Belgium and massed on the Western front
were intended to press home any advantage that might be won by the
asphyxiating gas.

A decided lack of vigour on the part of the German infantry at Ypres
has been attributed, and is probably due, to the fact, clearly
established by the statements of prisoners, that the German soldiers
were terrified of their gas-cylinders, and showed the utmost reluctance
to advance immediately behind their gas-cloud. That they had good
reason to look askance at their new instrument of frightfulness is
shown by the circumstance that, both at Hill 60 and farther northward
in the salient, more than once the gas-cloud was seen to drift back
into the German lines. Shortly after the second battle of Ypres I was
told by an unimpeachable witness, a Belgian who had escaped from Ghent,
that there were German gas victims in the military hospitals there, and
that their sufferings had caused the military authorities the greatest
embarrassment, owing to the effect thereby produced on the German
wounded in the wards. The German soldiers’ dread of their unholy ally
may to some extent account for the enemy’s failure to press home his
advantage, but in my own mind I am convinced that the real explanation
is that the German plans were entirely upset by our offensive at Hill
60 on April 17.

As the result of the dashing feat of arms by the 1st Royal West Kents
and the 2nd King’s Own Scottish Borderers in capturing the hill, the
German offensive was forestalled. The second battle of Ypres, in a
figure of speech, went off at half-cock. The German General Staff may
well have believed that the attack on Hill 60, instead of being a
purely local affair as it really was, was the precursor of a vigorous
offensive by the Allies.

The Germans had their pipe-lines laid and their gas-cylinders embedded
in front of their trenches in the northern part of the salient. They
obviously had no gas at Hill 60, otherwise, seeing that from April 22
on the wind was favourable, they would have gassed the 13th Brigade
off the hill immediately the position fell into our hands, instead of
waiting until May 1, when they gained a footing on the hill by means
of their first gas attack (against the Dorsets), and May 5, when they
overwhelmed the Duke of Wellington’s and recaptured the position.
Believing, then, that the attempt was to be made to pierce their line
at Hill 60, they naturally turned their hand to the best offensive
weapon they believed themselves to possess--namely, the line of
gas-cylinders installed ready for their experiment in the northern part
of the salient.

They had been accumulating a formidable concentration of artillery in
anticipation of their attack. Their plans were certainly not ripe, for
during the battle they had to bring down heavy naval guns from the
Belgian coast to reinforce their artillery. Fortune favoured them in
respect of guns.

The second battle of Ypres was an artillery battle. As I have said,
the German infantry showed want of vigour. Its attacks, when they
were made, were half-hearted and comparatively easily repulsed. Their
strength lay in their artillery, of which they possessed guns of all
calibres, and used them with a reckless expenditure of ammunition that
must have struck our gunners, starved of high-explosive shells, hot
with angry envy. From April 22 until May 13 they pounded our men in
their trenches, wherever they were, night and day, with relentless
energy until the trenches were obliterated in places and choked with
débris. They stretched a curtain of fire right across the salient,
over Ypres (from which all the main roads radiate like the spokes of a
wheel) and far beyond, and the brigades rushed up into action had to
traverse this inferno before they came into the fight.

It was a battle of machinery. It was scientific slaughter--death and
destruction poured out from miles away. There was a British brigade
in the fight that lost all its Colonels but one, and battalions that
lost heavily without ever seeing a German. For the Germans not to have
won through, against an enemy thrown into confusion by a foul and
diabolical surprise and out-gunned from start to finish, is in itself a
defeat. Their failure to blast their way through to the sea, which was
their objective as the battle developed for them with such unexpected
success, must be counted a signal triumph for the Allies--not only for
the British troops that held the salient, but also for the gallant
French, whose counter-attacks were instrumental in delaying the onrush
of the German hordes down the western bank of the canal.

The balance of the second battle of Ypres cannot have been agreeable
reading for the Supreme War Lord. On the credit side the gain of a
mile or two of a position which we could hardly have hoped to hold
against a really strong thrust, on the debit side an expenditure of
ammunition, only exceeded by the colossal Austro-German bombardment
before Przemysl, and extremely severe casualties. The battle marked
the end of all German offensives on the Western front for months, and
in this theatre the war relapsed into the state of stalemate, in which
Time, most valued ally of the Western Powers, can make his assistance
most efficaciously felt against the enemy of mankind.

As, in my opinion, the capture of Hill 60 by the British was in reality
the starting-point of the fight for the salient, no account of this
historic battle would, I believe, be complete without the story of
the capture and loss of the hill, a chaplet of stirring incidents in
which the 13th Infantry Brigade won immortal glory. In order to make a
connected narrative, I will group together the incidents marking the
capture and loss of Hill 60, though, in reality, the fight for the
salient had begun before the hill was finally lost.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hill 60 lies in an isolated position on the extreme western ridge of
the Klein Zillebeke Ridge with the Ypres-Comines railway-line, which
here runs through a deep cutting, spanned by a small bridge on the one
side and the Klein Zillebeke-Zwartelen Road on the other. It is a low
hill, with a flattish top, about 45 feet above the surrounding country.
The Germans held the upper slopes and the summit of the hill, while our
trenches ran round the lower slopes.

[Illustration]

For some months before the events which I am about to describe the
trenches round Hill 60 were held by a division whose General was not
slow to recognize the strategical advantage which the possession of
the hill conferred. He accordingly began to make his plans to this end,
but before he could bring them to fruition his division was ordered
north to take over some of the line from the French.

It fell to the lot of the 13th Brigade to put to the test the plan for
the capture of the hill. Like all successful offensives, the attack was
the object of the most minute preparation in advance. It was decided
that the summit of the hill should be mined, after which the infantry
should advance to the capture of the hill. While underground the mining
operations went forward, the Brigadier reconnoitred the positions in
person. Finally everything was ready for the attack, which was timed to
be launched at seven o’clock on the evening of April 17.

The 1st Royal West Kents, otherwise “The Gallant Half-Hundred,”
and the 2nd King’s Own Scottish Borderers, who were for so long in
garrison in Dublin, were entrusted with the initial attack. Officers
and non-commissioned officers received their instructions as to the
order in which the storming parties were to go forward, ammunition and
bombs were laid ready, the doctors selected their regimental aid-posts,
where first aid is administered to the wounded, and all along the line
the requisite measures were taken for the replenishment without delay
of the supplies in men, ammunition, and provisions as the wastage of
the fight should make itself felt. So it is before every engagement.
Meanwhile the West Kents and the K.O.S.B.’s spent a long day in the
trenches on the fateful April 17, waiting for the shadows to fall and
the hands of the watch to point to 7 p.m. When an attack of this kind
is impending men’s nerves are strung up tight. It speaks well for the
discipline of these two battalions that they stood the test without a
trace of nerves.

Thin blue threads of smoke were rising from the German trenches into
the clear evening air when, with a dull, low thud, accompanied by a
billowing quiver of the earth, the summit of Hill 60 was blown sky-high
in an immense black spout of earth and débris and human fragments.
Immediately afterwards, with a deafening roar, the second mine went
up--exploding, it is believed, a German mine with it, so loud was the
report. In the space of a minute or two five mines were touched off,
and immediately after our artillery opened rapid fire on all the German
positions in the vicinity, on the woods in the rear, on the ruins of
Zwartelen village on the left (see map), and on the railway cutting.
As our guns spoke, Major Joslin, who was commanding the West Kents’
storming party, standing beside the Royal Engineers officer who fired
the mines, blew the charge on his whistle, and the attack got away, the
bombers in front.

The Germans were as completely surprised as they were at Neuve
Chapelle. Their trenches had been practically obliterated, and in their
place appeared five yawning craters, the largest of which measured
about 50 yards across by 40 feet deep. These gulfs were filled with
dead and wounded men. A few Germans made a show of resistance, but were
speedily accounted for. Many who fled headlong across the open behind
their trenches were mown down by our machine-guns, which had been
expecting this development. The West Kents went through the craters
and bombed their way down the communication trenches into the German
support trenches, while digging parties of the K.O.S.B.’s set about
making trenches across the lips of the craters.

At 7.20 p.m. Hill 60 was ours.

The loss of the hill was a bad shock for the enemy. He did not recover
from it that evening at any rate. After a rather feeble bombardment
with “whizz-bangs,” he attempted three counter-attacks in the small
hours of the morning, but they were easily smothered by our machine-gun
fire.

As the night wore on, however, his bombardment began to increase in
violence. The K.O.S.B.’s, who came up to the relief of the West Kents
about 2.30 a.m. (April 18), came in for it badly. It was pitch dark,
and the going was made difficult by the holes in the ground, the dead
bodies scattered around, and the innumerable strands of broken barbed
wire strewing the Hill. Major Joslin was killed, so was the company
commander of the relieving party, while Major Sladen, the commanding
officer of the K.O.S.B.’s, was wounded and his Adjutant mortally
wounded. It was a subaltern who finally took the K.O.S.B.’s into their
new trenches on the hill-top.

By this time the German bombardment was extremely severe.
High-explosive shells were bursting in regular volleys on the exposed
slopes, and the Germans, whose trenches in some places were but a few
yards distant from ours, separated by only a sandbag barrier thrown
across a communication trench, kept up a merciless fusillade of
bombs. The flares broke in a gush of green light over the battered
hill, showing the green and yellow eddies of smoke from the bursting
projectiles. But the K.O.S.B.’s, swathed in choking smoke, their
trenches clogged with the dead and wounded, kept a brave heart. Some
of them actually whiled away the night in song, shouting in chorus
that ditty which is, above any other, the song of our fighting-men in
Flanders:

  “Here we are! Here we are!
      Here we are again!
  Tommy, Jack, and Pat, and Mac, and Joe!”

Dawn stole with lemon streaks into the sky, and found them there amid
the bursting shells. But they had had to give ground a little and
abandon the trenches on the far side of the crater on the extreme left
of our position.

Their condition was rather precarious, and the West Kents sent a
company up in support. The officer commanding the company described how
he found the K.O.S.B.’s Captain dead in the crater between the British
and German trenches, on top of a pile of dead and wounded men so thick
that “_hardly a portion of the ground could be seen_.”

At 11.30 a.m. the Duke of Wellington’s (The West Riding) Regiment,
2nd Battalion, arrived to relieve the K.O.S.B.’s and West Kents, who
by this time had been able to retain possession of only three of the
craters on the near side of the hill (the three right-hand craters
in the map). “The Duke’s,” as they are called, did magnificently
that day. “The Old Duke would be as proud of you to-day as he was
when he commanded you,” the Brigadier said afterwards in addressing
the shattered remnant of the battalion that came away from the hill.
Despite the rain of shells and bombs, they held on grimly all through
the day. By the early afternoon the Germans had recaptured the whole of
the hill save only for a section behind the second and third craters
(counted from the right in the map), where “The Duke’s” still resisted.
Their General saw them clinging to the brown, scarred ridge “like a
patch of flies on the ceiling.”

The day wore on and “The Duke’s” still held out. It was decided to
relieve the pressure on them by a counter-attack with artillery
support. The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry were brought up, and
at six o’clock “The Duke’s,” their numbers thinned, it is true, by
heavy casualties, particularly in officers, were over the parapet and
away, their fellow county men of Yorkshire at their heels. Behind came
some of the K.O.S.B.’s and the “Q. Vic.’s” (the Queen Victoria Rifles,
that well-known London Territorial battalion). These young Londoners
covered themselves with glory in this day’s fighting and later. Second
Lieutenant Woolley, one of their subalterns, won the Victoria Cross for
a magnificent display of endurance and gallantry.

“B” Company of “The Duke’s,” on the right, reached the German trenches,
and established themselves there with slight loss; “C” Company had to
cross open ground, got badly hammered, and only Captain Barton and
eleven men reached their objective. They never stopped to see how many
men they had lost, however. They went for their crafty enemy with
bayonet and bomb, and killed or routed every man in the trench. Their
blows would have been struck doubly hard had they known what stood
before. “D” Company, on the left, had also a patch of open country to
traverse. All its officers were killed or wounded in its passage over
the broken ground swept by shell and machine-gun fire, but with the
help of the stout-hearted Yorkshire Light Infantry it managed to secure
the trench.

Hill 60 was ours once more. It would still be in our hands to-day but
for the German crime against civilization and humanity, the nameless
horror of the asphyxiating gas. Sir John French said as much in his
despatch on the second battle of Ypres (dated “Headquarters, June 15”).
Referring to the loss of Hill 60, the Commander-in-Chief wrote:

“The enemy owes his success ... entirely to the use of asphyxiating
gas. It was only a few days later that the means, which have since
proved so effective, of counteracting this method of making war, were
put into practice. Had it been otherwise, the enemy’s attack on May
5 would most certainly have shared the fate of all the many previous
attempts he had made.”

On the morning of the 20th, in the small hours, the 13th Brigade,
exhausted by its spell of hard fighting, was relieved by the arrival
of another brigade, which took over the hill. The East Surreys and
the Bedfordshires went into the trenches, and forthwith had to bear
the brunt of a whole series of most desperate efforts made by the
Germans to recapture the hill, or, failing that, to prevent us from
consolidating the positions gained. Desperate hand-to-hand fights,
bombing encounters, and point-blank rifle and machine-gun fire,
together with an incessant stream of shells, marked the whole of that
day and the following night, when the Devons came up and relieved.

The East Surreys and the Bedfords fought most gallantly, and were
splendidly seconded by the 6th King’s Liverpools, a Territorial
battalion, which, notwithstanding the terrific fire, rendered very
real support to the regulars in the front line by carrying up stores
of all kinds throughout the fighting. A quartermaster-sergeant of
the Bedfordshires paid a fine tribute to the work of these gallant
Territorials. “The approaches to our positions,” he wrote to me, “were
swept by a storm of bullets and shells of all kinds, and they (‘The
King’s’) had a large number of casualties, but they never flinched, and
it was largely owing to the manner in which they kept up the supply of
hand-grenades and ammunition of all kinds that we were able to hang on
and finally drive back the enemy’s attacks.”

The losses of the East Surreys and the Bedfordshires were very severe,
but two V.C.’s and many other decorations were afterwards awarded to
the two battalions in recognition of their fine behaviour.

In the meantime the 13th Brigade had marched off to its rest-billets,
looking forward to a spell of well-earned repose. But it was not to be.
Hardly had the brigade settled down in its new quarters before urgent
orders reached the Brigadier to push it up with all speed through Ypres
to the Pilckem Road in support of the French, who had been driven in
by the German gas attack, and of the Canadians, whose flank had been
left “in the air” by the French withdrawal.

The Germans could not do without Hill 60. They wanted it notably as
a vantage-point from which to sweep the Ypres salient with a rain of
fire to support the tremendous effort, which they were just developing,
to pierce the Allied line. “Necessity knows no law” is a saying that
served to justify in German eyes the murder of Belgium. It served
equally well to explain (if the moral aspects of the question were ever
discussed, which I doubt) the employment of gas to wrest from our grasp
the hill we had won and held with untarnished weapons.

On May 1 the gas appeared on Hill 60. The Dorsets held the line. It
was in the early hours of the morning that a low greenish cloud came
rolling over the top of the hill on to our trenches. Our men were taken
unawares, unprepared. Of respirators they had none. Respirators were
only just beginning to arrive at the front as the result of an appeal
made to the women of England after the gas attack against the French
and Canadians on April 22 and 24. In a minute or two the gas had got
the Dorsets in its grip, and they were choking with its stifling fumes.
The Germans came on at them behind their gas-cloud, but the Dorsets
were ready for them. Half-asphyxiated as they were, they scrambled
on the parapet of the trench and swept down the advancing files with
machine-gun and rifle-fire.

That day the spirit of England, as enshrined in the begrimed and
mud-stained exterior of these Dorsetshire lads, rose superior to
the menace of a hideous and long-drawn-out death. Again and again
throughout the morning and afternoon messages came down from the
Dorsets on the hill to the Devons in support asking for machine-gun
ammunition. All day long the Devons waiting in the woods heard the
brave tap-tapping of the machine-guns on the hill, and knew that the
Dorsets were keeping their end up.

The Devons went up in relief that night, cleverly led to our trenches
without the loss of a man. They still speak with reluctance of the
sights that met their eyes on the way, for the fields were strewn with
many gallant Dorsets who had crawled into the fields and ditches to
die. The men cursed the Germans savagely as they stumbled over the
prostrate forms.

The 13th Brigade had not taken “The Duke’s” into action with them at
Ypres, and on May 4 this battalion relieved the Devons on the hill.
The following morning the Germans made another and stronger bid for
the position. At eight o’clock in the morning of a balmy May day they
opened their gas-cylinders behind the crest of Hill 60, and presently,
“like mist rising from the fields,” in the words of an eyewitness, the
vapours came creeping up in greater volume than ever. At the same time
the German guns opened a heavy bombardment.

The gallant “Duke’s” were overwhelmed. The ordeal was too severe. They
were forced to give ground. Alone they stood the full brunt of the
attack, officers and men sticking to the trenches until the sandbags
fell in upon them, until there was no room to move for dead and wounded
men and débris. Standing at the entrance to his dug-out in the rear
that morning, the Adjutant of “The Duke’s,” as he afterwards told me
himself, saw an officer and an orderly staggering towards him. The
officer spoke in a gasping voice. “They’ve gassed ‘The Duke’s,’” he
said. “I believe I was the last man to leave the hill. All the men
up there are dead. They were splendid. I thought I ought to come and
report.” The officer was new to the regiment, having been detached from
the 3rd East Yorks for service with “The Duke’s” after the heavy losses
of the latter at Hill 60 on the 18th. The high spirit of duty that
impelled him, a dying man, to struggle down the hillside and make his
report is characteristic of the British regimental officer. He died at
the field ambulance that night, a hero if there ever was one. He was
Captain G. U. Robins.

The situation was highly critical. The Devons in support at the foot
of the hill collected every man they could find, and lined them up in
anticipation of a German rush. It never came.

The British Army has passed through some stern trials in this war, but
I doubt if any were more terrible than the ordeal of May 5 at Hill 60.
The sun shone hotly out of a cerulean sky on the slopes of the hill,
where the dead lay in thick clusters on the grass stained yellow by the
gas-fumes. The railway cutting was a shambles, dead and wounded lying
in places so thickly that men had to move them out of the way in order
to pass. Our soldiers, who went along the cutting where the shells were
crashing with reverberating explosions, were positively sickened at
the sights they saw, and filled with fierce anger against the fiends
who had perpetrated this nameless crime.

The men at Hill 60 had their fight to fight out alone. Farther to the
north one of the greatest battles of the war was raging. The horrors
of the hill and the railway cutting were but an incident in the mighty
struggle of nations which was swaying to and fro in the fields and
woods about Ypres. Yet it had cost in lives many more men than the
costliest battle of the South African War.

Now the 13th Brigade, which had shortly before come out of the inferno
about Ypres, returned to Hill 60 with orders to counter-attack and
recapture it if possible. We were back in our old positions on the
lower slopes of the hill. The work had to be begun again. It was tired
men who had to do it. Such is the fortune of war.

West Kents and K.O.S.B.’s were again to furnish the storming parties.
It was a pitch-black night. Not even a flare rent the inky curtain
which had descended on the hill. Craters and holes innumerable, dead
bodies, fragments of timber, splintered barbed-wire posts, miles of
barbed wire in inextricable tangles, made a forward rush impossible.
But the hill had to be taken, and the army had entrusted the gallant
“Half-Hundred” and the lads of the Kilmarnock bonnets with the task. So
on the stroke of ten they were ready to go, the West Kents on the left,
the K.O.S.B.’s on the right.

It was a desperate undertaking, and it failed from the outset. As the
first files of men clambered out over the parapet, the Germans, as
though they had been waiting for the attack, opened a storm of shell
on them, while the air fairly whizzed with machine-gun bullets. Only a
few officers and a handful of men reached the German trench, and were
there shot down or took cover in the numerous shell-holes dotted about.

With the first light of daybreak another attempt was made to gain
the hill. The Yorkshire Light Infantry and the Cheshires attacked,
supported on either side by the bombers of the Irish Rifles and the
K.O.S.B.’s respectively. Two companies of the Yorkshire Light Infantry,
despite a murderous fire, fairly burst their way into the Zwartelen
salient, a very strong German redoubt, and were never heard of again.
The Germans in their stronghold enfiladed the Cheshires on the right,
and after a desperate struggle we had to fall back to our trenches.
Throughout the night heavy fighting, often at close quarters with bomb
and bayonet, went on amid a terrific bombardment, whilst from the north
the guns thundered incessantly.

That was our last attempt to capture Hill 60. Honeycombed with mines,
eviscerated, battered, and blasted, the summit of the hill lay
abandoned and desolate when I visited the positions in July. The dead
were still lying in the craters, huge yawning chasms of crumbling
brown earth, the edges strewn with a wild jumble of rags of uniform,
haversacks, splintered rifles, and barbed wire. Just below the summit
the German trenches, with sandbags of brown and blue and red and green,
wound their way round the side of the hill, seeming to tower above our
narrow trenches which clung to the lower slopes.


II.

THE FIGHT FOR THE SALIENT.

The afternoon of April 22 was drawing to a close, and a fresh breeze
was blowing from the north-east, when the German Supreme Command
decided that the moment had arrived for the perpetration of the crime
that will brand the German Army with infamy until the end of time. Our
line about Ypres ran, more or less as the first great German thrust
for Calais had left it in November, in a wide semicircle about Ypres.
The French were on our left on the east bank of the Yser Canal, along
a line running eastward through Langemarck to the point where our
line began. Here the Canadian Division was in the trenches which went
through Kersselaere along the Gravenstafel ridge to a point adjacent to
the cross-roads at Broodseinde, where the 28th Division under General
Bulfin held the line as far as the outer, the eastern, edge of the
Polygon Wood. Here the 27th Division under General Snow took over the
line which bent back westward down to where the 5th Division was in
position about Hill 60.

This, then, was the famous salient of Ypres. It was in the northern
part that the Germans launched their first gas attack, and one can
imagine with what eager expectation their gas engineers throughout that
fine April day fingered the taps of the cylinders embedded in front
of their trenches, where our outlook men had observed them working
for several weeks before. We have never heard the French version of
what happened after 5.15 on the evening of April 22, when the fatal
greenish-yellow cloud, the significance of which no man could fathom
at that time, rising to about man’s height, began to roll sluggishly
forward from the white and blue sandbags marking the German line. We
only know that our artillery observation officers in their different
coigns of vantage in this region saw a mysterious greenish haze
hovering over the French lines, and that presently down all the roads
leading from the canal to Ypres and Vlamertinghe and Poperinghe a
stream of French infantry and Turcos appeared, most of them with terror
in their faces, with streaming eyes and gasping breath, in the grip of
a horror they feared because they did not understand it.

It was a grim and awful ordeal to be the first to endure a method of
warfare so diabolical in its conception, so fiendish in its effects,
that its equal has hardly been encountered in all the blood-stained
history of man. The whole British Army applauded the noble words in
which its Commander-in-Chief alluded to the conduct of the French
on that occasion. In his despatch of June 15 Sir John French said,
referring to the gas attack on the French: “I wish particularly to
repudiate any idea of attaching the least blame to the French Division
for this unfortunate incident. After all the examples our gallant
Allies have shown of dogged and tenacious courage in the many trying
situations in which they have been placed throughout the course of this
campaign, it is quite superfluous for me to dwell on this aspect of the
incident, and I would only express the firm conviction that, if any
troops in the world had been able to hold their trenches in the face
of such a treacherous and altogether unexpected onslaught, the French
Division would have stood firm.” We know now that many of our brave
Allies, both officers and men, stayed and died at their posts, victims
of slow asphyxiation. You may find the graves of many of them to-day,
among other places by the canal bank, around Ypres, and in a little
burial-ground close to a road leading out of Poperinghe.

Fortunately, the healthy respect the Germans had for their new ally
delayed their advance, and enabled the news of the overwhelming of the
right of the Allied line to reach General Headquarters, where it was
received with amazement. Prompt measures were taken, for it was at once
recognized that the Canadian left was dangerously exposed.

The fact that the Germans had, on April 20, started bombarding Ypres
with 17-inch shells had aroused the suspicions of General Bulfin,
commanding the 28th Division, which was on the right of the Canadians.
Knowing that most of the practicable roads from west to east led
through Ypres, he very wisely ordered everything to come east of
the city, in anticipation of some German move which at that time he
was unable to fathom. The most urgent need of the moment, after the
retirement of the French, was to fill the gap left in the line between
the French who had escaped the poisoned gas and were still in their
old positions and the Canadian left. Colonel Geddes of the Buffs was
accordingly put in command of four battalions in reserve east of
Ypres--the Buffs, the Middlesex, the 5th King’s Own, and the Yorks and
Lancaster--and two Canadian battalions in billets at Wieltje, and sent
up to stop the gap. At the same time the 13th Brigade, which had just
emerged exhausted from the fighting at Hill 60, was rushed up from its
rest-billets to support the French and the Canadians along the Pilckem
Road.

It was a critical night for the Canadians. The Germans, realizing
at last that the French trenches opposite their gas-cylinders were
unoccupied, and that their experiment had succeeded beyond their widest
hopes, had advanced, and were now threatening the Canadian flank.
Advancing with the utmost gallantry, Geddes’s strange conglomeration
of British and Canadian troops had succeeded in capturing by assault
a small wood west of the village of St. Julien, in which four 4·7
guns--the 2nd London Heavy Battery--lent to the French some time
before, had fallen into German hands. The 10th Canadian Regiment and
the Canadian Highlanders made a most spectacular and splendid charge
through the wood that night, routing the Germans and recapturing the
guns. Unfortunately, the “heavies” could not be brought away, so the
breech-blocks were removed and the guns otherwise rendered useless.

That night the Canadians bent back their left flank against the attack
they knew could not be long delayed. Indeed, reports showed the Germans
to be busy outside their trenches. The Canadians dug themselves in
along their new line whilst the dawn came creeping up heralding the
day that was to win immortal glory for the Maple Leaf. They knew that
they must hold out against the arrival of the British troops which were
coming to reinforce them, and of the French reinforcements which were
hastening up to try and regain what had been lost.

It was at 4 a.m. that the gas was released. It came on in its sluggish
rolling billows against the Canadians lined up behind their sandbags
on the Gravenstafel ridge from a distance calculated by the Winnipeg
Rifles (8th Canadian Battalion) to be about 200 yards. They had time to
load and discharge two charges of their Ross rifles before the gas was
on them, rolling over the parapet, creeping in and out of the sandbags
and eddying into the dug-outs. Urgent messages were telephoned back to
the batteries as the Germans were seen assembling in front of their
main trench. The enemy waited ten minutes or so before attacking, and
when they did come on were driven back by our guns and the rifles of
the men who were still able to stand upright.

For the Canadians stood fast. As long as the Empire endures the story
of their fight shall live. Stifled like wasps in a nest, battered
incessantly by a terrific bombardment which increased in intensity as
the day wore on, they held out grimly. The Highlanders in the wood west
of St. Julien, badly enfiladed, as the flank was bent back here, got
the full blast of the vapours, but they would not fall back. At one
place where part of one battalion was forced to evacuate their trench,
the survivors made an extraordinarily plucky attempt to reoccupy it in
the face of a withering fire.

The Canadian left--the 3rd Canadian Brigade--was sorely pressed.
Once the brigade sent word to its sister brigade--the 2nd Canadian
Brigade--on its right that the Germans were advancing unchecked on
its trenches. Two platoons were despatched as reinforcements, and some
of the Northumberland Fusiliers under Lieutenant Hardy. One of this
officer’s reports was so characteristic of the circumstances of this
epic fight and of the spirit in which our men went through with it that
I think it is worth quoting textually. Here it is:

“_The greater part of the officers and men are asphyxiated by gas.
I understand that the enemy is on three sides of me. Unless I am
reinforced fairly well, it will be impossible to do anything great._”

You observe no trace of panic, no heroics; just a blasé suggestion
that, failing reinforcements, the “Fighting Fifth” might not be able to
live up to its fine record and _do anything great_.

Soon after noon word reached the Canadian left that it was to fall
back. But the Brigadier, hearing that the other brigade was going to
counter-attack, decided to stay where he was and await developments. He
communicated this decision to his troops, whereupon the officers sent
back word to say they would hang on as long as they had a man to line
the parapet.

It now became clear that St. Julien and the wood could no longer be
held. The Canadian left had withstood all through the day of the 23rd
furious onslaughts from three sides, and a fresh gas attack on the
morning of the 24th settled the question. The left brigade fell back on
a line running from St. Julien to Fortuin whilst awaiting the arrival
of reinforcements from a British Division, which was coming up with
all speed through a deadly zone of shell-fire. This was the morning
of the 24th. By this time the Germans to the north had succeeded in
establishing themselves on the west bank of the canal, having captured
Steenstraat and some works south of Lizerne from the French.

On the 23rd Sir John French had had an important interview with
General Foch, one of the most brilliant of the French Generals, who
commands the left group of French Armies. General Foch gave the British
Generalissimo a clear account of what had happened, informed him of his
intention to make good the original line, and requested him to allow
the British troops to hold on until the necessary reinforcements could
arrive. Sir John French agreed to do this, but stipulated that he could
not suffer his troops to remain in their present exposed position for
an unlimited period of time.

It was now imperative to hold the Germans at all costs. There were
two highly critical periods in the battle, and the first began now
with April 24. On the canal bank Geddes’s detachment, reinforced by
some battalions of the 13th Brigade, had been making a series of
small attacks on the Germans at a heavy price but with good effect,
for the Germans never got through here. The Lahore Division of the
Indian Corps subsequently relieved Geddes’s gallant troops at the very
moment that their intrepid leader, his work done, paid the supreme
sacrifice. He was killed by a shell on the 26th in the upper room of a
house in which the General commanding the 13th Brigade had established
his headquarters, and where Geddes spent the night. The shells were
bursting continually about the vicinity when Colonel Geddes arrived,
and he was killed by one which entered the breakfast-room the next
morning. The General commanding the 13th Brigade had a providential
escape, as he had left the room to fetch a map a few seconds before.

The retirement of the Canadian left from St. Julien on the 24th had
exposed the flank of the Canadian Brigade on the right, and it was
essential to stop the gap. By this time General Hull’s 10th Brigade of
the 4th Division, which was coming up to reinforce the Canadians, had
reached the canal, and was on its way to Wieltje, where it arrived at
2.30 a.m. the following morning. It had been placed under the orders
of the General commanding the Canadian Division, who sent an urgent
message asking the brigade to attack St. Julien immediately.

It was a desperately difficult undertaking. The night was extremely
dark, the ground, which had not been reconnoitred, was honeycombed with
trenches and strewn with barbed wire, and, moreover, the artillery
had not been able to “register”--that is to say, get its range of the
_terrain_. Just before the attack was launched word came back that
some Canadians were still holding out in the village of St. Julien.
Therefore the place could not be shelled. The guns, however, opened on
the wood west of the village.

It was half-past four in the morning when the attack got away. The 7th
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a Territorial battalion that was
on its trial that day, led with splendid dash on the right, the 1st
Warwicks on the left. They were followed on right and left respectively
by the 1st Royal Fusiliers and the 2nd Dublins, whilst the 2nd
Seaforths were ordered to connect with General Riddell’s Brigade of the
Northumbrian Division, which had been sent up to relieve the Canadians.

As soon as our men got out of their trenches they were met by a
terrific machine-gun and rifle fire at close quarters, whilst the
German heavy guns in the rear spouted a continual torrent of shells
over the fields through which the assault was delivered. Our men
dropped left and right, but they never wavered, and the Irish Fusiliers
and the Dublins, Irishmen all, fighting shoulder to shoulder, actually
got into the outskirts of St. Julien. The scattered ruins, the maze
of trenches, and the barbed wire strung out everywhere, seriously
delayed these two battalions and checked our advance. Two battalions
of a brigade of the Northumberland Division, supporting the Dublins,
lost their direction. These men had only been a few days in France, and
were advancing over country which was totally unknown to their officers
and themselves. On the left the Warwicks and on the other flank the
Highlanders got to within 70 yards of the German trenches in front of
the wood. Here they were hung up, and could make no further progress.
They dug in, and were “properly hammered,” in the words of one who was
there, by German high-explosive shells. Nevertheless, by this gallant
attack, the gap between the Canadians east of St. Julien and north of
Fortuin was filled.

The next day another attack on St. Julien was delivered, but also
without success. General Riddell, commanding the Northumberland Brigade
of the Northumbrian Division, received a pressing order from the
Canadians to attack with the Lahore Division and a battalion of General
Hull’s Brigade. There had been no time to reconnoitre. It was for this
brigade a “boost in the dark,” but the urgency of the crisis admitted
of no delay. So our men went forward again, three battalions of the
Northumberland Fusiliers and the Indians, straight into an inferno of
shell and rifle fire. All through the afternoon they struggled on under
a terrific bombardment, the worst that the battle had brought forth
up to that time. At half-past three the gallant Riddell was killed by
a bullet as he was going up to see for himself the position of his
battalions, who had dug themselves in 200 yards away from St. Julien.

Let us pause a minute here, and contemplate the work of this North
Country Territorial Division. Landed in France on April 19, five days
later the stout North Countrymen, the majority of whom were miners
from Northumberland, Yorkshire, and Durham, were undergoing an ordeal
of fire which tried the nerves of our hardiest veterans. They knew
nothing of the country, they had had no practical experience of war. In
the ordinary course of events they would have had a progressive course
of acclimatization in the field before taking their turn of duty in
the firing-line as a divisional unit. “Had they been only a couple of
months in France,” a competent observer said to me after the battle,
“their losses would not have been so heavy. There are things about this
war which no amount of careful training at home can teach. But the need
for reinforcements was imperative, and they had to go into the fight.
They never flinched from their ordeal. They fought and died like men.”

That was a Territorial division, if there ever was one, men of the same
mould, of the same speech, mostly led by the men they were wont to
follow in their civilian callings. In battle, says the old German song,
a man must depend on himself. That is what the Northumbrian Division
did. On them, the untried battalions of but five days’ active service,
devolved the proud honour of serving the Empire as a homogeneous unit,
and they did not shirk the call. The mind dwells with a thrill on the
advance of those sturdy, thick-set fellows suddenly confronted with the
most hideous side of modern war, yet accepting the ordeal stolidly,
unflinchingly, with many a rough word of encouragement and comfort
bandied from mouth to mouth in their broad northern speech.

The abandonment of St. Julien had placed the Canadian right in a
precarious position. Their position on the Gravenstafel ridge, which
had now become the acute angle of the salient, was untenable. Another
brigade of the Northumbrian Division having come up to their relief
with great difficulty, the Canadians fell back on the night of the 26th
to behind the Hannabeek stream. Alter that the Canadian Division was
withdrawn, its place being taken by the Lahore Division, part of the
4th Division, and the Northumbrian Division.

Some battalions of the Durham Light Infantry of the Northumbrian
Division which carried out the relief came in for a most tremendous
hammering from German 8-inch guns. One battalion on the Gravenstafel
ridge repelled an attack delivered by several German battalions at 2
p.m. on the 26th, losing all save one officer and fifty men, but then
had to retire. The Germans, pressing forward, started to envelop,
so our men fell back in good order to behind the Hannabeek stream.
Other battalions of this regiment were sent to stop a gap where the
Germans, pushing on after the Canadian retirement, had broken through
at Zevenkote. They, too, suffered heavily from the terrific German
bombardment, and, indeed, never caught a glimpse of the enemy at all.
On the evening of April 26 they dug themselves in on a line near
Zevenkote to the left of the railway-line skirting Zonnebeke.

The retirement of the Canadians from the Gravenstafel ridge had created
a grave situation for the brigade on its right, the left-hand brigade
of the 28th Division, which, you will remember, was holding the centre
of the salient. When the Canadians fell back, the Royal Fusiliers’
flank was left “in the air,” as the saying goes. The 11th Brigade
of the 4th Division, which had come to the relief of the Canadians,
arrived most providentially, and the Hampshires were rushed up to get
connection with the “Seventh” in their perilous position.

On the 25th the Germans delivered a furious attack against the East
Surreys and the Middlesex, but the Londoners stood firm and beat
the Boche back to his trenches, the Surreys capturing a number of
prisoners. The order was to hold the line at all costs, and it was
held. Both battalions behaved splendidly, but one must make particular
mention of the gallantry of the 8th Middlesex, a Territorial
battalion, which stood its first taste of modern war with admirable
coolness.

All next day the Germans kept up a tremendous bombardment, and a gap
appeared between the Hampshires and the Royal Fusiliers, the point of
least resistance of our line here. It was eventually filled by the
Shropshire Light Infantry at dusk. Some battalions of the Northumbrian
Division were brought in to reinforce the line here.

Meanwhile on the extreme left the French had carried out their promise,
and had counter-attacked. In conjunction with our gallant Indian
troops, who fought most stoutly in this battle, they were able to push
the enemy farther north. The French recaptured Lizerne, and made some
progress at Steenstraat and Het Sas; but the Germans, profiting by the
north-easterly breeze, which unexpectedly held in their favour during
the greater part of the three weeks’ fighting, made free use of their
gas-fumes, and little real progress was realized. All through the 27th,
28th, 29th, and 30th the Germans kept up a tremendous bombardment
right round the curve of the salient. Our line now ran from the canal
straight across the Ypres-Langemarck Road in front of St. Julien,
through Fortuin to Zevenkote, and thence bent round Zonnebeke (for
Broodseinde had had to be abandoned), through the Polygon Wood, back to
Hill 60. The Germans made full use of their superiority of artillery,
and swept the trenches with a never-ending deluge of heavy projectiles
and mortar bombs, while all the roads leading through Ypres to the
front were sprayed day and night with fire.

Not Meissonnier, nor Détaille, nor Werner, nor even Verestchagin, I
believe, could have thrown on canvas an adequate impression of the
awful ordeal which these endless days of pitiless bombardment imposed
on our troops. They could have painted you a picture of the British
in the trenches running through green fields and pastures and woods,
with the wrecks of cottages and churches dotted about the landscape,
and the grey ruins of Ypres, seen through bursts of black and white
smoke, in the background. They could have shown you our men, unshorn,
unwashed, their eyes shining whitely out of their faces, begrimed,
burnt by the sun, standing at the parapet firing steadily, or digging,
filling sandbags and piling them up to close the breaches rent in
the parapet by the enemy’s shells bursting on every side. They could
have shown you the dead, the pitilessly mangled, the hideously limp
victims of the shells; they might have conveyed by a touch of the
brush the indifference with which men in the firing-line will pass
to and fro before the yet warm bodies of their comrades. They could
have shown you the wounded, quiet, dull-eyed, the long processions of
the stretcher-bearers dodging their way down to houses and barns and
churches and stables, where, under the Cross of Geneva, the doctors
were working swiftly and silently, without fuss.

But they could never have conveyed to you the overwhelming,
unimaginable truth--that this little sketch of a few yards of trench
must be repeated over miles and miles of front, with the same dusty
figures at the parapet, the same headless and armless dead, the same
suffering wounded, the same rain of shells, if one would bring home an
impression of the second battle of Ypres.

One reads that the endurance of the men was wonderful. But one does
not understand. I saw the men who came alive out of that hell in the
salient, and they were as men transfigured. Not that they were shaken,
depressed, or, on the other hand, exultant. They were just uncannily
quiet, sitting about in the sunshine, rather limp, like men recovering
from supreme fatigue. Talking to them, one felt somehow that their
characters had changed; that they would never look on life again as
they had done in the past; that they had acquired a new seriousness of
mind, as though their glimpse into the dark valley had sobered them.
And they all had a puckered, strained look about the eyes, the look one
sometimes sees in men who have spent their lives in the open under a
tropical sun. At first these symptoms used to puzzle me. They did after
the battle of Ypres. Afterwards I found out that they were the badge of
the modern battle, and that, with a week of rest and change of scene,
they pass away.

The ruthless bombardment with which the Germans occupied the last
days of April were the preliminary to a fresh onslaught on the troops
holding the northern part of the salient. In the meantime, the French
counter-attacks having made no progress, Sir John French, in accordance
with his arrangement with General Foch, decided that he could not
afford to hold on any longer to our present exposed position. He
therefore gave orders to Sir Herbert Plumer, who was directing the
operations of the army engaged in defending the salient, to fall back
upon a new line which had already been prepared in anticipation of this
emergency. The effect of the withdrawal was to diminish considerably
the arc of the salient, the whole of the centre falling back to a line
starting east of Wieltje on the Ypres-Fortuin Road, running across
the Ypres-Frezemberg Road south of Frezemberg, cutting through the
Ypres-Thourout railway-line, and then the Ypres-Menin Road east of
Hooge.

Before the withdrawal could be begun, however--the day was May 2--the
Germans, having obtained fresh supplies of chlorine gas in tank waggons
from Belgium, launched a gas attack from St. Julien against the 12th
and 10th Brigades, which, with the 11th Brigade, were holding the
line round this village and down to Fortuin. By this time our men
were provided with respirators of a sort, as the result of the appeal
made by the army, and magnificently responded to by the women of
Britain. Unfortunately the respirators were of rather a rudimentary
pattern--they have since been replaced by an entirely efficacious
model--and they did not serve wholly to protect our men from the
poisonous fumes. Notably the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers and the Essex
Regiment got the full blast of the noxious vapours. Despite many acts
of individual gallantry shown by officers and men of the Lancashire
Fusiliers, they could not hold the trench, and the line was forced back.

It was here that Jack Lynn won the Victoria Cross, conferred
posthumously, for this brave fellow did not survive his gallant action.
He was in the machine-gun pit when the deadly cloud approached, but
without waiting to adjust his respirator he kept his machine-gun
playing on the dense billows of greenish-yellow smoke. The cloud caught
him and eddied about him, but his fingers never left the button of the
gun, which barked on incessantly as the dimly descried forms of the
Germans appeared creeping over the open. Choking and gasping as he was,
Lynn hoisted his machine-gun on the parapet, and there, amid a storm of
bullets, a lonely figure in a trench full of dead and dying, he kept
his gun going on the enemy till he collapsed. The German infantry could
not face the storm of fire, and returned to their trenches.

Lynn had collapsed by his gun when his comrades found him. They took
him to a dug-out, half-conscious, but even then, when a machine-gun
started barking near by, that gallant spirit struggled to regain his
feet to get back to “his gun.” He died there in the sunset, with the
din of battle ringing in his ears, only a Liverpool van-boy, “jes’ a
little bet of a chaap,” one of his mates told me afterwards, but a man
with a mighty soul.

The 2nd Seaforths were also badly gassed, but with true Scottish
tenacity they stuck to their trenches until relief came. It was not
long delayed. The Cavalry Division in support sent up the 4th Hussars,
who executed a splendid charge side by side with the 7th Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders (Territorials), who had already done so well at
St. Julien. Hussars and Highlanders went forward, head down, through
the gas fumes straight into the Germans, ambling to what they imagined
was an easy triumph. There was some swift and silent slaying, and the
Germans went back the way they had come with sorely diminished numbers.
Said General Hull to me afterwards with a chuckle: “We got the Boches
on the hop that time.”

Fighting went on all that day and the next. It was essential to conceal
from the enemy our withdrawal, which was timed to begin after dark.
The continual counter-attacks delivered by these brigades effectually
contrived to mask our intentions from him. As a result we were able
to withdraw the whole centre of our line and take up the new position
we had prepared almost without a casualty, and without the Germans
being a penny the wiser. In fact, they continued to pour a devastating
fire into our empty trenches until 3.30 on the afternoon following the
withdrawal.

The retirement began at 10 p.m. on the night of May 3. The arrangement
was that, first, part of the infantry should withdraw, followed after
an interval by a portion of the remainder, each battalion leaving
behind twenty picked shots to man the parapet and pick off any
German that showed himself. It was a most delicate undertaking. The
least mistake would have betrayed our move to the Germans. At some
places--for instance, at Broodseinde--the trenches were only ten yards
apart. Talking and smoking were forbidden. Our men just slipped away in
silence through the darkness, the officers hoping in their hearts that
they might get away undiscovered.

With a muttered “Good-night and good luck” to the lonely figures
left at the parapet, looking out over the dreary expanse between the
trenches, where spasmodic flares vouchsafed a glimpse from time to
time of gaping shell-holes, a wild tangle of barbed wire and dead in
uniforms brown and green, the first batch of troops silently filed out
of the trenches. What a crew they were, with an eight-days’ beard,
unwashed and unkempt, their faces and uniforms smeared with clay! With
that peculiar hitch that Tommy gives to his pack behind when he starts
off, they trudged out into the black night, their backs turned to the
enemy.

Thus to turn the back on danger and face the unknown, worn out with
fatigue and hunger, shaken by the loss of many dear comrades--what
a test of discipline! The men were admirable; their officers were
magnificent. The success of the withdrawal was, first and last, the
work of the Regimental Officer, as those most qualified to speak
readily attest. With most of the field officers killed or wounded or
gassed, it was primarily the subaltern, the boy fresh from a public
school or the Varsity, from Sandhurst or the O.T.C., or, in the
Territorials, the young clerk or business man, who led his men down
over unreconnoitred ground through the rain and the darkness, steeling
them against the danger that always threatened by a fine display of
nonchalance and good-humour.

Nothing was left behind. All the arms and ammunition and supplies that
could not be taken away were destroyed. They tell of a Colonel who did
away with a box of kippers rather than let them fall into the hands of
the Germans. To his surprise at breakfast the next morning in the new
line the kippers appeared on the breakfast-table (an ammunition-box on
the bottom of a trench). The Regimental Sergeant-Major confessed that
the sacrifice had been too great. He could not bring himself to take
any chance of making a present of the kippers to the Germans. So he had
clandestinely rescued them.

At midnight the last men quitted our front trenches, and, going “as
they pleased,” made off through the pouring rain to rejoin their
comrades. A private in the 2nd Cheshires got left behind. He remained
at his post at the parapet with a waterproof sheet over his shoulders,
firing at intervals at the German parapet opposite him. Presently he
noticed that the trench had grown very still. He left his post and went
round the adjacent traverse. Nobody there! He went round the traverse
on his other side. Again a vista of empty trench! He hurried down the
trenches for a hundred yards or so, and found that everyone had gone.
He was, as he put it afterwards, “left to face the whole blooming
German Army alone.” He lost no time in joining the retirement.

Many of the wounded of the days of heavy fighting had been taken to
the ruined villages of Frezemberg and Zonnebeke, where the doctors
tended them by candlelight in the cellars. During the evening, in
anticipation of the withdrawal, by hook and by crook, seventy-six
motor ambulances were got together. From dusk until half an hour after
midnight, it had been found impossible to remove a single wounded man,
as each would have had to be carried by hand over marshy ground through
inky darkness, and without lights, for no lights could be shown. The
Germans were shelling both villages heavily, and I should like to pay
a tribute here to the splendid courage of the motor-ambulance drivers
who sat imperturbably at the steering-wheel of their cars in the open
street and waited for the wounded, with shells falling fast about them.

The evacuation of the wounded at Zonnebeke was the work of Colonel
Ferguson, R.A.M.C., and of Major Waggett, R.A.M.C., the throat
specialist of Harley Street. Thanks to the untiring devotion of these
two officers, every wounded man was safely got away, with the exception
of a few men with shattered limbs whom it would have been dangerous to
move, and who were left behind with comforts and medicines, and two
R.A.M.C. orderlies to tend them. Every man of the R.A.M.C., doctors
and orderlies alike, worked like Trojans that night, and added fresh
laurels to the rich harvest which the corps has gleaned already in this
war.

On our right centre, where the men had stood for days a very heavy
bombardment, the troops were very loth to fall back. Some of the men
left insulting messages addressed to the “Germs,” as they call them,
pinned on to the trenches. One man was seen going round “tidying up”
his section of trench, “just to leave things clean for the Germs,” as
he naïvely explained!

The enemy did not let us remain in peace for long. After a few days’
shelling, during which it was observed that his 6-inch howitzers were
“registering,” at 5.30 on the morning of May 8, he made a sledgehammer
attempt to smash in the front of the 5th Corps. He started as usual
with a terrific bombardment from north of Passchendaele and from
Zonnebeke, which gradually concentrated on the front of the 28th
Division between north and south of Frezemberg.

The General commanding this division told me that it was the most
terrible bombardment he had ever listened to. The German shooting was
marvellously accurate, and their guns simply wiped out our trench
line. “This fire,” in the blunt phrase of Sir John French’s despatch,
“completely obliterated the trenches and caused enormous losses.”

It was an awful ordeal. The men who came out of it alive told me in
awed voices that the shelling was like machine-gun fire, an incessant
rain of high-explosive shells that fairly plastered the whole of the
ground. The din was ear-splitting, the earth trembled, the air was
unbreathable with the fumes from the explosives, and in the space of
a minute or two the trenches were reduced to broken heaps of rubbish
crowded with dead and wounded men. At one place a trench became
impassable with the dead, so the survivors filled it in and planted a
cross on top--surely the finest grave for a soldier!

A heavy infantry attack followed the bombardment. It was too much for
our men. Some battalions had been for a fortnight in the firing-line
without the chance of a wash (“A lick and a promise was all the
cleaning up we did,” a Colonel of one of these battalions said to me
afterwards, “and, by Jove! it was a long promise”), with a scant supply
of drinking-water, and salt beef and hard biscuit the only food. Most
wires were cut, and the only connection between the firing-line and
the Brigade Headquarters in many cases was by orderly. The gallantry of
the despatch-bearers in these terrible days was beyond all praise. They
were shot down by the dozen, but there were never lacking volunteers
“to have a shot” at getting through when no word had come back from the
last man sent back.

Isolated, battered, worn, our men could do no more. The line broke.
First it went on the right of a brigade near Frezemberg. It was
10.15 on May 8. Then the centre of the same brigade gave, and then
part of the left of the brigade in the next sector to the south. It
was here that the Princess Pat.’s Light Infantry, the colours that
their graceful patroness had embroidered for them with her initials
flying throughout the battle over their regimental headquarters,
sustained their trial by fire. Their own Record Officer has given to
the world their story of matchless heroism, has told how they held
their fire-trench until it was annihilated, then fell back to their
support trench, and held it until the Shropshires relieved them, a
battered handful, 150 strong. I have seen the peaceful graveyard near
Voormezeele where many of the dead of that gallant stand are sleeping,
and it was as though the soul of the Empire was beating beneath the
rows of white crosses.

North of the Frezemberg Road that Saturday morning the first battalion
of the 1st Suffolks trod the blood-stained path to glory. They held out
in their trenches under the terrific bombardment and against repeated
assaults by the Germans until they were surrounded and overwhelmed.
Of the 500 men that went into action of that gallant regiment, only
seven emerged unhurt. North of the Frezemberg Road the 1st Yorkshire
Light Infantry, which the army dubs the “ K.O.Y.L.I.’s,” likewise got
a terrible hammering. Supported by a company of Monmouth Territorials,
they stayed on till night, when the 12th London Regiment (The Rangers)
going up to relieve were practically destroyed by shell-fire, only
seventy surviving.

At half-past three in the afternoon a strong counter-attack made
by the 1st Yorks and Lancs, the 3rd Middlesex, the 2nd East Surrey
Regiment, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, and the 1st Warwicks, reached
Frezemberg, but was eventually driven back, and finally remained on a
line running north and south through Verlorenhoek. The Middlesex lost
their Colonel, who, as he fell, cried, in the words of the Middlesex
Colonel killed at Albuera: “Die hard, boys!” A charge by the Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders side by side with the 1st East Lancs towards
Wieltje connected up the old trench-line with the ground won by the
counter-attack.

May 9 and 10 saw the continuation of the hellish bombardment. The
enemy, who had lost heavily on the 8th, notably against the 2nd Essex
Regiment, which let a party of Germans come close up to their trenches
and then simply wiped them out, furiously attacked the trenches of
the 2nd Gloucester and the 2nd Cameron Highlanders, but were repulsed
with heavy casualties. There was ding-dong fighting of the severest
description about the trenches on either side of the Ypres-Menin Road,
where a gas attack delivered on the 10th was driven back by the 2nd
Cameron Highlanders, the 9th Royal Scots (Territorials), and the 3rd
and 4th King’s Royal Rifles. The Rhodesian detachment serving with the
3rd K.R.R.’s had their baptism of fire in this fight, and suffered very
heavily.

The following day the Germans concentrated their artillery fire on a
point a little more to the north, against the 2nd Cameron Highlanders
and the 1st Argyll and Sutherland; but the Scotsmen, as tenacious as
ever, gave a good account of themselves, though the Germans attacked in
force. A brilliant charge by the Royal Scots “Terriers” ejected them
from a section of trench in which they had gained a footing. In the
afternoon there were two more spells of shelling, each followed by an
attack, but the first attack was beaten off, and, though the Germans
gained ground in the second, the lost trenches were recovered during
the night.

Meanwhile desperate fighting had been proceeding in the northern part
of the salient, where, as has been seen, the Germans were making a
tremendous effort to smash in our line. A great rambling Flemish
homestead, situated west of the Wieltje-St. Julien Road, and called
by our men “Shell-trap Farm,” was the centre of some of the hardest
fighting of the war. The place owed its curious name to the sheer
incredible number of shells which the Germans fired into the old
red-brick buildings surrounded by a deep, broad moat. At one period 117
shells a minute were counted at this spot. Nevertheless, “Shell-trap
Farm” proved too much for the authorities who regulate the nomenclature
of places on the map, and a fiat went forth that the place should be
known as “Mouse-trap Farm.”

As “Shell-trap Farm,” however, it will remain in the memory of the
men who fought there. The farm changed hands several times during
the fighting, finally remaining in our possession. With its wrecked
walls, its shell-pitted front and splintered shutters, and its floors
strewn with empty cartridge-cases, it reminds one of the _Maison de la
Dernière Cartouche_ on the field of Sedan.

The Germans got into the farm, but the 2nd Essex got them out in quick
time. The enemy was shelling heavily at the time, but the Essex,
advancing “as they pleased,” literally dodged the shells and rushed
the farm. Theirs was a most inspiriting charge, and the Rifle Brigade,
whom they passed on their way up, were so thrilled that they stood up
in their trenches and gave the Essex a cheer. Presently the Germans
regained possession of “Shell-trap Farm.” Then the East Lancs drove
them out. By this time the farm and its approaches were a shambles, and
the moat was full of dead men.

We held the farm that night. The next morning it was lost again. This
time a Territorial battalion--the 5th South Lancs--won it back for us,
and kept it. While the South Lancs were in possession a shell came
into the farm, and laid out every officer and non-commissioned officer
in the place. Thereupon a private sprang into the moat, swam across,
and reported the situation to the commanding officer at Regimental
Headquarters. The message he took back with him to “Shell-trap
Farm” was that the Colonel hoped the men would hang on. Presently
a bandolier was flung out across the moat bearing the Territorials’
reply. It ran: “We shall hold out.”

The 1st Hampshires beat off one German attack by killing every man
that approached within fifty yards of their trenches. They and the
men of the 1st Rifle Brigade and the 1st Somerset Light Infantry
actually stood up on the parapets and defied the Germans to come on!
The London Rifle Brigade, that holds so high a place among the London
Territorial regiments, here earned battle honours that in years to come
will figure proudly on its colours. They were practically overwhelmed
by shell-fire, but stuck to their trenches through it all. They
kept sending back cheerful messages to the rear. “Our trenches are
irrecognizable,” ran one such report, “but we are quite cheerful.” When
it was suggested to them that it might be as well if they evacuated
their trenches, which were falling in on them, the reply was that they
would be damned if they would. It was in this fighting that young
Douglas Belcher, salesman of Waring and Gillow’s, of Oxford Street, won
the Victoria Cross by holding a section of trench with a few comrades
when the Germans had forced back the cavalry on one side of him. His
daring bluff saved our left flank, and his decoration was indeed well
earned. But I have anticipated.

The battle was nearing its close. What result had the Germans gained by
their unprecedented expenditure of ammunition? By their “unquestionably
serious losses”? (Sir Herbert Plumer, quoted in Sir John French’s
despatch). Certainly they had inflicted casualties, very heavy,
enormous casualties, on us, and had gained ground in the salient,
which, however, had exposed us to danger as long as we held it. But
they had not broken our line, despite two tremendous blows (those of
April 24 and May 8), nor had they in any sense of the word defeated
the French or the British armies. Our line was intact. Their effort
had failed. No wonder that there has been less written in the German
newspapers about the second battle of Ypres than about any other
engagement of the war. For this two motives are responsible--the one
the desire to hide from the German public the fact that the initial
advantage was won by a treacherous breach of the Hague Convention, the
second the desire to conceal what must be reckoned tantamount to a
German defeat, since the plan of the German Generals was not realized.

On the night of May 12 our line was reorganized, the 28th Division,
which on May 8 had undergone such a tremendous ordeal, being withdrawn,
its place being taken by two cavalry divisions, dismounted, which, with
the artillery and engineers of the division relieved, formed, under the
command of General de Lisle, what was known as “De Lisle’s Force.”

At 4.30 on the morning of May 13 the Germans opened the heaviest
bombardment yet experienced in the battle on the trenches occupied by
two cavalry brigades on a line running from the Ypres-Roulers railway
to the Bellewaarde Lake. The Germans shelled mercilessly the whole
triangle between the railway and the lake, while Bellewaarde Wood was
enveloped in dense masses of smoke from the bursting shells. The
cavalry trenches were simply obliterated (one of the lessons of this
battle is that no trench will stand a really heavy bombardment). The
3rd Dragoon Guards were buried, and though the North Somerset Yeomanry
held on with magnificent endurance, the line could not be held, and
here we fell back about 800 yards. The Royals (1st Dragoons) were
rushed up to reinforce, and suffered heavily on the way. Presently news
came back that on the right the Life Guards had been buried in their
trenches, and had had to fall back, but that the Leicester Yeomanry
were holding out. The 2nd Essex Regiment managed to fill one of the
gaps by a fine charge, and held out until relieved by the cavalry
supports.

A counter-attack was organized. It was preceded by a very heavy
bombardment of the German positions with all available guns firing
high-explosive shells. Then--it was 2.30 p.m.--the attack went forward.
It was led by the 10th Hussars, who went forward with such splendid
dash that at the sight of them the gallant Leicester Yeomanry, reduced
in numbers as they were, could not restrain themselves, but tumbled out
of their trenches and joined in the rush. The Essex Yeomanry and the
Blues (Royal Horse Guards) also took part in the attack. The behaviour
of the Blues has been described to me as particularly fine. These
magnificent men went forward under a very heavy fire of shrapnel and
high-explosive as steady as on parade. The Germans were routed out of
the trenches they had won from us. The Germans fairly bolted, in some
instances with the cavalry after them.

Our armoured motor-cars, great heavy vehicles, played a part in this
counter-attack. It was, I believe, their début in the war. Some of
them, under Lieutenant Cadman, dashed down the _chaussées_ and opened
fire on the Germans in their trenches in the roadside woods. For a
little while it was as though we had returned to the war in the open.
But the position we had won was untenable.

The trenches were merely holes half filled with dead and débris, and
the German shell-fire was pitiless. So our men had to fall back to “an
irregular line in rear, principally the craters of shell-holes,” to
quote Sir Herbert Plumer once more. That night our line remained intact
in its former position, with the exception of a small distance lost by
one cavalry division. Later the line was advanced, and fresh trenches
dug slightly in the rear of the original line, but in a less exposed
position.

May 13 may be reckoned the last day of the second battle of Ypres.
It is too early to say how many men “went west” in the interval that
elapsed between the April evening when we blew up the mines on Hill 60
and the May afternoon when almost for the first time for twenty-six
days the inferno of fire abated in the woods and pastures about
Ypres. It was not a battle like the first battle of Ypres, when our
men met the flower of the Prussian Army face to face, and withstood
a succession of onslaughts delivered with an incredible disregard of
human life. The second battle of Ypres was a battle of machinery,
in which the German infantry skulked behind their gas-cylinders and
machine-guns, and waited for their heavy guns to prepare for them
victory at a cheap price.

The moral of the battle, brought home to every man that took part in
it, was that the ultimate victory in this war will lie with the nation
that best organizes itself to provide its armies with the sinews of
war. If at Neuve Chapelle we bitterly felt our shortage of shells, at
Ypres we realized even more intensely the enormous advantage which the
enemy’s superiority in artillery and high-explosive ammunition gave
him. The fighting at Neuve Chapelle and Ypres, and later on at the
Fromelles ridge, showed us that the principal weapon of modern warfare
is the heavy gun, and gave us due warning that the next German attempt
to break our line will be preceded and accompanied by an artillery
bombardment even severer than that inferno of fire which played for
more than three weeks on the Ypres salient, and failed to pierce our
front. Artillery fire can only be crushed by artillery fire, so we have
our lesson. And because that lesson has at length been learnt, the
thousands of Britons who made the supreme sacrifice at Ypres will not
have died in vain.




CHAPTER IV

SILENT YPRES

 “Et erit sui monumentum gloriosum.”

  (Epitaph in the ruined Cathedral of
  St. Martin at Ypres.)


In years to come the name of Ypres will loom large in the annals of our
race. Before the war it was known only to a few tourists who, sated
with the more familiar art treasures of Belgium, had the curiosity or
the time to take the steam tram out from Ostend or Menin to the quaint
old city lying in the plain thrust up close to the French frontier.
Such visitors had their pains well rewarded (and a two-hour journey
by a Belgian steam tram along the flat and dusty Flemish roads merits
some recompense). In Ypres they found a perfect jewel of an old-world
Flemish city, small and self-contained, well preserved, the two or
three principal streets lined with fine old houses with curiously
wrought façades, leading to the splendid square, the _Grand’ Place_,
or _Groote Markt_, as the bilingual street signs proclaimed, where the
magnificent Hall of the Cloth-Makers, the far-famed _Halle des Draps_,
with its noble tower and majestic front, quite dwarfed the charming
Renaissance houses nestling about the square. From the distant plain
the lofty towers of Ypres peeped forth in the summer sunshine above
a fringe of greenery. The trees marked the old ramparts of the city,
where the burgesses were wont to take the air in the evenings, and
where the hearts and intertwined initials cut into the stout old trees
still speak, amid the desolation of to-day, of love-making through the
centuries.

All the stirring past of Ypres, once wealthiest and most powerful city
of Flanders, was outlined in the noble buildings thrusting their heads
up out of the undulating plain. Built in a sparsely populated region,
there was no city, far and wide, to compare with the beauty, the
luxury, and wealth of Ypres. It stood proudly alone, superbly beautiful
among ugly surroundings, its ramparts all about, a broad moat where
swans glided idly among the water-lilies on the one side, the Yser
Canal, bearing trade to Ostend on its sluggish waters, on the other.
Ypres feared no comparison with the cities far about. Neither Courtrai
nor Menin nor Lille nor Béthune nor St. Omer, nor even Arras, could
match with this perfect jewel of old Flemish civilization.

Square and solid to the four winds of heaven, which in winter blow
lustily across these mournful plains, stood the Gothic tower of
the Cathedral of St. Martin, where Bishop Jansen, most renowned of
heretics, sleeps his untroubled sleep in the shadow of the high-altar.
Near by rose the massive red-brick keep of the Abbey of Thérouanne,
last survival of a powerful and wealthy foundation transferred to Ypres
when Elizabeth ruled in England. The lofty Renaissance roof of St.
Nicholas, the graceful spire of St. Pierre, the high fabric of St.
Jacques, looked down from other parts of the city on the ancient gabled
houses clinging close together in the narrow cobbled streets. The
splendid old houses of the Ypres guilds, rich and independent and free,
told of the days when the cloth-makers and lace-workers of Ypres were
renowned throughout Europe, before pestilence and internal dissension
and wars dethroned the city from its high estate.

There was a delightful intimacy in this old-world Flemish city. Even
in the names of the streets you saw it--the Street of Paradise, a
narrow thread of an opening between two ancient gabled houses with a
glimpse of waving foliage at the end; the Street of the Pots, where
doubtless the tinsmiths once sat and hammered before their shop-doors;
the Street of the Mice, survival of some legend of the Middle Ages; the
Street of the Moon, derived probably from a shop or inn sign. A fine
old almshouse, with gaudily painted statues in niches on the outside,
the _Hospice Belle_, a refuge for old women founded in the days of the
Plantagenets by a pious noblewoman of Ypres, Christine de Guines, stood
in the Rue de Lille, a perfect background to a Jan Steen or Pieter
Brueghel painting. In every street the elaborately decorated fronts and
carved doors were silent witness of centuries of prosperity and ease,
the fatal fat years that brought ruin to Belgium.

But above all and before all, first and foremost, pride and heart
of the city as it was its centre, rose the fair square tower of the
Cloth Hall, with its four richly decorated pinnacles in the Gothic
style and great golden clock. The heavy hand of the nineteenth-century
restorer, taking his cue from the smug iconoclasts of Victoria and
Louis Philippe, had played havoc with the interior rooms, great, lofty
halls with fine old wooden roofing. The walls had been decorated with
frescoes in the best “Sham Castle” style, illustrating the history
of the city. But nothing, not even the modern statues set in niches
to replace the statues destroyed by the armies of the _Directoire_,
could spoil the majestic harmony, the perfection of line, of the great
three-storied façade with its corner-turrets, a vast towering front
such as you might have seen nowhere else in the world.

The years that have gone “with the old world to the grave,” as Henley
sang, swept all the horrors of warfare over Ypres, yet the city
survived. Often in bygone days the sky above Ypres had reddened with
the flames of the buildings set alight by the conqueror, while the
narrow streets ran with the blood of the hapless inhabitants massacred
by a ruthless victor. Popular riots, fighting between the nobles and
the Guilds, an awful visitation of the Black Death--the same plague
that ravaged England in the fourteenth century and affected our entire
national life as deeply as Magna Carta itself--and a succession of
sieges, destroyed the one-time commercial supremacy of Ypres. Over
against the Lille Gate of the city there still stands, amid the rack
and ruin of to-day, a humble little house with a gabled front of
timber, probably the most ancient building in the city, that has
witnessed most of the exciting happenings of Ypres’ storied past:
the burning of the outlying parts of the town by the English and the
burghers of Ghent in 1383; the devastations of the Iconoclasts, most
fantastic of sects, in 1566; the sack of the city by the Gueux in 1578;
its capture by the soldiers of Alexander Farnese in 1584; and by the
French, who obtained possession of Ypres four times in the seventeenth
century and held it until 1715.

Harried by fire and sword, the Ypres weavers fled from their homes, and
many came to England, where the so-called Wipers Tower at Rye is, I
believe, a token of the hospitality they received in our islands. Now
once again, after many centuries, the hand of fate has bound together
the threads of England and the ancient Flemish town so close that, as
long as England endures, the name of Ypres shall signify a stern ordeal
bravely borne and willing faithfulness even unto death.

The graves of our dead, the heroes of the two great battles which raged
about this placid city, the dead of the fierce assaults, the daily
toll of the trenches, lie in a vast semicircle about Ypres. Ypres was
already a sacred name to us, while its towers and pinnacles yet stood,
and life pulsated as of old in the congested streets of the quaint old
town. Now, in its ruins heaped up in a funeral pyre over the corpses of
its hapless civilians slain by German monster shells, it is, more than
ever, a fane for ever holy to Englishmen, who in days to come shall
know no greater pride than to say, “I was at Ypres!”

It was in the chill wet days of October that our army first came to
Ypres. We had fought the great battles of the Marne and the Aisne, and
Sir John French had executed that wonderfully adroit and silent move
from the Aisne to the left of the Allied line to hold the Germans off
the Channel ports. The Seventh Division, fresh from its ineffectual
attempt to save Antwerp--ineffectual because too late--had been placed
under Sir John French’s orders and was operating eastward of Ypres. Sir
Douglas Haig, beloved of Corps Commanders, Sir John French’s trusted
Chief of Staff in South Africa, was sent to take his First Army Corps
through Ypres towards Thourout, with the idea of sweeping the Germans
eastward with the help of the French.

Ypres, with its snug houses and intimate streets, must have made a
comforting impression on our troops, the war-worn veterans of Mons,
the Marne, and the Aisne, as they tramped in from beneath the sighing
poplars of the Poperinghe road. The city yet sheltered people when our
troops came through; moreover, the 87th French Territorial Division
was billeted in the town. How many of the Englishmen, whose eyes were
gladdened by the sight of the old-world houses and smiling prosperity
of the ancient city, were destined never to return through the Menin
Gate, beyond which in the wooded plain the greatest battle of the war
was raging! In the churches and convents of the city, particularly in
the Chapel of the Irish Ladies of Ypres, where was hanging the British
standard captured by Clare’s Dragoons fighting with the French at
Ramillies, many a prayer went up in those days for the army fighting
so steadfastly without the city against overwhelming odds.

The roads from Ypres radiate like spokes of a wheel. To pass from
westward to eastward of Ypres you must go through the city. During the
fight all the immense activity of the rear of an army, redoubled in
intensity when a battle is in progress, went on in and about Ypres,
whose century-old houses, with their red roofs and overhanging gables,
will be ever associated with the battle in the minds of those who
fought there. For three weeks, while our thin line resisted the mighty
smashes of the flower of the German army, the guns drummed almost
unceasingly in the distance, and the little motor ambulances came
whirring over the uneven cobble-stones of the city, bearing in the
wounded to the field dressing-station, an unending procession of pain.

Ypres could not remain unscathed in the battle. Soon the German
batteries took the proud towers of the Cloth Hall and St. Martin’s
for their goal, and amid a rain of shells pouring into the city, the
luckless inhabitants, once again after centuries, were compelled to fly
for safety out along the bare and dusty road that leads to Poperinghe.

The Poperinghe road! Who of our army in the field that has ever passed
along it will ever forget that hideous highway--the road of pain for
many, the road of death for many, the road of glory for all? I have
traversed it in all weathers and in all conditions, and never have I
seen it without a feeling almost of dread, the sensation of treading on
ground sanctified by the feet of heroes going to their death.

Straight and ugly and flat, lined with tall poplars with bushy tops,
set in the centre with uneven _pavé_ worn bright by the wheels of a
thousand motor-cars and lorries and carts, the Poperinghe road has been
the silent witness of all the vicissitudes of the stupendous struggles
which have raged about Ypres. On its polished _pavé_ the emotions of
a million men have been ground fine by the relentless wheels of the
chariot of war. Men have passed along that road into battle, their
hearts singing with the thrill of great deeds standing before, and
along it have returned from the front pale, silent forms, the Angel of
Death their escort--or have returned no more.

I have met them going into action along that road, in the blazing heat
of noonday, tramping steadily in the thick dust of the footpath lining
the _pavé_, tunics unbuttoned, sweat streaming down their begrimed
faces. I have seen them returning, lying very still in the motor
ambulances, with the stolid philosophy of wounded men, or else stifling
in the ghastly grip of the asphyxiating gas.

Not even 17-inch shells blindly dropped at arbitrary intervals will
permanently separate the Fleming from his home. Therefore, as soon as
the German bombardment of Ypres slackened, the refugees came streaming
back to find a great slice cut out of the tower of the Cloth Hall, the
tower and roof of St. Martin’s irreparably damaged, and many houses in
different quarters of the town considerably battered.

When I paid my first visit to Ypres in March--it was, I remember,
during the battle of Neuve Chapelle which was raging far to the
south--the city was full of life. British, French, and Belgian troops
were billeted there. There was a fine medley of khaki, _bleu horizon_,
as the new powder-blue of the French Army is called, and the variegated
hues of the uniforms of the _braves Belges_. The soldiers had
fraternized with one another and with the populace. All the small boys
were wearing puttees, all the small girls, and some of the grown-up
ones, British Army badges, whilst there appeared to reign a fine spirit
of Socialism with regard to the rations of the three armies. Everybody,
soldiers and civilians alike, seemed to be subsisting on bully-beef,
_singe_ (as the French soldier calls his tinned meat), the famous
plum-and-apple jam of the British Expeditionary Force, and ration
biscuits. English cigarettes and newspapers were for sale in the shops,
and here and there on shutters or on doors were inscribed in more or
less idiomatic English notices to the effect that washing was done, or
that eggs and milk were for sale.

Whether it was the premonition that I should never see Ypres again as a
populated city, I know not, but the fact remains that every detail of
that brief visit to the city in March remains engraved on my memory.
The streets were swarming with soldiers and children. Huge lorries of
our Mechanical Transport grunted through the streets; mounted police
clop-clopped over the cobbles; the women, lineal descendants of the
lace-workers of the Middle Ages, sat at their half-doors, and plied
the funny little wooden cocoons by means of which the renowned Ypres
lace is made. Only the _Grand’ Place_, with the torn tower and gaping
roof of the Cloth Hall, and the battered belfry of St. Martin’s, the
damaged Lunatic Asylum where a Red Cross hospital was installed, and
here and there a roofless house or a shell-hole torn in a façade,
remained to tell of the stern struggle which had raged about the city.

I roamed through the empty and battered rooms of the Cloth Hall, and
picked up from the floor great flakes of the ugly frescoes which had
decorated the walls. I had a perfectly prosaic tea in a little teashop
on the _Grand’ Place_ before motoring away through the crowded streets
into the gathering darkness. Thus I left Ypres, peaceful and busy, and,
to tell the truth, I think, rather basking in the sunshine of publicity
brought to the old place after so many centuries by the historic events
of which it was the centre. Two months were to elapse before I saw
Ypres again. Then Ypres was dead.

In the smiling country of the Mendips, in Somersetshire, there stands
a little village church alone by itself in the fields, remote from
the village to which it has given its name. In my schoolboy days in
Somersetshire they used to tell me that that church--the name of
which has gone from me--was the last survival of one of the villages
devastated by the Black Death when it ravaged England in the fourteenth
century.

They said, I remember, that the villagers could not plough the fields
about the ancient church, for the stones and bricks of the vanished
hamlet were still lying just beneath the surface. In later years men
had built another village to take the place of that which was dead,
but had placed it away from the original site, so that only the little
church remained amid the fallow fields to speak to future generations
of a little corner of England razed from the face of the earth.

The picture of that little Somersetshire church came drifting back
to me over a long span of years when I went back to Ypres on a sunny
morning in May, a week or so after the second great attempt of the
Germans, reinforced by asphyxiating gas, to burst their way through to
the sea had failed. “_Lucia e morte, la bella Lucia!_” runs the old
Italian song. Ypres, beautiful Ypres, was dead, and Death had strewn
all the approaches to the city with the hideous emblems of his trade.

From April 24 to May 13 a second great struggle had raged about Ypres,
where our line bent out in a wide salient round the city. Ypres was
shelled incessantly throughout the battle with artillery of the
heaviest calibre, and our reinforcements, rushed up from other parts
of the line, met on their way into Ypres the long and melancholy
procession of refugees again seeking safety in flight, while the huge
German “fat Berthas,” as the Boches call their 17-inch shells, exploded
noisily in the emptying city.

I remember arriving in Lisbon at three o’clock on a bright moonlit
October night on the day following the revolution. The Sud-Express,
which brought me down from Paris, was the first train into the
Portuguese capital since the overthrow of the Monarchy. The Central
Station was battered by artillery fire, the houses in the Avenida
da Liberdade were torn and pitted with shell-holes, and the city
lay absolutely silent and deserted, the ruins hard and black in
the brilliant white moonlight. Lisbon on that October night is the
only city I have seen that even approximately resembled Ypres as
I found it on that sunny May morning. Even so the resemblance was
fallacious, for the battered corner of Lisbon which met my eyes on my
arrival represented practically the whole of the damage done, and the
prevailing silence was the silence of night, whereas Ypres was all
destroyed, and the silence was the silence of death.

Neither St. Pierre, Martinique, nor Messina, nor Kingston, Jamaica--as
I have it on the authority of men who visited those places after their
destruction by earthquake, and who have also seen Ypres--produced on
the mind such an overwhelming impression as the spectacle of this
fair city of Flanders smitten with death all standing as it were.
An earthquake or a cyclone will all but obliterate a city, will
sweep across it, and leave a vast jumble of ruins in its passage.
Bombardment, on the other hand, even the heaviest, will seldom wipe out
the line of the streets, and the capricious path of the shells will
leave standing single relics that recall in a flash all the beauty, all
the intimacy, of the city that has passed away.

The great battle that had raged for three weeks about Ypres had spread
on all sides the disorder of war. The warm air was heavy with the
stench of dead horses putrefying in the sun, their torn carcasses
lying athwart the roads or sprawling in the fields where German shells
had rent great holes in the grass or brown earth. The little houses
by the roadside--squalid hovels of staring red brick, for the most
part--bore abundant traces of the passage of our soldiers to and from
the fight. Here a broken rifle lay resting against the post of a door
hanging lamentably on a single hinge and giving a glimpse of wild
confusion within--furniture overturned, crockery broken, mattresses
disembowelled, with the sunshine streaming in through a shell-hole in
the roof. There lay a crumpled khaki overcoat beside a tangled heap of
webbing equipment, with empty cartridge-cases scattered around. Heaps
of empty shell-cases, ranging from the huge cylinder of the 4·7 gun
to the natty little tube of the light field-gun, were piled up in the
farmyards where deep wheel-ruts, empty fuse-boxes, and all the litter
of batteries, showed where the gun emplacements had been. Here and
there I caught sight of a cheerful English face in the little roadside
houses. Some of our men were billeted there. Some of the faces were
lathered, and a great sound of splashing and a strong odour of fried
bacon announced that the breakfast-hour was at hand.

A lonely sentry standing against the wall of a shattered _estaminet_,
a dead horse lying in a pool of blood in a gutter, a long vista of
empty streets lined with roofless houses, jagged beams projecting into
the void, jets of bricks spouted out across the cobble-stones amid
charred fragments of furniture, and a silence so absolute, so heavy,
that one might almost hear it--this was what the Hun had left of Ypres.
Here, indeed, was the tragedy of Belgium, the horror of Louvain, the
crime of Dinant. But murdered Ypres, as it seemed to me, cried out
more loudly to Heaven for vengeance than her slaughtered sisters. Her
destruction had been wrought from afar, the destroyer could not enter,
her citizens had left her, her saviour shunned her. The city was empty,
desolate, her toppling walls bending forward as though in grief for her
children buried beneath the ruins, for the utter obliteration of five
centuries of work and planning to the end of prosperity, happiness, and
beauty.

The city lay silent in the sunshine, and a subtle odour of death
crept out of nooks and crannies, where swarms of noisome flies danced
eternally in the sunbeams. But the air above me was full of noise. Our
heavy shells were passing over and about the city with a prodigious
reverberating bang that seemed to shake the vault of heaven, followed
by long-drawn-out gurgling rushes like the beating of wings of a host
of lost angels. Now and then the scream of shells became louder on a
different note. Then the sound stopped of a sudden, and was swallowed
up in a deafening explosion mingling with an orange flash and a pillar
of black or white smoke. Not even dead might Ypres find mercy at the
hands of her tormentors. Morning and evening the Germans shelled the
empty shell of a city, demolishing the ruins, rekindling fires that had
burnt themselves out.

I paid many visits to Ypres. The dead city fascinated me. Every visit
was for me a pious pilgrimage to the place of sacrifice of the best of
England’s sons. The crumbling, battered remnant of the Cloth Hall, the
roofless nave of St. Martin’s, the ruined houses of the Guilds, the
four-square tower of the Abbey of Thérouanne, sliced and rent but not
demolished--all those relics of a beauty that was Flemish were to me
Belgium’s offering to the memories of the men who had laid down their
lives that a great crime might be atoned. Some day, maybe, we shall
know how many shells the Germans hurled into Ypres. I know that in all
my visits to the ruined city I never found a single house that had
escaped unscathed, and I passed through every quarter of the town.

The atmosphere of Ypres was heavy with tragedy. Alone and unheeded
I wandered from house to house--ever obsessed with the feeling that
I was indecently intruding into another’s intimacy--amid the rich
_intérieurs_ of the old patrician families and the humble surroundings
of the small shopkeepers. I rambled through the ancient cloisters of
the Belle Hospice, where the exquisite Renaissance chapel had been
destroyed save for a single delicate pillar still rearing its head
aloft to where God’s blue heaven now formed the roof. I roamed through
Ypres’ ruined churches, where the pigeons were fluttering to and fro
over heaps of rubbish that on examination disintegrated themselves into
fragments of old pictures, pieces of carved oak confessionals, remnants
of _prie-dieu_, all dusted with the fine yellow powder scattered by the
German high-explosive shells.

The sacristy of St. Martin’s, where the exquisitely embroidered sacred
vestments still peeped out of their long, flat drawers, was ankle-deep
in this dust. It lay over everything--on the linen sheets enveloping
the magnificent copes on their wooden stands, on the Mass missals and
vessels, on the old brass candelabra, even on the uniform of the Suisse
cast hurriedly in a corner. One day I met an _abbé_ who was seeking to
salve what he could of the church treasures. With him was a Carmelite
monk. The wizened old _abbé_ and the tonsured monk in his brown and
white habit dragging old pictures across the ruined square formed a
picture that might have come straight out of the Middle Ages.

The fancy took me to see what the bombardment had left of the two
museums of Ypres, containing valuable collections of old Flemish
pottery and china and prints of the city. The Municipal Museum had been
installed in the so-called _Boucheries_, a fine old colonnaded house
opposite the Cloth Hall. The other had been housed in an old-world
mansion, the Hotel Merghelynck, in the street that the French call the
Rue de Lille and the Flemish the Rijssel-Straat, Rijssel being the
Flemish name for Lille. Both museums were utterly destroyed. Whether
the City Fathers of Ypres had removed the treasures of Ypres to a place
of safety before the first bombardment I do not know, but of both
museums only the blackened shell remained, the interior piled up high
with an immense heap of bricks and charred rafters.

“_Est-ce que mon lieutenant voudrait boire un coup?_” a sour-visaged
Belgian peasant asked me in Ypres one morning. The Germans were
shelling the city heavily, and I was inquiring as to the danger
spots. The peasant was loading a cart with furniture from a big house
in the Rue d’Elverdinghe (one of the principal streets), with the
assistance of a mate and under the indulgent eye of a Belgian gendarme.
These three men, with my companion and myself, were, I believe, the
only human beings in Ypres that day. Standing drinks to strangers
is inexpensive in a deserted city where locks no longer serve to
imprison bottles in their cellars, and anyway looting is discouraged
in the British Army. So, to the speechless amazement of the Belgians,
who pointed, with gestures significant of the delights awaiting us,
to a large array of ancient, cobwebbed bottles set out on a buhl
table, we refused to drink with them. But we went over the house, a
treasure-house of old Flemish art, as fine a specimen of a patrician
home of the Low Countries as one might wish to see.

The peasants were salving the treasures for the owner, who had fled
for refuge to the village of Watou, some twenty miles away. Everything
within was in the wildest disorder, and the peasants, with none too
tender hand, were piling pell-mell into baskets and crates exquisite
specimens of old Flemish pottery, tiles, blown-glass flagons, and
wood-carving. I noticed on the floor a lovely old stone drinking-jug
inscribed “Iper, 1506”--the sort of jug you see in a Teniers or
Jan Steen painting. This family seemed to have thrown nothing away
all through the centuries it had lived in the house. In one room a
wonderful collection of old children’s toys was scattered about the
floor--punchinellos and jack-in-the boxes, with clothes of faded
chintz, and little model rooms, complete to the little clock on the
wall, enclosed in boxes with glass sides. A shell had come through
the roof of the library, a bright and sunny apartment on the top
floor, with a charming outlook on the green surroundings of Ypres,
and sent the bookshelves and their contents flying before it went on
its way through another room on the floor below and out of the house.
Old calf-bound tomes were scattered about the place in a smother of
brick-dust.

Disaster sometimes overtook the salvage parties. Whilst dodging shells
in Ypres one late afternoon, about the hour of the “evening hate,” as
our army calls the German evening bombardment, I came upon a large
blackened patch opposite the Cloth Hall. As it had not been there on
my last visit, I examined it. I did not have to look very closely. The
sickening stench of charred human flesh took me by the throat as I
approached the patch. A scorched black bowler hat and some fragments of
burnt cloth were, with that vapour of the charnel-house, all that were
left to show that the remains of a man lay in that horrible heap. There
were two charred skulls of horses, some blackened harness chains and
calcined parts of a cart. Near by was a jagged lump of cast-iron shell,
which lies by me as I write. The cart and horses of one of the salvage
parties had obviously been overwhelmed by a shell which, after blowing
up driver, horses, and cart, had started a fire which had utterly
consumed what the explosion had left.

In past centuries Ypres has been Flemish, French, and Belgian in turn.
Whatever her ultimate fate, whether the city be built up again on her
ruins or suffered to remain as she is, a perpetual monument of Hunnish
malice, henceforth and for all time Ypres will be as British as the
impress of the place left on a hundred thousand brains can make it.
Wherever I have been all along our winding line I have been plied with
questions about Ypres. “We were there in October.” “I was dressed in
the asylum there when I got pipped on the Zillebeke ridge.” “What about
the Cloth Hall?” “Are the cavalry barracks destroyed?”

The British graves in Ypres--but a fraction of the endless graveyards
which the defence of the city has filled in the plain and on the wooded
slopes beyond the gates--are a further link between Ypres and the
Empire. There is a cluster of wooden crosses in the fields over against
the asylum, where I have seen orderlies digging fresh graves when I
have passed that way. There are graves on the ramparts, old graves
hastily dug in the leaf-mould by the shallow trenches thrown up by the
French round the city in October, and new graves, the resting-place of
men killed in and about the city when the trees were green with this
year’s summer foliage.

Ypres is impregnated with the memory of the British Army. You will
find its cartridges ground into the cobble-stones of the streets, you
will find its rations strewn about the floors of the abandoned houses,
you will find its billeting directions and inscriptions of all kinds
scrawled on doors and walls. As I walked down the echoing streets of
ruined houses, amid the ghastly odours of the dead wafted insidiously
from choked cellars, with German shrapnel bursting viciously about,
sent screaming over from two sides of the salient, I found myself
thinking that not the tangible signs of the passage of our army, the
abandoned equipment and stores, the simple graves, but the city
itself, burned, battered, and blasted, is the most moving monument to
the heroic self-sacrifice of our men. Rent and torn and blackened, “all
tears, like Niobe weeping for her children,” Ypres, uncaptured still,
stands, an indestructible witness to our unbroken line.




CHAPTER V

BILLETS IN THE FIELD


People at home often imagine that our troops _live_ in the trenches.
They do not. Generally speaking, they live in billets behind the line,
and move into the trenches at regular intervals. They take their turn
for duty in the trenches like policemen going on their beat. As a rule
the procedure is for them to spend a fixed period in the front-line
trenches, another period in reserve (living in billets behind the
firing-line, which are occupied in rotation by the troops who, in this
particular sector, are out of the trenches), and a further period
resting somewhere in the rear. The turn for duty in the trenches
is therefore something exceptional, requiring a special effort of
endurance, for, if there is any liveliness, or, as we say out here,
“frightfulness,” going, there may be no sleep for anybody for several
days and nights on end, something demanding special preparations in the
way of supplies of cigarettes and other luxuries likely to drop out if
there is any difficulty about getting rations up.

The greater part of the life of our men at the front is therefore spent
in billets in our zone of occupation. Naturally, these billets vary
enormously. Roofless houses in ruined villages or dug-outs in the
open in a country absolutely devoid of food of any kind are as like
as not the sour lot of the troops awaiting their turn of duty in the
trenches, though sometimes a village situated at no great distance from
the firing-line will provide admirable accommodation for men just out
of the firing-line. I dined one June evening with the officers of the
famous Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry. I found them waiting their
turn for duty in the trenches in a positively palatial mansion, the
home of a wealthy French merchant of these parts.

I well remember the pride with which they showed me over their
quarters. I saw their bedrooms, vast apartments with huge four-poster
beds with heavy, old-fashioned _ciels_, and their bath-room, renowned
throughout their division--a pleasant, clean, white-tiled place, with
three different sizes of baths, as great an array of douches as you
would find at a spa, and an apparatus for warming bath-towels. When I
thought of other officers I had seen, painfully scrubbing themselves
in a few inches of tepid water in a leaky canvas bath in the sordid
surroundings of a filthy Flemish farm, I agreed that the “Princess
Pat.’s” had every reason to bless the good fortune which had endowed
them with a super-bathroom within a few miles of the firing-line.

Before dinner we walked round the garden. It was a kind of St.
James’s Theatre garden scene, with masses of greenery and banks of
flowering plants and great beds of flowers gushing over on to the
exquisite stretch of soft green turf. As we strolled they told me of
their charming host and hostess. The latter, it appeared, had given
them their best rooms, and had installed for them a special kitchen,
where their orderlies might mess about--as orderlies do all over the
world--to their heart’s content. The model of charity and goodness,
this French merchant and his lady wife every morning distributed
handfuls of copper to the poor of the place who gathered in long files
at their gates. On the Feast of the Sacred Heart in June the host and
hostess, patterns of pious Catholics, sent a message, worded with
charming diffidence, to the British officers asking them whether they
would care to join in a service of prayer in the private chapel of
the mansion. The Feast of the Sacred Heart had been set aside by the
French Bishops as a special day of intercession for the victory of
French arms. Of course the officers agreed. Presently you might have
seen them assembled in the little chapel with the host and hostess and
the members of their household, the stalwart forms of the Canadian
officers, heroes of the stricken field of Ypres, kneeling in prayer to
the God that knows not nations for the triumph of the right. Afterwards
the host took his guests down to his little study, and there, in a
bottle of his best wine, cobwebbed and reverently handled, the company
drank success to the Allied arms.

In the billets near the front our men are birds of passage. One goes
up to the trenches as light as possible, so everything that is not
essential for the comfort of the inner and outer man in the highly
uncomfortable surroundings of the front line is left behind. These
squalid ruined houses in the wrecked villages behind the firing-line
are sad places to visit when the battalion returning to them has been
in action. There in the common room which the officers use both for
messing and for sleeping you may see the kits and personal belongings
of officers who will return to that billet no more. You may see letters
there addressed to the dead, unopened, expectant, as though waiting to
be unburdened of the messages of love and anxious inquiry they bear.

Ah, those empty billets at the front! Their atmosphere is charged
with mourning. With what tense expression one sees in the face of men
who have been through a modern artillery bombardment. The survivors
sit about in silence, seeming almost to resent the presence of the
new-comers drafted in from England without delay to take the places of
their fallen comrades. This depression, however, is only a phase. It
soon passes. Men get used to the loss of their comrades. But if you
know them well you will find how hard, how defiant, how reckless it
makes them.

A battalion that has “copped it,” as the soldiers say, is not allowed
to sit about in billets and brood over its losses. For they will brood
unless they are stirred up. After Neuve Chapelle Sir John French, going
round the battalions that had taken part in that gallant fight, came
upon some depleted billets, such as I have described, with the Colonel,
one of the few officers surviving, sitting by the fire with his head
between his hands, prone to overwhelming grief. The Commander-in-Chief
is a man of heart and understanding. He talked to that Colonel as one
soldier to another, and told him that the losses of his fine battalion
were the price that had to be paid for victory. Then Sir John had the
battalion paraded, and spoke to the men in the same sense.

This war gets you by the heart-strings when you see the awful gaps it
tears in the ranks of men who have been closely associated for years.
After that fight at Neuve Chapelle, when our losses were heavy, but
not so heavy as in fights to come, I lunched with the Rifle Brigade
in their billets close behind the firing-line. The battalion had been
the first in the village of Neuve Chapelle, and over lunch (out of tin
plates in a workman’s cottage) the Colonel and the officers gave me
a most picturesque account of the Riflemen’s sweeping rush into the
ruined village, and their adventures in getting the Germans out of the
cellars and dug-outs.

It was a jolly meal. Five of the officers were there, beside the
Colonel, including the machine-gun officer (formerly the Regimental
Quartermaster-Sergeant), who had just got his commission. Three
months later I lunched with the Colonel again. He had by that time
become a Brigadier. Of all that merry luncheon-party, only he and
the machine-gun officer (now a Captain with the Military Cross, and
promoted Brigade Machine-Gun Officer) survived. The other three were
dead, killed within a few hours of one another on the Fromelles
ridge. The survivors at luncheon that day spoke of them with infinite
affection, with obvious regret, but without any lamentation. Death
has another aspect out here. It is often the matter of a fraction of
an inch. One friend is taken and the other left. And the survivor
“carries on,” only in his heart wondering “Why he and not I?”

Our men make longer stays in the billets situated farther away from
the front than in those which are merely the jumping-off place for
the trenches. Some of the cavalry spent months on end in the same
billets, cursing this horseless war and chafing at their inaction. From
time to time they took their turn in the trenches, and played their
part manfully, as at Ypres on May 13, when the flower of the cavalry
suffered cruel losses from a terrible German bombardment. But for
the most part they carried on what was practically peace training in
conditions which were depressing and monotonous to the last degree.

Thus I fell in with a crack Hussar regiment billeted in some farms well
off the main road. Their billets were so remote that it took me a good
hour to locate them. After inquiring successively from two privates in
an _estaminet_, a farrier-sergeant playing ball with a small girl in a
courtyard, and a battered-looking young subaltern riding down the road,
a long, low farm-house with a red-tiled roof, built round three sides
of a yard in which a duck-pond, a dung-heap, and several enormous pigs
were the outstanding features, was pointed out to me as the officers’
quarters. I side-stepped the dung-heap, skirted the pond, and, dodging
the pigs, banged on the door with my riding-crop. “_Entrez!_” shouted
someone within, and I entered the mess of the 3rd Hussars.

“Mess” summed up the scene rather well. Of the four or five officers
in the room, most were lying, the picture of boredom, on sleeping
valises which lined the walls of the long, low-pitched room. A table
on trestles in the centre was piled up with maps, field-glasses,
cigarette-tins, magazines, a mass of Sam Browne belts, a Sparklet
bottle, a tin of shortbread, and some flowers in a shell-case. The
stone floor was thick with mud, brought in fresh that morning, as the
boots of the officers present certified.

I was rapturously received. One of the chairs was cleared of its
contents. On shouts of “Orderly,” a door in the corner opened, and a
strong smell of frying and a greasy-looking soldier in a grey army
shirt and khaki trousers emerged simultaneously. He brought glasses
and a bottle of local beer; the box of cigarettes was produced, and
then I was ordered summarily to tell the company what was happening
at home and at the front. Was America coming in? And Italy? (This was
before Italy’s intervention.) What were they going to do with that
fellow, Ramsay Macdonald? They heard nothing, nothing, where they
were. Were the cavalry _never_ coming into action in this dam-fool
hole-in-the-ground war? They might be at Shorncliffe for all they were
seeing of the war....

Would I come round the horse-lines before lunch? The man I had come
to see, a Captain, conducted me via the dung-heap, the duck-pond, and
the pigs to an orchard where the horses of this squadron were picketed
in a sea of mud. It was a sad, weeping morning, like a spring day in
Ireland. The horses looked very fit despite the wet winter they had
passed through. “Mind that little ’orse, sir,” said a grizzled old
private as we passed. “Rather a character, that man,” said my friend:
“re-engaged; typical old soldier; regular scamp. Talk to him.”

He was a wizened little man in the forties, with a horsy manner, and
had been all through the retreat from Mons. Only one of his remarks has
stuck in my head. I was asking him about the food. He was pleased to
be very well satisfied with the efforts of the A.S.C. on his behalf.
“No one ain’t got no cause to grumble,” he said, “and that’s the truth.
You gets yer grub reg’lar, and that’s more than a lot of them in this
army did before. Of course”--with fine sarcasm--“there is some as wants
stewed apples and custard ev’ry day for dinner, and there’s no pleasing
the likes of those. No, sir, the food’s all right.”

By the time we returned to the farm-house the table had been cleared
and set with a number of tin plates, a loaf of ration bread, and some
tin cups. It was a rough meal, there is no denying the fact. There were
sardines as _hors-d’œuvre_, some very tough roast beef, and potatoes,
and some tinned apricots and boiled rice. We washed it down with very
strong tea and condensed milk out of the aforesaid tin cups. “D’you
mind tea?” asked my host apologetically. “We mostly have it for lunch.”
I did not mind a bit. But I wondered idly to myself what the 3rd
Hussars would have said if, a few months previously, you had suggested
tea for lunch in their elegant mess at home!

Puck, in his most mischievous mood, never conceived anything more
glaringly inappropriate than the British soldier in billets in France.
Probably no greater contrast could be found than, on the one hand,
the French peasant, working from daybreak to nightfall, scraping and
stinting and saving to realize a profit where he can, to add a franc or
two to his _bas de laine_, and, on the other, the British soldier--who
receives about the same wage as a farm-hand in this part of France,
unless he is in the Mechanical Transport, when with 6s. a day he is
far better paid than the curé or the village schoolmaster--wasteful,
liberal-handed, as thriftless about money as he is about food. Without
warning the two are flung together. Suddenly they are called upon to
live together on a footing of the utmost intimacy.

To know a man you must live with him. That is how the North of France
has got to know the British soldier. After making due allowance
for English madness--_spleen_, the French call it--the peasant has
discovered the British soldier to be the most easy-going of lodgers,
whose liberal allowances in the matter of rations and broad ideas
about money enable all manner of small transactions to be arranged of
advantage to the host and his cronies in the village, who is always
ready to do odd jobs about the house, who is a kind of nurse to the
children, who is, in short, the best of fellows imaginable. This is all
to the credit side. On the debit side there is the British soldier’s
unaccountable and inexplicable mania for washing himself, requiring
quantities of clean cold water that appear positively incredible in
comparison with the small jugful which suffices for the ablutions of
the host and his entire family.

The German comic (God save the mark!) press loves to portray the
“savage” British soldier “preying” on the North of France, to the
despair of the unfortunate French peasant, abandoned to the clutches of
the wicked English by an unscrupulous Government of Paris Chauvinists.
In reality the “unfortunate” French peasant in these parts is living on
British rations, and making more money than ever before in his life.
In all the villages about our line the boys and girls of all ages are
wearing British Army badges. I met a cowherd once who was wearing a
most unmistakable pair of British khaki riding-breeches. I lunched one
day at an hotel in a town in our zone where British ration bread was
served at the _table d’hôte_. The hostess noticed the query in my eye,
and hastened to explain: “_C’est un officier anglais qui loge chez nous
et qui demande, comme ça, que l’on lui sert de son pain à lui._” That
might pass for the bread, but the soft sugar had specks of black in it,
those flakes of tea which you will always find in British ration sugar.
I said no more, but paid without a murmur three francs for the worst
meal I have ever eaten in France.

[Illustration:

  _Underwood & Underwood phot._

BILLETS IN THE FIELD: THE BRITISH SOLDIER AND HIS PEASANT HOSTS.]

It says much for the tact of our army in the field that it has wielded
the wide powers conferred on it with the utmost loyalty by the
French, _vis-à-vis_ the civilian population, without any friction.
In all the towns and villages of our zone of occupation you will see
printed notices signed by “_Le Général Commandant la ---- Armée
Anglaise_,” or “_Le Capitaine_ A.P.M.” (Assistant Provost-Marshal),
with directions for the closing of cafés and _estaminets_ at a fixed
time, and the hour by which the civilian population must be indoors.
In most places the sale of spirits to the British Army is absolutely
prohibited. If an _estaminet_ offends in any way against these
regulations, the British authorities have power to close it--a power
that is often exercised. There is no direct intercourse between the
British military authorities and the civilian population, however. The
French _officiers de liaison_ attached to the different armies and
corps and the Mayors act as go-betweens. Things work very smoothly by
this arrangement, which removes the disagreeable possibility of our
military authorities having to exercise direct pressure on the French
civilians. Billeting and requisitioning are worked on similar lines,
and there is a Claims Commission which, in consultation with the
French, deals with the redemption of requisitioning receipts and claims
for indemnity for damages, etc.

The rank and file of our army that went to Mons knew practically only
two words of French, apart from _Wee wee_ and _Nong_, French words
familiar to every Britisher since the days of Boney, and those were
_souvenir_ and _bong_. The British Army increased its French vocabulary
by these two words in the course of its triumphal progress from the sea
coast to the interior through villages _en fête_, where the peasants
loaded the troops with good things of every description, asking only in
return a badge as a _souvenir_. That is why most of our men went into
action badgeless, and the giving away of badges had to be prohibited.
That is why to-day, when you see a man with the initials of his
regiment written in faded ink on his cap in default of a badge, you may
know almost to a certainty that that man went through the great retreat.

The British Army has improved its acquaintance with the French tongue
since those early days of the war. It has, indeed, contrived a kind of
_lingua franca_ as a vehicle of speech between itself and its hosts in
the billets. The vocabulary is small, being in the main restricted to
articles of food and drink. Grammar is a negligible quality, and the
accent varies from the clipped speech of North Britain to the broad
burr of the West of England. The French being reputed a race which sets
great store by politeness, _sivvoo-play_ is freely tacked on to all
sentences in conversation with the natives. The difficulties of the
modification of the definite article are simply abridged by prefixing
to the substantive _doo_ (_du_). Thus, milk is _doolay_, bread
_doopong_, water _doolo_, wine _doovang_. Jam, indispensable adjunct
to all meals of our army in the field, has, as every schoolboy knows,
no exact equivalent in French, for the simple reason that the French
seldom eat jam except in the form of a kind of fruit jelly which they
call _confiture_. But the British soldier never hesitated. The army
slang for jam is, I believe, _poz_ or _pozzie_, so jam became _doopoz_,
and was speedily recognized by the natives under that form.

The peasants on their side have fallen into a kind of pigeon French,
accompanied by a good deal of simple gesture, which, even with the
most elementary vocabulary, is extremely easy to understand. As the
population of the region of France abutting on the Belgian frontier
speaks Flemish as well as French, the peasants in some parts of our
line are able to draw on Flemish (which has many words resembling
English) to supplement their vocabulary in talking with _les
solgaires_, as they call them. The children, with childhood’s ready
ear for languages, pick up English from our men extraordinarily fast.
The ragged urchins who sell the London newspapers at G.H.Q. (General
Headquarters) every evening have gathered quite a lot of English one
way and another, though, I must say, some of their expressions savour
very strongly of “our army in Flanders.”

Our men, too, are very quick about French. On Sunday afternoons in the
villages in the rear you may see Mr. Atkins going for a quiet stroll
with his host in billets, some gnarled old peasant, and carrying on
quite an animated conversation with him about the crops and what not.
The mess orderlies at G.H.Q. are wonderful. On market-days they are to
be seen in the Grand’ Place, baskets on their arms, haggling away as
fluently as may be in French with the old women selling butter and eggs
and fish and fruit.

Our army in the field has a fine sweeping way with the pronunciation
of the names of places in its zone of occupation. _Wipers_ and
_Plug Street_ are classical and well-known examples of the phonetic
adaptation of such names. In many cases a place, as pronounced by our
men, is instantly recognized when seen in print, a fine tribute to
the correctness of their phonetics. Often their pronunciation is a
very close imitation of what the name of the place sounds like in the
mouth of a Flemish boor. “Wipers” is astoundingly near the Flemish
pronunciation of Ypres. In the same way _Gertie-wears-velvet_ is an
almost perfect phonetic rendering of _Godewaersvelde_, and easy to
remember at that. I have amused myself by keeping a little list of the
pronunciation by our army of some of the names familiar to them in our
zone of operations:

  Armentières           Arm-in-tears.
  Haverskerque          Haversack.
  Reninghelst           Running Hold.
  Festubert             Fest-Hubert.
  Etaples               Eatables.
  Lumbres               Lumbers.
  Hinges                (As in English).
  Vieux Berquin         Viooks Berkwinn.
  Potijze, or Potyze    Pottidjy.
  Wytschæte             White Sheet.
  Cuinchy               Quinchey.
  Hazebrouck            Azebrook.
  Beuvry                Bouvry (as in  Bouverie Street).
  Haltebast             Hell-and-Blast.

The amusing thing is that the whole army has adopted this nomenclature.
You will hear Staff officers who know French well speaking of
“Arm-in-tears” and “White Sheet.” With the Expeditionary Force it is
“the thing” to do as the army does.

There is no doubt that our men were very uncomfortable both in the
trenches and out during the long wet winter in Flanders. Even after a
dry spell in the summer a heavy shower sufficed to turn the roads and
paths and communication trenches about the firing-line into regular
quagmires. But the warm air of a perfect summer, when the sun is never
long absent, puts a different complexion on everything. The quagmires
dry up, the hot sunshine evaporates the moisture in sodden garments,
and the exquisite garb in which summer clothes these Flanders flats, so
gloomy and repelling in winter, quickly restores depressed spirits.

In its summer dress Flanders indeed is very fair. Behind the
firing-line the wind and the birds have done the work of man. The
fields are all asway with wheat and barley and oats, sprung up of
themselves, splashed with great stains of scarlet and blue where
poppies and cornflowers nod in the breeze. Nature has scattered with
a liberal hand these most English of flowers, suggestive of all that
is most beautiful in the English countryside, wherever the sappers’
pick has thrown up the clods of earth, be it from a trench, be it from
a grave. In the little gardens about the shattered homesteads, where
abandoned equipment, ends of hospital dressings, scattered cartridges,
and empty ammunition boxes tell of the war that has passed that way,
the scarlet ramblers still scramble with flaming petals athwart the
blasted walls, in and out of the empty window-frames. The red roofs
of the farms nestling in masses of swaying greenery, the roses in the
village gardens, the blooming hedgerows--all this is the beauty of
summer England, surest cure for home-sickness and ennui.

Very wisely the military authorities out here have always encouraged
the playing of games by the men in their periods of recreation. They
have recognized that games keep the men physically fit, and also take
their minds off the dangers and hardships of their life at the front.
Games keep the men from brooding over the perils they have escaped
as over the dangers that may stand before. Games keep them out of
mischief, from loafing about the villages and clandestine drinking,
which so often leads to unreflected acts. It is in no spirit of
frivolity, but in the spirit of the old maxim, “_Mens sana in corpore
sano_,” that our men while away their leisure hours with cricket
and football and sing-songs. I am anxious to reaffirm this, to all
Englishmen, self-evident truth because (there is no object in cloaking
the matter) the French have shown at times a tendency to be scandalized
at the recreations of our army in the field. As time has gone on, and
they have come to know us even better than before, they have begun to
understand that the Englishman, in taking his games with him into the
field of war, is only carrying on our great system of national hygiene
which has turned out all our great fighters of history from Francis
Drake to the Grenfells.

Therefore, fair weather or foul, our army in the field contrives to
amuse itself in its leisure hours, sparse though they may be. In
winter it played football. The ground was always rough, and sometimes
pitted with shell-holes. Four of the black and white posts which the
signallers use for laying their field telegraph wires served as goal.
But the ball was tight and firm, blown up by some kindly A.S.C. driver
with his tyre-pump, the players were hard and keen. I have seen many a
good game played not a mile behind the firing-line, always liable to
be disturbed by sporadic outbursts of German “frightfulness.”

[Illustration:

  _“Daily Mail” phot._

CRICKET AT THE FRONT.]

Summer brought cricket and rounders. Real cricket bats were seldom
seen, but quite a serviceable substitute can be fashioned out of a
packing-case, which will also supply both stumps and bails. With a
composition ball and willing and eager fielders many excellent games
were played in all kinds of surroundings, on every imaginable--and
unimaginable--sort of wicket. A brigade of the Indian Cavalry had a
rounders team of which great things were said. The Machine Gun School
introduced badminton. The war correspondents’ mess invented a weird
kind of pseudo-cricket played with a broomstick and a soft ball.

During the winter two concert parties had a great vogue. The one, “The
Follies,” was run by the 4th Division, and consisted of army talent
assisted by two charming young ladies, one a refugee from Lille, the
other, I believe, a daughter of an _estaminet_ keeper at Armentières,
where “The Follies” performed several times a week for months. I
never heard them, but I am told that their “show” was excellent, and
attracted spectators from far down our line. The _pièce de résistance_
was, I believe, the singing of “Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for
Soldiers” by the young female refugee, a considerable feat if you
remember that the young person did not know a word of English. Most of
“The Follies” are dead by now, killed in action in the spring. Thus
does cruel war break up pleasant partnership. The two young ladies
were absorbed in the second concert party, “The Fancies,” which also
had a successful career.

In an existence which, save for the spells of fighting, is
comparatively monotonous, the weekly baths arranged for the men are
quite an event. The danger of vermin as the transmitters of disease
aroused the medical authorities, at an early stage of the campaign, to
the necessity of providing regular bathing facilities for the men in
the firing-line. The numerous large buildings in this part of France
afforded ideal wash-houses, and “bathing-stations,” as they are called,
are now established in all divisional areas. Here, while the men are
enjoying a good scrub-down with plenty of soap in huge vats and tubs
filled with hot water, their uniform is disinfected and their soiled
shirts, underwear, and socks are replaced by clean ones. On bathing
days, which are mostly every day, these bathing-stations are a sight
that does the heart good, so delighted are the men to get their bodies
clean, to have the feel of clean underwear next their skin. If needs
be, the British soldier will put up with any amount of discomfort. But
the discomfort he resents most of all is to be deprived of his soap and
water. “Cleaning up” morning and evening is as much a rite with our
army in the field as the morning and evening prayer of the Moslem.

The installation of these bathing-stations was the idea of a young
officer of the R.A.M.C. It frequently happens in our army in the field
that, if a man happens on a good idea, he is told to go “ahead with
it.” This young doctor’s idea was a very happy one, and he “went ahead
with it” to such good purpose that it was copied, and, as I have said,
“bathing-stations” were arranged throughout the army. They are now
show-places to which the distinguished visitor is invariably conducted.
It is whispered that sometimes, when these visits have been arranged at
short notice, bathers are not available, so a squad of men, who perhaps
had had their bath the day before, are ordered to the bath and are
solemnly washed again. Though perhaps on these occasions the clothing
and bodies of the men seem surprisingly clean, the visitors to the
“star” bathing-station, where personages of note are always conducted,
can see “the real thing” in the shape of a lamentable garment preserved
between two sheets of glass. It is known as “The Lousy Shirt,” and
is an indisputably genuine relic of winter, literally covered with
the cremated remains of hundreds of this most unconventional insect.
The doctor in charge of the bathing-station declares his intention of
presenting the shirt to the United Service Museum after the war.

In many parts of the line, where the German rarely desists from
“frightfulness,” the troops waiting their turn in the trenches live
entirely in dug-outs, as such houses as are still standing are not
safe owing to shell-fire. A dug-out is, as its name implies, a
shelter scraped out of the ground, the earth being laid on timbers
placed crosswise on top. A dug-out will afford adequate cover against
bullets and shrapnel and splinters of shell. It will not as a rule,
unless quite exceptionally solid, resist a direct hit by a shell. If
a dug-out is struck fair and square in this way, its occupants seldom
escape. Some of the dug-outs I have seen were models of neatness and
ingenuity. One in particular, used as regimental headquarters in a
village that had been totally destroyed--the 2nd Worcesters, the heroes
of Gheluvelt, were there when I visited it in June--was reached by a
neat flight of wooden steps and had practicable casement windows. Walls
and roof were papered in an artistic shade of green, linoleum was on
the floor, a mirror and coloured prints of General Joffre and Sir John
French hung on the walls, and there were tables and chairs in addition
to a camp-bed in a corner. A pigeon-hole with a slide in one wall gave
access to a second room, “the office.” The place was dry and well
ventilated. It had a great local reputation as the “super-dug-out.” A
framed notice on the wall proudly attested the fact that it had been
visited by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.

Round about Ypres, where the country has been laid waste by shell-fire,
everybody lives in dug-outs.

When up in the Ypres salient one day I ran across an old friend in the
person of the C.O. of the 16th Lancers. He and his officers were living
in dug-outs constructed in the grounds of a ruined country house. I
reminded him that the last time I had seen him had been in the very
handsome dining-room of the 16th Lancers mess at The Curragh. Then he
was wearing the red and gold mess-kit of “The Scarlet Lancers.” Now
he was in the worn and stained khaki, plastered with mud from top to
toe, with a disreputable old cap with ear-pieces and monstrously heavy
boots. “Perhaps you’d care to have a look at our mess here,” he said,
and pointed at a black hole in a mud-bank a few feet away. Outside some
facetious orderly had affixed a notice-board inscribed “Hotel Ritz,”
with various light-hearted remarks to the effect that it was licensed
for the sale of beer and wines to be consumed on the premises.

This dug-out was what it purported to be, a hole in the ground,
muddy and damp and depressing. At the back several sleeping-valises
lay on the ground. There was an elegant table and some chairs,
white-enamelled, with turned legs. “The table’s got a marble top,” said
a sad-looking Major sitting there, “like the tables at the Carlton!”

I have visited troops in their billets in every part of our line. I
have been to headquarters installed in fine old châteaux, with which I
deal in a subsequent chapter; I have lunched with Brigadiers quartered
in hovels so mean and filthy that they would disgrace the lowliest
cabin of the West of Ireland; I have sat and chatted with sappers
living in holes scraped out of the sides of a bank like kingfishers’
nests; I have seen our soldiers living in wooden hutments and under
canvas; I have seen them in grubby little workmen’s cottages in suburbs
of the industrial towns of the North of France and in dreary, rambling
old French barracks. Sometimes they were comfortable (and the British
soldier is able to make himself comfortable on astonishingly little!);
generally they were uncomfortable. But they never grumbled at their
rough lot. They groused about their inaction and bemoaned their hard
fate at not being able to “get a crack at the Germs.” By no single
word, however, did they indicate that they regarded their conditions
of life as anything exceptional, anything outside the great game in
which they are engaged. The army does its best for them. Their food
is plentiful, extraordinarily varied, seeing the difficulties of
transport, and absolutely regular in every part of the line. The army
gives them, amongst other things, cigarettes and tobacco and matches
and newspapers. As my Hussar said, the A.S.C. does not run to “stewed
apples and custard.” It cannot give them houses always; it cannot give
them family life; it cannot protect them against the dark angel that
stalks these Flanders flats by day and night. But it smooths things as
best it can, and for the rest the cheerful philosophy of the British
soldier “carries on.”




CHAPTER VI

CASTLES IN FLANDERS


With the British, as with the French and German armies in the field,
you will sometimes find Headquarters Staffs housed in a château. A
Staff wants plenty of elbow-room, it wants quarters away from the
noise and dust of the high-road and the bustle of a town; it has to
choose a fairly secluded spot, so as to escape the vigilant eyes of
enemy airmen and the bombardment which inevitably follows detection.
This word château is very misleading. It is what you might call a
“portmanteau” word. It signifies not only the Alexander Dumas type of
medieval castle; it also means practically any large house standing in
its own grounds. Thus, when I have set out to find the Headquarters
of the Nth Division in the Château of Blancques (B 13 c., or some
similar hieroglyphic, marking the spot on the Staff maps, will be
the address given to me at General Headquarters), I have never known
whether I shall find the Divisional General living amid the picturesque
surroundings of a real old French château, with slender grey turrets,
and lichen-covered walls, and a black and shining moat, or amid the
stucco and red brick, the pitch-pine and stained glass, of some
preposterous mansion built by a retired merchant on the outskirts of
an industrial town.

When I think of this war in years to come, however, I feel that I
shall always see some of its incidents re-enacted against the idyllic
background of one or other of the ancient châteaux of this part of
France. There is little enough picturesqueness, Heaven knows, in this
most business-like of wars, but there is an undeniable touch of romance
in the scenes which take place in and about these fine old castles
in our zone of occupation. I always came upon them with a feeling of
surprise, these old châteaux, in a country that with its smoke-stacks
and mine-shafts speaks of anything rather than of old-world romance.
They are mostly tucked away behind a screen of trees, to shelter them
from the icy winds which blow across these melancholy Flanders flats in
winter; they are almost always surrounded by a moat, and stand in their
own grounds, which remain in their natural state, with wide stretches
of short grass interspersed with wild flowers between groups of fine
old trees.

These grand old houses, which have witnessed so many stirring scenes
of war in the past, were awakened from many years of slumber by the
arrival of our army in the North of France. The little stumpy bridges
across their moats, which had re-echoed under the hoofs of horsemen in
the armies of _le Roi Soleil_; the tall, pointed turrets which had seen
in succession the cocked hats of _le grand Marlbrook’s_ infantry; the
ragged bonnets of the Revolution; the beplumed busbies of Wellington’s
cavalry, filing along the white roads threading the distant plain,
were once again the silent witnesses of the bustle of an army in the
field. A slender pennant was affixed to the lichen-covered gate-post;
sentries in khaki, stolid, slow-moving, rifle with fixed bayonet at
the “Order arms,” materialized apparently out of nowhere; motor-cars
came whirring up, discharging lean, athletic-looking officers in caps
of red and gold; while motor-lorries unloaded themselves of stacks of
papers and maps and stores and sleeping-valises and kit-bags. A party
of extraordinarily energetic people took possession of stables or an
outhouse, or some building conveniently adjacent to the château, and
decorated roof and walls with telegraph and telephone wires, and set up
a pole flying a blue and white flag over against a fair fretwork sign,
“R.E. SIGNALLERS.” To the Signallers’ station presently began to arrive
the motor-cyclist despatch orderlies in a frantic fuss of noise and a
cloud of dust.

The old châteaux hardly knew themselves again in all this activity.
Northern France is so eminently industrial that one had forgotten that
it had its relics of the old nobility of France as well, though many of
the ancient châteaux had passed into other hands, and some were seldom
if ever inhabited at all save by the caretakers and a few old servants.

So the old places awoke. _The Times_ and the _Daily Mail_ appeared
where formerly the _Figaro_ and _La Croix_ (pillars of the old French
nobility) were seen; the _Winning Post_ found itself side by side
with _The Lives of the Saints_ (in thirty-eight volumes in calf);
and pictures of charming young ladies cut out of the _Sketch_ or _La
Vie Parisienne_, particularly Rudolphe Kirchner’s delightful sketches
from the latter, were pinned up on the walls next to family portraits
of dead-and-gone châtelains and châtelaines. The green tree-frogs,
sprawling lazily in the sunshine among the sedge on the surface of the
moat, leapt away in high indignation at the invasion of their realm by
noisy young men with bath-towels. The rooks in the plantation cawed
in raucous protest against the thin blue curls of smoke arising from
the camp-fires of the troops bivouacked among the oaks and beeches,
singing, hammering, rattling tins, and jesting from dawn to dark. The
birds watched in amazement men-folk doing work they had been wont to
believe was the prerogative of rabbits and moles, scraping deep holes
in the ground, roofing them with timber, and thatching them with
leaves, and vanishing therein when blasts on a whistle heralded the
approach of the curious new birds recently noticed in the sky, birds
that glittered whitely far up among the clouds and droned angrily like
a giant bumble-bee.

I have seen many striking contrasts in these châteaux of France. One
day I turned into the courtyard of as dainty a little château as ever
the fifteenth Louis of gallant memory built for a lady. It was one of
the country places of a French officer then at the front, and very
rarely visited by him. Its grounds were neglected, the iron gates were
rusted and broken, and the stonework running round the flat and shallow
fish-pond was hoary and cracked with age. Against a superb background
of green foliage, a mighty screen of poplars bordering a drive that ran
out to the blue horizon, a horseman sat on his horse, turbaned, a lance
at his stirrup, immobile, a sublime equestrian statue. It was an Indian
sowar, a Pathan trooper of the native cavalry. He sat perfectly still
in the sunshine, in the silence that was Pompadour France....

Again, I remember calling at a château to get a pass to visit a certain
part of our line. It was a hybrid kind of place. The old part of the
château had been caught up and surrounded, as it were, in an imposing
pile of new red brick. On the lawn in front ran a lean fragment of
old grey wall, along which the scarlet rambler climbed recklessly,
profusely, in and out of the castellated coping and athwart a broken
arch. Two motor-cyclist despatch-riders sat on the lawn beneath a
giant walnut-tree and tinkered with their cycles. In the distance the
guns drummed gently, continuously. A young man came strolling across
the lawn. He was an officer. His khaki tunic and breeches and puttees
had seen hard service, his cap was thrust back from his forehead. In
his hand he carried a sheaf of papers, with which he returned, rather
punctiliously, the salute of the two motorcyclists. As he passed me I
saw it was the Prince of Wales.

He passed into my vision briefly that day and passed out again, very
slim, still a little diffident, in the pink of condition, as he passes
to and fro in the midst of our army in the field, restless when he is
held back too long from the front, happy only when he feels that he is
sharing the dangers and hardships of the army. The Prince of Wales with
the army in France! What a fine suggestion there is about the phrase!
It kindles my imagination every time I see him there with the troops.
Possibly the grey old tower of that modernized château which watched
him strolling nonchalantly across the grass that morning had also
looked down upon his most famous ancestor, him whose sable armour, once
famed in France, you may see to this day in the Cathedral at Canterbury.

This region is rich in association with our fighting past. I spent a
morning once with a Headquarters Staff in a château where Marlborough
(who has left the impress of his magnetic personality so deeply
stamped on the French imagination) had stayed when he was conducting
his operations against Marshal Villar’s famous _Ne Plus Ultra_ lines.
A quiet, reposeful spot was that château, with a rococo atmosphere,
with panelled rooms and old furniture, and gold-framed portraits of
military men of a past age. In a little study on the ground-floor,
where “Corporal John” may have worked himself, a General explained to
me over a table spread with maps his hopes and ambitions for the coming
summer. Outside a Staff Officer was explaining the working of a trench
mortar, the invention of one of the officers quartered in the château;
others were talking of the fishing they had managed to get in the
neighbourhood. Mortars and fishing! As subjects of conversation they
were as topical in the times of “the army in Flanders” as to-day.

One day I picked up a thread which conducted me straight back to
Waterloo. It was in an old château I found it, an exquisitely preserved
gem of the early seventeenth century, with a pigeon-coop, emblematic
of seigneurial rights, and a dainty little flower-garden, a perfect
corner of old France which, as a contemporaneous print hung in one of
the rooms of the château attested, had not changed its appearance since
it was laid out when the château was built. In this château Grant’s
Brigade of cavalry, which fought at Waterloo, was quartered for two
years after the battle. The place was still redolent of the memories
of the British cavalry which, as part of the army of occupation of
the Allies after the overthrow of Napoleon, had been quartered in the
château and in the little township which surrounds it. In the outer
wall of the stables they showed me a row of rings affixed there for the
horses, a hundred years ago, by the men of the 15th Hussars who were in
Grant’s Brigade. In and about the little town surrounding the château,
on the occasion of my visit, I met again men of the 15th Hussars
quartered there--the 15th Hussars of to-day, gallantly carrying on the
great traditions which their forbears at Waterloo helped to establish.

These ancient châteaux in our zone of operations often change their
occupants. A Staff moves on and disappears, and before the old house
has had time to relapse into its secular sleep there is another
irruption of “brass-hats” in motor-cars and mess orderlies in
motor-lorries.

The General Staff room is generally established in the largest room
of the château. I have seen some curious contrasts in these rooms.
I have in mind a long and lofty apartment with a broad alcove made
by a story of one of the corner turrets of the château. On the walls
old-fashioned oil-paintings hung side by side with innumerable maps,
army orders, and various indications, serious and facetious. A Staff
Officer was sitting at a big old oak table spread with an extraordinary
collection of mud-stained papers. This was the Intelligence Officer
going through correspondence found on German prisoners and dead. In the
alcove another Staff Officer was talking on the telephone to a Brigade
Headquarters; sandbags was the theme, and its discussion developed a
certain amount of acerbity as it proceeded. A young man in very muddy
riding-boots stood by the handsome carved-stone mantelpiece, his cap on
the back of his head, a riding-crop in his hand. He was waiting with
some impatience for the sandbag debate to finish.

In its outward appearance the room was a blend of suggestions of
peace and war. There were touches of the boudoir, the bureau, and the
barrack-room in the furniture. One or two dainty _bergère_ chairs, a
work-stand, a pretty cabinet or two, spoke of some feminine influence
that had once reigned here; the typewriters, the telephone, suggested
the city office; while the barrack-room touch was provided by the Sam
Browne belts, the revolvers, the riding-crops and swagger canes which
were scattered about in the corners and on the tables and chairs.

Life in these châteaux is not always so peaceful as their appearance
would indicate. Not so very long ago I was having tea in a château
with a Headquarters Staff, and the very tea-things on the table rattled
with the continual air-percussion of shells screeching to and fro about
the place. It was an ill-omened place, that dining-room, for all the
windows on one side had been smashed, and in front of them a solid
barricade of sandbags had been erected to diminish the effect of shells
bursting on the gravel without. As we drank our tea placidly, half a
dozen heavy shells went wailing over the house, and exploded noisily in
the immediate vicinity.

There are châteaux, like the château of Hooge of which I spoke in a
previous chapter, which have been totally destroyed by shell-fire.
Yet you may find troops living in the grounds, in dug-outs furnished
from the château, or sometimes even in a single room or cellar of
the château which has escaped destruction. I have been to châteaux
where almost every day shells plumped square into the crumbling
brickwork, ploughing their way through ancient rafters and bursting
with reverberating explosions amid Buhl tables and Empire chairs and
Louis XIV. clocks and old French prints. I have seen gardens still
blooming amid a horrid welter of destruction, with standard roses
rearing their slender stems on high, and London pride and stocks and
syringa straggling over little graves dotted here and there between
gaping shell-holes, and tree-trunks blasted lying across shattered
cucumber-frames.

I have been in a room, the last room habitable in a pretty little
country-house where the flooring was of parquet, once highly polished,
no doubt, but now stained with mud and scratched by hobnailed boots. A
splendid Empire clock ticked away on the white marble mantelpiece; the
table, spread with tin plates and cups, some bully-beef in a saucer,
a loaf of bread, and a bottle of whisky, was Buhl; the chairs were of
mahogany in the Empire style. A common wash-hand-stand, retrieved, I
should think, from the stables, stood in a corner; in another corner an
Empire couch had been spread with a flea-bag and blankets, and served
as a bed for the doctor, who had his quarters there. Two walls of the
apartment were curtained off with sacking, for beyond was the open
air--roofless rooms, piled-up with débris, and shattered walls.

But what of the proprietors of these châteaux in our lines? you may
ask. The British Army pays for everything it uses, pays rent for
the châteaux it occupies, as for the horses or cattle it may (very
rarely) requisition. The châtelains have very often gone away until
the war is over; sometimes they have been called up to the French or
Belgian armies, as the case may be. I have met with cases in which
the châtelain has lived in his château during our occupation, and the
officers quartered there have dined daily at his table.

The position is a little delicate. Our army is an army of gentlemen,
and both officers and men have shown in this war that they know how to
respect the feelings and property of the civilian population in our
zone of operations. But, obviously, considerable tact is required to
reconcile some elderly Countess, accustomed all her life to preside
over a well-conducted, placid, and scrupulously clean household, with
the irruption of a horde of healthy, active men, shod with hobnails
(“_Mon Dieu, le parquet!_”), very often muddy (“_O Ciel, mes tapis!_”),
and inclined to smoke pipes all over the place.

In one case I heard of, a Headquarters Staff, on arriving at a château
where they were to establish themselves, found that the owner and his
wife, an elderly couple, had not been on the best of terms with their
predecessors, a Headquarters Staff that had just moved on. A tactful
Staff Captain went out to reconnoitre the ground. He found that their
hosts had been a trifle _froissé_ by a lack of understanding on the
part of the other British officers who had been quartered there. He
laid himself out to make friends with the old couple with some success.

One day they mentioned _en passant_ that it was a pity there was
only one swan on the lake, and that a female. The Staff Captain took
counsel. Presently, with great secrecy, the youngest member of the
Staff, who was thought to require a change of air, was despatched to
Paris with strict orders only to return with a male swan. The British
officer is a resourceful person. In three days the subaltern was back
with a gentleman swan in a basket. This graceful present broke the ice
between the British officers and their hosts, and when I visited that
château, not only did the old couple preside daily at the officers’
mess, but they had also given them the usage of certain rooms which
they had resentfully closed to their predecessors.

Occasionally, on the other hand, the châtelain--in the case I have in
mind it was a châtelaine--is irreconcilably disagreeable. The lady
in this case was married, and her husband, having been mobilized,
was serving somewhere in the French firing-line. This circumstance
had fired her indignation. With woman’s sweet unreasonableness, she
laid it down that soldiers who were not in the firing-line were a
good-for-nothing pack of ne’er-do-wells, and if they expected to have
a nice comfortable time in her château, she would show them that they
were vastly mistaken. So this preposterous person would visit the
house several times a day--she lived herself in another house close
by--ferret about for any damage done, and generally make herself an
unmitigated nuisance. The gardener actually had instructions, which he
carefully observed, to lop off the heads of every flower in the grounds
to prevent the British officers from plucking them for their rooms. The
General quartered there might have had the woman promptly packed off
about her business by saying a word to the French Military Mission at
General Headquarters. He was, however, much too polite to do that, so
the lady was suffered in silence, and only scolded behind her back.

This case, which I have only mentioned because it is amusing, and not
because it is typical, is quite exceptional. In the main, the relations
between our army and its French hosts have been admirable. There has
been a maximum of consideration on the one hand, a maximum of grateful
hospitality on the other. In years to come the memories that will
linger about these old châteaux of those who gratefully accepted their
hospitality will be of brave, unostentatious, clean-living gentlemen,
like Bayard, premier knight of France, _sans peur et sans reproche_.




CHAPTER VII

G.H.Q.


In an army in which abbreviation by capital letter is carried to the
pitch of mania, the hieroglyphics standing at the head of this chapter
may be recognized, without undue difficulty, as signifying _General
Headquarters_. This is a comparatively simple combination. It is not
always thus. One requires a certain amount of practice to discern the
different offices of the army in the field in a row of letters flashed
out at one in conversation with soldier-men.

“Can you direct me to the D.A.D.O.S.?” a dusty motor-cyclist
despatch-rider, one foot trailing on the ground beside his snorting
machine, asks a quartermaster-sergeant in a village. “First on the
right past the D.A.D.R.T.’s, the red house next to the A.P.M.” Quite
unperturbed by this fearsome array of letters, the youth whirrs
cheerily off, and finds his destination without difficulty. Question
and answer, as interpreted to the layman, signify: “Can you direct me
to the Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Services?” “First on the
right past the Deputy Assistant Director of Railway Transport, the red
house next to the Assistant Provost Marshal.”

In all this maze of abbreviation, G.H.Q. is the combination most often
heard at the front. For G.H.Q. is the head of the army, the brain and
nerve centre which directs and governs the whole vast organism of our
fighting force, from the most advanced stretch of sandbags which marks
the firing-line back to the enormous office of a thousand clerks, where
the regimental records are kept in a snug French town far to the rear.
To the men in the firing-line G.H.Q. is the home of the “brass-hats”
(as Staff officers are popularly styled), a mysterious and remote place
from which unexpected and inexplicable edicts are issued forth, mostly
leading to unwelcome changes in comfortable billets or cosy trenches, a
snug spot of soft jobs and easy living.

In reality G.H.Q. is nothing of the kind. I wish some of the
imaginative writers who, in the course of one or other of the political
controversies which this war has brought forth, have described G.H.Q.
as a centre of fashion, swarming with idle A.D.C.’s buzzing about
beautiful ladies, could spend a day or two in the place. Luxury follows
fashion as surely as trade follows the flag. One glance at the bedroom
which would be reserved for our friend, the imaginative writer, at
the local hotel would speedily disillusionize him as to G.H.Q. being
fashionable, luxurious, or even comfortable. ---- (the etiquette of
our army in the field forbids me even now to lift the transparent veil
enveloping the identity of the French town where Sir John French has
installed his General Headquarters) is not Brussels of 1815. Nor is it
Capua. It is a small town with historic associations, particularly with
England, the greater part of any architectural and antiquarian beauty
it may have possessed, however, swept away by the growth of industry.

G.H.Q. is a place of hard work and of simple living. The men in the
trenches who “grouse,” as all good soldiers “grouse,” about the “soft”
and “safe” jobs at G.H.Q. have no conception of the strenuous life of
the men in the offices there. I am personally acquainted, not with one
or two, but with scores of officers who are at their desk at eight
o’clock, or earlier, each morning, Sundays included, and are kept hard
at it, with not more than two hours’ break in the day, until eleven
o’clock at night. Rank makes no distinction. In fact, the heads of the
different services set the example of “hustle” to their subordinates.

“Never in my life,” said an officer with a distinguished record of
service in the field in South Africa, “have I worked so hard as I
have done at G.H.Q. I have not heard a shot fired in this war; I have
never seen a shell burst; I have not set eyes upon a German, not even
a German prisoner. I never get any time for exercise. Sometimes I long
to be up in the trenches, getting hard and fit in the fresh air, and
winning clasps for the war medal.”

“It’s very strange to be back at the old game,” a General who had been
moved from a high appointment at G.H.Q. to the command of a division
in the field said to me one day. “Here I am following my natural
vocation of commanding men in the field. I am getting sunburnt. I have
an enormous appetite, and I sleep better than I ever did in my life.
Of course, I miss my friends at G.H.Q., but this is a life of leisure
compared to the grind there.”

All the threads of the army run back to G.H.Q.--the threads controlling
its strategy, its supplies of men, of material, of food, of equipment;
its relations with our Allies, the French. To do proper justice to
the work of G.H.Q. would require a volume; but, as I have set myself
in this book to write an impression and not a technical review of the
work of our army in the field, I will content myself with setting forth
as briefly as I can the services centred at G.H.Q. as a preface to
glancing at the conditions of life prevailing at the hub of the army.

General Headquarters, then, consists of the Command-in-Chief,
the General Staff, the Adjutant-General’s Staff, and the
Quartermaster-General’s Staff. Here we have assembled the principal
services of the army, the supreme direction of all centred in the
person of the Commander-in-Chief assisted by the General Staff, the
Adjutant-General’s Department responsible for _personnel_, and the
Quartermaster-General’s Department responsible for supplies. General
Staff, A.G. and Q.M.G. Departments (you see how easy it is to fall into
army abbreviations!), are represented by General Staff officers and an
officer representing together A.G. and Q.M.G. Departments (he is called
Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-General) attached to each army,
army corps, and division, thus insuring smooth departmentalization of
the different branches right through the army. Each of the subdivisions
of the three great services, General Staff, A.G., Q.M.G. Departments,
also have their special representatives with armies, corps, and
divisions in the field in the shape of Assistant and Deputy-Assistant
Directors of Medical Services, of Ordnance Services, and so on.

The General Staff is divided into two divisions--Operations, known as
“_O_,” and Intelligence (“_I_”).

“_O_” occupies itself with strategy and tactics, the general brainwork
of the army. It is also the centre to which all reports come.

“_I_” is the detective of the army. It is the business of this division
to endeavour to discover by every possible means all about the enemy
forces, their disposition and composition. One of the most important
of the sections of “_I_” is the map department, where maps, not only
of our own positions, but also, as far as possible, of the enemy, are
prepared.

The A.G. Department likewise falls into two divisions--(_a_)
Administration; (_b_) Military Law. The first attends to the
all-important question of men, the wastage due to casualties and
sickness, and the replenishment by fresh drafts out from home. At a
stated hour every day telegrams begin pouring in from every part of
the line with the day’s casualties which are sent home, and immediate
measures taken to refill the gaps thus caused by fresh drafts out from
home.

The Medical Services, presided over by a Director-General of Medical
Services, and their immense ramifications, from the regimental
aid-post, installed in a house or barn right behind the firing-line,
down to the hospitals established in palatial hotels at one or other of
our army bases, come under this division of the A.G. Department.

The Military Law division deals with discipline, no small matter in
an army which has grown to the size of ours. Offences against military
law, such as drunkenness, desertion, cowardice in face of the enemy,
and so on, are matters with which this department deals. Trial is, of
course, by court-martial, and the sentence is sent up to the Judge
Advocate for confirmation by the Commander-in-Chief.

It was under the auspices of this division of the A.G. Department that
the Suspension of Sentences Act, a measure which, though revolutionary
in its bearing on military law, received next to no attention in
England, was passed through Parliament. The effect of the Act is to
empower the military authorities to suspend for the duration of the
war the execution of a sentence passed on a British soldier on active
service, and at the same time to offer him the opportunity to expunge
the conviction by meritorious conduct in the field.

It is a sane, a merciful, but also a practical measure. Though it
does not apply to death sentences in cases where the authorities
are constrained to let justice take its course, in all ordinary
circumstances a man need no longer feel that he has irretrievably
ruined his career by a single unreflecting act. Absence from duty, for
instance, is an offence that can find no condonement on active service.
But a man with a clean record may shirk his duty under the influence
of a fit of depression caused by passing indisposition or some other
external circumstance. In these conditions a sentence of imprisonment
may be passed, but its execution postponed until the end of the war.
The man returns to his duty knowing that he can wipe out the black
mark against him by gallant behaviour in face of the foe. The Act has
the practical advantage of frustrating the attempts of shirkers to
evade their duty in the firing-line by committing offences which, under
the old system, would have sent them down for a spell of penal duty at
one of the bases.

The measure has been completely successful. It has undoubtedly
prevented injustice being done in more than one case. I was told of a
sergeant, for instance, who was sentenced to death by court-martial
for cowardice in face of the enemy. It was an inexplicable case, for
the man had an excellent record, but the facts were incontrovertible.
The man’s conduct had been disgraceful, and might have imperilled the
position if his comrades had followed his example. According to custom,
a report on the man was requested from his commanding officer. It was
extremely favourable, and it stated, on the doctor’s evidence, that on
the occasion in question the sergeant was suffering from a liver attack.

While the case was being debated, the sergeant, who was carrying on
with his duties, performed a deed which in other circumstances would
certainly have won for him the Military Cross. It seemed an ideal
opportunity for applying the Act, though, in point of fact, it had not
then been passed by the House of Commons. The sergeant, who had been
degraded, was restored to his rank, and the conviction wiped off his
record.

Another case of an even more remarkable nature in which the Act was
applied was that of a man who escaped from custody after sentence
of death passed on him for desertion had been confirmed by the
Commander-in-Chief. By some means or other the man contrived to get
wounded after his escape, and was in this way passed through the
hospitals to England, where he spent a delightful week posing as
a wounded “hero” back from the front. When he was discharged from
hospital he calmly returned to his regimental depot, and was in due
course sent back to France with a draft to his old battalion. The
sergeant who received the draft promptly recognized the offender,
and, speechless with stupefaction, marched him off under guard to
the lock-up while the case was sent up to the A.G. Department for a
decision.

The case was unique in the annals of the Department. Fortunately for
the scapegrace, the authorities handling it were men of the world,
and the decision they reached was both wise and merciful. It was
argued that a man who would not let even a sentence of death deter
him from returning to the front is the kind of man we want in the
firing-line--what the army in the field would call “a stout feller.”
Accordingly the death sentence was commuted, and the scamp returned to
the trenches with a long term of imprisonment suspended, like the sword
of Damocles, over his head as an added inducement to valour.

The Provost Marshal, most feared of officers, with his acolytes, the
Assistant Provost Marshals, commonly known as the A.P.M.’s, attached
to the different armies and corps, is under this branch of the A.G.
Department.

The A.P.M. is the instrument of military law. His mission is to look
after discipline. Multifarious and difficult are his duties. He must
be drastic as Draco, tactful as Talleyrand, astute as Sherlock Holmes.
He is the pass “wallah.” He is the authority who at all times and
places has the indisputable right to demand your papers and to inquire
all about you. If a private or two get drunk in a village, it is the
A.P.M. who must find out where and how they get their liquor despite
the stringent army prohibition, and place the offending _estaminet_
out of bounds. The A.P.M. must know the civilians who are respectable
citizens in our zone of operations and those who are not.

Frequently his duties bring him into collision with the fair sex. Since
immemorial times the courtesan has proved an invaluable instrument of
espionage, and the advent of ladies of the roving eye in the towns
of our zone is but one of the hundreds of topics which engage the
attention of the A.P.M.

Pity the A.P.M.! He _must_ be rather truculent in manner in order to
assert his authority, for it is his duty to scent the spy in everyone
whose business in the war zone is not instantly apparent. But hear
him when papers and passes have been produced in impeccable order:
“You know I have to do this. It’s my job. You don’t mind my troubling
you--what?” The presence of civilians in the zone of our army is a
valuable shelter to spies, and one must therefore be grateful to
the unremitting labours of the A.P.M.’s, however inconvenient their
activity may be at times.

“During the march of the Allies to the Meuse,” writes Captain Maycock
in his admirable treatise on Marlborough’s campaigns, “every
possible provision had been made for the comfort of the men, while
the discipline of the troops, and the fact that all supplies were
scrupulously paid for, astonished the inhabitants of the countries
through which they passed.”

This high standard, established by Cadogan, Marlborough’s famous
Quartermaster-General, on the Danube and in Flanders, has been
splendidly maintained--nay, surpassed--by his successors in this
war. The supply services of the army have been above all praise.
Whether the Q.M.G. was dealing with the four divisions of the original
Expeditionary Force or with the great army into which that little body
ultimately expanded, the supply service reached the same high level
of efficiency. Whether in the summer heat of the retreat from Mons or
in the icy chill of the winter in the trenches, the hardships of war
have been consistently allayed for our troops by the abundance and
regularity of their supplies.

The Quartermaster-General Department furnishes the army in the field
with everything, including arms and ammunition, which are provided
through the Ordnance Services, but are carried up to the front in the
motor-lorries of the Mechanical Transport of the Army Service Corps,
which is under the Q.M.G. Everything, from bully-beef and biscuits to
fly-papers, from plum-and-apple jam to chloride of lime, is supplied by
the Q.M.G.

[Illustration:

  _“Daily Mail” phot._

OUR TROOPS AND THEIR DAILY BREAD. A SCENE AT A BASE.]

The Q.M.G. works in close co-operation with the Inspector-General
of Communications (I.G.C.), who controls the Lines of
Communication--familiarly known as L. of C.--supervises the unloading
of supplies at the base and their transfer to trains bound for
the railheads at the front, “railhead” being the railway station or
siding allotted to the division as its collecting-point on the line.
At the railhead the Q.M.G. steps in again and sees to the collection
of the supplies by the motor-lorries attached to each division, which
take the supplies to the refilling-points, where the horse-carts of
the different battalions are waiting to carry them right into the
firing-line.

The Q.M.G. has to look after the motor and horse transport of the army.
Through his Director of Transport he has to find the army in motor-cars
and motor-lorries, with spare parts and petrol and tyres and enormous
garages, where the havoc wrought by the rough Flanders roads can be
repaired by expert mechanics; in motor-cycles for the despatch-riders
of the Signalling Corps; in carts for the horse-transport. Through his
Director of Remounts he has to provide the army with its horses and
mules.

He is the army postman, controlling, through his Director of Postal
Services, an admirable organization which keeps the men in the trenches
in touch with home, even though their home be Alberta or Fiji, by means
of postal deliveries as regular as those in England. He looks after
requisitioning and billeting. In short, his activities are innumerable,
and after months spent with the army in the field, I still come across
traces of his usefulness in new directions. In an army which is always
“grousing”--for grumbling has ever been the habit of the soldier--the
comparative immunity from criticism of the Army Service Corps, chief
handmaiden to the Q.M.G., is probably the highest compliment that can
be paid to the efficiency of that hard-worked department.

The organization of our army in the field is so admirable, its
departmentalization so fascinating, so simple, that the temptation
lies very near me to devote this chapter to a survey in detail of
the diverse services whose direction is centred at G.H.Q. Efficient
organization has a strange fascination for the lay mind, as witness the
transformation which a few months of soldiering effects in your young
civilian. He will bombard you with technical terms; he will pepper you
with alphabetical abbreviations; he will, in short, so demolish you
with his salvoes of “shop” that your mind in the process is reduced to
the state of a trench after the “artillery preparation” is over, and
the guns are “lifting” to make way for the infantry attack.

But I want to tell you of the life, of the soul of the army in the
field. Your sons and husbands and brothers and cousins will fill in the
details of the vast network of services which I have sketched above.
While I have been talking (and boring you doubtless) of A.G.’s and
A.P.M.’s and Q.M.G.’s, there are the sentries standing at the entrances
to the nameless little French town, where G.H.Q. is established,
waiting to inspect the impeccable credentials with which I can furnish
you, and then to pass you on, with a brisk salute, into as strange a
scene as you will see in the world to-day.

For this sleepy little French town, with its inevitable _Grand’
Place_--a spacious cobbled square--its narrow streets mostly named
after local politicians and other notabilities, its neglected-looking
cathedral and churches, its garish little shops, is a kind of museum
of uniforms. Never was such a variety of military caps seen together
before: many variations of the “brass-hat” of the Staff Officer, from
a hideous kind of Sandford-and-Merton pattern with a swollen crown,
which some of the arbiters of fashions have imported from Piccadilly,
to the faded red and tarnished gold of the Brigade Major from the
trenches; the forage-cap of the Royal Flying Corps, the Glengarry and
Kilmarnock bonnet, the _képi_ with its khaki cover--badge of the French
interpreter--the slouch hat of the Gurkha, the puggaree of the Indian
Cavalry, the common or garden service-cap of Mr. Thomas Atkins.

Then the boots and leggings! What a multiple variety! Immaculate
field-boots of the A.D.C., boned and blocked and polished daily by
enthusiastic “batmen” until you can see yourself in their resplendent
surface; “pig-dealers,” the grey, close-fitting, canvas leggings
affected by the “horsy”; Stohwassers of every make and kind; puttees,
brown, grey, and blue; ski boots; canvas field-boots; “ammunition
boots,” clean or mud-caked and sodden according as the wearer’s duties
take him near or away from the firing-line.

The _bureaux_ of notaries, of insurance agents, of exporters and
importers, have been turned into offices for the army services.
Officers with such alphabetical titles as I have mentioned above stride
with a preoccupied air in and out of old houses whose dilapidated
fronts and faded rooms breathe an atmosphere of fatigue that contrasts
strangely with the bustle within.

Here in a room that might have come out of an illustration of Du
Maurier in _Punch_ of the seventies an officers’ mess is installed.
Tins of cigarettes and tobacco stand on the mantelpiece, the _Sketch_
and the _Vie Parisienne_ lie about the tables, maps hang on the
walls, in the depressing atmosphere created by an abundance of
rubbed and dusty plush, of cheap brass ornaments, of soul-searing
chromo-lithographs, of dyed grasses crammed into vases as big as
drainpipes. Perhaps the word _mess_ conjures up for you a picture of
regimental plate, of shaded lights, of red-and-gold uniforms. Banish it
from your mind! “Cut it out!”

Meals at G.H.Q. have only one excuse--viz., that man must eat. They
are short and business-like, and the fare is plain. In this stern,
hard-working North of France they have none of the amenities of French
life. The wine is imported, and bad and dear at that; the cooking is
atrocious; and as for cleanliness, I have dined in my time at many
a humble eating-house in London where the food was served in a far
more appetizing manner than I have seen it in the hotels in this part
of France. Soup produced from soup squares, fish (on Wednesdays and
Fridays, fish-market days) or macaroni, then roast beef or mutton
(ration meat, and mostly very tough), followed by tinned fruit and
coffee, is the average _menu_ of the messes at G.H.Q. Immediately after
dinner everybody bolts back to his work.

During the greater part of the day everything is in movement at G.H.Q.
Except for the orderlies waiting for messages outside the offices, and
officers here or there talking in the street, everyone seems to be
moving. Cars come chug-chugging up the narrow streets, waved in and
out by military policemen posted at the dangerous corners, with little
coloured flags affixed to the bonnet signifying the formation to which
they are attached. There are French cars, adventurous-looking cars,
some of them, heavily coated with the mud of Arras or the Argonne,
or maybe even the Vosges, bearing mysterious numbers and letters on
their wind-screens. They stand there in the sunshine while their
drivers, begoggled and leather-coated, chat with a French interpreter
or two, with a friendly town policeman, or a uniformed messenger from
the Banque de France. In the group there will surely be a British
A.S.C. driver or two surveying the Allied car with that silent mien of
unspoken criticism which is the attitude of the chauffeur the world
over towards a car other than his own.

Clean, well-set-up fellows are the sentries in the town furnished by
the famous Territorial regiment incorporated in the G.H.Q. troops. The
trim General with the blue arm-band you will often see walking about
the town commands the G.H.Q. troops, and, as far as the British Army
is concerned, represents law and order in the town. The Territorial
regiment concerned has a drum-and-fife band that gives concerts twice
daily on the _Grand’ Place_, to the huge delight of the populace. It
also organises smoking-concerts of its own, at which a fine array of
talent is forthcoming. The pianist at entertainments of all sorts
organized by our army in the field within a wide radius of G.H.Q. is a
private of this battalion, a musician of no mean order.

If you want an idea of the medley of mankind that swarms at G.H.Q.,
come in here to the Fortnum and Mason’s of the place. At all hours
of the day the shop is full of officers and men, mess presidents and
orderlies, ordering biscuits and liqueur and wine and tinned fruits and
cake and macaroni and sardines and Heaven knows what. The trim young
ladies who serve know us all by our units, if not by our names. You
may hear them rating the patient and ox-like _garçon_, a stolid man
of fifty or thereabouts. “_Eh bien! le whisky pour l’Intelligence? Où
est-ce? Vous ne voyez pas que le Capitaine attend les conserves pour
les Indiens? Voyons, dépêchez-vous!_”

One afternoon in the shop I met a Guardsman of my acquaintance,
_liaison_ officer with a French army. “The beggars won’t let me pay my
mess-bill,” he protested, “so I am getting something in the way of a
contribution to the mess. What do you think of asparagus?” And he went
off presently to his car with a huge bundle of _asperges d’Argenteuil_
under each arm.

There is no social life whatsoever at G.H.Q. For one thing, many of the
leading inhabitants have left the war-zone, and gone to live in Paris
or elsewhere; for another, the army in the field is far too busy for
calling and dining. There are no amusements. There is a theatre, but it
is empty. There is not even a cinematograph show. There are sing-songs
arranged by one or other of the different services from time to time,
and one of the A.S.C. convoys has a “rag-time band,” with mouth-organs
and combs and tin cans by way of instruments, which is said to be
very successful. But the fact is that no one has the time to organize
amusements for the army. For G.H.Q. is the hub of the army, the
power-house that supplies the driving-force to our army in the field.

Our army has established the most cordial relations with the French
inhabitants of G.H.Q. The town must be truly thankful for the British
occupation, for, on the testimony of the Mayor, the towns-people have
made more money since the English arrived than they ever made in their
lives. The English influence is very clearly seen in the shops. There
are no less than three shops, for instance, doing a thriving trade
in all the appurtenances of English games--badminton sets, tennis
rackets and balls, cricket bats and balls and stumps, and so on. Bass’s
beer, Quaker Oats, all kinds of sauces and pickles, Perrier water,
English cakes and biscuits, and, of course, English jam, are in the
shop-windows, and are largely advertised through the town. Notices
in English are displayed on all sides. “Watches Carefully Mended,”
“Top-Hole Coffee and Chocolat” (_sic_), “Manufacturer of Brushes and
Brooms,” “Washing Done for the Military,” are some of the notices I
have remarked. At dinner-time hordes of ragamuffins invade the one or
two hotels and cafés with the English newspapers which have just come
up, having arrived by the morning boat. In parenthesis I might remark
that, in addition to the copies of the London dailies given to the
troops free as part of their rations, enterprising newsagents have
established themselves in all the principal towns in the zone of our
army, and send out newsboys with the papers as soon as they arrive
to all the troops billeted in the neighbourhood. In this way I have
seen the _Daily Mail_ sold on a road less than five miles from the
firing-line, with the guns rumbling noisily in the distance.




CHAPTER VIII

THE CHIEF

 “May the great God Whom I worship grant to my country, and for the
 benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory; and
 may no misconduct in any way tarnish it; and may humanity after
 victory be the predominant feature of the British fleet. For myself,
 individually, I commit my life to Him Who made me, and may His
 blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my country faithfully.
 To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to
 defend.

  “Amen, Amen, Amen.”

  (_Nelson’s Prayer. A copy hangs in the workroom of the
  Commander-in-Chief at General Headquarters in France._)


You might spend a couple of days in the little town where the
headquarters of our army in the field is established without
becoming aware of the presence of the Commander-in-Chief. The
departmentalization of a modern army is so complete, the duties are so
widely delegated, the responsibilities so extensively divided, that an
officer, even of the higher grades, may serve for months with the army
in the field and never come into personal contact with its supreme head.

This is a state of things which arises directly out of the conditions
of modern war. The direct personal influence of military leaders on
their troops is no longer possible owing to the vast scale on which
modern wars are conducted. In former times the General directed the
battle from a hill-top which afforded him a commanding view of the
operations as they unfolded themselves beneath his eyes. To-day,
the General also looks down on the battle from a height, but only
metaphorically speaking.

Field-Marshal Oyama playing croquet during the Battle of Mukden, the
General in “Ole Luke Oie’s” brilliant sketch who fought and worsted
a trout in a pleasant garden whilst hundreds of men went to their
death--these are but the symbols of a state of mental detachment which
is essential in the modern General called upon to handle vast masses
of troops operating on a gigantic scale. To keep his mind clear and
unembarrassed by a host of details, to retain his mental freshness
against the moment when a supreme decision, or maybe a series of
supreme decisions, has to be taken, the modern Commander-in-Chief must
delegate much more of his powers than formerly, must relinquish a great
measure of his direct personal influence on his men.

The influence of the great modern General will always be indirect
rather than direct. Comparatively few of the German troops fighting on
the Western front had ever set eyes on Field-Marshal von Hindenburg,
save in pictures, yet, when the rumour ran in the spring that he was
coming to assume the supreme command in Flanders, the men in the
trenches set up notices on the parapets announcing to the _Engländer_
that Hindenburg was coming, and that the Germans would be in Calais in
a week.

[Illustration:

  _“Daily Mail” phot._

“THE CHIEF.”]

The influence of Sir John French on the British Army in France is
as a strong leaven leavening the whole mass. The conditions of life
of an army in the field, a great host of men working to the same
end, the monotony of existence undisturbed by sex antagonism, united
by the risk of death common to all, make men as sensitive to the
transmission of influences as African tribes are to the transmission
of news. In the field a strong character will make itself felt in
a week. Imperceptibly, the men will begin to lean on qualities of
determination, courage, intuition. All these are attributes of Sir John
French, and they are, I believe, responsible, in quite an astonishing
degree, for the splendid tenacity, the unshakable optimism, of the
British Army in France.

Within his power, Sir John French has always sought to keep in personal
contact with the men in the firing-line. More than once, on the retreat
from Mons, the Commander-in-Chief might have been seen to leave his
car and sit down beside the exhausted troops resting by the roadside,
so tired that they did not care whether the whole German Army was in
the next field. He would remain there on the dusty grass, and tell the
men that it was only so many miles to the next halt for the night, and
spur them on to fresh efforts by his generous praise of the splendid
endurance they had shown up to then. In a little he would have them
on their feet again, foot-sore and weary as they were, ready to face
the world, if needs be, to win a pat on the shoulder, a word of
appreciation, from “Sir John.”

But the British Army in France has grown immeasurably since those
days when four divisions was England’s entire contribution to the war
on land. With the army of Mons, the Commander-in-Chief might yet hope
to be the John French of South Africa, where the cavalry hailed the
trim little man on the white horse as the harbinger of stern, swift
blows against the Boer, as the incorporation of dash, decision, and
resourcefulness. But with the great citizen army of to-day, in which
he counts divisions where before he counted battalions, the British
Generalissimo could not hope to keep in personal touch in the same
degree as was possible with the cavalry in South Africa or with the
little Expeditionary Force of August, 1914.

Nevertheless, Sir John French has never failed in this war to visit
formations that have distinguished themselves, and to express to them
personally his appreciation of their good work. I remember, after the
second battle of Ypres, receiving word that the Commander-in-Chief
would inspect some brigades of cavalry that had held our line round
Ypres on May 13, when the Germans made their last and most violent
attempt to burst through to the sea. It was a fine, warm morning in
June, a regular Aldershot review day, though, Heaven knows! there was
little enough of the red and gold of Cæsar’s Camp or Laffan’s Plain
about the squadrons in their war-worn khaki drawn up in a square in a
meadow by a country road. The Commander of the Cavalry Corps was there,
and the Divisional General and the Brigadiers, and just in front,
beside a fine, broad Union Jack fluttering from a flagstaff planted
on a farm-cart, Sir John French, exquisitely neat, as usual, in his
trim khaki, with four rows of medal-ribbons, and immaculate brown
field-boots, and a cane that he swung as he talked.

The men stood easy, Lifeguards and Hussars and Dragoons, dismounted as
they had been at Ypres, their eyes on the soldierly figure before them,
their thoughts, I wager, away among the poppies and the cornflowers
of the salient where in their graves dead comrades smiled in their
last sleep at the recollection of the good fight well fought. The
Commander-in-Chief indulged in no rhetorics. He, like the plain man he
is, likes plain speaking. So he stood up there against the farm-cart,
and talked to the men in a clear, soldierly voice, and as he spoke, lo!
it was not the Commander-in-Chief addressing his troops, but just John
French of the 19th talking to his cavalry, that cavalry he loved and
made his life-work. There were no tears, no elegiacs, but heartening
words of praise for good service stoutly rendered. There was, indeed,
such perfect frankness in much of what the Field-Marshal said that I
remember the blue pencil of the Censor cut furrows in the report of it
I sent to my newspaper in London.

As soon as a new body of troops arrives in France, whether Territorials
or Colonials or New Army, you may be sure that, before very long, the
Rolls Royce, flying the Union Jack from the roof--the only car that
may fly the old flag in France--will appear outside their billets,
and the Commander-in-Chief will descend to see for himself what the
new material is like. One has only to glance at his despatches to see
that he never fails to pay a tribute to good qualities in new troops
out from home. Real soldier that he is, he always has a keen eye to
the general appearance of the men, knowing that the best soldiers are
the men who, even in the rigour of winter in the trenches, managed to
preserve a cleanly appearance, and who, right up in the firing-line,
are as punctilious about saluting as they would be in barracks at home.
The Brigade of Guards, who always pride themselves upon their personal
neatness, set a fine example to the army in this respect, and earned
the approval of every good soldier.

Sir John French has had many residences since he came to France in
August. Châteaux, farms, colleges, or other public buildings, and the
villas or town-houses of such local notabilities as the Mayor, the
lawyer, or the doctor, have afforded him hospitality from the battle
of Mons and the subsequent retreat down to the stalemate of the war of
positions which brought our General Headquarters to anchor for a spell.
But no matter where the Commander-in-Chief has lived, though his house
were French, its atmosphere has always been wholly and essentially
English. Thus, at G.H.Q. in the little town of which I wrote in my
last chapter, though the large and stately rooms and rather florid
furniture, the pictures and statuary of the house in which he lives are
_bourgeois_ of the _bourgeois_, they are powerless to dissipate the
pleasant family air of the place, the atmosphere of an English country
seat in the shires.

It is a restful place. Though it shelters the brain of the army, there
is no rush or flurry, even when heavy fighting is toward. Deep thinking
and hard work are going on day and night between the four walls of
this plain, unpretentious house; but, save for the whirr of a telephone
now and then, or the arrival of a Staff car or a cyclist, only the
sentries at the gateway betoken the presence of the Commander-in-Chief.

You enter from the street under one of those arched entries, known as a
_porte cochère_, found in all French towns. A small door, with panels
of frosted glass on the left of the entrance, gives access to the hall,
where the first thing to meet the eye is a pyramid of parcels, gifts
from home for the Field-Marshal and his troops, mostly from unknown
admirers. By every post these presents pour in, vivid testimony of the
loving solicitude wherewith the folks at home hang on the life of the
army in the field. Every imaginable kind of gift is there--Bibles,
Books of Common Prayer, blessed medals and rosaries, charms of all
sorts, “woollies” galore, socks and waistcoats and comforters and mitts.

One day even Russia sent her tribute of admiration in the shape of a
little ikon of the far-famed Madonna of Kazan, before whose bejewelled
image in the Kazan Cathedral at Petrograd thousands of suppliants kneel
daily in silent prayer for the safe return of their loved ones from the
war. Truly there is a great sameness about certain aspects of the war
on both sides. I remember reading an amusing appeal by Field-Marshal
von Hindenburg to the correspondent of the _Neue Freie Presse_, my old
friend, Dr. Paul Goldmann, begging him to tell people he did not want
any more mitts or remedies against rheumatism and chilblains.

A small room to the right of the hall is the A.D.C.’s (Aide-de-Camp’s)
room, where one of the four A.D.C.’s to the Commander-in-Chief is
always present. He is known as the A.D.C. on duty. He remains in this
room all day in attendance on the Commander-in-Chief, receiving and
transmitting messages, answering the telephone on the desk at his
elbow, dealing with applications for interviews with “The Chief,” as he
is called by his Staff, and receiving visitors. A huge map of the whole
zone of the British Army in France hangs on the wall, and portraits of
Sir John French and some of his Generals, cut from French and English
illustrated papers, have been nailed up.

In the corner is a white door marked “PRIVATE”. When a bell whirrs the
A.D.C. disappears through this door. It leads to the workroom of the
Commander-in-Chief.

A perfectly plain room, spacious and lofty, with large windows, from
its white walls and massive marble mantelpiece and large mirror
obviously the drawing-room of the house in other days, the big maps
hung all round the walls and spread over the very large plain deal
table, lend it an essentially business-like air. On the mantelpiece a
handsome Empire clock and some candelabra are the sole ornaments in the
room.

There is also a little illuminated card, headed “Nelson’s Prayer,”
that finely inspired supplication for victory which they found in the
great Admiral’s cabin on board his famous flagship after he received
his mortal wound. I have placed this beautiful prayer at the head of
this chapter, because its plain, direct appeal, its confidence, and its
dignity seem to me to be characteristic of the man on whom once again
the hopes of the whole British race are fixed. That little English
prayer is the only visible link between Sir John French and home in his
workroom in France.

The Commander-in-Chief spends the greater part of the day in this
room. It is a place of hard work, of deep concentration, of lightning
decisions on which hang the lives of thousands of men. You will find
him there at all hours, dapper, fresh, as young as the youngest of
his Staff, eternally giving the lie to his white hair and moustache.
It is in this room that most of his despatches are written, those
models of precise English that, without rhodomontade, false pathos, or
exaggeration, set forth their plain tale of glory to make the Empire
ring.

Sir John French always writes his own despatches. His warm words of
praise, his frank words of criticism, are absolutely the expression of
his own thoughts. When he has a despatch to write he will shut himself
up in this reposeful room for hours at a time, neglecting his meals,
working far into the night, until the last word is written and his name
affixed:

  “Your Lordship’s most obedient servant,

  “J. D. P. FRENCH,

  “_Field Marshal, Commanding-in-Chief,
  British Army in the Field._”


In an army of hard workers, in the centre of the hive of industry
that is G.H.Q., no man works harder than “The Chief.” Breakfast at
the Commander-in-Chief’s is from 7.45 to 8.30, but long before that
time Sir John French is at his table studying the reports which have
arrived from the different armies during the night, and are awaiting
his perusal when he comes down in the morning. Half-past eight finds
Sir John at his place at the head of the breakfast-table, with a cheery
greeting for everyone there.

At a fixed hour there takes place the daily conference between the
Commander-in-Chief and the different heads of the services at G.H.Q.
The Generals arrive singly or in pairs from their offices, a portfolio
under their arm--the Adjutant-General, the Quartermaster-General, the
Chief of the General Staff, the Chief of Intelligence. For an hour or
more they are closeted singly or together with “The Chief.” Operations
past or future are discussed, the whole situation along our front
reviewed, guns, men, supplies, the enemy’s situation, and his probable
plans.

The distribution of the rest of the day depends largely on the
situation at the front. Once a movement has started and is progressing
favourably, a Commander-in-Chief’s work is done for the time. Broadly
speaking, it is the Commander-in-Chief who conceives the strategy of an
operation, it is the Chief of the General Staff who works it out, while
its tactical execution lies in the hands of the General commanding the
army to which the operation is confided. He in turn leaves the carrying
out of more detailed operations to the Corps Commander, who delegates
part of the yet more detailed execution to the Divisional General, and
he in his turn relinquishes the details of the work of the battalions
on the ground to the brigade and battalion commanders.

Visits to the different army commanders in the field, the inspection
of troops who have come out of action, of reinforcements, of new guns
or appliances in the war of the trenches, interviews with visitors at
G.H.Q., French Generals, British _liaison_ officers with the French
Army, or distinguished visitors from England, fill in the remainder
of Sir John French’s day. The arrival in the afternoon of the King’s
Messenger from London with despatches from the War Office and the
morning newspapers absorbs the rest of the time until dinner, and often
makes the Commander-in-Chief late for this meal, which, by his express
orders, is never delayed for him.

Sir John French presides over his small household at G.H.Q. in a
benevolent and paternal manner. All the members of his Personal Staff
are old friends of his, and were with the Field-Marshal in South
Africa. He calls them all by their Christian names, and each vies with
the other in his devoted loyalty to “The Chief.”

The genial, courtly presence of the man pervades his whole environment.
Is the situation ever so desperate, the fighting never so severe, there
is no fuss or flurry at the Commander-in-Chief’s. Even during the
retreat from Mons, when Headquarters was frequently moved, when for
days at a time neither the Commander-in-Chief nor his Staff got even a
few hours of unbroken rest, Sir John diffused about him the same calm
atmosphere. He would not allow the overwhelming responsibility resting
on his shoulders to overcloud the existence of the others. At meals
he was cheery and debonair as usual, guiding the conversation into
pleasant English channels, and illuminating it with many anecdotes and
witty sayings which his great and retentive memory has stored up from
an exceptionally busy life and wide and varied reading.

More than once he astonished his Staff, at a critical moment, by
announcing that he would go for a walk. Picking up his old riding-crop,
he would stroll forth with one of the A.D.C.’s and walk for an hour
through the country lanes, stopping to admire the view, or to criticize
a horse, or to look at the crops. But on his return he would go
straight to his maps again, and then like a flash he would announce
his decision. “I will do this and that!” And they would realize that
whilst he had strolled and chatted his mind had been wrestling with the
military problem that had obsessed them all.

Dinner is a pleasant meal at the Commander-in-Chief’s. Often there is a
distinguished visitor from London present, a member of the Cabinet who
has come out to get a glimpse for himself of conditions at the front,
a leading scientific authority despatched on some mission or other,
distinguished ecclesiastics like the Bishop of London or the Archbishop
of Westminster. For many months the Prince of Wales, as A.D.C. to the
Commander-in-Chief, dined nightly at Sir John’s table, a very charming,
extremely natural young officer, who was simply addressed as “Prince,”
and who was best pleased when no notice whatsoever was taken of his
exalted rank. There is never any formality about precedence at the
Commander-in-Chief’s, save that the guest of the evening sits on the
right of the Field-Marshal.

[Illustration: UNDER THE EYE OF “THE CHIEF.” TROOPS MARCHING PAST SIR
JOHN FRENCH AT THE FRONT.]

Sir John French presides at his dinner-table with delightful urbanity.
Books and battlefields have been the study of his life. He has, I
believe, read all the histories of the campaigns of the world’s great
Generals, from Julius Cæsar’s _Commentaries_ down to Ropes’s _History
of the American Civil War_, and the text-books on the Franco-Prussian
War, especially the German. But he does not believe in reading alone.
He is fond of quoting a saying of Lord Wolseley’s: “A soldier ought to
read little and think much.” In accordance with this maxim, Sir John
French has not only read but assimilated, and he has done a great deal
of both.

But the military authors have not alone engaged his attention. He is a
profound admirer of Dickens, and he can find suitable quotations and
similes from Dickens for the most varied situations of life. He is not
a great talker. He only speaks when he has something to say. But that
is always to the point, and often refreshingly original.

The Commander-in-Chief is a profound student of humanity. That is why
he admires Dickens. That is why he loves the British soldier, with his
whimsicalities and his contradictory ways. He knows the British soldier
as well as Lord Roberts knew him, and that is saying a great deal. He
understands the British soldier’s pride in his work, and therefore he
always gives credit where credit is due. When the Suffolks under his
command in South Africa walked into a hornets’ nest at Grassy Hill, Sir
John French took the first opportunity that presented itself--it was
not until several months later that he met them again--to tell them
they were not to blame for what happened.

“It has come to my knowledge,” he said to them, “that there has been
spread about an idea that that event cast discredit of some sort upon
this gallant regiment. I want you to banish any such thoughts from
your mind as utterly untrue.... You must remember that, if we always
waited for an opportunity of certain success, we should do nothing at
all, and in war, fighting a brave enemy, it is absolutely impossible
to be sure of success. All we can do is to try our very best to
secure success--and that you did on the occasion I am speaking of.”
When the 2nd Worcesters saved the day at the first battle of Ypres by
recapturing Gheluvelt at the bayonet-point, the Commander-in-Chief made
every possible inquiry to find out the name of the officer who had
ordered the charge. The name of the officer remained for a long time
a regimental secret, but Sir John French gave the gallant Worcesters
a very fine “mention” all to themselves in his despatch on the Ypres
fighting. It was not until months later that it was definitely
established that the author of the celebrated order was that most
gallant soldier the late Brigadier-General C. Fitzclarence, V.C., who
was afterwards killed in action.

Thus, though Sir John French must fain deprive himself of the privilege
he would be the first to want to enjoy, of seeing his troops actually
at grips with the Germans, he is not simply a distant name, a figure
on an Olympic height, to the men in the trenches. He is a pillar of
strength, a man that soldiers trust, who voices to the great public
beyond this little zone of war the deeds that have won a soldier’s
approbation, or who gives vent in carefully chosen words to the
soldier’s execration of the cynical treachery of the enemy. The bond
uniting the Commander-in-Chief with the men in the field is not to be
analyzed, for it is intangible. But it is nevertheless a very real tie
of mutual esteem, trust, and affection.

Yet the army which in the fulness of time Sir John French has been
called upon to command is no longer the army of South Africa, a
small, highly trained band of professional soldiers whom the Germans,
on first meeting with them at Mons, dubbed in despair “an army of
non-commissioned officers.” Since the days of the Civil War it is the
first national army that England has ever had, and the England that has
put it in the field is the greater England of the twentieth century,
the British Empire, whose pioneers sprang from that selfsame doughty
stock that did not fear to lay hands on the Lord’s Anointed if thereby
liberty might live.

The army has flung wide its portals to the civilian. All barriers of
caste or wealth are broken down. The officer is no longer a member of
a small military oligarchy, nor the soldier the tough old professional
fighter of whom Kipling delighted to write. Mulvaney, Learoyd, and
Ortheris have not vanished from the army. But they have vanished as
average types. If they had escaped the destiny of so many of the
magnificent fighters of our original Expeditionary Force, which was the
quintessence of our standing army--six feet of earth in Flanders or a
long visit to Germany--the three friends of Kipling’s tales would have
passed out of their former sphere of action. The incorrigible Mulvaney,
maybe, might yet be a sergeant, the backbone of his platoon, putting
the new-comers, officers and men alike, up to all the dodges of the
trenches. But the other two would surely be officers, with suspiciously
new Sam Browne belts, a little uncertain of their social position, but
treated with all the more deference for that by their fellow-officers.

Socially it is a topsy-turvy army. Learoyd is brigade machine-gun
officer with the Military Cross, and has already learned the proper
degree of nonchalance in returning the salutes of men who, in civilian
life, maybe, themselves were wont to command, who perhaps even shared
in that incomprehensible English prejudice against the military which
refused the red-coat a seat in the stalls of a London theatre or a
drink in the saloon bar of a public-house. “When I went to see the
old people in Yorkshire in my uniform for the first time,” a fine
old soldier of my acquaintance, a sergeant of the Coldstreams with
twenty-two years’ service, told me once, “my father said: ‘I never
thought boy of mine would disgrace the family by going for a soldier.
Get out of here, and never darken my doors again until you have taken
that red coat off!’”

_Nous avons changé tout ça!_ The last shall be first and the first last
in this citizen army of ours. I know of a peer of the realm, an Earl
who is the head of one of the oldest families in the British Isles, who
is serving as orderly in a clearing hospital at the front. When last
seen he was whitewashing and whistling a little tune as he worked,
the bearer of one of our greatest names at the beck and call of the
humblest medical student with a commission in the R.A.M.C., but, like
the latter, filling his niche in the service of the State.

Could one imagine a more difficult task, amongst all the manifold
problems which have confronted us in this war, than the expansion
of the framework of our little Expeditionary Force to embrace these
hundreds of thousands of men, from England, Scotland, Wales, and
Ireland, from India and Canada, from South Africa and Australia, from
Fiji and the West Indies, with their varying ideas of personal liberty
and discipline? That this task has been successfully accomplished
is due, for one thing, to the fact that every man in our army is an
apostle, bearing within him a message of liberty to the world, ready to
subordinate every personal feeling to the end of victory; for another,
to the astonishing adaptability of our race, which has enabled Lord
Kitchener to stamp an army from the earth, and Sir John French and his
Generals to breathe into it the spirit of our great military past.

If you took a small haberdasher in a London suburb and suddenly
increased his modest establishment until it reached the dimensions of
William Whiteley’s or of Harrod’s, would you blame the man if, even
with unlimited resources, he showed himself incapable of achieving
the same relative measure of success as he had attained with his
little shop? You know that you would not. You would rather blame the
lack of organization that had suddenly thrust enormously increased
responsibilities on a man who, had the process been gradual, might have
adapted himself to the growing dimensions of his business. Yet this is
what the country has thrust upon Sir John French. He, a General, like
all save the Balkan and Turkish Generals, without any experience of
modern European war, has been called upon to meet in unequal combat the
finest military brains that the application of forty years can produce,
with a sword that has constantly changed its weight and balance and
length and sharpness.

He has sustained the ordeal. His adaptability of temperament and
breadth of outlook, for which all Britons may thank God, has enabled
him to cope with an army ten times the size of the little force which
he originally led out to France, and to surround himself with Generals
who have shown themselves able to handle divisions where before they
were dealing with battalions. Not only have the numbers of our army
increased; the quality of our men has changed. The sturdy fighters
of Mons and the Marne have been reinforced by Territorials who are,
generally speaking, of a higher stamp of intelligence, and accordingly
endowed with the good and bad fighting qualities which the more trained
intellect bestows, and the men of the New Army, in which all types
and classes of Briton are found side by side in the ranks. Not only
has the question of the right leading of these new formations proved
all-important, the problem of their assimilation into the existing
organization was one requiring tact and a fine appreciation of the
_Imponderabilia_ of the situation. That it has been successfully solved
History, when it comes to review the world-shaking events of our days,
beside which man seems but the puniest of pygmies, cannot fail to
count to the merit of Sir John French.

To our citizen army, then, Sir John French is more than a
Commander-in-Chief. He is a national leader, the man to whom it is
given to direct that fount of ardent patriotism which has inspired
Britons, wherever the Union Jack flies, to lay down their work and
follow the drum. No man is more conscious of the responsibility resting
on his shoulders than Sir John French. No man is more profoundly
convinced of the justice of our cause. No man could appreciate more
gratefully the immense confidence which the nation has reposed in him
by entrusting to his care the greatest army that the British Empire has
ever put in the field.




CHAPTER IX

INTO THE FIRING-LINE


I never come upon the firing-line without a sense of surprise. Upon
eye and imagination alike it breaks with a sudden shock. You emerge
from a long communication trench, driven right through all obstacles,
now across a deserted highway with a vista of grass-grown cobbles
stretching away on either hand; now straight through the vitals of
a stricken farm, where the head is on a level with a floor littered
with rubbish, discarded equipment, rags, or empty ration-tins; through
the silent _basse cour_ with its empty chicken-run, its deserted
pigeon-coop, its barns gaunt and blasted, its forlorn carts and rusting
machinery; through cornfields waist-high in a self-sown crop gay with
poppies and cornflowers.

Up these trenches, you may reflect as you trudge along with what one
might call a rabbit’s-eye view on either side, reliefs and rations go
up at dark, long files of silent men plodding through the summer night
with the frogs croaking in the marshes and the night-jars creaking in
the trees. Down these trenches come the men who have done their spell
of duty in the firing-line, muddy and unshaven and laden with all kinds
of personal belongings from a month-old copy of the _Sketch_ to a
German cooking-pot, silently delighted at the prospect of a few days’
respite from trench mortars and “whizz-bangs” and bullets and vermin.
Here, when fighting is toward, there is a crush in the Strand on a
Saturday night. In one direction go the men bearing boxes of bombs and
ammunition swiftly forward to the firing-line, squeezing themselves
back against the muddy walls on the cry of “Gangway there!” to let
orderlies with messages past; in the other direction the wounded,
roughly bandaged, make their painful way back to the regimental
aid-post or field ambulance. The shells come crashing over in and
around the trench, and the bullets from the front line snap and whinny
and whistle in the air as though to proclaim to all men still alive
that their mission is not yet accomplished. But a little rain, and
these trenches become first quagmires of mud, the sticky whitish clay
of Flanders, of which our men speak with horror, or the browner soil
of France, then stagnant ponds, knee or even waist deep, in which men,
walking alone and struck down by shell or bullet, have been known to
drown before help could reach them.

But sombre thoughts have no place in the communication trenches.
The men you meet, passing up and down, are smiling. The Adjutant,
descending with mud-covered boots and puttees, his stout broomstick in
his hand, from his morning walk round his battalion’s section of the
line, gives you a cheery “Good-day!” after the etiquette of officers
when they meet out here. A working party, laden with spades and saws
and beams, who are marching in Indian file ahead of you, are joking
as they plod. One of them has a mouth-organ, and is softly playing a
little music-hall jingle as he walks:

  “I’d like to be, I’d like to be,
  I’d like to be right home in Dixie....”

As, with a whistling “whoosh,” a shell comes over from the deep blue
sky ahead, the music stops, the party stops, and the men, turning with
a common movement, crane their heads out of the trench to see where
the shell has fallen. Boom! ... the report comes back, and a cloud of
dense black smoke eddies out above a clump of trees. “My word!” says
the sergeant, “the brigade’s catching it to-day and no mistake!” Then
the party trudges on again down the trench, while the crickets chirp
noisily in the corn, and the musician resumes his little tune:

  “I’d like to be, I’d like to be,
  I’d like to be right home in Dixie....”

Cheery and confident like all our men, they heed neither the menace
of death which those whistling shells convey nor the grim signs that
meet them on their way of the harvest the Reaper has gathered in those
peaceful cornfields. Here the trench passes a little burial-ground in
an orchard, lying between an old farm-house and its deep broad moat,
the branches of the apple and pear trees leaning down until they
seem to caress with their gnarled fingers the little white crosses
of the graves. Now the trench stops by a sunken ditch, where a faint
and horrible odour speaks of fallen Germans buried in the slime. The
men cross the ditch by its little bridge with exaggerated sounds
expressive of disgust, with a joke, in which horror has no place.
“_Heute Dir, morgen mir_” is the philosophy of the trenches, and a
laughing philosophy it is.

Some day a poet shall sing the song of the communication trench, when
peace has come back to the land and the long grasses, springing up,
have smothered the narrow way that once upon a time led up to the
fiery ordeal of battle. He shall tell of the men who dug the trench
by night, toiling in the silver radiance of the moon among the eerie
shadows flitting in and out of ruined hamlets and deserted farms. He
shall conjure up the hard, black silhouette of the group, standing out
against the light of the German star-shells soaring skyward with a
hissing screech, making the countryside as bright as day.

His verse shall carry in its swing the dull thud of pick and shovel on
the soft ground blending with the hurried gasping of the machine-guns
and the crack of the rifles in the firing-line. He shall sing of the
men who have trodden the marshy bottom of the trench going gladly forth
into battle--of those who went up and came down, of those who went up
and were presently laid to rest in that earth to which, by the Heavenly
Will, all men must return. And for the brave smiles and calm resolution
those narrow ditches have seen, my poet shall sing of them, not as a
place of horror, not as the ante-chamber of death, but as the strait
path that leads to glory.

Imperceptibly the winding course of the communication trench brings
you nearer to noises of which you are aware without seeking to fathom
their meaning. There are sounds like those produced by running a stick
along an iron railing, there are individual, crisp noises like the
smack of a mass of butter on a marble slab, vague echoes in the air
like the rustling of gigantic wings, and here and there explosions, now
loud and insistent and close and terrifying, now distant and muffled
like the bark of an old dog. Then, as you realize with a flash that
these are the sounds of war, and begin to distinguish between the
rap-rap of the machine-gun, the hard crepitation of the rifle-bullet,
and the dull boom of a shell, you find you are in the firing-line.

What the eye focusses is merely a scene of some disorder, where the
communication trench debouches into the open and fades away opposite
a line of sandbags. Here is all the bustle of the bivouac, soldiers
grouped about fires on which pots are simmering, others polishing
accoutrements, “cleaning up,” writing letters. But the eye does not
take in this picture. It is looking farther afield to where, on a low
platform behind a neat row of sandbags, the sentries are standing
immobile beside their rifles. Their bandoliers are strapped across
them, their bayonets are fixed. Their backs are turned to you. They
look forward with an air of strained attention. They are the look-out
men in the fire-trench.

Piles of sandbags and a great deal of timber-work, timber flooring, and
timber supports, as neat and prosaic as a street excavation in London,
is what the eye sees. But my first view of that line of men standing
on guard at the parapet stimulated my imagination more than any other
picture I have seen in this war; for I realized that these quiet
figures behind their stout rampart are the bulwark of our civilization,
an infinitesimal fraction of the line which the Allies have flung from
the Channel to the Alps.

  “Our world has passed away,
  In wantonness o’erthrown.
  There is nothing left to-day
  But steel and fire and stone.”

Here, in the firing-line, one stands on the ruins of that world of
ours, in Kipling’s fine symbolism, that passed away at the menace of
the Hun. The little strip of parapet before us, like all the rest of
the line winding its way from the sands of Nieuport to the frontier of
Switzerland, is the boundary-line between civilization and barbarism,
the bourne which marks the frontier between idealism and materialism.

Beyond the parapet is broken ground, utterly uninteresting, utterly
prosaic, for all that it is the realm of death. Immediately in front
of the trench is barbed wire, new and taut and cleanly grey, fastened
in a perplexing criss-cross work to lines of stout wooden posts driven
deep in the ground; beyond that a stretch of flat field, of corn or
grass or stubble, with a ditch here and a tree there, and maybe a pile
of blackened bricks that once was a farm. Between corn and grass and
stubble the earth has been turned up in places--you may see it brown
or white beneath its cloak of scarlet poppies or azure cornflowers. An
irregular cluster of posts from which hang jagged fragments of barbed
wire, a whitish line in the ground marking an old trench, something
like an old grey coat lying humped up on the grass or a pair of
boots thrust out from a hole in the ground, which, if you have seen
a battlefield before, you know to be unburied corpses--all these are
relics of former fighting.

This sordid patch of ravaged fields is the theatre of war. These
crumbling ditches and broken posts, these obliterated farmsteads,
these lamentable dead, and, always opposite, the long, low line of
sandbags marking the German trenches, make up the setting of so many
great dramas in our history of to-day. On this scene our young men gaze
as they take a final look about them before plunging forward to the
assault that is to lead them to their death. In these surroundings are
performed those great deeds of gallantry which stir our race to the
core. Whether you are in Flanders or the Argonne, in flat or undulating
country, the space between the lines is always the same. It is as dead
as the castle of _la Belle au Bois dormant_, the only truly neutral
ground in Europe to-day.

An extraordinarily untidy-looking jumble of multi-coloured sandbags,
white and blue and green and stripey (like the ticking of a mattress),
marks the German line.

You will be disposed to think that the German trenches must be
ill-constructed until you have seen our line from the outside. Then you
will understand that, under the weight of the parapet and the influence
of the wet, sandbags get squeezed out of their regular line, many
besides being constantly ripped open by the bullets plunging through
their canvas into the mud within with a sharp smack.

The German trench-line looks old and untidy and weather-beaten. The
only neat thing about it are the dark grey steel plates let in at
intervals all along the line. These are the plates with a loophole that
may be opened or shut for firing purposes.

The trench-line is finite. Here England, the Empire, ends. Up to the
line, by grace of the A.S.C., you may live your life as an Englishman,
eat your bully beef and drink your dixie of tea, receive your two posts
a day and your newspaper, and enjoy the safety of the strong iron ring
which the Grand Fleet has thrown about our vast possessions. Beyond
the line the _Polizei-Staat_ very soon begins. Behind the parapet
across the intervening space framed in the little loophole of our
firing-plate everything is _feldgrau_. As regular and universal as the
drab grey uniform of the German hordes is the mentality of that people
moving like one man to the wires pulled in Berlin--wires that stretch
from the ugly yellow building of the _Grosser General Stab_, by the
Koenigsplatz, to this narrow ditch in Flanders.

It is overwhelming, this first glance into the enemy’s country. Spires
and towers, mine-shafts and chimney-stacks, are as fingers beckoning
to the Allies, pointing to them the path of duty and honour. A forest
of tall factory chimneys, seen cold and smokeless in the blue of the
horizon, mark where Lille waits feverishly the hour of her deliverance.
From all parts of our line I have gazed long into the zone of the
German Army, from the banks of the Yser Canal in the north, down to the
heart of the Artois country in the south, and woven for myself mental
pictures of the life of the Germans in the field, with only a hundred
yards or so separating them from our lines, nearer than most of them
have ever been to England or, please God, ever will be. Did ever, in
the whole course of history, a hundred yards bridge a gulf so vast as
that existing here--between individual liberty and chivalry and mutual
forbearance, on the one hand, and, on the other, a police-controlled
mentality, a blind adoration of brute force, and a cynical disregard of
the teachings of Christ?

With the combatants on both sides securely hidden from view deep in the
ground, there is little opportunity in this siege warfare of seeing
the daily life of the German at the front. A French General who had
been in the field since last October jubilantly informed a friend of
mine one day this summer that he had that morning seen a German for
the first time. I may therefore, I presume, esteem myself fortunate to
have seen quite a number of Germans in their lines in the course of my
journeyings up and down the front.

I shall never forget the first German I saw. It is true that he was not
in the German lines, but in the British military hospital installed in
the Trianon Palace Hotel at Versailles. It was in September, and the
army was on the Aisne. This German was lying in a tent in the beautiful
garden of the hotel abutting on the park of Versailles. He was dying of
gangrene, and his condition made it impossible to keep him indoors in a
ward with the other wounded. His bed had therefore been moved into this
tent--a large, airy place. With him there was another gangrene victim,
a British soldier.

It was a grim and poignant meeting. A civilian doctor, who was with
me, whispered, directly he saw the man and breathed the air of that
tent, that the case was hopeless. The German was a thick-set, bearded
Landsturm man, nearing the fifties. His face was very bronzed, and
looked almost black beside the whiteness of his pillow. He was fiercely
and bitterly hostile, and his eyes, already dulling with the shadow of
approaching death, blazed for a moment with unconcealed enmity as he
looked at the Englishman by his bedside.

I spoke to him in German. He never took his eyes off my face as he
heard again the familiar sounds of his mother-tongue. I asked him his
name. He told me. I have forgotten it, but I remember he said he was
a farmer from near Hanover. His voice was very, very weak, and the
intonation was indescribably sad. I asked him how he felt. “_Es geht
mit mir zu Ende!_” (I am all but finished), he replied slowly.

I asked him if he was in need of anything. He shook his big brown head,
and answered: “_Man ist sehr gut zu mir_” (They are very good to me).

Had he relatives? I asked. Could I write to anybody for him? “_Ich habe
niemand_,” came the reply in his sad voice.

A widower, all his children dead, this old German had left his farm on
being mobilized, and had gone all through Belgium with the German Army
until they had abandoned him, wounded, on the retreat from the Marne.
When I left him, with a phrase about keeping a good heart, for he would
soon be well (how senseless it must have sounded to that man who for
days had seen the Black Angel hovering at his bedside!), he shook
his head, and said: “_Ich glaub’ es nicht!_” I never saw him again
or learnt his fate, for I left Paris that same afternoon. But I have
often thought since then of the peaceful life of that humble Hanoverian
farmer sacrificed to the insensate arrogance of the neurasthenic who
wears the purple of the Hohenzollerns.

Apart from prisoners, the first German I encountered at the front in
this war was in the space between the lines. His work for “_Kaiser und
Reich_” was done. With hundreds of his fellows he lay stiff and stark
in the moonlight before our trenches at Neuve Chapelle. He looked like
a waxen image as he lay on his back in the grass, in his grey uniform
all splashed with mud, his helmet, clotted with blood (I have it as a
memento of that night), still on his head, his rifle with its rusting
bayonet grasped in one hand flung wide. All around him lay his comrades
as the machine-guns of the Indians had mowed them down. By the light of
the flares I could see the grass dotted with these sprawling figures,
so inert and limp that one would have said it was a group in a wax-work
show rather than an actual picture of war.

I have looked down on the villages of Messines and Wytschaete, built
upon the slope of the ridge that bears their names, where the Germans
dwell in desolate cities and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which
are ready to become heaps. I have seen the smoke of their _Mittagessen_
rising into the air from the cellars and dug-outs in which they live by
day, and once I caught a glimpse of a figure, grey against a red wall,
slipping in and out of the ruins.

Looking out over the German lines with a telescope one day, my Ross
focussed suddenly and surprisingly a portly German, a little forage cap
on his head, absorbed in the preparation of something in a little pot.
Presently he dipped down and disappeared, but almost the next moment
two other grey figures came bobbing along down the trench. They were
out of range of our rifles, and, with ammunition a luxury, not worth
wasting a shell on.

More than once I have watched Germans at work behind their lines. One
summer afternoon, in particular, I had a regular surfeit of Germans.
First a cart appeared, slowly descending a field. As I followed it
with my glass until it stopped, my eye caught two diminutive figures
digging. In another part of my field of vision I saw two German
officers out riding, the one on a bay, the other on a white horse.
They galloped across a field, then walked their horses, to cool them,
alongside the fringe of a belt of black forest. They were engaged in
animated conversation, and as I watched I wondered what their feelings
would have been had they known that two artillery officers at my side
were discussing whether it was worth while putting a shell over at
them. The verdict was against a shot, so the two officers continued
their ride undisturbed.

There is nothing more thrilling than to watch the discovery and
shelling of a working party by our guns. I was present one day when a
detachment of Germans were made out digging on a road behind a screen
of trees. I saw four of them myself quite distinctly, working busily
in their white shirts, their tunics discarded. A few brief directions
about angle and direction and shell went over the telephone to the
battery behind us. Then I glued my eye to the glass and waited.

The four men worked on. I could see the flash of their shirt-sleeves
behind the trees. One man had a loose sleeve which kept coming
unrolled, and which he kept rolling up again. A loud explosion ... a
rushing noise ... the telephone orderly’s voice, “First gun fired,
sir!” ... three more explosions, and three more shells cleaving
the air, and, almost simultaneously, as it seemed, a pear-shaped
ball of white smoke, then another and another and another ... four
detonations--boom! bum-bum-bum! Between the appearance of the first
white pear-drop and the second there was a flash of white cloth between
the trees ... then all was quiet. And presently I heard the telephone
orderly slowly dictating a report to the Brigade ... “dispersed a
German working-party on the ---- road.”

The men love to get these glimpses of the Germans. When the line is
quiet, and the messages, “Nothing to report,” accumulate in piles on
the table in the Operations Section of the General Staff, sniping is a
welcome break in the monotony of trench life. I was in the trenches of
the Leinster Regiment one day and presently found myself in an outpost
established in the ruins of a farm which was only some 15 yards from
the enemy. As it was not desired that the Germans should know the farm
was occupied, the men in the outpost had strict injunctions that they
were not to fire except in case of an attack. The men squatting in a
narrow trench--to have raised oneself to one’s full height would have
meant instant death--showed me the German trench a stone’s-throw away
in a periscope. “’Tis a pity we mayn’t shoot now,” they whispered to
me. “D’ye see that bit of tree beyond there? Sure, the Allemans is
always potterin’ about there. There’s a fine big fellow with great
whiskers on him comes out of that sometimes. Faith! you couldn’t miss
him!” They spoke with such regret that I almost laughed.

The Leinsters had given all the German snipers names. One, believed to
be established in a tree, was known as Peter Weber, another was Hans,
another Fritz. One of the Leinsters, an excellent marksman, spent the
whole of his spare time sniping. He had his little corner, and when
he came back he used to regale his friends with fabulous stories of
old Germans with long white beards that he had seen. He had “got”
an officer the morning of the day I was in those trenches, and the
“frightfulness,” which always follows after a sniper’s bullet has found
its billet, went on with great regularity all through the afternoon in
the shape of half-hourly salvoes of whizz-bangs.

The sniper’s job is no sinecure. Both sides are always engaged in
trying to locate snipers, and once a sniper’s nest is discovered, a
few rounds with a machine-gun will generally bring him down, however
well concealed he may be. A sniper never knows but that an enemy
marksman has found him out, and is waiting, finger on trigger, for the
slightest movement on his quarry’s part to pick him off.

Sniping is an integral part of trench warfare. The Germans attach
so much importance to it that they have not hesitated to issue
expensive telescopic-sight rifles to their picked marksmen. They keep
machine-guns and clamped rifles trained on certain spots, and a man
always ready to open fire immediately a movement becomes visible over
a certain measured space with a good background. A certain amount of
wastage from sniping is inevitable. The trench lines wind so much that
it is not always possible to make trenches secure from every angle of
fire. We have to buy our experience, and I have passed in our trenches
many a newly heightened parapet or freshly constructed traverse, the
price of which was a man’s life.

As far as sniping is concerned, I believe that the British soldier
holds the mastery. In our Regular army, the private cannot reach the
maximum of pay until he has passed as a first-class shot, with the
result that almost all our Regulars are fair marksmen, and some are
very fine shots indeed. Of the Territorials, probably the London
battalions contain the best riflemen. There are some very good snipers
among the Indians and also the Canadians, as both possess in their
ranks a good percentage of hunters.

[Illustration: IN A GERMAN TRENCH.

One soldier watches the periscope and the other attends to the
telephone.]

I have been in several German trenches, and they were all well
constructed. The Germans are the beavers of trench warfare. They
were quick to recognize the rôle that heavy artillery was destined
to play in deciding the fortunes of the war of positions. Their aim
has therefore been to construct dug-outs, proof, if possible, even
against hits with high-explosive shells, in which their men can take
shelter during an artillery bombardment, and emerge, when the guns lift
and the infantry assault, to defend the trench with machine-guns, many
of which are made to sink at will into specially constructed cement
shelters.

The Germans work with antlike industry. Thus, in the eight days that
elapsed between the loss of the trenches round and about the château of
Hooge, on the Ypres-Menin road, on July 30, and their recapture by our
infantry on August 9, they constructed an amazing network of trenches
and dug-outs. The vast mine-crater (caused by the mine we exploded here
on July 19 when we reoccupied it) resembled an amphitheatre with its
tiers of bomb proof shelters scooped out of the crumbling sides of the
chasm, and shored up with tree-trunks. The dug-outs in the trenches
took a diagonal plunge downwards, were most solidly constructed, and
afforded accommodation for four or five men at a time. They were,
like all German dug-outs, quite comfortably furnished with beds and
furniture from the abandoned cottages in the vicinity.

There are known to be trenches in the German lines which are lit by
electric light from Lille, but I have not seen any of these. Apropos of
the Lille electric-light supply, it is a fact that for many weeks after
the Germans had occupied Lille, Armentières, the important industrial
centre which is in our lines and which received its electric current
from Lille, only five miles or so away, continued to draw its electric
power as before. The joke was too good to last, and one day without
warning the current was cut off. It is believed that a spy revealed
to the Germans the fact that they were lighting the operations of the
Allies.

What has struck me particularly about the German trenches I have been
in is the extraordinary collection of objects of all kinds that the
men have accumulated there. The German soldier resembles the magpie
in his pilfering and hoarding habits. Psychologists must explain the
mental state of a man who will go into action with articles of ladies’
underwear in his haversack, or who will take ladies’ boots, a feather
boa, or a plush-covered photograph-album with him into the trenches.
Their predilection for looting ladies’ _lingerie_ gave rise to a legend
which in its numerous versions resembles the story of the Russians or
the Bowmen of Mons. This story, which was generally current after Neuve
Chapelle, was to the effect that the infantry on entering the village
had found some girls, half demented with fright, hiding in a cellar.
The theory was that they had been carried off by the German troops for
their own base uses.

When going round the battalions collecting material for the story of
Neuve Chapelle which I was writing--it was the first newspaper message
of the kind to be written from the British front in France in this
war--I came upon this tale of the women of Neuve Chapelle in every
imaginable form. Now the victims were peasant women, now they were
beautifully dressed _demimondaines_ from Lille, or, again, they were
little more than children. Finally I reached the Rifle Brigade, the
regiment that was first to enter the village, and heard the truth.
In one of the cellars in which some German officers had been living a
quantity of ladies’ undergarments were found. The sight of these lying
on the ground outside the cellar apparently gave rise to a story that
was firmly believed at the time right through the army.

I saw these German trenches at Neuve Chapelle within ten days of the
battle. They showed many grim traces of the fighting in the shape of
dismembered bodies, blood-stained parts of uniform, and discarded
equipment. I must say I was surprised to find that the trenches were
extremely filthy. The straw in the dug-outs was old and malodorous,
and must have been crawling with vermin. I believe that the plague
of lice from which everybody in the trenches, be he never so cleanly
in his personal habit, suffers more or less, was introduced by the
German soldiers who had been brought from Poland, notoriously the most
vermin-ridden country in the world. There were an extraordinary number
of letters, documents, books, and newspapers scattered about. In some
places the flooring of the trench disappeared under the litter. Our
Intelligence must have spent weeks in going over this material. Such
labours are well expended, however. Has not Von der Goltz himself, in
his book on War, told us of the value of such captures of letters and
documents to the Intelligence branch of the army?

The _Volkscharakter_, as the Germans say, finds very definite
expression in the trenches constructed by the Germans, the French, and
the British. I do not propose to make comparisons, which are always
invidious, and which, moreover, might involve me in paths where I
should find the blue pencil of the Censor blocking my passage. The
German, with his craze for organization and his love of bodily ease,
builds a solid trench, admirably suited, one must admit, to the
purposes of this war. But I am one of those who contend that there is
such a thing as over-organization, and I am inclined to believe that
the German, with all his elaborations of trench warfare, his cemented
trenches, his “super-barbed-wire,” his iron-doored ammunition stores,
overlades his organization with detail.

The exquisite neatness of the French mind shows itself clearly in
the perfect orderliness of the French trenches, with tidily bricked
flooring, the sides lined with plaited branches or rabbit netting.
The French trenches contain the largest dug-outs to be found on this
front--deep subterranean caves, tremendously solid in construction,
with sometimes as many as three or four layers of massive tree-trunks
laid across the roof. I think that the perfect network of communication
and support trenches, which are always found about trench-lines
constructed by the French, denote a certain æstheticism in the French
mind.

The British trenches are the least elaborate of the trenches of the
three belligerents. Nothing that would make for efficiency in them is
sacrificed to comfort, and the striving, first and last, is to evolve a
defence work that not only affords adequate protection to the men, but
is equally well suited for an offensive as well as a defensive. Both
the Germans and the French, thanks to the universal service system,
have large stocks of workmen--navvies, carpenters, engineers, and the
like--who have been called to the colours, who, though not first-class
fighting-men, can be usefully employed in squads on trench work. We,
on the other hand, with our army recruited haphazard, must take our
resources as we find them. The pioneers, who have done magnificently
in this war, cannot be expected to do all the digging and construction
work that trench warfare demands; their efforts must be supplemented by
the soldiers themselves, some of whom, by chance, may be labourers with
their hands, many of whom, however, are not.

But we can never regard the training of our army as finished. We
started the war with the merest skeleton of an army, so that we were
compelled, even while we fought, to expand it into a great Continental
force. Therefore, it often happens that the British soldier is more
usefully employed in practising bombing, or taking a machine-gun
course, or learning to manipulate a trench mortar, than in adding
to his bodily comfort in a trench which already fulfils its primary
object--that of affording him shelter, or enabling him to beat off
an assault, and of being easy to get out of in the attack. These are
considerations which should be borne in mind when one hears invidious
comparisons between the comfort of the German trenches and the more
Spartan simplicity of ours.

Not that there are not many very comfortable dug-outs and shelters in
our trenches. I dined in the officers’ mess in some trenches in the
Ypres salient one night in a dug-out furnished with cushioned seats,
a trap in the wall with a practicable glass window through to the
“kitchen” (a fire contained between six bricks in the open behind the
trench!), where the dishes were handed through, excellent lighting in
the shape of an acetylene lamp, and, by way of table decorations, some
beautiful roses, fresh from the ruined gardens of Ypres, in 18-pounder
shell-cases. The menu was as _soigné_ as the dining-room. Here it is:

  Soup
  Pork Chops.
  Haricots Verts.
  Potatoes.
  Stewed Pears and Cream.
  Coffee.

  _Wines._
  Red Wine of the Country.
  Armentières Beer.
  Black and White Whisky.

  _Liqueurs._
  Ration Rum.
  Benedictine.
  Kümmel.

After dinner we retired to the company commander’s dug-out, which I
found to be as comfortable as the mess-room. It was sunk to one-half
below the ground level; it had a boarded floor, a brass bedstead with
a spring mattress, a wash-hand stand, a large mirror and a big settee.
Like the mess-room, it was lit by acetylene.

The Captain was musical, and it was with tears in his voice that he
related to me the tragedy of the piano. It appears that in the only
room remaining in a ruined house on one of the roads leading out of
Ypres he had located a piano, a cottage piano, sadly out of tune, it
is true, from its long exposure to the weather, but otherwise sound
in wind and limb. The Captain, a practical man, found no difficulty
in procuring a cart and some willing hands to cart the piano by night
up to his dug-out in the support trench. Everything was ready for the
transfer when disaster, in the shape of a German shell, overtook the
plan. Three German shells fell into the ruins of the house containing
the piano, and of those three shells one went into the very vitals of
the instrument. When the musical-minded Captain visited the spot, he
found house and garden strewn with pieces of piano.

You must picture the trenches as deep, rather narrow gangways, which
are much more like street excavations than anything else one can
imagine. Some are dug down in the soil, but many of them are only a
foot or two in the ground, the parapet being built up with sandbags, as
in many parts of our line, especially in Flanders, the water lies too
close to the surface to allow of deep digging. The bottom of the trench
has a wooden flooring composed of “grids,” as they are called, footways
made of short pieces of wood nailed laterally on planks placed edgeways.

A deep broad step is cut in the parapet and boarded over. It looks
like a deep window-seat. This is the “fire-stand,” where the look-out
men are posted at the loopholes to fire at the enemy. In most parts of
the line there is but little rifle-fire by day, save for sniping, as
neither side can expose its men by daylight, even for a momentary shot,
without grave risk.

Round and about the fire-stand the whole life of the soldier in the
trenches centres. While his comrade takes his turn of duty at the
parapet he sleeps on the fire-stand, or cooks his food over fires,
or cleans his rifle, or writes a letter home. Shelters, that the
men call “funk-holes”--long holes scraped out of the side of the
trench and holding two or three men--give him a dry place to sleep in
and protection from the rain. But should the funk-holes be full in
rainy weather, the soldier has his waterproof sheet, issued with his
equipment, and thus covered he will not hesitate to lie down and sleep
in the wet.

What with traverses and communication trenches and outposts, what with
second and third lines and support trenches, the firing-line is such
a winding maze that it is utterly impossible to get a comprehensive
view of it as a whole. A walk round the trenches of a single company,
which will take you a good half-hour, leaves you with a confused mass
of impressions: of rather grimy figures, looking very business-like
with their bandoliers strapped crosswise over their overcoats, their
rifles by their sides, standing at the parapet; of men in all stages of
undress, cooking, eating, washing, writing, in the narrow trench; of
faces seen white against the dark background of a dug-out, strained to
a telephone which wails fretfully with a puny whine like the toot of a
child’s trumpet; of officers in shirt-sleeves and trench boots going
their rounds or writing reports amid thousands of flies in a shelter....

You walk up a trench and down a trench, you see the angular outline of
machine-guns under their canvas covers in their emplacements, you are
shown case upon case of ammunition, bombs, and grenades, large and
small, and rocket-like cartridges which are flare-lights.

It is so unutterably strange to find all this life, this vast
preparation and organization, going forward in the open country where,
but a twelvemonth back, the peasants were gathering the harvest, to
know that it was going forward before you came, and will go forward
after you have left. With such feelings of bewilderment, I fancy, must
the traveller, in the early days of gold-mining, have come upon the
mining-camps that sprang up in a day in the midst of barren wastes, and
stood, in incredulous amazement, watching the ceaseless activity of a
great host of humans returned to the era of the troglodyte.

Neither by day nor by night are the trenches restful. Seldom a day or
a night goes by without the “whoosh” of a shell or the clumsy rush of
a trench-mortar bomb. The hollow reports of the rifles never cease.
Scarcely an afternoon passes, should the weather not be misty, but the
firmament quakes with the rapid reverberations of the anti-aircraft
guns. “Pom-pom-pom-pom-pom” is their note, sharp and unmistakable,
as they throw circles of snow-white smoke-puffs about the aeroplanes
soaring high in the sky.

The firing-line by night is restless as a storm-tossed sea. One dark
and starless night in June I climbed a commanding height which afforded
a wonderful view of a great part of our line. A thin crescent of yellow
moon hung low on the skyline. A cold east wind rustled through the
trees. Far below me in the plain a never-ceasing spout of brilliant
green-white star-shells marked the winding course of the British and
German lines.

It was an unforgettable picture. For one brief moment a desolate
ridge, broken with the jagged silhouette of ruined houses, stood out
hard and clear before my eyes, and then was blotted out as a flare
fell earthward and died. The ragged outline of a shattered belfry was
revealed for a fraction of time, black and sinister as a Doré glimpse
of Hell, and then melted away into the surrounding darkness. The soft
soughing of the wind in the trees was mingled with an incessant dull
thrumming from the plain. Now it rose in a swelling burst of sound,
from the right, from the left, from the centre, of the darkness at my
feet; now it died away into single blows that echoed noisily in their
isolation.

Sometimes the spout of star-shells ran dry, and for a minute or two all
the plain lay swathed in its pall of darkness. Then silently, swiftly,
a flare would wing its way aloft, and once more unbare the plain of
death to view.

Guns boomed now and then from the distance. Along the blurred line of
the horizon fitful bursts of light blazed up and died, like lightning
in a summer sky. Sometimes the blaze was orange, sometimes yellow, and
the air throbbed to the ear.

So the night dragged on towards the lemon dawn, with star-shells and
distant shell-bursts and the throb of musketry in the plain. With
the coming of the light the flares were seen no more, but the angry
drumming of rifles never ceased. Daybreak showed the crumbling towers
of Ypres, with the smoke of shell-bursts encircling them like a funeral
wreath, but the morning mists enshrouded the trenches in the plain.




CHAPTER X

THE COMRADESHIP OF THE TRENCHES

  “All the bright company of Heaven
    Hold him in their high comradeship,
  The Dog-Star and the Sisters Seven,
    Orion’s Belt and sworded hip ...
  Through joy and blindness he shall know,
    Not caring much to know, that still
  Nor lead nor shell shall reach him, so
    That it be not the Destined Will.”

  (_“Into Battle,” by Captain Julian Grenfell, killed in action, Ypres,
  May, 1915._)


The firing-line is the touchstone of character. It is the final
instance. There is no appeal beyond it. A man may have shown himself
at home to be the best of officers, self-possessed, self-reliant,
conscientious, thoughtful for his men; but half an hour’s
“frightfulness” at the front can undo the good impression made in
months of home training. A good sergeant will relieve an officer of a
great deal of routine in ordinary circumstances, but when the company
comes under fire the sergeant will, like the men, lean unconsciously on
the moral strength of the officer.

No man can hope to be eternally master of his nerves. Modern shell-fire
wears the nerves away. A man who would lead his platoon fearlessly into
the jaws of hell may feel himself inwardly cringing when he hears the
long high whistle of a shell, mingling with the ominous hiss that means
it is nearing the end of its journey. But if a man is what the army
calls “a good officer,” the first thought that will rise to the surface
in him when he comes under fire is, “The men.”

He will know that, almost automatically, the men are watching him to
see what he will do. Be they the toughest of veterans, and he the
greenest of “subs.,” there is always a subconscious disposition in the
soldier under fire to mould himself on the example given by an officer.
An officer who is always exhorting his men to be careful (and by this
I do not mean the officer who takes sensible measures to check the
irrepressible foolhardiness of the British soldier under fire), who
indulges in exaggerated demonstrations of horror when a shell shatters
a man to fragments at his very elbow, will “rot” the finest company.
The men will begin to think before they act, and in consequence lose
that singleness of purpose that takes the soldier straight to his
appointed goal, that makes just the difference between good and bad
troops.

The firing-line is a strange place. There are few situations in life
where a man is called upon to hold himself permanently in check. There
are emergencies in civil life where a man must subordinate his feelings
to a higher interest, but only in war is he compelled to make the
perpetual sacrifice of his feelings, to face again and again an ordeal
which perhaps never loses its terrors for him.

Do you realize the weight of responsibility resting on the shoulders of
the Regimental Officer in war? Here is a situation he is frequently
called upon to face. A shell falls right into the midst of his platoon
as he is leading his men to or from the trenches. Maybe the men are
fresh from home, and this sudden horror that cleaves its bloody path
through their ranks is their first taste of war.

There is one man in that platoon who must not lose his head. That is
the officer, boy though he be. Those raw and mangled corpses, those
groaning, whimpering men that strew the ground, may affright the rank
and file; they may make no visible impression on him. In his hands
repose the lives of a couple of hundred men. He owes them not only to
those men themselves, but to the State. He must maintain his calm,
so that the men shall come to see with him that this is but a common
incident of war; he must decide whether to put the men under cover or
to march straight on; he must collect the survivors, and form them up
again; he must, in short, take command for the moment, not only of
his own feelings, but of those of his men as well. Though a senseless
terror, which highly strung men who come under shell-fire for the first
time know all too well, creep over him, he must not show it. He must
play the veteran, though the heavens fall in.

The whole relationship between officer and man in our army is based
on incidents like these. To get the best out of his men, an officer
must show them that he does not fear to do what he demands of them.
Seldom, if ever, is a stout-hearted officer “let down.” His example
endures, even after he is gone. More than once, I am sure, the souls
of our officers, slain in battle, have paused, as they winged their
way homewards, to contemplate with pride their men, their officers
all dead, holding on in an obliterated trench, sustained in their
resolution by the lesson their dead leaders taught them.

On countless occasions in this war the teachings of the Regimental
Officer have borne fruit, even after he himself had joined the great
majority. In the assault on Neuve Chapelle in March the leading
companies of the 1st 39th Garhwalis lost all their officers in the
first ten minutes. But the brave little Nepalese hillmen never wavered.
They had seen their officers die at the head of their companies. They
remembered ... and it kept them firm. In the same historic fight the
Scottish Rifles lost all their officers save one, Lieutenant Somervail,
a Second Lieutenant of Special Reserve. But the men of this splendid
regiment, whose tradition is that there shall be no surrender, went
on behind their non-commissioned officers, despite heavy losses,
against barbed wire and machine-guns, “moulding themselves,” as their
regimental sergeant-major said to me afterwards, “on the glorious
example of their officers.” When we recaptured at Hooge on August 9
the positions we lost on July 30, a party of twenty-five men of the
2nd Durham light Infantry, under the command of Lance-Corporal Smith,
were lost in the dense smoke of battle, and held out alone in an
obliterated trench for more than twenty-four hours, without orders,
without connection with the rest of the troops, and only came away when
they saw a fresh line being dug behind the line they were holding. The
officers of this fine battalion had created in their men’s minds the
proper idea of the functions of an officer, so that, when there were no
officers left to lead, this young lance-corporal stepped forward and
“carried on” in the best traditions of the service.

In the firing-line you get down to bedrock. Character tells. The cult
is of the “stout fellow,” the “thruster.” The men will vaguely admire
the clever strategy of their Generals which enabled the soldier to sing:

  “We gave them hell
  At Neuve Chapelle.
  Here we are again!”

But their outspoken praise of any one General will always be traceable
back to qualities of personal bravery that he has displayed. If they
admire and respect Sir John French, it is because they recall him
on the South African veld, because they remember him sitting on the
roadside with them among the shells during the retreat from Mons. If
they think a world of Sir Douglas Haig, it is likewise because they
have seen him in the midst of his men on many critical occasions, not
forgetting that historic afternoon in the first battle of Ypres, when
the Commander-in-Chief and Sir Douglas Haig, waiting at Hooge, heard
the news that the Germans had broken our line, and later that the 2nd
Worcesters had saved the day. In present circumstances practically
the only Generals that come into direct contact with the men are the
Brigadiers, and I have found that the Brigadiers who are the best loved
are those who are constantly making the round of the trenches, who
show the men that they are willing to expose themselves to the same
perils as they ask the men to incur.

I have been on many a long round of trenches with the Brigadiers
through mud and water and evil smells, along roads in view of the
Germans where bullets sang and snapped, across fields where shells
were plumping, right up to the firing-line, where “whizz-bangs” were
demolishing the parapet. I have often found myself admiring the
physical endurance and the calm courage of these Brigadiers--who are
not all young men--and have read the reflection of my own thought in
the eyes of the men in the trenches who saluted as we passed.

It is in the firing-line that the relationship between officer and man,
which it has taken so many decades to build up in the British Army,
comes to full fruition. Its essence is the spirit of the playground.
I am sure that the British officer is to his men, more than anything
else, the captain of the team. The game is stern, the stakes are high,
but the spirit is the old one: “Buck up! and play the game!”

Officer and man live together in closer companionship than ever was
possible before they entered the firing-line. Their bond of mutual
confidence is sealed by a thousand recollections of dangers faced
together, of assaults side by side against the enemy, of perilous
patrols at night. The daily tragedies of the trenches unite them still
closer, drawing them together as men sleeping in the open will huddle
up for warmth.

A young Captain was in his dug-out in the trenches one day, when word
came back to him that one of his men had been sniped. He hurried out
and along the trench to the spot indicated. As he came to a traverse,
a man sprang out of a “funk-hole.” “Don’t go round there, sir,” he
said; “there’s a sniper watching that traverse. He’s just got one
of the men.” In a feeling of spontaneous sympathy the young officer
went on. As he rounded the traverse in sight of his man, who had just
expired on the floor of the trench, the sniper’s rifle cracked again,
and the officer collapsed with a bullet through the body.

There was no doctor in the trench at the time. The wounded man’s
comrades, who examined him, found that he had been shot through the
abdomen. The only chance of life was to leave him where he lay. So,
while a message was sent down for the doctor, his men built a shelter
over him in the open trench.

Food or drink are fatal in the case of grave internal wounds like this.
The wounded man was racked with thirst, but all they could do was to
moisten his lips from time to time with a damp handkerchief. The men in
his company went about their duties with set faces, for, one and all,
they loved their Captain. His servant was in despair, and watched him
in his shelter. His best friend in the regiment, the Captain of another
company, sat with him until evening, when he had to go to take his
company back into reserve.

That night the wounded man died. One who saw him laid to rest in the
little burial-ground of the battalion by a ruined farm says the grief
of his men at the graveside was poignant to witness. When the dead man
first took over the company it was slack and unruly, the worst company
in the battalion. The new man who succeeded him told me it was the
best company he had ever seen, for the spirit of the dead officer was
living in every man. Such are the relations of officer and man; such
are the little dramas that keep friendship green in our army in the
field.

The British soldier’s indifference to danger, while it is one of his
finest qualities, is often the despair of his officer. The Irish
regiments are the worst. Their recklessness is proverbial. An officer
in one of the Irish battalions--he was a “ranker,” and therefore
knew his subject--told me some amazing instances of the complete
indifference of his men to the dangers of their situation. Crossing
a railway on one occasion, in full view of the Germans, he came upon
a party of men engaged in setting up bottles along the line. To his
vigorous inquiry as to what they were doing, they disingenuously
replied that they were setting up targets to shoot at from an angle of
the trench! If the Germans had turned on a machine-gun down the line,
not one of those men would have escaped alive.

I have had more than one experience myself of the British soldier’s
indifference to danger. When I was going up to some trenches in the
Ypres salient one day, the guide, a particularly stolid-looking
private, stopped suddenly on a road and said: “Will you go by the road
or the trench, sir?” Of course, I had not the least choice, not knowing
the ground, so I asked him which was the shorter way. “The road’s a
long way the shorter,” he replied. So we went by the road. But when I
told the officers up at the mess in the trenches that I had come by
that road they stared, and asked if we had been shelled. I said we had
not. Then they told me that that particular stretch of road was one of
the most “unhealthy” spots in the neighbourhood by day.

The guide was interrogated. “Some takes the road, and some the trench,”
he said. “But don’t you know they are always shelling that road?” the
officer asked. “They do put one over now and again,” the man replied,
“but the road’s a deal shorter, sir!” “You’ll find it a short-cut to
heaven one of these days, if you go on using that road,” the officer
said, whereat the man grinned broadly.

The relationship between courage and discretion is always a difficult
thing in war. Many lives have been lost, I fear, in this war because
officers, particularly those new to the game, would not take cover
when a shell came over, lest they might appear “rattled.” In point of
fact, a man may often escape a wound, or perhaps even save his life, by
taking refuge in a dug-out or seeking refuge behind a tree or a wall,
when he hears by the diminishing speed of a shell that it is about to
burst in his neighbourhood.

A very few weeks in the field, however, makes most men fatalistic
about shell-fire--a man sees so often that life and death hang on a
fraction of a second, on a foot this way or that. Going up to trenches
one afternoon with two companions in a particularly lively part of our
line, we had to cross a little bridge over a ditch. Twenty yards from
this bridge was a dug-out in which the headquarters of the battalion I
had come to visit was situated. I had just reached the dug-out, when
I heard the slow drone of a shell. As I turned towards the direction
from which the sound came the shell burst square over the bridge we
had crossed less than a minute before, and two other shells fell close
by within a few seconds. With the utmost satisfaction, I must admit,
I dwelt on the thought that, if I had delayed for a minute to fasten
a boot-lace or to light a cigarette, I should in all probability have
been on that bridge just when those three shells burst there.

Two officers were following one another in cars through a ruined
village close behind our lines. At the end of the village they were
stopped by a military policeman, who warned them that the road was
being shelled. The officer in the leading car decided that he would
wait for the “strafing” to cease; the other, who was in a hurry,
proceeded to his destination by another route. On arriving he found a
telephone message to say that the first car had been struck square by
a shell a few minutes after he had left, and that the officer and his
chauffeur had been killed on the spot.

The rivet that holds the regimental officers together, their common
solicitude as their common pride, are the men. The officer in the
trenches is thinking continually of the men, of their safety, of their
comfort, of their health, of their behaviour under fire. Get an officer
talking about a “show,” and he will never tire of telling you how well
the men behaved, how Private This is a most “gallant feller,” and
Private That, “my best bomber,” died. “The men did d---- well,” “The
men were splendid.” How often have I heard phrases like these!

Pride in their officers, pride in their regiment, flashes out quaintly
in the men’s talk. Listen to a group of soldiers describing a fight.

“The Captain ’e says....” “Lieutenant Blank ups with his rifle
quick-like....” “The Major? ’E’s a fair nut, ’e is. First over the
parapet ’e was, and going that fast that, what with the bombs you ’ave
round you, and them you carry in a box, we couldn’t ’ardly keep up with
’im!”

This is a sergeant-major on the death of his Colonel:

“Yes, sir,” he says in his deep, slow voice, “our Colonel was hit, the
best soldier that ever commanded this battalion. He was a grand man.
‘Sergeant-major,’ he says to me, ‘sergeant-major, I’m just going up to
have a look round.’ Well, he didn’t come back. Then a man coming down,
wounded, says in a great fuss: ‘Sergeant-major, it’s something awful up
there. The Colonel’s killed,’ he says, ‘and the Adjutant, too!’ ‘You’ve
got the wind up, my man,’ I said to the chap, not believing him. ‘You
run along to the dressing-station and get your head bound up. You
haven’t any brains to spare, remember.’ But, all the same, I went up
to see for myself what was happening. It was true, sure enough. There
was the Colonel, mortal bad he was, and the Adjutant killed. Ah, he was
a grand gentleman, our Colonel! There were not many like him, sir! We
could ill spare him!”

When you have seen officers and men together in the trenches you
understand Francis Grenfell’s dying words: “Tell them I died happy. I
loved my squadron.” Those noble words are the epitome of the lifework
of the Regimental Officer.

Out of this close friendship between officer and man springs a great
spirit of _camaraderie_ between officers in the trenches. It is no
small test of character for a group of men of different stations, ages,
and dispositions to live in the closest possible association, as men
do in the trenches, for days at a time, and never to fail to display
that mutual forbearance and readiness to serve which help men over the
rough paths of life. During the months I have been at the front I have
been privileged, at different times, to see a great deal of officers
together in the trenches. I have spent nights with them in their
dug-outs; I have had various meals with them at their messes; I have
accompanied them on their rounds. What has struck me more than anything
has been the real spirit of co-operation existing between them. This
takes the form not only of the sharing of the minor comforts of life,
such as the pooling of gifts sent out from home--which was only to be
expected--but of a continual striving to help one another, to render
one another small services in their duties, to cover up, if needs be,
one another’s shortcomings, and, above all, to make things smooth for
the new man.

On the other hand, active service appears to accentuate
inter-regimental rivalry. Trenches are a great theme for criticism.
There _may_ be a battalion in our army in the field to-day that has
given a written testimony to the troops from which it has “taken over”
of the splendid condition in which the trenches were left. If there is,
I have not found it. The relieving battalion _always_ roundly abuses
its predecessor for the state of the trenches. In every trench I have
been in I have been shown with pride the improvements made by the
actual tenants: “You should have seen the state of things those bloody
fellows in the Blankshires left behind!...” I once heard the Commander
of the Second Army get in a sly dig at a brigade on parade regarding
this inevitable trench criticism. It was a very human touch in a formal
address, and evoked broad smiles from the audience, both officers and
men.

Nothing could be more charming than the atmosphere of a trench mess.
The Colonel is back at the battalion headquarters with the Adjutant,
so that the senior officer present is the Captain in command of
the company holding the particular section of trench, or at most a
Major. The rest of the company at table will consist of two or three
subalterns, the machine-gun officer, possibly the doctor, and sometimes
the Chaplain. The “Padre” is, properly speaking, attached to the Field
Ambulance, but one often meets these gallant men in the firing-line,
making their tour of the men under their charge as conscientiously as
the Captain makes his round of his trenches.

You must picture the company seated on rough benches or
ammunition-boxes (here and there one finds a chair salved from a
wrecked farm) round a makeshift table, knocked together by the
orderlies, with sheets of newspaper in lieu of a tablecloth. Most of
the food is put on the table at once--sardines in an enamel soup-plate,
cold tongue ditto, ration bread (rather mouldy if we are in an isolated
post), some kind of hot meat on an enamel dish, and enamel cups for
drinks. The conversation is sprightly, mostly of the events of the day.
The presence of the “Padre” curbs the freedom of the language to some
extent, though, Heaven knows, he, poor man, has already discovered that
the army swears terribly in Flanders. “I can stand a good deal,” a
“Padre” said to me one day, “but I draw the line firmly at some words.”

This imperturbable young man with the shaven head and the yellow
moustache, whose dinner is being continually interrupted by gruff
voices issuing from the darkness at the door of the dug-out, “Can
I speak to the Captain?” “A message for the Captain!” “About those
blankets for the men, sir ...” is responsible for the safety of this
stretch of trench and its tenants. He transacts his business through
the door of the dug-out and eats his dinner at the same time, always
tranquilly. The hole in the back of his tunic is a souvenir of a piece
of high-explosive shell in the shoulder, and the cut in the knee of
his trousers is due to the same cause. A boy with yellow hair and pink
cheeks, who is talking telescopic rifles with the doctor, is Lord of
the Hate Squad--in other words, in charge of the snipers. Only that
afternoon I had seen him, with a companion, amid bullets snapping
viciously against a ruined wall, patiently waiting for a certain
sniping Hun whose habitat was in a tree. He had not got him that day,
but the Hate Squad had their eye on the sniper, and sooner or later his
number would go up.

A burst of laughter from the other end of the table greets a story told
with infinite gusto by the machine-gun officer, a phlegmatic young man
with the ribbon of the Military Cross on his tunic. He knows German
well, and one of his amusements is to revile the Germans in their own
tongue. He is recounting some of the epithets he applies to them.

Our army in the field has managed to scrape together a whole vocabulary
of trench slang. It is a strange medley of English, French, and
German. That immortal phrase “Gott strafe England” has given to trench
slang “strafing” as a substantive, and “to straf” as a verb. As you
have probably already gathered from reading soldiers’ letters in the
newspapers, to be “strafed” is to be bombarded by the enemy--in short,
to suffer in any way at the hands of the Hun. The morning and evening
“straf” is equivalent to the morning and evening “frightfulness” or
“hate,” the liveliness with which the German guns issue in the day and
march it out at its close. The Germans apply the words “_Morgengruss_”
(morning greeting) and “_Abendsegen_” (evening benediction) to these
periodical outbursts from our side. “Hate,” used in this sense,
undoubtedly owes its origin to that amusing sketch in _Punch_, showing
a German family indulging in its “morning hate.” This clever cartoon
had an immense vogue at the front, and I have seen it frequently
hanging up on the walls of dug-outs and billets.

To be “crumped”--another expression often heard in the trenches--is
to be bombarded with heavy howitzer shells, an onomatopœic word.
To be “archied”--a Royal Flying Corps phrase--is to be shelled by
anti-aircraft guns, which are universally known as “Archibalds” or
“Archies.”

A whole vocabulary has grown up about the guns which are playing
such a rôle in this war. “Gunning” is freely used as a synonym for
“shelling”; the heavy guns are, _tout court_, “the heavies”; the
howitzers are the “hows.” There is a wild and picturesque crop of
nicknames to denote the different kinds of guns and shells. Thus, our
heaviest howitzer is known as “Grandmother” or “Grandma,” while the
next below it in size is “Mother.” A certain German long-range naval
gun, whose shells have the peculiarity of bursting before you hear them
arrive, is known as “Percy.” German high-explosive shrapnel shells
are “white hopes” or “white swans.” “Jack Johnsons,” “Black Marias,”
and “coal-boxes” are used rather indiscriminately for different kinds
of heavy shells, while “whizz-bangs,” the small 15-pounder shell
thrown by a mountain-gun, are also called “pip-squeaks.” The men
in the firing-line got so free with their nicknames for shells in
official reports at one time that a list of officially recognized and
distinctive nicknames for German shells was drawn up and issued for use
by some divisions.

From the French trench slang derives one or two expressions. “To
function” (_fonctionner_) is one. A man “functions” as liaison officer,
a trench-pump will not “function.” “_Dégommer_” is often used to denote
the action of relieving an officer of his command. It is, of course,
pure French slang, and is invariably used in this sense in the French
Army. This word has a curious derivation. It was, I believe, first
applied by the _Humanité_ in its old sledgehammer days under the late
Jean Jaures, to denote Aristide Briand, most fiercely hated of all
French Ministers because, at the outset of his career, he was in
the ranks of those revolutionary Socialists whom he had to combat so
fiercely when in office. All public men who came under the ban of the
_Humanité_ had their nicknames, and were never referred to by anything
else. Thus M. Lépine, the late Prefect of Police of Paris, was spoken
of as _le sinistre gnome_, M. Clemenceau as _Le Tigre_, and M. Briand,
after his fall from power as the result of his suppression of the
railway strike, as _Le Dégommé_--“the ungummed one,” the innuendo being
that he had clung to office until he was forcibly torn from power.

Talk at the trench mess, of course, principally turns round such trench
topics as the men and their caprices, the date of relief, leave. There
is “grousing” about the slowness of promotion, about the Mentions in
Despatches. But there is no gloom. It is an eternal wonder to me that
the officers in the trenches are so consistently cheerful. Neither
death nor danger depresses their spirits; the monotony does not make
them despondent. They do not hide the fact that they hate shell-fire,
or that they could contemplate a more agreeable existence than living
in a ditch in Flanders. Only they realize that they have a job to do,
and they do it. And they will go on doing it until their work is done.

The Germans have realized too late what they have lost by sacrificing
the respect of their enemies. Our soldiers in the trenches make no
concealment of their admiration of the efficiency and bravery of the
Germans as fighters, but as men they loathe and despise them. The
British soldier is an easy-going fellow, and the Germans, had they only
regarded the conventions of soldiering, might have prevented much of
the bitterness which this war has engendered. Even as it is, though
the anger of our men against their treacherous enemy makes them a
formidable and pitiless foe in the assault with the bayonet, they are
gentle and paternal with their prisoners.

I have actually seen the British escort giving German prisoners
cigarettes. I have read letters written by German prisoners waiting in
our lines in France to be sent with a convoy to England, dwelling on
the good treatment they were receiving, and describing how they were
given the same rations as their escort, including cigarettes, and were
being taught football by their captors. The extraordinary _agapes_ that
took place during the Christmas truce, when British and Germans, for a
few brief hours, fraternized between the lines, could not, I believe,
occur again, except possibly with the Saxons, who have behaved decently
in this war, and for whom our men have a soft corner in their hearts.
Since Christmas the hideous crime of the asphyxiating gas has drifted
in a foul miasma between us and our enemy. No man who fought in the
second battle of Ypres and saw the sufferings of the gas victims would
give his hand to a German to-day. But the psychology of the British
soldier is so enigmatic that the prophet would run grave risk of coming
to grief who ventured to predict what the British soldier will do where
his heart is concerned. Nevertheless, this much I would say--that
to-day the British soldier neither fears nor trusts the German. He
knows that, man for man, he is his superior; he looks forward to the
time when, gun for gun and shell for shell, the same will be true.

[Illustration:

  _“Daily Mail” phot._

GERMAN PRISONERS.]

With the British and German lines in places only forty yards or less
apart, there is always a certain amount of communication between
ourselves and the enemy. The Germans generally contrive to find out
which of our battalions is holding the trenches opposite, and often
greet the reliefs with the name of their regiment. When a famous
Highland battalion was going away, after a long stay in one portion
of the line, the Germans played them out of the trenches with “Mary
of Argyll,” very well rendered on the cornet. The Jocks were hugely
amused, and gave the performer a round of applause to reward his
efforts.

A large sheet of water which had formed about some shell-holes outside
the trenches of the Rifle Brigade in the winter afforded both sides a
great deal of amusement. One night a patrol found a rough wooden model
of a German submarine floating in the pond, flying a paper flag on
which were inscribed the words: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!”
The submarine was “captured,” and for the next few days several handy
fellows in the battalion of the R.B.’s holding the front line spent
all their spare time in constructing a model battleship. This was
subsequently launched at night flying a pennant with the words: “Why
don’t you come out and fight?” A night or two after our patrols found
that the pennant had been removed from the battleship, and replaced by
a flag bearing the words: “Germania rules the waves!” In the meantime
the battle of Heligoland was fought. The model was accordingly rescued
from the pond, suitably disfigured to represent a sinking ship,
“BLUECHER” painted in large letters on its side, and the flag replaced
by one bearing these words: “Has your Government told you about this
ship?” The blow told: the model disappeared, and the jest ended.

The exchange of news is very popular. I was in the front line one
afternoon when a message arrived from the division announcing the
surrender of German South-West Africa, and adding: “Perhaps the enemy
might like to know this.”

The suggestion was immediately acted upon. The news was translated into
German, “Gott strafe England!” was added to give it a proper German
ring, and when I went down the men were painting the message in white
on a large blackboard, which was going to be hoisted on the parapet
facing the German trench. The Germans attacked this part of the line
the next day, whether as the result of our message I am unable to say.

The high comradeship of our trenches is enhanced by many little
touches redolent of home. The British soldier is a homing-bird, and
he loves to perpetuate the memory of places that are dear to him
in his surroundings in the trenches. The troops in the Ploegsteert
lines--“Plug Street” of wide renown--who inaugurated the custom of
giving street names to trenches with their “Strand” and “Fleet Street”
and “Hyde Park Corner,” in reality hit upon a very practical solution
of the great difficulty of providing suitable identification for the
network of trenches which was growing up all along our lines. Now the
custom is general, and the neatly inscribed sign-boards which meet your
eyes in so many parts of the line evoke recollections of busy streets
and squares in London and provincial towns, and of gallant commanders,
some of whom have “gone west,” whose names are perpetuated in countless
“houses” and “corners” and “farms” along our line.

Since I came to France I have made it my business to visit the trenches
in almost every part of the line. There are those who say: “When you
have seen one trench, you have seen them all.” Of a truth, outwardly
there is little enough difference between them all--the same swarm of
dust-coloured figures, the same sandbags, the same timber-work, the
same mud, the same strip of No Man’s Land ahead, the same devastation
behind, the same noises echoing hollow all about. But to me each strip
of trench is another corner of the great heart of Britain, where
Britons of all stamps--the fair-haired Saxon, the darker Norman, the
Scot, the Celt, from many climes, of many races--are playing the part
in the work of Empire which is every Briton’s birthright to-day. The
bond uniting them in the steel line which the German hordes have vainly
tried to break is the companionship of the Table Round of the Empire,
the bulwark of the world’s civilization against the most formidable
menace ever launched by the powers of darkness.




CHAPTER XI

THE PRINCE OF WALES


One evening, a few years ago, I stood on the platform of the _Gare du
Nord_, and saw the arrival of the London train that was bringing the
young Prince of Wales to Paris for a stay of a few months before going
to Magdalen College, Oxford. The arrival was quite informal. There
was no red carpet, no guard of honour, only a few old friends of King
Edward, like the Marquis de Breteuil, with whom the Prince was going to
live, and M. Louis Lépine, most Parisian of police prefects. “_Comme
tout ça fait penser à son grand-père!_” one of those present said to me
as the train steamed in. “_Il aimait Paris, celui-là!_”

Because of his grandfather, Paris from the first opened her heart wide
to the young Prince, a fair-haired slip of a boy, as I saw him that day
at the _Gare du Nord_, acknowledging with just a trace of embarrassment
the cordial welcome of the friends of that other “Prince de Galles.”
The newspapers very chivalrously acceded to his wish that his movements
should be ignored, and for a few brief months the Prince of Wales
enjoyed that magic experience which everyone would give the best years
of his life to be able to taste again, the first acquaintanceship with
Paris. From the windows of the Breteuil mansion in the Avenue du Bois
he saw spring creeping into the trees of the Bois de Boulogne, while in
London winter still drearily held sway. Many a time I met him swinging
along the paths of the Bois with his tutor, the tall Mr. Hansell, or
caught a glimpse of him driving out with one of the young Breteuils.

During his stay in Paris the young Prince went to the theatre, and
visited the museums, and played tennis at the courts of the Bois
de Boulogne or the Ile de Puteaux. M. Georges Cain, Curator of the
Carnavalet Museum, and the greatest living authority on antiquarian
Paris, led him into all the historic nooks and corners; M. Lépine
took him round the Halles and the queer cabarets and lodging-houses
surrounding the markets; while with Mr. Hansell he made excursions into
the wider France--to Reims, and Amiens, and Tours, of cathedral fame;
to the château country of the Loire; to Avignon and the Palace of the
Popes; to Brest and Toulon, where M. Delcassé, another faithful friend
of _Edouard Sept_, showed him the French Navy at work.

In the months he spent amongst the French I know the Prince learnt
to love and admire France--eternal France, in President Poincaré’s
noble phrase. In a conversation which I was privileged to have with
the Prince in London before he went out to the front, he spoke with
affectionate remembrance of his days in Paris, with indignation at
the German air-raids on the city. Now, by a strange dispensation of
Providence, the Prince of Wales is in France again, but the France he
finds to-day is not the France he left a year or two ago.

He finds Paris tranquil, but sobered--_digne_, in the phrase of a
Parisian. He finds France vibrating with a passion she has not known
since the cry, “_La Patrie en danger!_” brought the tatterdemalions of
the Revolution flocking in their thousands to take service under the
_Tricouleur_. He finds in France England’s stanch and helpful Ally,
finds the _entente cordiale_ which his grandfather built up with such
infinite tact and inexhaustible patience welded into a firm alliance by
the blood of Frenchman and Briton spilled in defence of a common ideal
of liberty. When, in the fulness of time, Edward, Prince of Wales,
shall succeed, by the grace of God, to the throne of his fathers,
History shall count it a wise and far-seeing decision that sent the
Heir-Apparent into the field to play his part in those great events
which shall throw their shadow over his reign and the reign of his sons
and grandsons.

Directly the war broke out the Prince of Wales, like every other
Englishman of spirit, was burning to play his part; but the sending
of the Prince to the front was undoubtedly something in the nature of
an experiment. History and precedent were against such a course--an
argument often adduced by authorities when there is a question of
checking the ardour of youth.

Yet if there were those who doubted the wisdom of exposing the Prince
of Wales to the perils and hardships of campaigning, there was one
person thoroughly and completely convinced as to the propriety of
his going to the front. That person was the Prince himself; and to
objectors his rejoinder, eminently practical and modest, was something
to the effect that he had brothers at home if anything happened to him.

It speaks volumes for the energy of the young Prince that, although he
only joined the Grenadier Guards at the beginning of the war, he should
have rapidly passed through the necessary preliminary training, and
then have succeeded in overcoming any opposition to his dearest wish.

In the earliest days of the war the Prince was seen taking his turn on
the guard at St. James’s, and performing the ordinary routine duty of a
Guards Subaltern.

This, however, was not to last long, and soon the happy day came when
the _London Gazette_ announced the appointment of Lieutenant the Prince
of Wales, K.G., Grenadier Guards, to be A.D.C. to Field-Marshal Sir
John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in the Field; and
the Prince left for General Headquarters.

Then for a long time we heard no more of the Prince of Wales. Now and
again a soldier’s letter from the front contained a brief mention of
his doings--that the Prince had been in the trenches or had visited a
hospital--and an occasional paragraph in the French newspapers revealed
the fact that he had been in the French or Belgian lines. But it was
the Commander-in-Chief himself who first broke the silence anent the
Prince’s doings. In his despatch dealing with the battle of Neuve
Chapelle he mentioned that the Prince of Wales had acted as _liaison_
officer with the First Army during that engagement, and paid a tribute
to the zeal and quickness with which the Prince had discharged his
duties, and the deep interest he took in the comfort and general
welfare of the men. It was the Prince of Wales himself who brought that
despatch to London, and Londoners were able to see for themselves how
he had filled out and hardened during the months he had spent with the
army in the field. His eyes shone with the light of health, his face
was tanned with exposure to the rain and wind of winter and the pale
sunshine of spring in Flanders, and his whole being exuded that bodily
fitness and mental vigour which are the symptoms of a man whose heart
is in his work.

This was my impression of the Prince when I saw him in the field myself
one wet afternoon in March. It was when the Second Army, with whom
I was on that particular occasion, was carrying out a local attack
against the Germans in the northern part of our line. The valley was
heavy with mist, and reverberating with the sound of our guns carrying
out the artillery preparation, our shrapnel bursting with a gleam of
orange-coloured fire against the white haze enveloping the ridge we
were going to attack.

As I stood and watched the fascinating spectacle--I find there is
no sight which holds the attention more than the play of bursting
shells--I noticed two young officers ascending the road leading to
the point where a group of Generals and Staff Officers was posted.
The new-comers stalked up the steep path at a good pace, and as they
passed I saw that the one who was leading was the Prince of Wales. He
was in field kit, with long trousers and putties, after the manner of
the Guards, and was wearing his accoutrements strapped on over his
“British warm.” He appeared to be soaked through, and his walk through
the steamy air had made him very hot. He saluted punctiliously as
he passed the group of Generals, then took up his position with his
companion and, unstrapping his glasses, began to survey the scene that
unfolded itself in the valley.

As darkness was falling I saw him again, walking along a road where
soldiers were standing to, preparatory to marching away to take their
turn in the trenches. As the men came running out of the roadside
hovels where they had been billeted, hoisting their packs on their
backs or tugging at their strappings, they recognized the Prince, who
acknowledged their salutes with a smile. He stopped for a minute and
talked to one or two of the men, then walked on through the gathering
shadows to a neat little racing-car standing by the roadside, in which
he was going to drive himself and his companion back to G.H.Q.

For many months the Prince lived at G.H.Q. He shared quarters with
Lieutenant-Colonel S. L. Barry and Lord Claud Hamilton, and was a
member of the Commander-in-Chief’s mess. Colonel Barry, a distinguished
cavalry officer and a delightful companion, arranges the details of
the Prince’s plans at the front, and his visits to different parts of
our lines and to the French and Belgian Armies; while in Lord Claud
Hamilton, the youngest brother of the Duke of Abercorn, who won the
D.S.O. for gallantry while serving with his regiment, the Grenadier
Guards, in the trenches, the Prince has a comrade of his own age.

With that gift of easy self-effacement which our Public Schools and
’Varsity inculcate, the Prince slipped without any apparent difficulty
into his place in Sir John French’s small and intimate household at
G.H.Q. All ceremonial was waived as far as the Prince was concerned,
to his own great relief, and he was treated like any other officer of
the personal Staff. Perfectly natural as he is, the Prince has small
liking for the elaborations of Court etiquette in private life. He has
shown that, at State functions, he can acquit himself with dignity, but
excessive demonstrations of respect in private life embarrass him, for,
first and last, he is English, as English in mind and manner as he is
in appearance.

The Prince is English in his love of fresh air and hard exercise and
bodily fitness. Anything gross and unwieldy and fat and slothful is
repugnant to him. He takes a tremendous amount of exercise at the
front. He is always in training. He eats and drinks very little. He
thinks nothing of going for a run before breakfast, riding until
luncheon, then walking ten miles or so, with a three-mile run home to
finish up with. No doubt his intense mental alertness and energy, a
positively Celtic quickness of temperament, have something to do with
this love of physical exercise; but I believe it mainly springs from
pride of body, the clean and sane and English desire to be perfectly
healthy.

But the Prince of Wales is nothing of a prig or a faddist. He has
arranged his life in this healthful way of his own initiative entirely,
with a quiet decision that is rather surprising in a young man who
has the world at his feet. But then the Prince of Wales knows his
own mind, and acts, as far as he can, according to his own ideas. His
manners are charming, he is quite unaffected and absolutely unspoilt,
and he talks freely in a manner that betrays a strongly marked sense of
humour.

Of fear, I think, he knows nothing. If he had had his way, he would
be permanently in the firing-line. He has been with his Grenadiers in
the trenches. He has been under shell-fire. But the experience did not
suffice him. He wants to savour in person the perils and hardships
which so many of his friends in the army (whom he regards with
unconcealed and frankly expressed envy) are experiencing day after day.
“I want to see a shell burst really close,” he said on one occasion.
“I want to see what it is like.” Someone pointed out that a shell had
burst over the headquarters in which he had been lunching that day. “I
know,” he exclaimed quite wrathfully, “but I didn’t see it!”

When an engagement is on, as he cannot obviously be allowed to go
to the firing-line (in the Flanders flats there is no chance of a
close view of a battle with even a reasonable chance of safety from
shell-fire), he sometimes visits a casualty clearing-station, where the
wounded are being brought in. He goes round the stretchers while the
doctors are examining the wounds, and talks freely with the men about
their experiences. Many a wounded man sent down from the front has been
taken to hospital in the Prince’s own car, with the Prince himself at
the steering-wheel. Infinitely good-natured as he is, he is always
doing good turns like this to casual people he meets on the road as he
motors about between the armies in the execution of his duties.

The Prince is no shirker. Nor is he content with being given merely
nominal tasks which he could scramble through anyhow if he pleased.
Everything he does he does with all his heart, for he wants to play
his part in this war, not from ostentation or personal ambition, but
a sheer sense of duty. He follows the operations of the armies, both
the French and the British, and makes his own maps. He keeps a diary
of all he sees. If he cannot be present in person with the men in
the front line, he is with them in spirit night and day, and follows
their movements, their successes, and their mishaps, as closely as any
officer of the General Staff.

His thoughts are often with the Fleet, in which he began his career. I
believe the Prince had once hoped that he might have put to sea with
Sir John Jellicoe, as his younger brother was privileged to do. His
friends in the navy send him long letters full of the most amusing
gossip about the “shows” they have been in, about their life at sea,
about the adventures of old shipmates of the Prince. The Prince, who,
like all real naval men, will talk naval “shop” for hours without ever
being bored, devours these letters, and sometimes reads out extracts to
his friends at G.H.Q.

When he was at G.H.Q. the Prince of Wales learnt all there was to
know about the organization of the army. He visited in person all the
different services at G.H.Q., the bathing-stations behind the front,
the railheads, the ammunition-parks, the R.E. stores. He went down
the lines of communication, and saw for himself the unloading and
distribution of supplies. He inspected the hospitals at the base. He
has been to see the French Army at work. He has paid many visits to
the Belgian lines. In everything he has seen he has displayed the same
intense interest, the same absorbing thirst for information.

He has done service with his own regiment, the Grenadier Guards,
has lived with them in the trenches and in billets. If there is an
officer with the British in the field to-day who knows what the army
has accomplished, not only in the way of organized efficiency, but of
uncomplaining endurance of hardships and danger, it is the Prince of
Wales.

In the summer the Prince of Wales left G.H.Q., and was attached to the
First Army, with which he went through a regular course of training as
a Staff Officer. For some time he was on the Intelligence. Here his
work was to read through the German newspapers, and the letters and
documents taken from prisoners or the dead, and translate any passages
that appeared to furnish useful information. When I was going down
to visit a portion of our line towards the south in June, it was the
Prince of Wales, who was then serving in the Q.M.G. branch of the First
Army, who handed over our passes.

It is the fate of all writers who would describe the lives of Princes
to be exposed to the charge of sycophancy. Yet there is no life for a
plant of this growth in the perfectly natural and wholesome atmosphere
surrounding the Prince of Wales at the front. He is not playing at
soldiering. His periods of leave are few and far between. His life
must often be very monotonous by reason of the restrictions which
considerations of State must necessarily place upon his young and
ardent temperament. Nevertheless, he sticks to his work, because he
feels that his place is with our army in France. In after years, when
the land over which the young Prince will one day rule is reaping the
harvest of that peace for which our men in Flanders endured and died,
the months which Edward, Prince of Wales, spent, of his own wish, with
the army in the field will surely form another and a closer tie between
him and the Empire.




CHAPTER XII

THE GUARDS IN FLANDERS.

 “... They (the 3rd French Chasseurs) had neared the cross-road, when
 Wellingtons’s voice was heard clear above the storm, ‘Stand up,
 Guards!’ Then from the shelter of the wayside banks rose the line of
 Maitland’s brigade of Guards, four deep and fifteen hundred strong,
 which poured a withering volley into the square, and charging, swept
 them out of the combat.”

  (“The Guards at Waterloo.” From _The
  Life of Wellington_, by the Right Hon.
  Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P.)


“Tangier,” “Namur,” “Gibraltar,” “Blenheim,” “Malplaquet,” “Dettingen,”
“Talavera,” “Fuentes d’Onor,” “Waterloo,” “Alma,” “Inkerman,”
“Tel-el-Kebir,” “South Africa”--what a host of gallant memories these
battle honours of the Guards call forth, what a glorious procession of
heroic figures defiling through history amid the fire and smoke of a
hundred deathless fights! Men come and go in war. The regiment remains.
Its battle honours are the symbol of what it was, the promise of what
it will be.

No body of troops in the British Army has redeemed the promise of
its battle honours more illustriously in this war than the Guards.
Marlborough, Wellington, Raglan, who saw in their careers, each in his
turn, that the Guards were true to the promise of their colours, must
look down from the Elysian Fields in proud admiration of the way in
which the Guards in this war have once more maintained the untarnished
splendour of their name. It will be with rightful satisfaction that
the historian of the future will record how, in an unmilitary age, the
British Army proved itself not unmindful of its great traditions, but
he will be able to add that no regiments showed themselves more highly
imbued with respect for the noblest qualities of the soldier than the
Guards.

It is this same respect for soldierly attributes that is the
outstanding feature of the Guards on active service. It is not a pose.
It is not an affectation of the officers. It is not an individual whim.
It is an attitude of mind that pervades the Guards as a whole, from
their most senior officer down to the youngest drummer-boy. It is not a
creation of this war, for then surely it would have withered for lack
of fertile soil, by reason of the number of original Guardsmen who have
died. On the contrary, it is seen as strong and as virile as ever,
even in men who abandoned their civilian pursuits to take service with
the Guards. The young men of good birth who have received commissions
in the Guards after the outbreak of war, and the recruits who come
out with drafts--novices all, not only to the war, but also to the
Guards--are saturated with this manly respect for soldierly virtues.

In what do these soldierly virtues consist? First and foremost, in
courage. Courage, indeed, is their alpha and omega, for it is the
basis of all merit in the soldier. The standard that the Guards set,
the standard that they most emulate and most admire, is the courage
that recks not of danger, the courage that thinks first of the common
cause, then of the fellow-man, and of self last; the courage that
leads the forlorn hope as blithely as the storm, that is uncomplaining
in hardships and humane after victory; the courage that hides itself
beneath a bushel when the ordeal is past.

Then there is discipline. The strictest discipline on duty, a certain
friendly good-fellowship off duty--these are the relations between
officers and men of the Guards, as, of course, they are between
officers and men right through the British Army. In the field the
Guards officer is a guardian to his men. He is eternally preoccupied
with their comfort in the trenches and in the billets; he furthers
their sports and games, often out of his own pocket; he takes a
general interest in their welfare. He is debonair and democratic in
his dealings with them off duty, and they respect the familiarity
thus allowed them, and in time of need repay their leaders’ generous
solicitude by a loyalty and a devotion that are beyond all praise.

The strict attention to duty which is enforced in the Guards is shown
in the personal neatness of the men and the fine condition of their
trenches. Be the conditions never so bad, and water never so scarce,
a Guardsman in the field will always contrive to present a clean
appearance. If his uniform is stained and patched, his puttees will be
neatly tied and his boots, cumbrous though they are, will be scraped
clean of mud. The army knows that a well-turned-out battalion, clean
in appearance and punctilious about saluting, is a good fighting
battalion. It has been the ambition of the Guards to set an example to
the army in this respect.

The Guards trenches are famous all along our line. Deep, and well
made, and clean, and as safe as they can be made, they are named after
London streets familiar to the Guards on their “walkings out” on Sunday
evenings--Piccadilly and Bond Street and Edgware Road and Praed Street.
When the Guards are in their trenches they are kept scrupulously neat
and tidy; the greatest attention is paid to hygiene, with the result
that the plague of vermin and flies is probably less felt here than in
any other part of the line.

There is a fine disdain for the shirker in the Guards. The Guards
esteem it an honour to be able to fight with the Guards against the
Germans, and therefore among the men there is nothing but contemptuous
pity for the young fellow who prefers to loaf at home to earning the
proud right to say in after years: “I was with the Guards in Flanders!”
But for the Guards officer who should stay away from his battalion in
the front line for any reason whatsoever, even to do useful duties in
the rear, the officers have nothing but the most withering disdain.

It is no use arguing the question. It is no use pointing out to them
that a man who is by temperament not a fighter can render better
service to the country by serving on a Staff or doing other work behind
the fighting-line. The only reply is that “they cannot imagine how the
fellow can stay away from his battalion at a time like this.” You feel
that they are often unjust in such wholesale condemnation, but you
cannot help admiring the real Guards spirit which is reflected in this
attitude of mind.

Their spirit is one of the most jealous exclusiveness. It is apparent
in their mental attitude as well as in their dress. The Guards officers
have succeeded in investing even their prosaic service khaki with
one or two little touches that render their uniform quite distinct
from that of officers of the line. In the first place, the different
Guards regiments retain their distinctive button groupings in the
service tunics of the officers, the buttons being arranged in ones for
the Grenadier, in twos for the Coldstream, in threes for the Scots
Guards, and in fours for the Irish Guards. It is etiquette that the
buttons should be of dulled bronze, and as small and as unobtrusive as
possible. No badges are worn on the collar, and the badge on the cap is
silver and diminutive in size. Many Guards officers affect excessively
baggy breeches, cut like full golfing-knickers, and worn with puttees.
They are certainly distinctive, but they can hardly be said to be
becoming, and are liable to get sodden and heavy from the wet in the
trenches, I am told.

The Guards in the field judge life by two standards--the Guards’
standard and other men’s standard. There is nothing offensive to
the rest of the army in their carefully studied exclusiveness. They
are genuinely and generously appreciative of the undying gallantry
displayed by line regiments. They show themselves friendly and
companionable neighbours in the trenches, and stout and reliable
comrades in action. But you will find that what they are seriously
willing to concede to other regiments they will never allow to the
Guards. They have no criticism to offer if a line battalion surrenders
after a most gallant stand against overpowering odds, but if you probe
their minds you will find that they would naturally expect a Guards
battalion in similar circumstances to fight to the last man. And the
remarkable thing is that, if you examine their records in this war, you
will find that this is the standard the Guards have set and lived up to.

Indeed, the Guards’ spirit is not of this war. It is of another age.
It is as old as chivalry itself. It was to the British Guards, if
you remember, that the Frenchmen at Fontenoy said: “_Messieurs les
Anglais, tirez les premiers!_” and as far as our Guards are concerned,
a similar incident might occur in this war. You will never hear a
Guardsman disparage the German as a fighter. He thinks the German is
a bad sportsman, and, remembering Belgium and the _Lusitania_, he has
a fierce joy in fighting him. But he knows he is a brave man, for our
Guards, remember, saw the Prussian Guard advancing in parade order to
their death at Ypres in the face of a perfect tornado of shot and shell.

“They were fine, big men all,” a Guards officer who witnessed that last
desperate attempt to break our line said to me, “and they walked past
the corpses of their dead comrades choking their line of advance, and
straight into our machine-gun fire like brave men that were not afraid
to die.”

It was the spirit of the Guards in Marlborough’s day that sent the
Guardsman William Lettler across the river at Lille to cut the chains
of the drawbridge. It was the same spirit that carried the Guards
forward at Talavera with such impetuosity that a catastrophe was only
narrowly averted, that at Waterloo welded them into a solid wall of
steel. It was the Guards’ spirit that transformed the little Irishman,
Michael O’Leary, into an epic hero; that inspired the Coldstreams at
Ypres, the Scots Guards at Festubert, to fight to the last man.

This book is not a history, and I must leave the story of the Guards’
achievements in this war to an abler pen than mine. From the outset
they have been in the very thick of the fighting. At Mons we find the
famous Guards Brigade--2nd Grenadiers, 2nd and 3rd Coldstream and 1st
Irish Guards--with the Second Division, and with the First Division the
1st Coldstream and the 2nd Scots Guards. With Sir Henry Rawlinson’s
Seventh Division in Belgium--that splendidly gallant division of whose
exploits in the early days of the war we heard so little--were the 1st
Grenadiers and the 2nd Scots Guards. At Mons the Guards battalions
played their part gallantly in beating back the desperate attempt of
the Germans to overwhelm “French’s contemptible little army” with
vastly superior numbers.

No battle honour will figure more gloriously in years to come on the
colours of the four battalions of the Guards Brigade than Landrecies.
The magnificent stand which the brigade, under General Scott-Kerr,
made in this little town averted a disaster and inflicted enormous
losses on the enemy. The Germans delivered a surprise attack on the
place in the mist and darkness of the night of August 25, hoping,
by dint of tremendously superior numbers, to overwhelm the Guards
and burst through our line. The Guards hastily improvised a defence,
and throughout the night, through hours of bloody and desperate
hand-to-hand fighting in the narrow streets, held their own. At last
the Germans realized that the surprise had failed, and withdrew,
leaving their dead piled up in ramparts on the cobblestones.

With the rest of the British Army, sorely pressed and exhausted, but
not beaten, the Guards fell back from Mons. We hear of the Guards
Brigade again in the woods of Villers-Cotterets, fighting a desperate
rear-guard action, engaged at close quarters, as they love to be. Here
the Irish Guards, on active service for the first time in this war--and
right gallantly have they acquitted themselves--lost their Colonel,
Lieutenant-Colonel Morris, a man as brave as he was big.

When fortune changed, and to the stern ordeal of the retreat and the
bad news from Belgium succeeded the spirited pursuit of Von Kluck
falling back baffled from Paris, once more we find the Guards in the
centre of things. They fought in the battle of the Marne, and advanced
with the rest of the army to the Aisne. Carrying out Sir John French’s
historic order to “make good the Aisne,” the Guards Brigade had a
stiff fight at Chavonne, but managed to cross the river at this place,
after overcoming severe German resistance in the woods, by ferrying a
battalion over the stream.

In the first great struggle about Ypres in October, 1914, the
Guards--like every other British regiment engaged there, be it
said--gave of their best in the defence of our line. The 2nd Scots
Guards, holding the trenches at Kruseik, north-east of Zandvoorde,
came in for the brunt of the smashing attempt of the Germans to pierce
the line of the Seventh Division. The enemy actually managed to break
through, but the gap was closed and the bulk of the storming party
killed or made prisoner. The 2nd Scots Guards counter-attacked with
splendid dash, and the German attempt failed, but in a subsequent
vigorous assault by the enemy the gallant battalion was all but
exterminated. That was on October 25. On October 31--by Sir John
French’s own admission, the critical day of the battle--when the
Germans broke through the line of the First Division, the 1st
Coldstreams held on till the end, and were practically destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Guards Brigade, which had come into line on the previous
evening, was fighting desperately on the left of the First Division.
I have already mentioned in my chapter on Sir John French how the 2nd
Worcester Regiment, by its gallant charge at Gheluvelt, saved the
British Army on that fateful 31st of October. For a time the peril
was averted. But after a short respite from their persevering efforts
to obey the Emperor’s command to win Ypres at all costs, the Germans
attacked again on November 6, this time against the Klein Zillebeke
position, defended by the 2nd and the Guards Brigades and a French
division--the Ninth--under General Moussy.

General Scott-Kerr, who commanded the Guards Brigade at Mons, wounded
at Villers-Cotterets, relinquished the command to Brigadier-General the
Earl of Cavan, who came out from England to take up the appointment.
Lord Cavan commanded at Ypres. The achievements of the Guards Brigade
in this war will for ever be associated with his name. A short, stoutly
built little man, there is nothing particularly suggestive of the
great soldier in his personal appearance, but a few minutes’ talk with
him will show you the fine courage in his keen eyes, the tremendous
virility in his language and gestures, that bespeak the leader of men.

Cavan is the Guards’ spirit incarnate. All his admiration goes to the
fearless man. I wish I could tell you in his own words, as he told me,
the now familiar story of how Mike O’Leary of the Irish Guards won the
V.C. at Cuinchy. The General (who believes that where the Guards are
there he should also be) witnessed the incident himself. He tells how
he saw O’Leary, right ahead of his company, dash up one bank and kill
the Germans there, then dash up another and kill the Germans there,
then, going round the back, seize two Germans working a machine-gun by
the scruff of the neck, and with either hand gripping their collars
firmly, call to his comrades to relieve him of his prisoners. “A most
extraordinary fellow,” says the General. “By rights he should have been
killed a dozen times.”

Lord Cavan’s own fearlessness and complete indifference to danger
are a by-word in the army. His officers swear by him. His men adore
him, regarding him, with true Guards’ exclusiveness, as a treasured
possession, a peculiar acquisition of the Guards. More than once he has
been mentioned in despatches. This is what the Commander-in-Chief, on
the recommendation of Sir Douglas Haig, wrote of his conduct at the
first battle of Ypres: “He was conspicuous for the skill, coolness, and
courage with which he led his troops, and for the successful manner
in which he dealt with many critical situations.” Lord Cavan has no
enemies, I believe, and no one who has seen him in the field will think
that what I have written in praise of him is excessive.

A sudden German attack on November 6 drove back the troops on the left
of the Guards Brigade, which was left exposed. A splendid charge by
the Household Cavalry brought a British cavalry brigade to fill the
gap on the left of the Guards, and the next day the Guards delivered a
successful counter-attack, but could not retain the ground they had won
against the overwhelming German odds.

On November 11 the final desperate effort of the Germans to break
through to the sea, in the shape of the attack of the Prussian Guard,
failed, and the battle came to a close. The First Brigade, with which
were the 1st Coldstream and the 1st Scots Guards, with the rest of the
First Division, stemmed the tide and threw the flower of the German
Army back in confusion. The First Brigade left its commander on that
blood-stained field in the person of the gallant Brigadier-General
Fitzclarence, V.C., who, as I have told elsewhere, was the author of
the famous order to the 2nd Worcesters that saved the day at Ypres on
October 31.

The next serious fighting in which the Guards were involved was to the
south, in the wet and dreary black country opposite La Bassée. In
December the First Division was ordered up to Givenchy to relieve the
Indian Corps, which had been having a very bad time, and on December 21
the First Brigade found itself holding the trenches from Givenchy down
to the La Bassée Canal. The prompt intervention of this fine division
enabled our line, from which the Indians had been partially forced
back, to be re-established.

This ugly and sinister region from Givenchy to Cuinchy, situated on
the other side of the La Bassée Canal, was destined to be the home
of the Guards for many months, and the scene of some of their most
heroic exploits in this war. On January 24 the First Brigade, under
Brigadier-General Cecil Lowther, found itself holding the line in the
Cuinchy brick-fields opposite the famous La Bassée Railway triangle
formed by the Béthune-La Bassée line and the Lens-La Bassée line,
which joins the first in two branches. The 1st Scots Guards and the
1st Coldstreams were in the trenches. On the 25th the Germans opened
a heavy bombardment of the Guards’ trenches, which were practically
destroyed. The line was broken, and the Germans managed to secure a
footing in the brick-fields. A counter-attack, delivered with great
gallantry by the Black Watch, the Cameron Highlanders, and the King’s
Royal Rifles, succeeded in partially clearing our second line. The
First Brigade lost heavily, and was relieved during the night.

On February 1 Cavan’s Guards Brigade was holding the line through
the Cuinchy brick-fields. At half-past two in the morning the 2nd
Coldstreams were driven out of their trenches, but managed to hold out
till daylight in a position close to their old trench. A counter-attack
launched in the small hours by some of the Irish Guards and Coldstreams
was checked by the enemy’s rifle-fire.

Another counter-attack was arranged for 10.15 a.m. It was preceded by
a splendid artillery preparation--the kind of ruthless and accurate
rain of high-explosive projectiles that puts a fine heart into men
waiting to attack. Then the storming-party went forward, a grand array
of big, stalwart men in whose great hands their rifles with bayonets
fixed seemed as light and as inconsiderable as toothpicks. Captain A.
Leigh Bennett led the way at the head of fifty of the 2nd Coldstreams,
bent on “getting their own back”; following came Second-Lieutenant F.
F. Graham with thirty Irish Guards, with whom went one Michael O’Leary
in the front line, and a party of Royal Engineers with barbed wire in
rolls, and sandbags, to “organize” the trenches that might fall into
our hands.

It was a magnificent piece of work. The Guards were irresistible. They
swept like an avalanche over the lost trench, bayoneting their way.
All the ground lost was retaken, and another trench besides, while two
machine-guns and thirty-two prisoners fell into our hands. It was here
that Michael O’Leary performed his prodigious exploit.

But the achievements of the Guards were not confined to brilliance in
the open with the bayonet. They proved themselves well-disciplined,
uncomplaining, resourceful, and patient through the long winter months
in the trenches in this sordid region, which vies with the Ypres
salient as being the ugliest, wettest, and most depressing portion of
our whole line.

Neuve Chapelle saw the 1st Grenadiers and 2nd Scots Guards in line
with the Seventh Division. The latter stages of that historic fight
made great demands on the courage and tenacity of the troops engaged,
and these two famous battalions maintained their high reputation for
both. The Guards were not engaged in the second battle of Ypres. Their
services were required farther south, where the attack on the Fromelles
ridge, to support the French “push” in the Artois, was preparing. In
the operations which began on May 9, and, continuing with intervals
until the middle of June, resulted in the gain of a mile or two of
front and the capture of several hundred prisoners, all the brigades in
which the Guards are serving were concerned.

After the attack by the Seventh Division on May 15 on the German
trenches south of Richebourg l’Avoué, the greater part of a company of
the 2nd Scots Guards, including Captain Sir Frederick Fitzwygram, was
found to be missing. Presently word came down to the brigade--I think
from the Canadians, who had taken over the line here--that some Scots
Guards’ graves had been located. Would the brigade send up an officer
to investigate?

An officer was despatched. He was destined to elucidate the mystery of
the missing company. He did not find Fitzwygram, who had been wounded
and captured. But he found the dead bodies of sixty Scots Guards lying
huddled together in the open, the centre of a grim circle of some 200
German corpses, and close by two rough white crosses marking the spot
where the Canadians had laid two Scots Guards officers to rest.

The Scots Guards, who had advanced side by side with the Border
Regiment, had outdistanced their fellows. They were found dead, amid
heaps of empty cartridge cases, with their rifles still grasped in
their stiffened fingers, in the place where they had last been seen
through a drifting haze of high-explosive vapours, standing shoulder to
shoulder together under a murderous fire poured in on them from three
sides. Soaked by the rain and blackened by the sun, their bodies were
not beautiful to look upon, but monarch never had nobler lying-in-state
than those sixty Guardsmen dead on the coarse grass of the dreary
Flanders plain.

It has been my privilege to have seen a good deal of the Guards in this
war. You would scarcely recognize in these battle-stained warriors the
spruce Guardsmen of St. James’s and the Park. The first Guardsmen I met
in this war were a battalion of Irish Guards and a battalion of the
Coldstreams on an evening in May, as they were marching down a road
near Chocques towards the firing-line. Their creased caps and stained
khaki, their dull green web equipment and short brown rifles, made them
look at the first superficial glance like any other Regular troops.
But something about their stride, the way they bore themselves, their
alignment (though they were marching easy), made me look again. That
magnificent physique, that brave poise of the head, that clear, cool
look of the eye--that could only be of the Guards!

They had come a long way. It was a close, warm evening, and the roads
were a smother of choking dust. The Guards wore their caps pushed back
off their foreheads, and their tunics unbuttoned at the neck, showing a
patch of white skin where the deep tan of their faces and necks ended.
The perspiration poured off them in streams. It traced little channels
in the dust that lay thick on their sunburnt cheeks. Every now and then
a man, with a grunt, would wipe the sweat from his eyes, and in the
same motion administer that little hoist to his pack that is peculiar
to the British soldier marching with a full load.

Many a time, on German manœuvres, I have passed a regiment on the
march, like these Guardsmen, in the stifling dust of a summer day. I
have been all but choked by the sour odour which the breeze has wafted
over from the marching men, and have been only too glad to follow the
advice of the old hands to put the wind between them and me. But these
British Guardsmen, grimy and travel-stained though they were on the
outside, were clean of body, and the air about them was pure. Looking
at them closer, I saw that under the dust their haversacks were neatly
packed and fastened, their uniform well-fitting and whole, their
puttees beautifully tied. These things may seem trifles to you who
will read this in the sheltered atmosphere of England, where one man
in khaki with a gun seems as another. But they are the mark of a good
battalion, and, noting them on that dusty French road, with the guns
drumming faintly in the distance and an aeroplane droning aloft, I
knew that the trenches for which those troops were bound would be well
held.

One of the most stirring military spectacles it has ever been my
good-fortune to witness was a parade of some battalions of the Guards
before the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Kitchener, and M. Millerand, the
French Minister of War. I have seen many reviews of the Prussian
Guard before the German Emperor, both in Berlin and in Potsdam. My
eye has been fascinated by the perfect precision of the movements of
the Prussian drill, the long lines of heads thrown stiffly over at
the left shoulder at the same angle, of feet flung forward in the
_Paradeschritt_ with such mathematical exactitude that they seemed as
one movement, of white-gloved hands swinging to and fro in absolute
accord.

I have watched the rippling line of the French infantry swing past the
saluting-point at Longchamps reviews with a wiry elasticity that gave
better promise of efficiency in the field than the stiff precision of
the Prussian, and have delighted in the brilliant array of colours, the
red and blue and gold and silver against the deep green background of
the historic racecourse.

But I have never seen, and never wish to see, a more inspiring picture
than those four battalions of Guards drawn up in their drab khaki on a
heath in Flanders over against the Tricolour and the Union Jack flying
side by side. An ancient military tradition, a high purpose and perfect
physical condition, never combined to produce a more sublime spectacle
of troops than this. There was no display, no searching after cheap
effects. The Guards were there in their khaki, as they had come from
the trenches; the officers carried no swords; the colours were guarded
in churches at home. The Grenadiers and Coldstreams had their drums and
fifes; the Scots Guards their pipers, wearing the proud red tartan of
the ancient House of Stuart. The four battalions stood there in four
solid phalanxes, unbeautiful and undecorative, save when, to the crash
of the opening bars of the “Marseillaise,” three distinct ripples ran
through those serried ranks, and with a dazzling flash of steel the
Guards presented arms.

Memories of Mons and Landrecies, of Klein Zillebeke and Cuinchy and
Festubert, went shuddering by, pale shadows escaping from the prison of
the imagination, as the stalwart giants of the King’s Company of the
Grenadiers led off the march past. The drums and fifes crashed through
“The British Grenadiers” again and again and again before the serried
files of men, marching with an iron tread that fairly shook the earth,
had all gone by, and the skirling of the pipes proclaimed the approach
of the Scots Guards.

There were faces in that procession like faces on a Greek frieze,
fighters all, radiant with youth and strength and determination to
conquer or readiness to die, men who had looked Death in the eyes, and,
in that they had withstood the ordeal, had risen above man’s puny fears
of the Unknown. It was a spectacle to thrill a soldier, to inspire a
poet, to make an Englishman vibrate with pride at the thought that
these are his brothers.

The army in the field loves the Guards. It is not jealous of their
exclusiveness, for the Guards have shown in this war that they are not
content to rest upon their laurels. The army trusts the Guards, for it
knows that, when in a critical hour Wellington’s voice shall be heard
once more above the storm crying, “Stand up, Guards!” the Guards will
rise again in a solid wall of steel, as invulnerable as their phalanx
at Waterloo.




CHAPTER XIII

THE ARBITERS OF VICTORY

 “... My guns are better than the German guns ... for instance, my
 15-inch shell is equivalent to their 17-inch. The issue is now one
 between Krupp’s and Birmingham.”

  (Field-Marshal Sir John French to Mr.
  James O’Grady, M.P., quoted in
  the _Daily News_, August 23, 1915.)


“Too-too! Too-too! Too-too!”

“‘Ul-loh?” (wearily).

“Too-too! Too-too! Too-too!” (with insistence).

“‘Ul-loh?” (with vexation). “‘Ul-loh? ‘Ul-loh?”

The sounds issued forth from a low, cramped dug-out, where a
perspiring orderly, squatting on a box, huddled over a crepitating
telephone-receiver--not the “gentlemanly article” of your City office
or my lady’s boudoir, but a Brobdingnagian kind of instrument.
Fragments of conversation drifted out of the hole:

“_’Oo? ... I can’t ’ear yer.... Oh! Yessir! Yessir! Yessir!_”

Then a sentence was bawled and repeated from mouth to mouth till it
reached the orderly standing at the end of the trench. “_The Major
of the Blankshires sends ’is compliments to Captain X, and there’s a
German working-party be’ind the village clearly visible. Will Captain X
send a few rounds over?_”

The Captain turned wearily to the subaltern by his side (Cambridge
O.T.C., out since March, keen as mustard). “Did you ever see such
fellows?” he said. Then, to the orderly: “My compliments to the Major,
and we have been watching that working-party for the past half-hour.
Unfortunately, it is out of range. But tell him, you can, that we have
just dispersed another working-party over by the bridge!”

This message is shouted from mouth to mouth, the telephone toots again,
but even before the Major in his dug-out a mile away has had his
answer, the battery is called up once more from another quarter, with
the request to “turn on for a bit” in some other direction.

So it goes on all day, and every day. The guns are the big brothers of
the trenches. To them the front line, like the small boy in a London
street row, appeals when bullied by the German artillery. To them
the men in the trenches look for protection against working-parties
preparing new “frightfulness,” against spying aircraft, against undue
activity on the part of the _minenwerfer_.

The gunners keep guard over the front line in a paternal and
benevolent, not to say patronizing spirit. Their business it is to find
places from which they can keep an eye on the enemy, watch the effect
of their shells, and see what the enemy’s guns are doing. No matter
that these places are exposed; no matter that the Germans search for
them with their guns like caddies “beating” the heather for a lost
ball; no matter that, sooner or later, they will be brought down about
the observers’ ears. Observation is a vital part of artillery work. It
saves British lives; it kills Germans.

When German “frightfulness” oversteps the bounds of what is average and
bearable, “retaliation” is the word that goes back to the guns. When
there are bursts of German “liveliness” going on all along the line,
the battery telephones (so the men in the fire-trenches tell me) are so
busy that to call up a battery is like trying to get the box-office of
the Palace Theatre on the telephone at dinner-time on a Saturday night.

This word “retaliation” has a fine ring about it. To men with nerves
jaded by a long spell of shelling with heavy artillery it means a fresh
lease of endurance. To the least imaginative it conjures up a picture
of the Germans, exulting in their superiority of artillery, watching
in fascination from their parapets their “Jack Johnsons” and “Black
Marias” ploughing, among eddies of black smoke, great rifts in our
trench-lines, starting back in terror as, with a whistling screech, the
shells begin to arrive from the opposite direction.

Nothing puts life into weary troops like the sound of their own shells
screaming through the air and mingling with the noise of the enemy’s
guns. Nothing in the same way puts a greater strain on men, even the
most seasoned and hardened troops, than to have to sit still under a
fierce bombardment, and to know that their guns must remain inactive
because ammunition is limited to so many rounds a day per gun.

[Illustration: BIG SHELL EXPLODING ON A ROAD IN FRANCE. GERMAN SOLDIERS
IN FOREGROUND.]

Our success at Hooge on August 9 showed us, albeit on a very small
scale, what our infantry, adequately supported by artillery, can
achieve. The Hooge affair was of quite minor importance, and had next
to no bearing on the general situation. It was, however, of the deepest
interest to all of us on the Western front, for at this engagement,
almost for the first time, the guns had a free hand in the matter of
ammunition. It was due to their thorough and devastating preliminary
bombardment and their splendid support afterwards that our infantry
were able to recapture the lost trenches, and to hold them against all
German attempts to win them back.

The battalions who took part in the attack against Hooge were brimful
of gratitude towards the gunners. Not only had the guns done the work
of cutting the barbed wire and of destroying the enemy’s machine-guns
and defences in the most thorough manner, but the timing of the
different operations of the artillery--the preliminary bombardment, the
lifting on the front line and then the _tir de barrage_ (to prevent the
Germans from sending up reinforcements)--was absolutely perfect. As a
result, the attacking files were able to push on freely with no fear of
coming under their own fire, for, with each position won, the rain of
shells lifted and poured down farther ahead.

A bombardment like this makes men optimistic. The infantry, waiting in
the paling darkness before dawn for the preliminary bombardment to do
its work, were elated as the heavy shells went plumping into the German
trenches, as the curtain of smoke from the high-explosive drifted
thicker and thicker in the twilight.

The men’s comments were fierce and heartfelt. “Ah! they’re getting it
at last, the ----s! That’ll learn ’em! Boom!” (as a shell exploded
with a deafening crash). And when the storming-party went forward it
was irresistible. The men “had their tails up,” as the army says. Not
only did they hurl the Germans out of their trenches, but they held the
positions. Every time the Germans massed for a counter-attack our guns
were ready for them, and swept the attack away before it had properly
developed.

I was able to appreciate the elation of the men who fought at Hooge,
because I had already seen, in past months, the evil effects of
the shortage of shells. As I talked to these gallant fellows, full
of their stories of the fight, I kept thinking of a position I had
visited months before where, day after day, the Germans kept up an
almost incessant bombardment with shells of all calibres. As so much
of their strategy, their action was aimed at achieving a moral effect,
like their senseless raids on undefended English seaside resorts. At
this particular position they had no chance of breaking through our
line, yet, so much do they believe in the effect of high-explosives in
undermining the _moral_ of troops, that they fired away ammunition from
their guns in the most reckless fashion.

I spent an afternoon in a dug-out there with a Colonel, a fine, hearty
body of a man, while the shells passed almost continuously over our
heads or burst noisily, with whizzing fragments of hot metal, in our
immediate vicinity. He expressed himself very sagely on this question
of shells. “Of course,” he said, “perpetual bombardment like this is a
great strain on the men. But they are stout fellows, and they stand it
all right. What does upset them, though, is the silence of our guns. My
men see that a little energy on the part of our guns promptly reduces
the Germans to silence. If we give the Germans shot for shot, and
sometimes, for a change, two shells to their one, they become as meek
as lambs. What my men lack is the heartening sound of our own shells.
When our guns do retaliate, their fire is feeble, and soon dies away. A
well-fed man is a better fighter than a fellow with an empty belly. So
troops who know that they have the weight of metal behind them may be
counted upon to make a better showing than men who feel that they are
not properly supported.”

But I do not intend to go further into the shell controversy here.
Hooge showed us that the tide has turned. The shells which our guns
fired that day were better than anything the gunners had ever seen
before. The issue, in the Commander-in-Chief’s expressive phrase, is
now between Krupp’s and Birmingham. Birmingham will win if England
understands that, were every man left in England and every woman from
this moment to give their services to the making of munitions of war,
even then our Generals could not conscientiously say they were certain
that the supply would be sufficient.

In our former wars the gunners reaped the richest harvest of
decorations, for they most often found themselves in a tight corner,
and the rule of the Royal Artillery is, “Never lose a gun!” If you
want a contrast between the war of movement and the war of positions,
between August, 1914, and August, 1915, you have but to look at
the gunners then, when the war was in the open, and now, when the
belligerents have sat down to a siege. The foaming horses, the jingling
accoutrements, the mud-bespattered guns, the gunners falling man by
man about their gun--this splendid picture of war, painted on many a
glorious page of our military history, has been replaced--temporarily,
I know--by as strange a blend of peace and war as can be seen in the
field to-day.

Not that in the main the gunner’s task to-day is less perilous than
before. Most of the shells that the Germans send over night and day are
hunting for our batteries, searching for them principally with the aid
of little maps provided by the German air observers. The Germans have
to reckon with a resourceful lot of men in our gunners, however, and
so skilfully are the guns hidden that more often than not the enemy’s
projectiles plump harmlessly into fields, and cause no greater damage
than the massacre of a few dozen buttercups and daisies.

But the gunner is _toujours en vedette_. He must stay with his gun. If
his battery is firing, he can take no thought of safety. He must expose
himself. Shells or no shells, he must go about his duty. Thus, though
the day of the race forward with the guns is over for the moment, the
gunners’ casualties go on steadily, in little driblets, it is true, but
nevertheless mounting up to a long roll of honour that will show future
generations that, in the long months of trench warfare, the Royal
Artillery, true to its grand traditions, did its work as steadfastly
and gallantly as in the thrilling days of the retreat from Mons and the
advance on the Marne.

The gunners have had a difficult task in Flanders. Since the battle of
the Marne the great offensives on our front have been with the enemy.
The Germans, even when advancing, never forget for a moment that he
who goes forward may also have to fall back, and their striving has
always been to secure for themselves good defensible positions from
which their guns can dominate our lines. The flatness of the country
has made the work of artillery observation both perilous and difficult,
and the heroism with which the observation officers exposed themselves
in the fighting round Ypres, at Neuve Chapelle, and at Festubert, to
mention but a few concrete cases, is a chapter by itself in the roll of
fame of the Royal Artillery in this war. The time has not yet come when
one may write freely of this most thrilling and perilous of duties at
the front, the observing for the guns, but I have seen the observation
officers at their work, and feel very strongly that one cannot pass
over their gallantry and tenacity in silence.

I have witnessed the growth of our artillery; with it I have passed
from the discouraging days of the shell shortage to the brighter era
that dawned at Hooge. I have spent many absorbingly interesting days
with the gunners in the batteries, with the observation officers at
their stations. I have seen in action every type of gun, every type of
howitzer, big and small, used in our army to-day. I know the voices of
them all--the short, sharp report of the field-gun, the ear-splitting
crash of the 4·7, the air-shaking roar of the heavy howitzer, whose
shell in its passage through the air over one’s head produces
long-drawn-out reverberating waves of sound that resemble nothing on
earth unless it be the echo of a fast motorcar rushing through miles of
empty, narrow streets.

But because I have thus seen the work of our guns in the field, because
I have been allowed to penetrate the _arcana_ of gunnery, and to enter
holy places where few save those of the craft are suffered to enter,
I find myself in a dilemma. Despite the ceaseless activity of German
spies in peace and war, there are still many blanks in the German
information about our artillery. Far be it from me to fill them in!
Permit me, therefore, to leave the guns hidden beneath their covers,
cunningly stowed away from prying eyes in their emplacements.

In a battery you get a good idea of the detachment of modern war.
The effect of the war of positions is to hold off from the guns the
rough-and-tumble of fighting. It happens occasionally, as in the case
of the London Territorial “Heavies,” surrounded and captured during the
second battle of Ypres, that the tide of battle sweeps up and washes
round the guns. But as a general rule the guns, in their positions
behind the front, are several miles from the actual firing-line. Their
rôle is practically that of the artillery of a besieging force, and
they thereby acquire a fixity of tenure which must be particularly
sympathetic to the gunners who remember the awful ordeal of the guns on
the retreat from Mons.

A skilful fencer who has a good reach and a long foil can keep his
opponent at a distance without moving his position, without losing his
calm. The gunners in this war of positions are using a foil several
miles long. Their blade is constantly in play, but the enemy is kept
at arm’s length. Therefore, the life of the gunners is probably more
ordered and stable than the life of any other formation at the front.

In a London newspaper office some years ago I used to know a cable
operator who on Saturday nights, when the wires were clear, was wont to
pass the time by playing cable chess with the operators at Queenstown
or New York. Many an evening I have sat by his side and watched him,
poring over his chessboard, with one hand on the cable-key ready to
transmit his move across the wires. The sense of long distance, which
that quiet cable-room, with its shaded lights, its absorbed chess
enthusiast, and its ticking instrument, used to convey, has come back
to me in these batteries at the front, where death goes and comes over
a stretch of miles.

Among my notes of a visit to a battery of field-guns, I find the
following observation: “The coolness, the savage _Sachlichkeit_ (a
comprehensive German word which may be rendered by ‘business-likeness’)
of the gunners; exposed to the constant menace of death at long range
themselves, their one thought in life is to ‘get back’ at the enemy on
the distant horizon.”

This studied efficiency in the business of slaying is indeed the
dominant impression left on the mind by a view of one of these
batteries in action. The officers, always neat and trim, are nonchalant
and laconic as they snap out in monosyllables the orders that carry
with them winged death; the men serving the gun--just a handful of
dust-coloured figures about some ironwork--go about their work swiftly
and silently. A word with the telephone orderly as to range and angle
and shell, a brisk order, a yellow-painted shell is whipped smartly out
of its neat _caisson_ standing open by the gun, its doors flung wide
like two arms, as though to say, “Help yourself!” there is a snapping
and a clicking of bolts and blocks, then the voice of the sergeant:
“All ready to fire, sir!”

The gun is laid on its quarry. No gun fires without an object.
Somewhere in the sun-bathed flats beyond, where the horizon is smudged
in blue behind a curtain of dancing heat, there are men whose glass
of life is all but run out. How often have I thought on this picture,
in the few seconds’ interval between that short phrase, “All ready to
fire, sir!” and the brisk command: “No. 1 gun, fire!” ... A group of
Germans, not the fierce helmeted Huns in exquisitely neat uniforms
that our artists love to show us in the illustrated papers, but vague
figures in ill-fitting dirty grey that makes them look like scavengers,
with trousers, showing a band of white lining, turned up over their
boots, curiously long tunics unbuttoned at the throat, and little round
caps, all stained with mud and sweat, their heads beneath shaved until
the skin shows greyish through the pale stubble--a group of vague
Unknowns waiting for death.

Perhaps they are walking up a communication trench, plodding in Indian
file, silent; maybe they are sitting outside a dug-out talking of the
things which form the staple conversation of the men on both sides
out here--their food, their duties, their spell of rest from the
trenches, their leave, their sergeant. All are marked down by the Power
that regulates these things--those that are to die, those that shall
survive. Even now one is taking that step forward that shall save his
life, another has tarried an instant, and for that instant’s delay he
shall die. The cigarette that the officer in our battery is lighting
shall give the doomed ones a few seconds’ respite.

The shell is in the gun, bearing in its shining and beautifully turned
case that which shall release a never-ending succession of events
springing from the widows and orphans which this shot shall make.
In a second now it will be sped, in another second its work will be
done. There will be telegrams--ill-omened and feared visitants in
these days of war--arriving in German homes, in the officer’s flat on
the third-floor of a dull street in a garrison town, in the tenement
dwelling in a Berlin slum, in a farm in Pomerania, in a wooden cottage
on a pine slope in the Black Forest.

There will be tears and hysterics and black stuff and crape in the
house; black-bordered announcements, headed by the Iron Cross, in
newspapers beginning, “_Den Tod für Kaiser und Reich_ ...”; visits of
condolence from _Onkel Fritz and Tante Frieda_ in the _Gutes Zimmer_
(the parlour); lonely widows and fatherless orphans, bereft sweethearts
and heartbroken mothers....

“No. 1 gun, fire!”

The scream of the shell cleaving the air strikes upon the ear still
reverberating from the crash of the explosion. As the breech is opened
a thin vapour of smoke blows out of the gun, and vanishes in an
instant, as though rejoicing to be free. The men are busied about the
gun. In quick succession the other guns of the battery discharge their
shots.

The officer turns on his heel. “You’d better stay to tea!” he says. “My
people have sent me a birthday cake.”

Give and take!--that is the philosophy of war. These gunners in their
placid batteries hear death coming at them in the wind--day after day,
night after night. They are matched against worthy foes--from the
gunners’ standpoint--fine artillery, well supplied, that shoots well.
The guns are the rooks and bishops of this great game of chess. They
sweep off the board any piece that comes into their field. The gun
which I saw firing to-day may be discovered to-morrow before there is
time to shift its position. Then a rain of shells will fall all about
it, smashing in the dug-outs, slaying and maiming the devoted men whose
place is by their gun.

In this trench warfare the battery is a placid place. So well concealed
are the guns, so cunningly hidden, so skilfully blended in their
surroundings, that one is often not aware that guns or howitzers are
thrusting their noses into the air within twenty yards of where you
enter. There is an air of permanency about the large solid dug-outs,
a touch of homeliness about the curls of blue smoke that drift lazily
aloft from the fires where the cooks are making the tea in tin
“dixies.”

The gunners show a certain facetiousness in naming their underground
homes. “Rowton House,” “Ritz Hotel,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Ocean
View,” are some of the names burnt in fretwork on the neat boards
fixed at the entrances to the dug-outs. Within, pictures cut from the
illustrated papers are hung, those of pretty ladies and the guns of
other armies being more especially favoured. You are sure to find one
or two men here engaged in fashioning knick-knacks, such as ash-trays
or lamp-stands, out of parts of German shell sent over at the battery.
I saw some of these souvenirs, one a sugar-sifter, made by one of our
gunners out of the case of a shell--a very well-finished piece of work.

When heavy fighting is on, the battery, though it always preserves its
outward calm, is a very busy place. When the guns concentrate during a
preliminary bombardment, the gunners hardly get a moment to breathe,
but keep on loading and firing, and loading and firing, while all
the time fresh supplies of shells are brought up, and the piles of
empty shell-cases, with their bronze burnt black at the edges, swell
steadily. Then it is that the ammunition convoys stream together to
the ammunition railheads, where shells, great and small, neatly packed
in their wooden boxes, are lying in the goods-trains that have brought
them up from the base.

Soon after the fighting at Festubert in June, I spent a morning at
an ammunition railhead. The officer in charge showed me round, a
pleasant young man in very old riding-breeches and a khaki shirt,
who had an office, a place of wonderful contrivances in the way
of chairs and desks and pigeon-holes and shelves made out of empty
shell-boxes, installed in a railway-truck. The railhead was established
in a railway-siding, where, on three or four sets of metals, long
trains were waiting, some full, others empty, about to return to the
base to be replenished. The full trains contained the overflow. What
can be safely stored is dumped out, and collected by the ammunition
convoys--motor lorries of the Mechanical Transport--which come to the
railhead daily to fetch supplies, in order to bring deplenished stocks
up at the front to the normal level again.

I saw, I believe, almost every form in which “villainous saltpetre
digged out of the bowels of the harmless earth” is employed for the
dismemberment of man. There were shells galore, from huge 4-foot
howitzer shells in enormous coffin-like boxes, one to each, down to
small 15-pounder shells, several to a case. There were hundreds of
cases of bombs and grenades: stick-bombs, and round bombs, and square
bombs; bombs for trench mortars, large and small; boxes of Verey
flare-lights, and stacks of S.A.A.--that is, small arms ammunition,
rifle and revolver cartridges. I was lost in admiration at the
exquisite neatness of the packing--so contrived that by the simplest
manipulation the shell and its charges can be lifted safely out of the
box without hammering or violence of any kind.

Every day the officer in charge sends in his returns of the amount
of ammunition supplied, and the amount in hand. The returns for the
preceding days of fighting in the Festubert region were eloquent of
the part that artillery is playing in this war. The returns are made
according to the size and description of shell.

The enormously increased importance of artillery in this war
necessitates not only an unlimited supply of ammunition, but more and
more new guns of the latest and heaviest types, besides the requisite
increase of transport. The enormous output of ammunition from the
factories in England demands extended storage accommodation at the
base, and a larger service of trains for conveying the supplies from
the base to the railheads at the front. The motor-lorries which
bring the shell to the gun, the bullet to the rifle, the bomb to the
grenadier, must be increased in number to cope with the augmented
supplies. Thus, wherever you turn, whether towards the men of the new
army flocking out from England, or towards the guns that are to blast
for them the path to victory, you are confronted by the same process
of expansion which is developing the little Expeditionary Force of
Mons and the Marne into the great army upon which--who knows?--may
eventually devolve the final task of liberating Europe.




CHAPTER XIV

CHILDREN OF THE RAJ


War in its old guise, the clash of warring Kings and their levies of
horse and foot, with victory on the side of the stoutest blows, and
triumph reckoned by the number of slain and spoils, may have faded
from the European mind, but it still lingers, a brave and picturesque
adventure, in the storied imagination of the East. So it happens
that, of all the forces in the field to-day, none has a more knightly
conception of war, as the word was understood in the days of chivalry,
than the levies which India has sent to Europe to fight for the British
Raj.

How old John Froissart, who loved a brave spectacle of war, would have
thrilled to see the stately Sikh horsemen, as I have seen them, high
turbans and tall lances silhouetted against an evening sky, defiling
along a road in Flanders, trod in bygone days by many of the old
chronicler’s heroes--Edward of Wales, Sir Reginald Lord Cobham, Sir
Walter Manny, Sir John Chandos, and the rest! How gladly he would have
wandered into their camps and bivouacs, and heard from bearded Sikh and
lean Pathan the stirring story of their military past, heard them speak
again in the manner of his time of the great war between the Kings of
Europe!

For to the Indian troops who have come to Europe to fight this war
is an adventure, as wars were to the knights of old. The high sense
of duty which makes them ready and willing to play their part in the
defence of the Empire is not patriotism. It is loyalty, the honourable
resolution to stand by the man whose bread they have eaten. In their
rudimentary and picturesque way they understand very clearly the
origin of the war. They talk among themselves, and write home to their
villages of the unjust King of Austria, who sought to steal the kingdom
of Serbia, and was therein helped by the arrogant King of Germany,
who in his turn invaded the country of the King of Belgium. Hereupon
the King-Emperor said, “This must not be,” and summoned the Kings of
Germany and Austria to make good the wrong they had accomplished. When
they refused, the King-Emperor called upon his friends the Kings of
France and Russia to make war upon them.

Gleefully the Indians will count the number of Kings that are on
the side of the Allies in the cause of right--the King-Emperor, the
King of France, the King of Russia, the King of Belgium, the King of
Serbia, and, more lately, the King of Italy. Triumphantly they ask:
“Shall but three Kings--those of Germany, Austria, and Turkey--prevail
against six?” The position of Austria-Hungary is rather a puzzle to
them. Sometimes both the King of Austria and the King of Hungary
appear on the side of the foe, sometimes the King of Austria is ranged
in the ranks of the Allies, owing to a confused recollection that
_Australians_ are fighting for the Allies in the East.

They write elaborate and often allegorical disquisitions on the origin
of the war to their friends at home in India. In one case that I heard
of the writer took the names of mutual acquaintances in the village at
home in which the first letter corresponded with the initial letter
of the names of the belligerent powers, while a dispute about a field
served to illustrate the causes of the conflict.

The strangest medley of races, castes, and religions that has ever
fought on one side in Europe, the Indians took the field in the cause
of the King-Emperor behind their hierarchical chiefs and military
leaders. The Maharajah of Kapurtala, the Maharajah of Bikanir, the Jam
of Nawanagar (whom the Empire knows better as “Ranji”), the Rajah of
Ratlam, the young Maharajah of Jodhpur, Maharajah Sir Pertab Singh, the
Maharaj-Kumar of Kuch Behar, were among those who came to Flanders.

Among the troops were Sikhs from the Punjab, Pathans from the
North-Western Frontier of India--Afridis, Mahsuds, Yussufzais,
Khattaks--Punjabi Mohammedans, Dogras from the hills, Jats from the
Southern Punjab and the United Provinces, Gurkhas from the hills of
Nepal, Garhwali hillmen from Garhwal, and Rajputs.

Even the great Cadogan of Wellington’s army, the Prince of Q.M.G.’s,
might have well been appalled by the task which the commissariat
department of this heterogeneous collection of races and religions
represented. The Pathans, being Mohammedans, will drink no wine or
spirits; the Sikhs, who have their own religion, may drink wine, but
may not smoke; the Gurkhas may do both, but have other ceremonial
practices which must be scrupulously observed. Beef is anathema to the
Hindu, bacon to the Mohammedan; indeed, pork in any form is abhorrent
to all save the lowest caste of Indian. Therefore, the flesh of goats,
slain in a prescribed ritual form, and specially prepared, had to take
the place of the bully-beef ration for the majority of the Indian
contingent. There was no rum ration for the Mohammedan, no cigarette or
tobacco ration for the Sikh.

Though the commissariat question has proved a continual source of
difficulty to the military authorities, it has been satisfactorily
solved, and the Indians, from the standpoint of food, have fared well.
On this campaign they made the acquaintance of ration jam, which they
like immensely. The Gurkhas will not touch marmalade, although they
are as fond of jam as the rest of the Indians are. They are very keen
on their cigarette rations. The army supplies the Indian troops with
_ghi_, or clarified butter, which they use extensively in cooking,
and with Indian corn, from which they bake their _chupatties_, thin
wafer-like cakes cooked in the ashes of the camp-fire.

You can imagine what an epoch-making adventure it was to these
thousands of Indians, living their carefully ordered lives in one of
the oldest civilizations of the world, to be suddenly transplanted into
the civilization of the white man. For the first time they have seen
the white man served by his own race. For the first time they have
seen the white man pursuing those agricultural avocations which, in
agricultural India, are carried on exclusively by the native. For the
first time they have seen the white man at close quarters in his home.

Agriculturist as every Indian is, it is the life of the French peasant
that has primarily absorbed his interest in things outside the war.
The prodigious size of the cows, in comparison with the small Indian
kine, overwhelms him with admiration; so also the heavy Flemish horses.
He is amazed to find himself surrounded on all sides by _pukka_
houses--that is to say, houses with tiled roofs and timber flooring
and lath-and-plaster walls and glazed windows--to see that even the
lowliest French peasant can aspire to dwellings like these.

A very familiar sight in Flanders is the dog-wheel, a large open
tread-wheel, affixed to the side of the house, and driven by a dog,
for the pumping of water. This spectacle is of never-failing interest
to the Indians. It is frequently described at length in their letters
home, and it is the theme of endless conversation amongst themselves.
A group of Sikh troopers one day was heard gravely discussing whether
the dog worked the wheel from promptings of natural sagacity--from a
canine desire, as it were, to help with the housework--or whether he
was a poor slave imprisoned in the wheel and sternly ordered to do his
master’s bidding.

The exceptional beauty of the Flanders spring, succeeding to the cold
and damp of winter, caused many men to express their determination to
return to France after the war, and settle down as agriculturalists. I
believe the men seldom, if ever, write to their womenfolk. The brother
of the writer is generally the recipient of the letters from the
front. Often, if there is any mention of the writer’s wife, she is
referred to allegorically, as a tree in a certain field, and so on.
Many letters request that the writer’s sister may be told to pray at
some specific shrine for the safe return of her brother. Some of these
letters are fine recruiting agents, describing in glowing terms the
advantages of being able to save one’s pay, of the good food, and the
interesting life.

As these Indian soldiers’ letters are written and addressed in the
native character, sorting and distribution has to be done by a special
staff of native clerks from the Indian postal service, while Indian
Army officers, conversant with the different languages and scripts,
attend to the censoring. Certain vernacular journals are permitted to
be sent to the troops, but the men, for the most part, eagerly read
a special news-sheet, issued every two or three days from the Indian
Corps Headquarters. This journal, edited by a distinguished Indian
Intelligence Officer, is reproduced by a manifolding process in Hindi
(which is familiar to the Gurkhas, Garhwalis, and Dogras), Gurmukhi
(the language of the Sikhs), and Hindustani (for the other Indian
troops). It gives a summary of the latest war news, starting with the
most recent events on the British and French fronts, in plain and
simple language. Here is a specimen:


“INDIAN SUMMARY OF NEWS, 26TH TO 28TH JULY, 1915.

“This great war has now lasted exactly a year. It is announced
officially that the total British casualties up to date amount
to 330,995 men, of whom 69,313 have been killed. This includes
all theatres of war--France, the Dardanelles, Egypt, Mesopotamia,
Africa--as well as the losses of our fleet over the whole world. It
may seem a high figure, but it must be remembered that the German
casualties are at least 30 lakhs by this time, of whom about 8 lakhs
must have been killed. The Turks have also lost very heavily. Our
total of less than 70,000 killed is, therefore, comparatively small:
most of them are, of course, British, but they also include Canadians,
Australians, Indians, New Zealanders and African troops.”

Thus, it will be seen that there is no attempt to hide unpleasant news
from the Indian troops, but that, on the contrary, the endeavour is to
explain events to them in an intelligible fashion.

These news-sheets are printed by the thousand, and are distributed not
only among the troops at the front, but are also sent to the Indian
troops at the bases and in the hospitals in France and in England. A
special copy of each number is forwarded to the Commander-in-Chief in
India.

The relations between the Indians and the French civilian population
are extremely friendly. The French peasants in these parts have a
saying that British troops give the most trouble in billets, the French
are less exacting, while the Indians cause the least inconvenience of
all. Their wants are few, their demands modest--water, a place where
they may build their fires and range their pots, a roof beneath which
they may sleep, a little straw for a bed.

They are infinitely obliging. They share their food with their hosts,
and play with their children. I have seldom seen a prettier sight
than a glimpse I had one day of some Sikhs belonging to a squadron
quartered in a school, romping with the children in the playground.
Experience has shown that the Indians pick up French far more quickly
than the average British soldier. I have been amused to come upon a
row of native soldiers sitting on a bench in the sunshine outside an
_estaminet_, engaged in a dignified exchange of ideas with the peasants.

The friendly relations existing between the Indians and the French are
best seen at the gymkhanas which the Indian cavalry give from time to
time. A broad field is chosen, a course is staked off, and in this
space the cavalry disport themselves for two or three hours on a Sunday
afternoon, with races, tent-pegging, trick-riding, and sports of all
kinds, to the enormous delight of the peasantry. Posters placarded in
the neighbouring villages a day or two before bring all the villagers
flocking to the scene on foot, on cycles, in old-fashioned hooded
carts, drawn by such sorry specimens of horse-flesh as the French Army
has discarded.

I went to a _Tamasha_, as the Indian troops call these affairs, one
fine Sunday afternoon in May. A broad plateau in the middle of the
fields had been selected for the sports, and when I arrived an enormous
crowd, as picturesque as any I have ever seen, was thronging round the
ropes. There were old peasants in the local costume of black smocks
and peaked caps, _curés_ in shovel-hats and _soutanes_, French troops
in a bewildering variety of uniforms--pale blue Hussars, _Chasseurs
d’Afrique_ in flowing red cloaks, Moroccan _Goumiers_ in swelling white
burnouses, Zouaves in red and blue monkey-jackets; French interpreters
in khaki, with the golden palm-leaf tabs and khaki-covered _képis_;
Indian _sowars_ (native troopers) with tall puggarees and long smock
tunics with chain shoulder-straps and round silver buttons, Gurkhas
with their slouch hats, Indian Army officers with unfamiliar collar
badges on their biscuit-coloured khaki uniforms.

It was a fine _Tamasha_. There was marvellously skilful tent-pegging,
with a rush of horses, a thunder of hoofs, clouds of dust, and that
exhilarating swoop upwards of the lance with peg neatly transpierced
as the rider whirls past. There was a most exciting Victoria Cross
race with drums beating, pistols going off, much shouting and beating
of hands--one race for the Indian troops and another for the British
troops brigaded with them. I was quite touched to hear the uproarious
and whole-hearted applause wherewith the British soldiers greeted the
winner of the Indians’ race. There was a foot-race for the village
children, to the huge delight of the Indians, who ran along the course
encouraging the youngsters and setting those who fell on their feet
again.

[Illustration:

  _Alfieri phot._

INDIAN CAVALRY IN A FRENCH VILLAGE. NOTE BANDOLIERS ROUND HORSES’
NECKS. ]

But the display of trick-riding was the _clou_ of the show, and
elicited in particular the outspoken admiration of the French cavalry
officers--who know something about riding. Handkerchiefs were laid in
a row on the ground. Presently, in a swirl of blinding dust four
horsemen came thundering along, and, as they reached the handkerchiefs,
each man flung himself, head downwards, backwards from the saddle, and
snatched, or sought to snatch, his appointed cloth, then raised himself
in the saddle again.

There were men who rode the length of the course head downwards, others
who rode with their faces to the horse’s tail, fired revolvers at the
men riding behind them, whereupon the men fell, ostensibly dead, from
the saddle, and were dragged along, head downwards, their heads almost
touching the ground.

What amused me about the show was to see that the performers were every
whit as interested and excited in the performance as the crowd. Every
horseman was on his mettle to show off his horse and his horsemanship.
Some of the riders indulged in touches of superb swagger. When at the
end of the trick-riding the horsemen stopped dead in the middle of a
rush, and, suddenly wheeling their horses, brought up short at the
saluting-point to the note of a bugle, those stalwart figures, swelling
with pride, sitting their panting, foam-flecked horses, presented as
magnificent a spectacle as I have seen in this war.

By the time these pages will have seen the light the Indian Corps will
have been a year at the front. In September last the first of them
landed at Marseilles, a bizarre procession that might have passed
out of the pages of The Thousand and One Nights, swarthy faces and
bristling moustachios and glittering eyes beneath proud turbans,
strange knives and implements, odd-looking carts, mules, goats. There
was a spell of wild and delirious enthusiasm among the _Marseillais_,
most imaginative of French populations ... and the Indians passed on.

I saw them later at Orléans, some of the cavalry and part of the Lahore
Division. The principal hotel was full of Indian Army officers. They
all seem to have a certain modesty of mien, a blend of reserve and
simplicity, that marks them down, apart from the Indian drill uniform
and the little forage-caps that so many of them wear.

The city swarmed with Indians. Their little mule-carts, in charge of
dark-skinned _mehtars_, or sweepers, heads muffled up in all manner
of cloths to keep out the first touch of autumnal damp, stood outside
shops, surrounded by gaping crowds. To and fro in the streets native
orderlies passed with their curious straight stride, their impassive
faces, scarcely seeming to note the air of profound curiosity wherewith
the good people of Orléans followed them.

Here a Pathan _sowar_ in khaki puggaree held a pair of stamping horses
outside an office; there a fatigue-party of Gurkhas with pronounced
Mongolian cast of features, slouch hats and _kukri_ slung at the back
of the belt, came marching solidly over the cobble-stones, and swung
their heads smartly over at the command of their havildar in his
curious clipped English: “Eyes ... rait!” as a Brigade Major went by
resplendent in new “brass hat” and red tabs.

The barber’s shop in the principal street was crowded with healthy,
dusty young men, back from long drills at the camp outside the town,
clamouring for hair-cuts and shaves, and buying hair-oils and soap
and razor blades with a reckless extravagance that made the proprietor
pinch himself to make sure he was not dreaming.

The front! That was the phrase that had a magic ring for them all. At
the camp the officers talked of nothing else. They showed me their
Sikhs and their Pathans and their Gurkhas as who should say: “When the
Empire gets _these_, victory is assured!” They had chafed in India,
when the Empire went to war, lest their services might not be called
upon. One gallant soul grieved so much, as we have read, that he
deserted and enlisted in the ranks of a British Regular regiment and
died at the front.

The call came. I left them at Orléans, untried in European warfare,
eager, impatient. When I saw them again six months later they were
veterans of war.

The despatch of the Indian Corps to take part in the war in Europe was
an experiment. That the experiment was possible, that the Indian troops
have shown themselves to be loyal and well-behaved while fighting our
battles on foreign soil, that India has falsified the hopes of the
enemy and the fears of the pessimists as to her fealty to the Empire
in the event of a European war, seems to me to be the finest tribute
to the wisdom and justice of our administration of India. The loyalty
which our rule has fostered has withstood all attempts to corrupt it.
The attempts of the Germans on the Western front to sow sedition among
our Indian troops have failed as lamentably as the more redoubtable
activity of their secret agents in India would appear to have done.

At one time the Germans were wont to bombard the Indians holding
the trenches in France with proclamations from the air. These
manifestos, generally couched in incorrect Hindi or Pushtu, the work
of painstaking _Herren Professoren_ at German Oriental Seminaries,
announced the German victories and the proclamation of the “holy war”
by the Khalifate against the Allies, and painted a rosy picture of
the delights awaiting the Indians who would desert to the enemy. The
Indian, who has a keen sense of humour, laughed at the bombast of these
preposterous concoctions, and made fun of the grammatical mistakes.

Two German airmen who were brought down in the lines of the Indians
one day were found to have a large stock of these manifestos in their
machine with them. The prisoners turned livid when the discovery was
made, for, under military law, I believe, it rendered them liable to be
shot. With perfect _sang-froid_, however, our officers distributed the
pamphlets to the Indians who were present at the capture, and the two
airmen had the mortification of seeing the broad grins of the sepoys as
they read out, amid shouts of laughter, the grammatical mistakes in the
work of the German Orientalists. This air propaganda was so barren of
results that the Germans eventually abandoned it.

The spirit of the Indian troops is splendid and soldierly. Above
all, they value recompense for valour. The V.C., of course, is their
highest ambition. They attach more importance to “Izzat”--their
prestige--than to anything else in life. The bitterest blow that an
Indian in the field can receive is to be passed over for promotion.
I heard of a non-commissioned officer who had distinguished himself
by a brilliant feat of gallantry, and was informed that the “General
Sahib” proposed to reward him by a present of money. The havildar in
question had already been recommended for decoration. “It is very kind
of the _General Sahib_,” the man said, “to have thought of making me a
present, but I would rather have the decoration.”

Men of ancient fighting races, they esteem courage highly and count
cowardice a disgrace. Praise of their gallant deeds is as music in
their ears. Never are they so proud as when the _General Sahib_, Sir
James Willcocks, commanding the Indian Corps, inspects them after a
fight, and tells them in their own tongue, in plain martial language
that they understand, that he is satisfied with them, that they have
fought well.

Their attitude towards the Germans is curious. They respect the enemy’s
technical efficiency in war, but they do not believe that he is any
match for the bayonet or the _kukri_ when it comes to in-fighting. “It
is well!” said the Garhwalis, as they came out of some swift slaying at
Neuve Chapelle. “We have killed many Germans! They are good fighters!”

Kwaja Mohammed Khan, Sirdar Bahadur, one of the Indian _aides-de-camp_
to Sir James Willcocks, a magnificent figure of a man from the borders
of Buner, in his uniform of Rissaldar of the Guides, with a hawk-like
nose and fierce black eyes, said to me one day: “The Indians stand the
weather well. Why shouldn’t they? If the Germans stand it, so can we!
Huh!”

They are fierce and terrible in the charge, the Indians. But they are
merciful to their prisoners. Among the Indians there has been none of
that slaying of prisoners that has eternally besmirched the German
escutcheon. The Indians bring their prisoners in proudly--living booty,
proud testimony to the prowess of their captors.

I met some of the Westphalians we captured at Neuve Chapelle on their
way down to the base to be shipped to England--fine, well-set-up,
front-line troops they were, too. I well remember the eagerness with
which they explained to me that resistance had been impossible. “_Auf
einmal_,” they said in their clipped Westphalian speech, “_sahen wir
uns von den Schwarzen umzingelt. Da müssten wir uns ergeben!_”

And they sighed heavily.

The first Indians to receive their baptism of fire in this war were
the 57th Rifles and the 129th Baluchis of the Lahore Division, which
came up to the front minus one brigade left behind in Egypt. These two
battalions were sent into action at Hollebeke about October 22 in the
initial stages of the first battle of Ypres, and acquitted themselves
very well. In the meantime the rest of the two brigades of which the
Lahore Division was composed were assisting the Second Corps southward,
where the fighting was desperate and bloody.

On October 27 the Germans captured Neuve Chapelle, and to the 47th
Sikhs, the 9th Bhopals, and the 20th and 21st Companies of Sappers and
Miners, was allotted the task of retaking the village. The 47th Sikhs,
and the two Sappers and Miners’ companies, were specially mentioned in
despatches for their fine work here. Captain Nosworthy, of the Sappers,
leading a forlorn hope of a dozen Indians, managed to get into the
village at the price of no less than seven wounds, but we failed to
regain possession of the place, which remained in German hands until
March.

The arrival of the Meerut Division at the end of the month practically
completed the Indian Corps, which was placed under the command of
Sir James Willcocks. Against it some 60,000 to 70,000 Germans were
arrayed--the whole of the crack VIIth Corps from Münster, tough
Westphalian fighters, part of the XIVth Corps, and part of the 48th
Reserve Division. Sir James Willcocks was told that he must hold out at
all costs, and that no reinforcements could be promised him.

On November 2 the Germans managed to pierce our lines west of Neuve
Chapelle, where the 2nd Gurkhas held the trenches. A fine charge, led
by Colonel Norie, their battalion commander, prevented the situation
from becoming serious, and all that the Germans achieved was that our
line was slightly bent back.

For several months to come Rouges Bancs to Givenchy was to be the
Indians’ line. Autumn crept by with drenching rain, and then, on
November 4, a spell of hard frost set in and lasted until the 25th. On
November 23 the 112th Regiment of the XIVth German Corps managed to sap
its way close up to the trenches held by the 34th Sikh Pioneers and the
9th Bhopals. A determined attack put the enemy in possession of these
trenches over a front of several hundred yards. That evening, however,
a series of counter-attacks on our part drove the Germans back with
great slaughter. The 39th Garhwalis, stout little hillmen resembling
the Gurkhas in features, but of rather heavier build, played a very
fine part, and one of their number, Darwan Singh Negi, won the Victoria
Cross.

On November 25 the weather broke. The frost vanished and gave place
to torrential rain. For three weeks it rained almost incessantly. The
trenches soon became rivers of water, with two or three feet of mud
at the bottom. In some places the men stood waist-deep in filth. Not
alone the Indians were exposed to these trying climatic conditions. The
British Regulars brigaded with them had to face the same ordeal, but
the Indian, peculiarly sensible to damp cold, undoubtedly suffered more
severely.

Frost-bite and chills and very long spells in the front line--some
battalions were from twenty-one to twenty-five days on end in the
trenches--increased the difficulties of the Indian troops. In mid
December the success of General Maud’huy’s forces on our right in
capturing the village of Vermelles created a favourable opportunity for
an offensive on our part. By this time the Sirhind Brigade, the brigade
which the Lahore Division had left behind in Egypt, had arrived.

On December 19 the Lahore Division started the attack with the Highland
Light Infantry and the 4th Gurkha Rifles. On the left, battalions of
the Meerut Division assaulted. Some trenches were won, but could not
be held, and our troops fell back before counter-attacks.

[Illustration:

  _Underwood & Underwood phot._

INDIAN INFANTRY ON THE MARCH.]

On the following day the Germans started a general offensive.
Opposite Festubert they blew up ten mines under the trenches of the
Highland Light Infantry and the 4th Gurkhas, and, supported by a
heavy bombardment with high-explosive shells and _minenwerfer_ bombs,
attacked. The Sirhind Brigade was driven back and the Germans captured
Givenchy, but the Manchesters and Suffolks, attacking with splendid
heroism, retook the village. They failed, however, to make further
progress. A counter-attack, delivered from the direction of the Rue
de Marais by the Secunderabad Cavalry Brigade with the 47th Sikhs and
8th Gurkhas, was likewise unable to get on. To the north the Meerut
Division was in difficulties owing to the German wedge at Givenchy, and
the retreat of a battalion of the 2nd Gurkhas at a place known as the
Orchard dangerously threatened our position. The arrival of a brigade
of the 1st Division, and, finally, of the whole Division, enabled the
Indian Corps to be withdrawn at Christmas for a much-needed rest.

In his despatch on the winter fighting in Flanders (dated General
Headquarters, February 2, 1915) the Commander-in-Chief said:

“The Indian troops have fought with the utmost steadiness and gallantry
whenever they have been called upon.... It was some three weeks after
the events recorded in paragraph 4 (the fighting at Givenchy) that I
made my inspection of the Indian Corps, under Sir James Willcocks. The
appearance they presented was most satisfactory, and fully confirmed my
first opinion that the Indian troops only required rest, and a little
acclimatizing, to bring out all their fine inherent fighting qualities.”

Events were to justify this tribute of the _Junghi Lat Sahib_, as the
Indians call the Commander-in-Chief, to his Indian troops. At Neuve
Chapelle, in March, the Indians--and in first line the 1st and 2nd 39th
Garhwalis and the 3rd Gurkhas--showed what they could do when it came
to fighting in the open.

The Indian Corps was on the right of our line, the Meerut Division in
front, the Lahore Division in support. The Garhwalis went away clear
through the village, and the Gurkhas, outdistancing everybody, actually
penetrated into the Bois de Biez, whence the Germans were eventually
able to check our further progress. All the Indians engaged displayed
splendid qualities of dash and steadiness, and after Neuve Chapelle
it may be said that the Indians were at the height of their military
efficiency.

You will remember that, during the second battle of Ypres, the Lahore
Division was sent up to the Pilckem road to operate in support of
the French, who were counter-attacking to win back the ground they
had given before the first German gas attack. The Indians fought
magnificently, and the 40th Pathans, under the leadership of the
gallant Lieutenant-Colonel Rennick, who gave his life that day, showed
splendid courage in face of a terrible ordeal.

The Indian Corps has rendered a great, an inestimable service to the
British cause. The first contingent came into the field at a moment
when every man was wanted, and as its numbers were completed, it
took over its share of our line and held it efficiently. Everything
in trench warfare was new to the Indians, and for months they had no
opportunity of displaying those qualities of dash that won them fame
in many a hard fight in their own land. But they showed themselves to
be excellent marksmen, and on patrol work revealed a cool pluck and
resourcefulness which brought in much valuable information.

The Indians have proved themselves to be a smart and soldierly body
of men, clean and well-mannered, and, like all good troops, most
punctilious about saluting. Their cavalry, which prays day and night
for a chance to get at the enemy with the lance, is a dream of beauty
on parade, with men and horses in the very pink of condition. Both for
the Indians themselves and for the Empire, the sending of the Indian
Corps to Europe was a great adventure, in many respects the most
remarkable event of the world war. The future lies on the knees of the
gods, but to those, like the writer, who have seen the British and
Indian troops side by side in the field, one thing at least is clear,
and that is, that this campaign has knit even closer than before the
ties of affection and respect existing between the Indian soldier and
his British leaders.




CHAPTER XV

T.F.

 “The conduct and bearing of these units under fire, and the efficient
 manner in which they carried out the various duties assigned to them,
 have imbued me with the highest hope as to the value and help of
 Territorial troops generally.”--FIELD-MARSHAL SIR JOHN FRENCH.


The first Territorial troops that I saw in the field was the North
Midland Division. Neither they nor I will probably ever forget that
meeting, not because either of us made an unforgettable impression on
the other, but by reason of the circumstances in which it occurred. It
was a wet and cheerless March afternoon, the hour when the greyness of
weeping spring is succumbing to the shades of evening. The Division,
fresh out from England, had just arrived at its first billets in the
field in and about the little village of Merris, which lies a little
off the beaten track between Hazebrouck and Bailleul.

A battalion--from the Midlands--was halted in the village, a dirty
little jumble of white houses straggling along a single main
street with a few feet of sidewalk, a cobbled roadway, a totally
undistinguished church, a weather-stained and sordid-looking _Mairie_.
The rain blew hither and thither in cold, soaking gusts, and pavements
and roadways were slippery with sticky, yellow mud.

The men of the battalion had been allowed to break the ranks. They
overflowed in that squalid village street. They had evidently come a
long way, for most of them were soaked to the skin, and their boots
and puttees were all smeared with clay. They stood about in groups in
the desultory fashion of the Briton in a strange place, or pressed
together outside the village shops and stared through the tiny windows
at the heterogeneous jumble of articles within--loaves of bread, tins
of sardines, bootlaces, pats of butter, picture-postcards, and, as a
reminder that British troops had passed that way before, boxes and
packets of English cigarettes.

It did not need the bronze “T” on collars and shoulder-straps to tell
me that these were not Regular troops. These men were prone to silence,
rather shy, a trifle helpless, as they stood about the rain-swept
street, waiting for their officers to show them their billets, to tell
them what to do. They seemed to be drinking in their impressions of
this, their first experience of life in the field, and I doubt that
they will ever fade from the minds of those men, so cheerless was their
welcome at Merris. Regulars would have made themselves at home on the
instant. They would have found a fire at which they might have dried
their sodden overcoats and brewed themselves a drink of hot tea in
their capacious pannikins. If fire or warm drinks were not forthcoming,
they would have ferreted out for themselves a dry corner under a roof
somewhere, and gone to sleep with that infinite capacity for sleeping
at odd moments and in queer places that is peculiar to the British
soldier.

The officers did not seem to me to be quite sure of themselves. They
had a certain earnestness of mien, a certain formality of manner,
and seemed inclined to hold aloof from their men. It is only the
fire-trench, after all, that teaches the new officer the exact
proportion of familiarity that discipline permits between officers and
men.

Their equipment, too, seemed rather more elaborate than was consonant
with comfort on a long march through the wet. Their caps were
stiff-crowned, they wore heavy overcoats, and over them their web
equipment hung, attached to it a more or less large variety of the
leather-bound articles that people at home present to the departing
warrior, most of which he discards after a week or two in the trenches,
and their puttees were quite impeccably tied. To me, who had grown
accustomed to the _négligé_ of dress and manner of the fire-trench,
these small distinctions were probably more apparent than they would
have been to an ordinary observer.

It was not until months later that I saw the North Midland Division
again. It was a thundery summer day in the trenches, with bursts of
hot sunshine alternating with drenching showers. The trenches were
ankle-deep in mud and water, and had been dug in many places through
the all too shallow burial-places of the dead of former fights. In some
places the British and German lines were very close together, and there
was short shrift for him who should thrust his head, even for a moment,
above the shelter of the parapet.

In these unwholesome surroundings I found my Territorials of Merris
again. But in the sunburnt, calmly deliberate veterans who manned the
parapet I scarcely recognized the young troops with the half-fledged
air that I had seen standing in the rain on that March afternoon. The
conditions in those trenches on that showery morning were, I imagine,
incomparably worse than anything the Division had undergone before.
But the men made the best of things, and woebegone and weather-stained
though they were in appearance, went about their normal round of duties
as though they had been living all their lives in mud and water and in
close proximity to a dangerous foe.

Over fires skilfully contrived in dry corners some were cooking
pannikins of savoury soup and steaming tea; others, who had been on
guard all night, slept as peacefully as children, though “whizz-bangs”
burst noisily to and fro about the parapet, and now and again the
thunder rolled imperiously above the sound of the guns. The rain came
down steadily; every trench was a slough of sticky, yellow clay and
foul water; the walls of dug-out and “funk-hole” reeked with damp. But
the sleepers slept on, those who could not find room in a “funk-hole”
lying on the “fire-stand,” completely enveloped in their great-coats or
waterproof sheets.

Active service had transformed the officers. They looked as hard and
as capable and as self-reliant as their men. They had lost much of
their formality of manner; that very scrupulous correctitude of dress
had gone; vanished, too, were many of the natty little articles that,
but a few months since, had jingled melodiously about them as they
marched up from the coast at the head of their platoon or company. Such
of them as wore caps had old soft caps, stained with mud and sweat,
crushed well on to their heads; many were tunicless, and made their
round of the trenches simply attired in grey soldier shirt and old
riding-breeches thrust into trench boots, for all the world like the
old-time “Forty-niners” of the gold-fields.

The link between them and their men was much looser, but much more
intimate. It was not difficult to see that the men leant more than ever
on their officers, and that the officers, on their side, were beginning
to “discover” their men--to discover the soul of the Englishman, as
it has never been unbared between Englishmen before, I think--simple,
brave, devoted, uncomplaining, inspired by an ocean-deep patriotism not
fed from external sources, but springing spontaneous and elemental from
within. Both had found themselves and one another, officers and men.

It was in the rainy days of the first battle of Ypres that our
Territorials first found themselves actually fighting on foreign soil.
Of Yeomanry Cavalry, the Northumberland, the Northamptonshire, the
North Somerset and the Leicestershire Regiments, and the Oxfordshire
Hussars; of Territorial Infantry, the London Scottish, the Honourable
Artillery Company, the Queen’s Westminsters, and the Hertfordshire,
were engaged. General Sir Julian Byng, commanding the cavalry, made
special mention to the Commander-in-Chief of the conduct of the
Yeomanry in the field, while, in the case of the Territorial Infantry,
Sir Douglas Haig spoke in high terms of their gallant behaviour.

On these powerful recommendations Sir John French wrote the sentence
in his despatch on the first battle of Ypres which I have quoted
at the head of this chapter. It must have been with feelings of
peculiar satisfaction that he found himself in a position to pay
this well-merited tribute to the Territorials. For he, more than
any other, was responsible for the creation of the Territorial Army
which was destined to play an invaluable part in the expansion of
the Expeditionary Force into the great national army. It was he whom
Lord Haldane, fresh to the War Office, summoned to bring his wide
experience, his flexible mind, his great knowledge of war, to the task
of carrying the Haldane reforms--first and foremost among them the
creation of the Territorial Force--to fruitful accomplishment.

The material of the Territorials sent out to the front was always good;
often their training and equipment left something to be desired. At
the outset of the war the progress of the Territorials from England
to the firing-line was very gentle. The first Territorial battalions
to come out were given a preliminary stage at a temporary camp
established at General Headquarters, where they went through a further
course of instruction at the hands of men fresh from the trenches,
or, at any rate, in closest touch with the army in the field, and
where any shortcomings in their equipment were rectified. As their
training proceeded they were sent to the trenches in driblets, the
officers going by couples to serve for some time with a battalion in
the front line, the men going first by sections, then by platoons,
then by double companies, until it was judged that the whole battalion
was sufficiently experienced to take over by itself a section of the
trenches, preferably in one of the quieter parts of the line.

The famous Artists’ Rifles have played a unique rôle in this war.
The battalion was originally intended to take its place in the line
the same as the Regulars and the other Territorial troops out here.
But their fine _esprit de corps_, together with the high standard of
intelligence and the good social standing of their men, pointed to
this distinguished battalion as an ideal Officers’ Training Corps in
the field. The experiment was tried. The battalion, as a homogeneous
unit, was not sent to the front line, but retained in the rear, and
used for furnishing sentries and doing other duties, while likely
candidates were selected from the ranks and sent to a Cadet School
to be trained for commissions. At the Cadet School, which, from very
modest beginnings, has now developed into a large and flourishing
institution--a veritable Sandhurst in Flanders--they are given a
thoroughly practical course of instruction, which includes trench
modelling in clay and weekly visits of forty-eight hours’ duration
to the trenches. So successful has the experiment proved that the
Commander-in-Chief is said to have stated that the Artists’ Rifles have
been worth a Division to him. Altogether the Artists have supplied more
than a thousand officers to the army in the field--a truly magnificent
achievement.

When the Territorials first came to France, a Regular might yet safely
ruffle his nose at them and get a laugh. “T.F.” stood for Saturday
afternoon soldiering and tubby Colonels and bespectacled privates. But
the Territorials were used to being made fun of. In peace-time kicks
and no ha’pence were their lot, and in war they did not care very
much whether they got either as long as they might “have a smack at
the Germans.” So they grinned and bore the chaff, and settled down in
uncomfortable billets in dreary towns and dirty villages to learn what
they had not learnt about war--and at first it was a good deal--in
their camps at home, chafing desperately at the waiting, but doing
all manner of useful jobs behind the line against the time that their
services might be required for the work they had volunteered to do.

Their chance came at last, as it comes to every man in the field. At
a critical stage in the first battle of Ypres (if you can speak of a
critical stage in a battle that was one long crisis), the Territorials
I have already mentioned, horse and foot, went into action and bore
themselves well. The London Scottish, particularly, fought like
veterans at Messines, though I fear that the injudicious “booming” of
their spirited charge in the newspapers called down on their heads a
good deal of unmerited ill-will on the part of other battalions out
here.

Winter came and went. In March the first Territorial Division arrived
in France. Others followed, and Territorial Divisions began to be
employed, with due circumspection, as homogeneous units to do their
share of holding our lengthening line. Even as the Territorial
Divisions began to arrive, individual battalions were undergoing their
baptism of fire on the bloody field of Neuve Chapelle. There were
many Territorials in that hard-fought fight, and none did better than
the 6th Gordons and the 3rd London Regiment, the latter executing a
splendid charge that so electrified the Regulars who witnessed it,
that they stood up on the parapet of their trenches and cheered as the
“Terriers” swung past.

The second battle of Ypres saw the début of a Territorial Division,
fighting as a homogeneous unit, in the shape of the Northumberland
Division, which, as I have described elsewhere in this book, though
only a few days out from England, went straight into action and played
its part unflinchingly. Indeed, the fight for the Ypres Salient was
a Territorials’ as it was a Regulars’ battle from the inferno of
Hill 60, where the Queen Victoria Rifles--“the Q. Vics,” as they are
affectionately called in the Brigade--and the 6th King’s Liverpool
Regiment earned the unstinted admiration of their fellow-Regulars, to
the horror of the closing stages of the battle on May 13, when the
North Somerset, the Leicestershire and the Essex Yeomanry showed the
Lifeguards and the Blues and the Bays, the flower of our cavalry, that
Yeomanry also know how to die.

Right round the arc of the salient, throughout those weeks of bloody
fighting, Territorials fought side by side with the Regulars. After
the battle General Prowse, commanding the Brigade to which the London
Rifle Brigade, that fine London Territorial Regiment, was attached,
said to me: “_If you see the L.R.B.’s, tell them from me we want them
back. We all look on them as Regulars now._”

The old Territorial joke died at Ypres. It lies buried in the salient
in the graves where Territorials from nearly every shire in the United
Kingdom are sleeping their last sleep. Our fathers who laughed at
_Punch’s_ gibes at the old Volunteers, with their “sham-fights” and
“field-days” on Wimbledon Common, little thought that those rotund
Colonels and bewhiskered Majors and slow-moving privates were creating
the tradition that was to bear our gallant Territorials with heads
uplifted unflinchingly through the inferno of the Flanders plain.

Do you remember Saturday afternoons in London before the war? and the
processions of young fellows in odd-looking uniforms of grey and blue
and bottle-green, rifles slung across their shoulders, hastening to the
railway-stations for their afternoon drills? Some of us scoffed, maybe,
at the “earnest” young men whose pleasure it was to “play at soldiers”
... but the shame of it came back to me in a hot flush as I stood by
their graves in the salient of Ypres.

The attack on the Fromelles ridge on May 9, the fighting at Festubert
in May and June, the capture, loss, and recapture of the trenches at
Hooge in June, July, and August, found the Territorials in action every
time. Their behaviour under fire only confirmed the good impression
which their début at Ypres in November had produced on the army. Its
verdict was, “The ‘Terriers’ are all right.”

Thus, the Regular came to admire--nay, to love the Territorial. He
admitted him into the inner circle of his esteem and affection, where
hitherto only the navy and the Royal Flying Corps, of our combatants
in this war, have had a place. If the New Army prove themselves hardy
fighters, imbued with those soldierly qualities which are the sole
criterion by which the army in the field judges men, then they, too,
shall find ingress into that jealously guarded preserve, the heart of
the Regular.

When he gives you his friendship, the British soldier is a good
friend. Between some Regular and Territorial battalions bonds of the
closest affection have been formed in the field. Thus, the gallant
Hertfordshire Territorials, who wear the Hart badge of the Bedfordshire
Regiment, are sworn brothers to the Guards, by reason of their being
brigaded with the Guards in the famous Guards Brigade--the only
non-Guards battalion in the Brigade--for many months. The army calls
them “The Herts Guards,” and right proud the Hertfordshires are of the
title.

War has rounded off many edges in the Territorials, yet, to the
inexperienced eye, there is still a marked difference between the
Regular and even the most seasoned Territorial. A Territorial battalion
is far more of a family gathering than a Regular battalion. Your
Territorial regiment recruits, as a rule, from one more or less
restricted area, so that there are all kinds of bonds of family,
business, and speech between its men. To the Regulars of our old
standing army war has ever been a business: to the Territorial it is
much more of a prolonged foreign holiday--“the most glorious change of
air and scene I have ever had,” is how a member of the H.A.C. referred
to his service at the front.

This homogeneity of interests in a Territorial battalion also applies
to trades. Thus, you will find, in the case of Territorials from the
North, whole battalions of miners, of cotton operatives, of gillies. I
heard of an entire company of a certain Territorial regiment formed out
of hands from a well-known brewery, who had joined _en masse_.

I imagine that our Territorial regiments resemble more closely than
any other formations we have in the field to-day the bands of archers
who, in the Middle Ages, as Froissart tells, followed their feudal
Barons to France and fought over the very fields where the war is being
waged to-day. Like our Territorials, these bands must have been united
within themselves by countless home associations, led, as they were,
by their home leaders, speaking their home speech, swearing by their
home shrines. The tie that welds Regulars together is the spirit of the
regiment; home is the uniting bond of the Territorials.

The Regular generally marches in silence. If he sings it is as often
as not one of those soldier songs of obscure origin like “The Song of
Shame,” which I have often heard sung but have never seen in print. It
deals with the misfortunes of a lass that loved not wisely, but too
well, and beginning,

  “She wuz pore but she wuz honest,”

continues through any number of more or less unprintable strophes.

The Territorial, on the other hand, hates to march in silence. If he is
not singing, he is whistling. His range of songs is extensive. He will
sing anything, from doggerel set to hymn tunes to Grand Opera. He will
carol from Poperinghe to Ypres, from Lillers to Béthune, that familiar
marching ditty which goes to the tune of “Here we go gathering nuts and
may”:

  “Nobody knows how dry we are,
  Nobody knows how dry we are,
  Nobody knows how dry we are,
  And nobody seems to care-oh!”

and when one song stops, another is started.

I have no hesitation in setting down the fine qualities of pluck and
endurance which the Territorials have displayed in this war to the
educational influence of games. The best type of Territorial--the young
city-dweller, the shop-assistant and clerk class--is nearly always an
athlete, and I make no doubt that the healthy spirit of the cricket,
football and hockey field, and of the boxing-ring, is responsible not
only for his fine capacity for delivering blows, but also for standing
knocks without repining, without losing his temper. Our games are
the product of our English minds, no doubt, and you find these same
qualities in the Regular soldier. But in the latter this little seed is
cultivated and developed by the force of regimental tradition, while in
the Territorial, who comes out to the front practically as an outsider
to the army, it is by the physical and mental training he has received
from the games he has played in times of peace.

Months of active service do not seem to eradicate altogether a
certain aloofness which generally exists between the Regular and the
Territorial, save in the case of those units which have been brought
into close touch in the field. The officers seem to slip more slowly
into the groove than the men. The Territorial officer is new to the
game. Under our Territorial system he has had but scant opportunities
in times of peace of knowing his men, and little or no chance of
familiarizing himself with the spirit of the army. Until he has found
his feet, therefore, he is inclined to grapple himself desperately to
the regulations, thereby acquiring, not only towards his men, but also
towards his brother officers in the Regulars, a certain formality of
manner which those brought up in that perfect school of easy manners,
the British Army, are inclined to resent.

When I have been in trenches held by Territorials, I have sometimes
noticed that the officers have been more concerned with the making
of reports, etc., than more practical and immediate cares, such as
the comfort of their men, the cleanliness of their trench (of great
importance from the standpoint of hygiene), and the movements of the
enemy. A good regimental officer of Regulars, in similar circumstances,
would have let the paper business go hang, and would have set the whole
company hustling, baling out the water in the trenches, improving the
dug-outs and mending the flooring, whilst he himself would have had a
prowl round looking out for German snipers and for any likely corners
from which his men might “draw a bead” on the enemy.

The Territorial officer is lacking in experience, but that is a fault
that remedies itself with every day that he spends in the front line.
It is here that a good Staff tells. An active Brigadier who constantly
visits the trenches can get the very best results out of the real
good-will of the Territorial officer.

I have been round the trenches once or twice with the Brigade Major
of one of the brigades of a Territorial Division, and I have been
astonished to see the number of small points which his quick and
experienced eye has detected, which he has pointed out, always in a
tactful, suggesting way, to the officers in charge of the front-line
companies--here a German loophole left open, offering a chance for
a good shot (in which these Territorial battalions abound); there a
line of fresh earth behind the German trench, suggesting underground
activity of some sort; there, again, a weak parapet in our fire-trench,
or a man whom the careful eye has seen exposing himself recklessly. The
Brigade Major, who had fought at Mons, had experience: the Territorial
officers were getting it. The courteous, eager way in which they
accepted his hints was as charming as the suave fashion in which they
were proffered.

The army in the field has not been slow to learn that a profusion of
talent in the arts and crafts is lying dormant in the Territorial
battalions. If an expert in any branch is wanted, application is
always made to the nearest Territorial battalion, seldom, if ever,
without success. A friend of mine, a company commander in the Ypres
region, having procured a piano for his company’s rest billets behind
the line, found the instrument so much out of tune as to be useless.
Forthwith word was sent round for a piano-tuner. A search through the
battalion drew a blank. A note to an adjacent Territorial regiment
produced a finished piano-tuner who had been driving a lorry in the
Mechanical Transport. Naturally, he had none of his piano-tuning tools
with him, but he made excellent shift with a couple of spanners from
the travelling workshop. In the same way a Brigade wanted a plumber and
a clerk, and got both from its Territorial battalion. The clerk was a
bookmaker’s clerk, it is true, but he proved himself a treasure--“...
Besides,” as the Staff Captain said, “if one ever wants to make a book
on a race at home, why, there he is, don’t you know!”

Territorial battalions have supplied the army with chemists and doctors
and fly experts, with map-drawers and photographers and electricians,
and with an extraordinary variety of dramatic and musical talent for
concerts at the front. At the fortnightly “smokers” of the Machine Gun
School, which are by far the best in the field, territorial battalions
supply a good proportion of the contributors to the programme.
The Artists’ Rifles are particularly prolific in platform talent.
They possess three much sought after performers, in the person of
a lance-corporal (in private life a broker in the rubber market, I
believe), who is a most amusing “drawing-room entertainer” after the
style of the late George Grossmith; a transport sergeant (he forsook
the law for the war), who has an extensive repertory of Kipling
recitations; and a sergeant-instructor of machine-guns, who is the
perfect accompanist and a really first-class musician to boot.

These Territorial battalions are full of experts. The beautifully
finished sign-posts in Plug Street Wood are the work of Territorials,
and a familiar landmark in this historic part of the line is the
exquisite little cemetery laid out by a famous Southern Territorial
battalion in a pretty little wooded glade, where the gallant Lieutenant
Poulton Palmer, the international Rugby footballer, lies. The Adjutant
of a certain Territorial battalion of the Leicesters is a quarry
manager in civil life. When last I saw him, at tea in a Flemish
farm-house, he was proposing to utilize his expert knowledge of pumps
for the benefit of his battalion’s section of trenches.

In the field I have seen Territorials from England, Scotland and
Wales--raw troops fresh from home and hardened veterans of half a dozen
fights, bank clerks from Cornhill, miners from Cardiff, gillies from
Inverness shire, ploughboys from the Mendips. I have seen them in rain
and shine, in the fire-trenches and behind the lines. And seeing them I
have marvelled at the equalizing influence of war that has moulded all
these men, torn from their civilian callings--as widely differing as
the poles are asunder--to the same stamp of cool, courageous fighters
who will endure to the end.

The homogeneity of these Territorial battalions, even of the Divisions,
is remarkable. One day I met the whole of the London Division together
on the occasion of Divisional sports. The big field in which the
meeting was held was the microcosm of London life. It was London in
Picardy. Every London accent was heard in that crowd--the whole gamut
of dialects--from the mannered speech of Berkeley Square through all
the intonations and inflexions of the suburbs from Highbury to Brixton,
and from Shepherd’s Bush to Streatham, down to the strident tones of
the New Cut and the Old Kent Road. It was strange to think that but
a short year since all these men had travelled together in ’bus and
tube, had rubbed elbows in Oxford Street or the Strand, strangers all,
leading the jealously guarded individual existence of the average
Londoner--to think that they were now thrown together into almost the
closest relationship it is possible to conceive, the life of troops
fighting side by side in the field.

With the Scottish battalions the family spirit is even more marked.
The Scotsman is a far more clannish creature than the Southerner, and
these Scottish battalions hang together with a fierce _esprit de corps_
in which the Englishman feels positively lost. This is especially true
of the kilted battalions, which have in their bonnets and kilts a
perpetual reminder of their origin.

I have been in the trenches with Highland battalions in which hardly a
man born south of the Tweed was serving, and in which all, officers as
well as men, spoke in the broadest Scottish vernacular. The chaplains
of some of these Scottish Territorial regiments are delightful
characters, fine types of “meenister” and “verra’ godly men,” but,
for all that, stout, great-hearted fellows who are continually with
the men in the front line. The fine, practical spirit in which these
Scottish _padres_ carry out their mission is expressed in the saying
of one of their number, Chaplain to the 5th Gordon Highlanders, whose
continual exhortation to the men is: “Keep your hearts up and your
heads doon!”

With these brave words, which might well serve as a motto for the
Territorial on active service, we will leave the Territorials at
the post of duty. When the country’s need of men was sorest, they
volunteered for foreign service and came to France and did their part.
Now that the first great transports have crossed the Channel with the
men of the New Army, the original mission of the Territorials may be
regarded as accomplished, though, doubtless, many fights still await
them. They gave their help at a time when every man was wanted to hold
our fragile line. Now they have become absorbed into the framework of
our army in the field, which the legions of the New Army are expanding
into the great Continental host to decide the ultimate issue with the
hordes of Germany.




CHAPTER XVI

THE EYES OF THE ARMY

 “Why, all my life I have been trying to guess what lay on the other
 side of the hill!”--THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.


One day, while I was gazing at a German working-party grubbing like
ants on a far slope behind the enemy lines, a hawk glided swiftly and
strongly into the field of my telescope. It hung almost motionless in
the clear summer air, high up above the green valley, its powerful
wings outspread, the very incarnation of waking watchfulness. And I
found myself wondering of what the hawk reminded me, poised aloft, now
swooping a little this way, now that, until a low droning in the azure
far above gave me my clue even as an aeroplane glittered into sight.

The aeroplane stood out, almost motionless as it seemed to me, over the
German lines, while with a “pom-pom-pom!” the German anti-aircraft guns
ringed it round in puffs of white smoke. Like the hawk that continued
to hover over the valley, it was watching--watching. Like the hawk’s,
its searching glance plunged down into the animate life far below, the
life that pursues its normal round unperturbed because it knows it
cannot escape from the eyes in the sky.

The aeroplanes are the eyes of the army. They alone have made possible
the war of positions. From the Alps to the North Sea the warring
nations of Europe are hidden in the ground, but their eyes are far
aloft. It is the alliance between the mole and the hawk. While the
man in the trench uses the periscope to observe from his safe shelter
the enemy trench across the way, the army commanders in the rear peer
through the eyes of the aeroplanes into the enemy trenches and into the
enemy country far behind the firing-line.

The most important contribution which this war is destined to make to
our knowledge of warfare lies in the development of the use of military
aircraft. The aeroplane has revolutionized warfare, because it has
practically removed from war the element of surprise. The only hope
that the modern General has of maintaining the fog of war lies in the
weather, which, in more than one instance in this war, has effectually
veiled from peering eyes aloft movements which are destined to have a
decisive influence on the operations.

The aeroplane has relieved the cavalry of the greater part of its
functions. If our cavalry are serving dismounted in the trenches, and
their horses growing round of belly, it is the fault of the aeroplane.
Sir John French has defined the functions of cavalry as threefold: to
reconnoitre, to deceive, to support. The aeroplane has entirely usurped
the first of these three roles, and has rendered the second illusory.
Only rain and mist can safely hope to obscure the movements of an army
from the eyes of the watcher in the skies.

Like cavalry, the military aeroplanes execute both tactical and
strategical reconnaissances. Their tactical reconnaissances are carried
out on shorter flights, which lead them out over the enemy trench-lines
and the region immediately behind. Their object is to note any change
in the clear-cut line of the trenches, as seen from above, indicative
of the laying out of fresh fortifications or communication trenches; to
look out for reliefs coming up; and, generally, to gauge the strength
and composition of the enemy forces along a definite section of the
front by noting the positions of transport columns and by locating the
whereabouts of brigade and divisional headquarters.

Generally the aeroplane has a specific mission, though, of course,
roving flights are also made. A flight may be undertaken at the request
of a battalion in the front line which has observed suspicious activity
on the part of the enemy opposite, or the Intelligence may have got
wind of some move which seems to require further elucidation by a peep
from above.

Of the same nature as these tactical reconnaissances are the flights
undertaken in collaboration with the artillery, either to survey likely
objectives for our guns, to locate hostile batteries that have been
annoying our lines, or to perform that useful duty known as “spotting
for the guns”--_i.e._, observing the effect of our artillery fire.
Naturally, in the course of flights undertaken for purposes unconnected
with our artillery, an aeroplane will often make observations of the
greatest value to the guns. In such cases, of course, a report is
immediately made to the artillery headquarters.

As in these tactical reconnaissances the aeroplane is, so to speak, an
extended and movable periscope for the men in the front line, so, in
its strategical reconnaissance work, it may be said to serve as eyes
to the General Staff. Strategical reconnaissance takes the aeroplane
on longer flights far into the enemy’s country, where above towns
in the war zone, about barracks and railheads and headquarters and
fortifications, keen eyes may glean much that is of supreme importance
to the General Staff in compiling the information as to the strength
and dispositions of the enemy on which all strategy is based.

In addition to the tactical and strategical importance of the
aeroplane in war, it is also a weapon not only of offence, but
of defence, against aircraft. It can carry out bombing raids on
fortified positions, factories of munitions of war, aviation centres,
railway-stations, barracks, bivouacs, and batteries. It is the only
really effective weapon of defence against aircraft, both aeroplanes
and airships. One of the principal duties of our aeroplanes at the
front is to go up and chase away German aircraft reconnoitring or bound
on bombing exploits. They have also done useful work as sky sentries on
the watch for the Zeppelins which from time to time sally forth--with
small success, be it said--to spread German _Kultur_ from the clouds
over the towns situated in our zone of operations at the front.

The battle of Neuve Chapelle may be cited as a typical instance of the
work which the Royal Flying Corps is doing in this war. It was our
airmen who, by continual reconnaissance work in all the variations of
weather which are found in the late winter of Flanders, ascertained
the dispositions of the Germans about Neuve Chapelle to be such as to
justify the hope that we might risk a successful offensive at this
point. It was they who, while our troops were massing for the attack,
made sure that all was quiet, not only in the German lines, but also
in the enemy’s country, far back into Belgium. It was they who, by
hovering constantly above our trenches, kept prying German eyes away,
and prevented them from discovering the surprise which was preparing
for Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and his merry men.

Nor did the usefulness of the Royal Flying Corps cease here. Despite
the very hazy weather which prevailed on the morning of the engagement
(March 10), “a remarkable number of hours’ flying of a most valuable
character were effected, and continuous and close reconnaissance was
maintained over the enemy’s front” (Sir John French’s Despatch, dated
General Headquarters, April 5, 1915).

During the actual fighting, in addition to their usual work of
“spotting for the guns,” our aeroplanes executed several daring raids
into Belgium, in order to hamper the enemy’s movements by destroying
his points of communication. Bombs were dropped on the railways at
Menin, Courtrai, Don, and Douai; a wireless installation near Lille
is believed to have been destroyed; while, to quote the official
despatch again, “a house in which the enemy had installed one of his
headquarters was set on fire.”

This was, I believe, the headquarters of the German Intelligence, for
I read in the German newspapers that the rooms in which the German
Intelligence at General Headquarters is installed are boarded up along
one side as the result of the partial destruction of the house by an
English air raid. It was also stated that one of the English bombs
which had not exploded is kept on the mantelpiece in the office as a
memento.

A Belgian doctor who called upon me in London in April, immediately on
his arrival from Belgium, told me of a dramatic account of the British
air raid on the railway at Courtrai, given to him by the guard of a
train which had been standing in the station at the time. The man had
been wounded, and my Belgian friend had been called in to attend him.
The guard said that, on the appearance of the British aeroplane over
the station, a number of German soldiers rushed out on to the line and
started to fire at the raider with their rifles. The British airman
suddenly planed down, and the Germans, thinking he had been hit,
streamed together with shouts of joy into a dense crowd to await his
landing.

But their triumph was short-lived. When he was not more than a hundred
feet from the ground the raider dropped four bombs in rapid succession
right into the midst of the crowd; then, with a quick jerk of his
elevating plane, soared aloft and away. The bombs worked havoc among
that dense mass. A score or more of soldiers and railwaymen were
killed, and as many more wounded. The train was wrecked; and as for
the guard, who was a German, the doctor said he became positively
panic-stricken at the mere thought of what he had seen that day.

The development which the war has produced in what I may call air
tactics is positively prodigious. It must be remembered that, at the
outset, the aeroplane had practically never been tried on active
service, for the experiments made in the Tripoli and Balkan wars, and
by the French in Morocco, were more in the nature of sporting flights
than serious military tests. Our pilots have had to learn by their own
experience in the air--and a gallant and bravely bought experience it
has been--the fighting tactics of the aeroplane. They have had to learn
to distinguish “by silhouette” the different types of German machine,
and to discover the most efficacious way of dealing with each one,
according as the position of the propeller and of the driving-seat
in relation to the planes restricts the field of fire of the enemy
machine-gun. They have had to learn for themselves how to manœuvre for
position when tackling an adversary in the air, to find out the vital
spots in the different types of enemy machines.

Active service has brought them their first taste of flying under fire.
They have learnt to keep a cool head with high-explosive shrapnel from
the enemy “Archies” bursting all around them, and bullets from the
machine-guns of attacking aeroplanes whistling about their ears or
rustling through the canvas stretches of their wings. They have learnt
to make those twists and turns, those swoops and dives, which I have
so often seen them making high in the air above the lines, to avoid
those pretty little puffs which carry instant destruction in their
folds of white smoke.

Just as a certain temper of nerve is required of the airman, so must
he also possess special faculties of observation to fit him for
military work. The air observer must be cool-headed and resolute.
Above all things he must possess a certain measure of intuition which
will complete, which will fill in the details, as it were, of the
picture which his sharp eyes must pick out in relief from the blurred
chessboard of fields and roads and trees far beneath him.

Only experience will teach even the keenest eye to observe fruitfully.
Only the trained eye, reinforced by a good military brain, will detect
in that black thread on a white strip troops marching along a road,
or distinguish a moving train in that white smudge gliding over a
dark background. Only the trained mind will appreciate the military
significance of these observations. Where the intuition comes in is in
making the correct deductions from the things observed, and fitting
them into their right place in the general scheme of our information of
the enemy’s movements. Intelligent map-reading at the height at which
aeroplanes in war are compelled to travel is more than an acquired
accomplishment; it is a born gift.

Where a pilot and an observer venture forth together in one machine,
they must work in closest harmony. Like bowler and wicket-keeper in one
of those successful combinations with which we are familiar in county
cricket, each must divine by intuition the intention of the other. In
the roar of the propeller, the rush of the hurricane, communication by
word of mouth is hopeless, and even the portable telephone is of small
avail.

Now the observer is the captain on the bridge, the pilot the chief
engineer in the engine-room. Now the rôles are reversed. Destruction
threatens, and the pilot takes command. The observer can lean back and
commend his soul to God, while his comrade strains every nerve to avert
a swift end by a bullet in the air or a more terrible death on the
cruel earth a mile below.

Though only two years old, the Royal Flying Corps has already created
its own distinctive atmosphere. I can only describe it as a subtle
blend of the free-and-easy good-fellowship of the navy with the kind of
hectic dare-devilry which is characteristic of airmen everywhere.

Not that the foolhardiness of a certain type of airman that we all
know is tolerated in the Royal Flying Corps. Its spirit demands high
courage, cool nerve, and absolute devotion to duty, on the part of
every one of its men, but feats of the “looping the loop” order are
strictly repressed. It is to keep this spirit out of the Corps that the
rule has been made forbidding any “advertising” of individual airmen by
name in connection with their flights on military service.

The risks are the same for all airmen at the front. Every airman
that fares forth over the German lines takes his life in his hand.
The authorities who decide these things hold--and rightly hold, in
my opinion--that the “writing-up” of the feats of individuals on
duty might introduce into the Corps a spirit of rivalry which is not
consonant with our high military traditions, and would also be unfair
to those airmen who weekly fly hundreds of miles in accomplishment of
difficult and dangerous missions, but who, by chance or by their own
skill and judgment, avoid adventures that savour of the sensational.
Therefore, “no names, no courts-martial.”

This rule has often rankled in my journalistic heart, for the Royal
Flying Corps accomplishes almost daily feats which appeal to all that
is daring and adventurous in Englishmen. Let us hope that after the war
the war diary of the Royal Flying Corps will be made public. It should
prove as inspiring a record of gallantry as the story of the Scott
Expedition.

Let me remind you, as a foretaste of the deeds of epic heroism
this diary contains, of the achievements of three young men of the
Royal Flying Corps, all of whom have made the sacrifice of their
lives--Rhodes-Moorhouse, V.C., Mapplebeck, D.S.O., and Aidan Liddell,
V.C.

England was thrilled to the depths when it read the plain,
unvarnished tale told by “Eyewitness” of the last flight and death of
Rhodes-Moorhouse. You remember how, landing at the flying-ground with
a mortal wound, he had but one thought, not of himself, but of his
mission--to make his report before they bore him away to die. Those who
were present when he returned from his last flight repeated to me the
grim jest he made about the horrifying wound he had received. Though
his body was hurt beyond repair, the courage in that brave soul burned
so brightly that it gave him strength to fulfil his duty to the last.
And so his epitaph ran: “He made his report.”

I have heard nothing more extraordinary or more gallant than the
Odyssey of young Lieutenant Mapplebeck, who, after emerging safe
and sound from one of the most adventurous episodes of the war, met
his death in a banal flying accident in England. Young Mapplebeck’s
adventure began when, in the course of a reconnaissance over the enemy
lines, he was shot down over a town in German occupation. He managed
to land in a field, and, finding to his amazement that his enforced
descent had not been observed, promptly concealed himself.

Mapplebeck spoke French, Flemish, and German, with equal fluency, and
this gift of tongues, coupled with a nice mixture of resourcefulness
and audacity, helped him to a suit of civilian clothes, in which he
proceeded to take a look round the town. The walls were covered with
placards announcing that his abandoned aeroplane had been found, and
threatening dire reprisals against whomsoever should contumaciously
venture to harbour him. This did not deter the adventurous young
man from mixing freely with the German soldiers. He drank beer with
them, and listened--with what silent amusement may be divined--to
their bewildered speculations as to the whereabouts of the vanished
_Engländer_.

He actually managed to change some money, bringing home in proof of his
feat German banknotes stamped with that historic phrase, “_Gott strafe
England!_” and probably circulated, in the territories occupied by
Germany, with a view to producing a “moral effect” on the unfortunate
civilian population.

As the result of an accident the hero of my tale had one foot shorter
than the other. But he did not allow this physical deformity to
interfere with his subsequent course of action. He concluded his
extraordinary adventure by walking right through the German lines,
through Belgium into Holland, doing an average of thirty miles on foot
a day. To prevent his passage being traced, he took the precaution of
changing his nationality, speech, and story, with everybody with whom
he came in contact. He, too, “made his report.” Though it was late by
several weeks, it was a good deal more ample and informative than had
ever been anticipated when he set out. Within a month of his adventure,
Mapplebeck was flying at the front again.

Captain Aidan Liddell died in hospital in August, after a magnificent
feat of endurance which was described to me by his comrades of the
R.F.C. at the time. While he was reconnoitring over the German lines in
Belgium one day at the beginning of August, his leg was almost severed
by a German shell which burst right above his machine. Liddell, who was
driving, immediately lost consciousness, and the machine, with pilot
and observer, dived nose foremost towards the earth.

The aeroplane was flying at a very great height when the accident
happened. It turned right over on itself as it hurtled down, but,
owing to its great altitude from the ground, had time to right itself.
On being wounded, Liddell had collapsed over the steering-wheel,
with his arms round the pillar. This position kept him in his seat
when the machine turned turtle. The observer was jammed hard between
the machine-gun and the struts, and was thus likewise prevented from
falling out.

As the machine righted itself, the pilot regained consciousness. Now
they were dangerously near the earth, but, recognizing that with his
wound he could not last very long, Liddell turned the machine for home.
He made off in a straight line for the nearest flying-ground, which
happened to be Belgian. With fifty wounds, as it subsequently appeared,
in his leg, faint from loss of blood, he flew for thirty-five minutes,
and finally reached the aerodrome, where he made a perfect landing. To
those who ran out to greet him he said very steadily: “You must lift me
out. If I move I’m afraid my leg will come off.”

When they told me his story there was every chance that the gallant
pilot would save his leg, nor did his life seem seriously endangered.
But amputation proved necessary, and Liddell did not survive the
operation. The Victoria Cross laid upon his coffin was the worthy
recompense of his deathless endurance.

Those are three little stories of the Royal Flying Corps. I can think
of no higher praise than to say that they are typical of the spirit of
our airmen at the front.

There is a freemasonry of the air. Some kind of affinity seems to
exist between those who have taken to themselves wings to explore the
vastnesses of space. It has survived the snapping of all the other
ties that once united us with our present foe. German airmen who
rejoice in the slaughter of civilians from the skies show themselves
of punctilious chivalry towards their foeman in space. If a British
aeroplane goes forth and does not return, it often happens that a
message is thrown down in our lines by a German aeroplane announcing
the fate of the missing. The Royal Flying Corps, on its side, is
equally courteous. There is no place left for chivalry between foemen
on earth, it seems, so they have banished it to the skies.

I always think there is an heroic atmosphere about the flying-grounds
at the front. It is the privilege of these green fields and gorse-grown
heaths, with their fringe of sheds, to witness the finish of these
epic adventures in the air. Out of the crystal clearness of the summer
evening, from the drifting cloud-wrack of a stormy day, the aeroplanes
drone home, laden with their cargoes of glorious deeds. I have seen the
airmen go out at dawn. I have seen them return in the sunset. Indeed,
where the war correspondents have their headquarters the sky throbs all
day with the song of the propellers.

There is a great deal of efficiency and bustle about these
flying-grounds at the front. Through the doors flung wide of the
hangars lining the ground one gets a glimpse of the fighting
aeroplanes, strangely big and cumbrous on the ground as contrasted with
their power and beauty in the air. Little knots of mechanics in blue
overalls, the natty forage-cap of the R.F.C. poised on one side of the
head, swarm about the machines, busied with the engine, changing parts,
tightening up wires.

All these flying-grounds at the front are self-contained. The
motor-lorries of the Wing stationed there line one side of the
aerodrome when they are not away at the railheads fetching stores and
supplies. The hum of the lathe, the clink of tools, resound from the
travelling workshops by the roadside as from the repair shops installed
in sheds and barns about the place. There is a constant droning in the
air, faint and soothing like the hum of a bee, from somewhere far aloft
where an airman is executing graceful curves on a testing flight, loud
and deafening about the sheds where the engines are having their trial
runs.

Here is an aeroplane starting off on reconnaissance. Pilot and observer
are already in their seats in the midst of a neat arrangement of
maps on rollers, compass, barograph, speedometer, pressure gauges,
clock, camera, and machine-gun. The biplane, big but frail, its planes
shining diaphanously, its metal-work sparkling in the sun, quivers and
trembles to the stroke of the roaring propeller. An officer wearing the
characteristic cross-buttoned tunic of the R.F.C. is making a parting
recommendation to the pilot, who, in his fur-lined leather hood and
leather coat and fur gloves, looks more like an Arctic explorer than
anything else. The observer, similarly muffled up, is fixing a map in
position.

The biplane is standing out in the middle of the field, its nose
pointed in the opposite direction from the firing-line, for the airmen
will only bring their machine into the wind after they are in the
air. The roar of the engine grows suddenly louder as the officer,
his injunctions at an end, steps clear, and the biplane slides away
over the ground with that curious bobbing motion that one knows. It
takes the air easily, steadily, and clambers aloft round and round the
aerodrome, then suddenly turns sharply aside and makes off towards the
firing-line, twenty miles away.

Not a day passes that one does not see our aeroplanes bound for the
front. How often have I stood in the fire-trench and watched one of
these aerial reconnaissances--seen our airman, so high that he looked
like a tiny moth in a vast domed hall, stealing out over the German
lines! Again and again the enemy anti-aircraft guns drive him back, but
each time he comes back and each time he sees a little more.

Sometimes, as I have watched, I have seen another aeroplane suddenly
materialize out of the blue and circle in sweeps about the invader.
The “Archies” cease fire. From somewhere very far away, as it seems,
echoes the dull tap-tapping of a machine-gun. Suddenly you realize that
it is a fight in the air, that you are watching the fantasy of Wells
translated into reality. Honestly, it is not very thrilling. You hear
that very faint barking of the guns: all you see is two tiny shining
specks manœuvring in the air. The only men who get a good view of the
fight are the combatants engaged.

But, as so often happens, imagination breathes life into the dead
bones of reality. As you watch those translucent dots curvetting a
mile above your head, you find yourself thinking of the greensward of
the busy aerodrome awaiting the return of the aerial scout, even now
at grips in the air, of his place at the dinner-table, of the pleasant
château where the Flying Corps has its mess, of the comrades who even
now, maybe, are scanning the sky towards where the battle front is
stretched, for a sign of the missing bird. I have seen these anxious
little groups at nightfall waiting on the open flying-ground for those
who have not come back, and great fires throwing out a ruddy light to
guide the wanderer home.

The Germans have the most wholesome respect for the efficiency of the
Royal Flying Corps. It has found tangible expression in the efforts
they have made to produce a type of machine faster and more powerful
than anything our airmen possess. The German battle aeroplane, a most
formidable machine with double fuselage, made its appearance this
summer, and proved itself to be the fastest aeroplane in the field.
Engine-power will almost always get the better of skill and courage.
Once again the Germans, by calling in their unrivalled technical
knowledge to their aid, diminished the advantage we had gained over
them in equal contest. We lost no time in taking up the challenge, and
there are signs that the Germans will not be left long in enjoyment of
their monopoly of speed in aerial reconnaissance.

The Germans have proved themselves to be skilful and adventurous
fliers in this war. It is characteristic of the thoroughness of their
war training that at the very outset of the war they gave proof of
possessing a more or less definite plan of campaign for the war in the
air. But--probably on superior orders--they do not show that lust for
fighting that distinguishes our airmen. Our fliers are always lamenting
the fact that a German airman will never wait to engage an adversary
who sallies out to drive him off, but turns tail and runs as soon as
the enemy appears.

The time has not yet come to review the work of the Royal Flying Corps
at the front. I have made no attempt to do so in this chapter. The
aeroplane is such an essential part of the Intelligence in modern war
that no detailed survey of the methods by which the Royal Flying Corps
fulfils its functions as the eyes of the army can safely be given
until the war is over. I have had to content myself, therefore, with
seeking to impart to you at home some of the admiration with which the
gallantry and endurance of our airmen in the field have inspired me,
who have been privileged to see them at their work.

  “Ruin-kist but gamesome ever,
    Proud we meet amid the blue:
  Who shall speed the world’s endeavour,
    Splendid foeman, I or you?
  Here we crash: the great downcasting
    Waits. May weal us all betide!
  Buoyant with the Everlasting
    Lords of death we ride--we ride!”

  J. MACKERETH: _Hymn of the Airman_.




CHAPTER XVII

ENTER THE NEW ARMY

 “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which
 is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under
 the sun.”--ECCLES. 1. 9.


The public at large first heard of the arrival of the New Army at the
front through the Commander-in-Chief’s Despatch, published on July 12,
covering the second battle of Ypres and the military operations down
to the end of May. In that Despatch Sir John French announced that,
since the date of his last report, several divisions of the New Army
had arrived in France, and added that their physique was excellent, and
that their bearing and appearance on parade reflected great credit on
the officers and staffs responsible for their training.

But there were many homes in England in which this carefully guarded
secret had long been known--in fact, ever since the sinister spectre of
the war had crept into the house on the sudden departure of husband,
son, or brother for the port of embarkation. Imagination, quickly
stirred by love, pictured the young soldier landed in post-haste in
France, and forthwith marched into the trenches--into battle.

I met one of the first divisions of the New Army to come out to France
within a few days of its landing. I fell in with it, indeed, at the
end of its very first march towards the front from the railhead, where
it had detrained on its journey up from the coast base. One of its
battalions came into the little village where the war correspondents
had their camp.

It was a picture that will not soon fade from my memory, the files
of wet and mud-stained Highlanders tramping in through the gathering
twilight, their baggage-carts and field-kitchens rumbling along behind.
Their transport seemed strangely spick-and-span under its layer of
yellow splashings from the road, and then, reading on the side of
a cart the inscription, giving number and name of the battalion, I
realized with a thrill that this was the New Army.

With what fresh interest I looked at those men again! The smiles and
tears of a thousand homes seemed to wreathe themselves about those
fine stalwart figures. If these bonny Highlanders did not each carry
a Marshal’s baton in his haversack, then, at least, they bore there
the hopes and pride of England. For, say what you will, the New Army
occupies a place of its own in the nation’s thoughts. Regulars and
Territorials both have their warm corners in the national heart, but
the New Army--it is you, it is I, it is all of us. It is a child of the
war, born since we broke with our old peaceful past, born of the new
spirit of self-sacrifice and determination that is remaking a nation
under our very eyes. The thought that is uppermost on seeing the New
Army in the field is that these are the men who must complete what has
been begun, the men that must carry on the torch so long and so bravely
upheld by the Old Army.

That battalion was quartered in the village for a few days. That
very evening, and each evening during its stay, their pipers strode
once up and once down the village street, playing the time-hallowed
tattoo. After nightfall the men quartered in the barns and sheds
all around chased dull care away by impromptu concerts. The rousing
choruses--veritable symposia of all the music-hall successes of the
past two years--mingling with the strains of mouth-organs, evoked
memories which were positively poignant in our isolation at the front
of tired crowds streaming back into London on hot Bank Holiday nights
in summer. For a few days one caught a glimpse of the kilt in the
village, one heard now and then the skirl of the pipes, and then, one
morning at daybreak, the battalion moved on.

After that, I continually came across the New Army at the front. I
seemed to be following, stage by stage, its progressive acclimatization
to the new life, its training for the new work. More than once I
encountered an entire division on the march between towns in rear of
our lines. The men’s uniform seemed to be of a more homogeneous khaki
tint than that of the veteran battalions in the field, and I was
particularly struck by the excellent leather harness and the splendid
condition of the big shire horses of the transport.

Little by little the New Army was creeping towards the front. Now I
would meet one of its officers doing a spell in the trenches, now a
company trudging with full equipment towards the firing-line along some
Flanders road, whose forlorn appearance spoke of “frightfulness” past
and to come. In the same way as the Territorials, the New Army was
gradually familiarized with the conditions in the trenches, until a
whole division was deemed suitably prepared for holding its part of the
line alongside of Regular and Territorial troops.

Like the Commander-in-Chief, everybody in the field was impressed
by the remarkably fine physique of the men of the New Army. Their
appearance fully dispelled an idea that was current at one time,
not only in England but also at the front, that the first of the
New Armies would be made up of poor specimens of the nation’s
manhood--that wastage in the form of the permanently unemployed and the
casual labourers, who are always the first to be hit by an economic
disturbance such as war produces. The splendid proportions of the
men in many new battalions, not only in stature but also in muscular
development, suggested that these men were ideal fighters, whatever
their training might prove to be like. This impression was amply
confirmed by the easy poise of the head and the clear expression of the
eyes of the men of the New Army.

Said the General commanding one of the first divisions of the New Army
to come to France, in talking to me about his men:

“I don’t believe they have a nerve in their bodies. They are
magnificent men in spirit as in physique. All they want now is to
‘have a go’ at the Germans, and once they get going, there will be
no holding them back, I give you my word for that. I have never seen
the Territorial system to better advantage than in the New Armies. In
almost every battalion the men come from their own recruiting area,
and, in addition to the bond of a common dialect, have all kinds of
family, business, and social relations with their officers and with one
another. Their discipline is excellent, and they are taking to the new
conditions of life out here like a duck to water.”

One who is in a position to judge adumbrated to me the theory that
the men of the later classes of the New Armies--men who joined for
“conscience’ sake,” after taking a month or two to settle up their
affairs--would be more “intelligent” soldiers, more to be trusted
individually and in a sudden emergency, but less good with the bayonet
and the spade than the earlier classes.

I believe this to be the veriest hair-splitting. Experience has shown,
I think, that war, or at any rate this war, gives a uniform mentality
to all men who are drawn into it, and they become good or bad soldiers
as the case may be. I am convinced that there is not a pin to choose
between a good Regular battalion and a good Territorial battalion, even
if the latter, like so many of the London Territorial regiments, for
example, is in the main composed of men from the educated classes.

The entrance of the New Army upon the stage of the theatre of war marks
the passing of the old soldier, the man who put the battle honours on
the regimental colours. He has left his magnificent spirit of courage,
devotion, and endurance behind, but he is taking away with him many
of his whimsical ways as expressed in his mysterious army slang, his
curious army games, his love of sentimental ditties of the “Just before
the Battle, Mother” order, or of doggerel like “Cock Robin” and “The
Song of Shame.”

Already you may find trenches at the front where an allusion to the
Motherland as “Old Blighty,” to bread as “roti,” and jam as “pozzy,”
will meet eyebrows lifted in haughty amazement, where “Crown and
Anchor”[1] is never played, where that cry, so familiar to army ears,
of “’Ouse!”[2] is never heard.

You remember the apoplectic horror of the old Colonel in the story
because a private of Regulars on parade blew his nose on his
handkerchief, “like any damned militiaman.” What would the old gentle
man say, I wonder, to privates who go into action with a pocket edition
of Ruskin in their haversacks and a couple of _Times Broadsheets_ in
their breast-pockets?

However, the long-service man is by no means wholly extinct in the
army in the field, and in many battalions his influence lingers strong.
In battalions of the New Army it is maintained by old soldiers who have
re-enlisted for the duration of the war, and upon whom, with their
tales of service in Malta, Gibraltar, Aden, Egypt, and India, their
comrades, fresh from civil life, seek to mould themselves. But for all
that, the soldier of Kipling’s stories is disappearing from the army as
the fighting unit, mainly because his numbers are gradually becoming
extinct through wastage of war, but also because the character of the
army is changing.

Under the influence of the introduction of so much new blood, the army
has ceased to be the close corporation it was, the kind of exclusive
association that, by its terms of service and its small numbers, was
able to select its material and shape it to its own form. It has
become more universal in character, more identified with the nation at
large. I believe that the change is only temporary, and that, as far
as one may look into the future at the present juncture, our military
traditions are strong enough to mould any amount of new material
into the old form: moreover, the men of the Expeditionary Force, now
prisoners in Germany, will alone suffice to furnish the backbone
of a new army on the old lines after the war. The introduction of
conscription would, of course, sound the knell of the army as we knew
it in the past.

The regimental officer of the type that Sandhurst and Woolwich turned
out is gradually being replaced by the subaltern from civil life. In
the new conditions, it will be impossible, I imagine, to maintain to
the full the old atmosphere of our officers’ corps, in which patriotism
and pride of regiment were rivals in the affections. The subaltern of
the New Army no longer talks of his regiment by its old army number,
nor does he recognize in the men around him those little symbols that
express our great military past, the red beckle of the Black Watch, the
Sussex plume, the eagle of the Scots Greys, nor could he tell you why
the officers of the Royal West Kents drink the King’s health sitting,
and the Grenadier Guards not at all.

We are here confronted with the introduction of an entirely new type
into the army. In the boys fresh from a Public School and in the
’Varsity graduates the army draws on a class that has always supplied
a large proportion of officers, but in addition to these there is
found in the New Army the vague young man--_le petit jeune homme_ that
Tristan Bernard writes of so delightfully--who has never done anything
particular until his response to the call of duty pitched him into a
period of intensive training among men to whom the army and its great
traditions meant as little as to himself.

Service in the field will make or mar this type of officer which is
found so largely in the New Army. In his training-camp at home he has
probably already dimly discerned that upon him, as an officer, devolves
the enormous responsibility of “mothering” a large number of men, all
of whom are older and more experienced in life than he. But he will
scarcely realize how much he is on his trial, that he must “make good”
or go under, until he comes out to the front. In the field he will
learn that his neat uniform and his Sam Browne belt are something more
than mere sartorial embellishments which are _de rigueur_ in England
this year. He will soon find out that the honour attaching not to him
but to the coat he wears carries with it obligations which he must meet
unflinchingly or be crushed.

In the field he will understand the true inwardness of those
regulations, continually impressed upon him at home by senior officers,
whom he was disposed to regard as “fussy” and “red-tapey,” which lay
down a clear social distinction between the officer and his men. He
must find out for himself how to adjust those regulations with that
measure of good-fellowship which, if he keeps his eyes open, he will
see existing between officers and men already at the front. Presently
he will begin to comprehend that the leader must be different from his
men, that the men must look up to him as to a real “superior,” for
guidance, for moral support. Then, when he begins to realize that it
largely depends on himself whether his men are good or bad, he will
take his place as a tiny cog in the position allocated to him by the
army in its vast system of machinery.

But even should it prove impossible to maintain the old atmosphere of
our officers’ corps, the new atmosphere will, I believe, be impregnated
with the same ideals as the old, though their origin may be different.
Our present army, composed of veterans of the Expeditionary Force,
Territorials, and New Army men, is inspired by the same determination
to prevail as held our little army firm at Mons and Ypres. In the case
of the Expeditionary Force, probably military tradition, which has all
the force of habit, was the main source from which this rare tenacity
was fed; with the New Army this unanimous resolve to conquer or die
springs from a blending of our great military traditions with the
mighty uplifting of our British civilization against a tyranny in which
liberty cannot live. Therefore I think one need not be apprehensive
lest the change which is coming over the character of the British
Army should detract from its fighting worth. Our military traditions
will see to it that discipline remains unimpaired: our resolve as a
nation to see this thing through will inspire our new troops to model
themselves on the glorious example of the men who have gone before.

The men in the field were glad to welcome the New Army. Already the
young troops have sustained their baptism of fire, not only in the
trenches but also in the open field. Obviously, not only officers and
men, but also the staffs, are lacking in experience of trench warfare.
Their immediate usefulness would rather seem to lie in the assault,
but, pending a resumption of the offensive by the Allies on the Western
front, every day the New Army spends in the field adds to its knowledge
of the peculiar conditions of the war of positions.

The future is to the New Army. Their arrival in the field betokens the
end of the era of insufficient men and resources. It ushers in the day
when the Allies, with all the force that in them dwells, shall essay
to break the wall of steel which Germany has flung across Europe. In
a dawn as full of promise as that which saw the rising of the sun of
Austerlitz, the young levies of Imperial Britain are waiting at the
parapet of our trench-line, looking out across the void at the barrier
behind which victory lies.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Crown and Anchor”--a soldier’s game of chance played with a
pointer which is spun round a board marked out in fields of different
colour on which the players stake. Stakes are paid according to the
field at which the pointer stops. This and “’Ouse” (see following
footnote) are great games among Regulars at the front. They are, or
used to be, extensively played on troop transports homeward bound from
India. Quite considerable sums of money are said to change hands at
“Crown and Anchor” on these transports.

[2] “House”--a kind of lotto, played with numbered cards, mostly for
copper stakes.


THE END


BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND.




  Telegrams:
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  Telephone:
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  41 and 43 Maddox Street,
  Bond Street, London, W.
  _September, 1915._

Mr. Edward Arnold’s AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS, 1915.


WITH OUR ARMY IN FLANDERS, 1915.

By G. VALENTINE WILLIAMS.

_Demy 8vo. Illustrated._ =12s. 6d. net.=

The author of this timely volume is one of the few accredited special
correspondents with British Headquarters in France. He has already made
his name in the literature of the Great War by his magnificent account
of the battle of Neuve Chapelle, published in the newspapers shortly
after the battle. Since then Mr. Williams has had ample opportunities
of seeing things for himself, and he may be trusted to have made the
best use of his chances. The narrative will be brought up to the latest
possible date consistent with the appearance of the book early in the
autumn, and will contain the author’s vivid impressions of the life of
our army in the field, viewed from all kinds of angles, from General
Headquarters right up to the firing-line.


THIRTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE NEW FOREST.

By the Hon. GERALD LASCELLES.

_With Illustrations. Demy 8vo._ =12s. 6d. net.=

It is safe to say that never before has a book been written about
the New Forest by a writer with such qualifications for the task as
the author of this interesting work. Brought up in the atmosphere of
large estates, he was appointed to an official post in the New Forest
at a comparatively early age, and has spent the best years of a long
life there. The whole series of its records has been at his disposal,
and engaged as he has been for over thirty years in administering its
resources, promoting its welfare, and composing the rival claims of
its inhabitants, he has gradually acquired an unequalled knowledge
of its history, forestry, sport, and politics. Its politics he has
left severely alone, but on all other topics he enlarges with the
affectionate zeal of a true lover of the woods. Much entertaining
and curious information about forest customs and hunting lore in
bygone times will be found in the volume; the vicissitudes of the
famous King’s House at Lyndhurst are traced, and the entertainment it
provided for the royal visitors. The successive steps taken in regard
to the magnificent timber of the forest, the deer, the game, and the
privileges of its inhabitants, are vividly described, and the results
of modern sport are contrasted with those of earlier days. The author
is equally at home in the hunting field or the game covert, and as a
modern devotee of hawking knows few rivals. He has already made his
mark in literature by his contributions to the Badminton volume on
Falconry and to the Victoria County History of Hampshire.


A SURGEON IN KHAKI.

By A. A. MARTIN, M.D., F.R.C.S. ENG.

_With Illustrations. Demy 8vo._ =10s. 6d. net=.

Dr. Martin is a New Zealander, who served as a surgeon in the South
African War, and last summer he made a professional tour of some
well-known British and American clinics. When the war broke out he
was attending the British Medical Association meetings at Aberdeen.
He at once came to London, and offered his services to the Royal Army
Medical Corps, and was given a temporary commission in that body.
After a short time at Aldershot he was transferred to the base of the
British Expeditionary Force in France. From there he moved to the
front, arriving on the scene of actual fighting just at the moment
when the great retreat had reached its furthest point, and the French
and British armies were about to assume the offensive. Dr. Martin was
attached to one of the Field Ambulances, and did his share of its work
at the battles on the Marne and the Aisne, and afterwards in Flanders.

Although it is written by a surgeon, and contains one or two chapters
on the professional side of the campaign, this book is essentially one
for the general reader. It is written in a fresh, free style that is
becoming noticeable as a characteristic of writers from the Antipodes;
and as the author does not scorn to give the small details of how he
fared from day to day, the reader gets a more vivid idea of the events
as they struck the individual on the spot than has hitherto been given.


REMINISCENCES OF JOHN ADYE CURRAN, K.C.

_With Portrait. Demy 8vo._ =10s. 6d. net.=

A fund of good stories seems inseparable from a career at the Irish
Bar, and when their possessor elects to place them on record for the
benefit of the public, the reader may look forward to a treat. The
earlier portion of the book deals with the author’s career at the Irish
Bar, in the course of which we get illuminating sketches of many of
the great Judges and Advocates who have so nobly sustained its fame.
The _pièce de résistance_ of these reminiscences is, however, the
detailed and most interesting account of the unravelling of the Phœnix
Park Conspiracy, and the steps by which the ringleaders were brought
to justice. This episode exhibits him as a strong and fearless man
equipped with a fund of shrewd common sense and the enviable power
of guessing correctly at the line events had taken. Later on Mr.
Curran was engaged in the very arduous work of stamping out agrarian
crime from a disturbed district in which he again showed a remarkable
combination of courage and tact in dealing with a problem bristling
with difficulties.


THIRTY YEARS A REFEREE.

By EUGENE CORRI.

_One Volume. Illustrated. Demy 8vo._ =10s. 6d. net.=

These Reminiscences differ from any other in the present generation,
as they are written by one who is thoroughly conversant with the inner
scenes of the boxing world. In view of the position held by the noble
art in popular esteem just now, a book such as this, which gives a good
first-hand account of the notabilities and conditions prevailing, will
be heartily welcomed.

Mr. Corri considers that boxing--viewed as a great national sport--was
never in a healthier state than it is to-day, and that a great change
has taken place since thirty years ago, when the heavy gambling element
was rather too much in evidence. Of the actual exponents of the art his
opinion is equally encouraging. He says: “If a fellow has a genuine
love of boxing, it is long odds that he is a white man at bottom, for
there is something in boxing that shames the little shabby meannesses
out of a man.” This means a good deal, for Mr. Corri is a shrewd
observer, and has the knack of hitting off the characteristics of the
different boxers’ personalities, nor does he hesitate to criticize at
times.

There are some rattling good descriptions of fights in the book,
notable among them being those between Frank Slavin and Peter Jackson,
Fred Welsh and Willie Ritchie, and the dramatic contests associated
with the name of Carpentier.


NIETZSCHE AND THE IDEALS OF MODERN GERMANY.

By HERBERT LESLIE STEWART, M.A., D.PH., PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN
DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA; FORMALLY JOHN LOCKE
SCHOLAR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD; LATE JUNIOR FELLOW IN THE ROYAL
UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND. AUTHOR OF “QUESTIONS OF THE DAY IN PHILOSOPHY
AND PSYCHOLOGY.”

_One Volume. Demy 8vo. Cloth._ =7s. 6d. net.=

This volume is confined to those aspects of Nietzsche’s work which
throw light upon the social policy and ideals of Germany as revealed in
the present war. It is an effort to assist those who wish to correlate
the moral outlook of Germany with one personal influence by which,
beyond doubt, it has been in part directed; and for those who believe
that Nietzsche, properly understood, has been a force making for
cosmopolitan peace, the author sets forth in detail the grounds upon
which he believes the opposite. One key to the enigma of Germany is
to be found in a sinister aberration of thought on ethical questions,
especially on the issues of international conduct. Nietzsche was one
representative of this phase of thought: that he “made the war” would
be a grotesque overstatement; but that he enforced with singular
effectiveness just those doctrines of immoralism which Prussia has put
into execution this book endeavours to show. He is taken, not as the
originator of a policy, but as typical of a mood which has had fearful
consequences for mankind.


MODERN ESSAYS

REPRINTED FROM LEADING ARTICLES IN “THE TIMES.”

With an Introduction by DR. J. W. MACKAIL, F.R.S.L.

_Crown 8vo. Cloth._ =5s. net.=

This volume contains a selection from the charming series of Essays
which have formed such a prominent feature among the Leading Articles
in _The Times_ during the last year or two. They present admirable
examples of modern English style, and deal with themes, round which
the thought of all ages of literature has sparkled, in the spirit of
the twentieth century. Inimitable as are the Essays of Bacon, Addison
or Steele, it cannot be denied that the lapse of time has inevitably
drawn a line between the intellectual atmosphere in which those famous
authors moved, and the current of modern thought. The same problems are
with us to-day, but their appeal to us is made under new conditions;
these Essays respond to an ever-present need for the wisdom of ages,
but arrayed in the guise of 1915.


THE CAPTURE OF DE WET.

By P. J. SAMPSON.

_With Illustrations. Demy 8vo._ =10s. 6d. net.=

The rebellion in South Africa is one of the very few chapters in the
history of the war which are already completed. It is a story in
itself, somewhat apart from the main current of events, and even,
curiously enough, from the story of the conquest of German South-West
Africa to which it formed a preliminary. To people in England reading
of it at the time in disconnected fragments in the newspapers, the
whole thing was not only distressing but perplexing and unintelligible.
It is well that they should be given a consecutive narrative of it, in
its true perspective, by one who was on the spot, and familiar with the
strangely diverse currents of feeling that animate the heterogeneous
population of South Africa. The tale of the fighting--brisk, and full
of movement--forms a striking contrast to the trench warfare of Western
Europe, but it is the psychological rather than the military interest
which predominates throughout the book. The protagonists reveal
themselves with extraordinary vividness: on the one ride are the “slim”
Germanized Beyers, and Christian de Wet, fanatical and irreconcilable
to the last, a pitiful, tragic figure; on the other Botha plays the
fine part with which we are already familiar; but probably few of us
have realized, as this book enables us to realize, all that we owe to
the hard-headed efficiency and clear-sighted sense of honour of General
Smuts.


FROTH AND BUBBLE.

By MONTY HARBORD.

_Illustrated._ =10s. 6d. net.=

“Froth and Bubble” is the light-hearted and breezy record of the
life of a rolling stone. Mr. Harbord was young and athletic, a fine
horseman, and fond of outdoor life, and went to Canada to look for
experiences and adventures in the wild and woolly West. He encountered
some of the rubs which are the lot of the tenderfoot, but was ready to
take on any job that was going, and held his own well in any company.
We next encounter him in Rhodesia, where he arrived just in time to
take an active part in the Matabele Campaign. He remained in South
Africa till the outbreak of the war. Such a man was sure to do his
share, and a bit more, and Mr. Harbord’s modest narrative of his doings
with the Imperial Light Horse well deserves lo be preserved. Finally
he found his way to British East Africa, and--need we say?--did some
big-game shooting.


GOD AND FREEDOM IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

A Study of Degrees of Reality.

CONTAINING THE DONNELLAN LECTURES FOR THE YEAR 1913-14, DELIVERED
BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN.

By the Right Rev. CHARLES F. D’ARCY, D.D., BISHOP OF DOWN.

_One Volume. 8vo._ =10s. 6d. net.=

The principle of Degrees of Reality has been coming to light more and
more clearly in many recent developments of philosophical thought.
The purpose of this work is to exhibit the principle in its relation
to ordinary and scientific experience, and to apply the results so
obtained to some of the fundamental problems of Theology.


HUMAN IMMORTALITY AND PRE-EXISTENCE.

By DR. J. ELLIS M’TAGGART, FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

_Crown 8vo. Cloth._ =2s. 6d. net.=

At the request of many friends, Dr. M’Taggart has reprinted the
interesting chapters on Human Immortality and Pre-Existence from his
well-known work “Some Dogmas of Religion,” in order to bring them
within the reach of those readers who found the expense of the larger
book a bar to its purchase. The author is recognized as one of the
most distinguished exponents of Philosophy in the present day, and the
subject of this little volume is of such vital importance that his
carefully-thought-out propositions cannot fail to be of great interest.


A SURGEON IN BELGIUM.

By H. S. SOUTTAR, F.R.C.S., LATE SURGEON-IN-CHIEF OF THE BELGIAN FIELD
HOSPITAL.

_Popular Edition, Paper Cover_, =2s. net=. _Cloth_, =2s. 6d. net=.

 “This is one of the most impressive books that the war has yet
 produced; it should be read by everyone who wants to regard the
 struggle in its true perspective.”--_Daily Telegraph._

 “An excellently written book.”--_Pall Mall Gazette._

 “Admirably written and readable from beginning to end.”--_Morning
 Post._

 “Mr. Souttar is a surgeon with a gift for vivid writing. His book is a
 quite fascinating record of his experience.”--_Daily News._

 “Among the multitude of books on the war this must surely hold a
 foremost place.”--_Westminster Gazette._


STORIES FROM “THE EARTHLY PARADISE.”

By WILLIAM MORRIS.

Retold in Prose by C. S. EVANS.

_Illustrated. Crown 8vo._ =6s.=

It is through our natural love of a story that we are led to appreciate
the highest and best in literature. This is Mr. Evans’s justification
for his collection of stories from William Morris’s most characteristic
work, just as it was Charles Lamb’s for his famous tales from
Shakespeare. Morris based most of his poems upon legends well known
in other versions--some of the world’s best stories indeed--and it
is hoped that the book will be read with interest for the stories
themselves, and that it may also serve as an introduction to the work
of the poet. With the latter object in view, Mr. Evans has reproduced,
as far as possible, the poet’s own imagery, and has not been dismayed
by the fact that, in the change from poetry to prose, that imagery may
seem sometimes disproportionate and high-flown.

The stories included are “Atalanta’s Race,” “The Son of Crœsus,” “The
Man Born to be King,” “The Love of Alcestis,” “The Land East of the Sun
and West of the Moon,” “The Man Who Never Laughed Again,” “The Proud
King,” “The Writing on the Image,” “The Story of Rhodope,” “Ogier the
Dane,” “The Doom of King Acrisius,” and “The Lady of the Land.”


AT THE DOOR OF THE GATE.

By FORREST REID, AUTHOR OF “FOLLOWING DARKNESS,” “THE BRACKNELLS,” “THE
GENTLE LOVER,” ETC.

_Crown 8vo._ =6s.=

This is the most elaborate and finished piece of work its author has
yet given us. The history of a young man’s life, it begins with his
schooldays and follows him through the years of early manhood and of
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with three women, each of whom reflects the principal character from a
different point of view. The study of middle-class life, in its aspects
of alternate comedy and tragedy, is painted on a broader canvas than
the author has hitherto employed, but the central theme is followed
closely, for from the first the hero is confronted by a spiritual
reality which, while perpetually eluding him, seems ever about to come
within his grasp. And in the last chapters it is this which gives a
meaning to all that has gone before, so that we leave him, if not at
the end of his journey, at least with the open door within sight, and
the light shining beyond.


HILL BIRDS OF SCOTLAND.

By SETON GORDON, AUTHOR OF “THE CHARM OF THE HILLS,” ETC.

_With numerous full-page Illustrations. Demy 8vo._ =12s. 6d. net=.

Mr. Gordon is recognized as one of the highest authorities on the birds
of the hills; and he has made a life-study of them and their ways. He
has spent all hours of the day and night at all seasons of the year
watching the habits of these mountain birds. In his new book the author
discusses exhaustively the habits of the Ptarmigan; he was the first
person to obtain photographs of this bird in the Scottish hills. Much
information is also given about the Golden Eagle, its eggs and young;
its food, nesting haunts, and habits. There is an exhaustive account
of the Snow Bunting, a bird which only nests on the highest and most
inaccessible hills, close on 4,000 feet high. Mr. Gordon was the first
ornithologist to photograph this bird in its British nesting haunts.

A great deal of the information given in this book is quite new and
original. It is illustrated with numerous photographs of the birds and
their nests and nesting sites dealt with in the book; all these have
been taken by the author himself, mostly on the wildest moors of the
Highlands.


POULTRY HUSBANDRY.

By EDWARD BROWN, F.L.S., LATE HON. SEC. NATIONAL POULTRY ORGANIZATION
SOCIETY; PRESIDENT INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF POULTRY INSTRUCTORS
AND INVESTIGATORS. AUTHOR OF “RACES OF DOMESTIC POULTRY,” “POULTRY
FATTENING,” ETC.

_Fully Illustrated. Demy 8vo._ =8s. 6d. net=.

Twenty-four years ago (1891) the first edition of “Poultry-Keeping as
an Industry for Farmers and Cottagers,” by Mr. Edward Brown, F.L.S.,
whose labours for development of this branch of rural industrialism are
recognized all over the civilized world, was published. That book has
contributed greatly to the adoption of practical and scientific methods
scarcely known previously. It has passed through eight editions, and
been adopted as a textbook at educational centres in many countries.

Author and publisher now feel that the time has arrived for a work
dealing with the question on a broader basis. For the past year,
therefore, the former has been engaged upon an entirely new work, in
which has been brought into one focus from his former works what is
applicable to modern conditions, together with the result of practical
experience, and research work of later years, dealing with the entire
problem--productive, technical, and commercial. In it will be found a
vast amount of new material, and special attention has been given to
future developments, whether on extensive or intensive lines.


LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W




Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious errors in punctuation have been fixed.

Page 7: “D’AZINCOURT” changed to “D’AGINCOURT”

Page 22: “all German soliders” changed to “all German soldiers”

Page 31: “on the balks” changed to “on the baulks”

Page 50: “first gas attac” changed to “first gas attack”

Page 62: “eight o’cloc” changed to “eight o’clock”

Page 125: “French Arym” changed to “French Army”

Page 284: “in comparsion” changed to “in comparison”

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68038 ***