XVII

I was one of about thirty instructors at the Havre ‘Bull Ring,’ where

newly-arrived drafts were sent for technical instruction before going

up the line. Most of my colleagues were specialists in musketry,

machine-gun, gas, or bombs. I had no specialist training, only general

experience. I was put on instructional work in trench relief and trench

discipline in a model set of trenches. My principal other business was

arms-drill. One day it rained, and the commandant of the Bull Ring

suddenly ordered me to lecture in the big concert hall. ‘There are

three thousand men there waiting for you, and you’re the only available

officer with a loud enough voice to make himself heard.’ They were

Canadians, so instead of giving my usual semi-facetious lecture on

‘How to be happy though in the trenches,’ I paid them the compliment

of telling them the story of Loos, and what a balls-up it was, and

why it was a balls-up. It was the only audience that I ever held for

an hour with real attention. I expected the commandant to be furious

with me because the principal object of the Bull Ring was to inculcate

the offensive spirit, but he took it well and I had several more

concert-hall lectures put on me after this.

In the instructors’ mess the chief subjects of conversation besides

local and technical talk were _morale_, the reliability of various

divisions in battle, the value of different training methods, and

war-morality, with particular reference to atrocities. We talked more

freely there than would have been possible either in England or in the

trenches. We decided that about a third of the troops in the British

Expeditionary Force were dependable on all occasions; these were the

divisions that were always called on for the most important tasks.

About a third were variable, that is, where a division contained

one or two bad battalions, but could be more or less trusted. The

remainder were more or less untrustworthy; being put in positions of

comparative safety they had about a quarter of the casualties that the

best divisions had. It was a matter of pride to belong to one of the

recognized best divisions—the Seventh, the Twenty-ninth, Guards’, First

Canadian, for instance. They were not pampered when in reserve as the

German storm-troops were, but promotion, leave, and the chance of a

wound came quicker in them. The mess agreed that the most dependable

British troops were the Midland county regiments, industrial Yorkshire

and Lancashire troops, and the Londoners. The Ulsterman, Lowland Scots

and Northern English were pretty good. The Catholic Irish and the

Highland Scots were not considered so good—they took unnecessary risks

in trenches and had unnecessary casualties, and in battle, though

they usually made their objective, they too often lost it in the

counter-attack; without officers they were no good. English southern

county regiments varied from good to very bad. All overseas troops were

good. The dependability of divisions also varied with their seniority

in date of promotion. The latest formed regular divisions and the

second-line territorial divisions, whatever their recruiting area, were

usually inferior. Their senior officers and warrant-officers were not

good enough.

We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in trenches, taken

in nationalities. We agreed on a list like this, in descending order:

English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh and Canadians;

Irish and German Catholics; Scottish; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians;

Portuguese; Belgians; French. The Belgians and French were put

there for spite; they were not really dirtier than the Algerians or

Portuguese.

Atrocities. Propaganda reports of atrocities were, we agreed,

ridiculous. Atrocities against civilians were surely few. We remembered

that while the Germans were in a position to commit atrocities

against enemy civilians, Germany itself, except for the early Russian

cavalry raid, had never had the enemy on her soil. We no longer

believed accounts of unjustified German atrocities in Belgium; know

the Belgians now at first-hand. By atrocities we meant, specifically,

rape, mutilation and torture, not summary shootings of suspected spies,

harbourers of spies, _francs-tireurs_, or disobedient local officials.

If the atrocity list was to include the accidental-on-purpose

bombing or machine-gunning of civilians from the air, the Allies

were now committing as many atrocities as the Germans. French and

Belgian civilians had often tried to win our sympathy and presents

by exhibiting mutilations of children—stumps of hands and feet, for

instance—representing them as deliberate, fiendish atrocities when they

were merely the result of shell-fire, British or French shell-fire as

likely as not. We did not believe that rape was any more common on the

German side of the line than on the Allied side. It was unnecessary.

Of course, a bully-beef diet, fear of death, and absence of wives made

ample provision of women necessary in the occupied areas. No doubt

the German army authorities provided brothels in the principal French

towns behind the line, as did the French on the Allied side. But the

voluntary system would suffice. We did not believe stories of forcible

enlistment of women.

As for atrocities against soldiers. The difficulty was to say where

to draw the line. For instance, the British soldier at first

regarded as atrocious the use of bowie-knives by German patrols. After

a time he learned to use them himself; they were cleaner killing

weapons than revolvers or bombs. The Germans regarded as atrocious

the British Mark VII rifle bullet, which was more apt to turn on

striking than the German bullet. For true atrocities, that is, personal

rather than military violations of the code of war, there were few

opportunities. The most obvious opportunity was in the interval

between surrender of prisoners and their arrival (or non-arrival) at

headquarters. And it was an opportunity of which advantage was only

too often taken. Nearly every instructor in the mess knew of specific

cases when prisoners had been murdered on the way back. The commonest

motives were, it seems, revenge for the death of friends or relations,

jealousy of the prisoner’s pleasant trip to a comfortable prison camp

in England, military enthusiasm, fear of being suddenly overpowered

by the prisoners or, more simply, not wanting to be bothered with the

escorting job. In any of these cases the conductors would report on

arrival at headquarters that a German shell had killed the prisoners;

no questions would be asked. We had every reason to believe that the

same thing happened on the German side, where prisoners, as useless

mouths to feed in a country already on short rations, were even

less welcome. We had none of us heard of prisoners being more than

threatened at headquarters to get military information from them;

the sort of information that trench-prisoners could give was not of

sufficient importance to make torture worth while; in any case it was

found that when treated kindly prisoners were anxious, in gratitude, to

tell as much as they knew.

The troops that had the worst reputation for acts of violence

against prisoners were the Canadians (and later the Australians).

With the Canadians the motive was said to be revenge for a Canadian

found crucified with bayonets through his hands and feet in a German

trench; this atrocity was never substantiated, nor did we believe the

story freely circulated that the Canadians crucified a German officer

in revenge shortly afterwards. (Of the Australians the only thing to

be said was that they were only two generations removed from the days

of Ralph Rashleigh and Marcus Clarke.) How far this reputation for

atrocities was deserved, and how far it was due to the overseas habit

of bragging and leg-pulling, we could not decide. We only knew that to

have committed atrocities against prisoners was, among the overseas

men, and even among some British troops, a boast, not a confession.