'arm to you if you don't monkey with them. They are gentle and 'armless
things to them as is wise to them,' he would say, addressing his group
of humble disciples. 'Gather round and I'll learn you about bombs.' And
what time he toyed with the vicious missile the 'class' would gather
somewhat fearfully around him.
'When you remove this 'ere pin you release the spring which causes the
charge to explode the bomb in the time that you count five—so.' He
removes the pin and proceeds to deliberately count, 'One, two, three';
now his disciples begin to melt away, 'four'--'Oh, you needn't worry,
five, there ain't no charge in this one. It's empty for experimental
purposes.'
He has a wonderful command of hard, technical words, only equalled by
his disregard of the proper pronunciation of simple words.
[Illustration: "Gather round, and I'll learn you about bombs."]
Now with reassured courage the class gather round again, and he takes up
a 'live' bomb.
'As you count three, you hurl the bomb, not with a jerk, but with a
smooth round arm bowling motion. So—one, two, three,' and he hurls the
bomb clear into a trench forty yards away. It explodes with a loud
detonation, smashing up the trench, and he resumes his lecture.
'Although you 'ave removed the pin, you can still keep your bomb right,
by pressing the spring until you are ready for action, so you can 'ave a
bomb in your 'and just ready for throwing as you go up a German trench.
You've got to do it just right, so that Fritz has no time to pick up
your bomb and throw it back at you.
'You can 'ave faith in your bombs now. It's not like them there
Gallipoli days, when we 'ad to fire jam-tin bombs made on the premises.
They was filled with Turkish bullets and all sorts of things, but they
couldn't be relied on to do the same thing every time. Did you ever 'ear
of Lieutenant Forshaw, V.C., down Cape Hellis way? He hurled jam-tin
bombs for forty-two hours at Johnny Turk. He 'ad to light them with his
cigarette.
'Not been used to smoking cigarettes, 'im 'aving been brought up as a
schoolmaster, the smoking did 'im a lot of 'arm, for which reason the
King made 'im a V.C. Lucky fellow, I call 'im. Many's the time I've been
short of a fag.'
At once quite a number of the sergeant's pupils present fags, and having
made a selection and put a few in his pocket for future use, the
sergeant proceeds:
'There's another man I want to tell you about—Captain Shout, V.C., of
the 1st Battalion. 'E was throwing bombs at such close range at the
Turks that 'e had to have three lit at once for 'im, and 'e fired them
just so as they would explode among the enemy. 'E kept this up a long
time, and 'eld the enemy up, but one burst too near 'im, and after some
time, he died of 'is wounds. A great loss to the A.I.F., believe me. You
needn't worry about such-like 'appenings now; only one in two thousand
of our Mills' grenade goes wrong, and with the odd one you've got your
sporting chance.
'Now, what about bombs that land close to you, sometimes thrown by the
enemy, and sometimes by accident, our own, when a man 'its the side of
the trench? Don't be too scared. Even then bombs is 'armless properly
treated. Get behind a traverse if there is one. If not, then you render
the live bomb 'armless. Gather round. I'll show you.'
Sitting on a chair, he took a bomb, and, after counting three, threw it
on the ground, not a great way off. The men scatter for all they are
worth; but the sergeant, having thrown an overcoat over the bomb, calmly
resumes his seat. Crash! goes the bomb at the fifth second. The coat
rises with the bomb, the fragments drop harmlessly around, and the coat
is not much worse.
'Now then, let that learn you to throw sand-bags, blankets, your own
overcoat or some such thing over a bomb, and ten to one no 'arm will
follow.
'Did you ever hear of Mulga Bill at Quinn's Post? A bomb dropped in the
trench amongst them, and 'e promptly put a sand-bag from the parapet on
top of it. To make sure, 'e sat on top of the sand-bag. When it exploded
'e went up with the bag a little way. 'E came down all right and none
the worse. But 'e was _narked_--annoyed, to find his chums laughing at
'im. "What are yer laughing at?" 'e said. "I did that to save you
fellows, but I'll never do it again."
'That's where Mulga Bill was wrong. He done right, except sitting on top
of it. That was an extra act—a sort of curtain-raiser at the wrong end
of the play.
'Let that learn you not to put 'ard substances on a live bomb. It don't
take kindly to pressure. I'll show you. Gather round.'
The instructor then proceeds to throw another bomb. As, counting three,
he throws the bomb down, he proceeds quickly to put a sheet of
corrugated iron on it.
'Now,' he cries, 'run like hell!'--and he showed them the example.
The bomb, exploding, sends fragments, throws the torn iron all around,
and the men have learnt another strange lesson in regard to the
behaviour of bombs.
Notwithstanding the confident handling of bombs by this expert, I am
privately of opinion that men should beware of 'the familiarity which
breeds contempt' in the matter of bombs.
There was a man in our Brigade who had just returned from a bombing
school with his head stuffed full of all sorts of knowledge about the
manufacture and use of bombs. He had a small collection of them, and one
morning in the shadow of the Calvary at the cross-roads-at Fleurbaix,
having an audience, he held forth on his new subject, illustrating his
remarks by fiddling with a small screw-driver at a bomb which he
professed to know all about. Suddenly it exploded, wounding him sadly.
'A little learning' had for the moment 'made him mad.'
To get back to our Bombing School. After the instructor's talks, the men
in turn would hurl bombs from one trench to another, until they were no
longer 'bomb-shy.' As a matter of fact, a good bomber is just as good a
'life' in the army as any other expert. Indeed, a man may lose his life
through the absence of a bomb or the knowledge of how to use it.
In the words of our instructor, 'The cure for the bombing craze is--"A
hair of the dog that bit you."'
The Germans are good bombers, and when, in their counter-attack, they
come down a trench throwing bombs, the only way is to bomb them back and
out again.
He used to say, 'The Boches began this blooming bombing business,' only
his adjectives were sometimes profane. 'What we have to do is to give
them a fair sickening of it. Bomb their Zeppelins, bomb their
submarines, bomb their dug-outs'--then, in one final outburst, he would
say, 'Bomb the Boches; and if you don't believe what I say, ask the
Chaplain.'
If they ask me, how can I contradict him?
Our 'bomber' often surprised us, even to alarm. But the biggest surprise
he ever gave us was when he had been granted ten days' (well deserved)
leave in 'Blighty,' he turned up again in six. Wondering, the men, who
envied him his leave, inquired why he had returned before his leave was
up.
'I was very lonely in London,' he replied simply. 'I like to be with my
pals.'
V
ROMANCE AND REALITY
Page from a world-old palimpsest
Shrined on the altar of the sea,
Whereon a Nation's new-limned crest
Glitters in glorious blazonry!
Grave that our race shall kneel anigh
For aye—Gallipoli; good-bye!
Dying to rank as men with those
Who manned the wall while Ilium burned--
This is the crown your story knows,
The need their rare dear madness earned!
Troy's heroes cry to ours and thee,
Gallipoli, Gallipoli!
They watched through fierce weeks many a one
While, from his tent of rose-hued lawn
The unclenched fingers of the sun
Unloosed the westering birds of dawn;
For them those sun-birds stoop and fly
No more! Gallipoli, good-bye!
God's acre, bare and barren woods,
Cross-guarded mounds where noon-rays burn--
Like pale knights praying by their swords,
Set upright in the bracken-fern--
Thy love shall keep our freemen free,
Gallipoli, Gallipoli!
J. ALEX. ALLEN in the _Sydney Bulletin_.
V
ROMANCE AND REALITY.
The Army Chaplain, drawn by Mars from his quiet round of parish work and
life, made up, as it is, of pastoral visitation, educational and
devotional meetings, and the public services of the Sabbath, is certain
to find active service a restless experience. His battles aforetime,
fierce enough sometimes, were in the arena of Synod or Conference Hall,
and his duels were of the more or less friendly sort of the Ministers'
Fraternal. Now he sees something of battles more dramatic, in which the
missiles are more than words. He moves in an atmosphere of romance
mingled with grim reality, and he begins to feel that he is living in
heroic days. He sees the world in process of reconstruction, and looks
on whilst the fabric of man's life and character is taken down and built
up again according to a new pattern.
Our disappointment in not being allowed to proceed straight to the front
in France was somewhat mitigated by the news that we were to train and
wait beneath the shadows of the mighty Pyramids at Cairo. On the ground
where Napoleon, addressing his troops, reminded them that 'forty
centuries looked down upon them' and awaited their achievements, we
trekked through the sand, sweated through the hot days and shivered
during the cold nights, as we camped amid sand which is always either
very hot or cold. There was a hard winter's work for padres here who
desired to do something to counteract the evil attractions of Cairo for
the troops. The reality was, however, always tinctured with the romantic
glamour of Egypt and the Nile.
There was Vieux Cairo—the ancient Forstad—with its undoubted earliest
Christian Church; the place to which we can say with almost certainty
that Joseph and Mary came with the Infant Christ. Wanderings amid the
antiquities of this ancient place full of Coptic traditions, and an
occasional mingling with the multi-coloured crowds gathering among the
Bazaars of the Monsky, somewhat relieved the tedium of evolutions amid
the eternal sand of the Libyan Desert.
A hard three days' manœuvring was set over against the interesting fact
that we fought our sham battles at Sakkara, the City of the Dead, and
our Brigade signallers flashed or flagged their messages from the Step
Pyramid—the very oldest building in the world to-day.
'Going down to Egypt' had the same dangerous fascination for us as for
the ancient Israelites, and padres had to be modern Isaiahs, warning the
men of the languorous seductions which Egypt in modern times, as in
ancient, holds out to men of a sturdy race.
Then came the never-to-be-forgotten day when we marched out of our Mena
Camp, headed by our bands—away from the sand of the desert, and on
through the crowded streets of Cairo, singing, 'Advance, Australia Fair'
and 'Good-bye, Cairo.' We were going to fight, and we were glad. We had
left the back-block townships away beyond sunset for this very purpose:
to strike a blow for Old England.
That we were going to strike a blow at the heart of the Turkish Empire
made it all the more thrilling. Whether we would succeed or not we could
not tell, but we knew that we were going to strike hard. No ancient
crusaders ever felt higher enthusiasm than did we amid the marshalling
of the armada of transports at Alexandria. Then, with Pompey's Pillar
looking down upon us, we sailed away from the city of Alexander the
Great, passed the Pharos and out to the blue Mediterranean.
Whither bound? We hardly knew, but in those days, when padres stood upon
the higher decks and spoke to the men in their ranks below in the deep
well decks of those huge transports, the romance of it all impelled them
to call men to high endeavour and heroic faith. We had to 'do censor' on
this voyage, and we found that the men's letters were surcharged in
almost equal quantities with reality and romance. They complained that
they had to sleep on an iron deck, eat iron rations, and, to crown all,
some one said, 'We are commanded by a General called Iron Hamilton.' But
they felt the glory of it, and displayed the spirit of adventurers.
With St. John's Patmos in sight, with its white buildings on the summit
of the hill, we steamed on for Lemnos. Lemnos, the island to which, in
Greek myth, Jove's son was hurled from heaven, in disgrace, and where
the Greek army called on its way to the Trojan War, was beautiful to us
after the hot sands of Egypt.
We manœuvred on shore among the most beautiful wild flowers, and we
sailed in Mudros Bay around the formidable battleships of a mighty
allied fleet.
Those were romantic days for the padre. Everything one said was
flavoured with the seriousness of last words and final exhortations. The
last Communion service, and the last service on the huge flagship of the
A.I. Force, the _Minnewaska_, is something to remember. On April 11 the
topic was 'Consecration.' 'And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify
yourselves; for to-morrow the Lord will begin to do wonders among you.'
The lesson was the story of the preparation of Joshua's army for the
crossing of the Jordan. Knowing how desperate was our enterprise, we
girded ourselves for the attack, and whatever the result of our campaign
may have been—and we shall not know that fully until the war is over—we
can claim that we obeyed the word which said, 'When ye come to the brink
of the water of Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan.' How many of our
brave fellows on the brink of the water of the last Jordan stood firm on
that bit of land we wrested from the Turk?
The last service of all on the deck of the flagship, on April 18, 1915,
had for its message: 'Faith in God's leadership,' 'The Pillar of Cloud
by day and the Pillar of Fire by night.' It _was_ a pillar of
cloud—clouds of battle-smoke—and a pillar of fire from the thunderous
guns of our Fleet; and although it was not written in the Book of Fate
that we should take Gallipoli, we may yet believe that God was with us.
In that address, after showing, first, that God does lead nations, and,
secondly, we are not in the war for Empire aggrandizement, but for the
preservation of God-given ideals—I turned to ask: 'Are we suitable
instruments for the fulfilment of God's will?'
I look back with thankfulness to the fact that my last words to the men
who were going to land at Gallipoli were on 'personal salvation.' 'Some
of you may be satisfied that we are right as a nation in regard to God,
but you may have confused and troubled thoughts about your own relation
to God. You say, "I am not a church member or communicant. What about my
personal salvation?" In regard to the forgiveness of sins, there is no
magic or mystery about it. A man can be a Christian without knowing the
creeds, just as a man can be a soldier without knowing the military
text-books. The great revelation of the Bible is of God as a Father.
Think of a good father. He would forgive even a prodigal son. So will
God. But there must be repentance. If you thus come, God will accept you
and say: "Thy sins which were many are all forgiven; go in peace and sin
no more." Thus you may go forward, and fight all your battles knowing
that at last, when you ground your arms before the Throne of God, and
answer the roll-call of eternity, you will hear the Father say, "Well
done, thou hast been faithful unto death; enter into Life."'
On a brilliant day of Mediterranean beauty our ships lifted their
anchors, and, amid resounding cheers, one after another steamed out into
the Ægean Sea, in the wake of the fabled Argonauts and on the ancient
track of the Greek army sailing for the Plains of Troy. In the darkness
battleships and transports took up their allotted positions, and in the
early dawn there began one of the greatest combined naval and military
battles which the world has ever seen.
Even amid the tragedy of those Gallipoli days we lived under the spell
of the storied past. We were living in St. Paul's world. On a certain
bright Sunday morning we addressed some hundreds of men on 'Paul's
vision and call to Macedonia.'
We were fairly safe, for the shells flew over us on their way to the
beach, and the hill intervening stopped the rifle-fire of the enemy. It
is a good thing to be on the right side of the hill.
The men were always glad to hear about that indomitable fighter, Paul.
We were able to point to Kum Kale in the distance, which our battleships
had bombarded some days previously. It is the ancient Troas, from which
Paul sailed, and Troas again is the more ancient Troy. He 'made a
straight course to Samothrace.'
This would take his little ship (something like that Greek lugger
sailing in our sight) over the place where a few days before our good
friend, H.M.S. _Triumph_, was sunk by a submarine. And there, to the
right, was Samothrace, in its snow-capped beauty, facing us.
That was the romance. We were in the ancient world. The reality was that
we were verminous, plagued with flies and all the diseases they bring.
After visiting the dug-outs that day, I had to bathe in the Gulf of
Saros, wash all my clothes, and, dressed in others less worrying, try to
sleep in my cave of Adullam that night. Experiences solemn and weird
were ours on that craggy shore.
A Communion service at that same place stands out in my memory. How
freely the men came to the Table of the Lord! In the beautiful twilight
they sang hymn after hymn as relays of men took their places. It was a
setting solemn and impressive as any cathedral of man's building for
such a service. But there was a grim reality about it too, for as they
sang:
I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless!
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness:
Where is death's sting? where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still if Thou abide with me!
others, who had left the service for duty, were passing in single file
up the long communication trench armed for the fray.
It seems a strange and romantic fact that when we returned to Egypt,
after the evacuation of Gallipoli, our main camp was at Tel-el-Kebir.
Sir Garnet Wolseley's trenches were visible on the outskirts of our
camp. But what is more interesting, is that on the march to the desert
front our force followed the line mainly of the sweet-water canal, which
is probably the route of the Israelites under the wise generalship of
Moses.
Some units took a route through the Desert to Ismailia. There was less
romance about their experiences, and a reality which does not lend
itself to description here. Crossing the Suez Canal, we campaigned for
some months on a route which ultimately brought us to a post seventeen
miles out in the desert. What an opportunity for the padre of re-telling
the story of the wandering and fighting of the hordes of Israel under
Moses and Joshua!
Our Arab camel convoys, on a new-made road parallel with a strategic
railway, traversed by electric locomotives—East and West together!--lent
an air of romance to this period of service. But it was counterbalanced
by a severe reality, for on occasions we marched at 7 a.m. with the
thermometer at 100 degrees. And a padre's Sunday, beginning with the
first church parade at 5 a.m. and conducting others at various posts
among the sand-dunes, was a day which left one more conscious of reality
than romance.
An atmosphere of romantic interest hangs about our French campaign. The
scene changes, and for the white-robed hosts following Saladin or
Mehemet Ali, for the bronzed warriors who followed Cambyses, Alexander
the Great, Rameses II, for the Red and Blue arrayed against each other
under Napoleon or Abercromby, we have to exchange the chivalry and
battle represented by such names as Poictiers, Cressy, or Waterloo. In
our fleet of six transports, our division _en route_ had to _watch_ and
pray, wearing a lifebelt always.
We steamed into a bay of Malta on a Sunday morning. This gave us another
memory of Paul, and we had to speak of his shipwreck and landing there.
Arriving in La Belle France, we realize that it is a land of chivalry
and romance. We move under the banner of Joan of Arc, and fight on old
battle-fields. Every town has its storied past; but this is no war of
chivalry, and our battalions do not flaunt the banners of heraldry. The
reality is cold mud, dripping dug-outs, and hard fighting night and day;
and yet over all are the crossed flags of the two most romantic and
adventurous races in the world—the British and the French.
The achievements both of Napoleon and Wellington call us, the one to the
path of glory and the other to the path of duty; and a second greater
Waterloo awaits us as victors in the struggle for the freedom of Europe.
At this time we may still hear the ringing cry of Henry V at Harfleur in
our English ears:
'Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head,
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height!--On, on, you noblest English.'
VI
THE GOD OF BATTLES
Lord God of Hosts, whose mighty hand
Dominion holds on sea and land,
In Peace and War Thy will we see
Shaping the larger liberty.
Nations may rise and nations fall,
Thy Changeless Purpose rules them all.
JOHN OXENHAM.
VI
THE GOD OF BATTLES
Everything is in the melting-pot. Even our ideas of religion are
changing. The development of theology is being hastened by the 'big
push,' and orthodoxy is being tested in the red crucible of war. There
is a lot of confusion, and that all the contending nations claim God is
embarrassing to _us_, but not to God. We may be sure that there is no
jostling or confusion in the Eternal mind. The Good Shepherd knows His
own and is not deceived by our claims and counter-claims. 'Gott mit uns'
is engraved upon the belt of each German soldier, and the Kaiser claims
God as the German God. He has been appealed to by the Austrian Emperor,
by the Czar; even the Sultan's soldiers advance to the charge crying,
'Allah, Allah.' We appeal to God too. It is all natural and, from the
human standpoint, right. We may be sure that the God of Battles knows
the worth of all our claims, knows how much of truth is contained in our
cause. In His name the conscientious objector declines to fight, and God
only knows where conscience ends and cowardice begins. 'The Lord is a
Man of War,' and if history shows anything it shows that God does not
despise the sword as an instrument whereby men contend for the faith,
and even the blood of men is not too precious to spill for the defence
of the ideals of freedom and right. Like the pulsator on the diamond
fields of Kimberley, war, the mill of God, throbs back and forth. We may
throw on it the heaps of earth, but as it throbs it will shake away the
clods and wash away the mire; the true diamonds will remain.
To the superficial, war seems to be a grim contradiction of the fact
that God is the Ruler of the world. To them it seems as though this
world were governed by a demon. But really war is a terrible
confirmation of God's presence in the world and a lurid re-emphasis of
His inevitable and inexorable Law.
The mental disease of selfishness, lust of power, and military glory was
present; it was slumbering in the heart of the nations in times of
peace. The disease (which shows itself in commercial competition too)
broke out in the violent inflammation and irruption of war. War is a
delirium, a delusion, and a degeneracy. It is made possible by the brute
strength of a soulless people on the one part and the weak
unpreparedness of an easy-going, prosperous, and pleasure-loving people
on the other part.