get there. Our senior officers used to play hooky in Amiens and come back with
wonderful tales of sheeted beds and perpetual baths. I got there toward
evening and was met by a British Staff officer with a car. After dinner I
escaped him and wandered through the crooked streets, encountering everywhere
my dearly beloved British Tommy, straight out of the trenches for a few hours’
respite. As I passed estaminets I could hear concertinas being played and
voices singing. It was London and heroism and home-sickness all muddled up
together that these voices sang. And they sang just one song. It is the first
song I heard in France, when the war was very much younger. When the war is
ended, I expect it will be the last. If the war goes on for another thirty
years, our Tommies will be singing it—wheezing it out on concertinas and
mouth-organs, in rain and sunshine, on the line of march, on leave or in their
cramped billets. Invincible optimists that they are—so ordinary, so
extraordinary, so good-humoured and mild! I peered in through the estaminets’
windows of Amiens—there they sat with their equipment off, their elbows on the
table and their small beer before them. And here’s what they sang, as so many
who are dead have sung before them:
“Après la guerre fini
Tous les soldats parti,
Mademoiselle 'ave a souvenir—
Apres la guerre fini.”
After all my wandering along French and American fronts, I was back among my
own people.
My final night in Amiens was equally typical. I went to the officers’ club and
found a sing-song in progress. There was a cavalry major there who had been in
the show at Cambrai. He was evidently a hunting-man, for he kept on getting
off his hunting calls whenever things threatened to become dull. Most of the
music was rag-time, which offended him very much. “Let’s sing something
English,” he kept on saying. So we gave him “John Peel,” “Hearts of Oak,”
“Drink to me only with thine Eyes”—and he went to bed happy.
I had a good fast car, so using Amiens as our base we struck into the Aisne,
Oise, and Somme, covering a good many kilometres a day. In these districts the
Huns were masters a year ago—and now we are ploughing. The enemy withdrew from
these districts last March. Nearly all the demolition is wilful, and very
little of it is due to shell-fire. In town after town scarcely a house is left
standing—everything is gutted. The American Red Cross is trying to do
something to alleviate this distress. It was in a ruined château I found the
Smith College Unit and, much to my surprise, Miss W. from Newark, who had just
received a letter from M. She was wanting to go to Amiens, so we put her in
the car and took her back with us.
I’m longing to get to England to read all your letters. I feel quite out of
touch. To-morrow I shall be in London.
I was in Paris when the Huns were overhead, and saw one of them come down. The
calmness of the people was amazing. There was no dashing for the Métro or
other funk holes; only a contemptuous cheeriness. The French are great.
XXX
London
February 18, 1918
To-day I have made a start on my book Out to Win, and miss you very much. It’s
quite a difficult thing, I find, to really concentrate on literary work in a
strange environment. I wish I could take a magic powder and find myself back
in my own little study, with my own little family, till the book is written.
Heaps of people I met in France were returning to America, and promised to
telephone you to say they had seen me.
I stumbled across a most inspiring conversation which I overheard the other
day, and which, if I had time, I would work into a story, entitled “His Bit.”
I was sitting in front of two women on a bus.
“Well,” said one, “when they told me that Phil was married, you could 'ave
knocked me darn wiv a feather.”
It transpired that Phil was a C3 class man, no good for active service. He had
met a girl, turned out into the streets by her parents because she was about
to have a child by a soldier now dead, whom she had not married. Phil, without
asking her any questions, did his “bit”—led her off and married her right away
because he was sorry for her.
“And she ain’t a wicked girl,” said one of the good ladies on the bus. “She
didn’t mean no harm. She was just soft-like to a Tommy on leave, I expect. It
was 'ard lines on 'er. But that Phil—my goodness, he’ll make 'er a good
'usband. Is the child born? I should just fink so. 'E’s that proud, she might
be 'is own dawter. 'E carries 'er raund all over the plaice, Lord bless yer.
And 'is wife’s people, they can’t make too much of ’im. No, 'e’s not strong—a
C 3 man. I thought I told yer. She 'as ter work to 'elp ’im along. But between
’em——There! I’m 'ats h’orf to Phil. They’re a bloomin’ pair of love-birds.”
I like to think of Phil, don’t you? I like to know that chaps like him are in
the world. He couldn’t fight the Germans; but he could play the man by a dead
soldier.
That’s a little bit of real life to help you along. Now I’m going to knock off
and rest.
XXXI
London
February 24, 1918
I’m not spending much time on letter-writing just at present. From morning
till night, just as I did when I was writing The Glory of the Trenches, I
shove away at my new book. I am most anxious to get it creditably finished and
soon. The weather is getting quite ripping for the Front and I’m keen to be
back in time for the spring offensive.
You’ll be pleased to know that, under my encouragement, your youngest son has
broken out into literature. He did it while I was away in France. And the
result is extraordinarily fine. He’s managed to fling the spirit of his job on
paper—it lives and gets you. When they are asked at the end of a patrol what
they have been doing, they answer, “Pushing Water”—so that he’s made that
answer his title.
When I took the manuscript to W., he said: “But haven’t you another brother?
What’s he doing? Where’s his manuscript? And what about your mother and sister
in America, and your sister in Holland? Don’t tell me that they’re not all
writing?”
At that moment I felt a deep sympathy for Solomon, who I’m sure must have been
a publisher. Only a publisher would say so tiredly: “Of making many books
there is no end.”
On Tuesday another beastly birthday is due me—but I shan’t say anything about
it. I shall commence my new lease of life with a meat-card in my hand and no
prospect of being really fully fed till I get back to France. For the first
time England is feeling a genuine shortage. She isn’t particularly annoyed at
being rationed, but the worry you have over finding out how much you are
allowed to eat and where and when, causes people a good deal of trouble. My
own impression is that there is plenty of food in England at present, but that
we want to conserve it in order to be able to lend America our tonnage.
XXXII
London March 31, 1919
Below my window, as I write, I can hear the stirring of the Strand. Newsboys
are calling the latest papers, motor-horns hoot, and the million feet of
London, each pair with their own separate story, clatter against the pavement.
What a world! How do we ever get tired of living! Every day there are new
faces, bringing new affections and adventure, new demands for tenderness and
strength. These footsteps will go on. They will never grow quiet. A thousand
years hence they will clatter along these pavements through the miracle of
re-creation. Why do we talk of death and old age? It is not true that we
terminate. Even in this world the river in whose movement we have our part
still goes on—the river of opinions, of effort, of habitation. The sound of us
dies faint up the road to the listener who stands stationary; but the fact
that at last he ceases to hear us does not mean that we have ceased to
exist—only that we have gone farther. How arbitrary we are in our petty
prejudices against immortality! God hears more distinctly the travellers to
whom men have ceased to listen. Nothing to me is more certain than that we go
on and on, drawing nearer to the source of our creation through the ages. Just
as I came home to you after so many risks, such suffering, elation, bloodshed,
so through the unthinkable adventure of time we journey home to our Maker.
Going out of sight is sad, as are all partings. But I can bear to part now in
a way that I could not before I saw the heavens open in the horror of war. I
have ceased to be afraid of the unguess-able, and better still, I have lost my
desire to guess. Not to stand still—to press onwards like soldiers—that is all
that is required of us. I have heard men talk about world-sorrows, but if you
trace them back, our sorrows are all for ourselves—they are a personal
equation. To develop one’s personality in the remembering of others seems to
me to be the only road to happiness. All this talk—why? Because of the
footsteps beneath my window!
The leave train has just arrived at Charing Cross from France. It steamed
across the Thames with the men singing “The Land where the Bluebells grow.”
There was laughter and longing in their singing.
XXXIII
Bath
March 24, 1918
Here I am with Mr. Lane, spending the weekend. It’s a wonderful spring
Sunday—no hint of war or anything but flowers and sunshine. An hour ago I
halted outside the newspaper office and read the latest telegrams of the great
German offensive. It seemed like the autumn of 1914, reading of death and not
being a part of it. They’ll not take very long in letting me get back to my
battery now. One’s curiously egotistic—I feel, if only I were out there, that
with my little bit of extra help everything would go well.
Yesterday we went to Batheaston Manor, a fine old Jacobean house, to tea—the
kind of house that one has dreamt of possessing. There were high elms with
rooks cawing and green lawns with immaculately gravelled paths. Inside there
were broken landings and rooms with little stairs descending, and panelling,
and pictures—everything for which one used to care. The late Belgian Minister
to England, Count de la Laing, was there—a sad, courteous man. As we walked
back with him to Bath along the canal, he remarked casually that all the art
treasures in his château outside of Brussels had been shipped to Germany.
We spent the afternoon seeing the King’s pictures—mostly Gainsboroughs—which
have been brought to Bath from Buckingham Palace. From here we went to tea
with an old lady, Miss Tanner, who rode on her lonesome through Persia many
years ago and consequently has gained a Lady Hester Stanhope reputation and,
what is more important, a splendid selection of Eastern rugs and silverwork.
After that we walked home by way of the great crescent which forms the scene
in The School for Scandal.
An odd day to dodge in between experiences of European war! I have to pinch
myself awake to remember what is happening at this moment in the Front-line
trenches. Probably within a few weeks I shall be there—and feeling very much
more contented with myself than I do now.
XXXIV
London March 31, 1918
Eric is with me. I am very glad to have him for my last days in England, and I
do hope that Reggie may get here in time to see me. He’s ordered south in two
weeks’ time, but I may be in France by then. I report at Canadian Headquarters
to-morrow, and will probably be sent straight down to camp, and from there to
France within two weeks.
Have you seen General Currie’s stirring message to the Canadians, saying that
he expects them to die to a man if, by so doing, they can push the Huns back?
This summer will see the biggest of all the battles. I’m wildly excited and
longing to get back. There’ll be some of the old glamour about this new
fighting—it’s all in the open. We’ve got away from trench warfare at last. The
beasts are all over the country which we fought for and have recaptured since
1916. They’ve destroyed for a second time all the reconstruction work that I
saw in the devastated areas. I’m wondering if all the girls got out in time.
There were so many American girls there.
Don’t you dear people get down in the mouth when I’m again at the Front. It’s
where I’ve wanted to be for a great many months—ever since I recovered. To be
able to go back now, when there’s really something doing, is very fitting. I
should have been wasting my time, perhaps, during the inactivity of the
winter, if I’d been sitting in dug-outs when I might have been writing Out to
Win. But no man, whatever his capacities, is wasting his time in fighting at
this hour of crisis. I’ve been made ashamed by the excuses I’ve heard put up
for various quitters who have taken bomb-proof jobs. I’m in terror lest I
should be confused with such. Heaven knows, I’m no fonder of killing or of
being killed than anyone else, but there are times when everything decent
responds to the demand of duty. I shall absolutely be immensely happy to be a
man again, taking my chances. I know that you will be glad for me. If you
hadn’t known for certain that I was going back, you’d have been making excuses
for me in your hearts during these last five months. So smile and be proud.
And whatever happens, go on being proud and smiling. Your job is to set an
example. That’s your contribution towards winning the war.
It’s past midnight, and I go to camp to-morrow. I’ll let you have a cable when
I go to the Front—so you needn’t be nervous.
XXXV
In Camp. England April 4, 1918
I got down here last night and reported back this morning. I found the General
of my Division had already applied for me, so I am going back to my old
Brigade at the beginning of this week—on the Sunday, I think. To-day is
Wednesday, so I haven’t lost much time in getting into action. Probably I
shall go up to London to-morrow for a two days’ leave and meet Eric.
There’s just a chance that Reggie may be with us as well, for I’ve sent him a
telegram to say that I’m going to France.
And now, as you may imagine, I am at last happy and self-respecting. I’m going
to be a part of the game again and not a pretence-soldier. What’s more, I’m
going to go straight into a real battle—the biggest of the war. It’s really
splendid and I feel childishly elated.
Well, I’ve had a run for my money if any man ever had. The good times in
England, France, and America will be worth remembering when I’m again in the
fighting. I contrast in my mind my present mood with that of the first time
when I went out—I was very much afraid then; now I’m extraordinarily happy.
I’ve learnt to appreciate the privilege of being in the glory and the heroism.
I’m more pleased than if I had won a decoration, that my Colonel should have
asked for my return at the first possible moment. It proves to me something
which one often doubts—that I really am some good out there.
Keep your tails up, my dear ones, and don’t get worried. This line is only to
let you know the good news.
XXXVI
London April 6, 1918
I’m the happiest person in London to-day at the thought of my return. This is
quite unreasonable, when I sit down to calculate the certain discomfort and
danger. I can’t explain it, unless it is that only by being at the Front can I
feel that I am living honourably. I’ve been self-contemptuous every minute
that I’ve been out of the line. I began to doubt myself and to wonder whether
all my protestations of wanting to get back, were not a camouflage for
cowardice. I can prove to myself that they weren’t now. “The Canadians will
advance or die to a man,” were the words that General Currie sent to his
troops. Isn’t it magnificent to be included in such a chivalrous adventure? I
don’t think you’ll read about the Canadians retiring.
Whatever happens I’ve had a grand romance out of life—there’s nothing of which
to complain. I owe destiny no grudge. The world has been kind. I don’t think I
shall get killed; I never have thought that. But if I am, it will be as fine
an ending to a full day’s work as heart could desire.
I think I’m younger than I ever was. I no longer know satiety. The job in
front of me fills all my soul and mind. I’m going to prove to myself and
others that my books are not mere heroic sentiment. Going out a second time,
despite the chances to hang back, will give a sincerity to what I’ve been
trying to say to America. Heaps of people would think it brutal to want so
much to go where men are being slaughtered—but it isn’t the slaughtering that
attracts, it’s the winning of the ideal that calls me.
C. has command of my battery now. He’s a fine chap. You remember how he left
London before his leave was up, “because he wanted to be among men.” That’s
the sort he is, and I admire him.
XXXVII
London April 14, 1918
We’re sitting together in the little flat at Battersea, and Reggie is with us.
It’s Sunday afternoon. To-morrow morning early I set out for France. The
little party wanted me to sleep here to-night so that they could get up about
6 a.m. and see me off. I wouldn’t have that. So we’re going to say good-bye
comfortably to-night and the boys will sleep with me at a hotel just outside
the station.
You can’t guess how glad I am at the thought of going back. I was afraid I
should never be a fighting man again. Now that I’m once more to be allowed to
do my bit I feel extraordinarily grateful. I have the silly feeling that just
one more man might make all the difference at such a crisis, and I’m jealous
lest, when so many are being called upon for an exaggerated display of
heroism, I should lose my chance. I know now why soldiers sing when they go
out to war—they’re so proud that they have been chosen for the sacrifice.
The boys came down to camp with me and lived near to the camp. I took an
anti-gas defence course before re-joining in France. Friday night we came up
to town and we’ve had a very jolly time.
Well, dears, we’ve lived a happy crowded life since I was wounded, and we’ve
each one of us learnt more about the glory of this undertaking.
XXXVIII
France April 21, 1918
I’ve been back at the Front six days. This is the first opportunity I have had
to write. I left England last Monday, having spent Saturday and Sunday in
London with the boys. Major H. came up to give me a send-off and we had a very
gay time. Saturday evening, after dinner and a theatre, we returned to
Battersea and all found beds in one or other of the flats. On Sunday evening
we slept at a hotel next to the station so that I might be sure of catching
the early morning train. We managed to get a room with three beds in it, and
so kept all together as in the old days. By 5 a.m. we were up and stirring. P.
and L. walked in on us as we were having breakfast, and S. met us on the
platform. They all seemed quite assured that they would never, never see me
again—which makes me smile. I suppose they all had visions of grey waves of
Germans deluging our infantry by force of numbers, while the gunners were left
far in front, trying to stem the tide. That is what we all hope for. It’s the
kind of chance we dream about; but it hasn’t happened yet.
Monday afternoon I was in France and slept at the Base that night. Early
Tuesday morning I was on the move again, passing Red Cross trains packed with
wounded and trucks crammed with ordnance. I couldn’t help comparing this
return to the Front with my first trip up. We had a good time playing cards
and recalling the old fights—we were like schoolboys coming back for the
holidays. There wasn’t one of us who wasn’t wildly excited at the thought of
being a part of the game again. This was rather strange, if you come to
consider it, for each of us had been wounded at least once and knew the worst
of what war could do to us—yet fear was the emotion most remote from us. We
were simply and sheerly glad to be going into the thick of it; our great fear
had been that our fighting days were ended.
By 2 p.m. we were dumped out at a town through which I used to ride last
summer. Here we had to report to the Provost Marshal for further transport
orders. He told me that I should have to go to the Corps Reinforcement Camp. I
didn’t intend to do that, so waited till he was engaged on the phone and then
made my escape. Taking the baggage I could carry, I beat my way back to my old
battery on foot and in lorries. I was just coming into the wagonlines when I
met Major C., who now commands us. I think he had been lonely for some of the
old faces; he went wild with delight. I had a magnificent welcome back. On the
spur of the moment he made me a present of his own charger and took me up to
the guns with him, where we arrived in time for a very late tea, within
thirty-six hours of my leaving England.
The day after that I went forward to do my 24-hour spell at the observing
station. When I saw my first Hun after so long an absence, I felt more like
hugging him than trying to kill him. Of course I had to do the latter, and had
a very nice little strafe. I wrote you a fine long letter up there and somehow
lost it. So this is my second attempt.
Don’t get nervous about me. Everything is quite all right with us and I’m
having a real holiday after my feverish literary spasms. But a lot of familiar
faces are absent.
XXXIX
France April 22, 1918
You would hardly believe our peaceful state of mind unless you could drop in
on us for an hour. You, in America, are evidently very worked up about us, and
picture us as in desperate conditions. Don’t worry, we’ve got our tails up and
are happy as sand-boys. There’s nothing of the grimly set faces about our
attitude such as you imagine. We’re too confident to be grim; war is actually,
from our point of view, a gigantic lark. It must sound silly to you, I know,
but I love to hear the screaming of the shells in the darkness and the baying
of the guns. It’s like a pack of wolves being chased through the night by
bloodhounds.
I hadn’t been back two days before they got the rumour at the wagon-lines that
I was wounded—a little previous, I thought it. I call that wishing a blighty
on me.
I’ve just come back from a trip across one of our old battlefields. We’re in
the Hun support-trenches, behind us is his Front line, then No Man’s Land with
its craters and graves, and behind that the Front line from which we jumped
off. You can trace everything plainly and follow the entire attack by the
broken wire and blown-in dug-outs. We’re still filled with amused contempt for
the Hun on our part of the Front.
We were discussing chaplains the other day—the way some of them have failed us
in this war. One of the officers told a story of Grannie M., one of our First
Division majors. A chaplain, who never went farther than the wagon-lines, was
always saying how much he’d like to see the Front. Grannie called his bluff
and took him for a trip into one of the warmest spots. The chaplain kept
dodging and crouching every time a shell fell within a hundred yards. Each
time Grannie, standing quietly silent, waited for him to get up and renew the
journey. At last the chaplain flopped into a shell-hole and refused to come
out. Grannie, who is a big man and well over six foot, grinned down at him
despisingly. “Priest,” he said, “if I thought I had half the pull with Christ
that you say you have, not all the shells in France would make me lie as flat
as that.” Later another chaplain came to that brigade. No one would give him
house-room. He went off and slept where he could; he never came near the
officers, but he haunted the men at the forward guns. When the brigade moved
out to another sector, he procured an old skate of a horse and trailed along
at the rear of the line of march like a hungry dog. The new Front proved to be
a warm one; there were many casualties, but the chaplain was always on his
job, especially when the shells were falling. From somewhere he got the money
to start a canteen for the men, which he ran himself. When no one else had
cigarettes, he could supply them. At last even the officers had to come to
him. He finished up by being the most popular chaplain the brigade had ever
had, honoured by everyone from the colonel down. There are your two types of
army chaplains: the one who plays the game, the other who issues season
tickets to heaven, but is afraid of travelling on them himself.
XL
France April 26, 1918
I It is now over a week since I have been back with my battery, and it seems
as though all that trip along the American line and the rush back to New York
had never happened. I’m sitting in a little “house” in a deep chalk trench.
The house is made of half-circles of corrugated iron; there’s an anti-gas
blanket hanging at one end and at the other a window made of oiled calico. Up
one corner are the maps, scales, and office papers; pinned on boards is a
four-foot map of the entire English front. My sleeping bag is stretched on an
old French spring mattress, which was brought here some time ago by the Huns.
From the walls hang a higgledy-piggledy of trench coats, breeches, tunics.
This is the place in which we work out our ranges, play cards, have our meals,
and rest when we’re back from doing forward work.