everything unfolding like a picture—tanks, cavalry, infantry, guns. The long
marches were very wearying, and we were always pushing on again before we were
rested. Not that we minded—the game was too big. The first day of the attack I
sailed out into the blue alone, following up the Hun. I had the huge felicity
of firing at his retreating back over open sights at a range of less than 1000
yards. We pushed so far that night that we got in front of our infantry and
were turned back by enemy machine-gun fire. The Hun is a champion runner when
he starts to go and difficult to keep up with. However, we caught him up
several times after that and helped him to hurry a bit faster. I never saw
anything finer in my life than the clouds of cavalry mustering—the way the
horses showed their courage and never budged for shell-fire set an example to
us men. The destruction burst in the midst of them, but they stood like
statues till the order was given to advance. Then away they went, like a
whirlwind of death, with the artillery following at the trot and coming into
action point-blank. I came across one machine-gun emplacement that a horseman
had charged. The horse lay dead on top of the emplacement, having smothered
the machine gunner out of action. That day when I was off by myself with my
two guns, I fed my horses on the oats of the fallen cavalry and my men on the
rations in the haversacks of the dead. In the ripe wheat the dying stared at
us with uninterested eyes as we passed. The infantry going cheering by when we
were firing, waved their hands to us, shouting, “That’s the stuff, boys. Give
’em hell!” We gave them hell, right enough.
I’ve come through without a scratch and now I’m off to bed. Don’t worry if I
don’t write you—it’s impossible sometimes, and I’ll always cable through
London as soon as I can.
LXXII
France
August 22,1918
I can’t sleep to-night. It’s nearly one. The candle lights up the mud walls
and makes the other occupants of my dug-out look contorted and grotesque. They
sigh and toss in their dreams. Now an arm is thrown out and a face is turned.
They’ve been through it, all of them, in the past few days. They have a
haggard look. And somewhere in shell-holes, wheatfields, woods, they lie
to-night—those others. Pain no longer touches them—their limbs have ceased to
twitch and their breath is quiet. They have given their all. For them the war
is finished—they can give no more.
Do people at home at all realize what our men are doing and have done? Coarse
men, foulmouthed men—men whose best act in life is their manner in saying
good-bye to it. And then there are the high-principled fellows from whom
ideals are naturally to be expected—whatever we are, we all go out in the same
way and in the same rush of determined glory. We climb the steep ascent of
Heaven through peril, toil, and pain—and at last our spirits are cleansed.
I think continually of the mothers who stand behind these armies of millions.
Mothers just like my mother, with the same hopes and ambitions for their sons.
Poor mothers, they never forget the time when the hands that smite to-day were
too strengthless to do more than grope at the breast. They follow us like
ghosts; I seem to see their thoughts like a grey mist trailing behind and
across our strewn battlefields. When the rain descends upon our dead, it is
their tears that are falling. The whispering of the wheat is like the tiptoe
rustling of approaching women.
Pray for us; we need your prayers—need them more than you think, perhaps. Tuck
us up in our scooped-out holes with your love, the way you used to before we
began to adventure. Above all be proud of us, whether we stand or fall—so
proud that you will not fret. God will let us be little again for you in
Heaven. We shall again reach up our arms to you, relying on your strength. We
shall be afraid and cry out for your comfort. We’re not brave—not brave
naturally; we shall want you in Heaven to tell us we are safe.
So many thoughts and pictures come to me to-night. One is of a ravine I was in
a few days ago, all my men mounted and waiting to move forward. Wounded horses
of the enemy are limping through the grass. German wagons, caught by our
shell-fire, stand silent, the drivers frozen to the seats with a terrifying
look of amazement on their faces, their jaws loose and their bodies sagging.
Others lie twisted in the grass—some in delirium, some watching. We shall need
all our water before the day is over, and have no time to help them. Besides,
our own dead are in sight and a cold anger is in our heart. The
stretcher-bearers will be along presently—time enough for mercy when the
battle is won! We ourselves may be dead before the sun has set. I know the
anger of war now, the way I never did in the trenches. You can see your own
killing. You can also see the enemy’s work. And yet, through it all down come
our wounded, supported by the wounded Huns.
“Those chaps are very good to you,” one of our officers said. The Tommy
grinned. “They have to be. If they weren’t, I’d let the daylight into them.
I’ve a pocketful of bombs, and they know it.” Well, that’s one incentive to
friendship, however reluctant.
The Huns are brave—I know that now. They endure tests of pluck that are
well-nigh incredible. We are not defeating craven curs. I can think of no one
braver than the man who stays behind with a machine gun, fighting a rearguard
action and covering his comrades’ road to freedom. He knows that he will
receive no quarter from our people and will never live to be thanked by his
own. His lot is to die alone, hated by the last human being who watches him.
They’re brave men; they cease fighting only when they’re dead.
What a contrast between love and hatred—dreaming of our mothers to the last
and smashing the sons of other mothers. That’s war!
LXXIII
France
August 22, 1918
Here I am lying flat on my tummy in the grass and spying on the enemy 2000
yards away. I shall be here for twenty-four hours. There’s no sort of cover
and the sun is scalding. Luckily we’ve found water in a captured village near
by and I sent our linesmen to refill our bottles. There’s a lull for the
moment and we stretch ourselves out in weary contentment The body is a traitor
to the spirit—it can become very tired.
I begin to see the end of the war. I can feel it coming as I never did before
since I struck France. The unbelievable truth begins to dawn on me that we’ll
be coming back to you—that we shall wake up one morning to find that the world
has no further use for our bombs and bayonets. Strange! After so much killing,
to kill will be again a crime. We shall begin to count our lives in years
instead of in days.
How will the pictures one’s memory holds seem then? I can see, as I saw the
other day, a huge German lying on the edge of a wheatfield. His knees were
arched. He was on his back. His head rolled wearily from side to side. The
thing that fixed my attention was a rubber groundsheet flung hastily across
his stomach, whether in disgust or pity, I cannot say. I had my guns drawn up
in column, my men mounted, all ready to trot into action—so I had no time for
compassion or curiosity. But from my saddle I saw an infantryman raise the
ground-sheet and underneath there was nothing but a scarlet gap. There were
many sights like that that day. There have been many since then. I have seen
as many parts of the human body that the beautiful white skin tents, as a
student of anatomy. What hatred and injustice has preceded the making possible
of such acts!
But in these places where horrors have been committed, the birds still flit
about their nests. When the tanks and the cavalry and the guns have pushed
forward, Nature returns to her task of beautifying the world.
How I would like to sit down and talk with you all. When the war is over I can
see us going away to some quiet place and re-living the past and re-building
the future with words. I may see you sooner than either of us expect; there’s
always the chance of a Blighty. So far, beyond an attack of trench-fever from
which I’ve almost recovered, I’ve come through scatheless.
By the time this reaches you I shall be looking forward to leave. Casualties
have thinned out the numbers on the leave-list and I stand fairly high now. I
ought to see England again in October.
LXXIV
France
August 30,1918
This is only a brief note to say that all is well with me and to ask you not
to worry. It’s two years to-morrow since I first saw the Front—two centuries
it seems. I’m different inside. I don’t know whether my outside has changed
much—but I wish sometimes that I could be back again. I begin to be a little
afraid that I shan’t be recognizable when I return.
The journalists have been very free in their descriptions of our doings—they
have told you everything. If I told a tithe, my letter would not reach you.
LXXV
France
September 1, 1918
This is just another little note to let you know that I am safe and well. I am
allowed to say so little to you; that’s one of the worst penalties of this
war—the silence. Yesterday your cable, sent in reply to mine and forwarded
from London, arrived. My only chance of relieving your suspense when I have
not been able to write for some time, is to get one of my English friends to
cable to you.
Did you see the good news concerning R. B.? He’s got his V.C. for saving life
under shell-fire in Zeebrugge harbour. His M.L. was hit fifty times. I
remember the way his neighbours used to patronize him before the war. They all
laughed when he went to California to study for an aeroplane pilot. They
didn’t try to join themselves, but his keenness struck them as funny. What
could a man who was half-blind do at the war, they asked—a man who ran his
launch into logs on the lake, and who crashed in full daylight when
approaching a wharf? When he had been awarded his flying certificate at the
American Air School our R.F.C. refused to take him. He tried to get into the
infantry, into everything, anything, and was universally turned down on the
score of weak sight. His quixotic keenness made less keen spectators smile.
Then, by a careless chance, he got himself accepted by the R.N.V.R. and was
put on to a motor launch. Everyone pictured him as colliding with everything
solid that came his way, and marvelled at the slipshod naval tests. But it
wasn’t his eyesight and limitations that really counted—it was his keenness.
In two years he’s a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Lieutenant-Commander. Before the war
he was the kind of chap with whom girls danced out of kindness To-day he’s a
hero.
We were discussing him out here the other day; he’s the type of hero this war
has produced—a man not strong physically, a man self-depreciating and shy, a
man with grave limitations and very conscious of his difference from other
men. This was his chance to approve himself. People laughed that he should
offer himself as a fighter at all, but he elbowed his way through their
laughter to self-conquest. That’s the grand side of war—its test of internals,
of the heart and spirit of a man! bone and muscle and charm are only
secondary.
The big things one sees done out here—done in the way of duty—and so quietly!
Whether one comes back or stays, the test has made all the personal suffering
worth while—for one hour of living to know that you have played the man and
saved a fellow-creature’s life. One never knows when these chances will come;
they rush in on you unexpectedly and expect to find you ready. In the
encounter the character built up in a lifetime is examined and reported on by
the momentary result.
And yet how one suffers for the suffering he witnesses—the suffering of horses
and Huns, as well as of the men on our own side. The silent, smashed forms
carried past on the stretchers; the little groups of busy men among whom a
shell bursts, leaving those who do not rise. And overhead the sky is blue and
the wind blows happily through the sunshine. “Gone west”—that’s all, to the
land of departing suns. Some of us will stay to sleep among the gentlemen of
France. In either event we are fortunate in having been given the privilege to
serve our kind.
LXXVI
Prince of Wales Hospital, London, September 6, 1918
Here I am once again in a clean white bed with the discreet feet of nurses,
like those of nuns, making hardly any sound as they pass up and down the
corridor. There’s just one other officer in my room. His leg is full of
machine-gun bullets, and, like myself, he’s just arrived from France. I’ve not
got used to this new security yet, this right to live, this ordered
decency—all of which seems to be summed up in the presence of women. Less than
three days ago I saw two of my gun-teams scuppered by shellfire and the horses
rolling among the wounded men. I can’t get the sight out of my mind. To be
alive seems an unfair advantage I have taken.—And all the time I want to be
back in the thick of it. It was so glorious—such a bon little war, as we say
out there, while it lasted.
You’ll want to know what happened. On 2nd September at dawn we set out as the
point of the attacking wedge to hammer our way to Cambrai. You will have read
this, and more than this, already in your papers. After we had fired on the
barrage for several hours, and our infantry had advanced, we began to move our
battery forward by sections. The major was away on leave to Blighty, so the
captain was acting O.C. He went forward to observe and reconnoitre; I was left
to move up the battery. My own section was the last to move. On the road I was
met by a mounted orderly who handed me a written order to join another battery
which was doing forward work on opportunity targets. I reported to this
battery and had brought my two guns into position on their right flank, when
the first shell burst. The gun-teams had not unhooked; it burst directly under
the centre team and scuppered the lot, wounding all the drivers and killing
one of the gunners. We had got the guns into action, when another shell burst
beside the left-hand gun, near which I was standing, wounding all the gun-crew
except one man. I myself got a piece in the head, between the ear and the left
temple. It was a lucky chance that I wasn’t killed outright. The fragment of
shell struck upwards and under my steel helmet, cutting the chin-strap and the
brass link which holds the strap to the helmet. It was diverted by a rivet in
the strap, so instead of going straight into my head, it glanced along the
skull. I was X-rayed in France and was to have been operated on, but there was
no time with so many casualties coming down, so I was sent to England for the
operation. I was in luck to escape so lightly. I was so grateful to my helmet
that I hid it in my trench coat and smuggled it back to England with me as a
curiosity—which is not allowed.
But to return to my story. After the second shell had caught us and others
were popping all about us, I made up my mind that the enemy had a direct line
on us. I have since been told that he put on a strong counter-attack and bent
our line back for a time, so that our artillery were very near up and it’s
likely that he could observe us. I sent back for my teams after we had carried
out our wounded, intending to drag the guns out farther to the right flank.
Another gun-team was scuppered and all my gunners were knocked out but three
men. The enemy now started to pay attention to my ammunition wagons, putting
one shell straight in among the lot of them, so I had to leave the guns for
the moment and get my wagons away. I then rode forward to where the other guns
of my battery were in action and found that they had escaped casualties, so
arranged to bring my guns in beside them. About an hour and a half after I was
hit I went to an advance aid-post to have my head dressed. It was just a pile
of stretchers and bandages in a ditch—the living under cover in the ditch, the
dead lying out on top; here a doctor and four Red Cross orderlies were working
in silence. I was ordered to report at the next post back for an anti-tetanus
injection, so I got on my horse and rode. At the next post they had no
anti-tetanus, so I was put on a lorry and driven back to Arras. From there I
went to the Casualty Clearing Station, where I was dressed and got two hours’
sleep—from there I travelled on the Red Cross train to the Base, arriving at 6
a.m., only eighteen hours from the time that I was in the fighting. The
hospital I went to was the Number 20 General—the same one that I was in last
year. That same morning I was X-rayed and starved all day in preparation for
an operation which did not happen. In the evening I was warned for Blighty,
but it was the midday of 4th September before I got on the train for the port
of embarkation. The journey was rather long, for I did not reach Liverpool
Street till two in the morning. Yesterday, as soon as I woke up, I sent you a
cable. In the afternoon Mr. W. came to see me and is coming again to-day. I
left the Front without a bit of kit, so my first S.O.S. was for a pair of
pyjamas. Having studied the colour of my eyes and consulted with his
lady-clerks, W. sent me a suit of baby blue silk ones with thin white stripes
in them—so now I am ready to receive ladies.
3 p.m. I was X-rayed, and there is a splinter between the scalp and skull.
Whether the skull is fractured I don’t know; I think not, however, as I feel
too well. What a contrast lying here in the quiet after so many night marches,
so much secrecy, such tiger pounces forward in the dawn, such agony and
courage and death. There were wounded men hobbling seven miles from the
Drocourt-Quéant line where I was hit, to the hospital at Arras. The roads were
packed with transports—ammunition, pontoons, rations—streaming forward,
gunners and infantry marching up to the carnage with eager faces, passing the
back-going traffic which was a scarlet tide of blood. It was worth living
for—worth doing—that busting of the Hindenburg Line. I hope to be patched up
in two months, so that I may be in on the final rush to the Rhine. I’ve only
been out of the fighting three days and I want to be in it again.
Don’t worry about me at all. I’m all right and brown and strong. Thank God I’m
not dead yet and shall be able to fight again.
Note.—Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded on 2nd September in the attack
on the Quéant-Drocourt Line, when the magnificent fighting of the Canadians
broke the Hindenburg Line. The above letter describes that attack and the
manner in which he got his wound.
LXXVII
London
September 8, 1918
I’ve returned from this offensive with a very healthy hatred of the Hun. One
of our tanks, commanded by a boy of twenty, got too far ahead and was
captured. When the rest of the attacking line caught up, they found him
stripped naked and bound to his tank—dead. The brutes had bombed him to death
mother-naked. When I tell you that no prisoners were taken for the next
twenty-four hours, I think you’ll applaud and wonder why the twenty-four hours
wasn’t extended. The men said they got sick of the killing.
Why we’re decent to these vermin at all amazes me, until I remember that I
also am decent to them. I think the reason is that originally we set out to be
good sportsmen and are ashamed of being forced into hatred. All the way down
the line the German wounded received precisely the same treatment as our own
men—and treatment that was just as prompt. At the Casualty Clearing Station,
German officers sat at table with us and no difference was made. On the Red
Cross train they were given beds in our carriage and our English sisters
waited on them. I thought of how the German nurses treat our chaps, spitting
into the food and the cups before they hand them to them. Every now and then
you would see a wounded Canadian hop up the carriage and offer them
cigarettes. They sat stiffly and insolently, with absurd yellow gloves on,
looking as though every kindness shown was a national tribute to their
superiority. There were so many of us that at night two had to lie on beds
made for one. The Germans refused; they wanted a bed apiece. When they were
told they would have to sit up if they would not share, they said they would
sit up. Then the sister came along to investigate the disturbance. They eyed
her with their obstinate pig-eyes, as though daring her to touch them. She
told them that if they wanted to sit up all night they would have to do it in
the corridor, as they prevented the bed above them from being pulled down. At
the end of fifteen minutes they decided to share a bed as all of us had been
doing, but they muttered and grumbled all night. There were a good many of us
who wished for a Mills bomb and an open field in which to teach them manners.
It seems to me that the German is incorrigible. He was born a boor and he can
never respond to courtesy. Kindness and mercy are lost upon him; he accepts
them as his right and becomes domineering. If any peacemaker thinks that
Christian forbearance and magnanimity will make for a new brotherhood when
peace terms are formulated, he is vastly mistaken. The German is a bully, and
the only leadership that he acknowledges and the only righteousness to which
he bows, is the leadership and the armed force of a bully stronger than
himself. Sentimental leniency on the part of the Allies will only make him
swell out his chest afresh.
You may have seen the account of a booby-trap which the Huns left behind—a
crucified kitten. They banked on the humanity of our chaps to release the
little beast; but the moment the first nail was drawn it exploded a mine which
killed our Tommies. In contrast to this is an incident which occurred the
night before our attack on the Hindenburg Line. A hare, frightened by
shell-fire, came panting through our gun-position. Some of the fellows gave
chase, till at last one fell on it and caught it. It started to cry like a
baby in a heartrending sort of way. We hadn’t had very much meat, and the
intention in catching it had been to put it in the pot; but there was no one
who could face up to killing it—so it was petted and set free again in the
wheat. Queer tender-heartedness on the part of men who next morning were going
to kill their kind! Their concern when the little beast began to sob was
conscience-stricken and ludicrous.
LXXVIII
London
September 12, 1918
I’ve a great piece of news for you. It’s exceedingly likely that I shall visit
the States on the British Mission. This must read to you like moonshine—but
it’s a quite plausible fact. I shall not be allowed to go back to the Front
for three months, as it will probably be that time before I am pronounced fit
for active service. It is suggested that during that time I come to the States
to speak on Anglo-American relations. I feel very loath to postpone my return
to the Front by a single day, and would only do so if I were quite sure that I
should not be fit for active service again before the winter settles down,
when the attack will end. I don’t want to miss an hour of the great offensive.
If I agree to come to the States, I shall only do it on the pledge that I am
sent straight back to France on my return. This would give me a right to speak
to Americans as nothing else would. I could not speak of the war unless I was
returning to it. I owe the Lord a death for every life of my men’s that has
been taken—and I want to get back to where I can pay the debt. But wouldn’t it
be ripping to have a few weeks all together again? Can’t I picture myself in
my little study at the top of the house and in my old bedroom! I may even
manage a Christmas with you!
Having had my wound dressed and having togged myself up in my new uniform, I
jumped into the inevitable taxi and went to lunch at the Ritz with some of the
visiting American editors. It was delightfully refreshing to listen to Charlie
Towne’s, the editor of McClure’s, wild enthusiasm for the courageous high
spirits of England. “The streets are dark at night,” he said, “but in the
people’s hearts there is more light than ever.” Two stories were told,
illuminatingly true, of the way in which the average Englishman carries on.
There was an officer who had had an eye shot out; the cavity was filled with
an artificial one. Towne felt a profound pity for him, but at the same time he
was rather surprised to see that the chap wore a monocle in the eye that was
sightless. At last he plucked up courage to ask him what was the object of the
monocle. The chap smiled drolly. “I do it for a rag,” he said; “it makes me
look more funny.”
A Canadian Tommy, without any legs, was being wheeled down a station platform.
Another wounded Tommy called out to him, “You’re not on the staff, Bill. Why
don’t yer get out and walk?”
“'Cause I’m as good as a dook now,” the chap replied; “for the rest of me life
I’m a kerridge gent.”
The thing that seems to have impressed these American visitors most of all is
the way in which our soldiers make adversity appear comic by their triumphant
capacity for mockery.