PART I

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.

_The Grey Wave_

_THE GREY WAVE_

_By Major A. Hamilton Gibbs_

_With an introduction by Philip Gibbs_

[Illustration: (icon)]

_LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO_

_:: PATERNOSTER ROW 1920 ::_

MY DEAR MRS. POOLE

I dedicate this book to you because your house has been a home to

me for so many years, and because, having opened my eyes to the

fact that it was my job to join up in 1914, your kindness and help

were unceasing during the course of the war.

Yours affectionately,

ARTHUR HAMILTON GIBBS

Metz, January, 1919

CONTENTS

PART I

PAGE

THE RANKS 1

PART II

UBIQUE 73

PART III

THE WESTERN FRONT 123

PART IV

THE ARMISTICE 263

INTRODUCTION

There seems no reason to me why I should write a preface to my

brother’s book except that I have been, as it were, a herald of war

proclaiming the achievements of knights and men-at-arms in this great

conflict that has passed, and so may take up my scroll again on his

behalf, because here is a good soldier who has told, in a good book,

his story of

“most disastrous chances of moving accidents by flood and field; of

hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent-deadly breach.”

That he was a good soldier I can say not because my judgment is

swayed by brotherly partiality, but because I saw him at his job, and

heard the opinions of his fellow officers, which were immensely in

his favour. “Your brother is a born soldier,” said my own Chief who

was himself a gallant officer and had a quick eye for character. I

think that was true. The boy whom once I wheeled in a go-cart when

he was a shock-headed Peter and I the elder brother with a sense of

responsibility towards him, had grown up before the war into a strong

man whose physical prowess as an amateur pugilist, golfer, archer

(in any old sport) was quite outside my sphere of activities, which

were restricted to watching the world spin round and recording its

movements by quick penmanship. Then the war came and like all the

elder brothers of England I had a quick kind of heart-beat when I

knew that the kid brother had joined up and in due time would have

to face the music being played by the great orchestra of death across

the fields of life.

I saw the war before he did, knew the worst before he guessed at the

lesser evils of it, heard the crash of shell fire, went into burning

and bombarded towns, helped to carry dead and wounded, while he was

training in England under foul-mouthed sergeants--training to learn

how to fight, and, if need be, how to die, like a little gentleman.

But I from the first was only the onlooker, the recorder, and he was

to be, very quickly, one of the actors in the drama, up to his neck

in the “real thing.” His point of view was to be quite different from

mine, I saw the war in the mass, in its broad aspects and movements

from the front line trenches to the Base, from one end of the front

to the other. I went into dirty places, but did not stay there. I

went from one little corner of hell to another, but did not dwell

in its narrow boundaries long enough to get its intimate details of

hellishness burnt into my body and soul. He did. He had not the same

broad vision of the business of war--appalling in its vastness of

sacrifice and suffering, wonderful in its mass-heroism--but was one

little ant in a particular muck-heap for a long period of time, until

the stench of it, the filth of it, the boredom of it, the futility

of it, entered into his very being, and was part of him as he was

part of it. His was the greater knowledge. He was the sufferer, the

victim. Our ways lay apart for a long time. He became a ghost to

me, during his long spell in Salonica, and I thought of him only

as a ghost figure belonging to that other life of mine which I had

known “before the war,” that far-off period of peace which seemed

to have gone forever. Then one day I came across him again out in

Flanders in a field near Armentières, and saw how he had hardened

and grown, not only in years, but in thoughtfulness and knowledge.

He was a commander of men, with the power of life and death over

them. He was a commander of guns with the power of death over human

creatures lurking in holes in the earth, invisible creatures beyond

a hedge of barbed wire and a line of trench. But he also was under

the discipline of other powers with higher command than his--who

called to him on the telephone and told him to do things he hated

to do, but had to do, things which he thought were wrong to do, but

had to do; and among those other powers, disciplining his body and

soul, was German gun-power from that other side of the barbed-wire

hedge, always a menace to him, always teasing him with the chance

of death,--a yard this way, a yard that, as I could see by the

shell holes round about his gun pits, following the track of his

field-path, clustering in groups outside the little white house in

which he had his mess. I studied this brother of mine curiously. How

did he face all the nerve-strain under which I had seen many men

break? He was merry and bright (except for sudden silences and a dark

look in his eyes at times). He had his old banjo with him and tinkled

out a tune on it. How did he handle his men and junior officers?

They seemed to like him “this side idolatry,” yet he had a grip on

them, and demanded obedience, which they gave with respect. Queer!

My kid-brother had learned the trick of command. He had an iron hand

under a velvet glove. The line of his jaw, his straight nose (made

straighter by that boxing in his old Oxford days) were cut out for

a job like this. He looked the part. He was born to it. All his

training had led up to this soldier’s job in the field, though I had

not guessed so when I wheeled him in that old go-cart.

For me he had a slight contempt, which he will deny when he reads

this preface. Though a writer of books before the war, he had now

the soldier’s scorn of the chronicler. It hurt him to see my green

arm-band, my badge of shame. That I had a motor-car seemed to him,

in his stationary exile, the sign of a soft job--as, compared with

his, it was--disgraceful in its luxury. From time to time I saw him,

and, in spite of many narrow escapes under heavy shelling, he did not

change, but was splendidly cheerful. Even on the eve of the great

German offensive in March of 1918, when he took me to see his guns

dug in under the embankment south of St. Quentin, he did not seem

apprehensive of the awful ordeal ahead of him. I knew more than he

did about that. I knew the time and place of its coming, and I knew

that he was in a very perilous position. We said “so long” to each

other at parting, with a grip of hands, and I thought it might be the

last time I should see him. It was I think ten days later when I saw

him, and in that time much had happened, and all that time I gave him

up as lost. Under the overwhelming weight of numbers--114 Divisions

to 48--the British line had broken, and fighting desperately, day by

day, our men fell back mile after mile with the enemy outflanking

them, cutting off broken battalions, threatening to cut off vast

bodies of men. Every day I was in the swirl of that Retreat, pushing

up to its rearguards, seeing with increasing dismay the fearful

wreckage of our organization and machine of war which became for a

little while like the broken springs of a watch, with Army, Corps,

and Divisional staffs, entirely out of touch with the fighting units

owing to the break-down of all lines of communication. In that tide

of traffic, of men, and guns, and transport, I made a few inquiries

about that brother of mine. Nobody had seen, or heard of his battery.

I must have been close to him at times in Noyon, and Guiscard and

Ham, but one individual was like a needle in a bunch of hay, and the

enemy had rolled over in a tide, and there did not seem to me a

chance of his escape. Then, one morning, in a village near Poix, when

I asked a gunner-officer whether he had seen my brother’s battery,

he said, “Yes--two villages up that road.” “Do you happen to know

Major Gibbs?” “Yes.... I saw him walking along there a few minutes

ago.”

It was like hearing that the dead had risen from the grave.

Half an hour later we came face to face.

He said:

“Hulloa, old man!”

And I said:

“Hulloa, young fellow!”

Then we shook hands on it, and he told me some of his adventures,

and I marvelled at him, because after a wash and shave he looked

as though he had just come from a holiday at Brighton instead of

from the Valley of Death. He was as bright as ever, and I honestly

believe even now that in spite of all his danger and suffering, he

had enjoyed the horrible thrills of his adventures. It was only later

when his guns were in action near Albert that I saw a change in him.

The constant shelling, and the death of some of his officers and men,

had begun to tell on him at last. I saw that his nerve was on the

edge of snapping, as other men’s nerves had snapped after less than

his experiences, and I decided to rescue him by any means I could....

I had the luck to get him out of that hole in the earth just before

the ending of the war.

Now I have read his book. It is a real book. Here truthfully,

nakedly, vividly, is the experience not only of one soldier in the

British Army, but of thousands, and hundreds of thousands. All our

men went through the training he describes, were shaped by its

hardness and its roughness, were trampled into obedience of soul and

body by its heavy discipline. Here is the boredom of war, as well as

its thrill of horror, that devastating long-drawn Boredom which is

the characteristic of war and the cause of much of its suffering.

Here is the sense of futility which sinks into the soldier’s mind,

tends to sap his mental strength and embitters him, so that the edge

is taken off his enthusiasm, and he abandons the fervour of the ideal

with which he volunteered.

There is a tragic bitterness in the book, and that is not peculiar

to the temperament of the author, but a general feeling to be found

among masses of demobilized officers and men, not only of the British

Armies, but of the French, and I fancy, also, of the American forces.

What is the cause of that? Why this spirit of revolt on the part of

men who fought with invincible courage and long patience? It will

seem strange to people who have only seen war from afar that an

officer like this, decorated for valour, early in the field, one of

the old stock and tradition of English loyalty, should utter such

fierce words about the leaders of the war, such ironical words about

the purpose and sacrifice of the world conflict. He seems to accuse

other enemies than the Germans, to turn round upon Allied statesmen,

philosophers, preachers, mobs and say, “You too were guilty of this

fearful thing. Your hands are red also with the blood of youth. And

you forget already those who saved you by their sacrifice.”

That is what he says, clearly, in many passionate paragraphs; and

I can bear witness that his point of view is shared by many other

soldiers who fought in France. These men were thinking hard when day

by day they were close to death. In their dug-outs and ditches they

asked of their own souls enormous questions. They asked whether the

war was being fought really for Liberty, really to crush Militarism,

really on behalf of Democracy, or whether to bolster up the same

system on our side of the lines which had produced the evils of the

German menace. Was it not a conflict between rival Powers imbued with

exactly the same philosophy of Imperialism and Force? Was it not the

product of commercial greed, diplomatic fears and treacheries and

intrigues (conducted secretly over the heads of the peoples) and

had not the German people been led on to their villainy by the same

spell-words and “dope” which had been put over our peoples, so that

the watch-words of “patriotism,” “defensive warfare” and “Justice”

had been used to justify this massacre in the fields of Europe by the

Old Men of all nations, who used the Boys as pawns in their Devil’s

game? The whole structure of Europe had been wrong. The ministers of

the Christian churches had failed Christ by supporting the philosophy

of Force, and diplomatic wickedness and old traditions of hatred.

All nations were involved in this hark-back to the jungle-world, and

Germany was only most guilty because first to throw off the mask,

most efficient in the mechanism of Brute-government, most logical in

the damnable laws of that philosophy which poisoned the spirit of the

modern world.

That was the conclusion to which, rightly or wrongly--I think

rightly--many men arrived in their secret conferences with their own

souls when death stood near the door of their dug-outs.

That sense of having fought for ideals which were not real in the

purpose of the war embittered them; and they were most bitter on

their home-coming, after Armistice, or after Peace, when in England

they found that the victory they had won was being used not to

inaugurate a new era of liberty, but to strengthen the old laws

of “Might and Right,” the old tyrannies of government without

the consent of peoples, the old Fetish worship of hatred masking

under the divine name of Patriotism. Disillusionment, despair, a

tragic rage, filled the hearts of fighting men who after all their

sacrifices found themselves unrewarded, unemployed, and unsatisfied

in their souls. Out of this psychological distress have come civil

strife and much of the unrest which is now at work.

My brother’s book reveals something of this at work in his own mind,

and, as such, is a revelation of all his comrades. I do not think

he has yet found the key to the New Philosophy which will arise out

of all that experience, emotion, and thought; just as the mass of

fighting men are vague about the future which must replace the bad

old past. They are perplexed, illogical, passionate without a clear

purpose. But undoubtedly out of their perplexities and passion the

New Era will be born.

So I salute my “kid-brother” as one of the makers of History greater

than that which crushed German militarism and punished German crimes

(which were great), and I wish him luck with this book, which is

honest, vital, and revealing.

PHILIP GIBBS.

PART I

_THE RANKS_

THE GREY WAVE

1

In June, 1914, I came out of a hospital in Philadelphia after an

operation, faced with two facts. One was that I needed a holiday at

home in England, the second that after all hospital expenses were

paid I had five dollars in the world. But there was a half-finished

novel in my trunk and the last weeks of the theatrical tour which

had brought me to Philadelphia would tide me over. A month later the

novel was bought by a magazine and the boat that took me to England

seemed to me to be the tangible result of concentrated will power.

“Man proposes....” My own proposal was to return to America in a

month or six weeks to resume the task of carving myself a niche in

the fiction market.

The parting advice of the surgeon had been that I was not to play

ball or ride a horse for at least six months. The green sweeping

uplands of Buckinghamshire greeted me with all their fragrance and a

trig golf course gave me back strength while I thought over ideas for

a new novel.

Then like a thunderbolt the word “War” crashed out. Its full

significance did not break through the ego of one who so shortly

would be leaving Europe far behind and to whom a personal career

seemed of vital importance. England was at war. The Army would be

buckling on its sword, running out its guns; the Navy clearing decks

for action. It was their job, not mine. The Boer War had only touched

upon my childish consciousness as a shouting in the streets, cheering

multitudes and brass bands. War, as such, was something which I had

never considered as having any personal meaning for me. Politics and

war were the business of politicians and soldiers. My business was

writing and I went up to London to arrange accommodations on the boat

to New York.

London was different in those hot August days. Long queues waited all

day,--not outside theatres, but outside recruiting offices,--city

men, tramps, brick-layers, men of all types and ages with a look in

their eyes that puzzled me. Every taxi hoot drew one’s attention to

the flaring poster on each car, “Young Men of England, Your King and

Country need you!”

How many millions of young men there were who would be glad to answer

that call to adventure,--an adventure which surely could not last

more than six months? It did not call me. My adventure lay in that

wonderland of sprouting towers that glistened behind the Statue of

Liberty.

But day by day the grey wave swept on, tearing down all veils from

before the altar of reality. Belgian women were not merely bayoneted.

“Why don’t we stop this? What is the Army doing?” How easy to cry

that out from the leafy lanes of Buckinghamshire. A woman friend of

mine travelled up in the train with me one morning, a friend whose

philosophy and way of life had seemed to me more near the ideal than

I had dreamed of being able to reach. She spoke of war, impersonally

and without recruiting propaganda. All unconsciously she opened my

eyes to the unpleasant fact that it was _my_ war too. Suppose I had

returned to New York and the Germans had jumped the tiny Channel

and “bayoneted” her and her children? Could I ever call myself a man

again?

I took a taxi and went round London. Every recruiting office looked

like a four-hour wait. I was in a hurry. So I went by train to

Bedford and found it crowded with Highlanders. When I asked the way

to the recruiting office they looked at me oddly. Their speech was

beyond my London ear, but a pointing series of arms showed it to me.

By a miracle the place was empty except for the doctor and an

assistant in khaki.

“I want to join the Cavalry,” said I.

“Very good, sir. Will you please take off your clothes.”

It was the last time a sergeant called me sir for many a long day.

I stripped, was thumped and listened to and gave description of

tattoo marks which interested that doctor greatly. The appendix

scar didn’t seem to strike him. “What is it?” said he, looking at

it curiously, and when I told him merely grunted. Shades of Shaw! I

thought with a jump of that Philadelphia surgeon. “Don’t ride a horse

for six months.” Only three had elapsed.

I was passed fit. I assured them that I was English on both sides,

unmarried, not a spy, and was finally given a bundle of papers and

told to take them along to the barracks.

The barracks were full of roughnecks and it occurred to me for the

first time, as I listened to them being sworn in, that these were my

future brother soldiers. What price Mulvaney, Learoyd and Ortheris?

thought I.

I repeated the oath after an hour’s waiting and swore to obey orders

and respect superior officers and in short do my damnedest to kill

the King’s enemies. I’ve done the last but when I think of the first

two that oath makes me smile.

However, I swore, received two shillings and three-pence for my

first two days’ pay and was ordered to report at the Cavalry Depot,

Woolwich, the following day, September 3, 1914.

The whole business had been done in a rush of exaltation that didn’t

allow me to think. But when I stepped out into the crowded streets

with that two shillings rattling in my pocket I felt a very sober

man. I knew nothing whatever of soldiering. I hardly even knew a

corporal from a private or a rifle from a ramrod, and here I was

Trooper A. H. Gibbs, 9th Lancers, with the sullen rumble of heavy

guns just across the Channel--growing louder.

2

Woolwich!

Bad smells, bad beer, bad women, bad language!--Those early days!

None of us who went through the ranks will ever forget the tragedy,

the humour, the real democracy of that period. The hand of time has

already coloured it with the glow of romance, but in the living it

was crude and raw, like waking up to find your nightmare real.

Oxford University doesn’t give one much of an idea of how to cope

with the class of humanity at that Depot in spite of Ruskin Hall,

the working-man’s college, of which my knowledge consisted only of

climbing over their wall and endeavouring to break up their happy

home. But the Ruskin Hall man was a prince by the side of those

recruits. They came with their shirts sticking out of trousers seats,

naked toes showing out of gaping boots, and their smell---- We lay

at night side by side on adjoining bunks, fifty of us in a room. They

had spent their two days’ pay on beer, bad beer. The weather was hot.

Most of them were stark naked. I’d had a bath that morning. They

hadn’t.

The room was enormous. The windows had no blinds. The moon streamed

in on their distorted bodies in all the twistings of uneasy sleep.

Some of them smoked cigarettes and talked. Others blasphemed them for

talking, but the bulk snored and ground their teeth in their sleep.

A bugle rang out.

Aching in every limb from the unaccustomed hardness of the iron

bed it was no hardship to answer the call. There were lavatories

outside each room and amid much sleepy blasphemy we shaved, those of

us who had razors, and washed, and in the chill of dawn went down

to a misty common. It was too early for discipline. There weren’t

enough N.C.O.’s, so for the first few days we hung about waiting for

breakfast instead of doing physical jerks.

Breakfast! One thinks of a warm room with cereals and coffee and eggs

and bacon with a morning paper and, if there’s a soot in our cup, a

sarcastic reference as to cleanliness. That was before the war.

We lined up before the door of a gun shed, hundreds of us, shivering,

filing slowly in one by one and having a chunk of bread, a mug of tea

and a tin of sardines slammed into our hands, the sardines having to

be divided among four.

The only man in my four who possessed a jack-knife to open the tin

had cleaned his pipe with it, scraped the mud off his boots, cleaned

out his nails and cut up plug tobacco. Handy things, jack-knives.

He proceeded to hack open the tin and scoop out sardines. It was

only my first morning and my stomach wasn’t strong in those days. I

disappeared into the mist, alone with my dry bread and tea. Hunger

has taught me much since then.

The mist rolled up later and daylight showed us to be a pretty tough

crowd. We were presently taken in hand by a lot of sergeants who

divided us into groups, made lists of names and began to teach us how

to march in the files, and in sections,--the elements of soldiering.

Some of them didn’t seem to know their left foot from their right,

but the patience of those sergeants was only equalled by the cunning

of their blasphemy and the stolidity of their victims.

After an hour of it we were given a rest for fifteen minutes,

this time to get a handful of tobacco. Then it went on again and

again,--and yet again.

The whole of that first period of seven days was a long jumble of

appalling happenings; meals served by scrofulitic hands on plates

from which five other men’s leavings and grease had to be removed;

bread cut in quarter loaves; meat fat, greasy, and stewed--always

stewed, tea, stewed also, without appreciable milk, so strong that

a spoon stood up in it unaided; sleeping in one’s clothes and

inadequate washing in that atmosphere of filth indescribable; of

parades to me childish in their elementariness; of long hours in the

evening with nothing to do, no place to go, no man to talk to,--a

period of absolute isolation in the middle of those thousands broken

only by letters which assumed a paramount importance, constituting

as they did one’s only link with all that one had left behind, that

other life which now seemed like a mirage.

Not that one regretted the step. It was a first-hand experience of

life that only Jack London or Masefield could have depicted. It was

too the means of getting out to fight the Boche. A monotonous means,

yes, but every day one learnt some new drill and every day one was

thrilled with the absolute cold-blooded reality of it all. It was

good to be alive, to be a man, to get one’s teeth right into things.

It was a bigger part to play than that of the boy in “The Blindness

of Virtue.”

3

Two incidents stand out in that chrysalis stage of becoming soldiers.

One was a sing-song, spontaneously started among the gun sheds in the

middle of the white moonlight. One of the recruits was a man who had

earned his living--hideously sarcastic phrase!--by playing a banjo

and singing outside public houses. He brought his banjo into the army

with him. I hope he’s playing still!

He stuck his inverted hat on the ground, lit a candle beside it in

the middle of the huge square, smacked his dry lips and drew the

banjo out of its baize cover.

“Perishin’ thirsty weather, Bill.”

He volunteered the remark to me as to a brother.

“Going to play for a drink?” I asked.

He was already tuning. He then sat down on a large stone and began to

sing. His accompaniment was generous and loud and perhaps once he had

a voice. It came now with but an echo of its probable charm, through

a coating of beer and tobacco and years of rough living.

It was extraordinary. Just he sitting on the stone, and I standing

smoking by his side, and the candle flickering in the breeze, and

round us the hard black and white buildings and the indefinable

rumble of a great life going on somewhere in the distance.

Presently, as though he were the Pied Piper, men came in twos and

threes and stood round us, forming a circle.

“Give us the ‘Little Grey ’Ome in the West,’ George!”

And “George,” spitting after the prolonged sentiment of Thora, struck

up the required song. At the end of half an hour there were several

hundred men gathered round joining in the choruses, volunteering

solos, applauding each item generously. The musician had five bottles

of beer round his inverted hat and perhaps three inside him, and a

collection of coppers was taken up from time to time.

They chose love ballads of an ultra-sentimental nature with the soft

pedal on the sad parts,--these men who to-morrow would face certain

death. How little did that thought come to them then. But I looked

round at their faces, blandly happy, dirty faces, transformed by the

moon and by their oath of service into the faces of crusaders.

How many of them are alive to-day, how many buried in nameless mounds

somewhere in that silent desolation? How many of them have suffered

mutilation? How many of them have come out of it untouched, to the

waiting arms of their women? Brothers, I salute you.

* * * * *

The other incident was the finding of a friend, a kindred spirit in

those thousands which accentuated one’s solitude.

We had been standing in a long queue outside the Quartermaster’s

store, being issued with khaki one by one. I was within a hundred

yards of getting outfitted when the Q.M. came to the door in person

and yelled that the supply had run out. I think we all swore. The

getting of khaki meant a vital step nearer to the Great Day when

we should cross the Channel. As the crowd broke away in disorder,

I heard a voice with an ‘h’ say “How perfectly ruddy!” I could

have fallen on the man’s neck with joy. The owner of it was a comic

sight. A very battered straw hat, a dirty handkerchief doing the

duty of collar, a pair of grey flannel trousers that had been slept

in these many nights. But the face was clear and there was a twinkle

of humorous appreciation in the blue eye. I made a bee-line for that

man. I don’t remember what I said, but in a few minutes we were

swapping names, and where we lived and what we thought of it, and

laughing at our mutually draggled garments.

We both threw reserve to the wind and were most un-English, except

perhaps that we may have looked upon each other as the only two

white men in a tribe of savages. In a sense we were. But it was like

finding a brother and made all that difference to our immediate

lives. There was so much pent-up feeling in both of us that we

hadn’t been able to put into words. Never have I realized the value

and comfort of speech so much, or the bond established by sharing

experiences and emotions.

4

My new-found “brother’s” name was Bucks. After a few more days of

drilling and marching and sergeant grilling, we both got khaki

and spurs and cap badges and bandoliers, and we both bought white

lanyards and cleaning appliances. Smart? We made a point of being the

smartest recruits of the whole bunch. We felt we were the complete

soldier at last and although there wasn’t a horse in Woolwich we

clattered about in spurs that we burnished to the glint of silver.

And then began the second chapter of our military career. We all

paraded one morning and were told off to go to Tidworth or the

Curragh.

Bucks and I were for Tidworth and marched side by side in the great

squad of us who tramped in step, singing “Tipperary” at the top of

our lungs, down to the railway station.

That was the first day I saw an officer, two officers as a matter of

fact, subalterns of our own regiment. It gave one for the first time

the feeling of belonging to a regiment. In the depot at Woolwich were

9th Lancers, 5th Dragoon Guards, and 16th Lancers. Now we were going

to the 9th Lancer barracks and those two subalterns typified the

regiment to Bucks and me. How we eyed them, those two youngsters, and

were rather proud of the aloof way in which they carried themselves.

They were specialists. We were novices beginning at the bottom of the

ladder and I wouldn’t have changed places with them at that moment

had it been possible. As an officer I shouldn’t have known what to

do with the mob of which I was one. I should have been awkward,

embarrassed.

It didn’t occur to me then that there were hundreds, thousands, who

knew as little as we did about the Army, who were learning to be

second lieutenants as we were learning to be troopers.

We stayed all day in that train, feeding on cheese and bread which

had been given out wrapped in newspapers, and buns and biscuits

bought in a rush at railway junctions at which we stopped from time

to time. It was dark when we got to Tidworth, that end-of-the-world

siding, and were paraded on the platform and marched into barracks

whose thousand windows winked cheerily at us as we halted outside the

guardroom.

There were many important people like sergeant-majors waiting for us,

and sergeants who called them “sir” and doubled to carry out their

orders. These latter fell upon us and in a very short time we were

divided into small groups and marched away to barrack rooms for the

night. There was smartness here, discipline. The chaos of Woolwich

was a thing of the past.

Already I pictured myself being promoted to lance-corporal, the

proud bearer of one stripe, picking Boches on my lance like a row of

pigs,--and I hadn’t even handled a real lance as yet!

5

Tidworth, that little cluster of barrack buildings on the edge of

the sweeping downs, golden in the early autumn, full of a lonely

beauty like a green Sahara with springs and woods, but never a house

for miles, and no sound but the sighing of the wind and the mew of

the peewit! Thus I came to know it first. Later the rain turned it

into a sodden stretch of mud, blurred and terrible, like a drunken

street-woman blown by the wind, filling the soul with shudders and

despair.--The barrack buildings covered perhaps a square mile of

ground, ranged orderly in series, officers’ quarters--as far removed

from Bucks and me as the Carlton Hotel--married quarters, sergeants’

mess, stables, canteen, riding school, barrack rooms, hospital; like

a small city, thriving and busy, dropped from the blue upon that

patch of country.

The N.C.O.’s at Tidworth were regulars, time-serving men who had

learnt their job in India and who looked upon us as a lot of

“perishin’ amatoors.” It was a very natural point of view. We

presented an ungodly sight, a few of us in khaki, some in “blues,”

those terrible garments that make their wearers look like an

orphan’s home, but most in civilian garments of the most tattered

description. Khaki gave one standing, self-respect, cleanliness,

enabled one to face an officer feeling that one was trying at least

to be a soldier.

The barrack rooms were long and whitewashed, a stove in the middle,

rows of iron beds down either side to take twenty men in peace times.

As it was we late comers slept on “biscuits,” square hard mattresses,

laid down between the iron bunks, and mustered nearly forty in a

room. In charge of each room was a lance-corporal or corporal whose

job it was to detail a room orderly and to see furthermore that he

did his job, _i.e._, keep the room swept and garnished, the lavatory

basins washed, the fireplace blackleaded, the windows cleaned, the

step swept and whitewashed.

Over each bed was a locker (without a lock, of course) where each

man kept his small kit,--razor, towel, toothbrush, blacking and his

personal treasures. Those who had no bed had no locker and left

things beneath the folded blankets of the beds.

How one missed one’s household goods! One learnt to live like a

snail, with everything in the world upon one’s person,--everything

in the world cut down to the barest necessities, pipe and baccy,

letters, a photograph, knife, fork and spoon, toothbrush, bit of

soap, tooth paste, one towel, one extra pair of socks. Have you ever

tried it for six months--a year? Then don’t. You miss your books and

pictures, the bowl of flowers on the table, the tablecloth. All the

things of everyday life that are taken for granted become a matter of

poignant loss when you’ve got to do without them. But it’s marvellous

what can be done without when it’s a matter of necessity.

Bucks unfortunately didn’t get to the same room with me. All of

us who had come in the night before were paraded at nine o’clock

next morning before the Colonel and those who had seen service or

who could ride were considered sheep and separated from the goats

who had never seen service nor a horse. Bucks was a goat. I could

ride,--although the sergeant-major took fifteen sulphuric minutes

to tell me he didn’t think so. And so Bucks and I were separated by

the space of a barrack wall, as we thought then. It was a greater

separation really, for he was still learning to ride when I went out

to France to reinforce the fighting regiment which had covered itself

with glory in the retreat from Mons. But before that day came we

worked through to the soul of Tidworth, and of the sergeant-major,

if by any stretch of the imagination he may be said to have had a

soul. I think he had, but all the other men in the squadron dedicated

their first bullet to him if they saw him in France. What a man! He

stands out among all my memories of those marvellous days of training

when everything was different from anything I had ever done before.

He stands before me now, a long, thin figure in khaki, with a face

that had been kicked in by a horse, an eye that burnt like a branding

iron, and picked out unpolished buttons like a magnet. In the saddle

he was a centaur, part of the horse, wonderful. His long, thin thighs

gripped like tentacles of steel. He could make an animal grunt, he

gripped so hard. And his language! Never in my life had I conceived

the possibilities of blasphemy to shrivel a man’s soul until I heard

that sergeant-major. He ripped the Bible from cover to cover. He

defied thunderbolts from on high and referred to the Almighty as

though he were a scullion,--and he’s still doing it. Compared to the

wholesale murder of eight million men it was undoubtedly a pin-prick,

but it taught us how to ride!

6

Reveille was at 5.30.

Grunts, groans, curses, a kick,--and you were sleepily struggling

with your riding breeches and puttees.

The morning bath? Left behind with all the other things.

There were horses to be groomed and watered and fed, stables to be

“mucked out,” much hard and muscular work to be done before that

pint of tea and slab of grease called bacon would keep body and

soul together for the morning parade. One fed first and shaved and

splashed one’s face, neck, and arms with water afterwards. Have

you ever cleaned out a stable with your bare hands and then been

compelled to eat a meal without washing?

By nine o’clock one paraded with cleaned boots, polished buttons and

burnished spurs and was inspected by the sergeant-major. If you were

sick you went before the doctor instead. But it didn’t pay to be

sick. The sergeant-major cured you first. Then as there weren’t very

many horses in barracks as yet, we were divided half into the riding

school, half for lance and sword drill.

Riding school was invented by the Spanish Inquisition. Generally

it lasted an hour, by which time one was broken on the rack and

emerged shaken, bruised and hot, blistered by the sergeant-major’s

tongue. There were men who’d never been on a horse more than twice

in their lives, but most of us had swung a leg over a saddle.

Many in that ride were grooms from training stables, riders of

steeple-chasers. But their methods were not at all those desired in

His Majesty’s Cavalry and they suffered like the rest of us. But the

sergeant-major’s tongue never stopped and we either learned the

essentials in double-quick time or got out to a more elementary ride.

It was a case of the survival of the fittest. Round and round that

huge school, trotting with and without stirrups until one almost fell

off from sheer agony, with and without saddle over five-foot jumps

pursued by the hissing lash of the sergeant-major’s tongue and whip,

jumping without reins, saddle or stirrups. The agony of sitting down

for days afterwards!

Followed a fifteen-minute break, after the horses were led back to

the stables and off-saddled, and then parade on the square with lance

and sword. A lovely weapon the lance--slender, irresistible--but

after an hour’s concentrated drill one’s right wrist became red-hot

and swollen and the extended lance points drooped in our tired grasp

like reeds in the wind. At night in the barrack room we used to have

competitions to see who could drive the point deepest into the door

panels.

Then at eleven o’clock “stables” again: caps and tunics off, braces

down, sleeves rolled up. We had a magnificent stamp of horse, but

they came in ungroomed for days and under my inexpert methods of

grooming took several days before they looked as if they’d been

groomed at all.

Dinner was at one o’clock and by the time that hour struck one was

ready to eat anything. Each squadron had its own dining-rooms,

concrete places with wooden tables and benches, but the eternal stew

went down like caviar.

The afternoon parades were marching drill, physical exercises,

harness cleaning, afternoon stables and finish for the day about five

o’clock, unless one were wanted for guard or picquet. Picquet meant

the care of the horses at night, an unenviable job. But guard was a

twenty-four hours’ duty, two hours on, four hours off, much coveted

after a rough passage in the riding school. It gave one a chance to

heal.

Hitherto everything had been a confused mass of men without

individuality but of unflagging cheerfulness. Now in the team work

of the squadron and the barrack room individuality began to play its

part and under the hard and fast routine the cheerfulness began to

yield to grousing.

The room corporal of my room was a re-enlisted man, a schoolmaster

from Scotland, conscientious, liked by the men, extremely simple.

I’ve often wondered whether he obtained a commission. The other

troopers were ex-stable boys, labourers, one a golf caddy and one an

ex-sailor who was always singing an interminable song about a highly

immoral donkey. The caddy and the sailor slept on either side of me.

They were a mixed crowd and used filthy language as naturally as they

breathed, but as cheery and stout a lot as you’d wish to meet. Under

their grey shirts beat hearts as kindly as many a woman’s. I remember

the first time I was inoculated and felt like nothing on earth.

“Christ!” said the sailor. “Has that perishin’ doctor been stickin’

his perishin’ needle into you, Mr. Gibbs?”--For some reason they

always called me Mr. Gibbs.--“Come over here and get straight to bed

before the perishin’ stuff starts workin’. I’ve ’ad some of it in the

perishin’ navy.” And he and the caddy took off my boots and clothes

and put me to bed with gentle hands.

The evening’s noisiness was given up. Everybody spoke in undertones

so that I might get to sleep. And in the morning, instead of sweeping

under my own bed as usual, they did it for me and cleaned my buttons

and boots because my arm was still sore.

Can you imagine men like that nailing a kitten by its paws to a door

as a booby-trap to blow a building sky high, as those Boches have

done? Instead of bayoneting prisoners the sailor looked at them

and said, “Ah, you poor perishin’ tikes!” and threw them his last

cigarettes.

They taught me a lot, those men. Their extraordinary acceptation of

unpleasant conditions, their quickness to resent injustice and speak

of it at once, their continual cheeriness, always ready to sing, gave

me something to compete with. On wet days of misery when I’d had

no letters from home there were moments when I damned the war and

thought with infinite regret of New York. But if these fellows could

stick it, well, I’d had more advantages than they’d had and, by Jove,

I was going to stick it too. It was a matter of personal pride.

Practically they taught me many things as well. It was there that

they had the advantage of me. They knew how to wash shirts and socks

and do all the menial work which I had never done. I had to learn.

They knew how to dodge “fatigues” by removing themselves just one

half-minute before the sergeant came looking for victims. It didn’t

take me long to learn that.

Then one saw gradually the social habit emerge, called “mucking

in.” Two men became pals and paired off, sharing tobacco and pay

and saddle soap and so on. For a time I “mucked in” with Sailor--he

was always called Sailor--and perforce learned the song about the

Rabelaisian donkey. I’ve forgotten it now. Perhaps it’s just as well.

Then when the squadron was divided up into troops Sailor and I were

not in the same troop and I had to muck in with an ex-groom. He was

the only man who did not use filthy language.

It’s odd about that language habit. While in the ranks I never caught

it, perhaps because I considered myself a bit above that sort of

thing. It was so childish and unsatisfying. But since I have been

an officer I think I could sometimes have almost challenged the

sergeant-major!

7

As soon as one had settled into the routine the days began to roll

by with a monotony that was, had we only known it, the beginning of

knowledge. Some genius has defined war as “months of intense boredom

punctuated by moments of intense fear.” We had reached the first

stage. It was when the day’s work was done that the devil stalked

into one’s soul and began asking insidious questions. The work itself

was hard, healthy, of real enjoyment. Shall I ever forget those

golden autumn dawns when I rode out, a snorting horse under me, upon

the swelling downs, the uplands touched by the rising sun; but in the

hollows the feathery tops of trees poked up through the mist which

lay in velvety clouds and everywhere a filigree of silver cobwebs,

like strung seed pearls. It was with the spirit of crusaders that we

galloped cross-country with slung lances, or charged in line upon an

imaginary foe with yells that would demoralise him before our lance

points should sink into his fat stomach. The good smells of earth and

saddlery and horse flesh, the lance points winking in the sun, were

all the outward signs of great romance and one took a deep breath of

the keen air and thanked God to be in it. One charged dummies with

sword and lance and hacked and stabbed them to bits. One leaped from

one’s horse at the canter and lined a bank with rifles while the

numbers three in each section galloped the horses to a flank under

cover. One went over the brigade jumps in troop formation, taking

pride in riding so that all horses jumped as one, a magnificent bit

of team work that gave one a thrill.

It was on one of those early morning rides that Sailor earned undying

fame. Remember that all of the work was done on empty stomachs before

breakfast and that if we came back late, a frequent occurrence, we

received only scraps and a curse from the cook. On the morning in

question the sergeant-major ordered the whole troop to unbuckle their

stirrup leathers and drop them on the ground. We did so.

“Now,” said he, “we’re going to do a brisk little cross-country

follow-my-leader. I’m the leader and” (a slight pause with a flash

from the steely eye), “God help the weak-backed, herring-gutted sons

of ---- who don’t perishin’ well line up when I give the order to

halt. Half sections right! walk, march!”

We walked out of the barracks until we reached the edge of the downs

and then followed such a ride as John Gilpin or the Baron Munchausen

would have revelled in--perhaps. The sergeant-major’s horse could

jump anything, and what it couldn’t jump it climbed over. It knew

better than to refuse. We were indifferently mounted, some well, some

badly. My own was a good speedy bay. The orders were to keep in half

sections--two and two. For a straight half-mile we thundered across

the level, drew rein slightly through a thick copse that lashed one’s

face with pine branches and then dropped over a precipice twenty

feet deep. That was where the half-section business went to pieces,

especially when the horses clambered up the other side. We had no

stirrups. It was a case of remaining in the saddle somehow. Had I

been alone I would have ridden five miles to avoid the places the

sergeant-major took us over, through, and under,--bramble hedges that

tore one’s clothes and hands, ditches that one had to ride one’s

horse at with both spurs, banks so steep that one almost expected

the horse to come over backwards, spinneys where one had to lie down

to avoid being swept off. At last, breathless, aching and exhausted,

those of us who were left were halted and dismounted, while the

sergeant-major, who hadn’t turned a hair, took note of who was

missing.

Five unfortunates had not come in. The sergeant-major cast an eye

towards the open country and remained ominously silent. After about a

quarter of an hour the five were seen to emerge at a walk from behind

a spinney. They came trotting up, an anxious expression on their

faces, all except Sailor, who grinned from ear to ear. Instead of

being allowed to fall in with us they were made to halt and dismount

by themselves, facing us. The sergeant-major looked at them, slowly,

with an infinite contempt, as they stood stiffly to attention. Then

he began.

“Look at them!” he said to us. “Look at those five....” and so on in

a stinging stream, beneath which their faces went white with anger.

As the sergeant-major drew breath, Sailor stepped forward. He was no

longer grinning from ear to ear. His face might have been cut out of

stone and he looked at the sergeant-major with a steady eye.

“That’s all right, Sergeant-Major,” he said. “We’re all that and a

perishin’ lot more perhaps, but not you nor Jesus Christ is going

to make me do a perishin’ ride like that and come back to perishin’

barracks and get no perishin’ breakfast and go on perishin’ parade

again at nine with not a perishin’ thing in my perishin’ stomach.”

“What do you mean?” asked the sergeant-major.

“What I says,” said Sailor, standing to his guns while we, amazed,

expected him to be slain before our eyes. “Not a perishin’ bit of

breakfast do we get when we go back late.”

“Is that true?” The sergeant-major turned to us.

“Yes,” we said, “perishin’ true!”

“Mount!” ordered the sergeant-major without another word and we

trotted straight back to barracks. By the time we’d watered,

off-saddled and fed the horses we were as usual twenty minutes late

for breakfast. But this morning the sergeant-major, with a face like

a black cloud, marched us into the dining-hall and up to the cook’s

table.

We waited, breathless with excitement. The cook was in the kitchen, a

dirty fellow.

The sergeant-major slammed the table with his whip. The cook came,

wiping a chewing mouth with the back of his hand.

“Breakfast for these men, quick,” said the sergeant-major.

“All gone, sir,” said the cook, “we can’t----”

The sergeant-major leaned over with his face an inch from the cook’s.

“Don’t you perishin’ well answer me back,” he said, “or I’ll put you

somewhere where the Almighty couldn’t get you out until I say so.

Breakfast for these men, you fat, chewing swine, or I’ll come across

the table and cut your tripes out with my riding whip and cook _them_

for breakfast! Jump, you foul-feeder!” and down came the whip on the

table like a pistol shot.

The cook swallowed his mouthful whole and retired, emerging presently

with plenty of excellent breakfast and hot tea. We laughed.

“Now,” said the sergeant-major, “if you don’t get as good a breakfast

as this to-morrow and every to-morrow, tell me, and I’ll drop this

lying bastard into his own grease trap.”

Sailor got drunk that night. We paid.

8

The evenings were the hardest part. There was only Bucks to talk

to, and it was never more than twice a week that we managed to get

together. Generally one was more completely alone than on a desert

island, a solitude accentuated by the fact that as soon as one ceased

the communion of work which made us all brothers on the same level,

they dropped back, for me at least, into a seething mass of rather

unclean humanity whose ideas were not mine, whose language and habits

never ceased to jar upon one’s sensitiveness. There was so little

to do. The local music hall, intensely fifth rate, only changed its

programme once a week. The billiard tables in the canteen had an

hour-long waiting list always.

The Y.M.C.A. hadn’t developed in those early days to its present

manifold excellence. There was no gymnasium. The only place one had

was one’s bed in the barrack room on which one could read or write,

not alone, because there was always a shouting incoming and outgoing

crowd and cross fire of elementary jokes and horseplay. It seemed

that there was never a chance of being alone, of escaping from this

“lewd and licentious soldiery.” There were times when the desert

island called irresistibly in this eternal isolation of mind but not

of body. All that one had left behind, even the times when one was

bored and out of temper, because perhaps one was off one’s drive at

the Royal and Ancient, or some other trivial thing like that, became

so glorious in one’s mind that the feel of the barrack blanket was

an agony. Had one _ever_ been bored in that other life? Had one been

touchy and said sarcastic things that were meant to hurt? Could it

be possible that there was anything in that other world for which

one wouldn’t barter one’s soul now? How little one had realised,

appreciated, the good things of that life! One accepted them as a

matter of course, as a matter of right.

Now in the barrack-room introspections their real value stood out in

the limelight of contrast and one saw oneself for the first time: a

rather selfish, indifferent person, thoughtless, hurrying along the

road of life with no point of view of one’s own, doing things because

everybody else did them, accepting help carelessly, not realising

that other people might need one’s help in return, content with a

somewhat shallow secondhand philosophy because untried in the fire

of reality. This was reality, this barrack life. This was the first

time one had been up against facts, the first time it was a personal

conflict between life and oneself with no mother or family to fend

off the unpleasant; a fact that one hadn’t attempted to grasp.

The picture of oneself was not comforting. To find out the truth

about oneself is always like taking a pill without its sugar coating;

and it was doubly bitter in those surroundings.

Hitherto one had never been forced to do the unpleasant. One simply

avoided it. Now one had to go on doing it day after day without a

hope of escape, without any more alleviation than a very occasional

week-end leave. Those week-ends were like a mouthful of water to

Dives in the flames of hell,--but which made the flames all the

fiercer afterwards! One prayed for them and loathed them.

The beating heart with which one leaped out of a taxi in London and

waited on the doorstep of home, heaven. The glory of a clean body and

more particularly, clean hands. It was curious how the lack of a bath

ceased after a time to be a dreadful thing, but the impossibility

of keeping one’s hands clean was always a poignant agony. They were

always dirty, with cracked nails and a cut or two, and however many

times they were scrubbed, they remained appalling. But at home on

leave, with hot water and stacks of soap and much manicuring, they

did not at least make one feel uncomfortable.

The soft voices and laughter of one’s people, their appearance--just

to be in the same room, silent with emotion--God, will one ever

forget it? Thin china to eat off, a flower on the table, soft lights,

a napkin.--The little ones who came and fingered one’s bandolier

and cap badge and played with one’s spurs with their tiny, clean

hands--one was almost afraid to touch them, and when they puckered up

their tiny mouths to kiss one good night.--I wonder whether they ever

knew how near to tears that rough-looking soldier-man was?

And then in what seemed ten heart-beats one was saying good-bye to

them all. Back to barracks again by way of Waterloo and the last

train at 9 p.m.--its great yellow lights and awful din, its surging

crowd of drunken soldiers and their girls who yelled and hugged and

screamed up and down the platform, and here and there an officer

diving hurriedly into a first-class compartment. Presently whistles

blew and one found oneself jammed into a carriage with about twelve

other soldiers who fought to lean out of the window and see the

last of their girls until the train had panted its way out of the

long platform. Then the foul reek of Woodbine cigarettes while they

discussed the sexual charms of those girls--and then a long snoring

chorus for hours into the night, broken only by some one being sick

from overmuch beer.

The touch of the rosebud mouth of the baby girl who had kissed me

good-bye was still on my lips.

9

It was in the first week of November that, having been through an

exhaustive musketry course in addition to all the other cavalry work,

we were “passed out” by the Colonel. I may mention in passing that

in October, 1914, the British Cavalry were armed, for the first time

in history, with bayonets in addition to lance, sword and rifle.

There was much sarcastic reference to “towies,” “foot-sloggers,”

“P.B.I.”--all methods of the mounted man to designate infantry; and

when an infantry sergeant was lent to teach us bayonet fighting

it seemed the last insult, even to us recruits, so deeply was the

cavalry spirit already ingrained in us.

The “passing out” by the Colonel was a day in our lives. It meant

that, if successful, we were considered good enough to go and fight

for our country: France was the Mecca of each of us.

The day in question was bright and sunny with a touch of frost which

made the horses blow and dance when, with twinkling lance-points at

the carry, we rode out with the sergeant-major, every bright part of

our equipment polished for hours overnight in the barrack room amid

much excited speculation as to our prospects.

The sergeant-major was going to give us a half-hour’s final rehearsal

of all our training before the Colonel arrived. Nothing went right

and he damned and cursed without avail, until at last he threatened

to ride us clean off the plain and lose us. It was very depressing.

We knew we’d done badly, in spite of all our efforts, and when we

saw, not far off, the Colonel, the Major and the Adjutant, with a

group of other people riding up to put us through our paces, there

wasn’t a heart that didn’t beat faster in hope or despair. We sat to

attention like Indians while the officers rode round us, inspecting

the turnout.

Then the Colonel expressed the desire to see a little troop drill.

The sergeant-major cleared his throat and like an 18-pounder shell

the order galvanised us into action. We wheeled and formed and spread

out and reformed without a hitch and came to a halt in perfect

dressing in front of the Colonel again, without a fault. Hope revived

in despairing chests.

Then the Colonel ordered us over the jumps in half sections, and

at the order each half section started away on the half-mile

course--walk, trot, canter, jump, steady down to trot, canter,

jump--_e da capo_ right round about a dozen jumps, each one over

a different kind of obstacle, each half section watched far more

critically perhaps by the rest of the troop than by the officers. My

own mount was a bay mare which I’d ridden half a dozen times. When

she liked she could jump anything. Sometimes she didn’t like.

This day I was taking no chances and drove home both spurs at the

first jump. My other half section was a lance-corporal. His horse was

slow, preferring to consider each jump before it took it.

Between jumps, without moving our heads and looking straight in front

of us, we gave each other advice and encouragement.

Said he, “Not so perishin’ fast. Keep dressed, can’t you.”

Said I, “Wake your old blighter up! What’ve you got spurs on

for?--Hup! Over. Steady, man, steady.”

Said he, “Nar, then, like as we are. Knee to knee. Let’s show ’em

what the perishin’ Kitchener’s mob perishin’ well _can_ do.” And

without a refusal we got round and halted in our places.

When we’d all been round, the Colonel with a faint smile on his face,

requested the sergeant-major to take us round as a troop--sixteen

lancers knee to knee in the front rank and the same number behind.

It happened that I was the centre of the front rank--technically

known as centre guide--whose job it was to keep four yards from the

tail of the troop leader and on whom the rest of the front rank

“dressed.”

When we were well away from the officers and about to canter at the

first jump the sergeant-major’s head turned over his shoulder.

“Oh, _you_’re centre guide, Gibbs, are you! Well, you keep your

distance proper, that’s all, and by Christ, if you refuse----”

I don’t know what fate he had in store for me had I missed a jump but

there I was with a knee on either side jammed painfully hard against

mine as we came to the first jump. It was the man on either flank of

the troop who had the most difficult job. The jumps were only just

wide enough and they had to keep their horses from swinging wide of

the wings. It went magnificently. Sixteen horses as one in both ranks

rose to every jump, settled down and dressed after each and went

round the course without a hitch, refusal or fall, and at last we sat

at attention facing the Colonel, awaiting the verdict which would

either send us back for further training, or out to--what? Death,

glory, or maiming?

The Major looked pleased and twisted his moustache with a grin. He

had handled our squadron and on the first occasion of his leading us

in a charge, he in front with drawn sword, we thundering behind with

lances menacing his back in a glittering row, we got so excited that

we broke ranks and flowed round him, yelling like cowboys. How he

damned us!

The Colonel made a little speech and complimented us on our work

and the sergeant-major for having trained us so well,--us, the first

of Kitchener’s “mob” to be ready. Very nice things he said and our

hearts glowed with appreciation and excitement. We sat there without

a movement but our chests puffed out like a row of pouter pigeons.

At last he saluted us--saluted _us_, he, the Colonel--and the

officers rode away,--the Major hanging behind a little to say with

a smile that was worth all the cursings the sergeant-major had ever

given us, “Damn good, you fellows! _Damn_ good!” We would have

followed him to hell and back at that moment.

And then the sergeant-major turned his horse and faced us. “You may

_think_ you’re perishin’ good soldiers after all that, but by Christ,

I’ve never seen such a perishin’ awful exhibition of carpet-baggers.”

But there was an unusual twinkle in his eye and for the first time in

those two months of training he let us “march at ease,” _i.e._, smoke

and talk, on the way back to stables.

10

That was the first half of the ordeal.

The second half took place in the afternoon in the barrack square

when we went through lance drill and bayonet exercises while the

Colonel and the officers walked round and discussed us. At last we

were dismissed, trained men, recruits no longer; and didn’t we throw

our chests out in the canteen that night! It made me feel that the

Nobel prize was futile beside the satisfaction of being a fully

trained trooper in His Majesty’s Cavalry, and in a crack regiment

too, which had already shown the Boche that the “contemptible little

army” had more “guts” than the Prussian Guards regiments and

anything else they liked to chuck in.

I foregathered with Bucks that night and told him all about it. Our

ways had seemed to lie apart during those intensive days, and it was

only on Sundays that we sometimes went for long cross-country walks

with biscuits and apples in our pockets if we were off duty. About

once a week too we made a point of going to the local music-hall

where red-nosed comedians knocked each other about and fat ladies in

tights sang slushy love songs; and with the crowd we yelled choruses

and ate vast quantities of chocolate.

Two other things occurred during those days which had an enormous

influence on me; one indeed altered my whole career in the army.

The first occurrence was the arrival in a car one evening of an

American girl whom I’d known in New York. It was about a week after

my arrival at Tidworth. She, it appeared, was staying with friends

about twenty miles away.

The first thing I knew about it was when an orderly came into stables

about 4.30 p.m. on a golden afternoon and told me that I was wanted

at once at the Orderly Room.

“What for?” said I, a little nervous.

The Orderly Room was where all the scallawags were brought up before

the Colonel for their various crimes,--and I made a hasty examination

of conscience.

However, I put on my braces and tunic and ran across the square.

There in a car was the American girl whom I had endeavoured to teach

golf in the days immediately previous to my enlistment. “Come on

out and have a picnic with me,” said she. “I’ve got some perfectly

luscious things in a basket.”

The idea was heavenly but it occurred to me I ought to get

permission. So I went into the Orderly Room.

There were two officers and a lot of sergeants. I tiptoed up to a

sergeant and explaining that a lady had come over to see me, asked

if I could get out of camp for half an hour? I was very raw in those

days,--half an hour!

The sergeant stared at me. Presumably ladies in motor-cars didn’t

make a habit of fetching cavalry privates. It wasn’t “laid down” in

the drill book. However, he went over to one of the officers,--the

Adjutant, I discovered later.

The Adjutant looked me up and down as I repeated my request, asked

me my name and which ride I was in and finally put it to the other

officer who said “yes” without looking up. So I thanked the Adjutant,

clicked to the salute and went out. As I walked round the front of

the car, while the chauffeur cranked up, the door of the Orderly Room

opened and the Adjutant came on to the step. He took a good look at

the American girl and said, “Oh--er--Gibbs! You can make it an hour

if you like.”

It may amuse him to know, if the slaughter hasn’t claimed him, that I

made it exactly sixty minutes, much as I should have liked to make it

several hours, and was immensely grateful to him both for the extra

half hour and for the delightful touch of humour.

What a picnic it was! We motored away from that place and all its

roughness and took the basket under a spinney in the afternoon sun

which touched everything in a red glow.

It wasn’t only tea she gave me, but sixty precious minutes of great

friendship, letting fall little remarks which helped me to go back

all the more determined to stick to it. She renewed my faith in

myself and gave me renewed courage,--for which I was unable to thank

her. We British are so accursedly tongue-tied in these matters. I did

try but of course made a botch of it.

There are some things which speech cannot deal with. Your taking

me out that day, oh, American girl, and the other days later, are

numbered among them.

11

The other occurrence was also brought about by a woman, _the_ woman

for whom I joined up. It was a Sunday morning on which fortunately

I was not detailed for any fatigues and she came to take me out to

lunch. We motored to Marlborough, lunched at the hotel and after

visiting a racing stable some distance off came back to the hotel

for tea, a happy day unflecked by any shadow. In the corner of the

dining-room were two officers with two ladies. I, in the bandolier

and spurs of a trooper, sat with my back to them and my friend told

me that they seemed to be eyeing me and making remarks. It occurred

to me that as I had no official permission to be away from Tidworth

they might possibly be going to make trouble. How little I knew what

was in their minds. When we’d finished and got up to go one of the

officers came across as we were going out of the room and said, “May

I speak to you a moment?”

We both stopped. “I see you’re wearing the numerals of my regiment,”

said he and went on to ask why I was in the ranks, why I hadn’t asked

for a commission, and strongly advised me to do so.

I told him that I hadn’t ever thought of it because I knew nothing

about soldiering and hadn’t the faintest idea of whether I should

ever be any good as an officer. He waved that aside and advised me

to apply. Then he added that he himself was going out to France one

day in the following week and would I like to go as his servant?

Would I? My whole idea was to get to France; and this happened before

I had been passed out by the Colonel. So he took down my name and

particulars and said he would ask for me when he came to Tidworth,

which he proposed to do in two days’ time.

Whether he ever came or not I do not know. I never saw him again. Nor

did I take any steps with regard to a commission. My friend and I

talked it over and I remember rather laughing at the idea of it.

Not so she, however. About a fortnight later I was suddenly sent for

by the Colonel.

“I hear you’ve applied for a commission,” said he.

It came like a bolt from the blue. But through my brain flashed the

meeting in the Marlborough Hotel and I saw in it the handiwork of my

friend.

So I said, “Yes, sir.”

He then asked me where I was educated and whether I spoke French and

what my job was in civil life and finally I was sent off to fill up a

form and then to be medically examined.

And there the matter ended. I went on with the daily routine, was

passed out by the Colonel and a very few days after that heard the

glorious news that we were going out as a draft to France on active

service.

We were all in bed in the barrack room one evening when the door

opened and a sergeant came in and flicked on the electric light,

which had only just been turned out.

“Wake up, you bloodthirsty warriors,” he cried. “Wake up. You’re for

a draft to-morrow all of you on this list,” and he read out the names

of all of us in the room who had been passed out. “Parade at the

Quartermaster’s stores at nine o’clock in the morning.” And out went

the light and the door slammed and a burst of cheering went up.

And while I lay on my “biscuits,” imagining France and hearing in my

mind the thunder of guns and wondering what our first charge would

be like, the machinery which my friend had set in motion was rolling

slowly (shades of the War Office!) but surely. My name had been

submerged in the “usual channels” but was receiving first aid, all

unknown to me, of a most vigorous description.

12

Shall I _ever_ forget that week-end, with all its strength of

emotions running the gamut from exaltation to blank despair and back

again to the wildest enthusiasm?

We paraded at the Quartermaster’s stores and received each a kit

bag, two identity discs--the subject of many gruesome comments--a

jack-knife, mess tin, water bottle, haversack, and underclothes. Thus

were we prepared for the killing.

Then the Major appeared and we fell in before him.

“Now which of you men want to go to the front?” said he. “Any man who

wants to, take one pace forward.”

As one man the whole lot of us, about thirty, took one pace forward.

The Major smiled. “Good,” said he. “Any man _not_ want to go--prove.”

No man proved.

“Well, look here,” said the Major, “I hate to disappoint anybody but

only twenty-eight of you can go. You’ll have to draw lots.”

Accordingly bits of paper were put into a hat, thirty scraps of

paper, two of them marked with crosses. Was it a sort of inverted

omen that the two who drew the crosses would never find themselves

under little mounds in France?

We drew in turn, excitement running high as paper after paper came

out blank. My heart kicked within me. How I prayed not to draw a

cross. But I did!

Speechless with despair the other man who drew a cross and I received

the good-natured chaff of the rest.

I saw them going out, to leave this accursed place of boredom and

make-believe, for the real thing, the thing for which we had slaved

and sweated and suffered. We two were to be left. We weren’t to go

on sharing the luck with these excellent fellows united to us by the

bonds of fellow-striving, whom we knew in sickness and health, drunk

and sober.

We had to remain behind, eating our hearts out to wait for the next

draft--a lot of men whom we did not know, strangers with their own

jokes and habits--possibly a fortnight of hanging about. The day was

a Friday and our pals were supposed to be going at any moment. The

other unlucky man and myself came to the conclusion that consolation

might be found in a long week-end leave and that if we struck while

the iron of sympathy was hot the Major might be inclined to lend a

friendly ear. This indeed he did and within an hour we were in the

London train on that gloomy Friday morning, free as any civilian till

midnight of the following Tuesday. Thus the Major’s generosity. The

only proviso was that we had both to leave telegraphic addresses in

case----

But in spite of that glorious week-end in front of us, we refused

to be consoled, yet, and insisted on telling the other occupants of

the carriage of our rotten luck. We revelled in gloom and extraneous

sympathy until Waterloo showed up in the murk ahead. Then I’m bound

to confess my own mental barometer went up with a jump and I said

good-bye to my fellow lancer, who was off to pursue the light o’ love

in Stepney, with an impromptu Te Deum in my heart.

My brother, with whom I spent all my week-ends in those days, had a

house just off the Park. He put in his time looking like a rather

tired admiral, most of whose nights were passed looking for Zeppelins

and yearning for them to come within range of his beloved “bundooks”

which were in the neighbourhood of the Admiralty. Thither I went at

full speed in a taxi--they still existed in those days--and proceeded

to wallow in a hot bath, borrowing my brother’s bath salts (or were

they his wife’s?), clean “undies” and hair juice with a liberal

hand. It was a comic sight to see us out together in the crowded

London streets, he all over gold lace, me just a Tommy with a cheap

swagger stick under my arm. Subalterns, new to the game, saluted him

punctiliously. I saluted them. And when we met generals or a real

admiral we both saluted together. The next afternoon, Saturday, at

tea time a telegram came. We were deep in armchairs in front of a

gorgeous fire, with muffins sitting in the hearth and softly shaded

electric lights throwing a glow over pictures and backs of books and

the piano which, after the barrack room, made us as near heaven as

I’ve ever been. The telegram was for me, signed by the Adjutant.

“Return immediately.”

It was the echo of a far-off boot and saddle.--I took another look

round the room. Should I ever see it again? My brother’s eye met mine

and we rose together.

“Well, I must be getting along,” said I. “Cheero, old son.”

“I’ll come with you to the station,” said he.

I shook my head. “No, please don’t bother.--Don’t forget to write.”

“Rather not.--Good luck, old man.”

“Thanks.”

We went down to his front door. I put on my bandolier and picked up

my haversack.

“Well--so long.”

We shook hands.

“God bless you.”

I think we said it together and then the door closed softly behind me.

_Partir, c’est mourir un peu.--Un peu._--God!

13

The next day, Sunday, we all hung about in a sort of uneasy waiting,

without any orders.

It gave us all time to write letters home. If I rightly remember,

absolute secrecy was to be maintained so we were unable even to hint

at our departure or to say good-bye. It was probably just as well but

they were difficult letters to achieve. So we tied one identity disc

to our braces and slung the other round our necks on a string and did

rather more smoking than usual.

Next morning, however, all was bustle. The orders had come in and we

paraded in full fighting kit in front of the guardroom.

The Colonel came on parade and in a silence that was only broken by

the beating of our hearts told us we were going out to face the Boche

for our King and Country’s sake, to take our places in the ranks of a

very gallant regiment, and he wished us luck.

We gave three rather emotional cheers and marched away with our chins

high, followed by the cheers of the whole barracks who had turned out

to see us off. Just as we were about to entrain the Major trotted up

on his big charger and shook us individually by the hand and said he

wished he were coming with us. His coming was a great compliment and

every man of us appreciated it to the full.

The harbour was a wonderful sight when we got in late that afternoon.

Hundreds of arc lights lit up numbers of ships and at each ship was

a body of troops entraining,--English, Scotch and Irish, cavalry,

gunners and infantry. At first glance it appeared a hopeless tangle,

a babel of yelling men all getting into each other’s way. But

gradually the eye tuned itself up to the endless kaleidoscope and one

saw that absolute order prevailed. Every single man was doing a job

and the work never ceased.

We were not taking horses and marched in the charge of an officer

right through the busy crowd and halted alongside a boat which

already seemed packed with troops. But after a seemingly endless wait

we were marched on board and, dodging men stripped to the waist who

were washing in buckets, we climbed down iron ladders into the bowels

of the hold, were herded into a corner and told to make ourselves

comfortable. Tea would be dished out in half an hour.

Holds are usually iron. This was. Furthermore it had been recently

red-leaded. Throw in a strong suggestion of garlic and more than

a hint of sea-sickness and you get some idea of the perfume that

greeted us, friendly-like.

The comments, entirely good-natured, were unprintable. There were no

bunks. We had one blanket each and a greatcoat. My thoughts turned to

the first-class stateroom of the _Caronia_ in which only four months

previously I had had no thought of war. The accepted form of romance

and the glamour of war have been altered. There are no cheering

crowds and fluttering handkerchiefs and brass bands. The new romance

is the light of the moon flickering on darkened ships that creep

one after the other through the mine barrier out into deep waters,

turning to silver the foam ripped by the bows, picking out the white

expressionless faces of silent thousands of khaki-clad men lining the

rail, following the will-o’-the-wisp which beckoned to a strange land.

How many of them knew what they were going to fight for? How many of

them realized the unforgettable hell they were to be engulfed in, the

sacrifice which they so readily made of youth, love, ambition, life

itself--and to what end? To give the lie to one man who wished to

alter the face of the world? To take the part of the smaller country

trampled and battered by the bully? To save from destruction the

greasy skins of dirty-minded politicians, thinking financially or

even imperially, but staying at home?

God knows why most of us went.

But the sting of the Channel wind as we set our faces to the

enemy drove all reason from the mind and filled it with a mighty

exultation. If Death were there to meet us, well, it was all in the

game.

14

We climbed up from the hold next morning to find ourselves in

Portsmouth harbour. The word submarines ran about the decks. There

we waited all day, and again under cover of dark made our way out to

open water, reaching Havre about six o’clock next morning.

We were marched ashore in the afternoon and transferred to another

boat. Nobody knew our destination and the wildest guesses were made.

The new boat was literally packed. There was no question of going

down into a hold. We were lucky to get sufficient deck space to lie

down on, and just before getting under way, it began to rain. There

were some London Scottish at our end of the deck who, finding that

we had exhausted our rations, shared theirs with us. There was no

question of sleeping. It was too cold and too uncomfortable. So we

sang. There must have been some two thousand of us on board and all

those above deck joined in choruses of all the popular songs as they

sat hunched up or lying like rows of sardines in the rain. Dawn found

us shivering, passing little villages on either bank of the river as

we neared Rouen. The early-rising inhabitants waved and their voices

came across the water, “_Vivent les Anglais! A bas les Boches!_” And

the sun came out as we waved out shaving brushes at them in reply. We

eventually landed in the old cathedral city and formed up and marched

away across the bridge, with everybody cheering and throwing flowers

until we came to La Bruyère camp.

Hundreds of bell tents, thousands of horses, and mud over the ankles!

That was the first impression of the camp. It wasn’t until we were

divided off into tents and had packed our equipment tight round the

tent pole that one had time to notice details.

We spent about nine days in La Bruyère camp and we groomed horses

from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, wet or fine. The lines were endless

and the mud eternal. It became a nightmare, relieved only by the

watering of the horses. The water was about a kilometre and a half

distant. We mounted one horse and led two more each and in an

endless line splashed down belly-deep in mud past the hospital where

the slightly wounded leaned over the rail and exchanged badinage.

Sometimes the sisters gave us cigarettes for which we called down

blessings on their heads.

It rained most of the time and we stood ankle-deep all day in the

lines, grooming and shovelling away mud. But all the time jokes

were hurled from man to man, although the rain dripped down their

faces and necks. We slept, if I remember rightly, twenty men in

a tent, head outwards, feet to the pole piled on top of each

other,--wet, hot, aching. Oh, those feet, the feet of tired heroes,

but unwashed. And it was impossible to open the tent flap because of

the rain.--Fortunately it was cold those nights and one smoked right

up to the moment of falling asleep. Only two per cent. of passes to

visit the town were allowed, but the camp was only barb-wired and

sentried on one side. The other side was open to the pine woods and

very pretty they were as we went cross-country towards the village

of St. Etienne from which a tram-car ran into Rouen in about twenty

minutes. The military police posted at the entrance to the town

either didn’t know their job or were good fellows of Nelsonian

temperament, content to turn a blind eye. From later experience I

judge that the former was probably the case. Be that as it may,

several hundreds of us went in without official permission nearly

every night and, considering all things, were most orderly. Almost

the only man I ever saw drunk was, paradoxically enough, a police

man. He tried to place my companion and myself under arrest, but was

so far gone that he couldn’t write down our names and numbers and we

got off. The hand of Fate was distinctly in it for had I been brought

up and crimed for being loose in the town without leave it might have

counted against me when my commission was being considered.

One evening, the night before we left for the front, we went down

for a bath, the last we should get for many a day. On our way we

paid a visit to the cathedral. It was good to get out of the crowded

streets into the vast gloom punctured by pin-points of candlelight,

with only faint footfalls and the squeak of a chair to disturb the

silence. For perhaps half an hour we knelt in front of the high

altar,--quite unconsciously the modern version of that picture of a

knight in armour kneeling, holding up his sword as a cross before

the altar. It is called the Vigil, I believe. We made a little vigil

in khaki and bandoliers and left the cathedral with an extraordinary

confidence in the morrow. There was a baby being baptised at the

font. It was an odd thing seeing that baby just as we passed out. It

typified somewhat the reason of our going forth to fight.

The bath was amusing. The doors were being closed as we arrived,

and I had just the time to stick my foot in the crack, much to the

annoyance of the attendant. I blarneyed him in French and at last

pushed into the hall only to be greeted by a cry of indignation from

the lady in charge of the ticket office. She was young, however and

pretty, and, determined to get a bath, I played upon her feelings

to the extent of my vocabulary. At first she was adamant. The baths

were closed. I pointed out that the next morning we were going to the

front to fight for France. She refused to believe it. I asked her if

she had a brother. She said she hadn’t. I congratulated her on not

being agonized by the possibilities of his death from hour to hour.

She smiled.

My heart leaped with hope and I reminded her that as we were possibly

going to die for her the least she could do was to let us die clean.

She looked me straight in the eye. There was a twinkle in hers. “You

will not die,” she said. Somehow one doesn’t associate the selling of

bath tickets with the calling of prophet. But she combined the two.

And the bath was gloriously hot.

15

That nine days at La Bruyère did not teach us very much,--not even

the realization of the vital necessity of patience. We looked upon

each day as wasted because we weren’t up the line. Everywhere were

preparations of war but we yearned for the sound of guns. Even the

blue-clad figures who exchanged jokes with us over the hospital

railing conveyed nothing of the grim tragedy of which we were only on

the fringe. They were mostly convalescent. It is only the shattered

who are being pulled back to life by a thread who make one curse

the war. We looked about like new boys in a school, interested but

knowing nothing of the workings, reading none of the signs. This

all bored us. We wanted the line with all the persistence of the

completely ignorant.

The morning after our bath we got it. There was much bustle and

running and cursing and finally we had our saddles packed, and a

day’s rations in our haversacks and a double feed in the nose-bags.

The cavalry man in full marching order bears a strange resemblance to

a travelling ironmonger and rattles like the banging of old tins. The

small man has almost to climb up the near foreleg of his horse, so

impossible is it to get a leg anywhere near the stirrup iron with all

his gear on. My own method was to stick the lance in the ground by

the butt, climb with infinite labour and heavings into the saddle and

come back for the lance when arranged squarely on the horse.

Eventually everything was accomplished and we were all in the saddle

and were inspected to see that we were complete in every detail. Then

we rode out of that muddy camp in sections--four abreast--and made

our way down towards the station. It was a real touch of old-time

romance, that ride. The children ran shouting, and people came out

of the shops to wave their hands and give us fruit and wish us luck,

and the girls blew kisses, and through the hubbub the clatter of our

horses over the cobbles and the jingle of stirrup striking stirrup

made music that stirred one’s blood.

There was a long train of cattle trucks waiting for us at the station

and into these we put our horses, eight to each truck, fastened

by their ropes from the head collar to a ring in the roof. In the

two-foot space between the two lots of four horses facing each other

were put the eight saddles and blankets and a bale of hay.

Two men were detailed to stay with the horses in each truck while

the rest fell in and were marched away to be distributed among the

remaining empty trucks. I didn’t altogether fancy the idea of looking

after eight frightened steeds in that two-foot alleyway, but before I

could fall in with the rest I was detailed by the sergeant.

That journey was a nightmare. My fellow stableman was a brainless

idiot who knew even less about the handling of horses than I did.

The train pulled out in the growing dusk of a cold November evening,

the horses snorting and starting at every jolt, at every signal and

telegraph pole that we passed. When they pawed with their front feet

we, sitting on the bale of hay, had to dodge with curses. There was

no sand or bedding and it was only the tightness with which they

were packed together that kept them on their feet. Every light that

flashed by drew frightened snorts. We spent an hour standing among

them, saying soothing things and patting their necks. We tried

closing the sliding doors but at the end of five minutes the heat

splashed in great drops of moisture from the roof and the smell was

impossible. Eventually I broke the bale of hay and threw some of

that down to give them a footing.

There was a lamp in the corner of the truck. I told the other

fellow to light it. He said he had no matches. So I produced mine

and discovered that I had only six left. We used five to find out

that the lamp had neither oil nor wick. We had just exhausted our

vocabularies over this when the train entered a tunnel. At no time

did the train move at more than eight miles an hour and the tunnel

seemed endless. A times I still dream of that tunnel and wake up in a

cold sweat.

As our truck entered great billows of smoke rushed into it. The eight

horses tried as one to rear up and crashed their heads against the

roof. The noise was deafening and it was pitch dark. I felt for the

door and slid it shut while the horses blew and tugged at their ropes

in a blind panic. Then there was a heavy thud, followed by a yell

from the other man and a furious squealing.

“Are you all right?” I shouted, holding on to the head collar of the

nearest beast.

“Christ!” came the answer. “There’s a ’orse down and I’m jammed up

against the door ’ere. Come and get me out, for Christ’s sake.”

My heart was pumping wildly.

The smoke made one gasp and there was a furious stamping and

squealing and a weird sort of blowing gurgle which I could not define.

Feeling around I reached the next horse’s head collar and staggered

over the pile of saddlery. As I leaned forward to get to the third

something whistled past my face and I heard the sickening noise of

a horse’s hoof against another horse, followed by a squeal. I felt

blindly and touched a flank where a head should have been. One of

them had swung round and was standing with his fore feet on the

fallen horse and was lashing out with both hind feet, while my

companion was jammed against the wall of the truck by the fallen

animal presumably.

And still that cursed tunnel did not come to an end. I yelled again

to see if he were all right and his fruity reply convinced me that at

least there was no damage done. So I patted the kicker and squeezed

in to his head and tried to get him round. It was impossible to get

past, over or under, and the brute wouldn’t move. There was nothing

for it but to remain as we were until out of the tunnel. And then I

located the gurgle. It was the fallen horse, tied up short by the

head collar to the roof, being steadily strangled. It was impossible

to cut the rope. A loose horse in that infernal _mêlée_ was worse

than one dead--or at least choking. But I cursed and pulled and

heaved in my efforts to get him up.

By this time there was no air and one’s lungs seemed on the point of

bursting. The roof rained sweat upon our faces and every moment I

expected to get a horse’s hoof in my face.

How I envied that fellow jammed against the truck. At last we came

out into the open again, and I slid back the door, and shoved my head

outside and gulped in the fresh air. Then I untied the kicker and

somehow, I don’t know how, got him round into his proper position and

tied him up, with a handful of hay all round to steady their nerves.

The other man was cursing blue blazes all this time, but eventually I

cut the rope of the fallen horse, and after about three false starts

he got on his feet again and was retied. The man was not hurt. He

had been merely wedged. So we gave some more hay all round, cursed a

bit more to ease ourselves and then went to the open door for air. A

confused shouting from the next truck reached us. After many yells we

made out the following, “Pass the word forward that the train’s on

fire.”

All the stories I’d ever heard of horses being burnt alive raced

through my brain in a fraction of a second.

We leaned to the truck in front and yelled. No answer. The truck was

shut.

“Climb on the roof,” said I, “and go forward.” The other man obeyed

and disappeared into the dark.

Minutes passed, during which I looked back and saw a cloud of smoke

coming out of a truck far along the train.

Then a foot dropped over from the roof and my companion climbed back.

“Better go yourself,” he said. “I carnt mike ’im understand. He threw

lumps of coal at me from the perishin’ engine.”

So I climbed on to the roof of the swaying coach, got my balance and

walked forward till a yard-wide jump to the next roof faced me in the

darkness.

“Lord!” thought I, “if I didn’t know that other lad had been here,

I shouldn’t care about it. However----” I took a strong leap and

landed, slipping to my hands and knees.

There were six trucks between me and the engine and the jumps varied

in width. I got there all right and screamed to the engine driver,

“_Incendie!--Incendie!_”

He paused in the act of throwing coal at me and I screamed again.

Apparently he caught it, for first peering back along all the train,

he dived at a lever and the train screamed to a halt. I was mighty

thankful. I hadn’t looked forward to going back the way I came and

I climbed quickly down to the rails. A sort of guard with a lantern

and an official appearance climbed out of a box of sorts and demanded

to know what was the matter, and when I told him, called to me to

follow and began doubling back along the track.

I followed. The train seemed about a mile long but eventually we

reached a truck, full of men and a rosy glare, from which a column of

smoke bellied out. The guard flashed his lantern in.

The cursed thing wasn’t on fire at all. The men were burning hay in a

biscuit tin, singing merrily, just keeping themselves warm.

I thought of the agony of those jumps in the dark from roof to roof

and laughed. But I got my own back. They couldn’t see us in the dark,

so in short snappy sentences I ordered them to put the fire out

immediately. And they thought I was an officer and did so.

16

The rest of the night passed in an endeavour to get to sleep in a

sitting position on the bale of hay. From time to time one dozed off,

but it was too cold, and the infernal horses would keep on pawing.

Never was a night so long and it wasn’t till eight o’clock in the

morning that we ran into Hazebrouck and stopped. By this time we

were so hungry that food was imperative. On the station was a great

pile of rifles and bandoliers and equipment generally, all dirty and

rusty, and in a corner some infantry were doing something round a

fire.

“Got any tea, chum?” said I.

He nodded a Balaklava helmet.

We were on him in two leaps with extended dixies. It saved our lives,

that tea. We were chilled to the bone and had only bully beef and

biscuits, of course, but I felt renewed courage surge through me

with every mouthful.

“What’s all that stuff?” I asked, pointing to the heap of equipments.

“Dead men’s weapons,” said he, lighting a “gasper.” Somehow it

didn’t sound real. One couldn’t picture all the men to whom that

had belonged dead. Nor did it give one anything of a shock. One

just accepted it as a fact without thinking, “I wonder whether _my_

rifle and sword will ever join that heap?” The idea of my being

_killed_ was absurd, fantastic. Any of these others, yes, but somehow

not myself. Never at any time have I felt anything but extreme

confidence in the fact--yes, fact--that I should come through, in all

probability, unwounded. I thought about it often but always with the

certainty that nothing would happen to me.

I decided that _if_ I were killed I should be most frightfully angry!

There were so many things to be done with life, so much beauty to be

found, so many ambitions to be realized, that it was impossible that

I should be killed. All this dirt and discomfort was just a necessary

phase to the greater appreciation of everything.

I can’t explain it. Perhaps there isn’t any explanation. But never at

any time have I seen the shell or bullet with my name on it,--as the

saying goes. And yet somehow that pile of broken gear filled one with

a sense of the pity of it all, the utter folly of civilization which

had got itself into such an unutterable mess that blood-letting was

the only way out.--I proceeded to strip to the waist and shave out of

a horse-bucket of cold water.

There was a cold drizzle falling when at last we had watered the

horses, fed and saddled them up, and were ready to mount. It

increased to a steady downpour as we rode away in half sections

and turned into a muddy road lined with the eternal poplar. In the

middle of the day we halted, numbed through, on the side of a road,

and watered the horses again, and snatched a mouthful of biscuit and

bully and struggled to fill a pipe with icy fingers. Then on again

into the increasing murk of a raw afternoon.

Thousands of motor lorries passed like an endless chain. Men muffled

in greatcoats emerged from farm-houses and faintly far came the sound

of guns.

The word went round that we were going up into the trenches that

night. Heaven knows who started it but I found it a source of

spiritual exaltation that helped to conquer the discomfort of that

ride. Every time a trickle ran down one’s neck one thought, “It

doesn’t matter. This is the real thing. We are going up to-night,”

and visualised a Hun over the sights of one’s rifle.

Presently the flames of fires lit up the murk and shadowy forms moved

round them which took no notice of us as we rode by.

At last in pitch darkness we halted at a road crossing and splashed

into a farmyard that was nearly belly-deep in mud. Voices came

through the gloom, and after some indecision and cursing we

off-saddled in a stable lit by a hurricane lamp, hand-rubbed the

horses, blanketed them and left them comfortable for the night.

We were given hot tea and bread and cheese and shepherded into an

enormous barn piled high with hay. Here and there twinkled candles in

biscuit tins and everywhere were men sitting and lying on the hay,

the vague whiteness of their faces just showing. It looked extremely

comfortable.

But when we joined them--the trench rumour was untrue--we found that

the hay was so wet that a lighted match thrown on it fizzled and

went out. The rain came through innumerable holes in the roof and the

wind made the candles burn all one-sided. However, it was soft to lie

on, and when my “chum” and I had got on two pairs of dry socks each

and had snuggled down together with two blankets over our tunics and

greatcoats, and mufflers round our necks, and Balaklava helmets over

our heads we found we could sleep warm till reveille.

The sock question was difficult. One took off soaking boots and

puttees at night and had to put them on again still soaking in the

morning. The result was that by day our feet were always ice-cold

and never dry. We never took anything else off except to wash, or to

groom horses.

The next morning I had my first lesson in real soldiering. The

results were curious.

The squadron was to parade in drill order at 9 a.m. We had groomed

diligently in the chilly dawn. None of the horses had been clipped,

so it consisted in getting the mud off rather than really grooming,

and I was glad to see that my horse had stood the train journey and

the previous day’s ride without any damage save a slight rubbing

of his tail. At about twenty minutes to nine, shaved and washed, I

went to the stables to saddle up for the parade. Most of the others

in that stable were nearly ready by the time I got there and to my

dismay I found that they had used all my gear. There was nothing but

the horse and the blanket left,--no saddle, no head collar and bit,

no rifle, no sword, no lance. Everything had disappeared. I dashed

round and tried to lay hands on some one else’s property. They were

too smart and eventually they all turned out leaving me. The only

saddle in the place hadn’t been cleaned for months and I should

have been ashamed to ride it. Then the sergeant appeared, a great,

red-faced, bad-tempered-looking man.

I decided on getting the first blow in. So I went up and told him

that all my things had been “pinched.” Could he tell me where I could

find some more?

His reply would have blistered the paint off a door. His adjectives

concerning me made me want to hit him. But one cannot hit one’s

superior officer in the army--more’s the pity--on occasions like

that. So we had a verbal battle. I told him that if he didn’t find

me everything down to lance buckets I shouldn’t appear on parade and

that if he chose to put me under arrest, so much the better, as the

Major would then find out how damned badly the sergeant ran his troop.

It was a good bluff. Bit by bit he hunted up a head collar, a saddle,

sword, lance, etc. Needless to say they were all filthy and I wished

all the bullets in Germany on the dirty dog who had pinched my clean

stuff. However, I was on parade just half a minute before the Major

came round to inspect us. He stopped at me, his eye taking in the

rusty bit and stirrup irons, the coagulations on the bridle, the

general damnableness of it all. It wasn’t nice.

“Did you come in last night?” The voice was hard.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you come up from the base with your appointments in that state?”

“No, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

The sergeant was looking apoplectic behind him.

“These aren’t my things, sir,” said I.

“Whose are they?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Where are your things?”

“They were in the stables at reveille, sir, but they’d all gone when

I went to saddle up. The horse is the only thing I brought with me,

sir.”

The whole troop was sitting at attention, listening, and I hoped that

the man who had stolen everything heard this dialogue and was quaking

in his wet boots.

The Major turned. “What does this mean, Sergeant?”

There was a vindictive look in the sergeant’s eye as he spluttered

out an unconvincing reply that “these new fellows wanted nursemaids

and weren’t ’alf nippy enough in lookin’ arter ’emselves.”

The Major considered it for a moment, told me that I must get

everything clean for the next parade and passed on.

At least I was not under arrest, but it wasn’t good enough on the

first morning to earn the Major’s scorn through no fault of my own. I

wanted some one’s blood.

Each troop leader, a subaltern, was given written orders by the

Major and left to carry them out. Our own troop leader didn’t seem

to understand his orders and by the time the other three troops had

ridden away he was still reading his paper. The Major returned and

explained, asked him if all was clear, and getting yes for an answer,

rode off.

The subaltern then asked the sergeant if he had a map!

What was even more curious, the sergeant said yes. The subaltern

said we had to get to a place called Flêtre within three quarters of

an hour and they proceeded to try and find it on the sergeant’s map

without any success for perhaps five minutes.

During that time the troopers around me made remarks in undertones,

most ribald remarks. We had come through Flêtre the previous day and

I remembered the road. So I turned to a lance-corporal on my right

and said, “Look here, I know the way. Shall I tell him?”

“Yes, tell him for Christ’s sake!” said the lance-corporal. “It’s too

perishin’ cold to go on sitting ’ere.”

So I took a deep breath and all my courage in both hands and spoke.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said I. “I know Flêtre.”

The subaltern turned round on his horse. “Who knows the place?” he

said.

“I do, sir,” and I told him how to get there.

Without further comment he gave the word to advance in half sections

and we left the parade ground, but instead of turning to the left as

I had said, he led us straight on at a good sharp trot.

More than half an hour later, when we should have been at the pin

point in Flêtre, the subaltern halted us at a crossroads in open

country and again had a map consultation with the sergeant. Again

it was apparently impossible to locate either the crossroads or the

rendezvous.

But in the road were two peasants coming towards us. He waited till

they came up and then asked them the way in bad German. They looked

at him blankly, so he repeated his question in worse French. His

pronunciation of Flêtre puzzled them but at last one of them guessed

it and began a stream of explanations and pointings.

“What the hell are they talking about?” said the subaltern to the

sergeant.

The lance-corporal nudged me. “Did _you_ understand?”

“Yes,” said I.

“Tell him again,” he said. “Go on.”

So again I begged his pardon and explained what the peasants had told

him. He looked at me for a moment oddly. I admit that it wasn’t

usual for a private to address his officer on parade without being

first spoken to. But this was war, the world war, and the old order

changeth. Anyhow I was told to ride in front of the troop as guide

and did and brought the troop to the rendezvous about twenty minutes

late.

The Major was not pleased.

Later in the day the subaltern came around the stables and, seeing

me, stopped and said, “Oh--er--you!”

I came to attention behind the horse.

“What’s your name?” said he.

I told him.

“Do you talk French?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where were you educated?”

“France and Oxford University, sir.”

“Oh!” slightly surprised. “Er--all right, get on with your work”--and

whether it was he or the sergeant I don’t know, but I had four horses

to groom that morning instead of two.

From that moment I decided to cut out being intelligent and remain

what the French call a “simple” soldier.

By a strange coincidence there was a nephew of that subaltern in

the Brigade of Gunners to which I was posted when I received a

commission. It is curious how accurately nephews sum up uncles.

17

When we did not go out on drill orders like that we began the day

with what is called rough exercise. It was. In the foggy dawn,

swathed in scarfs and Balaklava helmets, one folded one’s blanket

on the horse, bitted him, mounted, took another horse on either

side, and in a long column followed an invisible lance-corporal

across ploughed fields, over ditches, and along roads at a good stiff

trot that jarred one’s spine. It was generally raining and always

so cold that one never had the use of either hands or feet. The

result was that if one of the unbitted led horses became frolicsome

it was even money that he would pull the rope out of one’s hands

and canter off blithely down the road,--for which one was cursed

bitterly by the sergeant on one’s return. The rest of the day was

divided between stables and fatigues in that eternal heart-breaking

mud. One laid brick paths and brushwood paths and within twenty-four

hours they had disappeared under mud. It was shovelled away in sacks

and wheelbarrows, and it oozed up again as if by magic. One made

herring-bone drains and they merged in the mud. There seemed to be no

method of competing with it. In the stables the horses stood in it

knee-deep. As soon as one had finished grooming, the brute seemed to

take a diabolical pleasure in lying down in it. It became a nightmare.

The sergeant didn’t go out of his way to make things easier for

any of us and confided most of the dirtier, muddier jobs to me.

There seemed to be always something unpleasant that required

“intelligence,” so he said, and in the words of the army I

“clicked.” The result was that I was happiest when I was on guard, a

twenty-four-hour duty which kept me more or less out of the mud and

entirely out of his way.

The first time I went on I was told by the N.C.O. in charge that no

one was to come through the hedge that bounded the farm and the road

after lights out, and if any one attempted to do so I was to shoot

on sight. So I marched up and down my short beat in the small hours

between two and four, listening to the far-off muttering of guns and

watching the Verey lights like a miniature firework display, praying

that some spy would try and enter the gap in the hedge. My finger was

never very far from the trigger, and my beat was never more than two

yards from the hedge. I didn’t realize then that we were so far from

the line that the chances of a strolling Hun were absurd. Looking

back on it I am inclined to wonder whether the N.C.O. didn’t tell me

to shoot on sight because he knew that the sergeant’s billet was down

that road and the hedge was a short cut. The sergeant wasn’t very

popular.

There was an _estaminet_ across the road from the farm, and the

officers had arranged for us to have the use of the big room. It was

a godsend, that _estaminet_, with its huge stove nearly red-hot, its

bowls of coffee and the single glass of raw cognac which they were

allowed to sell us. The evenings were the only time one was ever

warm, and although there was nothing to read except some old and torn

magazines we sat there in the fetid atmosphere just to keep warm.

The patron talked vile French but was a kindly soul, and his small

boy, Gaston, aged about seven, became a great friend of mine. He used

to bring me my coffee, his tiny, dirty hands only just big enough to

hold the bowl, and then stand and talk while I drank it, calling me

“thou.”

“_T’es pas anglais, dis?_”

And I laughed and said I was French.

“_Alors comment qu’ t’es avec eux, dis?_”

And when one evening he came across and looked over my shoulder as I

was writing a letter, he said, “_Qué que t’écris, dis?_”

I told him I was writing in English.

He stared at me and then called out shrilly, “_Papa. V’là l’Français

qu’écrit en anglais!_”

He had seen the Boche, had little Gaston, and told me how one day

the Uhlans had cleaned the _estaminet_ out of everything,--wine,

cognac, bread, blankets, sheets--_les sales Boches!_

As the days dragged muddily through it was borne in on me that this

wasn’t fighting for King and Country. It was just Tidworth over

again with none of its advantages and with all its discomforts

increased a thousand-fold. Furthermore the post-office seemed to

have lost me utterly, and weeks went by before I had any letters at

all. It was heart-breaking to see the mail distributed daily and

go away empty-handed. It was as though no one cared, as though one

were completely forgotten, as though in stepping into this new life

one had renounced one’s identity. Indeed, every day it became more

evident that it was not I who was in that mud patch. It was some

one else on whom the real me looked down in infinite amazement. I

heard myself laugh in the farm at night and join in choruses; saw

myself dirty and unbathed, with a scarf around my stomach and another

round my feet, and a woollen helmet over my head; standing in the

mud stripped to the waist shaving without a looking-glass; drinking

coffee and cognac in that _estaminet_.--Was it I who sometimes

prayed for sleep that I might shut it all out and slip into the land

of dreams, where there is no war and no mud? Was it I who when the

first letters arrived from home went out into the rainy night with a

candle-end to be alone with those I loved? And was it only the rain

which made it so difficult to read them?

18

The culminating point was reached when I became ill.

Feeling sick, I couldn’t eat any breakfast and dragged myself

on parade like a mangy cat. I stuck it till about three in the

afternoon, when the horse which I was grooming receded from me and

the whole world rocked. I remember hanging on to the horse till

things got a bit steadier, and then asked the sergeant if I might go

off parade. I suppose I must have looked pretty ill because he said

yes at once.

For three days I lay wrapped up on the straw in the barn, eating

nothing; and only crawling out to see the doctor each morning at

nine o’clock. Of other symptoms I will say nothing. The whole affair

was appalling, but I recovered sufficient interest in life on the

fourth morning to parade sick, although I felt vastly more fit.

Indeed, the argument formed itself, “since I am a soldier I’ll play

the ‘old soldier’ and see how long I can be excused duty.” And I

did it so well that for three more days I was to all intents and

purposes a free man. On one of the days I fell in with a corporal of

another squadron, and he and I got a couple of horses and rode into

Bailleul, which was only about three miles south of us, and we bought

chocolates, and candles and books, and exchanged salutes with the

Prince of Wales, who was walking in the town. Then we came back with

our supplies after an excellent lunch at the hotel in the square,

the “Faucon,” and had tea with the officers’ servants in a cosy

little billet with a fire and beds. The remarks they made about their

officers were most instructive, and they referred to them either as

“my bloke” or “’is lordship.”

And there it was I met again a man I had spoken to once at Tidworth,

who knew French and was now squadron interpreter. He was a charming

man of considerable means, with a large business, who had joined up

immediately on the outbreak of war. But being squadron interpreter

he messed with the officers, had a billet in a cottage, slept on

a bed, had a private hip bath and hot water, and was in heaven,

comparatively. He suggested to me that as my squadron lacked an

interpreter (he was doing the extra work) and I knew French it was up

to me.

“But how the devil’s it to be done?” said I, alight with the idea.

“Why don’t you go and see the Colonel?” he suggested.

I gasped. The Colonel was nearly God.

He laughed. “This is ‘Kitchener’s Army,’” he said, “not the regular

Army. Things are a bit different.” They were indeed!

So I slept on the idea and every moment it seemed to me better and

better, until the following evening after tea, instead of going to

the _estaminet_, I went down to squadron headquarters. For about five

minutes I walked up and down in the mud, plucking up courage. I would

rather have faced a Hun any day.

At last I went into the farmyard and knocked at the door. There were

lights in the crack of the window shutters.

A servant answered the door.

“Is the Colonel in?” said I boldly.

He peered at me. “What the perishin’ ’ell do _you_ want to know for?”

“I want to see him,” said I.

“And what the ’ell do _you_ want to see him for?”

I was annoyed. It seemed quite likely that this confounded servant

would do the St. Peter act and refuse me entrance into the gates.

“Look here,” I said, “it doesn’t matter to you what for or why.

You’re here to answer questions. Is the Colonel _in_?”

The man snorted. “Oh! I’m ’ere to answer questions, am I? Well, if

you want to know, the Colonel ain’t in.--Anything else?”

I was stumped. It seemed as if my hopes were shattered. But luck was

mine--as ever. A voice came from the inner room. “Thomson! Who is

that man?”

The servant made a face at me and went to the room door.

“A trooper, sir, from one of the squadrons, askin’ to see the

Colonel.”

“Bring him in,” said the voice.

My heart leapt.

The servant returned to me and showed me into the room.

I saw three officers, one in shirt sleeves, all sitting around a

fire. Empty tea things were still on a table. There were a sofa, and

armchairs and bright pictures, a pile of books and magazines on a

table, and a smell of Egyptian cigarettes. They all looked at me as I

saluted.

“Thomson tells me you want to see the Colonel,” said the one whose

voice I had heard, the one in shirt sleeves. “Anything I can do?”

It was good to hear one’s own language again, and I decided to make a

clean breast of it.

“It’s awfully kind of you, sir,” said I. “Perhaps you can. I came to

ask for the interpretership of my squadron. We haven’t got one and

I can talk French. If you could put in a word for me I should be

lastingly grateful.”

His next words made him my brother for life. “Sit down, won’t you,”

he said, “and have a cigarette.”

Can you realize what it meant after those weeks of misery, with no

letters and the eternal adjective of the ranks which gets on one’s

nerves till one could scream, to be asked to sit down and have a

cigarette in that officers’ mess?

Speechless, I took one, although I dislike cigarettes and always

stick to a pipe. But that one was a link with all that I’d left

behind, and was the best I’ve ever smoked in my life. He proceeded to

ask me my name and where I was educated, and said he would see what

he could do for me, and after about ten minutes I went out again into

the mud a better soldier than I went in. That touch of fellow feeling

helped enormously. And he was as good as his word. For the following

morning the Major sent for me.

19

The rain had stopped and there had been a hard frost in the night

which turned the roads to ice. The horses were being walked round and

round in a circle, and the Major was standing watching them when I

came up and saluted.

“Yes, what is it?” he said.

“You sent for me, sir.”

“Oh--you’re Gibbs, are you?--Yes, let’s go in out of this wind.” He

led the way into the mess and stood with his back to the fire.

Every detail of that room lives with me yet. One went up two steps

into the room. The fireplace faced the door with a window to the

right of the fireplace. There was a table between us with newspapers

on it, and tobacco and pipes. And two armchairs faced the fire.

He asked me what I wanted the interpretership for. I told him I was

sick of the ranks, that I had chucked a fascinating job to be of use

to my King and country, and that any fool trooper could shovel mud as

I did day after day.

He nodded. “But interpreting is no damned good, you know,” he said.

“It only consists in looking after the forage and going shopping with

those officers who can’t talk French.--That isn’t what you want, is

it?”

“No, sir,” said I.

“Well, what other job would you like?”

That floored me completely. I didn’t know what jobs there were in the

squadron and told him so.

“Well, come and have dinner to-night and we’ll talk about it,” said

he.

Have dinner! My clothes reeked of stables, and I had slept in them

ever since I arrived.

“That doesn’t matter,” said the Major. “You come along to-night at

half-past seven. You’ve been sick all this week. How are you? Pretty

fit again?”

He’s Brigadier-General now and has forgotten all about it years ago.

I don’t think I ever shall.

There were the Major, the Captain and one subaltern at dinner that

night--an extraordinary dinner--the servant who a moment previously

had called me “chum” in the kitchen gradually getting used to waiting

on me at the meal, and I, in the same dress as the servant, gradually

feeling less like a fish out of water as the officers treated me as

one of themselves. It was the first time I’d eaten at a table covered

with a white tablecloth for over two months, the first time I had

used a plate or drunk out of a glass, the first time I had been with

my own kind.--It was very good.

The outcome of the dinner was that I was to become squadron scout,

have two horses, keep them at the cottage of the interpreter, where I

was to live, and ride over the country gathering information, which

I was to bring as a written report every night at six o’clock. While

the squadron was behind the lines it was, of course, only a matter

of training myself before other men were given me to train. But

when we went into action,--vistas opened out before me of dodging

Uhlan patrols and galloping back with information through a rain of

bullets. It was a job worth while and I was speechless with gratitude.

It was not later than seven o’clock the following morning, Christmas

Eve, 1914, that I began operations. I breakfasted at the cottage to

which I had removed my belongings overnight, and went along towards

the stables to get a horse.

The man with whom I had been mucking in met me outside the farm. He

was in the know and grinned, cheerily.

“The sergeant’s lookin’ for you,” he said. “He’s over in the stables.”

I went across. He was prowling about near the forage.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” said I.

He looked at me and stopped prowling. “Where the----” and he asked

me in trooperese where I had been and why I wasn’t at early morning

stables. I told him I was on a special job for the Major.

He gasped and requested an explanation.

“I’m knocked off all rolls, and parades and fatigues,” I said.

“You’ve got to find me a second horse. They are both going to be kept

down the road, and I shall come and see you from time to time when I

require forage.”

He was speechless for the first and only time. It passed his

comprehension.

At that moment the sergeant-major came in and proceeded to tell him

almost word for word what I had told him. It was a great morning, a

poetic revenge, and eventually I rode away leading the other horse,

the sergeant’s pop eyes following me as I gave him final instructions

as to where to send the forage.

Later, as I started out on my first expedition as squadron scout, he

waved an arm at me and came running. His whole manner had changed,

and he said in a voice of honey, “If you _should_ ’appen to pass

through Ballool would you mind gettin’ me a new pipe?--’Ere’s five

francs.”

I got him a pipe, and in Bailleul sought out every likely looking

English signaller or French officer, and dropped questions, and

eventually at 6 p.m., having been the round of Dramoutre, Westoutre,

and Locre, took in a rather meagre first report to the Major. How I

regretted that I had never been a newspaper reporter! However, it was

a beginning.

The following morning was Christmas Day, cold and foggy, and before

starting out I went about a mile down the road to another farm and

heard Mass in a barn. An odd little service for Christmas morning.

The altar was made of a couple of biscuit boxes in an open barn. The

priest wore his vestments, and his boots and spurs showed underneath.

About half a dozen troopers with rifles were all the congregation,

and we kneeled on the damp ground.

The first Christmas at Bethlehem came to mind most forcibly. The

setting was the same. An icy wind blew the wisps of straw and the

lowing of a cow could be heard in the byre. Where the Magi brought

frankincense and myrrh we brought our hopes and ambitions and laid

them at the Child’s feet, asking Him to take care of them for us

while we went out to meet the great adventure. What a contrast to

the previous Christmas, in the gold and sunshine of Miami, Florida,

splashed with the scarlet flowers of the bougainvillea, and at night

the soft, feathery palms leaning at a curious angle in the hard

moonlight as though a tornado had once swept over the land.

The farm people sold me a bowl of coffee and a slice of bread, and

I mounted and rode away into the fog with an apple and a piece of

chocolate in my pocket, the horse slipping and sliding on the icy

road. Not a sound broke the dead silence except the blowing of my

horse and his hoofs on the road. Every gun was silent during the

whole day, as though the Child had really brought peace and good will.

I got to within a couple of miles of Ypres by the map, and saw

nothing save a few peasants who emerged out of the blanket of fog on

their way to Mass. A magpie or two flashed across my way, and there

was only an occasional infantryman muffled to the eyes when I passed

through the scattered villages.

About midday I nibbled some chocolate, and watered my horse and gave

him a feed, feeling more and more miserable because there was no

means of getting any information. My imagination drew pictures of

the Major, on my return with a blank confession of failure, telling

me that I was no good and had better return to duty. As the short

afternoon drew in, my spirits sank lower and lower. They were below

zero when at last I knocked reluctantly at the door of the mess and

stood to attention inside. To make things worse all the officers were

there.

“Well, Gibbs?” said the Major.

“It isn’t well, sir,” said I. “I’m afraid I’m no damn good. I haven’t

got a thing to report,” and I told him of my ride.

There was silence for a moment. The Major flicked off the ash of his

cigarette. “My dear fellow,” he said quietly, “you can’t expect to

get the hang of the job in five minutes. Don’t be impatient with it.

Give it a chance.”

It was like a reprieve to a man awaiting the hangman.

20

The squadron, having been on duty that day, had not celebrated

Christmas, but the _estaminet_ was a mass of holly and mistletoe in

preparation for to-morrow, and talk ran high on the question of the

dinner and concert that were to take place. There were no letters for

me, but in spite of it I felt most unaccountably and absurdly happy

as I left the _estaminet_ and went back to my billet and got to bed.

The interpreter came in presently. He had been dining well and

Christmas exuded from him as he smoked a cigar on the side of his bed.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, “your commission has come through. They

were talking about it in mess to-night. Congratulations.”

Commission! My heart jumped back to the Marlborough Hotel.

“I expect you’ll be going home to-morrow,” he went on; “lucky devil.”

Home! Could it be? Was it possible that I was going to escape from

all this mud and filth? Home. What a Christmas present! No more

waiting for letters that never came. No more of the utter loneliness

and indifference that seemed to fill one’s days and nights.

The dingy farm room and the rough army blanket faded and in their

place came a woman’s face in a setting of tall red pines and gleaming

patches of moss and high bracken and a green lawn running up to a

little house of gables, with chintz-curtained windows, warm tiles

and red chimneys, and a shining river twisting in stately loops. And

instead of the guns which were thundering the more fiercely after

their lull, there came the mewing of sandpipers, and the gurgle of

children’s laughter, and the voice of that one woman who had given me

the vision.--

21

The journey home was a foretaste of the return to civilisation,

of stepping not only out of one’s trooper’s khaki but of resuming

one’s identity, of counting in the scheme of things. In the ranks

one was a number, like a convict,--a cipher indeed, and as such it

was a struggle to keep one’s soul alive. One had given one’s body.

They wanted one’s soul as well. By “they” I mean the system, that

extraordinary self-contained world which is the Army, where the

private is marched to church whether he have a religion or not, where

he is forced to think as the sergeant thinks and so on, right up to

the General commanding. How few officers realise that it is in their

power to make the lives of their juniors and men a hell or a heaven.

It was a merciful thing for me that I was able to escape so soon, to

climb out of that mental and physical morass and get back to myself.

From the squadron I went by motor lorry to Hazebrouck and thence in

a first-class carriage to Boulogne, and although the carriage was

crowded I thought of the horse truck in which I’d come up from Rouen,

and chuckled. At Boulogne I was able to help the Major, who was going

on leave. He had left a shirt case in the French luggage office weeks

before and by tackling the porter in his own tongue, I succeeded in

digging it out in five minutes. It was the only thing I’ve ever been

able to do to express the least gratitude,--and how ridiculously

inadequate.

We spent the night in a hotel and caught the early boat, horribly

early. But it was worth it. We reached London about two in the

afternoon, a rainy, foggy, depressing afternoon, but if it had snowed

ink I shouldn’t have minded. I was above mere weather, sailing in

the blue ether of radiant happiness. In this case the realisation

came up to and even exceeded the expectation. Miserable-looking

policemen in black waterproof capes were things of beauty. The noise

of the traffic was sweetest music. The sight of dreary streets with

soaked pedestrians made one’s eyes brim with joy. The swish of the

taxi round abrupt corners made me burst with song. I was glad of

the rain and the sort of half-fog. It was so typically London and

when the taxi driver stopped at my brother’s house and said to me

as I got out, “Just back from the front, chum?” I laughed madly and

scandalously overtipped him. No one else would ever call me chum.

That was done with. I was no longer 7205 Trooper A. H. Gibbs, 9th

Lancers. I was Second Lieutenant A. Hamilton Gibbs, R.F.A. and could

feel the stars sprouting.

My brother wasn’t at home. He was looking like an admiral still

and working like the devil. But his wife was and she most wisely

lent me distant finger tips and hurried me to a bath, what time she

telephoned to my brother.

That bath! I hadn’t had all my clothes off more than once in six

weeks and had slept in them every night. Ever tried it? Well, if you

really want to know just how I felt about that first bath, you try it.

I stayed in it so long that my sister-in-law became anxious and

tapped at the door to know if I were all right. All right! Before I

was properly dressed--but running about the house most shamelessly

for all that--my brother arrived.

It was good to see him again,--very good. We “foregathered,”--what?

And the next morning scandalously early, the breakfast things still

on the table, found me face to face once more with the woman who had

brought me back to life. All that nightmare was immediately washed

away for ever. It was past. The future was too vague for imaginings

but the present was the most golden thing I had ever known.