NO QUARTER
I was soon to find out the difference between fighting Turks and
fighting Germans. The Turk will fight you like the devil, but he is
a sportsman. He is incapable of the treacheries and ghoulish tricks
of the German. He abhors attacking the helpless. I say this with full
knowledge of the Armenian cruelties and outrages. I can only speak of
my own knowledge. I am writing of how the Turks behaved in Gallipoli.
Within two months--yes, less--as far as I was concerned in my capacity
of lieutenant I had decided that where Germans were concerned there
should be no quarter. One of my best men had been murdered because
I had been deceived into showing mercy to a group of Germans in a
dug-out. Germans falsely surrendering, with hands up-raised and whining
cries of “Kamerad” had formed behind a small company of mine and
sought to stab us in the back. Besides in these next two months I was
to be an eye-witness to the truth of the many accusations that the
Germans were guilty of atrocities fit to burn horror into human minds
forever.
The reserve battalion of the “Oxfords and Bucks” with other battalions
left Southampton on the troop-ship, _Alexandria_, our military
destination being Rouen. There were several other troopships in our
company, a brisk convoy of cruisers and destroyers and overhead a
humming fleet of seaplanes. But the only thing that attacked us on the
way over was sea-sickness. It is a marvel of the British Navy that no
disaster has ever come upon these movements of her fighting men across
the Channel.
One of the boys of my Jewish company was specially a victim of _mal de
mer_. He had been a professional legerdemain artist in the London music
halls. He said ruefully that he had never in his life brought so many
things out of a hat as he had out of himself on the journey over. He
said mournfully that he was anxious to fight Germans, but would have
much preferred that they had come to England to get into the ring.
We landed at Havre, to an enthusiastic welcome from old men, women
and children. The old men cheered us, the women wept and the children
scampered about our legs, throwing kisses, and with irresistible
smiles, shouted:
“Bon jour! Bon jour! Oh, bully beef! Oh, biscuits!”
If there is one thing that has rung the gong of popularity in France
it is our English bully beef. And next to that our biscuits. And what
could we do but share our beef and biscuits with those kids with the
wonderful smiles!
Old men, women and children had all apparently learned the English
slogan, “Are we down-hearted? No!” They yelled it at us both joyfully
and tearfully, and we yelled back at them with vigor, “_NO!_ _NO!_ NO!”
Military transportation was working smoothly as oil, and without delay
my own contingent and some 3,000 others were rolled along to Rouen.
We were sent to camp No. 55, Infantry Base Depot, a part of the 48th
division Territorials, Sixth Army Corps, Major-General Fanshaw,
commanding. Other pens, infinitely greater than mine, have already
depicted the devastation in pretty Belgium and beautiful little France.
But the sights from the car windows stirred great waves of pity across
my heart because some ten years before, practically in my boyhood, I
had traveled these fair countries on a tour of military observation,
and could appreciate how terrible and large had been the wounds
inflicted.
Our particular camp was in Plugstreat.
I have said that it was the reports of Belgium atrocities which mainly
made the motive for the great outpouring of Australian manhood into
the fray. We had heard these stories and believed them. On March 16th,
when we entered the village of St. Elois, I saw with my own eyes that
these stories which had come to Australia were not lies. My first
confrontation with the shocking facts was when in this village. We came
upon a shattered convent. I cannot tell you its name because whatever
inscription had been on the building was smashed in the general wreck.
But the ancient archway of the entrance still stood, and on the heavy,
iron-bound door was the “exhibit” in the case. It was the nude body
of the Mother Superior. The villagers so identified her. She had been
nailed to the door. She had been crucified. In the ruins we brought out
the bodies of four nuns, unspeakably mutilated. Their bodies had been
stabbed and slashed each more than one hundred times. They had gone to
martyrdom resisting incredible brutes. They had fought hard, the blond
hair of their assassins clutched in their dead hands.
In this same village we found a white-haired blacksmith--he must have
been all of seventy years--tied to his anvil. His hands had been beaten
to a pulp. They were held together by a bayonet thrust through his
wrists. And on his anvil, weighted with a horseshoe, was a note in
German which read:
“You will never shoe another horse belonging to our enemies.”
I was shortly afterward to kill a German on whom I found a letter
evidently just written and ready for mailing wherein he told of a
score of atrocities in which he had participated. He described the
horrors as “great sport.”
One sprightly paragraph told of murdering four women at St. Julien
while carrying out orders to loot all homes of every ornament and
article of practical device containing brass, steel or copper. In this
instance, as of others, he said the looting had been “great sport,” a
phrase he seemed very fond of. But quite astonishingly his heart had
been moved when the four women, one of whom they shot and the other
three they bayoneted, had fallen on their knees and begged for mercy.
He wrote that he was rather uneasy in his mind about that, but at the
same time said that he had gathered from their home some very valuable
and interesting “souvenirs.” Good God! “Souvenirs!”
My first contact with the Germans was at Whytecheat. I was given 80
men with instructions to take the “skyline” trench ahead. A skyline
trench means just what it says--the enemy trench on the horizon. It
was a night attack. It was a dangerous trench. The Warwicks had three
days before taken it and then been blown to annihilation. This sort of
thing was constantly happening, I was told. The British with bayonets
could rout any bunch of Germans out of any trench. But at that time
German artillery was far superior. As a matter of fact at that time the
English batteries were given daily only six shells for each gun and
barrage fire was unknown. No British gun might fire a shell without a
particular objective view. There could be no general storm of shells
sent at any suspected point.
It was necessary for my commanders to know what was beyond that
first-line trench, what there might be in machine-gun and “pill-box”
emplacements, how strong a force might meet a general charge of our
special contingent.
As a trained soldier, I was therefore detailed to make this raid. No
Man’s Land at this junction of the fighting line was fully 500 yards
wide.
The Germans had so effectually blasted all other attacks on the skyline
trench, and our artillery had been so weak in its retorts that the
enemy figured themselves secure. No star-shells were glaring over No
Man’s Land as we made our way across. But we were cautious. It took us
all of three hours, starting at midnight, before we came to the first
line of enemy barbed-wire. We nipped it down successfully and still
without discovery went through the second wire barrier.
But by this time the Germans were awake. They started everything they
had at us in the way of rifle- and machine-gun fire, but the only men
of my company who hesitated were the ten who were shot down. We got at
them with the bayonet and they didn’t like it. In less than fifteen
minutes we had turned them out of the trench. And the second trench.
Then I was to have my first encounter with the rottenness of German
degeneracy. In the second trench captured, we heard voices in a dug-out
and I called to know who were down there--how many.
The answer came up:
“Six German wounded.”
[Illustration: Bringing in prisoners]
I believed them.
I detailed Platoon Sergeant O’Harper to go into the trench and see what
could be done for the wounded.
I got a shock right afterward. It was O’Harper’s cry:
“The damned dogs have stabbed me!”
So ten of us followed O’Harper into the dug-out and “cleaned up.” There
were nine Germans down there and none of them had a scratch until we
got at them.
I am afraid I ceased thinking of Germans as human beings from that
time. I may as well frankly admit that through all my experiences in
trench fighting since then, my habit became that of calling into a
dug-out:
“How many men are down there?”
If the answer came (let us say) “Six,” we would throw three bombs into
the dug-out and call:
“Here--share these among you.”
All my bombers had instructions to do the same.
We didn’t hold that trench very long. I don’t think it was more
than an hour. Information regarding the attack had been sent back to
the German artillery and the two trenches we had captured were sent
heaving into the air. My men were slaughtered all around me. But their
sacrifice was not in vain because I had been able to judge and estimate
for the information of my commanders the lay-out and strength of that
particular position. I had sent a messenger back with my report and
rough sketches. I hoped to hold the trench until reinforcements might
come at dawn. But it was useless for the rest of us (I was afterward
to find out that only twenty-five were left of my original eighty) to
remain in the face of certain death.
I ordered a retreat. German star-shells were making day out of night in
No Man’s Land so we got together and dug in about one hundred and fifty
feet from the trench whence we had fled. We camouflaged ourselves with
corpses only too readily at hand.
I sent back another messenger and secured reinforcements of three
machine-gun companies and two hundred men. I hated the idea of giving
up those two trenches.
When daylight came, we were given another German “treat.” Above the
wreck of the skyline trench bayonets stuck up and on them were the
severed heads, with horrible smiles under their English caps, of twenty
of my men.
When we saw that we all of us went into a blind rage. We swept across
a narrow strip and charged the Germans right and left. They hate
the bayonet. They will march shoulder to shoulder with astounding
doggedness against the most withering fire. But the cold steel is not
for Hans.
We drove them out in less than ten minutes. But they had other “things”
to show us in those trenches as to the treatment put upon our men.
We found four of our boys crucified to the doors of dug-outs and we
found others of our dead whose corpses had been horribly and obscenely
outraged.
I never heard of a German after that who got any mercy from the Oxfords
and Bucks.
We had to give those trenches up. The Germans’ big guns came after us
within half an hour and our own artillery had nothing with which to
reply. But we stayed there long enough to take the heads of our boys
off the bayonets, their bodies down from the doors and to give them
burial as best we might. Also under a demoniac fire, stretcher bearers
took away a small, smashed soldier I had fallen over in a shell-hole
at the close approach to the German trench the night before. When I
fell over him he moved and I grabbed him by the throat, not knowing
whether he was friend or enemy. However, there was no resistance and I
instinctively felt that I had in my hands a weak and wounded man. I let
go his throat and he gasped:
“Warwick!”
He was only a little chap, scarcely twenty, and was all broken up. He
had a broken arm, both legs had been broken and several of his ribs. He
had been caught in the fall of a great upheaval of earth and stone shot
forth by one of the German two-hundred-pound shells, but had managed
to crawl out into the air and wriggle his way to a shell-hole. In this
shell-hole he had lain for nearly four days. His emergency ration had
sustained him, but he was mad with thirst and pitifully unnerved. He
threw his arms around my neck like a child and begged me not to leave
him. I gave him drink. I had to lie to him, telling him that I was
going back to send for an ambulance when in reality I had to “carry on”
with my men. I left my emergency rations with him. And I was particular
to make a mental picture of the location of the shell-hole in which
the boy had found shelter and the following day was able to send him
stretcher bearers. You get a particular interest in such cases and I am
glad to be able to say this lad went safely to “Blighty” and lived.