STAFF OFFICERS
Now, the ordinary combatant officer who
perhaps will read these lines may expect
a diatribe against what the boys call, "the
brass-hats," but, if so, he will be grievously
disappointed. Outside the fact that Staff Officers,
like Medical Officers, are a necessary evil,
the writer has the vivid recollection of one
occasion on which he might have been
court-martialed, and perhaps shot, for _lèse majesté_,
or something akin to it, but for the good humor
of a well-known Brigadier General. So there
will be no scathing denunciation of Staff Officers here.
At noon I was sitting in a dugout in the
lines when I received an order to immediately
relieve Captain ----, of the --steenth Canadian
Battalion. The order gave no information
as to the whereabouts of this Battalion,
and as it turned out the order had been wrongly
transmitted, and I had been directed to go to a
Battalion which was not on our front. However,
I did not know this at the time, and so, I
quickly got my things together, hung my steel
hat, my cap, haversack, pack, overcoat, stick,
and other odds and ends on various parts of
my person,--for an officer, like a private,
seems to be made to hang things upon.
To get out of the lines to where I was to be
met by an ambulance was a long, hard trudge.
The ambulance was over one hour late, and
hours followed in which we searched everywhere
to find a trace of the Battalion. Night came on
and we were still searching, and as no food
had accompanied us, and a mixture of snow
and rain was falling, I was cold, wet, hungry
and pugnacious, when I entered a Headquarters
in order to try to get some information.
Forgetting I was only a Captain, and stalking
angrily in, I demanded:--
"Where the hell is the --steenth Battalion?" An
officer rose, came forward and
smilingly asked me what the trouble was.
"I have been hunting for hours," I replied
hotly, not even looking for his rank, "searching
for this bally Battalion, and I'm fed up to
the neck with being pushed around like a
basket of fruit," for I had had many moves recently.
"And a pretty healthy looking basket of
fruit you are, too," he returned with a
good-humored laugh, while he proceeded to put me
on the right track, and at last I noted his rank.
He was the General of my Brigade. So now
you have the reason that I will say nothing
against Staff Officers.
A story akin to this of an incident that
happened in one of our trenches may be worth
relating, though it has nothing to do with Staff
Officers. My Colonel who always, even in his
busiest times, had a vivid sense of humor, was
sitting in his dugout when a Tommy's voice
yelled down:--
"Say, Bub, how do we get to the Vistula
railhead from here?" The Colonel's voice
floated up giving directions. But the Tommy,
thinking he was talking to another Private,
said:--
"Oh, say, Bub, don't be so damned lazy,
come up and show us the way," and the
consternation of the Tommy as the Colonel
good-naturedly came up and showed him the way
was good to look at.
On a drizzling, rainy day when our Battalion
occupied the front lines on part of the
Vimy Ridge, I was standing in front of a
so-called dugout, which consisted of a room about
twelve feet by twelve, in which, through lack of
space, two Medical Officers and their four
Assistants and two batmen, ate, slept, and
attended the wounded and sick. We were
sheltered from shells by a tin roof, on which
someone had piled two layers of sandbags.
The trenches were of sand with no revetments
of any kind, so that the rain, which had
been pouring for days, washed the earth down
and formed mud to the knees. Sometimes the
mud was rich and creamy, and, except for the
fact that whoever happened to be in front of
you spattered it in your face, it was easy to get
through. The other variety of mud was mucilaginous
and tenacious, and in getting through
it one was very likely to lose his
boots--particularly if they were the long rubber
kind--and socks, or to get stuck fast. There were
many cases where men had to be dug or pulled
out; and not one but many men, and on one
occasion an officer, came into this dugout of
mine during the night in their bare feet. They
had come for hundreds of yards in some cases
in this manner.
On the day of which I speak I was standing
in the creamy mud half way to my knees
listening to the sharp crack made by bullets
whizzing over head, and to the singing of shells,
by way of a change from the rather poisonous
atmosphere in the dugout, made offensive by
the carbon monoxide from a charcoal fire, when
I heard someone splashing along through the
mud.
Looking up, I saw three Staff Officers with
the distinguishing red bands on their caps, for
they were not wearing helmets. Two of them
wore raincoats, so that their rank could not
be seen; the third wore no overcoat, but an
ordinary officer's uniform with ankle boots and
puttees. He strode doggedly behind the
others, apparently caring nothing for mud or
rain, and to my surprise he had upon his
breast, though he looked no more than twenty
years of age, the ribbons of a number of decorations.
They stopped just before they came to
where I was. Taking out a map of these
trenches they and their guide, or runner,
began studying it, while I stood wondering how
a boy of twenty could have won these coveted
decorations, finally deciding that he must be
in the Air Service. While I was still
wondering he turned to me, and, though he was of
my own rank, he saluted and, with a pleasant
smile, asked me if I could give them any
information as to this front. I joined them, and
for some time I answered their questions,
which, rather strangely, were in regard to a
cemetery to which Guillemot trench--the one
in which we stood--led on its way to the firing
line 500 yards away.
"After we go there," asked one of the older
officers, "what is the easiest way out?"
I explained that the easiest way was overland
to Neuville St. Vaast, and then down the
road, but as we still heard the bullets passing
a few feet above the parapet it might not
be the safest. He smiled whimsically, and
said he would personally rather take the risk
than plow through this dreadful mud, but
perhaps they'd better stick to the trenches. We
chatted a few moments more, and they put
their feet once again to the task of getting them
through the trenches, the rather thin legs of
the young officer pushing him determinedly
along behind the others.
That evening the Colonel informed me that
he had learned at Brigade that my questioner
of the afternoon was the Prince of Wales,
who is Honorary Chairman of a Commission
in charge of British cemeteries in France. And
this removes, for me at least, the idea which
many of us had that, while the Prince is in
France, he is kept well out of the danger zone.
For on this day he was well up toward the
front lines and under filthy trench conditions
at that. A Prince with as much red blood in
his veins as he displayed in making that
journey should not have enough blue blood to
prevent his being some day a strong and righteous
monarch.