DESPATCH-RIDING
[Particularly hard and responsible work has been done for the
British Army by motor cycle despatch-riders. Many members of this
fine branch of our fighting men abandoned very promising careers in
civil life to go to the seat of war. Amongst them is Corporal
Hedley G. Browne, Captain of the Norfolk Motor Cycle Club, who when
war broke out volunteered for active service and became a motor
cycle despatch-rider, attached to a signal company of the Royal
Engineers. It is his story which is here retold. Of the work of the
motor cycle despatch-riders Sir John French has spoken in terms of
high praise, and when the King visited the front recently a number
of the riders were specially brought to his Majesty’s notice.]
I was in Ypres, billeted in a brewery, when that beautiful old city was
still intact; I was there when the first German shell came and began the
ruthless bombardment which has laid the city in ruins and added one more
to the list of heavy debts which the Germans will have to pay when the
war is over. The sooner that time comes the better, especially for those
who have been at the front since the beginning, and have had to endure
things which people at home cannot possibly realise. Five days ago I
left the front for a flying visit home, and now I am on my way back. It
has seemed a very short spell, and a big slice of the time has been
eaten up in travelling. A nice batch of us came over together, and here
we are assembling again, though it’s a good hour before the boat-train
starts.
We go to Boulogne, and then we shall get into motor lorries and be
trundled off back to the fighting line. This is the kit we work and live
in--even now my revolver is loaded in every chamber. No, so far, I
haven’t used it on a German; but it’s shot a pig or two when we’ve
wanted pork, and really there isn’t much difference between the two. It
is hard to believe that human beings committed some of the acts of which
I saw so many during those four months at the front. The astounding
thing is that the Germans don’t realise that they have done anything
wrong, and quite lately I was talking with some German prisoners who
spoke English, who not only did not see this, but were also quite sure
that the war will end in favour of Germany. By this time, however, they
are changing their tune.
When I got to the front I was attached to a signal company, which
consists of establishing communication between headquarters and three
brigades, and that meant when we were on the march riding through about
seven miles of troops, guns, waggons and hosts of other things. When in
action we had to go quite up to the firing line, and very soon I hardly
knew myself, as I got quite used to the bursting of shells and to the
shocking condition of the killed and wounded. It was astonishing to see
how soon men, who had been used to every comfort at home and who knew
nothing of war in any shape or form, got accustomed to the hardships of
campaigning and developed a callousness which is altogether foreign to
their real nature.
One of the most amazing things about the war is the way in which it
changes a man and makes him callous. I know that before I had anything
to do with the Army I was so sensitive in some ways that the mere
thought of blood was almost enough to make me ill, yet now, after being
for more than four months in the war, and having seen the havoc of the
most terrific battles the world has ever known, I tear along the lonely
roads and remain almost unmoved by the most dreadful sights. The dead
pass unnoticed, and as for the wounded, you can do nothing, as a rule.
You have your orders, and they must be obeyed without loss of time,
because a motor despatch-rider is always on the rush.
I well remember the very first German I saw lying dead. He was an Uhlan,
and was on the roadside. I was greatly distressed at the sight of him,
there was something so sad about it all, but now there is no such
sensation at the sight of even great numbers of the dead. A strange
thing happened in connection with the Uhlan. I took his cap as a
memento, and brought it home, with several other German caps and
helmets, chunks of shell, clips of cartridges, and relics of
altar-cloths; and now, for some cause which I can’t quite fathom, the
Uhlan’s cap has turned a queer sort of yellow.
That strange callousness comes over one at the most unexpected times,
and often enough a motor despatch-rider has to dash through a crowd of
refugees and scatter them, though the very sight of the poor souls is
heart-breaking. When Ypres was bombarded, the men, women and children
thronged the roads, and all that was left to them in the world they
carried in bundles on their backs; yet they had to be scattered like
flocks of sheep when the motor despatch-riders rushed along. There was,
however, one pleasing feature in the matter, and that was that these
poor people knew that we were tearing along in their interests as well
as our own, and that we did not mean to hurt anybody--which was
different, indeed, from the spirit of the enemy, whose policy was to
spread terror and havoc wherever he could, and to destroy mercilessly.
When I first went into Ypres it was a beautiful old city, very much like
Norwich, but I saw the German guns smash the place and the shells set
fire to glorious old structures like the Cathedral and the Cloth Hall.
The two pieces of altar-cloth which I brought home were taken from the
Cathedral while it was burning.
Though you soon get used to war, still there are always things coming
along which are either particularly interesting or very thrilling.
Perhaps the most exciting incident I can call to mind is the bringing
down of a German aeroplane by a British brigade. That was on October
27th, when I was with the brigade. It was afternoon, and the aeroplane
was flying fairly low, so that it was a good target for the rain of
bullets which was directed on it. Even when flying low, an aeroplane is
not easy to hit, because of its quick, dodging movements, but this
machine was fairly got by the brigade. Suddenly there was an explosion
in the aeroplane, flames shot out and the machine made a sickening,
terrible somersault. I took it that a bullet or two had struck the
petrol tank and blown the machine up--anyway, the airman was shot out
and crashed to earth with fearful speed. You wanted to look away, but an
awful fascination made you keep your eyes on what was happening. At
first the man looked like a piece of paper coming down, then, almost
before you could realise the tragedy that was taking place, the piece of
paper took the form of a fellow-creature--then the end came. The man
himself smashed to earth about two hundred yards from the spot where I
was watching, but the machine dropped some distance off. That was really
one of the sights that no amount of war will accustom you to, and I
shall never forget it as long as I live.
At first the weather was very hot, which made the work for the troops
very hard. The machine I had soon struck work, and was left to be handed
over to the Kaiser as a souvenir; and several other machines gave up the
ghost in like manner. When a machine went wrong, it was left and a new
one took its place--the list of casualties for motors of every sort is
an amazingly heavy one; but casualties were inevitable, because in many
places the roads that we had to take were perfect nightmares.
It was very hard going till we got used to it. During the first month at
the front I had my boots off about three times--I am now wearing my
fourth pair, which is an average of one a month--and we reckoned that we
were lucky if we slept in a barn, with straw; if we couldn’t manage that
we turned in anywhere, in our greatcoats. When I say sleep, I mean lying
down for an hour or two, as sometimes we did not billet till dark. Then
we had some grub, anything we could get, and after that a message. Next
day we were off, five times out of six, at 3.30 to four o’clock, and got
long, hard days in.
Amongst the messages we had to carry there were none more urgent than
those which were sent for reinforcements, the men upon whose coming the
issue of a battle depended. It was tear and scurry all along, but
somehow the message would get delivered all right and the reinforcements
would hurry up and save the situation. Often enough a message would be
delivered at midnight to a tired officer who was living in a dug-out,
and I scarcely ever reached one of these warrens without being invited
to take something of whatever was going--it might be a drink of hot
coffee, with a biscuit, or a tot of rum, which was truly grateful after
a bitter ride. That is the only thing in the way of alcoholic drink at
the front, and very little of it. This is, for the British, a teetotal
war; but for the Germans it has been the very reverse, and time after
time we came across evidence of their drunken debauches.
The shell fire was so incessant that it was soon taken as part of the
day’s work. At first it was terrible, though one got used to it. My
first experience of rifle fire did not come until I had been at the
front for some weeks, and then I was surprised to find what a
comparatively small thing it is compared with shells--it is not nearly
so bad.
It was getting dark, and it was my duty to go down a lane where snipers
were hidden in the trees. This was just the kind of lane you know in
England, and you can easily picture what it meant. Imagine leaving your
machine, as I did, in a tree-lined lane at home, and going down it,
knowing that there were fellows up the trees who were on the watch to
pot you, and you will realise what it meant; but you will have to
picture also the sides of the lane being littered, as this was, with
dead and wounded men. Well, I had to go down that lane, and I
went--sometimes walking, sometimes running, with the bullets whizzing
round and the shells bursting. But by good luck I escaped the bullets,
though a piece of shell nearly nailed me--or would have got me if I had
been with my machine. The fragment struck the cycle and I picked it up
and brought it home with the other things as a souvenir.
That escape was practically nothing. It was a detail, and came in the
day’s work; but I had a much more narrow shave a few days later. It was
a Saturday and I had had a pretty hard time--amongst other things I had
done a thirty-mile ride after one o’clock in the morning--the sort of
ride that takes it out of you.
There was one of our orderlies with a horse near me and I was standing
talking to him. We heard a shrapnel shell coming, and ducked our heads
instinctively to dodge it--but the shell got at us. The horse was killed
and the orderly was so badly hit that he died in less than an hour. He
was buried in the afternoon, and very solemn the funeral was, with the
guns booming all around. I was deeply shocked at the time, but war is
war, and in a very short time the incident had passed out of my mind.
Our fellows told me that I was one of the lucky ones that day.
That was the beginning of one of the most awful periods of the war,
especially for the despatch-riders, for we were at it night and day. The
roads were hopelessly bad, and as we were not allowed to carry any lamps
at night the danger of rapid travel was greatly increased. We were,
however, relieved to some extent by mounted men. The fighting was
furious and incessant, and we were in the thick of a good deal of it.
After a very hard spell I was quartered all day in a little stable, and
it proved to be about the most dangerous place I had come across. On
October 29th the Germans went for the stable with high explosives and
the everlasting “scuttles.” For some time these big shells came and
burst in the locality, and two houses within a score of yards of us
were blown to pieces and enormous holes were driven in the ground.
From the stable we went to a house, and then we fairly got it. Four huge
shells came, one after the other, and one came and ripped the roof just
like paper. We were amazingly lucky, however, for the worst thing that
happened was that a fellow was wounded in the leg. I was thankful when
the order came to pack up and stand by, for there were in that little
place about twenty of us from different regiments, and a single
explosion would have put us all well beyond the power of carrying either
despatches or anything else. For a while we could not understand why the
enemy should so greatly favour us, but we soon learned that they were
going for some French guns near us. So the firing went on, and when we
went to sleep, as we did in spite of all, bullets ripped through the
roof, coming in at one side of the building and going out at the other,
and four more big shells paid us a most unwelcome visit.
I was thankful when we moved out of those unpleasant quarters and took
up our abode in a large farmhouse about three hundred yards away. This
was one of the very few buildings that had escaped the ravages of the
German artillery fire. We made the move on the 30th, when the cannonade
was very heavy, yet the only casualties were a pig and two horses. We
were now much better protected from the Germans’ fire, though the very
house shook with the artillery duel and the noise grew deafening and
almost maddening. I wrote home pretty often, and I remember that at this
time I got behind a hedge to write a letter, and as I wrote bullets
whizzed over my head, fired by German snipers who were up some trees
not very far away. They were going for our chaps in the trenches a mile
away.
Mons had been bad, and there had been many harrowing sights on the
retreat, but at the end of October and the beginning of November the
climax of horror was reached. The Germans, mad to hack their way through
to the coast, and perhaps realising that they would never do it, stuck
at nothing. They were frantic, and I saw sights that would sicken any
human being. No consideration weighed with them, they simply did their
best to annihilate us--but they are trying still to do that and not
succeeding.
We had left the farmhouse and gone into a large château, which served as
headquarters, and here, on November 2nd, we had a ghastly experience. It
is likely that the Germans knew the particular purpose to which the
château had been devoted; at any rate they shelled it mercilessly, and
no fewer than six staff officers were killed, while a considerable
number were wounded. Again I was lucky, and came out of the adventure
unscathed. On the following day, however, I was nearly caught. I had
taken a message to headquarters and was putting my machine on a stand.
To do this I had to leave a house, and go about fifty yards away, to the
stand. I had scarcely left the building when two shells struck it fair
and plump, and killed two motor cyclists and wounded three others. Like
a flash I jumped into a ditch, and as I did so I heard the bits of burst
shell falling all around me. When I got out of the ditch and went back
along the main road I saw a huge hole which a shell had made. It was a
thrilling enough escape, and shook me at the time, because I knew the
two poor fellows who were killed. That was the kind of thing we went
through as we jogged along from day to day.
I am not, of course, giving a story of the war so much as trying to show
what it means to be a motor cycle despatch-rider at the front. He is
here, there and everywhere--and there is no speed limit. He is not in
the actual firing line, yet he sees a great deal of what is going on.
Sometimes he is very lucky, as I was myself one day, in being allowed to
witness a fight that was taking place. I had taken a despatch to an
officer, and perhaps conveyed some cheering news. Anyway, I had the
chance to go to an eminence from which I could view the battle, and I
went, and it was wonderful to see the waging of the contest over a vast
tract of country--for in a war like this the ordinary fighter sees very
little indeed of the battle. At this special point I had the rare chance
of witnessing a fight as I suppose it is seen by the headquarters staff,
and one of the strangest things about it was the little there was to be
seen. There were puffs of smoke and tongues of flame--and the
everlasting boom of guns; but not much more. Men are killed at long
distances and out of sight in these days.
War is excessively wearing, and it was a blessed relief when a day came
which was free from shells and bullets. That, indeed, was the calm after
the storm. It came to us when we were snug in a farmyard about a mile
away from a big town, with our motor-cars, cycles and horses so well
under cover that the German aeroplanes did not find us out. Thankful
indeed were we for the change, because the whole region where we were
had been pitilessly bombarded, and there was nothing but devastation
around us. Shells had done their work, and there was a special kind of
bomb which fired anything it touched that was inflammable. A great many
petrol discs, about the size of a shilling, were discharged by the
Germans, and these things, once alight, did amazing mischief. Villages
were obliterated, and in the big town where we were billeted the
engineers were forced to blow up the surrounding houses to prevent the
entire place from being destroyed.
The glad time came when our Division was relieved for a time. We got a
bit of rest, and I crossed the Channel and came home for a short spell.
One of the last things I saw before I left the front was the Prince of
Wales making a tour. At that time he was about fifteen miles from the
firing line.
What was the most noticeable thing that struck me when I came back over
the Channel? Well, that is not easy to say, but I know that I
particularly noticed the darkness of the London streets.
[Illustration:
[_To face p. 168._
“THE MEN WERE TOLD TO LAY HANDS ON ANYTHING THAT WOULD FLOAT” (p.
172).]