THE AFTERMATH OF LOOS
I
_The Flavour of Victory_
The jolliest man in the field is the man who, so to say, has been safely
wounded, that is, whose wound is serious enough to take him right down
the line, with a good prospect of crossing to Blighty, but not so
serious as to cause anxiety. I never met so hilarious a crowd as the
first batch of wounded from the fighting of 25th September 1915. We had
been prepared for a 'rush.' The growling of the guns had for days past
been growing deeper and more extended. It is, as a matter of fact,
impossible to keep a future offensive concealed. The precise time and
place may be unknown, but the gathering together of men, the piling up
of ammunition, and the necessary preparations for great numbers of
wounded, advertise inevitably that something is afoot. The ranks are not
slow to read the signs of the times: they say, for example, that an
inspection by the divisional-general can only mean one thing. How much
crosses to the other side it is hard to say, but the local inhabitants
know all that is common talk, and sometimes a great deal more. They have
eyes in their heads; they can see practice charges being carried
through, and note which regiments carry battle-marks on their uniforms;
and the little shops and estaminets are just soldiers' clubs where
gossip is 'swapped' as freely as in the London west-end clubs, and
unfortunately, is much better informed. A woman working on a farm once
told me to what part of the line a certain division was going on
returning from rest, and she gave a date. The commanding officers of the
battalions concerned knew nothing of it, and indeed a quite contrary
rumour was in circulation, but time proved the old woman to be right.
The Loos offensive was no exception, and for many days anxious thoughts
and prayers had filled our hearts. We went from hope to despondency, and
back to hope again. I dare say the talk round the mess table was very
foolish. Compared with the earlier days of the war the country seemed
full of men, and we heard stories of great accumulation of ammunition.
Anything seemed possible.
By nine o'clock on the morning of the 25th the convoys were coming in,
and the wounded streamed into the reception room. They were 'walking
cases,' men who had been wounded in the early part of the attack and,
able to walk, had made their way on foot to the regimental aid-post. All
had been going well when they left. They were bubbling over with good
spirits and excitement. Three--four--no, five lines of trenches had been
taken and 'the Boche was on the run.' They joked and laughed and slapped
one another on the back, and indeed this jovial crowd presented an
extraordinary appearance, caked and plastered with mud, with tunics
ripped and blood-stained, with German helmets, black or grey, stuck on
the back of their heads, and amazing souvenirs 'for the wife.' One man
with a rather guilty glance round produced for my private inspection
from under his coat an enormous silver crucifix about a foot long. He
found it in a German officer's dug-out, but probably it came originally
from some ruined French chapel. All souvenirs taken from dead enemies
are loathsome to me. It is merciful that so many people have no
imagination. I have never been able to understand, either, the carrying
home of bits of shell and mementoes of that kind. Any memento of these
unspeakable scenes of bloodshed is repulsive. Yet the British soldier is
as chivalrous as he is brave. He speaks terrible words about what he
will do to his foes, but when they are beaten and in his power he can
never carry it through. This was very striking when you consider that
until quite recently the German was 'top-dog' and how much our men had
suffered at his hands. But once the fight is over he is ready to regard
their individual account as settled. I remember so well one fire-eating
officer who was going to teach any prisoners that came into his hands
what British sternness meant. In due course twenty wounded Prussians
came in. He was discovered next day actually distributing cigarettes to
them. Now we must recollect that the British Tommy is not a class apart;
he is simply the 'man in the street,' the people. Sometimes there is
savage bitterness, not without good reason, and frequently the sullen or
frightened temper of the prisoners made friendliness difficult, but
Tommy--and by that name I mean the British citizen under arms--does not
long nourish grudges when the price has been paid. He is essentially
chivalrous, and even to his enemy, when the passion of fighting or the
strain of watchfulness is past, he is incurably kind.
An atmosphere of hope and cheerfulness pervaded the clearing station
this first morning of the 'great offensive.' Passing through a ward I
said to the nurse, 'Well, sister, everything seems to be going
splendidly.' She looked up sombrely from the wound she was dressing and
replied, 'So they said in the first hours of Neuve Chapelle.' I was
chilled by what she said and felt angry with her.
II
_Doubts and Fears_
As the day wore on the news was not so good. The Meerut Division, which
had delivered the containing attack in front of us on the Moulin du
Pietre, was where it had been before it attacked, so the wounded said,
with the exception of some units, notably Leicesters and Black Watch,
who had apparently disappeared. Perhaps all that had been intended had
been achieved. After all, the real battle--none could be more real and
more costly to those taking part in it than a containing attack, forlorn
hope as it often is--the _decisive_ battle was further south at Loos.
But the changed mood of the wounded now coming in was noticeable. Our
fighting men hate to be beaten, and the story was of confusion and lack
of support. Our own gas, too, had lingered on the ground and then
drifted back on our own trenches. A young German student who was brought
in wounded admitted the gallantry of the first rush, but he said, 'We
always understood those trenches could be rushed, but we also know that
they cannot be held on so small a front. They are commanded on either
side.' In all seven hundred wounded and gassed were brought in from the
British regiments of this division, and there was much work to be done.
Sunday was a bright, warm day, and in the afternoon we gathered all who
could walk to a service in the green meadow behind the operating
theatre. (There, too, they were busy enough, God knows.) The men came
very willingly. I spoke a few words from the text 'Blessed are the
peacemakers,' for that benediction was meant also for those lads who had
just struck so brave a blow for a decent world. A gunner said
afterwards, 'Do you know, I have only heard two sermons since I came out
ten months ago. The other was by the Bishop of London, and he took the
same text!' It is, as a matter of fact, very difficult to serve the
gunners properly; they were so scattered in little groups. It was very
peaceful that Sunday afternoon--no sign of war anywhere, except the
maimed results of it--as those men remembered with tears those whom it
had 'pleased Almighty God to take out of this transitory world into His
mercy.'
Every wounded man has a letter to write or to have written for him, and
it was essential that since the people at home knew there was heavy
fighting going on all messages should be sent off at once. This is one
of the chaplain's voluntary tasks, and we were kept close to it every
afternoon for some weeks after the offensive began. For some time the
number of letters was about four hundred every day. A number of men had
written farewell letters--very moving they seemed, but I did not think
it part of my duty to look too closely at these. They had addressed them
and then put them in their pockets, hoping that if they were killed they
might be discovered. Some had been finished just before the order to go
over the parapet. But the curious thing was that these were sent home,
with a few words in a covering note saying they were alive and well, as
a sort of keepsake. In those written after arrival in hospital a sense
of gratitude to God was very frequent, and a great longing for home and
the children. Some strange phrases were used: a mother would be
addressed as 'Dear old face,' or simply 'Old face.' But poets used to
write verses to their mistresses' eyebrows, and why not a letter to a
mother's face?
The German prisoners sent a message asking if they might speak with the
_Hauptmann-Pfarrer_. They besought me to send word to their relatives
that they were safe. I took the full particulars and promised to ask the
Foreign Office to forward, but could not guarantee the messages getting
through, as their government was behaving very badly over the matter.
They were all very anxious that I should be sure and say their wounds
were slight (_leicht_).
Next day came urgent orders that all wounded were to be evacuated who
could possibly be moved. So far as we had heard events seemed to be
moving fairly well at Loos, but there were some ugly rumours and the
atmosphere was one of great uneasiness. After dinner that evening the
commanding officer, Major Frankau, took me aside, and asked me not to
go to bed as they would need every available pair of hands throughout
the night.
III
_Our Share of the Fifty Thousand_
It was ten o'clock when the first cars came crunching into the station
yard, and the convoys arrived one after another until five in the
morning. Then, as we could take in no more, the stream was diverted to
the other clearing station up the road. Before the war the deep hoot of
a car always seemed to say: 'Here am I, rich and rotund, rolling
comfortably on my way; I have laid up much goods and can take mine
ease'; but after that night it had another meaning: 'Slowly, tenderly,
oh! be pitiful. I am broken and in pain,' as the cars crept along over
the uneven roads. These were our share of the wounded from Loos, the
overflow of serious 'stretcher cases' who could not be taken in at the
already overworked stations immediately behind their own front. Many had
been lying on the battlefield many hours. They were for the most part
from the 15th (Scottish) Division and the 47th (London) Division. Both
had made a deathless name. The former got further forward than any
other, and paid the penalty with over six thousand casualties. All this
night the rain fell in torrents. It streamed from the tops and sides of
the ambulances, it lashed the yard till it rose in a fine spray; the
lamps shone on wetness everywhere--the dripping, anxious faces of the
drivers, the pallid faces of the wounded, eyes staring over their
drenched brown blankets, eyes puzzled in their pain and distress, like
those of hunted animals; and the reception room was filled with the
choking odours of steaming dirty blankets and uniforms, of drying human
bodies and of wounds and mortality. As each ambulance arrived the
stretchers, their occupants for the most part silent, were drawn gently
out and carried into the reception hall and laid upon the floor. At once
each man--the nature of whose wounds permitted it--was given a cup of
hot tea or of cold water, and a cigarette. Two by two they were lifted
on to the trestles, and examined and dressed by the surgeons. Their
fortitude was, as one of the surgeons said to me, uncanny. It was
supernatural. I could not have believed what could be endured without
complaint, often without even a word to express the horrid pain, unless
I had seen it. Amid all that battered, bleeding, shattered flesh and
bone, the human spirit showed itself a very splendid thing that night.
The reception room at last filled to overflowing and could not be
emptied. All the wards and lofts and tents were crammed. By the time the
other station was filled the two had taken in three thousand men. They
remained with us for a week, because the hospital trains were too busy
behind Loos to come our way. Every day every man had to have his wounds
dressed. Some were covered with wounds; many of the wounds were
dangerous, all were painful; and gas gangrene, which the surgeon so
hates to see, had to be fought again and again. The medical staff, seven
in number, worked on day after day, and night after night, skilfully,
tenderly, ruthlessly. There were also a great many operations, and
scores of difficult critical decisions.
As we stepped out from among the blanketed forms I thought bitterly of
the 'glory' of war. Yet if there was any glory in war this was it. It
was here, in this patient suffering and obedience. These men might well
glory in their infirmities. This was heroism, the real thing, the spirit
rising to incredible heights of patient endurance in the foreseen
possible result of positive action for an ideal. The reaction from
battle is overwhelming. Passions that the civilised man simply does not
know, so colourless is his experience of them in ordinary days, are let
loose, anger and terror and horror and lust to kill. So for a while, as
nearly always happens, even wounds lost their power to pain in the
sleep of bottomless exhaustion. Those who could not sleep were drugged
with morphine. The moaning never stopped, but rose and fell and rose
again. It shook my heart. We turned from the ashen faces and went out
into the grey morning light. Everything seemed very grey. A mist was
drawing up slowly from the sluggish Lys, and we wondered as we went
shivering through it across the soaked grass what was happening beyond
it over there at Loos.
Next afternoon at tea we were all cheered by the news that a man who had
had his leg taken off three hours before was asking for a penny whistle.
At last it was discovered that one of the cooks had one. (Cooks in the
army are a race apart, possessors of all kinds of strange
accomplishments.) It was willingly handed over, and soon the strains of
'Annie Laurie' were rising softly from a cot in Ward VIII.
A month later the Principal Chaplain asked me to go to a battalion.
Chaplains who had been through the previous winter with battalions were
not anxious for another winter of it, if fresh men could be found. I was
thankful to go, in spite of all the kindness there had been on every
hand and the friendships made. The devilish ingenuity of wounds was
getting the better of me.
My charge was a brigade, containing a battalion of the Gordon
Highlanders, with which I was directed to mess. But the day I joined,
this battalion was taken out of the brigade, and as soon as the
rearrangement was completed I was transferred to one of the battalions
of The Royal Scots. While I was with this unit both its commanding
officer and its adjutant were changed. In both cases the cause was the
promotion of the officer in question.
DUMBARTON'S DRUMS
_The Regimental Ribbon of The Royal Scots is shown on the wrapper of
this book_