DUMBARTON'S DRUMS
I
_Back Again!_
The landing of the British Expeditionary Force in the far-away days of
August 1914 was one of the great moments of history. And Scotland has a
special share in the pride and sorrow that surround that great day, for
in her premier regiment centred memories of warfare and endurance, of
ancient alliances and ancient enmities, without a parallel in the story
of any other regular regiment. The oldest regiment in Europe was on the
battlefield once again. The First, or Royal Regiment of Foot, now known
as The Royal Scots, when it climbed the steep streets of Boulogne,
marched on a soil sacred to it by the memories of heroic campaigns.
Names that were as yet unfamiliar to the world at large were dear to it
as the last resting-places of its comrades of long ago--names such as
Dunkirk and Dixmude, Furnes and Ypres, Saberne and Bar-le-Duc. Hepburn's
Regiment had fought over every foot of the ground on which it was now to
share the waging of the greatest of all campaigns. Dumbarton's Drums
were once more beating their way through Europe to the making of
history. The trust of Gustavus Adolphus and Turenne, of Marlborough and
Wellington, marched with them as the promise of victory; and from the
old Royals, dustily climbing the cobbled street, spoke all the glamour
of 'age-kept victories.'
France was a smiling land in those days, for the sun shone in the hearts
of Frenchwomen as the rumour of war rose from the anxiously expected
British columns and drifted across the shining August fields. The 2nd
battalion--the 1st was still in India--tramped cheerily on its way. To
no one then was there revealed that dreary vista of trenches that was to
be war to the mind of the modern soldier.
II
_The First Shock of War_
Mons and the 23rd of August saw The Royals in action. With other
battalions they occupied the Mons salient, actually the point on which
the torrent of war first broke and for a brief moment spent itself. On
that still night it seemed to hang suspended as a great wave does
before falling. As the battalion lay in the shallow trench the pregnant
silence was at last broken by the high, clear call of a bugle, one
single long note, indescribably eerie and menacing, and then the
listening men heard the rustling tread of feet moving through the grass
with a steady, regular, ominous advance. The might of Germany was on the
move, and still the thin brown line lay tense and silent, until only
forty paces separated the two. Then, at a word, The Royals' line broke
into a storm of flame which swept the line of the advancing men as a
scythe sweeps through the corn; and for the British infantry the great
war had begun.
Mons was a victory; the German advance was held up temporarily. But all
night the British troops were being withdrawn. It was after five in the
morning before The Royals got their orders to move, and 'A' Company
claims to be the last of the British army to leave Mons. But Le Cateau
was another story. Here our men learned what the concentrated fire of
artillery could be. The shallow trenches were obliterated; our gunners,
hopelessly outclassed in weight and number of pieces, could do little,
in spite of the greatest gallantry, to protect the infantry; and that
the army was able to withdraw at all was a striking proof of its stern
discipline. Audencourt was a shambles. Colonel McMicking, wounded near
this village and left behind, as all the wounded who were unable to walk
had to be, was hit again while being carried out of the blazing church.
The command devolved on Major, now Brigadier-General, Duncan. From this
time onwards the German guns had the range of the roads, and such a
superiority of fire that they could do almost as they pleased. The
infantry, at first furious at the necessity of retreat, turned again and
again--as did the guns--on their pursuers, but even so the pressure was
perilously near breaking point. The enemy had every means of mechanical
transport, and was able to find time for rest. Our men had to press on
to the last point of human endurance. There was no respite. The French
Foreign Legion have a grim saying, 'March or die.' Here the word was
'March or be captured,' and even when every other conscious feeling but
that of utter exhaustion seemed dead, somewhere deep down in their
hearts the will to endure urged them on.
Is there no painter, no poet, who can enshrine for future generations
the memory of this historic scene? We have here a sudden glimpse of
Britain at her best. Hot sun, torment of burning feet on the cruel,
white, and endless roads, the odour and sight and sound of death and
wounds, pressure of pressing men, and love of life and the horrid
loneliness of fear--all that was Giant Circumstance; but he could not
extinguish the souls of men made in the image of God for suffering and
endurance and triumph. English and Irish and Scottish--but brothers in
hatred of retreat and in their determination to push on until they could
turn and strike--the glamour of great names hung round all those
tattered battalions; and the very essence of it was in the oldest of
them all, in history and in campaigns, this famous Lowland regiment. Of
that at such a time they thought little, if at all; sheer physical facts
pressed too hard, yet in their desperate victory over circumstance they
wrote the most golden page of their story, and enriched the blood of all
who follow them.
You can find a certain humour in war if you look for it, though war is
not amusing, and life at home has many more entertaining incidents in it
than life at the front. One officer of The Royals fell sound asleep in a
trench during the climax of a terrific bombardment, and awoke to find
himself alone among the dead. (He makes us laugh when he tells the
story, but at the time it cannot have been just very humorous.) He
pushed on after the retreating army, and though--owing to the mistake of
an officer at a cross-roads who stood saying, 'Third division to the
right, So-and-so division to the left,' when it should have been the
other way about--he lost his way, he found the battalion a fortnight
later. Two others came in sight of the last bridge standing on one river
just as the explosive was about to be detonated, and maintain that,
running furiously toward the bridge, they persuaded the engineer in
charge to postpone the fatal moment by brandishing a large loaf, rarest
of all articles on the heels of a retreating army. Another who had been
sent on ahead to find a billet in a château saw a beautiful bathroom,
and was preparing to make use of a priceless opportunity when he found
that the enemy was upon him, and fled in haste. The transport officer,
peering round the corner of a house, saw his beloved transport which he
had gathered and cherished until it was reputed the best in the army,
go up in matchwood and iron splinters. One subaltern, finding himself on
the ground, discovered to his horror that he had a hole in his chest,
but struggled gamely on, now walking, now stealing a ride on a
limber--just catching the last train of all--and finally arriving in
England with no other articles of kit or clothing but a suit of pink
pyjamas and a single eyeglass.
At Meaux the steeples of Paris were in sight; but the hour had struck,
and The Royals at last wheeled to pursue.
III
_At the Nose of the Salient_
The battalion had come through much since then, on the Marne and the
Aisne and the Lys, and in trench warfare from Hooge to Neuve Chapelle.
Here is a picture of a day's fighting from the diary of an eyewitness--a
bald note of facts. It refers to 25th September 1915:--
'The brigade formed up in the trench in the following order from left to
right, 1st Gordons, 4th Gordons, 2nd Royals, one company Royal Scots
Fusiliers. Each battalion received separate point of attack, namely,
Bellevarde Farm, Hooge Château, Redoubt, Sandbag Castle. Artillery
bombardment 3.50-4.20 A.M. General attack then launched. "B" Company was
at the nose of the salient; "C" Company on right of "B"; "A" Company on
left; "D" Company in dug-outs in reserve. At 4.20 A.M. the battalion
advanced to the attack. Complete silence was observed and bayonets were
dulled. The front line was captured with few casualties on our side, and
shortly after the final objective was successfully attained. Our line
was consolidated. One hundred and sixteen prisoners belonging to the
172nd Regiment of XV. Prussian Corps were taken and three lines of
trenches. All four officers of "B" Company were hit before German front
line was reached. Touch was established with R.S.F. on right and 4th
G.H. on left. There was heavy German shell-fire on the captured
trenches. A party from "D" Company tried to make communication trench
back to our old front line, 1st Gordons unfortunately were not able to
reach the German front line owing to wire being undestroyed and too
thick to cut. A gap was thus made between 1st and 4th Gordons. The enemy
pushed bombers through, thus getting behind 4th Gordons. Desperate
hand-to-hand fighting ensued. O.C. "A" Company was forced to defend his
left flank. A German counter-attack moving N. to S. by C.T. across the
Menin Road, The Royals' machine-gun did great execution. Terrific
bombardment by German heavies (H.E.). "A" Company was ordered to retire
on our old front line to get in touch with 4th G.H. on left. "B" Company
to keep in touch ordered to do the same. "C" Company rinding enemy on
left rear, position became critical. No battalion at all now on left,
1st Gordons having failed in their objective, and 4th having been
withdrawn owing to flank attack in front of 1st. No battalion now on
right either. "C" Company in danger of being surrounded. Captain N.S.
Stewart personally reported the danger of his position. A company of 4th
Middlesex were rushed up--all our men by this time having been used
up--to the nose of the salient, but could not man it owing to terrific
barrage of fire. "C" Company, completely cut off, fought its way with
the bayonet back to its former front line. Colonel Duncan reorganised
the firing line. Both sides spent the night in gathering in the
wounded.'
So ended the containing attack from the Ypres salient. But is not every
sentence a spur to the imagination?
Two days later, the Corps commander, in personally thanking the
battalion, complimented it on 'the smart appearance of the men who
_showed no signs of what they had gone through_.'
It was to this famous battalion of a great Regiment that I was now
attached as one of the four Presbyterian chaplains to the 'fighting
Third' Division.
WINTER WARFARE