The new head-covering is made of heavy steel, which has been
specialty treated to increase its resisting power. The walls
protecting the skull are particularly thick, and the weight of the
helmet renders its use in open warfare out of the question. The rim
is large, like that of the headpiece of Mambrino, and the soldier
can at will either bring the helmet forward and protect his eyes or
wear it so as to protect the base of the skull . . . Military
experts admit that continuance of the present trench warfare may
lead to those engaged in it, especially bombing parties and barbed
wire cutters, being more heavily armoured than the knights, who
fought at Bouvines and at Agincourt.--_The Times_, July 22, 1915
The war is already a fruitful mother of legends. Some people think
that there are too many war legends, and a Croydon gentleman--or lady,
I am not sure which--wrote to me quite recently telling me that a
certain particular legend, which I will not specify, had become the
"chief horror of the war." There may be something to be said for this
point of view, but it strikes me as interesting that the old
myth-making faculty has survived into these days, a relic of noble,
far-off Homeric battles. And after all, what do we know? It does not
do to be too sure that this, that, or the other hasn't happened and
couldn't have happened.
What follows, at any rate, has no claim to be considered either as
legend or as myth. It is merely one of the odd circumstances of these
times, and I have no doubt it can easily be "explained away." In fact,
the rationalistic explanation of the whole thing is patent and on the
surface. There is only one little difficulty, and that, I fancy, is by
no means insuperable. In any case this one knot or tangle may be put
down as a queer coincidence and nothing more.
Here, then, is the curiosity or oddity in question. A young fellow,
whom we will call for avoidance of all identification Delamere Smith--
he is now Lieutenant Delamere Smith--was spending his holidays on the
coast of west South Wales at the beginning of the war. He was
something or other not very important in the City, and in his leisure
hours he smattered lightly and agreeably a little literature, a little
art, a little antiquarianism. He liked the Italian primitives, he knew
the difference between first, second, and third pointed, he had looked
through Boutell's "Engraved Brasses." He had been heard indeed to
speak with enthusiasm of the brasses of Sir Robert de Septvans and Sir
Roger de Trumpington.
One morning--he thinks it must have been the morning of August 16,
1914--the sun shone so brightly into his room that he woke early, and
the fancy took him that it would be fine to sit on the cliffs in the
pure sunlight. So he dressed and went out, and climbed up Giltar
Point, and sat there enjoying the sweet air and the radiance of the
sea, and the sight of the fringe of creaming foam about the grey
foundations of St. Margaret's Island. Then he looked beyond and gazed
at the new white monastery on Caldy, and wondered who the architect
was, and how he had contrived to make the group of buildings look
exactly like the background of a mediæval picture.
After about an hour of this and a couple of pipes, Smith confesses
that he began to feel extremely drowsy. He was just wondering whether
it would be pleasant to stretch himself out on the wild thyme that
scented the high place and go to sleep till breakfast, when the
mounting sun caught one of the monastery windows, and Smith stared
sleepily at the darting flashing light till it dazzled him. Then he
felt "queer." There was an odd sensation as if the top of his head
were dilating and contracting, and then he says he had a sort of
shock, something between a mild current of electricity and the
sensation of putting one's hand into the ripple of a swift brook.
Now, what happened next Smith cannot describe at all clearly. He knew
he was on Giltar, looking across the waves to Caldy; he heard all the
while the hollow, booming tide in the caverns of the rocks far below
him, And yet he saw, as if in a glass, a very different country--a
level fenland cut by slow streams, by long avenues of trimmed trees.
"It looked," he says, "as if it ought to have been a lonely country,
but it was swarming with men; they were thick as ants in an anthill.
And they were all dressed in armour; that was the strange thing about
it.
"I thought I was standing by what looked as if it had been a
farmhouse; but it was all battered to bits, just a heap of ruins and
rubbish. All that was left was one tall round chimney, shaped very
much like the fifteenth-century chimneys in Pembrokeshire. And
thousands and tens of thousands went marching by.
"They were all in armour, and in all sorts of armour. Some of them had
overlapping tongues of bright metal fastened on their clothes, others
were in chain mail from head to foot, others were in heavy plate
armour.
"They wore helmets of all shapes and sorts and sizes. One regiment had
steel caps with wide trims, something like the old barbers' basins.
Another lot had knights' tilting helmets on, closed up so that you
couldn't see their faces. Most of them wore metal gauntlets, either of
steel rings or plates, and they had steel over their boots. A great
many had things like battle-maces swinging by their sides, and all
these fellows carried a sort of string of big metal balls round their
waist. Then a dozen regiments went by, every man with a steel shield
slung over his shoulder. The last to go by were cross-bowmen."
In fact, it appeared to Delamere Smith that he watched the passing of
a host of men in mediæval armour before him, and yet he knew--by the
position of the sun and of a rosy cloud that was passing over the
Worm's Head--that this vision, or whatever it was, only lasted a
second or two. Then that slight sense of shock returned, and Smith
returned to the contemplation of the physical phenomena of the
Pembrokeshire coast--blue waves, grey St. Margaret's, and Caldy Abbey
white in the sunlight.
It will be said, no doubt, and very likely with truth, that Smith fell
asleep on Giltar, and mingled in a dream the thought of the great war
just begun with his smatterings of mediæval battle and arms and
armour. The explanation seems tolerable enough.
But there is the one little difficulty. It has been said that Smith is
now Lieutenant Smith. He got his commission last autumn, and went out
in May. He happens to speak French rather well, and so he has become
what is called, I believe, an officer of liaison, or some such term.
Anyhow, he is often behind the French lines.
He was home on short leave last week, and said:
"Ten days ago I was ordered to ----. I got there early in the morning,
and had to wait a bit before I could see the General. I looked about
me, and there on the left of us was a farm shelled into a heap of
ruins, with one round chimney standing, shaped like the 'Flemish'
chimneys in Pembrokeshire. And then the men in armour marched by, just
as I had seen them--French regiments. The things like battle-maces
were bomb-throwers, and the metal balls round the men's waists were
the bombs. They told me that the cross-bows were used for
bomb-shooting.
"The march I saw was part of a big movement; you will hear more of it
before long."