IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN
It has given me great pleasure to learn of the
development of the Y.M.C.A. work in France and
England during the last six months. In particular
I am very glad to hear of the successful growth of
the experiment begun at Aire.
No one can be long in this country without
realising the immense value of your organisation,
and the constant extension of your activities
itself testifies to the high regard in which it is
held by our soldiers.--FIELD-MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS
HAIG.
[Illustration: THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE SUPPORT TRENCHES]
THE history of the British Empire has been written over again, and
written in blood, in the valleys of the Somme, the Ancre, and the
Scarpe. Tens of thousands of our noblest and best lie buried in these
valleys or on the tableland of Peronne, situated between the
insignificant rivers that have within the past few months earned a
world-wide notoriety. No one can visit a modern battlefield without
realising something of the appalling waste of war. Towns and villages
have been blotted out of existence, or are marked to-day by a few
unrecognisable ruins. Thanks to the efficiency of British organisation,
excellent roads were quickly established right through the stricken
district, and it was impossible to traverse any of them without
marvelling at the obstacles overcome and the successes gained. The road,
for instance, from Albert to Bapaume, through Pozieres, Le Sars, and
Warlincourt, passing close by Contalmaison and Martincourt, was
contested almost yard by yard, and the same thing may be said of the
road that leads along the bank of the Ancre from Albert past the Leipzig
Redoubt, near Thiepval and Beaumont Hamel, through Achiet-le-Grand to
Bapaume, or the one from Peronne through Le Transloy.
[Illustration: 'GEORGE WILLIAMS HOUSE' IN THE FRONT TRENCHES]
[Illustration: A HALF-WAY HOUSE TO THE TRENCHES]
It was in December 1916 that I paid my first visit to the valley of the
Somme. The scene was dreary beyond description. Many villages known to
us by name as the scenes of desperate fighting were a name only. Hardly
a vestige of a house or cottage remained where many had been before the
war. Here and there one could see the entrance to a cellar; the charred
stump of a strafed tree; the remains of a garden; or a bit of a
cemetery. Everything else was churned up into the most appalling mud.
One day I had tea with an Army commander who has done great things since
then, and he showed me a series of photographs--the most interesting I
have ever seen, which were taken the day before my visit, by our airmen,
over the German lines. For seventeen and a half miles back, the enemy,
with infinite care and patience, had constructed trenches, 'and,' said
the Commander, 'every time we destroy his front line trench he
constructs another one in the rear.' 'But,' I cried, 'if this kind of
thing goes on, and unless the unexpected happens, the war must surely
continue indefinitely.' His only reply was, 'Is it not always the
unexpected that happens in war?' I was back again in Picardy in the
summer of 1917, and the unexpected had happened. The whole of the
seventeen and a half miles of trenches were in the hands of the British!
The enemy had retired to the much advertised 'Hindenburg Line,' and
leaving nothing to chance, was tirelessly, ceaselessly massing and
training his men, getting together huge reserves of munitions,
husbanding his resources in every possible way, and preparing, always
preparing day and night for his next great move. Meanwhile, Italy's
defences had to be strengthened by troops we could ill-afford to spare
from our Western front, and Russia, in loyalty to whom we first entered
the war, failed us altogether, German intrigue being the underlying
cause in each case. In his great advance in March and April 1918 he did
not achieve all he set out to do by any means, but his gains were
enormous. It makes one sad to think of the territory we had temporarily
to relinquish to the Hun in Picardy, even though the country itself was
not of any intrinsic value. The land is desolate, and the enemy ruined
every village and hamlet, every farm and cottage, before his retreat.
Ninety-three Red Triangle centres--huts, marquees, cellars, dug-outs,
and 'strafed' houses had to be abandoned in Picardy alone--most of them
destroyed before they fell into the hands of the Germans.
During the first visit to the battlefields of the Somme in the winter of
1916, the outstanding feature of the landscape was the mud and the
general desolation. In the summer of 1917 the scenes of desolation were
as great as ever, but there was a difference--the roads were in
excellent condition and bridges had been replaced. There were
shell-holes everywhere and the countryside was strewn with dud shells;
barbed wire entanglements; with here and there a stranded tank that had
had to be abandoned in the mud; the remains of trenches and dug-outs or
the cages in which the Huns had collected their British prisoners. There
were no domestic animals to be seen, and no civilians. The whole
district from Albert to Peronne, to Bapaume or to Arras, was one huge
cemetery, and one saw side by side the elaborate cross that marked the
burying place of German dead, the smaller cross with the tricolour on
it, that marked the last resting-place of the soldier of France, and
everywhere for miles and miles could be seen the little plain brown
crosses of wood, that marked the spot where lay our own loved dead. We
climbed to the top of the famous Butte of Warlincourt that so often
changed hands in the course of desperate fighting, and there on the top
were those little brown crosses. We stood at the edge of the vast crater
of La Boiselle that inaugurated the first battle of the Somme and saw in
its depths several of those little symbols of our Christian faith, but
looking away across the desolation of the battlefield one marvelled at
the efforts of nature to hide up the ravages of war. There were the most
glorious masses of colour everywhere--the colour given by the wild
flowers of the battlefields. One felt one had never seen more vivid blue
than that of the acres of cornflowers which rivalled the hues of the
gentian of the Alps. It may have been imagination, but looking out from
the Butte of Warlincourt over miles of poppies, one felt one had never
seen such vivid red, and instinctively those words came into one's mind:
'O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not seek to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red,
Life that shall endless be.'
The wild flowers of Picardy have bloomed over British graves again in
the summer of 1918, though German, not British, eyes saw them during the
early months, but those flowers speak of eternal hope, and tell us that
if we but do our part, the sacrifice of our bravest and best will not
have been made in vain.
Amid the ruins of Picardy the Y.M.C.A. did some of its best work. Lord
Derby spoke of the Association as 'essential in peace time,
indispensable in war time,' and never was the Association more
indispensable than during those terrible days of the German advance in
1918. Amid the ever-changing scenes of war it has been one of the
forces working for reconstruction. We mourn the loss of huts and Red
Triangle centres that have cost money, and on which labour has been
lavished. Not much to look at many of these places, and yet to those who
knew them they possessed an indescribable charm and fascination. It was
only a little marquee, for instance, that formed the Headquarters of the
Red Triangle at Henin in 1917, only a couple of padres, one Church of
England and one a Free Churchman there to represent the Y.M.C.A., but
the whole story is a romance. Whilst we were sharing their lunch of
bully beef and potatoes, bread, biscuits, and coffee, a 'strafe' began.
The British artillery, half a mile away, were pouring lead into the Hun
lines. Fritz soon replied, and things became lively. A shell burst near
us, but our padres took no notice of it, and seemed to regard a little
incident of that kind as a matter of course. Another shell burst on the
cross-roads we had just traversed. It was here we had our first glimpse
of the Hindenburg Line with Crucifix Corner in the foreground. Whilst we
were still at lunch the Germans began to throw over some of their heavy
stuff in the direction of Monchy, which was not far away. The British
camp at Henin had been heavily bombarded a few days before our visit,
and the troops quite properly had to run like rabbits to their burrows.
The last to take refuge in the dug-outs were our two padres, who with a
keen and commendable sense of duty had waited to gather up the cash
before taking refuge from the shells. One of the leaders gives the
following graphic story of his experiences in the Retreat:--
'On the first day of the offensive we were wakened by terrific drum fire
to the north, but on our own immediate stretch of front, the firing was
not so severe. There was therefore no immediate need for evacuation.
During that day the hut work went on as usual, but few men appeared, as
everybody was "standing to." Liquid nourishment of the Y.M.C.A. type was
rather at a discount. We finished serving at a somewhat late hour, and
deemed it advisable to sleep in the dug-out, as a few shells had begun
to sing overhead. Early the next morning we were awakened by the sound
of many men on the move. More and still more French troops were
arriving, and that day we had to speak more French than English. Towards
evening uncomfortable reports began to arrive that the Germans had
several places behind us, some in the immediate rear. "Les avions
Boche," about which the Frenchmen were using "polite" phrases all day,
were continually overhead, and having reported the movement of troops
on the roads, shell-fire began to increase in intensity. Decidedly, it
was "getting warm." Lieutenant-Colonel ---- of the R.A.M.C. and the
Medical Staff with whom I had had the privilege of messing for some time
were very forcible in their advice to me to evacuate with the orderlies.
They were living in a shell-proof dug-out, whereas we had no possible
defence against a direct hit from any kind of shell.
'Several batteries of artillery having been withdrawn from forward
positions, and posted near us, were making sleep impossible and drawing
the enemy's fire. It was quite impossible to obtain transport of any
kind for my stores, so I gave what remained to the R.A.M.C. for walking
wounded cases, of which I had supplied several during the day.
'Then we made a "night-flitting," the orderlies and myself, and slept a
few miles to the S.W. But with every step away from the hut I became
more and more uncomfortable. By daybreak I had decided to return and see
how things were going. The orderlies decided to accompany me.
'On the way back we had to take cover once for a while, but finally
reached the hut and carried on for the remainder of the day.
'We were called several kinds of lunatics for returning by the Medical
Staff, who were then preparing to leave, and be it confessed we felt the
truth of their remarks. It was quite out of the question to hold on any
longer without cover save a "tin-hat" a-piece, so again we evacuated,
this time finally.'
It was only when the grey-clad Germans were actually in sight that the
workers at St. Leger left their loved Y.M.C.A. I only visited St. Leger
once, but that little shanty strangely fascinated me. It was not much
to look at, just a group of ruined farm buildings, and in it 'the
swallows had found a house' and regardless of our presence, yes,
regardless of the shells, for St. Leger was bombarded every day even
then, they flew backwards and forwards, feeding their young and
twittering merrily and unconcernedly as if it had been a farm building
in one of our English counties. It must have been with a heavy heart
that those Y.M.C.A. men turned their backs on St. Leger and trudged to
Boisleaux-au-Mont, where the five splendid huts that formed our
equipment shortly afterwards shared the fate of St. Leger, and were all
destroyed before the advance of the Huns.
At Boyelles the tent was amid the ruins by the roadside, and the
enamelled Triangle sign was attached to the bottom of the trunk of a
tree that had been cut down by the enemy and was lying in the hedge
just as it fell. Achiet-le-Petit Y.M.C.A. was in an orchard, the
equipment consisting of a big marquee and several little shanties
ingeniously constructed by the workers from empty petrol cans and
biscuit boxes. High up in an elm tree was a sort of crow's nest, used by
the Germans as an observation post during the time of their occupation.
At Haplincourt the Y.M.C.A. was anything but imposing--an insignificant
house fitted up as a club room, but in the paddock behind it the
secretaries had erected a platform, and arranged an open-air auditorium
on a grand scale. A hundred yards or so away was a large plunge bath,
deep enough for a good high dive. It had been constructed by the Germans
when they were in occupation, but when we saw it a score of our own
Tommies were disporting themselves in the water and having a high old
time. Albert was a scene of desolation, with its ruined church as the
most conspicuous feature. High up on the top of the spire, dislodged by
German shells, and jutting out at right angles to the spire, was the
famous figure of the Virgin holding in her hands the infant Christ. For
many months the figure had remained in this position, and was only
finally brought down during the enemy's advance in 1918. The Y.M.C.A. in
Albert was established in one big hut and two badly ruined houses. It
was on the Saturday that St. Leger fell, and the Sunday at Albert was a
memorable day. The town was crowded with an endless stream of men,
horses, guns, and service wagons passing through. Little was sold in our
canteens, but free refreshments were handed out by tired but willing
workers all day long. Nearly all those workers had thrilling stories to
tell of narrow escapes from death. Albert was evacuated on the Sunday
night, and the place must have presented somewhat the appearance of a
shambles. The Boche aeroplanes were dropping bombs or firing their
machine-guns all the time, but still our men kept on serving the hot tea
and cocoa, biscuits, and cigarettes that were so much appreciated by
officers and men alike, only leaving their posts and abandoning their
hut when ordered to do so by the Military. The retreat from Albert must
have been like an awful nightmare. Some of our men in the darkness
became entangled in the fallen wires, and whilst trying to extricate
themselves heard the hum of an aeroplane just overhead, and a bomb was
dropped only a few yards in front of them.
[Illustration: THE Y.M.C.A. IN A RUINED WAREHOUSE. SHELL-HOLE IN FLOOR
OF CANTEEN]
At Bapaume we had several centres in and closely adjacent to the town.
Bapaume, like Peronne, was not destroyed by enemy shell-fire, but
deliberately wrecked by the Hun before he was forced to evacuate, and
the foe we face to-day is a past master in the art of destruction.
Hardly a building of any description remained intact in either of these
towns when the British entered into occupation. That very fact made us
marvel when, standing for the first time in front of the big building
occupied by the Y.M.C.A. in Peronne we noticed that it was practically
intact. On entering the building we marvelled still more, for the first
object we saw was a fine German piano. Surely it was an act of kindness
on the part of the wily Hun to leave it for our men. Was it? When the
British occupied Peronne a company of troops from the west of England
were the first to enter that house. A Tommy who was musical made a
bee-line for the piano, but his officer restrained him, bidding him
first look inside. It was well he did so, for three powerful bombs were
attached to the strings of the piano, and had he touched one of the
keys concerned, he himself, the piano, and the building would have been
utterly destroyed. In the hut attached to the house a boxing match was
taking place on the evening of our arrival, and men had come from
outposts miles away to take part. Underneath the house was a German
dug-out of almost incredible depth. The original staircase was
missing--the Germans having commandeered the wood for the construction
of the dug-out--but it had been replaced by an ingenious Y.M.C.A.
secretary, who had searched amid the ruins of Peronne until at last he
had found another staircase, which, with infinite pains and labour and
not a little ingenuity, he had built in to replace the original one. The
day before our visit the old lady who had lived in the house before the
war paid a visit to her old home. She was a refugee, and had trudged
miles to get back to Peronne. She requested permission to dig in the
garden and soon unearthed the uniform of her husband who fought against
the Germans in 1870. She had buried it there before the fall of the
town. Digging again she came across his sword and accoutrements, and
deeper still, her silver spoons and other trinkets that she valued.
Could anything bring home more clearly the horrors of war? If, instead
of Peronne in Northern France, it had been that sweet little town in
England or Scotland, or that village in Wales or Ireland in which you
live! If you had heard the cry one evening, 'The Huns are coming,' and
had just half an hour in which to rush round your home and gather
together any things you specially treasured, and take them out into your
garden and bury them, knowing that anything you left behind would be
either looted and sent to Germany, or deliberately destroyed for sheer
hate! How easily this might have been, but for the mercy of God, the
mistakes and miscalculations of the enemy, and the bravery and
self-sacrifice of our heroes in blue and khaki, yes, and our workers in
fustian and print--for England must never forget the debt she owes to
her munition workers as well as to her sailors, soldiers, and airmen.
They see nothing of the romance of war; they know nothing of its
excitement, and yet apart from their patriotic service the best efforts
of our fighting men would have been in vain.
[Illustration: A Y.M.C.A. CELLAR AT YPRES]
Never was the Y.M.C.A. more appreciated than during the months that
preceded the great retreat in the spring of 1918. New Red Triangle huts
were springing up like mushrooms, especially in the Fifth Army area,
that part of the line that had recently been taken over from the French.
Supported by the generous gifts of friends at home, ably directed by
our divisional secretaries and those associated with them in the work,
and supported and encouraged in every way by the Military Authorities,
the progress made was remarkable. Then came the unexpected advance of
the German hordes and the laborious work of months was destroyed in a
few hours. At Noyon the secretary had to quit in a hurry, but returned
to the hut later to bring away the money belonging to the Y.M.C.A.
Thrice he returned, and the third time found it impossible to get away.
After remaining in hiding for twenty-four hours he at length managed to
escape with ten thousand francs in his pocket, saved for the Association
which lost so heavily during those terrible days. At Amiens the Y.M.C.A.
workers hung on for ten days after the official canteens had been
removed because the town had become too hot for them. Day and night the
'Joy' hut close to the railway station was kept open, and thronged with
officers and men, and the service rendered to the troops may be gauged
from the amount of the takings, which ranged between fifteen and
twenty-thousand francs a day.
Our total loss in the retreat was exceedingly heavy--more than one
hundred and thirty huts and other centres in Picardy and Flanders, and
in cash, upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Serious as
was that loss it might have been very much worse. Eight trucks of stores
and equipment were stopped in the nick of time. The axle of one of our
big lorries broke within a hundred yards of the most heavily shelled
area in one of the towns bombarded by the enemy, but it was got away
and, excepting in two cases, all the money and notes from tills and
cash-boxes were removed safely before the huts were abandoned--striking
testimony to the devotion of those in charge. 'What I think impressed
me most,' wrote the organising secretary for France, 'has been the
undaunted spirit of our workers, who, when shelled out of huts,
persisted in the attempt to return to them under very great personal
danger.' 'Although we have lost everything that we had,' wrote one, 'we
still have hope within us, and are trusting to get back right into the
thick of things in the very near future.' Yet another, writing in the
spirit of Eastertide, said, 'We believe that our work will rise in new
freshness and power out of its apparent extinction!' 'There was a
singular unanimity of effort on the part of the workers who were
isolated one from the other, and had no opportunity of arranging a
common policy. The sale of such articles as the soldiers needed
continued in the huts up to the last moment possible, and then, when the
danger of the hut and stores falling into the hands of the enemy became
imminent, biscuits and cigarettes were handed out as largely as possible
to men in the neighbourhood taking part in the fighting. One would have
thought that having done this the workers would have considered their
own personal safety and retired, but in several cases I found them
running stunts for walking wounded in the open, outside the hut or in
its immediate neighbourhood, in close touch with the medical
authorities.
'The confusion of the retreat opened up to our workers opportunities of
service which they gladly utilised. Last night was a night of
uncertainty. We could not go to bed owing to the uncertainty of the
military position where our headquarters were, and so stood on a high
hill beside an old Trappist monastery, watching the village at the foot
in flames, and trying to ascertain the progress of the fighting through
the darkness. Our workers even under these circumstances seized an
opportunity of doing a very fine bit of service. A stream of poor
refugees were passing, people of all conditions and ages, fleeing for
safety and shelter, and so at 11.30 at night at the cross-roads, a table
was set up with a hot urn of cocoa and supplies of biscuits, which were
handed out to French and Flemish people as they passed....
'I have never seen anything that has touched me more than these streams
of all sorts and conditions of people straggling along with their little
belongings, infants in arms, to old people who had not walked a mile for
years. It was a great opportunity for rendering a truly Christian
service. The other day we lent one of our large lorries for a whole day
for the purpose of carrying these people in some degree of comfort to a
place of safety.'
Thus by every device that resourcefulness and experience could suggest
the workers of the Y.M.C.A. in France ministered to the comfort of the
men who were so bravely sustaining that terrible onslaught. The
organisation of the Red Triangle is the embodied goodwill of the British
people towards its beloved army. An emergency like the one in the spring
of 1918 was just the time when the services of the Red Triangle were
most sorely needed by our soldiers.
Fortunately, all the Y.M.C.A. workers got away safely. Sixty from the
Fifth Army took refuge at Amiens, whilst more than eighty from the area
of the Third Army found sanctuary at Doullens.
A few months later, thanks to the arrival of the Americans in France,
and the brilliant strategy of Foch and Haig; thanks above all to the
mercy of God, the tide turned, and the Huns were once more in full
retreat. A distinguished war correspondent wrote his impressions of
Bapaume a day or two after it had again been captured by the British.
Said he, 'I prowled about the streets of Bapaume through gaping walls of
houses, over piled wreckage, and found it the same old Bapaume as when I
had left it, except that some of our huts and an officers' club, and
some Y.M.C.A. tents and shelters have been blown to bits like everything
else.' A ruined town without a Y.M.C.A.! Could anything be more
desolate?