"It was undoubtedly the hardest action fought on Belgian soil since the
Second Battle of Ypres, more than a year ago."
As for our men, a day has made a wonderful difference to those who have
emerged unscathed from the shock of battle. Not soon shall I forget the
spectacle which greeted me an hour ago when one Scottish Canadian
battalion passed me in the road on the way to neighbouring rest billets.
A stalwart band of pipers marched behind a sleek regimental goat, who
ever and anon shook his horns in conscious pride. The pipers droned
"Bonnie Dundee," and on came the long column of troopers, still unkempt
and unshorn and in strangely fitting headgear--for scarce a man had kept
the bonnet he had gone out in--but each with a dogged, invincible air
that those forty-eight hours' hell in the trenches had failed to subdue.
There was a terrible thinning of the ranks, and there were some chargers
without riders. I followed them to their new camp. One other battalion
had already arrived, and some of the officers, taking advantage of the
sudden spell of sunshine, were already playing tennis. It was a strange
scene. Our aeroplanes had come out to reconnoitre, and numerous puffs
of smoke high overhead showed that they were the target for the German
anti-aircraft guns. Other guns boomed forth in the distance, but
otherwise amidst these green and peaceful surroundings there was little
enough to suggest the tragedy of war.
"Thirty--love!" called out Colonel Rattray, of the 10th Battalion,
lowering his racquet at the end of a fine rally. You would never
imagine that this clean-cut, debonair figure had just emerged from the
jaws of death and the mouth of hell.
The kilted Canadians were in sight of their billets when a slim young
officer, pushing a bicycle, stepped off the road with his companion to
allow them, their triumphant goat and their pipers, to pass. Not a man
of these battle-scarred heroes recognised him. I am sure they would
have raised a cheer if they had known.
For this slender young officer, his breast covered with many-hued bits
of ribbon, was His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, a captain in the
Guards.
*VII.*
_June 23rd._
Exactly one week after I had watched our scarred and shaken but still
valiant Canadian soldiers on their way out of the trenches of Maple
Copse and Sanctuary Wood, after the third fiercest struggle that has
taken place in the Ypres Salient, I stood and marked the passage of the
men of the relieving battalions. It was in the chief street of a little
town whose church and houses were cruelly disfigured by German shells.
The sound of drum and fife was heard, and the whole populace ran to
doors and windows. On every lip the cry was heard--
"The Guards--the Guards! They are coming out!"
On they came in column of route, these tall, stern, bronzed men, chins
up, eyes front, jaws set, marching with all the firmness and precision
of a dress parade, marching as if the eyes of His Majesty the King were
upon them, as I had seen them march in scarlet tunics and monstrous
busbies in Hyde Park, at Aldershot, on the Horse Guards Parade, the same
men, and yet, alas, not the same. You forgot--nay, you did not
see--their shabby, faded, stained khaki uniforms, the shapeless steel
basins on their heads, the untidy linen sacks slung on their shoulders;
you only saw the men, the brave, strong men, the triumph of training,
the justification of discipline, the vindication of the old despised
Imperial military system, the glory of the British Army--the Guards.
No wonder eyes gleamed and cheeks mantled in that little Flemish town,
which has seen so many units of the British Army pass and repass the
mouth of hell, whose lips are the hitherward parallel roadways and whose
gnashing teeth are the front trenches. Six days before the same scene
had been enacted when the cry ran--
"The Guards! They are going in!"
And they went in--the Coldstreams and the Grenadiers--to take over the
trenches from the Canadians, to delve and sweat, carrying loads of
ammunition on their backs, crawling into No Man's Land, laying mines,
shooting Germans or braining them with the butts of their rifles, or
treating them to the cold steel, as imperturbable as you see them
now--it being all in the day's work. The popularity of the Guards
arouses no jealousy in the other divisions. "We don't grudge 'em what
they get," remarked a sergeant in a line regiment; "they work hard, and
they deserve it. They've got a big name to keep up."
And yet it was one of these same Guards who an hour later, with more
emotion than I would have thought credible, waving his brawny hand
backwards towards the line, said:
"The Canadians--yes, sir, perhaps we have something they haven't got.
But--excuse the liberty, sir--by God, we take off our hats to them! I
tell you what, sir, they're MEN! They saved the Salient!"
*EPILOGUE.*