The “Long, long way to Tipperary” had carried our men far from the
first enthusiasm with which they had joined up as “crusaders for
civilisation.” And yet they had an instinct of loyalty in them stronger
than all their doubts, angers and ironies. Again and again, before
their battles, and at the worst time, it rose and carried them through
to desperate endeavour or frightful endurance. It was loyalty to their
own manhood, to their division and battalion, to their comrades, to
the spirit of this hellish game, and to the old, old spirit of race
which they could not deny. The orders might be wrong, but they obeyed.
The attack might be doomed before it started—and often was—but they
went over the top, all out. The battalion might be wiped out under high
explosives, but the last of the living, lying among the dead, held
on to their holes in the earth until they were relieved or killed or
captured. Comradeship helped them. It was the best thing they had all
through, and very wonderful; and, more wonderful still, they kept a
sense of humour, whimsical, ironical, vulgar, blasphemous, and divine,
which made them guffaw at any joke suggested by a pal and laugh in the
face of death itself if it were not immediate in its menace. To the
end the British Army kept that saving grace of humour, denied to the
Germans, not so common with the French, but our most priceless gift
in a world of horror. So they went on with the job of war, while the
casualties tore gaps in their ranks.
New men came out to take their places. Fresh contingents arrived
from the Overseas Dominions. There were new and monstrous battles.
The Australians had already come to France after the tragic epic of
Gallipoli, in which they too had lost the flower of their manhood. The
Canadians had been a strong link on the British front since the early
battles of Ypres. In England conscription took the place of recruiting.
There was to be no escape from the ordeal for any able-bodied man
unless he was wanted for a home job or could get one to save his skin
or his conscience.... The war went on in France and Flanders, in Italy,
Russia, Palestine, Turkey, Africa. The British Empire was all in,
everywhere, on sea and land. The area of destruction was widened as
the months passed and the years. Battles became more murderous because
the technique of war was becoming more “efficient,” its weapons more
deadly. Guns increased in number and in range. Poison gas supplemented
high explosives. Aeroplanes increased in size, in power, and speed of
flight; in bomb-dropping activity. Tanks arrived. The British battles
in Flanders five months long, after those of Arras and Vimy and
Messines, were more ghastly, more sacrificial, than those of the Somme.
They were fought in mud and blood. Men were drowned in shell craters.
Battalions were blotted out by machine-gun fire, high explosives and
gas shells.