FROM THE MARNE TO THE AISNE.
At 7 a.m. our Field Ambulance was ready to march. Breakfast was over,
and we stood by awaiting orders. While waiting, some of us strolled
back towards the bridge which we had crossed the previous night. It was
now empty of men and vehicles. The ashes of the bivouac fires and the
lopped branches of trees were all the tokens left of the passage of a
German and a British Army Corps. The Marne is a deep stream with a slow
current, and is a popular boating river. Two or three boating-club sheds
lay pleasantly situated on the banks of the stream, bowered in foliage
and trees. Up and down the river the scene was exceedingly beautiful. It
was curious, when standing on the bridge, to think that in the previous
forty-eight hours the tide of war had rolled over this lovely valley;
that artillery had plastered the landscape with shrapnel and high
explosives, and that riflemen had lined the banks where to stand exposed
for one minute meant instant death; that many hundreds of men had died
and many hundreds had been wounded and crippled for life. The ambulance
lorries climbing out of the valley to the rear with the loads of wounded
men were the aftermath of the glitter and panoply of war, and of the
deadly struggle in the now peaceful valley.
At eight o’clock we received our orders to follow on. So “Field
Ambulance, fall in!” and away we went on the great walk to the Aisne.
At this time I did not have a horse. Every ambulance medical officer is
provided with a horse; but horses were scarce just then, and with three
other doctors I “foot-slogged” the way. It was a beautiful morning. The
night’s rain had settled the dust on the roads, the sun was shining
pleasantly, but drifting rain-clouds threatened a change. Major B—— and
myself marched at the head of the column on foot. Behind marched the
men of A Company—the stretcher-bearers and orderlies, followed by the
six ambulance waggons of A Company. Then the men and the waggons of B
Company, followed by the men and waggons of C Company. Water carts, kit
waggons, supply and equipment carts, brought up the rear. Our _personnel_
was about 250 men, and these with the waggons, carts, and horses made
a fairly long column. Our road led in a snake-like way through the
gradually rising uplands beyond the Marne on to the plain beyond. The
countryside was typically French: clumps of forest were on our right,
villages were dotted about everywhere, and there were many isolated
farmhouses surrounded by belts of trees and orchards. The countryside
was agricultural. The wheat and oats had been cut and newly-made stacks
were standing in the stubble fields, and some of the fields still held
the “stooks” of grain. About nine o’clock we came on the grim evidences
of war. Our road led right through a country over which the Germans were
retreating and we were pursuing. Two large motor-cars, broken down, were
lying in a ditch beside the road. These were German staff cars. One had a
badly burst tyre and that seemed to be all that was the matter with it.
Farther on was a smashed French ambulance waggon, with a broken axle,
and full of equipment and stores, abandoned by the Germans. This car had
evidently been captured from the French during the German advance. Four
German soldiers of the Mecklenburg Corps were lying together in a ditch.
All had been killed by shrapnel wounds in chest and head. It seemed as
if the four men had sat down exhausted in the ditch by the roadside and
that one of our shrapnel shells had burst right over them, killing them
all outright. We removed their identification discs in order that they
could be sent to Germany later on. Close by was another dead German
lying face downwards on the earth and with both hands extended above his
head. Shrapnel had caught him full in the back of the neck. In a small
clump of trees to the left of the road were two more dead Germans. One
was lying on his back with his left hand over a wound in the chest. The
other soldier had evidently been trying to assist him, for he had been
kneeling on the right side of the wounded man when he too received a
mortal hurt and fell dead across his dying comrade. His head was lying
in a deep puddle of coagulated blood. The rifle of one lay some distance
off, evidently violently thrown away by the first man when he received
his chest wound. The rifle of the other soldier had been laid carefully
against a tree within reach. The poor fellow did not reach out for it
again. Two young Germans were found lying close together in a clump
of vegetation. They had been sorely wounded and had crawled off the
roadside into the friendly shelter of the trees. Left behind by their
countrymen, grievously wounded and in dire distress, they had curled up
together in the damp grass and died during the night. One had died from
hæmorrhage and one from a brain injury. Another group of four soldiers
had crawled into a ditch and were lying close together in their last long
sleep—killed by one of our heavy shells.
A small footpath at one place ran from the side of the road towards the
gate of an orchard of apple trees. Two German soldiers were lying here
dead, and with their rifles alongside them. One had just reached the gate
and the other was close on his heels when a burst of British shrapnel
stopped their further progress. Stragglers from the retreating army,
they were making for the orchard to hide when death came suddenly upon
them. So the grim picture went on. The German dead dotted the roadside,
the clumps of trees, and the fields on either side. Thirty Germans were
found killed on a small ridge to our right. Another one was found alive,
but dying. His wounds were carefully dressed and we carried him into
a neighbouring cottage to die. Our artillery at the Marne did deadly
execution and our shrapnel must have made of that roadside and the fields
alongside a perfect hell.
Our gunners had got the range of the road and plastered it and the
adjoining land with a murdering hail of lead and iron. It was curious
to note how badly wounded men seemed to try to escape from the open and
crawl into the shelter of a ditch or a clump of trees.
A man wounded in the field would do as a wounded stag or rabbit
would,—try for cover. Some men died after crawling away a few yards. Some
got some distance away into the ditches and died there, a bloody trail
marking their last painful journey.
The expressions on the faces of the men were on the whole peaceful. Some
had a look of wild surprise in their upward, staring eyes. Some looked as
if a great fear and terror had possessed them at the last awful moment.
The expression on the face of one finely built German officer, with a
clean-cut intellectual face and firm jaw, was that of a sublime contempt.
His eyes and nose and the curl on his lips betokened a contemptuous
regard that was curious to see in a dead man.
One burly young man killed by a shell wound in the abdomen had lived some
time after having received his mortal hurt, for he had plucked some straw
from the wheat stack near which he lay and made a pillow of it. On this
he had rested his head. His military cloak lay over him, pulled tightly
round his neck. There he lay with one hand under his head and resting on
his pillow of crumpled straw, and the other hand pressed on his wounded
abdomen as if to give it some support. He looked like a man sleeping the
peaceful sleep of utter fatigue, and when painlessly asleep his heart had
ceased to beat. In his haversack there was a hard sausage and a piece
of hard white bread. His water-bottle was empty and the cork had not
been replaced, nor had the bottle been hooked on to his belt. Wounded,
bleeding, thirsty, and exhausted, he had slowly crept off that awful
field into the friendly shelter of the haystack.
The dead Germans were young sturdy men, strong-jawed and wiry. This was
no canaille whom we were fighting, but a trained, determined soldiery who
would fight hard and die gamely.
Our route for the remainder of this day lay through such scenes of blood
and devastation. We passed abandoned ammunition trains, field guns,
saddlery, field kitchens, and war equipment of all sorts. There could
be no doubt about the precipitate retreat of the Germans, nor of the
tenacious and pressing character of the pursuit. Large numbers of dead
horses littered the roadsides and fields. Some had been wounded or killed
by our fire. Some lay with outstretched necks and open mouths, dead from
exhaustion, and some had evidently been shot as temporarily useless by
the Germans themselves who did not wish them to remain alive for the
enemy. One sorely wounded horse as we passed tried painfully to get up.
We gave him the merciful dispatch with a revolver shot.
Rain fell heavily during the afternoon for about an hour and then the
sky cleared again. Continuous heavy fighting was going on all day on our
front and flanks, and muffled waves of artillery bursts could be heard
from the far distance. The whole French and British Army was advancing in
one wide semi-circle, endeavouring to “roll up” two German Army Corps.
After a hard, gruelling march of twenty-two miles we reached Chiezy. It
was then pitch dark and we were all exhausted, for we had been on our
feet for over twenty hours, part of the time marching, and part of the
time standing by waiting to go forward. When a column is marching along
a road, pursuing an enemy who is every now and again making a temporary
stand to get a brigade or a battalion out of a tight corner, the going
is necessarily slow and there are many waits—sometimes for ten minutes,
sometimes for an hour or more. The waits on the roadside are really more
tiring than the steady marching. When one is “soft” and not accustomed
to long walking, a day’s march like this proves a torture. If such a
“tenderfoot” sat down by the wayside for a few minutes, it was almost
impossible to get the cramped body into the erect attitude again. Towards
the end of the long, long day, and in the darkness of the night, with
feet swollen and sore, brain and body numbed with fatigue, one did not
march, but only stumbled and lurched along the never-ending road like
a drunken man. A tired brain induces muscular fatigue, and physical
exhaustion causes mental torpor. When our ambulances pulled into the
stubble field at Chiezy, we had lost all interest in the war, and in
everything else on this earth except a cup of tea and a long sleep.
However, certain duties had to be attended to before one turned in. The
horses were looked after, the ambulances parked, and rations served out
to the men. We had about twenty patients, all of them British soldiers
with sore feet—men who had fallen out of the regiments on the march and
had waited by the roadside for the ambulance waggons. We always ordered
these poor devils to jump into the waggons and take off their boots and
socks. This gave instant relief. The sores on the heels and across the
instep were painted with iodine. In a few days the men were generally
well and fit to rejoin their regiments.
On bivouacking this night we got all these “foot birds” to wash their
feet. This was a novel experience to men who had marched from Mons
without a wash or change of socks. The officers’ cooks soon had coffee
and stew ready, and our servants had spread straw on the ground, on which
our valises were unrolled. The night was beautiful; about two miles away
the guns were booming and the bright flashes of the bursting shells
reminded us that war was close beside us. Without even taking off our
boots we lay down on our valises and were asleep as soon as our bodies
assumed the horizontal.
At four o’clock next morning we were roused by the penetrating voice of
the O.C., Major X——. “Turn out, turn out!” There was no escaping that
voice or the caustic remarks that would be sure to come if one did not
“turn out.” We all got buckets of water, and stripping in the open had
a good morning bath in the buckets. It was cold, but bracing. Breakfast
of coffee, bread, jam, and fried bacon. Day broke shortly afterwards and
we found that we had camped on the scene of a struggle of the previous
afternoon. Close by were a number of dead horses with their saddlery
still on. Some newly-made graves were distinguished about 500 yards from
our sleeping quarters. A German cavalry patrol had been bivouacked near
a wood hard by our camping-place, and had evidently been very badly
handled, judging by the signs of confusion, the litter left behind, the
dead horses, the recent graves. In a small hollow I picked up a very
fine German saddle and bit, and a good waterproof sheet. A bundle of
letters was lying near in a small leather satchel, and on the cover of
the satchel was stitched the photograph of a very pretty woman’s face.
Our O.C. had been educated in Germany, and being a good German scholar
read the letters. They were of no military importance, and had been sent
by the lady of the photograph to the owner of the satchel—evidently
an officer. There were congratulations about his “promotion,” and an
earnest, loving message for his safe return.
Poor devil! We surmise that he must have been a young cavalry officer in
command of the patrol. His “promotion” was short-lived, for he lay under
one of the new mounds of clay, and the poor lady with the charming face
would have some very sad hours when she learned from the German casualty
lists that “Ober Lieutenant X—— was missing.” One of our men picked up
here a very fine pair of new German boots. As his own were a little the
worse for wear he put on the German ones, and said that they were much
more comfortable than the British military boot. I believe that his
observation was quite correct. Amongst other souvenirs picked up at this
interesting corner were a pair of field-glasses, a revolver, a good set
of razors and mirrors, an ivory-backed hair-brush—all made in Germany.
Our greatest find was yet to come. As our ambulance was getting under
way one of our R.A.M.C. corporals hove in sight marching proudly at the
head of eleven fully-armed German prisoners. The corporal’s tale was
full of interest. He was searching in the wood for more “souvenirs” when
he came suddenly upon the eleven soldiers lying together in a small
clearing. The corporal thought that his last hour had come. All the
tales of German atrocities he had heard unfolded rapidly in his mind,
and when the German non-commissioned officer got up and approached him,
speaking German, which our corporal did not understand, he thought
that his death-sentence was being pronounced. By signs, to the utter
amazement of the corporal, he grasped the fact that the Germans wished to
surrender. He beckoned the enemy to follow him, and the eleven hungry,
tired, and very dirty-looking Mecklenburghers came docilely into camp.
Our O.C. approached them, took their rifles, and ordered them coffee,
bully beef, and biscuits. The prisoners set to without delay, and ate as
only hungry Germans can eat. Three of them had badly blistered feet, and
when we marched off these were accommodated in the ambulance waggons. The
remainder marched behind the waggons of A Company, under charge of the
corporal who “captured” them. Later in the day we handed them over to the
Norfolk Regiment, as it was clearly against the etiquette of war for a
Field Ambulance to have prisoners of war. We hadn’t a gun amongst us.
The capture of eleven prisoners of war by our Field Ambulance was the
occasion for much joy to our men, and the corporal was a very proud man.
I don’t know what the Germans thought when they discovered that they had
surrendered to an unarmed party. The 15th Field Ambulance is so far the
only ambulance which has taken prisoners of war, and I hope that the
R.A.M.C. messes at Aldershot and Netley will duly treasure the fact in
the archives.
Rain fell heavily when we left Chiezy, and we were soon soaked to the
skin. The roads were quagmires of greasy and sticky mud, heavy lowering
clouds made everything sombre and grey, and the countryside looked
mournful and cheerless. Mile after mile we trudged in the pitiless rain.
I shall always remember the march from the Marne to the Aisne, for its
wet and mud. Shortly after leaving Chiezy we came upon some gruesome
evidences of German savagery. Near a stable built on to a farmhouse we
saw a Frenchman lying dead across a manure heap. The top of his head had
been blown off, and his brains were plastered over his face. The man,
evidently the proprietor, had been shot the previous day by a German
officer. There was an old woman at the farm, and she told us this, and
that she had seen him fall. What was the reason for the brutal murder she
did not know. She said that the officer and the farmer seemed to be in
conversation near the stable, and the farmer appeared to be protesting at
something. Suddenly the officer placed the muzzle of his revolver close
to the farmer’s forehead and shot him. The wound had been inflicted at
close range, and we were filled with disgust at such a callous murder.
About a mile farther on, we met another poor devil who had been done to
death. A middle-aged man with a bald head, bare-footed, and dressed in an
old pair of blue pants and a cotton shirt, was lying near a plough close
to the road. His head had been battered in, probably with the butt-end
of a rifle, and he had been dead for about twenty-four hours. Why the
poor wretched man had been killed we did not know. The third instance of
this fiendish villainy I saw later on in the day at Billy. This time it
was a young man, a mere youth, and he lay face downwards at the door of
a cowhouse, dead from a bullet wound in the chest. I examined the wound
with some care, and would be quite prepared to swear in any court of law
that the man who shot him had pressed the revolver against the dead man’s
chest when he pulled the trigger. This is the German way. These examples
of nauseous and disgusting frightfulness amazed me. I had never before
come up against such tragedies, and I felt an unholy pleasure that our
big guns farther along the road were pouring shrapnel and shell amongst
the living devils who did such things.
At Billy our Brigadier-General, Count Gleichen, ordered us to bivouac for
the night. Major B—— and I billeted in a small cottage abutting on a very
smelly cowshed. At the cottage fire we dried our soaking uniforms, and
dug dry underclothing out of our valises, which we spread on the kitchen
floor and lay upon. Madame of the cottage was full of the latest war
news. She was _très intelligente_ and very satisfied with the progress
of the war. She told us that our advanced guard had entered the village
only six hours behind the retreating Germans; that the Germans were in a
great hurry and were too tired almost to march; that their officers were
angry and cursed and struck the men who lagged behind. She also assured
us that some Uhlans had ridden through, and that they were very drunk and
had bottles of champagne suspended in festoons round their necks. While
making some tea, and boiling eggs, she cheered us up with the assurance
that the war would soon be over, for Monsieur le Curé had told her so
himself, bless his heart.
The Curé opened his church and allowed our men to carry in straw and
sleep there for the night. This was a godsend to our men during that
night of pouring rain, and the Curé got many a rough blessing for his
kind act. The villagers at Billy were much heartened at seeing the
British so close on the German heels, and one old fellow—he must have
been a centenarian—got very drunk on the strength of it all, and assured
us that he was a veteran of the _soixante-dix_ and had killed many
Germans at that time. He was too drunk to remember the exact number.
During the night I was awakened by a tremendous artillery fire. The
batteries beyond the village had got the range of something and were
giving them hot potatoes. Madame of the cottage was very alarmed, and
thought that the Germans were coming back. Her confidence in the British
was not as firm as she had led us to believe the previous evening.
We were all out and ready to march at five o’clock next morning, but
did not move off till seven o’clock. Rain still continued to pour down
and we were all miserably muddy and damp. Whenever a big artillery duel
took place heavy rain was sure to follow. This was so on the Marne and
on the Aisne, and some one with a meteorological bent had made the same
observations during the Peninsular War. All day long we marched or
waited on the muddy, sopping _pavé_ with waterproof sheets tucked round
our necks and shoulders, off which the water streamed. The advance now
was very slow, and we were told that our men ahead were meeting with a
more organised and steady resistance. We no longer met evidences of a
precipitate retreat. There were no more German dead or abandoned material
by the roadsides.
At 9 p.m. in the dark we entered the doleful village of Chacrise. For
sixteen hours we had been on our feet and had only covered about eight or
nine miles. The soft roads, ground down by our heavy waggons and guns,
were in a bad state, and we walked through ankle-deep mud and slush. When
we entered Chacrise we were told that all the billets had been taken
up. The church, the _Mairie_, the shops, and houses were all occupied
by our soldiers. It looked as if we should have to sit all night on the
cobble-stones of the street, and what with the darkness, the incessant
pouring rain, and the fatigue, we were all very sorry that we had come to
France to fight Germans. But every cloud has its silver lining. We found
an unoccupied house down a dark alley. The windows were firmly shuttered
and the door securely locked. The occupants had locked up their house
and bolted when the Germans were known to be about. By a little skilful
burglary with a jemmy we opened a window. One of us got in and opened the
front door from the inside: very soon our cook had a fire lighted and a
hot supper ready. We got all our men and horses under good cover, and
our night at Chacrise, which promised so badly, turned out very happily.
We were all given an issue of rum this night. Rum is an oily, nauseous
drink, but given certain surroundings and a certain physical state
it has a most excellent flavour. On the night at Chacrise everything
conspired to make the rum very palatable.
At 4 a.m. next day our never-sleepy O.C. disturbed our dreams with his
“Turn out, turn out!” and out we turned. We had no choice when he was
stalking round. Again we stepped out on muddy roads, and under a heavy
downpour of soaking rain, and marching and stopping, reached the village
of Serches on the Aisne at eleven o’clock in the morning. The rain then
ceased and a glorious, welcome sun appeared. The whole countryside was
bathed in a delightful warmth, and we felt glad to be alive.
We were ordered to bivouac our ambulances in a field behind the village,
and were told that the German rearguard was holding up our advance most
determinedly along the Aisne banks, and that the enemy artillery was in
great strength.
Our march from the Marne to the Aisne was accomplished, and we now
entered upon a new and different phase of the great war game. Our Brigade
was in action on the Aisne banks, and we had to take up a position behind
it and be prepared to receive its wounded and sick.
The Field Ambulance with a marching army takes its number from the
Brigade which it serves. The 15th Field Ambulance followed the 15th
Brigade; the 13th Field Ambulance, the 13th Brigade, and so on. Four
regiments or battalions form a Brigade, and all the other units attached
to the Brigade, such as cavalry or ammunition columns, are also medically
attended by the Field Ambulance attached to their Brigade.
Our Brigade consisted of the Norfolks, Cheshires, Bedfords, and Dorsets,
and the Brigadier was Major-General Count Gleichen, now a General of
Division.
It was from these regiments that we received most of our casualties on
the Marne, on the Aisne, and later at La Bassée, and, as the following
few notes will show, we were serving with regiments who had proved
themselves doughty warriors in the past.
The Norfolk Regiment was created in 1685 in the time of the Stuarts to
help suppress the rebellion of Monmouth. Their badge is the figure of
Britannia, well won, in 1707, for their gallant bearing at Almanza. This
great regiment has done sterling service in many lands, and has as battle
honours, Roleia, Corunna, Peninsula, Sevastopol, Afghanistan, and South
Africa. Their nicknames are three, “The Holy Boys,” “The Fighting Ninth”
(they were formerly called the 9th Regiment of Foot), and the “Norfolk
Howards.”
The Bedfordshire Regiment, with its badge of the united red and white
rose, and its battle honours with the proud names, Blenheim, Ramillies,
Chitral, was a magnificent unit in France when we joined it. The regiment
had been raised in the last years of James II. in 1688, and from 1809
to 1881 was known as the 16th Regiment of Foot. The nicknames of the
regiment are “The Peacemakers,” “The Featherbeds,” “The Bloodless Lambs.”
This regiment lost heavily at Missy on the Aisne, and at Ypres later on
in the war it had over 650 casualties.
The Cheshires, with a united red and white rose for a badge like the
Bedfords, were raised in 1689, and were in old days the 22nd Regiment
of Foot. Their war record includes Martinique, Hyderabad, Scinde, and
South Africa, and their nicknames are “The Two Twos,” “The Red Knights,”
and “The Lightning Conductors”—when marching in Ireland about fifteen
years ago the regiment was struck by lightning. The Cheshires have
suffered terribly during this war, and at Missy we had a number of their
casualties to treat, and many were buried near the old village on the
Aisne.
The Dorsetshire Regiment has a proud motto, “Primus in Indis,”
commemorating its great services in India, and the fact that it stands
first in order of precedence amongst British regiments that have seen war
there. The drum-major of this regiment still carries the staff of the
Nawab’s herald on parade. It was captured at Plassey, where the regiment
was in action under Clive.
Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, Commander of the 5th Division, “particularly
mentioned the fine fighting of the Dorsets. They suffered no less than
400 casualties. Their Commanding Officer, Major Roper, was killed, but
all day they maintained their hold on Pont Fixe.” Their battle story is
a great one, and includes Plassey, Albuera, Vittoria, Sevastopol, and
Relief of Ladysmith. The 1st Battalion was raised in 1702. The “Green
Linnets” is their nickname.