GOOD-BYE TO THE AISNE.
Early in October, and at night, the Ambulance again took the road—we
turned our back on the Aisne and with the 2nd Army Corps began the famous
move across the French lines of communication to the Belgian frontier and
into Flanders. This change of position will be written up in the future
as one of the most masterly episodes of the war. It was a formidable
task to move the British Army and its supplies across the French lines
and bring them into an entirely new position on the front. It had to
be carried out with the utmost secrecy. None of us knew where we were
going. Each day the secret orders were issued and the various brigades
and columns carried out the indicated programme, while the French took up
our positions and trenches as we retired from them. This was done also
with great secrecy. I can imagine the perturbation of the Saxons and
Wurtemburgers on our front on seeing French _képis_ and uniforms where
for weeks they had seen the khaki. The 2nd Corps moved off first. The 1st
Corps left a week later.
On the first night we marched through Nampteuil and reached Droszy about
midnight. It was a beautiful starlight night with a biting frost. We
billeted in a spacious château, with plenty of cover for the ambulance
waggons and with stables for the horses. The men slept in stable lofts
and the officers on the floor of the marble hall. The hall was a
beautiful room, containing some valuable old furniture. The walls were
covered with relics of the chase of the days of Louis XIV., and old
hunting horns, knives, and boar spears. Part of the château was modern,
and part consisting of a wonderful old tower, loopholed for arrows, was
evidently all that was left of the keep of a strong feudal castle. The
proprietor was an old rear-admiral of the French Navy and he received
us with the greatest courtesy; the Norfolks arrived an hour after us
and quartered in a big house and yard close by. Our brigadier, Count
Gleichen, arrived early in the morning and slept in our château.
A Taube was seen approaching in the morning and every one was ordered to
get under cover or stand stock-still. This Taube was evidently trying to
find out the reason for the absence of British in the old trenches and
the presence of the French in their place. We surmised correctly that
the Teutonic curiosity was considerably aroused. A few hours afterwards
another Taube appeared—or it may have been our first visitor—and flying
very fast, for a French airman was in hot pursuit. Both soon disappeared
into the upper blue, but we laid our odds on the Frenchman.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF LONGPONT.]
[Illustration: VILLAGE OF LONGPONT.]
At 6.30 that night we again got under way and had a magnificent night
march to Longpont, arriving there at 10.30 p.m. Longpont is a wonderful
old place. The Château Longpont dates back to very early times and
contains some marvellous old tapestry. It is the home of the Comte and
Comtesse M——, and they were in residence at this time and entertained
as their guests on this day General Sir Charles Ferguson and his staff.
Sir Charles was the Commander of the 5th Division of the 2nd Army Corps.
The Comte and Comtesse had as guests, some weeks previously, General
von Kluck, Commander of the right wing of the German Army, and had some
interesting anecdotes to tell of this hard-fighting General and his staff.
Abutting on the château were the famous ruins of the abbey of Longpont.
The remains of the old abbey are so historic that they are known in
France as “Les Ruines.” It was built by the Cistercian monks in the
twelfth century, and in the adjoining priory over three hundred monks
were accommodated in the days when the Church was omnipotent in France.
During the Reign of Terror the beautiful old abbey was destroyed by the
revolutionaries, but the massive character of the pillars and walls
proved too much even for these iconoclasts, and stand to-day, clothed in
ivy and moss, the monuments of a glorious past. The venerable and stately
majesty of these ruins, where every stone seemed to speak of the grandeur
of other days, impressed the imagination of all who gazed upon them.
The day following our arrival at Longpont was a Sunday. Divine service
was conducted at 10 a.m. round the old broken altar by our Church of
England chaplain, and Sir Charles Ferguson, the Divisional General, read
the lessons. Monsignor conducted the Catholic service at 11.30. Both
services were largely attended by our own men and by French soldiers
occupying the village. In imagination one could see the princely abbots
and the cowled monks who, during a period of six hundred years, had
chanted their litanies and passed in procession inside the beautiful
abbey, gazing wonderingly at the simple military services held round the
tumbled masonry of the ancient altar.
After the services we spent the day wandering through the old-fashioned
village of Longpont, examining its ancient gateways adorned with the
crests of the kings of France, or strolling through the fine woods
bordering the lake. Heavy artillery fire from the French batteries could
be heard all the day. We were now right behind the French lines.
I cannot pass from Longpont without describing our sleeping quarters on
the night of our arrival. The officers of the ambulance had to sleep
on the straw of an old stone stable. The stable looked comfortable and
inviting, and it was not till we had crawled into our valises that the
“fun” commenced. We had just lain down and blown out the candles when
we felt curious obscure movements under our valises. Then a rustling
of straw and a scampering of some objects over our beds. One doctor at
once yelled out, “Good Lord, the place is full of rats.” He turned on
his electric torch and immediately there was a wild scurry and stampede
to cover of hundreds of rats. The torch was turned off, and after a
little while the scampering and squeaking started again. The rats were
either enjoying a game or were upset by our occupation of their stable.
At one end of the stable was a feeding trough, and sitting in a row on
the edge of the trough were innumerable rats. Conspicuous amongst them
was one enormous fellow, about the size of a cat—some one said he was
as big as a calf—with huge grey moustaches and very knowing eyes. This
was undoubtedly the leader. We christened him Von Hindenberg. Somebody
threw a bottle at him, but the cunning old rascal dodged it by making a
tremendous leap into the middle of the stable and disappeared. One young
doctor then said that he would rather sleep out in the open than amongst
the rats, and he carried his valise outside. The rest of us decided to
stop where we were, but we all pulled our blankets well over our heads.
Our childhood horror of rats still remained, and we were just a little
bit afraid of them—especially of Von Hindenberg.
From Longpont we had a hard gruelling march of fifteen to eighteen
miles through the night, and arrived at Lieux Ristaures at 6 a.m. We
were stopped a long time on the road at the little village of Corcy by
hundreds of motor vans, waggons, and buses containing French troops. We
realised on this night what “crossing a line of communication” actually
means. The French were hurrying up heavy reinforcements to strengthen a
part of their front which at that moment was withstanding a most resolute
German attack, our Brigade was moving as quickly as possible to another
point of the front. The roads of the two armies crossed at Corcy, and
of course one had to wait till the way was clear. It all looked very
confusing and chaotic, but it was really very cleverly managed. Our
road at first led through a forest, and anyone who knows the forests of
France knows the beauty and charm of the tall trees. Little could be
seen, however; high overhead one could make out a few stars, but the
track itself was in Cimmerian darkness. About 2 a.m. we reached Villars
Cotterets and marched through the old cobbled streets without a pause.
This old town looked interesting, and one would have liked to have
explored the birthplace of Dumas. After Villars Cotterets our road lay
through more open country and a grey dawn made things clearer. We were
all dog-tired with the long march and the constant halts; marching at
night was more monotonous and fatiguing than day marching.
On the way from Villars Cotterets to our next bivouac, Lieux Ristaures,
at night time, when we were all feeling very done up, a most surprising
rumour reached us. Far ahead on the long column we suddenly heard distant
cheering which grew in intensity as it travelled quickly down to us
preceded by a message shouted from one to another, “The Kaiser is dead.
Killed yesterday morning. Pass it on.” When the message reached us we
laughed, and did not pass it on. Cries came out of the darkness in front,
“Pass the message on. It’s official. The Kaiser’s dead.” So we passed
it on, and the cheering travelled back across country to the marching
men far behind. It cheered the men up wonderfully; they were delighted.
It of course turned out to be a fake, cleverly engineered by some wags
at the head of the column. Of rumours there was no end. The Crown Prince
had been buried in Flanders, in the Argonne, at Soissons. But he always
got out of his grave. We buried Von Kluck, Hindenburg, and Bulow, and
each burial was related with a wealth of detail that left nothing to the
imagination. The most accepted rumour of all, and one which is still
believed by many, was the harrowing story of the Prince with the velvet
mask. This story had a distinctly Dumas flavour, and it had a great
vogue. It was related to me first on the Aisne by a doctor in a Scottish
regiment, who had had it from the Colonel, who had received it from
somebody higher up. I, of course, passed it on lower down the social
scale, and our Division knew it that afternoon. The Crown Prince at this
time was said to be living in a richly furnished cave opposite Reims.
On dull days he would sit on a chair outside and order the shelling of
Reims Cathedral, while he gazed through a powerful glass at the falling
masonry. One day the Prussian Nero was missing from his cave, and the
story then shifts to Strasburg, whither in the dead of night a wounded
officer of apparently august rank was conveyed in a motor-car. Two
powerful Limousines accompanied this car, one before and one behind, and
these were full of highly placed army officers. A special train with
steam up was awaiting the arrival of the cars, and as the wounded officer
was carried across the platform on a stretcher, closely surrounded by
Generals, it was noticed that a velvet mask covered his face. The mask
fell off as the body was lifted into the train and the Crown Prince’s
face was exposed to view. I believe that this story was afterwards
circulated in the French press. We certainly did not hear of His Imperial
Highness for many months afterwards.
Another rumour circumstantially related by a field chaplain and duly
passed on with the _imprimatur_ of the Church, was that Prince Albrecht
of Prussia, son of the War Lord himself, had been wounded and taken
prisoner into Antwerp by the Belgians. He was operated upon by Belgian
surgeons in the presence of two German medical officers, and a bullet
was extracted from his spine. The bullet was a Mauser—a German one. The
Prince died and his body was handed back to the Germans.
On the way to our next bivouac we also heard that Arras was being
bombarded by the Germans and that they were investing Antwerp. We had
quite a lot of war news to discuss for the remainder of our road, and
until we pulled our waggons under the trees round an old mill at Lieux
Ristaures. The men were billeted in out-houses and wood sheds belonging
to the mill, and the officers were cordially welcomed by the hospitable
miller and his kind-hearted womenfolk. They prepared coffee, bread and
butter, and eggs for us, and we had the use of two bedrooms and a small
office. A rapid mill race ran through the garden and under the kitchen
floor of the house to the orchard beyond. When the miller’s wife wanted
fresh water, all she had to do was to lift up a trap on the kitchen floor
and dip the bucket into the tumbling water below. Lieux Ristaures has a
fine old ruined church all to itself, but it is disfigured by some modern
attempts to restore it to its ancient grandeur, and these attempts have
spoiled completely the beauty of the ruins. At Lieux I received my first
mail since leaving England. It was now October, and I had left England in
August. This will give an idea of the marvellous work of our Army Post
Office, but as no department has received such abuse as this one, I will
spare its feelings and say no more.
[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO COMPIÈGNE.]
A fine contingent of French cavalry passed by on this day. The men and
horses looked splendid. The brass helmets, plumes, and cuirasses caught
the sun’s rays, and we described the passing as a “gorgeous cavalcade.”
The helmets and cuirasses, however, seem to belong to old-world armies,
and look stagey amongst the simpler uniforms of this age.
We stopped two nights at the quaint old farm of Lieux with its rushing
mill race, and at three o’clock on the second day marched to Bethisy St.
Martin, where we had an excellent tea at a cosy house in the town—butter,
eggs, bread, cold beef, and pickles. We sat round a table with a
tablecloth! our first since August. The good woman who prepared the meal
made us very welcome. We slept on the floor of the _Mairie_ in the
centre of the town till 5 a.m., when we again took the road to Santines
and Verberie, passing near Senlis. Verberie showed many evidences of the
Prussian sign manual—shelled houses and smashed walls. We reached the
river Oise at 10 a.m. and crossed by a pontoon bridge, as the fine old
stone bridge had been blown up; marched through Rivecourt and bivouacked
for three hours by the wayside. It was a glorious morning, the going was
good, and everybody was cheerful and looked very hard and fit. At Halte
de Meux, where was a railway siding with troop trains, we received orders
to embark on one of the trains for a destination unknown.
The train by which we were to travel had to carry the Norfolk Regiment
also. When the Norfolks were all on board we found that there was not
room enough left for the Field Ambulance, with its ambulance waggons,
supply waggons, horses, and men. C section, with its waggons and
equipment, had to be left behind, and get on as best it could by some
other train; so we of C section took the road to Compiègne. We reached
this charming and historic city in the dark, and found that there
was no train for us. We crossed the Oise again on a bridge of moored
barges, as the magnificent stone bridge spanning the Oise here was in
ruins, destroyed by the French during the German advance. The night
was desperately cold; we slept, or tried to sleep, on the boulevard
alongside the river bank, but had to get up and march about to keep up
the circulation. The men lit a fire under the trees of the boulevard
and sat round it all night. There was no reason really why we should
have slept out on the open boulevard, for there was a large, half-empty
infantry barracks about 20 yards away and the French offered us the use
of it for the night. Our commanding officer, however, decided otherwise,
and consequently we passed a most miserable night.
Compiègne, situated on the Oise, is one of the most charming and
fascinating cities in France. In the palace, Napoleon Bonaparte
and the Empress Marie Louise, Louis Philippe, and Napoleon III.
frequently resided. The tower where Joan of Arc was imprisoned, the
sixteenth-century Hôtel de Ville with its belfry tower, and the old
church of St. Jacques well repay a visit. The city appeared on the
surface to be leading a normal life except for the large number of
French soldiers and the many Red Cross Hospitals. Compiègne was at this
time a favourite afternoon call for the Taubes, and they frequently
dropped bombs, meant no doubt for the old palace. Old historic châteaux,
cathedrals, and churches have a strange fascination for German
artillerists and bomb-droppers.
I must now relate an episode of some interest that occurred on the
march up to Compiègne—nothing less than seeing General Joffre, the
Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies. I had dropped behind from my
ambulance, and had given my horse to my groom to lead behind my section
on the march. A marching regiment was coming up behind us, and as I
knew the doctor I waited till the regiment came up, and then joined in
and walked alongside my medical friend. A large château was situated on
the side of the road some distance on, and as we came up we saw a large
group of French officers standing at the old gateway. A whisper travelled
rapidly down the line that this was the French Headquarters Staff and
that Joffre himself was there. At once the subalterns “tightened up”
the marching men, heads were lifted, shoulders squared, the step became
smarter and rhythmic. Low muttered commands snapped out: “Smartly
there,” “By your right,” “Keep your distance, men.” As we came abreast
of the group at the gateway, the sharp, clear command rang out from
each platoon officer, “Eyes right!” the officers saluted smartly, and
with a parade swing the fine regiment marched past. I gazed long and
interestedly at the officer at the gateway who took our salute. He was
easily distinguishable as Joffre, for he was exactly like the pictures
seen of him in every shop window in France, or rather the pictures were
faithful representations of Joffre. When I got past, I stepped out of
the company I was marching with on to the far side of the road, and
while the remainder of the regiment was still passing by I had a good
long look at the man who means so much to France, and in whom France is
so sublimely confident. He was dressed in a well-fitting but easy blue
tunic, with stars on the sleeves near the cuff indicating his rank of
General, and with a gold band on the shoulders, the familiar red French
trousers, and black polished cavalry jack-boots. On his head he had a
gold-braided _képi_. Joffre is of middle height, strong and sturdily
made, broad-shouldered and with a figure stout and heavy. His face is
full, genial, and attractive, browned like the faces of men who have
lived and worked in the tropics, and with a white moustache which gave a
somewhat benevolent air. He was evidently interested in the march past
of our regiment, for he walked three or four paces forward from his
staff and towards us, and seemed to take in all the details of men and
equipment as his eye scanned up and down. His salute was given with the
careful exactness and ceremony always bestowed by the French upon this
act, which the British officer goes through so casually.
Joffre did not look the dazzling military leader of romance, but he
looked very business-like. Here was not the lean figure and the hawk nose
of a Wellington, the glittering swagger of a Murat, or the inscrutable
pose of the little Grey Man of Destiny. Yet this broad, homely,
comfortable, and democratic figure standing by the roadside and carefully
observing us, is the most powerful man in France to-day—the man against
whom no political criticism is levelled, the idol of the soldiers, and
in whom the people of France have such a simple faith. He is called “Our
Joffre,” and the possessive phrase indicates the pride the people and
army feel in him. The French will tell the following story, which has
gone the rounds, with great gusto. After a big battle in Poland, Von
Hindenberg’s Chief of Staff contracted a “political illness” and was sent
to Berlin to recover his health. The Kaiser wired to Hindenberg, “Whom
do you nominate for your new Chief of Staff?” The reply came back, “Would
like Joffre.”
French officers at the front will tell you that Joffre is an Aristides
the Just; that he ordered the shooting of four French Generals early in
the war because they were traitors to France, and that he has “retired”
all the old Generals who are slow to think and too fond of cocktails to
be good campaigners; that he speedily rewards ability and initiative by
promotions on the field, and is merciless on an officer—no matter of what
rank—who shows incompetence.
Joffre was met early in the War of the Trenches by an old friend, who
greeted him with, “Well, how are things going?” The General’s eyes
twinkled humorously as he replied, “Laissez-moi faire, je les grignotte”
(“Leave me alone, I am nibbling them”). A French surgeon who knows
Joffre, told me that he is a good sleeper, and that during the worst days
he never missed one night’s sleep. It was Shakespeare’s Cæsar who said, I
think, to Mark Antony:
“Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.”
Joffre has never interested himself in politics, and he is one of the
few great Frenchmen who have avoided the glamour of the political stage
on which so many ephemeral reputations have been made and so many good
ones blasted. Joffre, like most men who “do” things, is a silent man. I
am glad that I have seen “Joffre _le taciturne_,” and been privileged to
salute him.
Joffre and French are both over sixty years of age. Pau, the one-armed
French General, known as the “Thruster,” is a veteran of the War of
1870. Gallieni, the “rock of Paris,” the General destined to hold
Paris when Von Kluck was bearing so hastily down on the capital, is
an old man. Von Hindenberg, the pride of Germany, is sixty-seven. Von
Kluck, the Commander of the right wing of the German Army, who so
furiously hacked his way almost to the gates of Paris, and was rolled
back in a crushing defeat, is over seventy years of age. Napoleon and
Wellington were forty-six at Waterloo. Nelson died at forty-seven. Ney
was thirty-five when he was shot. Von Roon, the German Minister of War
in the Franco-Prussian War, was sixty-seven when the campaign began.
Bismarck was then about fifty-five, and Von Moltke was an old man—a
septuagenarian. Are we too old at forty? No. I knew a chaplain at the
front who was fifty-eight years of age. In times of peace he took very
little physical exercise; he was a student, a scholar, and an author.
I have seen this chaplain march mile after mile in rain and mud, and
under a broiling sun on dusty roads, and he was then fitter than he ever
had been before, and could eat bully beef and hard biscuits like the
hungriest youngster. He had the face and eyes and voice of a young man,
and he laughed like a merry boy.
We left Compiègne at 3 p.m.; our horses and waggons were entrained and
officers and men got into an old and evil-looking “100th” class carriage
and again set off for a destination unknown. No one seemed to know where
we were off to, but the entraining and route were really well carried out
by the staff of the railway. At Amiens we received orders to get off at
Abbeville, and after a tiring journey we reached the mouth of the Somme
at 2 a.m. The waggons and horses were quickly taken out, and in the dark
we trekked through Abbeville across open country to Gapennes, nine miles
away. Here we met the 13th Field Ambulance, temporarily quartered in a
most luxurious château. Our little party was dead beat for want of sleep,
and some of us lay down on the floor of the village schoolhouse and slept
heavily for three hours. The school was not “in” that day, otherwise I am
sure the children would have been highly entertained to see three weary
doctors in khaki soundly slumbering on the floor.
Still sleepy, we again had to take the road and tramp the weary miles. A
large number of French ambulances passed us going back to Abbeville, and
we heard that there had been some very hard fighting on the French left
wing.
The 13th British Infantry Brigade caught up with us, and we pulled aside
to let them pass. The officers told us that they were in a hurry—that the
French had moved up a lot of troops to the south of Lille and that the
whole British Army was to form up on the left of the French, and that
terrific fighting was going on round Lille and Arras, and French and
German cavalry screens had met farther west.
[Illustration: COMPIÈGNE, SHOWING THE BROKEN BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: AMBULANCE CROSSING THE OISE ON A PONTOON BRIDGE.]
At 5 p.m. we found the headquarters of our ambulance located in a
pig-sty of a farmhouse and were told that it was to move off shortly
and march through the night. All the romance of night marching had gone
for us, and we wanted to sleep. We were tired of walking, tired of
everything, tired of the war, and vaguely wondered why we had been so
foolish as to leave England.
So at nine o’clock on the same evening off we marched again into the
outer darkness of a depressing, gloomy night, and we were on our feet
through the whole of it. Most of the time we were standing by the
roadside waiting for the congestion of the long columns in front to ease
off. Sometimes we would sit in a ditch by the roadside and go off to
sleep, only to be wakened a minute after by the cry, “Forward!”
About 6 a.m. we reached Croisette. The name sounds attractive, but it
really was a mean-looking farmhouse at a cross-road; however, we got a
very good breakfast of coffee, bread and fresh butter, and eggs. The
farmer’s wife was anxious to know how the war was going on. She rarely
got news, but heard lots of rumours. Everybody appeared to be hearing
rumours as well as the British Army. We told her that we had killed
thousands of Germans and were on the way to slaughter those that were
still left; and as this appealed to the patriotic instincts of the farm
lady, she was very satisfied with our latest war bulletin.
In three nights and three days I had had only three hours’ sleep, and
had got to a stage when I marched, rode, and ate my food in a sort
of subconscious state of reflex animation. In the late afternoon we
rumbled into Thielyce, and tried fruitlessly to find some billets for our
officers and men. The place was full of small cottages, and the cottagers
eagerly offered each to take in one or two men; but we could not allow
this, as in the event of sudden orders through the night we might not
be able to get all our men together. We always lived in one large party
or habitation like gipsies. One old woman of the village was extremely
anxious to have some khaki soldiers stop at her house. She was curious to
observe the English at close quarters, as she had never seen one before
and had heard that they were such terrible fighting men. Our looks belied
our reputation; we looked harmless, very dirty and dusty, but very tame.
The ambulance was parked in a field off the village street and inside a
delightful clump of trees. Too tired to eat, I lay down as I was, armed
cap-à-pie, at the foot of a tall umbrageous tree and slept a dreamless
sleep.
At five o’clock next morning the sharp call of our O.C., “Field
Ambulance, turn out!” aroused me again to a world of marching men and
war; but I was my own man again and optimistic, and no longer wondered
why I had left England.
We had a picnic breakfast sitting on the grass in the field, and at seven
o’clock received orders to move off: we were to follow the 13th and
14th Brigades into Bethune and on to La Bassée, and be prepared for big
casualties, as a stern battle was expected and the two brigades would
probably be in action before midday. There was a feeling of expectancy
in the air that morning. All the rumours about a big battle and all our
quick movements and marchings by night seemed to presage a clash at arms.
We hoped for old England’s sake that we would do well; our pulses were
stirred and we were all very much alive.
We moved off smartly down a fine old tree-lined road towards the sound of
heavy guns which had been in action from daybreak. On our way we passed
thousands of hurrying refugees going towards St. Pol. Without stopping,
our ambulances growled their way through the ancient cobble-stoned town
on to the big high road leading to Bethune. Here again we met thousands
of refugees, nearly all young men of military age. We were curious to
know why these men were not in the French Army, and a French officer told
us that they belonged to Lille and the surrounding districts, and had
been ordered out by the French authorities to report at military dépôts
farther south for training and active service. These “mobilisables” would
have been good captures for the Germans and a considerable loss to the
French Army. Amongst them I counted twenty-seven priests in black caps
and cassocks; they, too, were on their way to shoulder a French rifle.
One young man I noticed carrying a white rabbit in a bird-cage in one
hand and a bundle of clothes and boots in the other; he was saving his
rabbit from a German pie. Another fellow was walking along the road in
carpet slippers and with a pair of heavy boots suspended round his neck.
The poor refugees looked tired, disappointed, and depressed, and no
wonder. It is hard suddenly to have to leave your home, your friends,
your wife and children, and to go away with a gnawing fear that they will
be in the power of an arrogant and brutal enemy who knows no mercy. We
pitied them all.
After all, there was no battle that day. We halted on the way some time,
and then were rapidly marched forward towards Bethune. We were now
passing through coal-mining towns and villages, and they recalled very
much the villages and houses round coal areas of Scotland like Falkirk.
The type of coal-miner and the coal-miner’s cottage are very much the
same all over the world. These people did not seem very curious or
interested in our passage through their villages or towns—simply gave us
a glance at passing.
That night we bivouacked in a château near Bethune and on the main road.
We could not get any farther forward, for the road in front was blocked
up by big guns and little guns, ammunition columns, engineer battalions,
and infantry. We saw a number of waggons loaded up with big pontoon
boats, and speculated that we must be near water. So we were. We were
near the famous canal, but the boats were intended for farther west.
After tea in the kitchen of the big château, some of us got on our horses
and rode into the city of Bethune, now full of troops, and the bustle
of warlike preparations. There were all nationalities in the streets of
Bethune that night. Arabs in flowing robes were on horseback in the
square, looking strangely out of place in this old western city. Spahis,
French Grenadiers, French gunners, Alpine Chasseurs in round cloth caps,
Belgian, French, and British officers, and, of course, Mr. Thomas Atkins,
quite at home, smoking a Woodbine cigarette and being petted and openly
admired by the women and the girls. We heard here that Antwerp had
fallen, and thought the news very serious. It was quite unexpected, as we
had not known that it had been strongly besieged.
At five o’clock next morning we were on the road in a dense fog, and
after going forward about half a mile were told to bivouac in a field
near the road till some ammunition columns and guns got past us. This we
did, but Monsignor wandered off alone farther down the road. We missed
him for a long time, and when he did turn up he told us that he had been
arrested as a spy by the French. Two or three French sentries with fixed
bayonets surrounded him, and I don’t know what arguments Monsignor used
to convince them that he was an Englishman. But he came back smiling, and
was evidently much tickled over the whole affair. He was the only officer
in the British Army, and in fact the only member of the Expeditionary
Force, who was not in khaki uniform, and it is no wonder that the French
thought it odd that he should be strolling about “on his own,” looking
at British guns and equipment. We were all delighted, of course, at
Monsignor’s arrest, and regretted that we had not been there with our
cameras. We were quite determined, if he were again arrested, to disown
all knowledge of him, just to see what the French would do next.
After some hours’ wait in the field we pushed on again through Bethune
towards the canal. This canal was to us then simply a canal and nothing
more, but along this belt of slowly flowing water was to be waged very
soon one of the most terrific and sanguinary struggles recorded in
history.
As we approached the canal the Norfolk Regiment came up, and we drew to
the side of the road to give them the right of way. I sat on a heap of
stones by the roadside and watched this fine regiment marching smartly
past, and I remember thinking curiously that probably that same day,
perhaps within a few hours, many of these fine fellows would have fallen
and many would be maimed.
It is an impressive thing to see a regiment going into action. The
Norfolks knew that they would very soon be in the thick of things, as
they were marching on the sound of the heavy guns, but they looked
perfectly cheerful and unconcerned. That night several of them passed
under my hands on the operating table, and many more were lying very
still on the wet earth not far away.
The King’s Own Scottish Borderers passed us earlier in the morning, and
with them was Dr. D—— as regimental surgeon. D—— was one of the first
medical officers over the Aisne, and he put through some splendid service
for the wounded under a heavy fire, and was mentioned in dispatches. Four
days afterwards poor D—— and his stretcher-bearers were captured and
sent as prisoners to Germany.
At 11 a.m. we crossed the narrow bridge spanning the now famous canal
leading up towards La Bassée, and installed our ambulance headquarters in
the Château Gorre on the road to Festubert. The château had up till that
day been the headquarters of a French cavalry general, and it was a most
palatially fitted-up place.
Our long journey was over. We had left the Aisne and taken up a new
position near La Bassée in the north of France. We were now in a
countryside destined soon to become the theatre of an intense and
sanguinary struggle. It was here that our men withstood the shock of the
most determined and relentless head-on attacks of the enemy. This was one
of the roads to Calais, and we held the gate.