only just arrived. I left a man called Gustave to look after Moonshine
and went out to spend a most laborious morning of shopping. After going
to many different shops I found a bazaar like a mortuary, with two
old women and a boy. They said to me: “Take whatever you want and pay
as much or as little as pleases you. If the Germans come we shall set
fire to this place.” They pressed every kind of souvenir on me, but
it was extraordinary, with plenty lying round, how difficult it was
to get what one needed. I was buying mostly for other people. It was
like being turned loose in Selfridge’s--boots, scissors, pocket-knives,
electric torches, watches, bags, vests, etc. I also bought an
alpenstock, as I had lost my sword and thought it might be useful as a
light bayonet.
I then went and had a bath, the first proper one since England. The
heat was very great. I felt dirty and wanted to shave my beard, as the
men said every day that I became more like King Edward. I then intended
to go to the Cathedral, but found the few English soldiers in the town
moving out hurriedly. They said the Germans were coming in an hour.
So I gave up the Cathedral and went and had lunch in a jolly little
inn. There were some very excitable Frenchmen, one of whom asked me
if I would sell him a lucky sixpence for a franc which he could wear
round his neck. I suppose he was really pathetic; at the moment he
only irritated me. He said: “J’ai confiance--même s’ils vont à Paris
j’aurais confiance.” “But,” he said, “where is the French Army?” They
were all saying that by this time.
I went back to my boot shop. All the women there were crying.
They insisted upon giving me some wine. At the hotel I found the
hotel-keeper and his family going off, squeaking with anger at the
ostler, Gustave, who was helping me to carry all I had bought in two
great bags. The weight was very oppressive in the heat, and I was
afraid of making Moonshine’s tender foot worse on the hard road. Before
I had got outside the town I had to get off and readjust everything,
with the help of some very kind French people. While I was doing
this, Westminster, with Hugh Dawnay, drove up in his beautiful car. I
suggested his taking my things on to Cœuvre. He said, unfortunately he
had other orders, and wanted to know where to lunch. I told him where
I had lunched, but said that he would probably have to share his lunch
with the Germans if he went into the town, as they must now be close
behind us.
Riding on, I met some French troops evacuating the town and with them
a man of my regiment, who had hurt his knee. He could not walk, so I
put him under the charge of a French sergeant. While I was talking to
him two other men of my regiment came up. They had fallen out on the
previous day and had had nothing to eat since yesterday’s breakfast. I
took them into a French house, where the people were very hospitable;
gave them food at once and insisted on giving them champagne, which
they said was “déchampagnisé.” The men ate like wolves. One of them was
a splendidly built fellow, called Sheridan.
Then we marched slowly on in the heat, for about two hours, when
Sheridan said: “What is it is happening yonder, sir?” pointing to the
horizon about a mile away. Soon rifle fire broke out, and Sheridan
said: “There are Uhlans coming down the road.” There was a wood on
our left, and we made preparations to get into this; the other man
had fallen behind. They were both very done, but Sheridan was like
a different man at the prospect of a fight. Our people, however, or
rather the French, drove the German cavalry back at this moment, and
we went on quietly. I was glad to be able to turn to the left, as the
fighting on our right was pretty hot and I was weighed down with all
the extra things I carried.
I fell into conversation with a medical officer, and asked him if he
knew where Cœuvre was. Then an R.A.M.C. Colonel came up and looked at
my kit very suspiciously. He asked me who the General in command of the
Division was. I said I had forgotten his name; I could not keep my head
filled with these details. He said to me: “You don’t seem to know who
you are.” I said to him: “I know who I am; I don’t know who you are, I
don’t want to. I hope to God I shall never see you again. Go to hell
and stay there.” This made him angry, and he said: “Your regiment is
ahead on the left, but the Germans are in front of you, if you wish to
rejoin them,” pointing in the direction from which I had come.
All this time I had been waiting for Sheridan and other now numerous
stragglers behind me, and at this point I turned round and rode off
to see what had happened, thoroughly irritated with the R.A.M.C.
Colonel. This apparently convinced him that I really was a German,
as the engagement in the rear was going on fairly close, and he came
after me with a Major of the K.R.R., who was unhappy. He said: “Will
you come with me to my Colonel?” I said: “I will go with you anywhere
to get away from this fussy little man, but if you think that a German
spy would come on a racehorse, dressed like the White Knight, with
an alpenstock, you are greatly mistaken.” He promised to have my
stragglers looked after, and then I rode up to his regiment with him,
when Blank came up and shook hands. We had not met since Eton. He
cleared my character. After that I went on as fast as I could. I picked
up some more of my regiment, including a sergeant who had sprained his
ankle. I told him to ride, but found a motor and put him in that.
Soon we were stopped by a sentry in a wood, as it was growing dark. He
said that his officer had told him to stop all on the road and to send
for him. Then came General Monro, who was also stopped. He was with a
sad man. He forced his way through, and I asked permission to take on
the men of my regiment. He told me that I should find my regiment at
Soucy, and gave me the permission I wanted. In a few moments I met the
officer who had had us stopped. He said the Germans were very close to
us. We could hear firing near by.
I reached my regiment as night was falling. They were delighted with
my arrest. We spent our last night very comfortably, though there was
heavy dew. Tom, who had been frightfully overdone, always carrying
rifles, was recovering, and every one was cheerful and very keen to
have a fight. Until now only Hickie had been invalided. The rum at
night after a long march made a wonderful difference. The men got in
very tired, footsore, cold and hungry, and had to sleep on the wet
ground. A tot of rum sent them to sleep, and sent them to sleep feeling
warm. Teetotalism on the march is an excellent thing, better still to
drink nothing, but that nip at night made the difference between health
and sickness, comfort and misery.
_September 1st._ The next morning we got up at 2 o’clock. The Army
was passing all round us already. It was like the sound of deep, slow
rivers. For the first and last time we took a wrong turning, only for
a couple of hundred yards. This was the only mistake I saw at all in
the long march. After two hours we halted, and S. and I sat under a
dripping tree and talked about the West Country. At the beginning S.
had said to me: “I shall be very disappointed if I go home without
seeing a fight, but the worst of it is you can’t make an omelette
without breaking eggs, and I don’t want to see my friends killed.” I
said to him: “You are going to get your omelette all right now.” Some
constituents passed me. They said: “This be terrible dangerous. Do’ee
come along with we.”
Moonshine would eat nothing, and this worried me. I had become very
fond of her.
At about 6 o’clock we halted on what I knew to be a tragic plain. In
my mind I associate this plain with turnips, though I am not sure that
any grew there. There was stubble, high and wet lucerne, and a mournful
field where corn had been cut but not carried. We sat about on the wet,
muddy ground for breakfast, while a thin, dismal rain fell.
The C.O. called us round and gave us our orders. He said: “We are
required to hold this wood until 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We may
have to fight a rearguard action until a later hour if there is a block
in the road. We are to retire upon Rond de la Reine.” After this we
breakfasted on hot cocoa; it tasted of vaseline or paraffin, but it was
warm.
It was apparent that if the First Division took long over their
luncheon we should be wiped out. By this time every one had got their
second wind, their feet were hard and they were cheerful. Jumbo said he
could go on walking for ever. I talked to Alex and agreed that we had
seen a great deal of fun together. He had said, while we were crossing
the Channel, that it was long odds, not, of course, against some of us
going back, but against any particular one of us seeing it through.
This was now visibly true; we believed that we were three divisions
against twenty-one or even twenty-eight German divisions. I wrote two
letters, one of them a eulogy of Moonshine. I went to Desmond, asking
him to post them. He said crossly: “You seem to think that Adjutants
can work miracles. Charles asks for letters under fire, you want to
post them on the battlefield. It is quite useless to write letters now.”
He then borrowed some of my paper and wrote a letter. I have the
picture in my mind of Desmond constantly sitting, in very tidy
breeches, writing and calling for sergeants. We had little sleep. He
never seemed to sleep at all. He was woken all the time and was always
cheerful. We had nothing to do for a bit, and I read scraps about
cemeteries from Shakespeare, to irritate the others. They remained
cheerful. Then we moved off to the wood. Nobody had any illusions about
the immediate future. One man said to me: “I may live to see many
battles; I think I shall, for I am very keen on my profession, but
I shall never forget this plain or this morning.” It must have been
about 7.30 when we went into the wood. No. 4 held the extreme right;
they were protected by a wall, which they loopholed, and a wire fence
outside. No. 3 was next on a road that ran through the heart of the
wood to Rond de la Reine. I did not see Tom; I thought I was sure to
see him some time in the morning. Stubbs was behind No. 3, down in the
village (I forget the name). The C.O. said to me: “I want you to gallop
for me to-day, so stick to me.” I lost him at once in the wood behind
No. 4, but rode right down to a deserted farm and, swinging to my
right, found him at the cross-roads.
I had seen a good deal of him the last days. He had a very attractive
personality, and it was a delight to hear him talk about anything.
I asked him what chance he thought we had of getting more than half
of us away. He said he thought a fairly good chance. Then he said to
me: “How is your rest-cure getting on now? There is very little that
looks like manœuvres in the millennium about this, is there?” I had
told him some time before that I looked upon this expedition as a
rest-cure, as in some ways it was. We talked about Ireland and Home
Rule, riding outside the wood. The grey, damp mist had gone and the day
was beautiful.
He sent me first to Hubert, Second-in-Command, with the order that in
the retreat every officer was to retire down the main road, with the
exception of Stubbs, who was to retire as he liked. I imagine that he
was afraid that men would be lost in the wood. By this time the firing
had begun, some way off, but our men could see the Germans coming
over the rising land. The C.O. ordered me to find Colonel Pereira of
the Coldstream Guards and tell him that, as soon our own troops, now
fighting the Germans in front of him, would fall back through his
lines, after this he was to fall back himself.
I went off at a hand gallop, and had got half-way there, with the
wood on my left and open land on my right, when the Germans began
shooting at about three-quarters of a mile. Our men were firing at
them from the wood, and I felt annoyed at being between two fires and
the only thing visible to amuse our men and the Germans. I turned
into the wood, and, galloping down a sandy way, found the road filled
with refugees with haunted faces. We had seen crowds of refugees for
days, but I felt sorrier for these. I suppose it was that the Germans
were so very near them. I gave my message to Pereira, who advised me
to go back through the wood, but I knew the other way and thought I
should soon be past the German fire. I had not, however, counted on
their advancing so quickly. When I came to the edge of the wood they
were firing furiously--shrapnel, machine-gun and rifle fire. Our men
had excellent cover, and were answering. I then tried to make my way
through the wood, but it was abominably rough. There were ferns and
brambles waist-high, and great ditches; the wood was very beautiful
with its tall trees, but that, at the moment, was irrelevant. Moonshine
stood like a goat on the stump of a tree that made an island among the
ditches, and I turned back to take the way by the open fields. When I
got outside the fire had grown very bad. I raced for an orchard that
jutted out of the wood. Bullets hummed and buzzed. Coming to it, I
found that there was wire round it. I then popped at full speed, like a
rabbit, into the wood again, through a thicket, down an enormous ditch,
up the other side, bang into some barbed wire, which cut my horse. It
was like diving on horseback. I turned round and galloped delicately
out again, riding full tilt round the orchard.
I found the Colonel, who was standing under shelter at the cross-roads
to the left of the road, facing the enemy, that led through the heart
of the wood. He mounted the bank and watched the Germans advancing. I
sat under the bank with M. and Alex. The German shells began to fall
close to us, knocking the trees about in the wood. There were some
sergeants very excited and pleased at the idea of a fight. They said:
“Now has come the time for deeds, not words.” They felt that they were
the men of the moment.
We considered whether the Germans were likely to charge down the road
along which I had come, but thought we could hold them effectively in
check from our corner and that the fire from the wood would reach them.
It was, I suppose, now about 10.30. Desmond, the Colonel and I rode
back into the big, green wood. It was very peaceful. The sun was
shining through the beech-trees, and for a bit the whole thing seemed
unreal. The C.O. talked to the men, telling them to reserve their fire
till the Germans were close on them. “Then you will kill them and
they won’t get up again.” That made them laugh. The German advance
began very rapidly. The Coldstreamers must have begun falling back
about this time. The Germans came up in front and on our left flank.
There was a tremendous fire. The leaves, branches, etc., rained upon
one. One’s face was constantly fanned by the wind from their bullets.
This showed how bad their fire was. My regiment took cover very well,
and after the first minute or two fired pretty carefully. Moonshine
was startled to begin with by the fire, but afterwards remained very
still and confidential. Desmond did not get off his horse; he told me
to lead my horse back into the wood and then come back to the firing
line. The Colonel then told me to gallop up to the Brigadier to say
that the retreat was being effectively carried out; that there were
two squadrons advancing and he did not know what force of infantry. In
this estimate he was very much out, as subsequent events proved. Eric,
now at home wounded, said to me: “The Germans seemed hardly to have
an advance guard; it was an army rolling over us.” When I found the
Brigadier he wanted to know if the C.O. seemed happy about things. I
said I thought on the whole he did. There were bullets everywhere and
men falling, but the fire was still too high. One bullet in about half
a million must have hit a man. I returned to the Colonel. Our men had
then begun to retire down the main road to Rond de la Reine. A galloper
came up and, as far as I heard, said that we were to hang on and not
retreat yet. This officer was, I think, killed immediately after giving
his message. The Colonel said that the Coldstreamers had already begun
to retreat, that we couldn’t hold on there, but must go back to the
position we had left. We were ordered to resume the position which
Hubert had been told to leave. The Germans were by this time about
250 yards away, firing on us with machine-guns and rifles. The noise
was perfectly awful. In a lull the C.O. said to the men: “Do you hear
that? Do you know what they are doing that for? They are doing that to
frighten you.” I said to him: “If that’s all, they might as well stop.
As far as I am concerned, they have succeeded, two hours ago.”
The men were ordered to charge, but the order was not heard in the
noise, and after we had held this position for some minutes a command
was given to retreat. Another galloper brought it, who also, I think,
was shot. Guernsey, whom I met with his company, asked me to gallop
back and tell Valentine he must retire his platoon; he had not received
the order. I found Valentine and got off my horse and walked him some
yards down the road, the Germans following. He, like everybody else,
was very pleased at the calm way the men were behaving.
I mounted and galloped after the Colonel, who said: “If only we could
get at them with the bayonet I believe one of our men is as good as
three of theirs.” He started in the direction of the Brigadier. Men
were now falling fast. I happened to see one man drop with a bayonet
in his hand a few yards off, and reined in my horse to see if I could
help him, but the C.O. called me and I followed him. The man whom I had
seen was Hubert, though I did not know it at the time. The C.O. said:
“It is impossible now to rescue wounded men; we have all we can do.”
He had a charmed life. He raced from one place to another through the
wood; cheering the men and chaffing them, and talking to me; smoking
cigarette after cigarette. Under ordinary conditions one would have
thought it mad to ride at the ridiculous pace we did over the very
broken ground, but the bullets made everything else irrelevant. At
about 1 o’clock we went up to the Brigadier at the corner of the road.
The fighting there was pretty hot. One of the men told the Colonel that
Hubert was killed. The Colonel said: “Are you sure?” The man said:
“Well, I can’t swear.” I was sent back to see. The man said he was
about 400 yards away, and as I galloped as hard as I could, G. called
to me: “To the right and then to the left.” As I raced through the wood
there was a cessation of the firing, though a number of shots came from
both sides. They snapped very close. I found Hubert in the road we had
been holding. I jumped off my horse and put my hand on his shoulder and
spoke to him. He must have been killed at once, and looked absolutely
peaceful. He cannot have suffered at all. I leant over to see if he
had letters in his pocket, when I heard a whistle 25 or 30 yards behind
me in the wood. I stood up and called: “If that is an Englishman, get
outside the wood and up to the corner like hell; you will be shot if
you try and join the rest through the wood. The Germans are between
us.” I bent over to pick up Hubert’s bayonet, when again a whistle came
and the sound of low voices, talking German. I then thought the sooner
I was away the better. As I swung into the saddle a shot came from just
behind me, missing me. I rode back as fast as Moonshine could go. The
lull in the firing had ceased, and the Germans were all round us. One
could see them in the wood, and they were shooting quite close. The
man who finally got me was about 15 to 20 yards away; his bullet must
have passed through a tree or through Bron’s great-coat, because it
came into my side broken up. It was like a tremendous punch. I galloped
straight on to my regiment and told the Colonel that Hubert was dead.
He said: “I am sorry, and I am sorry that you are hit. I am going to
charge.” He had told me earlier that he meant to if he got the chance.
I got off and asked them to take on my horse. Then I lay down on
the ground and an R.A.M.C. man dressed me. The Red Cross men gave a
loud whistle when they saw my wound, and said the bullet had gone
through me. The fire was frightfully hot. The men who were helping me
were crouching down, lying on the ground. While he was dressing me a
horse--his, I suppose--was shot just behind us. I asked them to go, as
they could do me no good and would only get killed or taken themselves.
The doctor gave me some morphia, and I gave them my revolver. They
put me on a stretcher, leaving another empty stretcher beside me. This
was hit several times. Shots came from all directions, and the fire
seemed to be lower than earlier in the day. The bullets were just above
me and my stretcher. I lost consciousness for a bit; then I heard my
regiment charging. There were loud cries and little spurts of spasmodic
shooting; then everything was quiet and a deep peace fell upon the
wood. It was very dreamlike.
It is really very difficult to reconstruct this fight. I think every
man’s attention was fixed like iron on doing his own job, otherwise
they would all have noticed more. I carry in my mind a number of very
vivid pictures--Desmond on his horse, Valentine and I discussing
fatalism, the C.O. smoking cigarettes in the cinema holders that I had
bought for him a few days before.
As I lay on the stretcher a jarring thought came to me. I had in my
pocket the flat-nosed bullets which the War Office had served out to us
as revolver ammunition. They are not dum-dum bullets, but they would
naturally not make as pleasant a wound as the sharp-nosed ones, and
it occurred to me that those having them would be shot. I searched my
pockets and flung mine away. I did not discover one which remained and
was buried later on,--but neither did the Germans. It was first hearing
German voices close by that jogged my memory about these bullets, and
the Germans were then so close that I felt some difficulty in throwing
the bullets away. The same idea must have occurred to others, for later
I heard the Germans speaking very angrily about the flat bullets they
had picked up in the wood, and saying how they would deal with any one
in whose possession they were found.
The glades became resonant with loud, raucous German commands and
occasional cries from wounded men. After about an hour and a half,
I suppose, a German with a red beard, with the sun shining on his
helmet and bayonet, came up looking like an angel of death. He walked
round from behind, and put his serrated bayonet on the empty stretcher
by me, so close that it all but touched me. The stretcher broke and
his bayonet poked me. I enquired in broken but polite German what he
proposed to do next; after reading the English papers and seeing the
way he was handling his bayonet, it seemed to me that there was going
to be another atrocity. He was extraordinarily kind and polite. He
put something under my head; offered me wine, water and cigarettes.
He said: “Wir sind kamaraden.” Another soldier came up and said: “Why
didn’t you stay in England--you who made war upon the Boers?” I said:
“We obeyed orders, just as you do; as for the Boers, they were our
enemies and are now our friends, and it is not your business to insult
wounded men.” My first friend then cursed him heartily, and he moved on.
The Germans passed in crowds. They seemed like steel locusts. Every
now and then I would hear: “Here is an officer who talks German,” and
the crowd would swerve in like a steel eddy. Then: “Schnell Kinder!”
and they would be off. They gave a tremendous impression of lightness
and iron. After some hours, when my wound was beginning to hurt, some
carriers came up to take me to a collecting place for the wounded.
These men were rather rough. They dropped me and my stretcher once, but
were cursed by an officer. They then carried me some distance, and took
me off the stretcher, leaving me on the ground. The Germans continued
to pass in an uninterrupted stream. One motor cyclist, but with a
bayonet in his hand, was very unpleasant. He said: “I would like to put
this in your throat and turn it round and round,” waving it down to my
nose. That sort of thing happened more than once or twice, but there
were always more friends than enemies, though as night fell the chance
of being left without friends increased. As it grew dark, I got rather
cold. One of the Germans saw this, covered me with his coat and said:
“Wait a moment, I will bring you something else.” He went off, and,
I suppose, stripped a dead Englishman and a dead German. The German
jersey which he gave me had no holes in it; the Englishman’s coat had
two bayonet cuts.