THE SAILING OF THE FORCE
_Follow, follow!
Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy;
And leave your England as dead midnight still.
* * * * *
For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd
With one appearing hair, that will not follow
These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?_
"_I consider that I have command of the sea when I am able to tell my
Government that they can move an expedition to any point without fear
of interference from an enemy's fleet._"--SIR GEOFFREY HORNBY.
Train No. B46 had slipped unostentatiously into its appointed siding
precisely on its scheduled time. For a couple of hours the men had
been working like galley-slaves to get the ammunition on board in time.
The C.O. and two other officers with their coats off were working as
hard as the rest. And it is no joke heaving up and packing neatly
cases of 18-pr. and howitzer shell, especially when you are not used to
it.
Finished at last, and with half an hour to the good. Another four
hours and they will be on the road themselves, the first step into the
unknown.
A couple of hours' sleep, a shave and a bath, a final look round the
battery office, a last hurried breakfast in the Mess, and a last
handshake with the colonel.
"You off? Well, good-bye, and good luck to you. We shall meet over
the other side, I expect."
The battery parades. "Battery all present, sir," reports the
sergeant-major. The report runs through until it reaches the C.O. A
few minutes to ride round the teams and then:
"Column o' route from the right. Walk--march!" and the battery is off
through the early morning quiet of the Aldershot streets, bound for the
port of embarkation.
Thus the mounted units, or most of them. Others by train. A few lines
will serve as description for all these.
A Railway Transport Officer meets the C.O. on the platform as the men
march in.
"Get your men in as quickly as you can, please; we always get off five
minutes ahead of time."
"What's our port?" asks the C.O.
"No idea. Push on, please."
The C.O. "pushes on."
"All in," he reports to the R.T.O., and turns for a final shake of the
hand.
"Well, good-bye, and good luck" (always that phrase); "wish I was
coming with you."
The R.T.O. gives the signal and looks wistfully for a moment after the
train before he clambers across the metals to dispatch another dozen or
so units from other sidings.
"Where are we embarking?" asks everyone. Not a soul knows. I don't
believe the engine-driver himself knew. He just went gaily forward
following the points or stopping for signals.
"Through Winchester! Why, it must be Southampton. Wonder what our
port will be the other side?"
Detraining and embarkation at Southampton were carried out under the
same admirable conditions of efficiency and speed, and with never a
single hitch. It seems little enough to read the sentence in cold
print, but the more one thinks about it the more wonderful appears the
organisation. Had it been the German War Staff directing movements the
affair would have seemed no more than an ordinary episode. But with
memories of the South African War, and a hundred everyday incidents
constantly revealing muddling, red-tape methods, one can find no words
in which to express adequately one's admiration for this astonishing
volte-face. One single incident, one of fifty like it, will show to
what excellent purpose the Authorities had profited by experience, even
in those early days.
An A.S.C. motor transport unit was detailed to embark upon a certain
ship. Nearly a day's warning had been given to the O.C. The lorries
were driven to the dock-side and were just being got on board. The
Embarkation Officer, who was standing quietly by, suddenly informed the
C.O. that his ship was not that one but another due to sail from
another dock some distance away.
The C.O. had barely time in which to get his lorries across, and the
ship sailed the moment all was reported clear.
An incident trivial enough, and how un-English it seemed at the time.
But after the secret landing of the 9th Army Corps at Suvla, and the
subsequent evacuation of Gallipoli, it would appear that we have
nothing to learn in the art of ruse.
The weather in those early days of August was perfect: the sea so calm
that there was no discomfort even, with the men and horses packed on
board like sardines in a tin. If it was a night crossing, the men
bedded down in rows out on the decks just as they had filed on board.
The transports were of all kinds, from an Atlantic liner to a coasting
tramp.
The ship's officers did more than their best for everybody's comfort,
giving up their cabins to the officers, sharing their meals and
refusing to accept any payment for food and drinks. If the skipper of
a certain ship of the Royal Mail Company, which sailed on the early
morning of August 16th from Southampton, chances to see these lines I
would tell him how gratefully his kindness is remembered, and how the
little mascot, in the shape of a tiny teapot from the steward's pantry,
brought the best of luck through ten months' hard service, always made
excellent tea whenever called upon, and now occupies a place of honour
in my china cabinet. Here's wishing everything of the best to those
who carry on the fine traditions of the blue or red ensign!
"Well, where are we bound for?" This to the First Officer.
"Don't know a bit," he replies. "The skipper may know, but I'm not
sure. Anyway he's as close as a barnacle about it."
We steamed across Channel with all lights on. It was another of those
astonishing facts which didn't strike one until later. We were off the
mouth of the Seine exactly twelve hours after sailing. And all that
time we only once sighted anything in the shape of a convoy, and that
was a T.B.D. for about twenty minutes a couple of miles to starboard.
At this stage it seems almost invidious to say anything more about the
work of the Grand Fleet during that first fortnight. And yet, even
now, the public is amazingly ignorant of what the Navy has
accomplished, or, indeed is still accomplishing. Ignorant, not through
indifference, but because the Authorities still steadily refuse to take
seriously in hand the work of education in war facts and ideas.
How the Navy succeeded in sweeping the enemy flag from the North Sea
and the Channel in a couple of days, apparently without firing a shot,
we cannot pretend to guess. Some day the story will be told. But the
result was the most astonishing manifestation of the real meaning of
naval supremacy that the world has ever seen, or is ever likely to see.
And Germany, by her naval inaction, lost for ever her great chance of
the War, and so, in failing to intercept or damage the British
Expeditionary Force, failed also to enter Paris and to end the war upon
her own terms within the period she had intended. The British Army may
have saved Paris, but the British Navy enabled it to do so.
Entering the Seine the skipper revealed the name of our destination,
Rouen. Another instance of organisation and forethought on the part of
the Authorities in using small ships so as to get right up the river
and disembark troops and stores well inland.
Again, this has become a matter of everyday routine, but in those days
each such new manoeuvre was sufficiently remarkable for admiring
comment.
Here the pilot came on board. A typical old son of Normandy he was,
grizzled and weatherbeaten, clambering aboard with stiff heavy gait.
On to the bridge he climbed: saw our lads clustered thick as bees in
the fo'c'sle and lower deck. Up went his cap into the air, tears
sprang to his eyes.
"Vivent les Anglais!" he shouted, "vive l'Angleterre! A--ah" (with an
instinct of triumph), "ça va bien. Ils arrivent."
How the lads yelled in answer.
"Cheer-o, moossoo. Veeve France! 'Who's your lady friend?' 'For he's
a jolly good fellow,'"--and other pertinent observations.
Then, to my astonishment, they burst into the "Marseillaise." How and
where they had learned it I have no idea. But sing it they did, and
very well too. They took that little curly bit in the middle, where a
B flat comes when you least expect it, just like an old hunter clearing
a stiff post-and-rails. And that old chap stood on the bridge and
mopped his eyes, and didn't care who saw him do it. The English had
really come to stand by his beloved France. _Comme ça va bien!_
That was the first hint we had of the reception which awaited us.
You picture the transport steaming slowly up river between the high,
wooded banks. Little houses, such as Peter Pan might have built for
Wendy, seem to sway dizzily in the tree-tops. Out on to the verandas,
down to the river path run the women and children, and the few old men
who remain. Everyone carries a little flag; not the French tricolour,
but the British Jack--or rather an excellent substitute.
Dimly one can see the waving hands, faintly across the water echo the
treble voices. But know now what it means, and gallantly our lads
respond to this welcome of our future hosts, who, with true French
courtesy, have met their guests at the very entrance gates.
Far up the hill-side, close under the ridge, there nestles a tiny
cottage. A blot of deep crimson staining the deeper green of the trees
makes me take out my binoculars. The good house-wife, with no British
flag available, yet determined to do honour to her country's allies,
has taken the red tablecloth, has stitched long bands of white across
it to form a St. Andrew's Cross, and flung it proudly across the
balustrade. What monarch ever had truer-hearted welcome from his own
people? Well, the sight brought a lump to the throat of at least one
Englishman.
And so slowly we steamed up the historic river. France had indeed
flung wide her gates in welcome. Here we found ourselves moving in a
small procession of transports. Greetings swung across from one ship
to the next, to combine and roar out a British answer to our French
friends on shore.
Ah! but it was good to feel that Britain had not failed France, though
the obligation were no more than a moral one. It was good to be an
Englishman that day; good to feel that Englishmen then in France could
now look Frenchmen squarely in the face and say:
"You thought we were going to stand aside, didn't you? Well, you see
we are coming in with you and you can bet that means that we intend to
see it through."
Yes, one felt proud as never before.