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LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
BY
J.H. MORGAN
LATE HOME OFFICE COMMISSIONER WITH THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
"And my delights were with the sons of men."
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1916
TO
LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR C.F.N. MACREADY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.
ADJUTANT-GENERAL TO THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
PREFACE
This book is an unofficial outcome of the writer's experiences during
the five months he was attached to the General Headquarters Staff as
Home Office Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force. His
official duties during that period involved daily visits to the
headquarters of almost every Corps, Division, and Brigade in the Field,
and took him on one or two occasions to the batteries and into the
trenches. They necessarily involved a familiar and domestic acquaintance
with the work of two of the great departments of the Staff at G.H.Q. So
much of these experiences of the work of the Staff and of the life of
the Army in the field as it appears discreet to record is here set down.
The writer desires to express his acknowledgments to his friends, Major
E.A. Wallinger, Major F.C.T. Ewald, D.S.O., and Captain W.A. Wallinger,
for their kindness in reading the proofs of some one or more of the
chapters in this book. Nor would his acknowledgments be complete
without some word of thanks to that brilliant soldier, Colonel E.D.
Swinton, D.S.O., with whom he was closely associated during the
discharge of the official duties at G.H.Q. of which this book is the
unofficial outcome. Most of these chapters originally appeared in the
pages of the _Nineteenth Century and After_, under the title to which
the book owes its name, and the writer desires to express his
obligations to the Editor, Mr. Wray Skilbeck, for his kind permission to
republish them. Similar acknowledgments are due to the Editor of
_Blackwood's Magazine_ for permission to reprint the short story,
"Stokes's Act," and to the Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_ in whose
hospitable pages some of the shorter sketches appeared--sometimes
anonymously.
The reader will observe that many of these sketches appear in the form
of what, to borrow a French term, is called the _conte_. The writer has
adopted that form of literary expression as the most efficacious way of
suppressing his own personality; the obtrusion of which, in the form of
"Reminiscences," would, he feels, be altogether disproportionate and
impertinent in view of the magnitude and poignancy of the great events
amid which it was his privilege to live and move. Moreover, his own
duties were neither spirited nor glorious. But the characters pourtrayed
and the events narrated in these pages are true in substance and in
fact. The writer has not had the will, even if he had had the power, to
"improve" the occasions; the reality was too poignant for that.
"Stokes's Act" and "The Coming of the Hun" are therefore "true"
stories--using truth in the sense of veracity not value--and the facts
came within the writer's own investigation. The investiture of fiction
has been here adopted for the obvious reason that neither of the
principal characters in these two stories would desire his name to be
known. So, too, in the other sketches, although the characters are
"real"--I can only hope that they will be half as real to the reader as
they were and are to me--the names are assumed.
It is my privilege to inscribe this little book to Lieut.-General Sir
C.F.N. Macready, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., to whose staff I was attached and to
whose friendship, encouragement, and hospitality I owe a debt which no
words can discharge.
J. H. M.
_January 1916._
CONTENTS
I
THE BASE
PAGE
I. BOBS BAHADUR 3
II. AT THE BASE DEPÔT 11
III. THE WILTSHIRES 17
IV. THE BASE 26
V. A COUNCIL OF INDIA 36
VI. THE TROOP TRAIN 45
II
THE FRONT
VII. THE TWO RICHEBOURGS 59
VIII. IDOLS OF THE CAVE 65
IX. STOKES'S ACT 73
X. THE FRONT 92
XI. AT G.H.Q. 103
XII. MORT POUR LA PATRIE 119
XIII. MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS 128
XIV. THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS 134
III
UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES
XV. A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" 143
XVI. PETER 154
XVII. THREE TRAVELLERS 166
XVIII. BARBARA 173
XIX. AN ARMY COUNCIL 178
XX. THE FUGITIVES 189
XXI. A "DUG-OUT" 195
XXII. CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914 202
IV
THE FRONT AGAIN
XXIII. THE COMING OF THE HUN 209
XXIV. THE HILL 226
XXV. THE DAY'S WORK 232
XXVI. FIAT JUSTITIA 244
XXVII. HIGHER EDUCATION 252
XXVIII. THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS 259
XXIX. THE "FRONT" ONCE MORE 270
XXX. HOME AGAIN 288
I
THE BASE
I
BOBS BAHADUR
It had gone eight bells on the S.S. _G----_. The decks had been
washed down with the hosepipe and the men paraded for the morning's
inspection. The O.C. had scanned them with a roving eye, till catching
sight of an orderly two files from the left he had begged him, almost as
a personal favour, to get his hair cut. To an untutored mind the
orderly's hair was about one-eighth of an inch in length, but the O.C.
was inflexible. He was a colonel in that smartest of all medical
services, the I.M.S., whose members combine the extensive knowledge of
the general practitioner with the peculiar secrets of the Army surgeon,
and he was fastidious. Then he said "Dismiss," and they went their
appointed ways. The Indian cooks were boiling _dhal_ and rice in the
galley; the bakers were squatting on their haunches on the lower deck,
making _chupattis_--they were screened against the inclemency of the
weather by a tarpaulin--and they patted the leathery cakes with
persuasive slaps as a dairymaid pats butter. Low-caste sweepers glided
like shadows to and fro. Suddenly some one crossed the gangway and the
sentry stiffened and presented arms. The O.C. looked down from the upper
deck and saw a lithe, sinewy little figure with white moustaches and
"imperial"; the eyes were of a piercing steel-blue. The figure was clad
in a general's field-service uniform, and on his shoulder-straps were
the insignia of a field-marshal. The colonel stared for a moment, then
ran hastily down the ladder and saluted.
* * * * *
Together they passed down the companion-ladder. At the foot of it they
encountered a Bengali orderly, who made a profound obeisance.
"Shiva Lal," said the O.C., "I ordered the portholes to be kept
unfastened and the doors in the bulkheads left open. This morning I
found them shut. Why was this?"
"Sahib, at eight o'clock I found them open."
"It was at eight o'clock," said the colonel sternly, "that I found them
shut."
The Bengali spread out his hands in deprecation. "If the sahib says so
it must be so," he pleaded, adding with truly Oriental irrelevancy, "I
am a poor man and have many children." It is as useless to argue with
an Indian orderly as it is to try conclusions with a woman.
"Let it not occur again," said the colonel shortly, and with an apology
to his guest they passed on.
They paused in front of a cabin. Over the door was the legend "Pathans,
No. 1." The door was shut fast. The colonel was annoyed. He opened the
door, and four tall figures, with strongly Semitic features and bearded
like the pard, stood up and saluted. The colonel made a mental note of
the closed door; he looked at the porthole--it was also closed. The
Pathan loves a good "fug," especially in a European winter, and the
colonel had had trouble with his patients about ventilation. A kind of
guerilla warfare, conducted with much plausibility and perfect
politeness, had been going on for some days between him and the Pathans.
The Pathans complained of the cold, the colonel of the atmosphere. At
last he had met them halfway, or, to be precise, he had met them with a
concession of three inches. He had ordered the ship's carpenter to fix a
three-inch hook to the jamb and a staple to the door, the terms of the
truce being that the door should be kept three inches ajar. And now it
was shut. "Why is this?" he expostulated. For answer they pointed to the
hook. "Sahib, the hook will not fasten!"
The colonel examined it; it was upside down. The contumacious Pathans
had quietly reversed the work of the ship's carpenter, and the hook was
now useless without being ornamental. With bland ingenuous faces they
stared sadly at the hook, as if deprecating such unintelligent
craftsmanship. The Field-Marshal smiled--he knew the Pathan of old; the
colonel mentally registered a black mark against the delinquents.
"Whence come you?" said the Field-Marshal.
"From Tirah, Sahib."
"Ah! we have had some little trouble with your folk at Tirah. But all
that is now past. Serve the Emperor faithfully and it shall be well with
you."
"Ah! Sahib, but I am sorely troubled in my mind."
"And wherefore?"
"My aged father writes that a pig of a thief hath taken our cattle and
abducted our women-folk. I would fain have leave to go on furlough and
lie in a nullah at Tirah with my rifle and wait for him. Then would I
return to France."
"Patience! That can wait. How like you the War?"
"_Burra Achha Tamasha_,[1] Sahib. But we like not their big guns. We
would fain come at them with the bayonet. Why are we kept back in the
trenches, Sahib?"
"Peace! It shall come in good time."
They passed into another cabin reserved for native officers. A tall Sikh
rose to a half-sitting posture and saluted.
"What is your name?"
"H---- Sing, Sahib."
"There was a H---- Sing with me in '78," said the Field-Marshal
meditatively. "With the Kuram Field Force. He was my orderly. He served
me afterwards in Burmah and was promoted to subadar."
The aquiline features of the Sikh relaxed, his eyes of lustrous jet
gleamed. "Even so, Sahib, he was my father."
"Good! he was a man. Be worthy of him. And you too are a subadar?"
"Yea, Sahib, I have eaten the King's salt these twelve years."
"That is well. Have you children?"
"Yea, Sahib, God has been very good."
"And your lady mother, is she alive?"
"The Lord be praised, she liveth."
"And how is your 'family'?"
"She is well, Sahib."
"And how like you this War?"
"Greatly, Sahib. The _Goora-log_[2] and ourselves fight like brothers
side by side. But we would fain see the fine weather. Then there will be
some _muzza_[3] in it."
The Field-Marshal smiled and passed on.
They entered the great ward in the main hold of the ship. Here were
avenues of swinging cots, in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as
snow, and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save where some
were sitting up--the Sikhs binding their hair as they fingered the
_kangha_ and the _chakar_, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring,
which are of the five symbols of their freemasonry. The Field-Marshal
stopped to talk to a big _sowar_. As he did so the men in their cots
raised their heads and a sudden whisper ran round the ward. Dogras,
Rajputs, Jats, Baluchis, Garhwalis clutched at the little pulleys over
their cots, pulled themselves up with painful efforts, and saluted. In a
distant corner a Mahratta from the aboriginal plains of the Deccan, his
features dark almost to blackness, looked on uncomprehendingly; Ghurkhas
stared in silence, their broad Mongolian faces betraying little of the
agitation that held them in its spell. From the rest there arose such a
conflict of tongues as has not been heard since the Day of Pentecost.
From bed to bed passed the magic words, "It is he." Every man uttered a
benediction. Many wept tears of joy. A single thought seemed to animate
them, and they voiced it in many tongues.
"Ah, now we shall smite the _German-log_ exceedingly. We shall fight
even as tigers, for Jarj Panjam.[4] The great Sahib has come to lead us
in the field. Praised be his exalted name."
The Field-Marshal's eyes shone.
"No, no," he said, "my time is finished. I am too old."
"Nay, Sahib," said the sowar as he hung on painfully to his pulley, "the
body may be old but the brain is young."
The Field-Marshal strove to reply but could not. He suddenly turned on
his heel and rushed up the companion-ladder. When halfway up he
remembered the O.C. and retraced his steps. The tears were streaming
down his face.
"Sir," he said, in a voice the deliberate sternness of which but ill
concealed an overmastering emotion, "your hospital arrangements are
excellent. I have seen none better. I congratulate you. Good-day." The
next moment he was gone.
* * * * *
Five days later the colonel was standing on the upper deck; he gripped
the handrail tightly and looked across the harbour basin. Overhead the
Red Cross ensign was at half-mast, and at half-mast hung the Union Jack
at the stern. And so it was with every ship in port. A great silence lay
upon the harbour; even the hydraulic cranes were still, and the winches
of the trawlers had ceased their screaming. Not a sound was to be heard
save the shrill poignant cry of the gulls and the hissing of an exhaust
pipe. As the colonel looked across the still waters of the harbour basin
he saw a bier, covered with a Union Jack, being slowly carried across
the gangway of the leave-boat; a little group of officers followed it.
In a few moments the leave-boat, after a premonitory blast from the
siren which woke the sleeping echoes among the cliffs, cast off her
moorings and slowly gathered way. Soon she had cleared the harbour mouth
and was out upon the open sea. The colonel watched her with straining
eyes till she sank beneath the horizon. Then he turned and went
below.[5]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A jolly fine show.
[2] The English soldiers.
[3] Spice.
[4] King George the Fifth.
[5] The writer can vouch for the truth of this narrative. He owes his
knowledge of what passed to the hospitality on board of his friend the
O.C. the Indian hospital ship in question.
II
AT THE BASE DEPÔT
Any enunciation by officers responsible for training of principles
other than those contained in this Manual or any practice of
methods not based on those principles is forbidden.--_Infantry
Training Manual._
The officers in charge of details at No. 19 Infantry Base Depôt had made
their morning inspections of the lines. They had seen that blankets were
folded and tent flies rolled up, had glanced at rifles, and had
inspected the men's kits with the pensive air of an intending purchaser.
Having done which, they proceeded to take an unsympathetic farewell of
the orderly officer whom they found in the orderly room engaged in
reading character by handwriting with the aid of the office stamp.
"I never knew there was so much individuality in the British Army," the
orderly officer dolefully exclaimed as he contemplated a pile of letters
waiting to be franked and betraying marked originality in their
penmanship.
"You're too fond of opening other people's letters," the subaltern
remarked pleasantly. "It's a bad habit and will grow on you. When you go
home you'll never be able to resist it. You'll be unfit for decent
society."
"Go away, War Baby," retorted the orderly officer, as he turned aside
from the subaltern, who has a beautiful pink and white complexion, and
was at Rugby rather less than a year ago.
The War Baby smiled wearily. "Let's go and see the men at drill," he
remarked. "We've got a corporal here who's A1 at instruction." As we
passed, the sentry brought his right hand smartly across the small of
the butt of his rifle, and, seeing the Major behind us, brought the
rifle to the present.
We came out on a field sprinkled with little groups of men in charge of
their N.C.O.'s. They were the "details." These were drafts for the
Front, and every regiment of the Division had sent a deputation. Two or
three hundred yards away a platoon was marching with a short quick trot,
carrying their rifles at the trail, and I knew them for Light Infantry,
for such are their prerogatives. Concerning Light Infantry much might be
written that is not to be found in the regimental records. As, for
example, the reason why the whole Army shouts "H.L.I." whenever the ball
is kicked into touch; also why the Oxford L.I. always put out their
tongues when they meet the Durhams. Some day some one will write the
legendary history of the British Army, its myth, custom, and folklore,
and will explain how the Welsh Fusiliers got their black "flash" (with a
digression on the natural history of antimacassars), why the 7th Hussars
are called the "White Shirts," why the old 95th will despitefully use
you if you cry, "Who stole the grog?" and what happens on Albuera day in
the mess of the Die Hards. But that is by the way.
The drafts at No. 19, having done a route march the day before, had been
turned out this morning to do a little musketry drill by way of keeping
them fit. A platoon lay flat on their stomachs in the long grass, the
burnished nails on the soles of their boots twinkling in the sun like
miniature heliographs. From all quarters of the field sharp words of
command rang out like pistol shots. "Three hundred. Five rounds. Fire."
As the men obeyed the sergeant's word of command, the air resounded with
the clicking of bolts like a chorus of grasshoppers. We pursued a
section of the Royal Fusiliers in command of a corporal until he halted
his men for bayonet exercise. He drew them up in two ranks facing each
other, and began very deliberately with an allocution on the art of the
bayonet.
"There ain't much drill about the bayonet," he said encouragingly. "What
you've got to do is to get the other fellow, and I don't care how you
get 'im as long as you knock 'im out of time. On guard!"
The men in each rank brought the butts of their rifles on to their right
hips and pointed with their left feet forward at the breasts of the men
opposite. "Rest!" The rifles were brought to earth between twelve pairs
of feet. "Point! Withdraw! On guard!" They pointed, withdrew, and were
on guard again with the precision of piston-rods.
"Now watch me, for your life may depend upon it," and the corporal
proceeded to give them the low parry which is useful when you are taking
trenches and find a _chevaux-de-frise_ of the enemy's bayonets
confronting you. Each rank knocked an imaginary bayonet aside and
pointed at invisible feet. The high parry followed. So far the men had
been merely nodding at each other across a space of some twelve yards,
and it was hot work and tedious. The sweat ran down their faces, which
glistened in the sun. "Now I'm going to give you the butt exercises";
they brightened visibly.
"I am pointing--so!--and 'ave been parried. I bring the butt round on
'is shoulder, using my weight on it. I bring my left leg behind 'is left
leg. I throw 'im over. Then I give the beggar what for. So!" The words
were hardly out of his mouth before he had thrown himself upon the
nearest private and laid him prostrate. The others smiled faintly as No.
98678 picked himself up and nonchalantly returned to his old position as
if this were a banal compliment. "Now then. First butt exercise." One
rank advanced upon the other, and the two ranks were locked in a close
embrace. They remained thus with muscles strung like bowstrings,
immobile as a group of statuary.
"That'll do. Now I'll give you the second butt exercise. You bring the
butt round on 'is jaw--so!--and then kick 'im in the guts with your
knee." Perhaps the section, which stood like a wall of masonry, looked
surprised; more probably the surprise was mine. But the corporal
explained. "Don't think you're Tottenham Hotspur in the Cup Final. Never
mind giving 'im a foul. You've got to 'urt 'im or 'e'll 'urt you. Kick
'im anywhere with your knees or your feet. Your ammunition boots will
make 'im feel it. No!"--he turned to a young private whose left hand was
grasping his rifle high up between the fore-sight and the
indicator--"You mustn't do that. Always get your 'and between the
back-sight and the breech. So! The back-sight will protect your fingers
from being cut by the other fellow. Now the third butt exercise."
As we turned away the Major thoughtfully remarked to me, "There isn't
much of that in the Infantry Manual. But the corporal knows his job.
When you're in a scrap you haven't time to think about the rules of the
game; the automatic movements come all right, but in a clinch you've got
to fight like a cat with tooth and claw, use your boots, your knee, or
anything that comes handy. Perhaps that's why your lithe little Cockney
is such a useful man with the bayonet. Now the Hun is a hefty beggar,
and he isn't hampered by any ideas of playing the game, but he's as
mechanical as a vacuum brake, and he's no good in a scrap."
We returned to the orderly room. The orderly officer had a pile of
letters on his right impressed with a red triangle, and contemplated the
completion of his labours with gloomy satisfaction. "But it's very
interesting--such a revelation of the emotions of battle and all that,"
I incautiously remarked. "Oh yes, very revealing," he yawned. "Look at
that"; and he held out a letter. It ran:
DEAR MOTHER--I'm reported fit for duty and am going back
to the Front with the new drafts. I forgot to tell you we were in a
bit of a scrap before I came here. We outed a lot of Huns. How is
old Alf?--
Your loving son, JIM.
The "bit of a scrap" was the battle of Neuve Chapelle. The British
soldier is an artist with the bayonet. But he is no great man with the
pen. Which is as it should be.
III
THE WILTSHIRES
"You talk to him, sir. He zeed a lot though he be kind o' mazed like
now; he be mortal bad, I do think. But such a cheerful chap he be. I
mind he used to say to us in the trenches: 'It bain't no use grousing.
What mun be, mun be.' Terrible strong he were, too. One of our officers
wur hit in front of the parapet and we coulden get 'n in nohow--'twere
too hot; and Hunt, he unrolled his puttees and made a girt rope of 'em
and threw 'em over the parapet and draw'd en in. Ah! that a did."
It was in one of the surgical tents of "No. 6 General" at the base. The
middle of the ward was illuminated by an oil-lamp, shaped like an
hour-glass, which shed a circle of yellow radiance upon the faces of the
nurse and the orderly officer, as they stood examining a case-sheet by
the light of its rays. Beyond the penumbra were rows of white beds, and
in the farthest corner lay the subject of our discourse. "Can I talk to
him?" I said to the nurse. "Yes, if you don't stay too long," she
replied briskly, "and don't question him too much. He's in a bad way,
his wounds are very septic."
He nodded to me as I approached. At the head of the bed hung a
case-sheet and temperature-chart, and I saw at a glance the
superscription--
Hunt, George, Private, No. 1578936 B Co. ---- Wiltshires.
I noticed that the temperature-line ran sharply upwards on the chart.
"So you're a Wiltshireman?" I said. "So am I." And I held out my hand.
He drew his own from beneath the bedclothes and held mine in an iron
grip.
"What might be your parts, sir?"
"W---- B----."
His eyes lighted up with pleasure. "Why, zur, it be nex' parish; I come
from B----. I be main pleased to zee ye, zur."
"The pleasure is mine," I said. "When did you join?"
"I jined in July last year, zur. I be a resarvist."
"You have been out a long time, then?"
"Yes, though it do seem but yesterday, and I han't seen B---- since. I
mind how parson, 'e came to me and axed, 'What! bist gwine to fight for
King and Country, Jarge?' And I zed, 'Yes, sur, that I be--for King and
Country and ould Wiltshire. I guess we Wiltshiremen be worth two Gloster
men any day though they do call us 'Moon-rakers.' Not but what the
Glosters ain't very good fellers," he added indulgently. "Parson, he be
mortal good to I; 'e gied I his blessing and 'e write and give I all the
news of the parish. He warnt much of a preacher though a did say 'Dearly
beloved' in church in a very taking way as though he were a-courting."
"What was I a-doin', zur? Oh, I wur with Varmer Twine, head labr'er I
was. Strong? Oh yes, zur, pretty fair. I mind I could throw a zack o'
vlour ower my shoulder when I wur a boy o' vourteen. Why! I wur stronger
then than I be now. 'Twas India that done me."
"Is it a large farm?" I asked, seeking to beguile him with homely
thoughts.
"Six 'undred yackers. Oh yes, I'd plenty to do, and I could turn me
hands to most things, though I do say it. There weren't a man in the
parish as could beat I at mowing or putting a hackle on a rick, though I
do say it. And I could drive a straight furrow too. Heavy work it were.
The soil be stiff clay, as ye knows, zur. This Vlemish clay be very
loike it. Lord, what a mint o' diggin' we 'ave done in they trenches to
be sure. And bullets vlying like wopses zumtimes."
"Are your parents alive?" I asked.
"No, zur, they be both gone to Kingdom come. Poor old feyther," he said
after a pause. "I mind 'un now in his white smock all plaited in vront
and mother in her cotton bonnet--you never zee 'em in Wiltshire now.
They brought us all up on nine shillin' a week--ten on us we was."
"I suppose you sometimes wish you were back in Wiltshire now?" I said.
"Zumtimes, sir," he said wistfully. "It'll be about over with lambing
season, now," he added reflectively. "Many's the tiddling lamb I've
a-brought up wi' my own hands. Aye, and the may'll soon be out in
blossom. And the childern makin' daisy-chains."
"Yes," I said. "And think of the woods--the bluebells and anemones! You
remember Folly Wood?"
He smiled. "Ah, that I do: I mind digging out an old vixen up there,
when 'er 'ad gone to earth, and the 'ounds with their tails up
a-hollering like music. The Badminton was out that day. I were allus
very fond o' thuck wood. My brother be squire's keeper there. Many a
toime we childern went moochin' in thuck wood--nutting and bird-nesting.
Though I never did hold wi' taking more'n one egg out of a nest, and I
allus did wet my vinger avore I touched the moss on a wren's nest. They
do say as the little bird 'ull never go back if ye doant."
His mind went roaming among childhood's memories and his eyes took on a
dreaming look.
"Mother, she were a good woman--no better woman in the parish, parson
did say. She taught us to say every night, 'Our Father, which art in
heaven'--I often used to think on it at night in the trenches. Them
nights--they do make you think a lot. It be mortal queer up there--you
veels as if you were on the edge of the world. I used to look up at the
sky and mind me o' them words in the Bible, 'When I conzider the
heavens, the work o' Thy vingers and the stars which Thou hast made,
what is man that Thou art mindful of him?' One do feel oncommon small in
them trenches at night."
"I suppose you've had a hot time up there?"
"Ah that I have. And I zeed some bad things."
"Bad?"
"Cruel, sir, mortal cruel, I be maning. 'Twur dree weeks come Monday.[6]
We wur in an advance near Wypers--'bout as far as 'tis from our village
to Wootton Bassett. My platoon had to take a house. We knowed 'twould be
hot work, and Jacob Scaplehorn and I did shake hands. 'Jarge,' 'e zed,
'if I be took write to my wife and tell 'er it be the Lard's will and
she be not to grieve.' And I zed, 'So be, Jacob, and you'll do the same
for I.' Our Officer, Capt'n S---- T----, d'you know 'en, sir? No? 'E com
from Devizes way, he wur a grand man, never thinking of hisself but only
of us humble chaps--he said, 'Now for it, lads,' and we advances in
'stended order. We wur several yards apart, just loike we was when a
section of us recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust jined
the Army an' sergeant made us drill with skipping-ropes a-stretched out
so as to get the spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that there
house--you know how they sputters. It cut down us poor chaps loike a
reaper. Jacob Scaplehorn wur nex' me and I 'eerd 'un say 'O Christ
Jesus' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'e never said no more. 'E wur a
good man, wur Scaplehorn"--he added musingly--"and 'e did good things.
And some chaps wur down and dragging their legs as if they did'n b'long
to 'em. I sort o' saw all that wi'out seeing it, in a manner o' spaking;
'twere only arterwards it did come back to me. There warn't no time to
think. And by the toime we got to thic house there were only 'bout
vifteen on us left. We had to scrouge our way in through the buttry
winder and we 'eerd a girt caddle inside, sort o' scuffling; 'twere the
Germans makin' for the cellar. And our Capt'n posted some on us at top
of cellar steps and led the rest on us up the stairs to a kind o' tallet
where thuck machine-gun was. And what d'ye think we found, sir?" he
said, raising himself on his elbow.
"What?"
"There was a poor girl there--half daft she wur--wi' nothing on but a
man's overcoat. And she rushed out avore us on the landing and began
hammering with her hands against a bedroom door and it wur locked. We
smashed 'en in wi' our rifle-butts, and God's mercy! we found a poor
woman there, her mother seemingly, with her breast all bloody an' her
clothes torn. I could'n mak' out what 'er wur saying but Capt'n 'e told
us as the Germans 'ad ravished her. We used our field-dressings and
tried to make the poor soul comfortable and Capt'n 'e sent a volunteer
back for stretcher-bearers."
"And what about the Germans?" I asked.
"Ah, I be coming to that, zur. Capt'n says, 'Now, men, we're going to
reckon with those devils down below.' And we went downstairs and he
stood at top of cellar-steps, 'twere mortal dark, an' says, 'Come on up
out o' that there.' And they never answered a word, but we could 'ear
'em breathing hard. We did'n know how many there were and the cellar
steps were main narrow, as narrow as th' opening in that tent over
there. So Capt'n 'e says, 'Fetch me some straw, Hunt.' 'Twere a kind o'
farmhouse and I went out into the backside and vetched some. And Capt'n
and us put a lot of it at top of steps and pushed a lot more vurther
down, using our rifles like pitchforks and then 'e blew on his tinder
and set it alight. 'Stand back, men,' he says, 'and be ready for 'em
with the bay'net.' 'Tweren't no manner o' use shooting; 'twere too close
in there and our bullets might ha' ricochayed. We soon 'eerd 'em
a-coughing. There wur a terrible deal o' smoke, and there wur we
a-waiting at top of them stairs for 'em to come up like rats out of a
hole. And two on 'em made a rush for it and we caught 'em just like's we
was terriers by an oat-rick; we had to be main quick. 'Twere like
pitching hay. And then three more, and then more. And none on us uttered
a word.
"An' when it wur done and we had claned our bay'nets in the straw,
Capt'n 'e said, 'Men, you ha' done your work as you ought to ha' done.'"
He paused for a moment. "They be bad fellows," he mused. "O Christ! they
be rotten bad. Twoads they be! I never reckon no good 'ull come to men
what abuses wimmen and childern. But I'm afeard they be nation
strong--there be so many on 'em."
His tale had the simplicity of an epic. But the telling of it had been
too much for him. Beads of perspiration glistened on his brow. I felt it
was time for me to go. I sought first to draw his mind away from the
contemplation of these tragic things.
"Are you married?" I asked. The eyes brightened in the flushed face.
"Yes, that I be, and I 'ave a little boy, he be a sprack little chap."
"And what are you going to make of him?"
"I'm gwine to bring un up to be a soldjer," he said solemnly. "To fight
them Germans," he added. He saw the great War in an endless perspective
of time; for him it had no end. "You will soon be home in Wiltshire
again," I said encouragingly. He mused. "Reckon the Sweet Williams 'ull
be out in the garden now; they do smell oncommon sweet. And
mother-o'-thousands on the wall. Oh-h-h." A spasm of pain contracted his
face. The nurse was hovering near and I saw my time was up. "My dear
fellow," I said lamely, "I fear you are in great pain."
"Ah!" he said, "but it wur worth it."
* * * * *
The next day I called to have news of him. The bed was empty. He was
dead.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] This story is here given as nearly as possible in the exact words of
the narrator.--J.H.M.
IV
THE BASE
If G.H.Q. is the brain of the Army, the Base is as certainly its heart.
For hence all the arteries of that organism draw their life, and on the
systole and diastole of the Base, on the contractions and dilatations of
its auricles and ventricles, the Army depends for its circulation. To
and from the Base come and go in endless tributaries men, horses,
supplies, and ordnance.
The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage.
If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and
understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position
on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the
harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at
their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the _patois_ of the
littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the
shrill challenge of the gulls. Stand where the Military Police are on
point duty and you will see a stream of Red Cross motor ambulances, a
trickle of base details, a string of invalided horses in charge of an
A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted motor-bus crowded with drafts for
the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their
moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships
unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile
up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless
concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here
are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's
brewery--wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate
palates of the Indian contingent. Somewhere behind there is a park of
ammunition guarded like a harem. In the railway sidings are duplicate
supply trains, steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. officer on board
ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond
the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the
grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two
amphibious petty officers darning their socks.
In huge offices improvised out of deal boarding Army Service Corps
officers are docketing stupendous files of way-bills, loading-tables,
and indents, what time the Railway Transport Officer is making up his
train of trucks for the corresponding supplies. The A.S.C. uses up more
stationery than all the departments in Whitehall, and its motto is
_litera scripta manet_--which has been explained by an A.S.C. sergeant,
instructing a class of potential officers, as meaning "Never do anything
without a written order, but, whatever you do, never write one." For an
A.S.C. court of inquiry has as impassioned a preference for written over
oral evidence as the old Court of Chancery. So that if your way-bill
testifies:
Truck No. Contents
19414 Jam 36 x 50
and from the thirty-six cases of fifty pots one pot of jam is missing on
arrival at rail-head, then, though truck 19414 arrived sealed and your
labels undefaced, it will go hard with you as Train Officer unless you
can produce that pot.
For the feeding of the Army is a delicate business and complicated. It
is not enough to secure that there be sufficient "caloric units" in the
men's rations; there are questions of taste. The Brahmin will not touch
beef; the Mahomedan turns up his nose at pork; the Jain is a vegetarian;
the Ghurkha loves the flesh of the goat. And every Indian must have his
ginger, garlic, red chilli, and turmeric, and his chupattis of
unleavened bread. One such warehouse we entered and beheld with
stupefaction mountainous boxes of ghee and hogsheads of goor, rice,
dried apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. Storekeepers in turbans stood
round us, who, being asked whether it was well with the Indian and his
food, answered us with a great shout, like the Ephesians, "Yea, the
exalted Government hath done great things and praised be its name." To
which we replied "Victory to the Holy Ganges water." Their lustrous eyes
beamed at the salutation.
Great, indeed, is the Q.M.G. He supplies manna in the wilderness, and
like the manna of the Israelites it has never been known to fail. It is
of him that the soldier in the trenches says, in the words of the
prophet, "He hath filled my belly with his delicates." And his caravans
cover the face of the earth. You meet them everywhere, each Supply
Column a self-contained unit like a fleet. It has its O.C., its cooks,
its seventy-two motor lorries, with three men to each, and its "mobiles"
or travelling workshops with dynamo, lathe, drilling machine, and a crew
of skilled artificers, ready to tackle any motor-lorry that is put out
of action. I take off my hat to those handy-men; many times have they
helped me out of a tight place and performed delicate operations on the
internal organs of my military car in the inhospitable night. It is a
brave sight and fortifying to see a Supply Column winding in and out
between the poplars on the perilously arched _pavé_ of the long sinuous
roads, each wagon keeping its distance, like battleships in line, and
every one of them boasting a good Christian name chalked up on the
tail-board. For what his horses are to a driver and his eighteen-pounder
to a gunner, such is his wagon to the A.S.C. man who is detailed to it.
It is his caravan. Many a time, on long and lonely journeys from the
Base to the Front, have I been cheered to find a Supply Column drawn up
on the roadside in a wooded valley, on a bare undulating down, or in a
chalk quarry, while the men were making tea over a blue wood fire. If
you love a gipsy life join the A.S.C.
Within this one-mile radius of the A.S.C. headquarters at the Base are
some twenty military hospitals improvised out of hotels, gaming-houses,
and railway waiting-rooms. For the Base is the great Clearing House for
the sick and wounded, and its register of patients is a kind of
barometer of the state of affairs at the Front. When that register sinks
very low, it means that the atmospheric conditions at the Front are
getting stormy, and that an order has come down to evacuate and prepare
four thousand beds. Then you watch the newspapers, for you know
something is going to happen up there. And in those same hospitals men
are working night and day; the bacteriologists studying "smears" under
microscopes, while the surgeons are classifying, operating, "dressing,"
marking temperature-charts, and annotating case-sheets. And in every
hospital there is a faint mysterious incense, compounded not
disagreeably of chloride of sodium and iodised catgut, which intensifies
the dim religious atmosphere of the shaded wards. If G.H.Q. is the
greatest of military academies, the Base hospitals are indubitably the
wisest of medical schools. Never have the sciences of bacteriology and
surgery been studied with such devotion as under these urgent clinical
impulses. Here are men of European reputation who have left their
laboratories and consulting-rooms at home to wage a never-ending
scientific contest with death and corruption. They have slain
"frostbite" with lanoline, turpentine, and a change of socks; they have
fought septic wounds with chloride of sodium and the ministries of
unlimited oxygen; they have defied "shock" after amputation by
"blocking" the nerves of the limb by spinal injection, as a signalman
blocks traffic. They have called in Nature to the aid of science and
have summoned the oxygen of the air and the lymph of the body to the
self-help of wounds.
High up on the downs is the Convalescent Camp. Here the O.C. has turned
what was a swamp last December into a Garden City, draining, planting,
building, installing drying-rooms of asbestos, disinfectors, laundries,
and shower-baths, constructing turf incinerators and laying down
pavements of brick and slag. Borders have been planted, grass sown, and
shrubs and trees put up--all this with the labour of the convalescents.
There is a football ground, of which recreation is not the only purpose,
for the O.C. has original ideas about distinguishing between "shock," or
neurasthenia, and malingering by other methods than testing a man's
reflexes. He just walks abstractedly round that football ground of an
afternoon and studies the form of the players. In this self-contained
community is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library, a theatre. In two
neighbouring paddocks are the isolation camps for scarlet fever and
cerebro-meningitis, and as soon as a man complains of headache and
temperature he is segregated there, preparatory to being sent down to
No. 14 Stationary to have his spinal fluid examined by the
bacteriologists. Here, in fact, the man and his kit, instead of being
thrown on the scrap-heap, are renewed and made whole, restored in mind,
body, and estate, his clothes disinfected and mended, the "snipers"
treated to a hot iron, and his razor and tooth-brush replaced.
For true it is that at the Base they study loving-kindness, and
chaplains and doctors and nurses are busy with delicate ministries
seeking to cure, to assuage, and to console. Alas! on what tragic
errands do so many come and go; parents like Joseph and Mary seeking
their child, and wives their husbands, in hope, in fear, in joy, in
anguish, too often finding that the bright spirit has returned to God
Who gave it, and that nothing is left but to follow him behind the bier
draped with the Union Jack to the little cemetery on the hill.... But
for one that is buried here a thousand lie where they fell. Those
stricken fields of Flanders! nevermore will they be for us the scene of
an idle holiday; they will be a place of pilgrimage and a shrine of
prayer. I well remember--I can never forget--a journey I made in the
company of a French staff officer over the country that lies between
Paris and the river Aisne. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in
the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and
between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little
tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden
cross. By each cross was a soldier's képi, and sometimes a coat,
bleached by the sun and rain. Instinctively we bared our heads, and as
we walked from one grave to another I could hear the orderly behind us
muttering words of prayer. That lonely oratory was the battlefield of
the Marne. Seasons will come and go, man will plough and sow, the earth
will yield her increase, but those graves will never be disturbed by
share or sickle. They are holy ground.
So it is with the fields of Flanders. In those fields our gallant dead
lie where they fell, and where they lie the earth is dedicated to them
for ever. Of the British Expeditionary Force that landed in France in
August 1914 perhaps not 10 per cent remain. Like the dead heroes whose
ghostly voices whispered in the ears of L'Aiglon on the field of Wagram,
they haunt the plains of France. But their voices are the voices of
exhortation, and their breath and finer spirit have passed into the
drafts that have taken their place. Their successors greet Death like a
friend and go into battle as to a festival, counting no price--youth,
health, life--too high to pay for the country of their birth and their
devotion. The nation that can nurture men such as these can calmly meet
her enemy in the gate. Verily she shall not pass away.
* * * * *
The moon was at the full as I climbed the down where the shepherd was
guarding his flock behind the hurdles on the short turf and creeping
cinque-foil. Far below, whence you could faintly catch the altercation
of the pebbles on the beach under the importunities of the tide, I saw
an oily sea heaving like shot silk in the moonlight, the lonely beacon
was winking across the waste of waters, strange signals were flashing
from the pier, and merchantmen were coming up Channel plaintively
protesting their neutrality with such a garish display of coloured
lights as to suggest a midnight regatta of all the neutral nations. A
troop train was speeding north and a hospital train crawling south,
their coming and going betrayed only to the ear, for they showed no
lights. The one was freighted with youth, health, life; the other with
pain, wounds, death. It was the systole and diastole of the Base.
V
A COUNCIL OF INDIA
"And I said, 'Nay, I who have eaten the King's salt cannot do this
thing.' And the _German-log_ said to me, 'But we will give you both
money and land.' And I said, 'Wherefore should I do this thing, and
bring sorrow and shame upon my people?'"
It was a Sepoy in the 9th who spake, and his words were exceeding clear
as Holy Writ.
"And what did they do then?"
"They took my _chupattis_, sahib, and offered me of their bread in
return. But I said, 'Nay, I am a Brahmin, and cannot touch it.' And they
said thrice unto me, 'We will give you money and land.' And I thrice
said, 'Nay.' Then said they, 'Thou art a fool. Go to, but if thou comest
against us again we will kill thee.' And I got back to my comrades."
"Yea, to me also they said these things." It was a jemindar of the 129th
who spoke. "Yes, a German sahib called to me in Hindustani, '_Ham dost
hein_--_Hamari pas ao_--_Ham tum Ko Nahn Marenge_.'" Which being
translated is, "We are friends, come to us, we won't kill you."
"And you, Mula Sing, what think you of this war?"
The Woordie-Major replied: "Sahib, never was there a war like this war,
since the world began. No, not even the Mahabharata when Kouro fought
Pandu."
Then spoke up a subadar of the Pioneers, a tall Sikh with his beard
curled like the ancient Assyrians. He had shown me the five symbols of
the Sikh freemasonry--nay, he had taken the _kangha_ out of his hair and
shown me the two little knives, also the hair-ring and the bracelet, and
had unwound the spirals of his unshaven locks. Therefore we were
friends. "All wars are but _shikkar_ to this war, sahib." "Shikkar?"
"Yea, even as a tiger-hunt. But this, this is an exceeding great war."
"Nay, this is a fine war--a hell of a fine war." The speaker was an
Afridi from Tirah, whose strongly marked aquiline features reminded me
of nothing so much as a Jewish pawnbroker in Whitechapel. He lacks every
virtue except courage, and his one regret is that he has missed the
family blood-feud. There have been great doings in his family on the
frontier in his absence--two abductions and one homicide. "If I had not
come home," his brother has written reproachfully to him from Tirah,
"things had gone ill with us. But never mind about all this now. Do your
duty well." And even so has he done.
"And how like you this war?"
"Sahib, it is a fine war, a hell of a fine war, but for the great guns."
"And wherefore?"
"Because we cannot come nigh unto them. But I, I have slain many men."
"And what is your village?" asks my friend, Major D----, of the I.M.S.
"Chorah."
"Why, I was there in the Tirah campaign."
"Even so, sahib."
The Ghurkhas looked on in silence at our symposium, their broad
Mongolian faces inscrutable. But Shiva Lal, a Brahmin surgeon, who all
this while has been eager to speak, for he is a pundit, and loves the
sound of his own voice, here thrust forward his quaint countenance,
whose walrus-like moustache conceals a row of teeth projecting like the
spokes of a wicker-basket. Softly he rubs his hands and thus he speaks
in English: "Sahib, I had charge of a German sahib--wounded. And I said
unto him, 'How is it that you, who are Christians, treat the Tommies
so? We' (Major D---- looks at me with the hint of a twinkle in his
eye--for has he not told me at mess of that surprising change in the
Indian vernacular whereby their speech is no longer of "Goora-log" and
"Sahib-log" but of "We," which fraternal pronoun is significant of
much)--'we shave you and feed you, we wash you and dress your wounds,
even as one of ourselves, and you kill our wounded Tommies, yea, and do
these things and worse even unto women. Are you not Christians? We'
(there is a return to old habits of speech)--'we are only Indians, but I
have read in your Bible that if one smite on the one cheek'"--here Shiva
Lal, who has now what he loves most in the world, an audience, and is
easily histrionic, smites his face mightily on the right side--"'one
should turn to him the other. Why is this?'"
"And what said the German officer, Shiva Lal?"