carpets--Corps’ spirit--A chivalric custom--Billeting in
French houses--Well-disciplined guests--Teaching the art of
war--Picturesque tribesmen from India--Their loyalty--British
justice--Matins and Angelus--Farming without men--The peasants
win--Greeting the French troops--Sir John French on duty--
“Inspecting and disinfecting”--The new “shilling a day” men--
Albert Edward, the “willing prince”--Care of the wounded.
A single incident, an impression photographic in its swiftness, a
chance remark, may be more illuminating than a day’s experiences. One
does not need to go to the front for them. Sometimes they come to the
gateway of our château. They are pages at random out of a library of
overwhelming information.
* * * * *
One of the aviation grounds is not far away. Look skyward at almost any
hour of the day and you will see a plane, its propeller a roar or a hum
according to its altitude. Sometimes it is circling in practice; again,
it is off to the front. At break of day the planes appear; in the
gloaming they return to roost.
If an aviator has leave for two or three days in summer he starts in
the late afternoon, flashing over that streak of Channel in half an
hour and may be at home for dinner without getting any dust on his
clothes or having to bother with military red tape at steamer gangways
or customs houses.
The airmen are a type, with certain marked characteristics. No nervous
man is wanted, and it is time for an aviator to take a rest at the
first sign of nerves. They seem shy and diffident, men of the kind
given to observation rather than to talking; men accustomed to using
their eyes and hands. It is difficult to realise that some quiet young
fellow, who is pointed out, has had so many hairbreadth escapes. What
tales, worthy of Arabian Nights’ heroes who are borne away on magic
carpets, they bring home, relating them as matter-of-factly as if they
had broken a shoelace.
Up in their seats, a whir of the motor, and they are off on another
adventure. They shy at mention of their names in print, for that is
not good for the spirit of corps of this newest branch in the service
of war. Anonymity is absolute. Everything is done by the corps for
the corps. Possibly because it is so young, because it started with
chosen men, the British Aviation Corps is unsurpassed; but partly it is
because of the British temperament, with that combination of coolness
and innate love of risk which the British manner sometimes belies.
Something of the old spirit of knighthood characterises air service. It
is individual work; its numbers are relatively few. I like one of the
aviation customs, not for its chivalry alone, but because it makes one
feel more kindly toward the Germans. If a German aviator has to descend
in the British lines, whether from motor trouble or because he is
winged by an anti-aircraft gun, a British aviator flies over the German
lines and drops a “message-bag” with long streamers telling whether the
unfortunate one is dead or alive, and the Germans do the same.
* * * * *
Some mornings ago I saw several young soldiers with notebooks going
about our village street. They were from the cadet school where
privates, from the trenches, take a course and return with chocolate
drops on their sleeve-bands as commissioned officers. This was a
course in billeting. For ours is not an army in tents, but one living
in French houses and barns. The pupils were learning how to carry out
this delicate task; for delicate it is. A stranger speaking another
language becomes the guest of the host for whom he is fighting. Mr.
Atkins receives only shelter; he supplies his own meals. His excess of
marmalade one sees yellowing the cheeks of the children in the family
where he is at home. Madame objects only to his efforts to cook in her
kitchen; womanlike, she would rather handle the pots and pans herself.
Tommy is thoroughly instructed in his duty as guest and under a
discipline that is merciless so far as conduct toward the population
goes; so the two get on better than French and English military
authorities feared that they might. Time has taught them to understand
each other and see that difference in race does not mean absence of
human qualities in common, though differently expressed. Many armies
I have seen, but never one better behaved than the British army in
France and Flanders in its respect for property and the rights of the
population.
And while the fledgling officers are going on with their billeting, we
hear the t-r-r-t of a machine gun at a machine-gun school about a mile
distant, where picked men also from the trenches receive instruction in
the use of an arm new to them. There are other schools within sound of
the guns teaching the art of war to an expanding army in the midst of
war, with the teachers bringing their experience from the battle-line.
* * * * *
“Their shops and their houses all have fronts of glass,” wrote a Sikh
soldier home, “and even the poor are rich in this bountiful land.”
Sikhs and Ghurkas and Rajputs and Pathans and Gherwalis, the
brown-skinned tribesmen in India, have been on a strange Odyssey,
bringing picturesqueness to the khaki tone of modern war. Aeroplanes
interested them less than a trotting dog in a wheel for drawing water.
They would watch that for hours.
Still fresh in mind is a scene when the air seemed a moist sponge and
all above the earth was dripping and all under foot a mire. I was
homesick for the flash on the windows of the New York skyscrapers or
the gleam on the Hudson of that bright sunlight in a drier air, that is
the secret of the American’s nervous energy. It seemed to me that it
was enough to have to exist in Northern France at that season of the
year, let alone fighting Germans.
Out of the drizzly, misty rain along a muddy road and turning past us
came the Indian cavalry, which, like the British cavalry, had fought
on foot in the trenches, while their horses led the leisurely life
of true equine gentry. Erect in their saddles, their martial spirit
defiant of the weather, their black eyes flashing as they looked toward
the reviewing officers, troop after troop of these sons of the East
passed by, every one seeming as fit for review as if he had cleaned his
uniform and equipment in his home barracks instead of in French barns.
One asked who had trained them; who had fashioned the brown clay into
resolute and loyal obedience which stood the test of a Flanders winter?
What was the force which could win them to cross the seas to fight for
England? Among the brown faces topped with turbans appeared occasional
white faces. These were the men; these the force.
The marvel was not that the Indians were able to fight as well as they
did in that climate, but that they fought at all. What welcome summer
brought from their gleaming black eyes! July or August could not be too
hot for them. On a plateau one afternoon I saw them having a _gymkana_.
It was a treat for the King of the Belgians, who has had few holidays,
indeed, this last year, and for the French peasants who came from the
neighbourhood. Yelling, wild as they were in tribal days before the
British brought order and peace to India, the horsemen galloped across
the open space, picking up handkerchiefs from the ground and impaling
tent pegs on their lances. The French peasants clapped their hands and
the British Indian officers said, “Good!” when the performer succeeded,
or, “Too bad!” when he failed.
If you asked the officers for the secret of the Indian Empire they
said: “We try to be fair to the natives!” which means that they are
just and even-tempered. An enormous, loose-jointed machine the British
Empire, which seems sometimes to creak a bit but yet holds together
for that very reason. Imperial weight may have interfered with British
adaptability to the kind of warfare which was the one kind that the
Germans had to train for; but certainly some Englishmen must know how
to rule.
* * * * *
That church bell across the street from our château begins its clangour
at dawn, summoning the French women and children and the old men to the
fields in harvest time. But its peals carrying across the farmlands are
softened by distance and sweet to the tired workers in the evening. In
the morning its peal in their ears tells them that the day is long and
they have much to do before dark. After that thought I never complained
because it robbed me of my sleep. I felt ashamed not to be up and doing
myself, and worked with a better spirit.
“Will they do it?”
We asked this question as often in our mess in those August days
as, Will the Russians lose Warsaw? Would the peasants be able to
get in their crops, with all the able-bodied men away? I had inside
information from the village mayor and the blacksmith and the baker
that they would. A financial expert, the baker. Of course, he said
that France would go on fighting till the German was beaten, just as
the old men and the women and children said, whether the church bell
was clanging the matins or the angelus. But there was the question of
finances. It took money to fight. The Americans, he knew, had more
money than they knew what to do with--as Europeans universally think,
only, personally, I find that I was overlooked in the distribution--
and if they would loan the Allies some of their spare billions, Germany
was surely beaten.
A busy man the blacksmith, and brawny, if he had no spreading chestnut
tree; busy not only shoeing farmhorses, but repairing American reapers
and binders, whose owners profited exceedingly and saved the day. But
not all farmers felt that they could afford the charge. These kept
at their small patches with sickles. Gradually the carpets of gold
waving in the breeze became bundles lying on the stubble, and great
conical harvest stacks rose, while children gathered the stray stems
left on the ground by the reapers till they had immense bouquets of
wheat-heads under their arms, enough to make two or three loaves of the
_pain de ménage_ that the baker sold. So the peasants did it; they won;
and this was some compensation for the loss of Warsaw.
One morning we heard troops marching past, which was not unusual. But
these were French troops in the British zone, _en route_ from somewhere
in France to somewhere else in France. There was not a person left in
any house in that village. Everybody was out, with affection glowing in
their eyes. For these were their own--their soldiers of France.
* * * * *
When you see a certain big limousine flying a small British flag pass
you know that it belongs to the Commander-in-Chief; and though it may
be occupied only by one of his aides, often you will have a glimpse of
a man with a square chin and a drooping white moustache, who is the
sole one among the hundreds of thousands at the British front who wears
the crossed batons of a field marshal.
It is erroneous to think that Sir John French or any other commander,
though that is the case in time of action, spends all his time in the
private house occupied as headquarters, designated by two wisps of
flags, studying a map and sending and receiving messages, when the
trench line remains stationary. He goes here and there on inspections.
It is the only way that a modern leader may let his officers and men
know that he is a being of flesh and blood and not a name signed to
reports and orders. A machine-gun company I knew had a surprise when
resting in a field waiting for orders. They suddenly recognised in a
figure coming through an opening in a hedge the supreme head of the
army in France. There was no need of a call to attention. The effect
was like an electric shock, which sent every man to his place and made
his backbone a steel rod. Those crossed batons represented a dizzy
altitude to that battery which had just come out from England. Sir John
walked up and down, looking over men and guns after their nine months’
drill at home, and said, “Very good!” and was away to other inspections
where he might not necessarily say, “Very good!”
Frequently his inspections are formal. A battalion or a brigade is
drawn up in a field, or they march past. Then he usually makes a short
speech. On one occasion the officers had arranged a platform for the
speech-making. Sir John gave it a glance and that was enough. It was
the end of such platforms erected for him.
“Inspections! They are second nature to us!” said a new army man. “We
were inspected and inspected at home and we are inspected and inspected
out here. If there is anything wrong with us it is the general’s own
fault if it isn’t found out. When a general is not inspecting, some man
from the medical corps is disinfecting.”
Battalions of the new army are frequently billeted for two or three
days in our village. The barn up the road I know is capable of housing
twenty men and one officer; for this is chalked on the door. Before
they turn in for the night the men frequently sing, and the sound of
their voices is pleasant.
A typical inspection was one that I saw in the main street. The
battalion was drawn up in full marching equipment on the road. Of those
officers with packs on their backs one was only nineteen. This is the
limit of youth to acquire a chocolate drop on its arm. The sergeant
major was an old regular, the knowing backbone of the battalion, which
had taken the men of clay and taught them their letters and then how to
spell and to add and subtract and divide. One of those impressive red
caps arrived in a car, and the general who wore it went slowly up and
down the line, front and rear, examining rifles and equipment, while
the young officers and the old sergeant were hoping that Jones or Smith
hadn’t got some dust in his rifle-barrel at the last moment.
Brokers and carpenters, bankers and mechanics, clerks and labourers,
the new army is like the army of France, composed of all classes. One
evening I had a chat with two young fellows in a battalion quartered
in the village, who were seated beside the road. Both came from
Buckinghamshire. One was a schoolmaster and the other an architect.
They were “bunkies,” pals, chums.
“When did you enlist?” I asked.
“In early September, after the Marne retreat. We thought that it was
our duty, then. But we’ve been a long time arriving.”
“How do you like it?”
“We are not yet masters of the language, we find,” said the
schoolmaster, “though I had a pretty good book knowledge of it.”
“I’m learning the gestures fast, though,” said the architect.
“The French are glad to see us,” said the schoolmaster. “They call us
the Keetcheenaires. I fancy they thought we were a long time coming.
But now we are here, I think they will find that we can hold up our
end.”
They had the fresh complexions which come from healthy, outdoor work.
There was something engaging in their boyishness and their views. For
they had a wider range of interests than that professional soldier,
Mr. Atkins, these citizens who had taken up arms. They knew what
trench-fighting meant by work in practice trenches at home.
“Of course it will not be quite the same; theory and practice never
are,” said the schoolmaster.
“We ought to be well-grounded in the principles,” said the architect--
imagine the average Mr. Atkins talking in such language!--“and they
say that in a week or two of actual experience you will have mastered
the details that could not be taught in England. Then, too, having
shells burst around you will be strange at first. But I think our
battalion will give a good account of itself, sir. All the Bucks men
have!” There crept in the pride of regiment, of locality, which is so
characteristically Anglo-Saxon.
They change life at the front, these new army men. If a carpenter, a
lawyer, a sign-painter, an accountant, is wanted, you have only to
speak to a new army battalion commander and one is forthcoming--a
millionaire, too, for that matter, who gets his shilling a day for
serving his country. Their intelligence permitted the architect and
the schoolmaster to have no illusions about the character of the war
they had to face. The pity was that such a fine force as the new army,
which had not become trench stale, could not have a free space in which
to make a great turning movement, instead of having to go against that
solid battle-front from Switzerland to the North Sea.
* * * * *
We have heard enough--quite enough for most of us--about the German
Crown Prince. But there is also a prince with the British army in
France. No lieutenant looks younger for his years than this one in the
Grenadier Guards, and he seems of the same type as the others when
you see him marching with his regiment or off for a walk smoking a
briar-wood pipe. There are some officers who would rather not accompany
him on his walks, for he can go fast and far. He makes regular reports
of his observations, and he has opportunities for learning which
other subalterns lack, for he may have both the staff and the army
as personal instructors. Otherwise, his life is that of any other
subaltern; for there is an instrument called the British Constitution
which regulates many things. A little shy, very desirous to learn, is
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of Great Britain and
Ireland and the Empire of India. He might be called the willing prince.
* * * * *
This was one of the shells that hit--one of the hundred that hit. The
time was summer; the place, the La Bassée region. Probably the fighting
was all the harder here because it is so largely blind. When you cannot
see what an enemy is doing you keep on pumping shells into the area
which he occupies; you take no risks with him.
The visitor may see about as much of what is going on in the La Bassée
region as an ant can see of the surrounding landscape when promenading
in the grass. The only variation in the flatness of the land is the
overworked ditches which try to drain it. Look upward and rows of
poplar trees along the level and a hedge, a grove, a cottage, or trees
and shrubs around it, limit your vision. Thus, if a breeze starts
timidly in a field it is stopped before it goes far. That “hot corner”
is all the hotter for a burning July sun. The army water-carts which
run back to wells of cool water are busy filling empty canteens, while
shrapnel trims the hedges.
A stretcher was being borne into the doorway of an _estaminet_ which
had escaped destruction by shells, and above the door was chalked some
lettering which indicated that it was a first clearing station for the
wounded. Lying on other stretchers on the floor were some wounded men.
Of the two nearest, one had a bandage around his head and one a bandage
around his arm. They had been stunned, which was only natural when you
have been as close as they had to a shell-burst--a shell that made a
hit. The concussion was bound to have this effect.
A third man was the best illustration of shell destructiveness. Bullets
make only holes. Shells make gouges, fractures, pulp. He, too, had a
bandaged head and had been hit in several places; but the worst wound
was in the leg, where an artery had been cut. He was weak, with a sort
of where-am-I look in his eyes. If the fragment which had hit his leg
had hit his head, or his neck, or his abdomen, he would have been
killed instantly. He was an illustration of how hard it is to kill a
man even with several shell-fragments, unless some of them strike in
the right place. For he was going to live; the surgeon had whispered
the fact in his ear, that one important fact. He had beaten the German
shell, after all.
Returning by the same road by which we came a motor car ran swiftly
by, the only kind of car allowed on that road. We had a glimpse of the
big painted red cross on an ambulance side, and at the rear, where
the curtains were rolled up for ventilation, of four pairs of soldier
boot-soles at the end of four stretchers, which had been slid into
place at the _estaminet_ by the sturdy, kindly, experienced medical
corps men.
Only one ambulance, dust-covered, of the colour of the road itself came
along, clear of any blast of shells; nothing at the front sends the
same chill down the spine as the thought of a man wounded by a shell
being hit a second time by a shell. It rarely happens, so prompt and so
shrewd is the work of the Royal Army Medical Corps.
Before we reached the village the ambulance passed us on the way back
to the _estaminet_. Very soon after the shell-burst, a telephone bell
had rung down the line from the extreme front calling for an ambulance
and stating the number of men hit, so that everybody would know what
to prepare for. At the village, which was outside the immediate danger
zone, was another clearing station. Here the stretchers were taken into
a house--taken without a jolt by men who were specialists in handling
stretchers--for any redressing if necessary, before another ambulance
started them on a journey, with motor trucks and staff automobiles
giving right of way, to a spotless white hospital ship which would take
them home to England the next night.
It had been an incident of life at the front and of the organisation
of war, causing less flurry than an ambulance call to an accident in a
great city.
XXXV
BRITISH PROBLEMS
The people behind an army--Military traditions--The “regulars” at
Mons--Our ideas of conscription--British pride of regiment--
Our West Point system--Sandhurst and the German system--Martial
team-play an instinct--The gallant British Expeditionary Force--
A perfect instrument--Mr. Thomas Atkins, hero--England after
the Marne--Empire-wide problems--The first year wastage--
Making a new army--Kitchener the man--Characteristics of the
British--The last battle that counts--The recruiting--Free
institutions versus a feudal socialistic organisation--“Putting
their backs into it”--The British type persists--Freedom or
“verboten” on every street corner?--England’s sturdiest blows
yet to come.
Throughout the summer of 1915 the world was asking, What about the
new British army? Why was it not attacking at the opportune moment
when Germany was throwing her weight against Russia? A facile answer
is easy; indeed, facile answers are always easy. Unhappily, they
are rarely correct. None that was given in this instance was, to my
mind. They sought to put a finger on one definite cause; again, on an
individual or a set of individuals.
The reasons were manifold; as old as Waterloo, as fresh as the
last speech in Parliament. They were inherent in the Anglo-Saxon
race. Whoever raised a voice and said, This, or that, or you, are
responsible! should first have looked into his own mind and into the
history of his race and then into a mirror. Least of all should any
American have been puzzled by the delay.
“Oh, we should have done better than that--we are Americans!” I hear
my countrymen say. Perhaps we should. I hope so; I believe so. The
British public thought that they were going to do better; military men
were surprised that they did as well.
Along with laws and language we have inherited our military ideas from
England. In many qualities we are different--a distinct type; but
in nothing are we more like the British than in our attitude toward
the soldier and toward war. The character of any army reflects the
character of its people. An army is the fist; but the muscle, the
strength of the physical organism behind the blow in the long run
belong to the people. What they have prepared for in peace they receive
in war, which decides whether they have been living in the paradise of
a fool or of a wise man.
As a boy I was brought up to believe, as an inheritance of the American
Revolution, that one American could whip two Englishmen and five or
six of any other nationality, which made the feathers of the eagle
perched on the national escutcheon look glossy. It was a satisfying
sort of faith. Americans had never tried five or six of any first-class
fighting race; but that was not a thought which occurred to me. As we
had won victories over the English and the English had whipped the
French at Waterloo, the conclusion seemed obvious.
English boys, I understand, also had been brought up to believe that
one Englishman could whip five or six men of any other nationality,
but, I take it for granted, only two Americans. This clothed the
British lion with majesty, while the lower ratio of superiority over
Americans returned the compliment in kind from the sons of the lion to
the sons of the eagle.