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If you are all extra good I’ll bring you home a pet German. How is Home Rule getting on? Send me a paper, but I don’t know when I’ll get it or you’ll get this. I suppose the papers are full of this ruction. I can write no more as I’ll soon have to go on guard.
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Letter 80. – From Mons. E. Hovelange, of Paris, written on August 30th, to Sir William Collins (Published in the “Sussex Daily News”):
How serious the situation is here it is hard for you to realize in London. We may be encircled at any moment by these hordes of savages. Such murderous cruelty has never been seen in the annals of war. The Turks and the Bulgarians were no worse. It is the rule to fire on ambulances and slaughter the wounded. I know it from eye-witnesses. The Germans are drunk with savagery. It is an orgy of the basest cruelty. They are rushing Paris at all costs, squandering their men recklessly in overwhelming numbers. Our troops are submerged and can only retreat, fighting desperately, but the spirit of our soldiers is splendid. All the wounded I have seen laugh and joke over their wounds and are burning to have another go at the barbarians. Victory is certain. But what disastrous changes shall we know before it comes. I am prepared for the worst – another month of hopeless struggle perhaps. But we will light to the last man. The tide will turn, and then – woe to them. I know you will stand by us in the cause of civilization, common honest truth till the bitter end. But if you want to help us you must hasten.
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Letter 81. – From a young officer who has been through the whole campaign, from the landing of the British at Boulogne:
I wish you would try to make the people in England understand that they should be most exceedingly thankful that they are living on an island and not in the midst of the dreadful things which are happening on the Continent. Do enforce upon the public that England must fight this thing out, and must conquer even if it has to spend the blood of its young men like water. It will be far better that every family throughout England should have to sorrow for one of its members than that England should have to go through similar ordeals to those which Continental countries are suffering.
The sight of old women and men fleeing from village to village; young mothers with babies in arms, with their few personal effects on their backs, or in some more fortunate cases with their goods and chattels surrounding the aged grandmother stowed away in an old farm cart, drawn by a nag too venerable to be of service to the State; this is what one has seen daily. Picture to yourself our night marches with the burning villages on all sides set fire to by German shells – and the Germans have been rather careless whether their shells struck fortified and defended positions, or open ones. In some cases the fires were caused intentionally by marauding patrols.
Do not imagine that things are not going well with us. We are all satisfied and confident of the end; but at the same time the only possible end can be gained by sacrifice on the part of those at home only. All is well with me personally; I have a busy time, but it is most interesting work.
IN HOSPITAL.
(1) At Salisbury.
A non-commissioned officer of the Royal Field Artillery, invalided home with shrapnel wounds in the thigh, from which he hopes soon to recover, has given this vivid description of his experiences at the front after passing north of Amiens, to a Daily Telegraph correspondent:
Pushing forward from our rest camp, covering from twenty to thirty miles a day, with the infantry marching in front and cavalry protecting us on either flank, we received information that we were within a few hours’ march of the enemy. Needless to say, this put us on the alert. There was no funk about us, for we were all anxious to have a go at the Germans, about whom we had heard such tales of cruelty that it made our blood run cold.
Our orders were to load with case shot, for fear of cavalry attack, as shrapnel is of little use against mounted troops. The order was soon obeyed, and after passing the day on the road, we moved across country north of – , where the infantry took up a strong position. We saw the French troops on our right as we moved up to gun positions which our battery commanders had selected in advance. It was Sunday morning when the attack came, and the sun had already lit up the beautiful country, and as I looked across at the villages which lay below in the valley with their silent belfries I thought of my home on the Cotswolds and of the bells ringing for morning service. I pictured dad and my sister Nell going to church.
It was, however, no time for sentiment, for gallopers soon brought the news that the enemy was advancing, and that a cavalry attack might be expected at any moment. Infantry had entrenched themselves along our front, and there was a strong body posted on our flanks and rear. These became engaged first with a large body of Uhlans, who endeavoured to take them by surprise, the front rank rushing forward with the lance and the rear using the sword.
We were on slightly higher ground, and could see the combat, which appeared to be going in our favour. Our men stuck to their ground and shot and bayonetted the Uhlans, who, after ten minutes’ fight, made off, but, sad to say, a dreadful fusilade of shrapnel and Maxim fire followed immediately, and our guns also came under fire. To this we readily replied, and must have done some execution, especially to the large masses of infantry that were advancing about a mile away.
We got a favourable “bracket” at once, so our Major said, and we worked our guns for all we were worth, altering fuses and the ranging of our guns as the Germans came nearer. Shells fell fast around us, some ricocheted, and passed overhead without bursting, ploughing the ground up in our rear, but not a few exploded, and made many casualties. Three of my gun detachment fell with shrapnel bullets, but still we kept the guns going, the officers giving a hand.
At one time we came under the fire of the enemy’s machine guns, but two of our 18-pounders put them out of action after a few rounds. The order came at length to retire so as to get a more favourable position, but our drivers failed to bring back all the gun teams, only sufficient to horse four of the guns. The remainder of the animals had been terribly mutilated. These were limbered up, the remainder being for a time protected by the infantry. The Gordons and Middlesex were in the shelter trenches on our left, and the latter regiment was said at one time to be almost overwhelmed, but aid came, and the masses of Prussian infantry were beaten off.
Still, there was terrible slaughter on both sides, and the dead lay in long burrows on the turf. We should have lost our guns to the Uhlans if the infantry had not persevered with the rifle, picking off the cavalry at 800 yards.
It was grand shooting. In the afternoon we slackened fire, as also did the Germans; in fact, we did but little from our new gun positions, as we were destined to cover the retreat of the infantry later on.
As the wounded were brought to the rear we heard of the deeds of heroism from the men of the Royal Army Medical Corps in the fighting line – how an officer stood over the body of a private who had previously saved his life until he had spent his last shot from his revolver, and then fell seriously wounded, to be avenged the next moment by a burly sergeant who plunged his bayonet into the Prussian.
In the ranks of the South Lancashire Regiment, from what has been heard, many deserve the Distinguished Conduct Medal, if not the V.C., for the manner in which they charged masses of German infantry through the village to our front. Uhlans got round behind them, but they did not flinch, although serious gaps were made in their ranks.
A non-commissioned officer of the Medicals related how he saw a party of Fusiliers rush to the aid of their Maxim gun party when Uhlans swept down on them from behind a wood. They accounted for over twenty and lost but one man.
At night we were ordered to move on again, and we marched south-west in the direction of – , covering twenty miles in the darkness. Our unhorsed guns were got through by splitting up our teams, and with the help of the brawny arms of the infantry.
The enemy were aware of our retreat, and kept up an incessant fire, bringing searchlights to the aid of their gunners. The moon slightly favoured us, and, with the help of local guides, we found our way. I heard of the brilliant work performed by our battalions, who kept the enemy at bay whilst we withdrew all our vehicles, and we gunners felt proud of them. They kept the enemy busy by counter-attack, and made it impossible to get round us.
Next morning the enemy were again in the field endeavouring to force our left flank. Field-Marshal Sir John French, whom we saw early in the day, was, however, equal to the occasion, and so manœuvred his troops that we occupied a position from which the Germans could not dislodge us. The artillery kept up long-range fire, and that is how I received my wound. Within a few minutes first aid was rendered, and I was put in an ambulance and taken off with other wounded to a field hospital, where I met with every attention.
IN HOSPITAL.
(2) At the London Hospital.
By a Daily Telegraph correspondent.
A description of a thrilling fight in the air, which had a dramatic climax, was given to Queen Alexandra when her Majesty paid a visit to the London Hospital.
Among the wounded soldiers there is a private of the Royal Engineers, who was himself witness of the incident.
He said that following a very hard fight on the day before, he was lying on the ground with his regiment, resting. Suddenly a German aeroplane hove in sight. It flew right over the British troops, and commenced to signal their position to the German camp.
A minute later, amid intense excitement of the troops, two aeroplanes, with English and French pilots, rose into the air from the British rear. Ascending with great rapidity, they made for the German aeroplane, with the intention of attacking it.
At first some of our men, who were very much on the alert, fired by mistake at the French aeroplane. Luckily, their shots went wide.
Then the troops lay still, and with breathless interest watched the attempts of the French and British aviators to outmanœuvre their opponent, and to cut off his retreat. After a little time the Franco-British airmen abandoned this attempt, and then the Englishman and the German began to fly upwards, in the evident desire to obtain a more favourable position for shooting down from above. Owing to the protection afforded by the machine, it would have been of little use for one aviator to fire at his opponent from below. Once a higher altitude was attained, the opportunity for effective aim would be much greater.
Up and up circled the two airmen, till their machines could barely be distinguished from the ground. They were almost out of sight when the soldiers saw that the British aviator was above his opponent. Then the faint sound of a shot came down from the sky, and instantly the German aeroplane began to descend, vol-planing in graceful fashion. Apparently it was under the most perfect control. On reaching the earth the machine landed with no great shock, ran a short distance along the ground, and then stopped.
Rushing to the spot, the British soldiers found, to their amazement, that the pilot was dead. So fortunate had been the aim of the Englishman that he had shot the German through the head. In his dying moments the latter had started to descend, and when he reached the earth his hands still firmly gripped the controls.
The aeroplane was absolutely undamaged, and was appropriated by the British aviators.
IN HOSPITAL.
(3) From a “Daily Telegraph” correspondent at Rouen:
It was known that there were British wounded in Rouen – I had even spoken to one of them in the streets – but how was one to see them? The police commissaire sent me to his central colleague, who sent me on to the état major, who was anxious to send me back to him, but finally suggested that I should see the military commissary at one of the stations. He was courteous, but very firm – the authorisation I asked for could not be, and was not, granted to anyone. At the headquarters of the British General Staff the same answer in even less ambiguous terms.
It was then that Privates X., Y., Z. came to my aid. Private Z. had a request to make of me. It was that I should see to it that the black retriever of his regiment now at the front should be photographed, and that the photograph should appear in The Daily Telegraph. Private Z. had a temperature of 102·5, and looked it, but he was not worrying about that. He was worrying about the photograph of the regimental retriever, which I understood him to say, though dates make it almost incredible, had gone through the Boer campaign, and had not yet had his photograph in the papers. So I met by appointment Privates X., Y., and Z. outside the Hospice Général of Rouen, and by them was franked in to the hospital, where a few dozen of our wounded were sunning themselves. It was just time, and no more, as orders had been received a few minutes before that the British wounded were to be transferred from Rouen to London, for something grave was afoot.
“Do you want to get back to England?” someone called out to a soldier whose arm was in a sling, and the whole sleeve of whose jacket had been ripped by the fragment of a shell.
“Not I,” he shouted; “I want to go to the front again and get my sleeve back, and something more.”
I managed to speak with two or three of the wounded as they were getting ready for the start. One of them, an artilleryman, had been injured by his horses falling on him at Ligny, I guessed it was – only guessed, for Tommy charges a French word as bravely and much less successfully than he charges the enemy. It was the same story that one hears from all, of a heroic struggle against overwhelming odds. “They were ten to one against us, in my opinion,” he said. “They were all over us. Their artillery found the range by means of aeroplanes. The shell fire was terrible.”
He says that it was very accurate, but that fortunately the quality of the shells is not up to that of the shooting. My informant’s division held out for twenty-four hours against the overwhelming odds. Then, when the Germans had managed to get a battery into action behind, they retired during the night of Wednesday, steadily and in excellent order, keeping the German pursuit at bay. The next man I spoke to really spoke to me. He was anxious to tell his story.
“I have been in the thick of it,” he said; “in the very thick of it. I was one of the chauffeurs in the service of the British General Staff.”
He told me that he was not a Regular soldier, but a volunteer from the Automobile Club, an American who had become a naturalised English citizen, and had once been a journalist. His own injury, a burnt arm, was from a back-fire, but his escape from the German bullets had been almost miraculous. Three staff officers, one after another, had been hit in the body of the car behind him. This is his story:
“On Friday, the 25th, the British were just outside Le Cateau. On Saturday morning the approach of the Germans in force was signalled. On Sunday morning at daybreak a German aeroplane flew over our lines, and, although fired at by the aeroplane gun mounted in the car, and received with volleys from the troops, managed to rejoin its lines. Twenty minutes later the German artillery opened fire with accuracy. The aeroplane, as so often, had done its work as range-finder. For twelve hours the cannonade went on. Then the British forces retreated six miles. On Monday morning the bombardment began again, and at two that afternoon the German forces entered Le Cateau from which the English had retired. Many of the houses were in flames. The Germans, who had ruthlessly bayonetted our wounded if they moved so much as a finger as they lay on the ground, were guilty of brutal conduct when they entered the city.
“On Tuesday, the British, who had retired to Landrecies, were again attacked by the Germans. They believed, wrongly, that on their right was a supporting French force. The range was again found by aeroplane, and the British were compelled to evacuate. That was on Tuesday. The British troops had been fighting steadily for four days, but their morale and their spirits had not suffered.”
As I write, a detachment of the R.A.M.C. is filing past, and people have risen from their chairs and are cheering and saluting. Half an hour ago Engineers passed with their pontoons decorated with flowers and greenery. The men had flowers in their caps, and even the horses were flower-decked. Tommy Atkins has the completest faith in his leaders and in himself. He quite realises the necessity for secrecy of operations in modern warfare. Of course, he has his own theories. This is one of them textually:
“The Germans are simply walking into it. Of course, we have had losses, but that was part of the plan – the sprat to catch the whale. They are going to find themselves in a square between four allied armies, and then,” – so far Private X., but here Private Y. broke in cheerfully: “And then they will be electrocuted.”
And at this moment it begins to look as if – apart from that detail of the square of four armies – Privates X. and Y. had known what they were talking about; for some few days ago the great retreat came to an abrupt end, the British and French forces carrying out General Joffre’s carefully laid plan of campaign, turned their defensive movement into a combined attack, the Germans fell back before them and are still retiring. They marched through Belgium into France with heavy fighting and appalling losses, only to be held in check at the right place and time and beaten back by the road they had come, when Paris seemed almost at their mercy. But that retirement is another story.
VI
The Spirit of Victory
“He only knows that not through HIM
Shall England come to shame.”
Sir F. H. Doyle.
Even through those three weeks when they were retreating before the enemy, the whole spirit of the British troops was the spirit of men who are fighting to win. There is no hint of doubt or despondency in any of their letters home. They talk lightly of their hardest, most terrible experiences; they greet the unseen with a cheer; you hear of them cracking jokes, boyishly guying each other, singing songs as they march and as they lie in the trenches with shells bursting and shots screaming close over their heads. They carried out their retreats grudgingly, but without dismay, in the fixed confidence that their leaders knew what they were after, and that in due time they would find they had only been stooping to conquer. “They won’t let us have a fair smack at them,” says “Spratty,” of the Army Service Corps, in a letter home. “I have never seen such a sight before. God knows whose turn is next, but we shall win, don’t worry.” This is the watchword of them all: “Don’t worry – we shall win.”
“Wine is offered us instead of water by the people,” wrote Private S. Browne, whilst his regiment was marching through France to the front; “but officers and men are refusing it. Some of the hardest drinkers in the regiment have signed the pledge for the war.”
“Tommy goes into battle,” a French soldier told a reporter at Dieppe, “singing some song about Tip-Tip-Tip-Tipperary, and when he is hit he does not cry out. He just says ‘blast,’ and if the wound is a small one he asks the man next to him to tie a tourniquet round it and settles down to fighting again.” A corporal of the Black Watch explained to a hospital visitor, “It was a terrible bit of work. The Germans were as thick as Hielan’ heather, and by sheer weight forced us back step by step. But until the order came not a living man flinched. In the thick of the bursting shells we were singing Harry Lauder’s latest.”
Trooper George Pritchard wrote to his mother from Netley Hospital the other day: “I got hit in the arm from a shell. Seven of our officers got killed last Thursday, but Captain Grenfell was saved at the same time as me. What do you think of the charge of the 9th? It is worth getting hit for.”
“We are all in good heart, and ready for the next round whenever it may come,” writes Private J. Scott, from his place in the field; and “South Africa was child’s play to what we have been through,” writes Corporal Brogan, “but we are beginning to feel our feet now, and are equal to a lot more gruelling.”
“We are all beat up after four days of the hardest soldiering you ever dreamt of,” Private Patrick McGlade says in a letter to his mother. “I am glad to say we accounted for our share of the Germans. We tried hard to get at them many a time, but they never would wait for us when they saw the bright bits of steel at the business end of our rifles. Some of them squeal like the pigs on killing day when they see the steel ready. Some of our finest lads are now sleeping their last sleep in Belgium, but, mother dear, you can take your son’s word for it that for every son of Ireland who will never come back there are at least three Germans who will never be heard of again. When we got here we sang ‘Paddies Evermore,’ and then we were off to chapel to pray for the souls of the lads that are gone.”
“Some of us feel very strongly about being sent home for scratches that will heal,” writes Corporal A. Hands. “Don’t believe half the stories about our hardships. I haven’t seen or heard of a man who made complaint of anything. You can’t expect a six-course dinner on active service, but we get plenty to fight on.”
Cases of personal pluck were so common that we soon ceased to take notice of them, a wounded driver in the Royal Artillery told an interviewer. “There was a man of the Buffs, who carried a wounded chum for over a mile under German fire, but if you suggested a Victoria Cross for that man he would punch your head, and as he is a regular devil when roused the men say as little as they can about it. He thinks he didn’t do anything out of the common, and doesn’t see why his name should be dragged into the papers over it. Another case I heard of was a corporal of the Fusilier Brigade – I don’t know his regiment – who held a company of Germans at bay for two hours by the old trick of firing at them from different points, and so making them think they had a crowd to face. He was getting on very well until a party of cavalry outflanked him, as you might say, and as they were right on top of him there was no kidding about his ‘strength,’ so he skedaddled, and the Germans took the position he had held so long. He got back to his mates all right, and they were glad to see him, for they had given him up for dead.”
“No regiment fought harder than we did, and no regiment has better officers, who went shoulder to shoulder with their men,” says a non-commissioned officer of the Buffs, writing from hospital, “but you can’t expect absolute impossibilities to be accomplished, no matter how brave the boys are, when you are fighting a force from twenty to thirty times as strong. If some of you at home who have spoken sneeringly of British officers could have seen how they handled their men and shirked nothing you would be ashamed of yourselves. We are all determined when fit again to return and get our own back.”
Everywhere you find that the one cry of the soldiers who are invalided home – they are impatient to be cured quickly and get back “to have another slap at them.” We know how our women here at home share that eager enthusiasm in this the most righteous war Britain has ever gone into; and isn’t there something that stirs you like the sound of a trumpet in such a passage as this from the letter a Scottish nun living in Belgium has written to her mother?
“I am glad England is aroused, and that the British lion is out with all his teeth showing. Here these little lions of Belgians are raging mad and doing glorious things.
“Tell father I am cheery, and feel sometimes far too warlike for a nun. That’s my Scottish blood. I hope to goodness the Highlanders, if they come, will march down another street on their way to the caserne, or I shall shout and yell and cheer them, and forget I mustn’t look out of the window.”
An extract from Sergeant T. Cahill’s letter to his friends at Bristol gives you a snap-shot of our women in the firing line, and of the fearless jollity and light-heartedness with which our Irish comrades meet the worst that their enemies can do:
“The Red Cross girleens, with their purty faces and their sweet ways, are as good men as most of us, and better than some of us. They are not supposed to venture into the firing line at all, but they get there all the same, and devil the one of us durst turn them away,” and he goes on casually, “Mick Clancy is that droll with his larking and bamboozling the Germans that he makes us nearly split our sides laughing at him and his ways. Yesterday he got a stick and put a cap on it so that it peeped above the trenches just like a man, and then the Germans kept shooting away at it until they must have used up tons of ammunition, and there was us all the time laughing at them.”
But I think there is perhaps nothing in these letters that is more touching or more finely significant than this:
“The other day I stopped to assist a young lad of the West Kents, who had been badly hit by a piece of shell,” writes Corporal Sam Haslett. “He hadn’t long to live, and knew it, but he wasn’t at all put out about it. I asked him if there was any message I could take to any one at home, and the poor lad’s eyes filled with tears as he answered: ‘I ran away from home and ’listed a year ago. Mother and dad don’t know I’m here, but you tell them that I’m not sorry I did it.’ When I told our boys afterwards, they cried like babies, but, mind you, that’s the spirit that’s going to pull England through this war. I got his name and the address of his people from his regiment, and I am writing to tell them that they have every reason to be proud of their lad. He may have run away from home, but he didn’t run away from the Germans.”
And if you have caught the buoyant, heroic ardour that rings through those careless, unstudied notes our gallant fellows have written home, you know that there is not a man in the firing line who will.
