Now It Can Be Told Part 7

This was natural and inevitable in armies controlled by the old Regular school of service and tradition. As a close corporation in command of the machine, it was not within their nature or philosophy to make way for the new type. The Staff College was jealous of its own. Sandhurst and Woolwich were still the only schools of soldiering recognized as giving the right "tone" to officers and gentlemen fit for high appointment. The cavalry, above all, held the power of supreme command in a war of machines and chemistry and national psychology....

I should hate to attack the Regular officer. His caste belonged to the best of our blood. He was the heir to fine old traditions of courage and leaders.h.i.+p in battle. He was a gentleman whose touch of arrogance was subject to a rigid code of honor which made him look to the comfort of his men first, to the health of his horse second, to his own physical needs last. He had the stern sense of justice of a Roman Centurian, and his men knew that though he would not spare them punishment if guilty, he would give them always a fair hearing, with a point in their favor, if possible. It was in their code to take the greatest risk in time of danger, to be scornful of death in the face of their men whatever secret fear they had, and to be proud and jealous of the honor of the regiment. In action men found them good to follow-better than some of the young officers of the New Army, who had not the same traditional pride nor the same instinct for command nor the same consideration for their men, though more easy-going and human in sympathy.

So I salute in spirit those battalion officers of the Old Army who fulfilled their heritage until it was overwhelmed by new forces, and I find extenuating circ.u.mstances even in remembrance of the high stupidities, the narrow imagination, the deep, impregnable, intolerant ignorance of Staff College men who with their red tape and their general orders were the inquisitors and torturers of the new armies. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. They were molded in an old system, and could not change their cliche.

II

The New Army was called into being by Lord Kitchener and his advisers, who adopted modern advertising methods to stir the sluggish imagination of the ma.s.ses, so that every wall in London and great cities, every fence in rural places, was placarded with picture-posters.

... "What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?"... "What will your best girl say if you're not in khaki?"

Those were vulgar appeals which, no doubt, stirred many simple souls, and so were good enough. It would have been better to let the people know more of the truth of what was happening in France and Flanders-the truth of tragedy, instead of carefully camouflaged communiques, hiding the losses, ignoring the deeds of famous regiments, veiling all the drama of that early fighting by a deliberate screen of mystery, though all was known to the enemy. It was fear of their own people, not of the enemy, which guided the rules of censors.h.i.+p then and later.

For some little time the British people did not understand what was happening. How could they know? It appeared that all was going well. Then why worry? Soon there would be the joy-bells of peace, and the boys would come marching home again, as in earlier wars. It was only very slowly-because of the conspiracy of silence-that there crept into the consciousness of our people the dim realization of a desperate struggle ahead, in which all their young manhood would be needed to save France and Belgium, and-dear G.o.d!-England herself. It was as that thought touched one mind and another that the recruiting offices were crowded with young men. Some of them offered their bodies because of the promise of a great adventure-and life had been rather dull in office and factory and on the farm. Something stirred in their blood-an old call to youth. Some instinct of a primitive, savage kind, for open-air life, fighting, killing, the comrades.h.i.+p of hunters, violent emotions, the chance of death, surged up into the brains of quiet boys, clerks, mechanics, miners, factory hands. It was the call of the wild-the hark-back of the mind to the old barbarities of the world's dawn, which is in the embryo of modern man. The shock of anger at frightful tales from Belgium-little children with their hands cut off (no evidence for that one); women foully outraged; civilians shot in cold blood-sent many men at a quick pace to the recruiting agents. Others were sent there by the taunt of a girl, or the sneer of a comrade in khaki, or the straight, steady look in the eyes of a father who said, "What about it, d.i.c.k?... The old country is up against it." It was that last thought which worked in the brain of England's manhood. That was his real call, which whispered to men at the plow-quiet, ruminating lads, the peasant type, the yeoman-and excited undergraduates in their rooms at Oxford and Cambridge, and the masters of public schools, and all manner of young men, and some, as I know, old in years but young in heart. "The old country is in danger!" The shadow of a menace was creeping over some little patch of England-or of Scotland.

"I's best be going," said the village boy.

"'Dulce et decorum est-'" said the undergraduate.

"I hate the idea, but it's got to be done," said the city-bred man.

So they disappeared from their familiar haunts-more and more of them as the months pa.s.sed. They were put into training-camps, "pigged" it on dirty straw in dirty barns, were ill-fed and ill-equipped, and trained by hard-mouthed sergeants-tyrants and bullies in a good cause-until they became automata at the word of command, lost their souls, as it seemed, in that grinding-machine of military training, and cursed their fate. Only comrades.h.i.+p helped them-not always jolly, if they happened to be a cla.s.s above their fellows, a moral peg above foul-mouthed slum-dwellers and men of filthy habits, but splendid if they were in their own crowd of decent, laughter-loving, companionable lads. Eleven months' training! Were they ever going to the front? The war would be over before they landed in France... Then, at last, they came.

III

It was not until July of 1915 that the Commander-in-Chief announced that a part of the New Army was in France, and lifted the veil from the secret which had mystified people at home whose boys had gone from them, but who could not get a word of their doings in France.

I saw the first of the "Kitchener men," as we called them then. The tramp of their feet in a steady scrunch, scrunch, along a gritty road of France, pa.s.sed the window of my billet very early in the mornings, and I poked my head out to get another glimpse of those lads marching forward to the firing-line. For as long as history lasts the imagination of our people will strive to conjure up the vision of those boys who, in the year of 1915, went out to Flanders, not as conscript soldiers, but as volunteers, for the old country's sake, to take their risks and "do their bit" in the world's bloodiest war. I saw those fellows day by day, touched hands with them, went into the trenches with them, heard their first tales, and strolled into their billets when they had shaken down for a night or two within sound of the guns. History will envy me that, this living touch with the men who, beyond any doubt, did in their simple way act and suffer things before the war ended which revealed new wonders of human courage and endurance. Some people envied me then-those people at home to whom those boys belonged, and who in country towns and villages and suburban houses would have given their hearts to get one look at them there in Flanders and to see the way of their life... How were they living? How did they like it? How were they sleeping? What did the Regulars think of the New Army?

"Oh, a very cheerful lot," said a sergeant-major of the old Regular type, who was having a quiet pipe over a half-penny paper in a shed at the back of some farm buildings in the neighborhood of Armentieres, which had been plugged by two hundred German sh.e.l.ls that time the day before. (One never knew when the fellows on the other side would take it into their heads to empty their guns that way. They had already killed a lot of civilians thereabouts, but the others stayed on.)

"Not a bit of trouble with them," said the sergeant-major, "and all as keen as when they grinned into a recruiting office and said, `I'm going.' They're glad to be out. Over-trained, some of 'em. For ten months we've been working 'em pretty hard. Had to, but they were willing enough. Now you couldn't find a better battalion, though some more famous... Till we get our chance, you know."

He pointed with the stem of his pipe to the open door of an old barn, where a party of his men were resting.

"You'll find plenty of hot heads among them, but no cold feet. I'll bet on that."

The men were lying on a stone floor with haversacks for pillows, or squatting tailor-wise, writing letters home. From a far corner came a whistling trio, harmonized in a tune which for some reason made me think of hayfields in southern England.

They belonged to a Suss.e.x battalion, and I said, "Any one here from Burpham?"

One of the boys sat up, stared, flushed to the roots of his yellow hair, and said, "Yes."

I spoke to him of people I knew there, and he was astonished that I should know them. Distressed also in a queer way. Those memories of a Suss.e.x village seemed to break down some of the hardness in which he had cased himself. I could see a frightful homesickness in his blue eyes.

"P'raps I've seed the last o' Burpham," he said in a kind of whisper, so that the other men should not hear.

The other men were from Arundel, Littlehampton, and Suss.e.x villages. They were of Saxon breed. There was hardly a difference between them and some German prisoners I saw, yellow-haired as they were, with fair, freckled, sun-baked skins. They told me they were glad to be out in France. Anything was better than training at home.

"I like Germans more'n sergeant-majors," said one young yokel, and the others shouted with laughter at his jest.

"Perhaps you haven't met the German sergeants," I said.

"I've met our'n," said the Suss.e.x boy. "A man's a fool to be a soldier. Eh, lads?"

They agreed heartily, though they were all volunteers.

"Not that we're skeered," said one of them. "We'll be glad when the fighting begins."

"Speak for yourself, d.i.c.k Meekcombe, and don't forget the sh.e.l.ls last night."

There was another roar of laughter. Those boys of the South Saxons were full of spirit. In their yokel way they were disguising their real thoughts-their fear of being afraid, their hatred of the thought of death-very close to them now-and their sense of strangeness in this scene on the edge of Armentieres, a world away from their old life.

The colonel sat in a little room at headquarters, a bronzed man with a grizzled mustache and light-blue eyes, with a fine tenderness in his smile.

"These boys of mine are all right," he said. "They're dear fellows, and ready for anything. Of course, it was anxious work at first, but my N. C. O.'s are a first-cla.s.s lot, and we're ready for business."

He spoke of the recruiting task which had begun the business eleven months ago. It had not been easy, among all those scattered villages of the southern county. He had gone hunting among the farms and cottages for likely young fellows. They were of good cla.s.s, and he had picked the lads of intelligence, and weeded out the others. They came from a good stock-the yeoman breed. One could not ask for better stuff. The officers were men of old county families, and they knew their men. That was a great thing. So far they had been very lucky with regard to casualties, though it was unfortunate that a company commander, a fine fellow who had been a schoolmaster and a parson, should have been picked off by a sniper on his first day out.

The New Army had received its baptism of fire, though nothing very fierce as yet. They were led on in easy stages to the danger-zone. It was not fair to plunge them straight away into the bad places. But the test of steadiness was good enough on a dark night behind the reserve trenches, when the reliefs had gone up, and there was a bit of digging to do in the open.

"Quiet there, boys," said the sergeant-major. "And no larks."

It was not a larky kind of place or time. There was no moon, and a light drizzle of rain fell. The enemy's trenches were about a thousand yards away, and their guns were busy in the night, so that the sh.e.l.ls came overhead, and lads who had heard the owls hoot in English woods now heard stranger night-birds crying through the air, with the noise of rus.h.i.+ng wings, ending in a thunderclap.

"And my old mother thinks I'm enjoying myself!" said the heir to a seaside lodging-house.

"Thirsty work, this grave-digging job," said a lad who used to skate on rollers between the bath-chairs of Brighton promenade.

"Can't see much in those sh.e.l.ls," said a young man who once sold ladies' blouses in an emporium of a south coast village. "How those newspaper chaps do try to frighten us!"

He put his head on one side with a sudden jerk.

"What's that? Wasps?"

A number of insects were flying overhead with a queer, sibilant noise. Somewhere in the darkness there was a steady rattle in the throat of a beast.

"What's that, Sergeant?"

"Machine-gums, my child. Keep your head down, or you'll lose hold of it... Steady, there. Don't get jumpy, now!"