On the King's Service Part 2

It was ten o'clock when the first cars came crunching into the station yard, and the convoys arrived one after another until five in the morning. Then, as we could take in no more, the stream was diverted to the other clearing station up the road. Before the war the deep hoot of a car always seemed to say: 'Here am I, rich and rotund, rolling comfortably on my way; I have laid up much goods and can take mine ease'; but after that night it had another meaning: 'Slowly, tenderly, oh! be pitiful. I am broken and in pain,' as the cars crept along over the uneven roads. These were our share of the wounded from Loos, the overflow of serious 'stretcher cases' who could not be taken in at the already overworked stations immediately behind their own front. Many had been lying on the battlefield many hours. They were for the most part from the 15th (Scottish) Division and the 47th (London) Division. Both had made a deathless name. The former got further forward than any other, and paid the penalty with over six thousand casualties. All this night the rain fell in torrents. It streamed from the tops and sides of the ambulances, it lashed the yard till it rose in a fine spray; the lamps shone on wetness everywhere--the dripping, anxious faces of the drivers, the pallid faces of the wounded, eyes staring over their drenched brown blankets, eyes puzzled in their pain and distress, like those of hunted animals; and the reception room was filled with the choking odours of steaming dirty blankets and uniforms, of drying human bodies and of wounds and mortality. As each ambulance arrived the stretchers, their occupants for the most part silent, were drawn gently out and carried into the reception hall and laid upon the floor. At once each man--the nature of whose wounds permitted it--was given a cup of hot tea or of cold water, and a cigarette. Two by two they were lifted on to the trestles, and examined and dressed by the surgeons. Their fort.i.tude was, as one of the surgeons said to me, uncanny. It was supernatural. I could not have believed what could be endured without complaint, often without even a word to express the horrid pain, unless I had seen it. Amid all that battered, bleeding, shattered flesh and bone, the human spirit showed itself a very splendid thing that night.

The reception room at last filled to overflowing and could not be emptied. All the wards and lofts and tents were crammed. By the time the other station was filled the two had taken in three thousand men. They remained with us for a week, because the hospital trains were too busy behind Loos to come our way. Every day every man had to have his wounds dressed. Some were covered with wounds; many of the wounds were dangerous, all were painful; and gas gangrene, which the surgeon so hates to see, had to be fought again and again. The medical staff, seven in number, worked on day after day, and night after night, skilfully, tenderly, ruthlessly. There were also a great many operations, and scores of difficult critical decisions.

As we stepped out from among the blanketed forms I thought bitterly of the 'glory' of war. Yet if there was any glory in war this was it. It was here, in this patient suffering and obedience. These men might well glory in their infirmities. This was heroism, the real thing, the spirit rising to incredible heights of patient endurance in the foreseen possible result of positive action for an ideal. The reaction from battle is overwhelming. Pa.s.sions that the civilised man simply does not know, so colourless is his experience of them in ordinary days, are let loose, anger and terror and horror and l.u.s.t to kill. So for a while, as nearly always happens, even wounds lost their power to pain in the sleep of bottomless exhaustion. Those who could not sleep were drugged with morphine. The moaning never stopped, but rose and fell and rose again. It shook my heart. We turned from the ashen faces and went out into the grey morning light. Everything seemed very grey. A mist was drawing up slowly from the sluggish Lys, and we wondered as we went shivering through it across the soaked gra.s.s what was happening beyond it over there at Loos.

Next afternoon at tea we were all cheered by the news that a man who had had his leg taken off three hours before was asking for a penny whistle.

At last it was discovered that one of the cooks had one. (Cooks in the army are a race apart, possessors of all kinds of strange accomplishments.) It was willingly handed over, and soon the strains of 'Annie Laurie' were rising softly from a cot in Ward VIII.

A month later the Princ.i.p.al Chaplain asked me to go to a battalion.

Chaplains who had been through the previous winter with battalions were not anxious for another winter of it, if fresh men could be found. I was thankful to go, in spite of all the kindness there had been on every hand and the friendships made. The devilish ingenuity of wounds was getting the better of me.

My charge was a brigade, containing a battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, with which I was directed to mess. But the day I joined, this battalion was taken out of the brigade, and as soon as the rearrangement was completed I was transferred to one of the battalions of The Royal Scots. While I was with this unit both its commanding officer and its adjutant were changed. In both cases the cause was the promotion of the officer in question.

DUMBARTON'S DRUMS

_The Regimental Ribbon of The Royal Scots is shown on the wrapper of this book_

CHAPTER V

DUMBARTON'S DRUMS

I

_Back Again!_

The landing of the British Expeditionary Force in the far-away days of August 1914 was one of the great moments of history. And Scotland has a special share in the pride and sorrow that surround that great day, for in her premier regiment centred memories of warfare and endurance, of ancient alliances and ancient enmities, without a parallel in the story of any other regular regiment. The oldest regiment in Europe was on the battlefield once again. The First, or Royal Regiment of Foot, now known as The Royal Scots, when it climbed the steep streets of Boulogne, marched on a soil sacred to it by the memories of heroic campaigns.

Names that were as yet unfamiliar to the world at large were dear to it as the last resting-places of its comrades of long ago--names such as Dunkirk and Dixmude, Furnes and Ypres, Saberne and Bar-le-Duc. Hepburn's Regiment had fought over every foot of the ground on which it was now to share the waging of the greatest of all campaigns. Dumbarton's Drums were once more beating their way through Europe to the making of history. The trust of Gustavus Adolphus and Turenne, of Marlborough and Wellington, marched with them as the promise of victory; and from the old Royals, dustily climbing the cobbled street, spoke all the glamour of 'age-kept victories.'

France was a smiling land in those days, for the sun shone in the hearts of Frenchwomen as the rumour of war rose from the anxiously expected British columns and drifted across the shining August fields. The 2nd battalion--the 1st was still in India--tramped cheerily on its way. To no one then was there revealed that dreary vista of trenches that was to be war to the mind of the modern soldier.

II

_The First Shock of War_

Mons and the 23rd of August saw The Royals in action. With other battalions they occupied the Mons salient, actually the point on which the torrent of war first broke and for a brief moment spent itself. On that still night it seemed to hang suspended as a great wave does before falling. As the battalion lay in the shallow trench the pregnant silence was at last broken by the high, clear call of a bugle, one single long note, indescribably eerie and menacing, and then the listening men heard the rustling tread of feet moving through the gra.s.s with a steady, regular, ominous advance. The might of Germany was on the move, and still the thin brown line lay tense and silent, until only forty paces separated the two. Then, at a word, The Royals' line broke into a storm of flame which swept the line of the advancing men as a scythe sweeps through the corn; and for the British infantry the great war had begun.

Mons was a victory; the German advance was held up temporarily. But all night the British troops were being withdrawn. It was after five in the morning before The Royals got their orders to move, and 'A' Company claims to be the last of the British army to leave Mons. But Le Cateau was another story. Here our men learned what the concentrated fire of artillery could be. The shallow trenches were obliterated; our gunners, hopelessly outcla.s.sed in weight and number of pieces, could do little, in spite of the greatest gallantry, to protect the infantry; and that the army was able to withdraw at all was a striking proof of its stern discipline. Audencourt was a shambles. Colonel McMicking, wounded near this village and left behind, as all the wounded who were unable to walk had to be, was. .h.i.t again while being carried out of the blazing church.

The command devolved on Major, now Brigadier-General, Duncan. From this time onwards the German guns had the range of the roads, and such a superiority of fire that they could do almost as they pleased. The infantry, at first furious at the necessity of retreat, turned again and again--as did the guns--on their pursuers, but even so the pressure was perilously near breaking point. The enemy had every means of mechanical transport, and was able to find time for rest. Our men had to press on to the last point of human endurance. There was no respite. The French Foreign Legion have a grim saying, 'March or die.' Here the word was 'March or be captured,' and even when every other conscious feeling but that of utter exhaustion seemed dead, somewhere deep down in their hearts the will to endure urged them on.

Is there no painter, no poet, who can enshrine for future generations the memory of this historic scene? We have here a sudden glimpse of Britain at her best. Hot sun, torment of burning feet on the cruel, white, and endless roads, the odour and sight and sound of death and wounds, pressure of pressing men, and love of life and the horrid loneliness of fear--all that was Giant Circ.u.mstance; but he could not extinguish the souls of men made in the image of G.o.d for suffering and endurance and triumph. English and Irish and Scottish--but brothers in hatred of retreat and in their determination to push on until they could turn and strike--the glamour of great names hung round all those tattered battalions; and the very essence of it was in the oldest of them all, in history and in campaigns, this famous Lowland regiment. Of that at such a time they thought little, if at all; sheer physical facts pressed too hard, yet in their desperate victory over circ.u.mstance they wrote the most golden page of their story, and enriched the blood of all who follow them.

You can find a certain humour in war if you look for it, though war is not amusing, and life at home has many more entertaining incidents in it than life at the front. One officer of The Royals fell sound asleep in a trench during the climax of a terrific bombardment, and awoke to find himself alone among the dead. (He makes us laugh when he tells the story, but at the time it cannot have been just very humorous.) He pushed on after the retreating army, and though--owing to the mistake of an officer at a cross-roads who stood saying, 'Third division to the right, So-and-so division to the left,' when it should have been the other way about--he lost his way, he found the battalion a fortnight later. Two others came in sight of the last bridge standing on one river just as the explosive was about to be detonated, and maintain that, running furiously toward the bridge, they persuaded the engineer in charge to postpone the fatal moment by brandishing a large loaf, rarest of all articles on the heels of a retreating army. Another who had been sent on ahead to find a billet in a chateau saw a beautiful bathroom, and was preparing to make use of a priceless opportunity when he found that the enemy was upon him, and fled in haste. The transport officer, peering round the corner of a house, saw his beloved transport which he had gathered and cherished until it was reputed the best in the army, go up in matchwood and iron splinters. One subaltern, finding himself on the ground, discovered to his horror that he had a hole in his chest, but struggled gamely on, now walking, now stealing a ride on a limber--just catching the last train of all--and finally arriving in England with no other articles of kit or clothing but a suit of pink pyjamas and a single eyegla.s.s.

At Meaux the steeples of Paris were in sight; but the hour had struck, and The Royals at last wheeled to pursue.

III

_At the Nose of the Salient_

The battalion had come through much since then, on the Marne and the Aisne and the Lys, and in trench warfare from Hooge to Neuve Chapelle.

Here is a picture of a day's fighting from the diary of an eyewitness--a bald note of facts. It refers to 25th September 1915:--

'The brigade formed up in the trench in the following order from left to right, 1st Gordons, 4th Gordons, 2nd Royals, one company Royal Scots Fusiliers. Each battalion received separate point of attack, namely, Bellevarde Farm, Hooge Chateau, Redoubt, Sandbag Castle. Artillery bombardment 3.50-4.20 A.M. General attack then launched. "B" Company was at the nose of the salient; "C" Company on right of "B"; "A" Company on left; "D" Company in dug-outs in reserve. At 4.20 A.M. the battalion advanced to the attack. Complete silence was observed and bayonets were dulled. The front line was captured with few casualties on our side, and shortly after the final objective was successfully attained. Our line was consolidated. One hundred and sixteen prisoners belonging to the 172nd Regiment of XV. Prussian Corps were taken and three lines of trenches. All four officers of "B" Company were hit before German front line was reached. Touch was established with R.S.F. on right and 4th G.H. on left. There was heavy German sh.e.l.l-fire on the captured trenches. A party from "D" Company tried to make communication trench back to our old front line, 1st Gordons unfortunately were not able to reach the German front line owing to wire being undestroyed and too thick to cut. A gap was thus made between 1st and 4th Gordons. The enemy pushed bombers through, thus getting behind 4th Gordons. Desperate hand-to-hand fighting ensued. O.C. "A" Company was forced to defend his left flank. A German counter-attack moving N. to S. by C.T. across the Menin Road, The Royals' machine-gun did great execution. Terrific bombardment by German heavies (H.E.). "A" Company was ordered to retire on our old front line to get in touch with 4th G.H. on left. "B" Company to keep in touch ordered to do the same. "C" Company rinding enemy on left rear, position became critical. No battalion at all now on left, 1st Gordons having failed in their objective, and 4th having been withdrawn owing to flank attack in front of 1st. No battalion now on right either. "C" Company in danger of being surrounded. Captain N.S.

Stewart personally reported the danger of his position. A company of 4th Middles.e.x were rushed up--all our men by this time having been used up--to the nose of the salient, but could not man it owing to terrific barrage of fire. "C" Company, completely cut off, fought its way with the bayonet back to its former front line. Colonel Duncan reorganised the firing line. Both sides spent the night in gathering in the wounded.'

So ended the containing attack from the Ypres salient. But is not every sentence a spur to the imagination?

Two days later, the Corps commander, in personally thanking the battalion, complimented it on 'the smart appearance of the men who _showed no signs of what they had gone through_.'

It was to this famous battalion of a great Regiment that I was now attached as one of the four Presbyterian chaplains to the 'fighting Third' Division.

WINTER WARFARE

CHAPTER VI

WINTER WARFARE

I

_The Sh.e.l.l Area_

The sh.e.l.l area is all the land behind the trenches which is under fire from the enemy's guns as a matter of course. It is not a pleasant place, for that reason, to walk about in, and our own artillery, cleverly concealed, is apt to open fire unexpectedly within a few yards of the pa.s.ser-by in a way that is very disturbing. It is a dreary land; a dank air broods over it, an atmosphere of destruction and death, of humanity gone awry and desolate. I remember the almost ecstasy with which one April afternoon some of us found ourselves among the purple hyacinths on Kemmel hill. Poor Kemmel, once a pleasure resort whither happy Belgians went for the benefit of their health, now far from that--and not particularly healthy! These battered villages are now merely sordid; only Ypres maintains a personality, an air of undefeat all its own. It too is a ruin, but unlike the others it is a splendid ruin. At every cross-roads the brooding crucifixes hang. The British mind does not like this constant reiteration of mishandling and defeat in the death of Christ. It does not seem to it to be the final message of the Cross.

Indeed, it is the product of the mediaeval, monkish mind. It was not until the tenth century that the representations of the Crucifixion showed Our Lord as dead; it was much later before the emphasis was laid on agony and despair. Once from among the debris of the convent in Voormezeele I rescued such a representation of the Body of Christ, limbs gone, broken arms outstretched, and it seemed a symbol. But that is not the final truth, defeat and despair. The cross-road shrines would not look down on those groups of tramping Islanders if it were so. And as you look back over the parados of the firing trench, across the bleached and scarred countryside, you remember that _that_, like the scenes of agony in the clearing station after Loos, is the plain, visible proof that His Spirit lives in the world of men. But what a Via Dolorosa it is, that grim ditch dug across Europe, with its crouching men behind the snipers' plates. Strange path for the twentieth century to have to walk in, to prove that compa.s.sion and righteousness still live.

In all this area the British soldier walks with a singular _insouciance_. It is not simply that he is brave. He is that, supremely so, and not least when he is very much afraid and will not show it and carries on with his job. But there is more in it than that. There is a kind of warlike genius in him which makes him do the right thing in the right way, so that he appeals to humour and comradeship as well as to gallantry. It was one of our sergeant-majors who before a battalion attack offered 5 to the man of his company who was first in the enemy's trench. Think of it for a moment. He appealed to their sporting instinct; he turned their thoughts from death and wounds and introduced a jest into every dug-out that night; and he indicated, without boasting, that he was going to be first over the parapet. He made it certain that every sportsman in the company--and what British regular is not--would strain every nerve to be first across. And the cream of the jest was that, stalwart athlete that he was, he was first across himself! The same may be said of the officer; he wins more than obedience from his men. I have seen senior N.C.O.'s crying like children because their young officer was dead.

Along with this courage and comradeship and humour there is often a great deal of fatalism. It expresses itself in many ways, in the reading of Omar Khayyam--'The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes'--for example, in the indifference so often shown by men if they lose through their own fault some 'cushy job' and have to go back to the line, or in the doing of really foolish things, foolish because dangerous, but useless. I remember sitting outside the dug-out of Captain Chree (who afterwards laid down his life on the Somme) at battalion headquarters, and watching the sh.e.l.ling of one of our batteries of 18-pounders some five hundred yards back. The Germans had searched for it repeatedly with lavish expenditure of ammunition, and that afternoon they got it repeatedly, with very unpleasant results. But of course there were many misses. Whenever the German sh.e.l.ls fell short they burst in the field, in front of the battery, which was bounded on two sides by a road. In the midst of the bombardment a soldier came down the road facing us and, instead of walking round by the cross-roads, cut across the field in which sh.e.l.ls were bursting. He deliberately left comparative safety for real danger simply in order to save himself five minutes' walk. On another occasion, when I was at dusk one evening in Vierstraat, a Tommy came along carrying some burden. At this point he got tired and planted it down right in the middle of the cross-roads. Another man told him he could not have chosen a worse place for a rest, that the Boche was always firing rifles and machine-guns up the road, but he was prevailed upon to move only with the greatest difficulty. Perhaps in another cla.s.s was the soldier the doctor and I came upon suddenly in a ruined house in Ypres kicking with all the strength of an iron-shod boot at the fuse of an unexploded German sh.e.l.l. A friend with his hands in his pockets was watching the proceedings with much interest. He said he was only wanting the fuse as a souvenir, but he would soon have got that to keep and a good deal more. The doctor was quite peevish about it, as the saying is!

When an attack is being made or repelled, the concentration of batteries in action turns the country in front of them into a nightmare of noise--'a terrific and intolerable noise' in Froissart's phrase. The incessant slamming of the guns makes it impossible to hear enemy sh.e.l.ls coming. The first intimation is their arrival. But the orderlies go backwards and forwards through it all with superb courage. Wounded trickle down the trolley line to the dressing station, and an occasional group of prisoners come through. It was on a day like this that I saw Davidson and Rainie for the last time. When The Royals were moved up from the support trenches to take over from the battalion which had delivered the attack at St. Eloi, some one said to Captain Davidson, who was going up at the head of his company through a terrible barrage, 'This is going to be a risky affair.' 'Yes,' he replied, 'but it's not our business whether it's risky or not. My orders are to go through.'

Soon after he fell. He was barely twenty years of age.

II