Sketches of the East Africa Campaign Part 4

Looting, although you may not know it, is the natural impulse of primitive man. And in war we are very primitive. To take what does not belong to one is very natural when a man is persuaded that he can be absolved from the charge of theft by quoting military necessity. How surely in war one sheds the conventions of society! It has the attraction of buried treasure; the charm of getting something for nothing. But there are different ways or degrees of looting.

Now there were a few of us in German East Africa who had been in the Retreat from Mons and the subsequent advance to the Marne and beyond it to the Aisne. Indelibly engraved upon our minds were the pictures of French chateaux and farmhouses looted by the German troops in their advance and abandoned to us in their retreat. All along the countless roads the German transport had pressed, hurrying to the Aisne, were evidences of the loot of German officers and men. In roadside ditches, half buried in the late summer vegetation, were pictures and bronzes, china and statuary, the loot the German officer had chosen to adorn the walls of his ancestral Schloss. Marble figures leant drunkenly against the wayside hedges, big bra.s.s clocks strewed the ditches. Long before, of course, had the German rank and file been compelled to jettison their prizes, for the transport horses were nearly foundered and only officers' loot could be retained. Later, when the exhaustion of the horses was complete, and capture of the waggons seemed imminent, the regimental equipment and food supply, and, finally, the loot of high officers had to be abandoned. The whole story of that retreat was to be read in the discard by the roadside. The regimental butcher had clung to his meat and the implements of his trade until the last; and when we found the roads littered with carcases of oxen, sacks of pea flour and sausage machines, we knew that we would shortly find the General's loot beside the hedge.

In the houses, too, both the chateaux and the comfortable French farmhouses, we saw what manner of man the Hun could be in the matter of looting. Where the soldier could not loot he could not refrain from destroying. Floors were knee-deep in women's gear, household goods, private letters and all the treasures of French linen chests. Trampled by muddy German boots were the fine whiteness of French bed-linen. Nor had the German soldier refrained from the last exhibit of his "_Kultur_," but left filthy evidences of his b.e.s.t.i.a.l habits behind him to ensure that the bedrooms would be uninhabitable by us.

Remembering all these things we wondered how our men would behave now that the tables were turned and they in a position to loot the treasures of many German farms and plantation houses. Of course, divisional orders against looting and wanton destruction were very strict. Where houses were at the mercy of small patrols and bodies of our men under non-commissioned officers, far from the path of the main advancing army, the temptation to all must have been immense, and it speaks volumes for the natural goodness of our men and their ingrained sense of order that never in this whole country was looting done by any of our troops. True many houses were plundered, and there was a certain amount of wanton damage; but it was all done by the plundering native or by the Hun himself in his retreat.

For our calculating enemy left no stone unturned to deprive us of any of the useful booty of war. He deliberately destroyed and ravaged and burnt the property of his fellow-countrymen, and mentally determined to send in the claim for damage against us. A German will always complain and send in a bill of costs to us, when he is once a.s.sured of the protection of British troops.

Naturally, of course, we requisitioned and gave receipts for any article or property that might be of use to us for our hospitals or our supplies. In fact, our scrupulous regard for enemy property will probably result in very many fraudulent claims against our Government when the war is over. How easy to add mythical articles of great value to the list attested to by the signature of a British Staff officer. Who could blame a Hun when the British were such fools and forgery of receipts so easy?

But such was the regard we paid to German women and children that, if a house were occupied, we took nothing and disturbed nothing. A German farmhouse was an oasis of plenty amid a very hungry army. It made us sometimes wonder whether it was quite right to leave German ducks and fowls and sheep behind us, when we had to live on mealie meal and tough trek-ox. But the women were so terrified, at first, that we gave such farms a wide berth when scarcity of water did not force us to camp within the enclosures. Shortly, however, as is the German custom, these women would profit by their immunity and come to regimental headquarters that listened so patiently and courteously to the tale of pawpaws or mangoes--fruit that was really wild--vanished in the night. In no campaign, I dare swear, has so much respect been given to occupied houses, so much consideration to conquered people. The German Government paid this compliment to our army, that they left their women and children behind to our tender mercies.

At Handeni, ours being a Casualty Clearing Station, our equipment included 200 stretchers, with little hospital equipment, beyond the men's own blankets and their kit. No sooner did we come along and install ourselves in the abandoned German fort than the 5th South African Infantry were in action at Kangata to win 125 casualties. For us they were to nurse and keep until convalescent; for there was no stationary hospital behind us, and forty miles of the worst of bad roads robbed us of the chance of transporting them to the railway.

So every afternoon I went to German planters' houses (empty, of course), for forty miles around, in a swift Ford car. And back in triumph we bore bedsteads and soft mattresses that heavy German bodies so lately had impressed. Warm from the Hun, we brought them to our wounded. Down pillows, soft eiderdown quilts for painful broken legs; mattresses for pain-racked bodies. And one's reward the pleasure and appreciation our men showed at these attempts to ameliorate _their_ lot. They were so "bucked" to see us coming back at night laden with the treasures of German linen chests. It would have done your heart good to see their dirty, unwashed faces grinning at me from lace-edged pillows.

Silk-covered cushions from Hun drawing-rooms for painful amputation stumps!

So I had the double pleasure, all the expectancy and the delight of seeing our men so pleased. Forty bedsteads and beds complete we found in that district, until the bare white-washed walls of the jail were transformed. White paint, too, we discovered in plenty, and soon our wards were virginal in their whiteness. And when I tell you that at one time I had no less than thirteen gunshot fractures of thigh and leg alone and other wounds in proportion, in the hospital, you may judge how necessary beds were.

But the natives had nearly always been before us, and the confusion was indescribable, drawers turned out, the contents strewed upon the floors, cupboards broken into, and all portable articles removed. Pathetic traces everywhere of the happy family life before war's devastating fingers rifled all their treasures. Photographs, private letters, a doll's house, children's broken toys.

And from some letters one gathered that insight into the relations between the plantation owner and the manager who lived there. At one farm, apparently owned by an Englishman who paid his manager, a German Dane from Flensburg, the princely sum of 200 rupees a month, we found that one, at least, of our own people knew how to grind the uttermost labour from his German employee. For there were letters from the manager asking for leave after 2 years' labour at this plantation, and pointing out that the German Government had laid down the principle of European leave every two years. To this came the cold reply that his employer cared nothing for German Government regulations; the contract was for three years, and he would see to it that this provision was carried out. One later letter begged for financial a.s.sistance to tide him over the coming months; for his wife and children had been ill and he himself in hospital at Korogwe with blackwater fever for two months.

"And how shall I pay for food the next two months, if my pay is 200 rupees only, and hospital expenses 500?"

SHERRY AND BITTERS

A common inquiry put to doctors is, "What do you think of the alcohol question in a tropical campaign?" Do we not think that it is a good thing that our army is, by force of circ.u.mstances, a teetotal one? Much as we regret to depart from an att.i.tude that is on the whole hostile to alcohol, I must say that it is our conviction that in the tropics a certain amount of diffusible stimulant is very beneficial and quite free from harm. And the cheapest and most reliable stimulant of that nature one can obtain commercially is, of course, whiskey. This whole campaign has been almost entirely a teetotal one for reasons of transport and inability to get drink. Not for any other reason, I can a.s.sure you. But where the absence of alcohol has been no doubt responsible for a wonderful degree of excellent behaviour among our troops, I yet know that the few who were able to get a drink at night felt all the better for it. At the end of the day here, when the sun has set and darkness, swiftly falling, sends us to our tents and bivouacs, there comes a feeling of intense exhaustion, especially if any exercise has been taken. And exercise in some form, as you have heard, is absolutely essential to health after the sun has descended toward the west about four o'clock in the afternoon. For men and officers go sick in standing camp more than on trek, and, often, the more and the longer the men are left in camp to rest, with the intention of recuperation, the more they go down with malaria and dysentery.

It is no sudden conclusion we have come to as to the value of alcohol, but we certainly feel that a drink or two at night does no one any harm.

But the drink for tropics must not be fermented liquor: beer and wine are headachy and livery things. Whisky and particularly vermouth are far the best. And vermouth is really such a pleasant wholesome drink too.

The idea of vermouth alone is attractive. For it is made from the dried flowers of camomile to which the later pressings of the grape have been added. One has only to smell dried camomile flowers to find that their fragrance is that of hay meadows in an English June! Camomile preparations, too, are now so largely used in medicine and still keep their reputation for wholesome and soothing qualities that it has enjoyed for generations. How could one think that harm could lurk in the tincture of such fragrant things as the flowers of English meadows? No little reputation as a cure and preventive for blackwater fever does vermouth enjoy! We know that we must always, if we would be wise, be guided by local experience and local custom, and it is told of the Anglo-German boundary Commission in East Africa, that the frontier between the two protectorates can still be traced by the empty vermouth bottles! But there were no cases of blackwater. I am told, on that very long and trying expedition.

In the survey of the whole question of Prohibition in the future, the essential difference of the requirements of humanity in tropical countries must be taken into consideration. There is no doubt, and in this all medical men of long tropical experience will agree, that some stimulant is needed by blond humanity living out of his geographical environment and debilitated by the adverse influence of his lack of pigment, the vertical sun and a tropical heat. It is more than probable that a proviso will have to be added to any world-wide scheme of prohibition. The c.o.c.ktail, the universal "sherry and bitters" and "sundowner" will have to be retained. To expect a man, so exhausted that the very idea of food is distasteful, to digest his dinner, is to ask too much of one's digestive apparatus. And this we must all admit, that if a man in the tropics does not eat, then certainty he may not live.

NATIVE PORTERS

Toiling behind the column on march is the long and ragged line of native porters, the human cattle that are, after all, the most reliable form of transport in Equatorial Africa. Clad in red blankets or loin cloths or in kilts made of reeds and straw, they struggle on singing through the heat. Gra.s.s rings temper the weight of the loads to their heads, each man carrying his forty pounds for the regulation ten miles, the prescribed day's march in the tropics. Winding snake-like along the native paths, they go chanting a weird refrain that keeps their interest and makes the miles slip by. Here are some low-browed and primitive porters from the mountains, "Shenzies," as the superior Swahili call them, and clad only in the native kilt of gra.s.s or reeds. Good porters these, though ugly in form, and lacking the grace of the Wanyamwezi or the Wahehe.

At night they drop their loads beside the water-holes that mark the stages in the long march, and seek the nearest derelict ox or horse and prepare their meals, with relish, from the still warm entrails. This, with their "pocha," the allowance of mealie meal or mahoga, keeps them fat, their stomachs distended, bodies shiny and spirits of the highest.

Round their camp fires they chatter far into the night, relieved, by the number of the troops and the plentiful supply of dead horses in the bush, from the ever-present fear of the lion that, in other days, would lift them at night, yelling, from their dying fires. One wonders that their spirits are so high, for they would get short shrift and little mercy from German raiding parties behind our advance. For the porter is fan-game, and is as liable to destruction as any other means of transport. Nor would the Germans hesitate a moment to kill them as they would our horses. But the bush is the porters' safeguard, and at the first scattering volley of the raiding party, they drop their loads and plunge into the undergrowth. Later, when we have driven off the raiders, it is often most difficult to collect the porters again. Naturally the British att.i.tude to the porter _genus_ differs from that of the Hun. Our aim, indeed, is to break up an enemy convoy, but we seek to capture the hostile porters that we may use them in our turn, all the more welcome to us for the increased usefulness that German porter discipline has given them.

Porters are the sole means of transport of the German armies; to these latter are denied the mule transport and the motor lorries that eat up the miles when roads are good. So they take infinite pains to train their beasts of burden. Often they are chained together in little groups to prevent them discarding their loads and plunging into the jungle when our pursuit draws near. The German knows the value of song to help the weary miles to pa.s.s, and makes the porters chant the songs and choruses dear to the native heart. Increasingly important these carriers become as the rains draw near, and the time approaches when no wheels can move in the soft wet cotton soil of the roads. Nor are the porters altogether easy to deal with. Very delicate they often are when moved from their own district and deprived of their accustomed food. Dysentery plays havoc in their ranks. For the banana-eating Baganda find the rough grain flour much too coa.r.s.e and irritating for their stomachs. So our great endeavour is to get the greatest supply of local labour. Strange to say, it is here that our misplaced leniency to the German meets its due reward.

It is not easy to tell the combatant, unless he be caught red-handed.

They all wear khaki, the only difference being that a civilian wears pearl b.u.t.tons, the soldiers the metal military b.u.t.ton with the Imperial Crown stamped on it. When it is borne in mind that the b.u.t.tons are hooked on, one can imagine how simple it is to transform and change ident.i.ty. Nor are the helmets different in any way, save that a soldier's bears the coloured b.u.t.ton in the front; but as this also unscrews, the recognition is still more difficult.

With these people, it has been our habit to send them back to their alleged civil occupations after extracting an undertaking that they will take no further active or pa.s.sive part in the war. But, to our surprise, when we sought for labour or supplies in their country districts, we found that we could obtain neither. Upon inquiry of the natives we learn that our late prisoners are conducting a campaign of intimidation.

"Soon--in a year--we shall all return, and the English will be driven out. If you labour or sell eggs, woe betide you in the day of reckoning." What can the native do? As they say to us, "We see the Germans returning to their farms just as they were before; the missionaries installed in their mission stations again. What are we to believe?"

THE PADRE AND HIS JOB

How often, in this war, has not one pitied the Army Chaplain! As a visitor to hospital, as a dispenser of charity, as the bearer of hospital comforts and gifts to sick men, as an indefatigable organiser of concerts, as the cheerful friend of lonely men, he is doing a real good work. But that is not his job, it is not what he came out to do.

And the padre, willing, earnest, good fellow that he is, is conscious that he is often up against a brick wall, a reserve in the soldier that he cannot penetrate. The fact is, that he has rank, and that robs him of much of his power to reach the private soldier. But he must have rank, just as much as a doctor. Executive authority must be his, in order to a.s.sert and keep up discipline. And yet there is the constant barrier between the officer and the man. Doctors know and feel it: feel that, in the officer, they are no longer the doctor. Now, however, great changes have been wrought and the medical officer likes to be called "doc," just as much as the chaplain values the name "padre." There's something so intimate about it. Such a tribute to our job and our responsibility and the trust and confidence they have in us.

The soldier is not concerned about his latter end; all that troubles him about his future, is the billet he yearns for, the food he hopes to get, the rest he is sure is due to him, his leave and the time when--how he longs for that!--he may turn his sword into a ploughshare and have done with war and the soldier's beastly trade.

Of course, in little matters like swearing, the padre is wise and he knows what Tommy's adjective is worth. He knows that Tommy is a simple person and apt to reduce his vocabulary to three wonderful words: three adjectives which are impartially used as substantives, adjectives, verbs, or adverbs. That is all. The earnest young chaplain at first gasps with horror at the flaming words, and would not be surprised if the heavens opened and celestial wrath descended on these poor sinners'

heads. But he soon learns that these little adornments of the King's English mean less than nothing. For Tommy is a reverent person, he is not a blasphemer in reality; he is gentle, infinitely kind, incredibly patient, extraordinarily generous, if the truth be told. His language would lead one to believe that his soul is entirely lost. But when one knows what this careless, generous, and kindly person is capable of, one feels that his soul is a very precious thing indeed. And there is one way the padre can touch this priceless soul: that is, by serving in the ranks with him. Then all the barriers fall, all the reserve vanishes, and the padre comes into his own, and saves more souls by his example than by oceans of precept. There he finds himself, he has got his real job at last.

Among the South African infantry brigade, that did that wonderful march to Kondoa Irangi, two hundred and fifty miles in a month, in the height of the rainy season, were fourteen parsons. All serving in the ranks as private soldiers, they carried a wonderful example with them. It was their pride that they were the cleanest and the best disciplined men in their respective companies. No fatigue too hard, no duty too irksome.

Better soldiers they showed themselves than Tommy himself. Of a bright and cheerful countenance, particularly when things looked gloomy, they were ready for any voluntary fatigue. The patrol in the thick bush that was so dangerous, fetching water, quick to build fires and make tea, ready to help a lame fellow with his equipment, always cheery, never grousing, they lived the life of our Lord instead of preaching about it.

For the padre's job, I take it, is to teach the men the right spirit, to send them to war as men should go, to a.s.sure them that this is a holy fight, that G.o.d is on their side.

He knows that Tommy, if he speculates at all upon his latter end, does so in the pagan spirit, the spirit that teaches men that there is a special heaven for soldiers who are killed in war, that the manner of their dying will give them absolution for their sins. And the padre knows that the pagan spirit is the true spirit and yet he may not say so. He may not suggest for a moment that sin will be forgiven by sacrifice, for that is Old Testament teaching; his Bishop tells him that he must not trifle with this heresy, but he must inculcate in sinful man that he can, by repentance, and by repentance only, gain absolution for past misdeeds.

And the chaplain knows Tommy, and he knows that he will never get him on that tack. He knows that any soldier, who is any good, looks upon it as a cowardly, mean and contemptible thing to crawl to G.o.d for forgiveness in times of danger, when they never went to him in days of peace. And I know many a chaplain who is with the soldier in this belief.

A little of war, and the padre very soon finds his limitations. To begin with, he is attached to a Field Ambulance and not to a regiment, as a rule. The only time he sees the men is when they are wounded. Then he often feels in the way and fears to obstruct the doctor in his job. So all that is left is going out with the stretcher-bearing party at night, showing a good example, cool in danger, merciful to the wounded. But that again is not his job.

First, when he laid aside the sad raiment of his calling, and put on his khaki habiliments of war, he thought that the chief part of his job was to shrive the soldier before action, and to comfort the dying. Later he found that the soldier would not be shriven, and found, to his surprise, that the dying need no comfort. Very soon he learnt that wounded men want the doctor, and chiefly as the instrument that brings them morphia and ease from pain. And when the wound is mortal, G.o.d's mercy descends upon the man and washes out his pain. How should he need the padre, when G.o.d Himself is near?

Early in his military career the young ministers of the Gospel were provided with small diaries, in which they might record the dying messages of the wounded. Then came disillusion, and they found the dying had no messages to send; they are at peace, the wonderful peace that precedes the final dissolution, and all they ask is to be left alone.

So is it to be wondered at, that men with imagination, men like Furze, the Bishop of Pretoria, saw in a vision clear that the padre's job lay with the living and not with the dying, that he could point the way by the example of a splendid life with the soldier, far better than by a hundred discourses, as an officer, from the far detachment of the pulpit. Thus was the idea conceived and so was the experiment carried out. And all of us who were in German East Africa can vouch for the splendid results of these excellent examples. For the private soldier saw that his fellow-soldier, handicapped as he was by being a parson, could know his job and do his job as a soldier better than Tommy could himself. To his surprise, he found that here was a man who could make himself intelligible without prefixing a flaming adjective when he asked his pal to pa.s.s the jam. Here was a N.C.O., a real good fellow too, who could give an order and point a moral without the use of a blistering oath; a man who was a man, cool under fire, ready for any dangerous venture, cheerful always, never grousing, always generous and open as a soldier should be, never preaching, never openly praying, never asking men to do what he would not do himself. Can you wonder that Tommy understood, and, understanding, copied this example?

When he saw a man inspired by some inward Spirit that made him careless of danger, contemptuous of death, fulfilling all the Soldier's requirements in the way of manhood, he knew quite well that some Divine inward fire upheld this once despised follower of Christ. Then lo! the transformation. First, the oaths grew rarer in the ranks and vanished; then came the discovery that, after all, it really was possible to conduct a conversation in the same language as the soldier used at home with his wife and children; that, after all, the picturesque adjectives that flavoured the speech of camps were not necessary; that there was really no need for two kinds of speech, the language of the camp and the language of the drawing-room.

And the process of redemption was very curious. All are familiar of course with the hymn tunes that are sung by marching soldiers, tunes that move their female relatives and amiable elderly gentlemen to a quick admiration for the Christian soldier. All know too that, could the admiring throng only hear the words to which these hymn tunes were sung, the crowd would fly with fingers to their ears, from such apparent blasphemy. Well, these well-known ballads were first sung at the padre, and especially at the padre who was masquerading as a soldier. And when the soldier saw that the padre could see the jest and laugh at it too, and know that it meant nothing, then he felt that he had got a good fellow for his sky pilot. Can you wonder that the soldier spoke of his padre comrade in such generous terms and that the whole tone of the regiment improved? The men were better soldiers and better Christians too.

There is one trap into which a padre falls when marching with a regiment. Provided, by regulations, with a horse, he is often unwise enough to ride alongside his marching cure of souls. It would, perhaps, do him good if he could hear, as I did, the comments of two Scottish sergeants in the rear. "Our Lord did not consider it beneath him to ride upon a donkey, but this man of G.o.d needs must have a horse."

"How is it that I don't get close to the good fellows on board the ship?" said a very good and earnest padre to me. "Why don't these fellow-officers of mine come to church? How is it that fellows I know to be good and generous and kindly are yet to be found at the bar, in the smoking-room, when my service is on? Why is it that the decent, nice fellows aren't professing Christians, and some of the fellows who are my most regular attendants haven't a tenth of the character and quality and charm of these apparent pagans?"

What could I do but tell him the truth? I knew him well and felt that he would understand. Most fellows, I said, don't come to church, because if they've good and decent characters, they hate to be hypocrites. Now you know, padre, in this improper world of ours, that many men are sinners, by that I mean that convention describes as sinful some of the things they do. What do you tell us when we go to early chapel in the morning?