Tommy Atkins at War Part 1

Tommy Atkins at War.

by James Alexander Kilpatrick.

NOTE

This little book is the soldier's story of the war, with all his vivid and intimate impressions of life on the great battlefields of Europe. It is ill.u.s.trated by pa.s.sages from his letters, in which he describes not only the grim realities, but the chivalry, humanity and exaltation of battle. For the use of these pa.s.sages the author is indebted to the courtesy and generosity of the editors of all the leading London and provincial newspapers, to whom he gratefully acknowledges his obligations.

J.A.K.

TOMMY ATKINS AT WAR

I

OFF TO THE FRONT

"It is my Royal and Imperial Command that you concentrate your energies, for the immediate present upon one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valor of my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and walk over General French's contemptible little army."[A]

While this Imperial Command of the Kaiser was being written, Atkins, innocent of the fate decreed for him, was well on his way to the front, full of exuberant spirits, and singing as he went, "It's a long way to Tipperary." In his pocket was the message from Lord Kitchener which Atkins believes to be the whole duty of a soldier: "Be brave, be kind, courteous (but nothing more than courteous) to women, and look upon looting as a disgraceful act."

Troopship after troopship had crossed the Channel carrying Sir John French's little army to the Continent, while the boasted German fleet, impotent to menace the safety of our transports, lay helpless--bottled up, to quote Mr. Asquith's phrase, "in the inglorious seclusion of their own ports."

Never before had a British Expeditionary Force been organized, equipped and despatched so swiftly for service in the field. The energies of the War Office had long been applied to the creation of a small but highly efficient striking force ready for instant action. And now the time for action had come. The force was ready. From the harbors the troopships steamed away, their decks crowded with cheery soldiers, their flags waving a proud challenge to any disputant of Britain's command of the sea.

The expedition was carried out as if by magic. For a few brief days the nation endured with patience its self-imposed silence. In the newspapers were no brave columns of farewell scenes, no exultant send-off greetings, no stirring pictures of troopships pa.s.sing out into the night. All was silence, the silence of a nation preparing for the "iron sacrifice," as Kipling calls it, of a devastating war. Then suddenly the silence was broken, and across the Channel was flashed the news that the troops had been safely landed, and were only waiting orders to throw themselves upon the German brigands who had broken the sacred peace of Europe.

And so the scene changes to France and Belgium. Tommy Atkins is on his way to the Front. He has already begun to send home some of those gallant letters that throb throughout the pages of this book. If he felt the absence of the stimulating send-off, necessitated by official caution and the exigencies of a European war, he at least had the new joy of a welcome on foreign soil. It is difficult to find words with the right quality in them to express the feelings aroused in our men by their reception, or the exquisite grat.i.tude felt by the Franco-Belgian people. They welcomed the British troops as their deliverers.

"The first person to meet us in France," writes a British officer, "was the pilot, and the first intimation of his presence was a huge voice in the darkness, which roared out 'A bas Guillaume. Eep, eep, 'ooray!'" As transport after transport sailed into Boulogne, and regiment after regiment landed, the population went into ecstasies of delight. Through the narrow streets of the old town the soldiers marched, singing, whistling, and cheering, with a wave of their caps to the women and a kiss wafted to the children (but not only to the children!) on the route. As they swept along, their happy faces and gallant bearing struck deep into the emotions of the spectators. "What brave fellows, to go into battle laughing!" exclaimed one old woman, whose own sons had been called to the army of the Republic.

It was strange to hear the pipes of the Highlanders skirl shrilly through old Boulogne, and to catch the sound of English voices in the clarion notes of the "Ma.r.s.eillaise," but, strangest of all to French ears, to listen to that new battle-cry, "Are we down-hearted?" followed by the unanswerable "No--o--o!" of every regiment. And then the lilt of that new marching song to which Tommy Atkins has given immortality:--

"IT'S A LONG, LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY"[B]

Up to mighty London came an Irishman one day; As the streets are paved with gold, sure ev'ry one was gay, Singing songs of Piccadilly, Strand and Leicester Square, Till Paddy got excited, then he shouted to them there:

CHORUS

It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go; It's a long way to Tipperary, To the sweetest girl I know!

Good-by Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square.

It's a long, long way to Tipperary, But my heart's right there!

It's a' there!

Paddy wrote a letter to his Irish Molly O', Saying, "Should you not receive it, write and let me know!

If I make mistakes in spelling, Molly dear," said he, "Remember it's the pen that's bad, don't lay the blame on me."

(_Chorus_)

Molly wrote a neat reply to Irish Paddy O', Saying, "Mike Maloney wants to marry me, and so Leave the Strand and Piccadilly, or you'll be to blame, For love has fairly drove me silly--hoping you're the same!"

(_Chorus_)

It may seem odd that the soldier should care so little for martial songs, or the songs that are ostensibly written for him; but that is not the fault of Tommy Atkins. Lyric poets don't give him what he calls "the stuff." He doesn't get it even from Kipling; Thomas Hardy's "Song of the Soldiers" leaves him cold. He wants no epic stanzas, no heroic periods. What he asks for is something simple and romantic, something about a girl, and home, and the lights of London--that goes with a swing in the march and awakens tender memories when the lilt of it is wafted at night along the trenches.

And so "Tipperary" has gone with the troops into the great European battlefields, and has echoed along the white roads and over the green fields of France and Belgium.

On the way to the front the progress of our soldiers was made one long fete: it was "roses, roses, all the way." In a letter published in _The Times_, an artillery officer thus describes it:

"As to the reception we have met with moving across country it has been simply wonderful and most affecting. We travel entirely by motor transport, and it has been flowers all the way. One long procession of acclamation. By the wayside and through the villages, men, women, and children cheer us on with the greatest enthusiasm, and every one wants to give us something. They strip the flower gardens, and the cars look like carnival carriages. They pelt us with fruit, cigarettes, chocolate, bread--anything and everything. It is simply impossible to convey an impression of it all. Yesterday my own car had to stop in a town for petrol. In a moment there must have been a couple of hundred people round clamoring; autograph alb.u.ms were thrust in front of me; a perfect delirium. In another town I had to stop for an hour, and took the opportunity to do some shopping. I wanted some motor goggles, an eye-bath, some boracic, provisions, etc. They would not let me pay for a single thing--and there was lunch and drinks as well. The further we go the more enthusiastic is the greeting. What it will be like at the end of the war one cannot attempt to guess."

Similar tributes to the kindness of the French and Belgians are given by the men. A private in the Yorkshire Light Infantry--the first British regiment to go into action in this war--tells of the joy of the French people. "You ought to have seen them," he writes. "They were overcome with delight, and didn't half cheer us! The worst of it was we could not understand their talking. When we crossed the Franco-Belgian frontier, there was a vast crowd of Belgians waiting for us. Our first greeting was the big Union Jack, and on the other side was a huge canvas with the words 'Welcome to our British Comrades.' The Belgians would have given us anything; they even tore the sheets off their beds for us to wipe our faces with." Another Tommy tells of the eager crowds turning out to give our troops "cigars, cigarettes, sweets, fruits, wines, anything we want," and the girls "linking their arms in ours, and stripping us of our badges and b.u.t.tons as souvenirs."

Then there is the other side of the picture, when the first battles had been fought and the strategic retreat had begun. No praise could be too high for the chivalry and humanity of our soldiers in these dark days.

They were almost worshiped by the people wherever they went.

Some of the earliest letters from the soldiers present distressing pictures of the poor, driven refugees, fleeing from their homes at the approach of the Germans, who carry ruin and desolation wherever they go.

"It is pitiful, pitiful," says one writer; "you simply can't hold back your tears." Others disclose our sympathetic soldier-men sharing their rations with the starving fugitives and carrying the children on their shoulders so that the weary mothers may not fall by the way. "Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind" were Lord Kitchener's words to the Army, and these qualities no less than valor will always be linked with Tommy Atkins' name in the memories of the French and Belgian people.

They will never forget the happy spick-and-span soldiers who sang as they stepped ash.o.r.e from the troopships at Boulogne and Havre, eager to reach the fighting line. These men have fought valiantly, desperately, since then, but their spirits are as high as ever, and their songs still ring down the depleted ranks as the war-stained regiments swing along from battle to battle on the dusty road to Victory.

II

SENSATIONS UNDER FIRE

It is said of Sir John French that, on his own admission, he has "never done anything worth doing without having to screw himself up to it."

There is no hint here of practical fear, which the hardened soldier, the fighting man, rarely experiences; but of the moral and mental conflict which precedes the a.s.sumption of sovereign duties and high commands.

Every man who goes into battle has this need. He requires the moral preparation of knowing why he is fighting, and what he is fighting for.

In the present war, Lord Kitchener's fine message to every soldier in the Expeditionary Force made this s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g-up process easy. But to men going under fire for the first time some personal preparation is also necessary to combat the ordinary physical terror of the battlefield.

Soldiers are not accustomed to self-a.n.a.lysis. They are mainly men of action, and are supposed to lack the contemplative vision. That was the old belief. This war, however, which has shattered so many accepted ideas, has destroyed that conviction too. Nothing is more surprising than the revelation of their feelings disclosed in the soldiers'

letters. They are the most intimate of human doc.u.ments. Here and there a hint is given of the apprehension with which the men go into action, unspoken fears of how they will behave under fire, the uncertainty of complete mastery over themselves, brief doubts of their ability to stand up to this new and sublime ordeal of death.

Rarely, however, do the men allow these apprehensions to depress or disturb them. Throughout the earliest letters from the front the one pervading desire was eagerness for battle--a wild impatience to get the first great test of their courage over, to feel their feet, obtain command of themselves.

"We were all eager for scalps," writes one of the Royal Engineers, "and I took the cap, sword, and lance of a Uhlan I shot through the chest."

An artilleryman says a gunner in his battery was "so anxious to see the enemy," that he jumped up to look, and got his leg shot away. Others tell of the intense curiosity of the young soldiers to see everything that is going on, of their reckless neglect of cover, and of the difficulty of holding them back when they see a comrade fall. "In spite of orders, some of my men actually charged a machine gun," an officer related. After the first baptism of fire any lingering fear is dispelled. "I don't think we were ever afraid at all," says another soldier, "but we got into action so quickly that we hadn't time to think about it." "Habit soon overcomes the first instinctive fear," writes a third, "and then the struggle is always palpitating."

Of course, the fighting affects men in different ways. Some see the ugliness, the horror of it all, grow sick at the sight, and suffer from nausea. Others, seeing deeper significance in this desolation of life, realize the wickedness and waste of it; as one Highlander expresses it: "Being out there, and seeing what we see, makes us feel religious." But the majority of the men have the instinct for fighting, quickly adapt themselves to war conditions, and enter with zest into the joy of battle. These happy warriors are the men who laugh, and sing, and jest in the trenches. They take a strangely intimate pleasure in the danger around them, and when they fall they die like Mr. Julian Smith of the Intelligence Department, declaring that they "loved the fighting." All the wounded beg the doctors and nurses to hurry up and let them return to the front. "I was enjoying it until I was put under," writes Lance-Corporal Leslie, R.E. "I must get back and have another go at them," says Private J. Roe, of the Manchesters. And so on, letter after letter expressing impatience to get into the firing line.