In The Firing Line

I

The Baptism of Fire

The War Correspondent has become old-fashioned before he has had time to grow old; he was made by telegraphy, and wireless has unmade him. The swift transmission of news from the front might gratify us who are waiting anxiously at home, but such news can be caught in the air now, or secretly and as swiftly retransmitted so as to gratify our enemies even more by keeping them well-informed of our strength and intentions and putting them on their guard. Therefore our armies have rightly gone forth on this the greatest war the world has ever seen as they went to the Crusades, with no Press reporter in their ranks, and when the historian sits down, some peaceful day in the future, to write his prose epic of the Titanic struggle that is now raging over Europe he will have no records of the actual fighting except such as he can gather from the necessarily terse official reports, the published stories of refugees and wounded soldiers that have been picked up by enterprising newspaper men hovering alertly in the rear of the forces, and from the private letters written to their friends by the fighting men themselves.

These letters compensate largely for the ampler, more expert accounts the war correspondent is not allowed to send us. They may tell little of strategic movements or of the full tide and progress of an engagement till you read them in conjunction with the official reports, but in their vivid, spontaneous revelations of what the man in battle has seen and felt, in the intensity of their human interest they have a unique value beyond anything to be found in more professional military or journalistic documents. They so unconsciously express the personality and spirit of their writers; the very homeliness of their language adds wonderfully and unintentionally to their effectiveness; there is rarely any note of boastfulness even in a moment of triumph; they record the most splendid heroisms casually, sometimes even flippantly, as if it were merely natural to see such things happening about them, or to be doing such things themselves. If they tell of hardships it is to laugh at them; again and again there are little bursts of affection and admiration for their officers and comrades – they are the most potent of recruiting literature, these letters, for a mere reading of them thrills the stay-at-home with pride that these good fellows are his countrymen and with a sort of angry shame that his age or his safe civilian responsibilities keep him from being out there taking his stand beside them.

The courage, the cheerfulness, the dauntless spirit of them is the more striking when you remember that the vast majority of our soldiers have never been in battle until now. Russia has many veterans from her war with Japan; France has a few who fought the Prussian enemy in 1870; we have some from the Boer war; but fully three parts of our troops, like all the heroic Belgians, have had their baptism of fire in the present gigantic conflict. And it is curiously interesting to read in several of the letters the frank confession of their writers’ feelings when they came face to face for the first time with the menace of death in action. One such note, published in various papers, was from Alfred Bishop, a sailor who took part in the famous North Sea engagement of August last. His ship’s mascot is a black cat, and:

“Our dear little black kitten sat under our foremost gun,” he writes, “during the whole battle, and was not frightened at all, only when we first started firing. But afterwards she sat and licked herself… Before we started fighting we were all very nervous, but after we joined in we were all happy and most of us laughing till it was finished. Then we all sobbed and cried. Even if I never come back don’t think I died a painful death. Everything yesterday was quick as lightning.”

A wounded English gunner telling of how he went into action near Mons owns to the same touch of nervousness in the first few minutes:

“What does it feel like to be under fire? Well, the first shot makes you a bit shaky. It’s a surprise packet. You have to wait and keep on moving till you get a chance.” But as soon as the chance came, his shakiness went, and his one desire in hospital was “to get back to the front as soon as the doctor says I’m fit to man a gun. I don’t want to stop here.”

“I have received my baptism of fire,” writes a young Frenchman at the front to his parents in Paris. “I heard the bullets whistling at my ears, and saw my poor comrades fall around me. The first minutes are dreadful. They are the worst. You feel wild. You hesitate; you don’t know what to do. Then, after a time, you feel quite at your ease in this atmosphere of lead.”

“I am in the field hospital now, with a nice little hole in my left shoulder, through which a bullet of one of the War Lord’s military subjects has passed,” writes a wounded Frenchman to a friend in London. “My shoulder feels much as if some playful joker has touched it with a lighted cigar… It is strange, but in the face of death and destruction I catch myself trying to make out where the shell has fallen, as if I were an interested spectator at a rifle competition. And I was not the only one. I saw many curious faces around me, bearing expressions full of interest, just as if the owners of the respective faces formed the auditorium of a highly fascinating theatrical performance, without having anything to do with the play itself. The impression crossed my mind in one-thousandth part of a second, and was followed by numerous others, altogether alien from the most serious things which were happening and going to happen. The human mind is a curious and complicated thing. Now that we were shooting at the enemy, and often afterwards in the midst of a fierce battle, I heard some remark made or some funny expression used which proved that the speaker’s thoughts were far from realising the terrible facts around him. It has nothing to do with heartlessness or anything like that. I don’t know yet what it is. Perhaps I shall have an opportunity to philosophise on it later on.”

There is a curious comment in a letter from Sergeant Major MacDermott, who writes during the great retreat from Mons, when everybody had become inured to the atmosphere of the battlefield.

“We’re wonderfully cheerful, and happy as bare-legged urchins scampering over the fields,” he says, and adds, “It is the quantity not the quality of the German shells that are having effect on us, and it’s not so much the actual damage to life as the hellish nerve-racking noise that counts for so much. Townsmen who are used to the noise of the streets can stand it a lot better than the countrymen, and I think you will find that by far the fittest are those regiments recruited in the big cities. A London lad near me says it is no worse than the roar of motor-buses in the City on a busy day.”

But the most graphic and minutely detailed picture of the psychic experiences of a soldier plunged for the first time into the pandemonium of a modern battle is given in the Retch by a wounded Russian artillery officer writing from a St. Petersburg hospital.

“I cannot say where we fought, for we are forbidden to divulge that, but I will tell you my own experiences,” he says. “In times of peace one has no conception of what a battle really means. When war was declared our brigade was despatched to the theatre of operations. I went with delight, and so did the others. When we reached our destination we were told that the battle would begin in the morning.

“At daybreak positions were assigned to us, and the commander of the brigade handed us a plan of the action of our artillery. From that moment horror possessed our souls. It was not anxiety for ourselves or fear of the enemy, but a feeling of awe in the face of something unknown. At six o’clock we opened fire at a mark which we could not distinguish, but which we understood to be the enemy.

“Towards midday we were informed that the German cavalry was attempting to envelop our right wing, and were ordered in that direction. Having occupied our new position we waited. Suddenly we see the enemy coming, and at the same time he opens fire on us. We turn our guns upon him, and I give the order to fire. I myself feel that I am in a kind of nightmare. Our battery officers begin to melt away. I see that the Germans are developing their attack. First one regiment appears, and then another. I direct the guns and pour a volley of projectiles right into the thick of the first regiment. Then a second volley, and a third. I see how they fall among the men, and can even discern the severed limbs of the dead flying into the air after the explosion.

“One of the enemy’s regiments is annihilated. Then a second one. All this time I am pouring missiles in among them. But now the nervous feeling has left me. My soul is filled with hate, and I continue to shoot at the enemy without the least feeling of pity.

“Yet still the enemy is advancing, rushing forward and lying down in turns. I do not understand his tactics, but what are they to me? It is enough for me that I am occupying a favourable position and mowing him down like a strong man with a scythe in a clover field.

“During the first night after the battle I could not sleep a wink. All the time my mind was filled with pictures of the battlefield. I saw German regiments approaching, and myself firing right into the thick of them. Heads, arms, legs, and whole bodies of men were being flung high into the air. It was a dreadful vision.

“I was in four battles. When the second began I went into it like an automaton. Only your muscles are taxed. All the rest of your being seems paralyzed. So complete is the suspension of the sensory processes that I never felt my wound. All I remember is that a feeling of giddiness came over me, and my head began to swim. Then I swooned to the ground, and was picked up by the Medical Corps and carried to the rear.”

II

The Four Days’ Battle Near Mons

Most of us are old enough to remember how, when we entered upon the South African Campaign (as when we started the Crimean and other of our wars) the nation was divided against itself; passionate, bitter controversies were waged between anti-Boer and pro-Boer – between those who considered the war an unjust and those who considered it a just one. This time there has been nothing of that. Sir Edward Grey’s resolute efforts for peace proving futile, as soon as Germany tore up her obligations of honour, that “scrap of paper,” and began to pour her huge, boastedly irresistible armies into Belgium, we took up the gauge she so insolently flung to us, and the one feeling from end to end of the Empire was of devout thankfulness that our Government had so instantly done the only right and honourable thing; all political parties, all classes flung their differences behind them unhesitatingly and stood four-square at once against the common enemy. They were heartened by a sense of relief, even, that the swaggering German peril which had been darkly menacing us for years had materialised and was upon us at last, that we were coming to grips with it and should have the chance of ending it once and for ever.

But immediately after our declaration of war on August 4th, a strange secrecy and silence fell like an impenetrable mask over all our military movements. In our cities and towns we were troubled with business disorganisations, but that mystery, that waiting in suspense, troubled us far more. News came that the fighting continued furiously on the Belgian frontier; that it was beginning on the fringes of Alsace; that the Russians were advancing victoriously on East Prussia; and still though our own army was mobilised and we were eagerly starting to raise a new and a larger one, we rightly learned no more, perhaps less, than the enemy could of what our Expeditionary Force was doing or where it was. Last time we were at war we had seen regiment after regiment go off with bands playing and with cheering multitudes lining the roads as they passed; this time we had no glimpse of their going; did not know when they went, or so much as whether they were gone. One day rumour landed them safely in France or Belgium; the next it assured us that they were not yet ready to embark; and the next it had rushed them, as by magic, right across Belgium and credited them with standing shoulder to shoulder in the fighting line with the magnificent defenders of Liège. But the glory of that defence, as we were soon to find out, belongs to Belgium alone; the Germans had hacked their way through and were nearing Mons before our men were able to get far enough north to come in touch with them. Not that they had lost any time on the road. It took a fortnight to mobilise and equip them; they sailed from Southampton on August 17th, and four days later were at Mons and under fire. This much and more you may gather from a diary-letter that was published in the Western Daily Press:

Aug. 17. – Sailed from Southampton, on Manchester Engineer, 4.45 a.m.

Aug. 18. – Landed Rouen, 6.20 a.m. Proceeded to rest camp at the Racecourse, Rouen.

Aug. 19. – Left camp 9 p.m., and entrained to Aulnoye.

Aug. 20. – Marched to Fiezines.

Aug. 21. – Marched to Mons, and proceeded to the canal, to obstacle the bridges and prepare for blowing up. Barricaded the main streets. Saw German cavalry, and was under fire.

Aug. 22. – Severe fighting and terrible. Went to blow up bridges with Lieut. Day, who was shot at my side through the nose. Unable to destroy bridges owing to such heavy firing of the Germans. Sight heart-breaking. Women and children driven from their homes by point of bayonet, and marched through streets in front of Germans, who fired behind them and through their armpits. Therefore, our fellows were unable to fire back. They rolled up in thousands, about 100 to our one. Went from here to dig trenches for infantry retreating. Was soon under fire, and had to retreat, and infantry took our position, and were completely wiped out (Middlesex).

Aug. 23. – Severe fighting and bombarding of a town, shells bursting around us. Retreated, and dug trenches for infantry, but soon had fire about us, and retreated again and marched to take up position for next day, which was to be a rest, us having had but very little.

Aug. 24. – Were unable to rest. Germans pressed us hotly, and fired continually. One of their aeroplanes followed our route, and was fired at. One of our lieutenants chased it, and eventually succeeded in shooting the aviator through the head, and he came to earth. Three aeroplanes were captured this day. We had no close fighting, and marched away to take up a position for next day’s fighting, which was a hard day’s work.

Aug. 25. – We tried to destroy an orchard, but drew the Germans’ artillery fire, which was hot and bursting around us. We continued our work until almost too late, and had to retire to infantry lines, and had it hot in doing so. I was stood next to General Shaw’s aide-camp who was badly wounded, but was not touched myself. We dug trenches for infantry, and then marched to join the 2nd Division, but fire was too hot to enable us to do our work. Germans were surrounded by us to the letter “C,” and we were waiting for the French to come up on our right flank, but they did not arrive. On returning from the 2nd Division two shells, one after another, burst in front of us, first destroying a house; the second, I received my wound in left leg, being the only fellow hit out of 180. Was placed on tool cart, and taken to Field Hospital, but rest there was short, owing to Germans firing on hospital. Orderlies ran off and left us three to take our chance. Germans blew up church and hospital in same village, and were firing on ours when I was helped out by the other two fellows, and on to a cart, which overtook the ambulance, which I was put on, and travelled all night to St. Quentin and was entrained there at 9.30 a.m. Aug. 26.

Aug. 26. – Travelled all day, reaching Rouen, Aug. 27, and was taken to Field Hospital on Racecourse.

We shall have to wait some time yet for full and coherent accounts of the fierce fighting at Mons, but from the soldiers’ letters and the stories of the wounded one gets illuminating glimpses of that terrific four-days’ battle.

It was Sunday night when we saw the enemy. We were ready for action, but were lying down to have a rest, when orders came to stand at our posts. It was about four a.m. on Monday when we started to fire; we were at it all day till six p.m., when we started to advance. Then the bugle sounded the charge, and the cavalry and infantry charged like madmen at the enemy; then the enemy fell back about forty miles, so we held them at bay till Wednesday, when the enemy was reinforced. Then they came on to Mons, and by that time we had every man, woman, and child out of the town.

We were situated on a hill in a cornfield and could see all over the country. It was about three p.m., and we started to let them have a welcome by blowing up two of their batteries in about five minutes; then the infantry let go, and then the battle was in full swing.

In the middle of the battle a driver got wounded and asked to see the colours before he died, and he was told by an officer that the guns were his colours. He replied, “Tell the drivers to keep their eyes on their guns, because if we lose our guns we lose our colours.”

Just then the infantry had to retire, and the gunners had to leave their guns, but the drivers were so proud of their guns that they went and got them out, and we retired to St. Quentin. We had a roll-call, and only ten were left out of my battery. This was the battle in which poor Winchester (another old Cornwall boy) lost his life in trying to get the guns away.

I was at Mons in the trenches in the firing line for twenty-four hours, and my regiment was ordered to help the French on the right. Poor old A Company was left to occupy the trenches and to hold them: whatever might happen, they were not to leave them. There were about 250 of us, and the Germans came on, and as fast as we knocked them over more took their places.

Well, out of 250 men only eighty were left, and we had to surrender. They took away everything, and we were lined up to be shot, so as to be no trouble to them. Then the cavalry of the French made a charge, and the Germans were cut down like grass. We got away, and wandered about all night, never knowing if we were walking into our chaps or the Germans. After walking about some time we commenced falling down through drinking water that had been poisoned, and then we were put into some motor-wagons and taken to Amiens.

It came unexpectedly. The first inkling we had was just after reveille, when our cavalry pickets fell back and reported the presence of the enemy in strength on our front and slightly to the left. In a few minutes we were all at our posts without the slightest confusion, and as we lay down in the trenches our artillery opened fire. It was a fine sight to see the shells speeding through the air to pay our respects to Kaiser Bill and his men. Soon the Germans returned the compliment; but they were a long time in finding anything approaching the range, and they didn’t know of shelters – a trick we learned from the Boers, I believe. After about half an hour of this work their infantry came into view along our front. They were in solid square blocks standing out sharply against the skyline, and we couldn’t help hitting them. We lay in our trenches with not a sound or sign to tell them of what was before them. They crept nearer and nearer, and then our officers gave the word. Under the storm of bullets they seemed to stagger like drunken men, after which they made a run for us shouting some outlandish cry that we could not make out. Half way across the open another volley tore through their ranks, and by this time our artillery began dropping shells around them. Then an officer gave an order, and they broke into open formation, rushing like mad things towards the trenches on our left. Some of our men continued the volley firing, but a few of the crack shots were told off to indulge in independent firing for the benefit of the Germans. That is another trick taught us by Brother Boer, and our Germans did not like it at all. They fell back in confusion and then lay down wherever cover was available.

We were sent up to the firing line to try and save a battery. When we got there we found that they were nearly all killed or wounded. Our Irish lads opened fire on the dirty Germans, and you should have seen them fall. It was like a game of skittles. But as soon as you knocked them down up came another thousand or so. We could not make out where they came from. So, all of a sudden, our officers gave us the order to charge. We fixed bayonets and went like fire through them. You should have seen them run!

We had two companies of ours there against about 3,000 of theirs, and I tell you it was warm. I was not sorry when night-time came, but that was not all. You see, we had no horses to get those guns away, and our chaps would not leave them.

We dragged them ourselves to a place of safety. As the firing line was at full swing we had with us an officer of the Hussars. I think he was next to me, and he had his hand nearly blown off by one of the German shells. So I and two more fellows picked him up and took him to a place of safety, where he got his wound cared for. I heard afterwards that he had been sent home, poor fellow.

We smashed up the Kaiser’s famous regiment – the Imperial Guards – and incidentally they gave us a shaking. They caught me napping. I got wounded on Sunday night, but I stuck it until Thursday. I could then go no further, so they put me in the ambulance and sent me home. It was just as safe in the firing line as in the improvised hospital, as when our force moved the Germans closed up and shelled the hospitals and burned the villages to the ground.

We started on Sunday, and were fighting and marching until Thursday. Troops were falling asleep on the roadside until the shells started dropping, then we were very much awake.

I feel proud to belong to the British Army for the way in which they bore themselves in front of the other nations. No greater tribute could be paid us than what a German officer, who was captured, said. He said it was inferno to stand up against the British Army.

We were near Mons when we had the order to entrench. It was just dawn when we were half-way down our trenches, and we were on our knees when the Germans opened a murderous fire with their guns and machine guns. We opened a rapid fire with our Maxims and rifles; we let them have it properly, but no sooner did we have one lot down than up came another lot, and they sent their cavalry to charge us, but we were there with our bayonets, and we emptied our magazines on them. Their men and horses were in a confused heap. There were a lot of wounded horses we had to shoot to end their misery. We had several charges with their infantry, too. We find they don’t like the bayonets. Their rifle shooting is rotten; I don’t believe they could hit a haystack at 100 yards. We find their Field Artillery very good; we don’t like their shrapnel; but I noticed that some did not burst; if one shell that came over me had burst I should have been blown to atoms; I thanked the Lord it did not. I also heard our men singing that famous song: “Get out and get under.” I know that for an hour in our trench it would make anyone keep under, what with their shells and machine guns. Many poor fellows went to their death like heroes.