Oct. 14.Dawn came at last, cold, clear, and very beautiful, and at 5.35 the barrage came to spoil it. I set off towards the batteries in the hope of picking the men up there and found the Pioneers. I gave them work to go on with and turned to try to find my own fellows. The din from our own guns was terrific and the German retaliation seemed unusually heavy. The hard, persistent rattle of machine-gun fire in front seemed to indicate that we had stuck anda lot of wounded seemed to be coming back—some shells exploded very near me and I dropped into a ditch. I was cold, hungry, and tired, and at that moment would have sold my soul to have been out of it all. Above me the sky was serenely blue and peaceful, but eastwards it was shot with balls of multi-coloured smoke, just as if an invisible artist were dabbing splotches of colour on to a blue canvas.
Why, oh! why should I walk into that blazing inferno and die on a morning like this? These thoughts were actually in my mind when I saw Cooper coming down the road with the section—they thought I had been killed. I shall always remember standing there in the road and chewing ravenously at a hunk of bully which I held in my muddy fingers. It was my first meal for seventeen hours, and I never enjoyed one better.
Then we went forward, and I began toget hold of myself again as the work engaged my attention. I shall never forget one sight. A big highlander with the lower part of his face blown off walking down the railway with a prisoner in front of him—his right hand on the back of the German’s neck and his left hand holding his face together with the blood pouring through his fingers. Men coming back say the Huns stuck hard at first, but we are going well forward now.
To-day’s programme was roughly as follows:—
The Army Corps is to form bridgeheads across the River Lys for a defensive flank. One R.E. company takes all the Divisional pontoons and stands by to bridge when the infantry get to the river. One section of this to dash forward with Lewis guns and try to prevent destruction of existing bridges.
The second company and two of our own sections are working on roads withspecial instructions to search for and destroy land mines. One of our remaining sections reporting on German dumps, and generally gathering information, and the last section arranging temporary water supplies.
We went forward very well during the morning as there was practically no shell-fire after the first two hours. The losses seem to have been fairly heavy in forcing the first trenches, and there were a lot of bodies lying crumpled up among the German wire. All that we saw were the veriest youngsters, and they looked so out of place lying there dead in the green fields on this beautiful autumn morning. Shortly after noon we arrived at a large farm and found ourselves mixed up with the front line infantry, who were held up. We lay behind a hedge and got a few shots into a feeble German counter-attack, and after this the line went forward again.
We remained at the farm and about twoo’clock were heavily shelled by German field guns. Several machine-gunners were hit and the Brigade Commander, who had just arrived, had his leg blown off. For a few minutes the place was in chaos, but two 18–pounders galloped up and silenced the Hun battery with their first few shots. After these years of trench warfare it is wonderful to see field guns galloping into action and engaging the enemy over open sights.
Beyond the farm the roads were in perfect condition, so we returned to the company and found them in tents on a hill about three miles behind. I thought at one time the men would have to carry me back, I had never felt so tired. Bad news awaited us—Cooper had been killed early in the morning, about half an hour after the attack started—later in the day the Sergeant-Major was wounded, and there were eleven casualties among the men.
The passing of an old friend makes a big impression in a small mess, and we were very silent at night as we sat and smoked after supper. The town of Menin was burning fiercely and many other places farther to the east.
Oct. 15.Buried Cooper fairly decently in some old sacking at a Belgian cemetery. No orders came through, and we had a day of welcome rest.
Oct. 16.Company moved forward at 10.30 a.m. to battle areas and took over billets from a company of our left Division.
There are no signs of war here, and almost every man in the company has a bed to sleep in—splendid grazing for the horses and lots of vegetables in the fields for ourselves. It is all like fairyland, and we walked out solemnly this afternoon to look at a large green field without a single shell-hole in it.
Reports state that we have taken Courtrai,and streams of refugees coming back along the roads indicate that it may be true. Unfortunately, they are all of the very lowest classes, and as they only speak Flemish we were unable to get any information out of them.
It is a heartbreaking sight to see them trudging through the rain—old men, women, and the tiniest of children.
Sometimes they wheel a barrow containing a few of their goods, but most of them are without anything except the miserable rags they stand in.
Oct. 17.Had the company out all day doing road drainage. The tedium of the work was relieved by a ghastly incident, showing how low these poor refugees have sunk. A party of them were trudging listlessly along the road when the leaders noticed a dead horse lying in the ditch. In a few seconds the men and women had taken their knives and were fighting likeanimals on the distended carcass, chattering and shrieking like a crowd of hungry jackals. As they worked they threw the chunks of bleeding meat into the road, where the children fought for them and stowed them in the barrows. In a few minutes the horse was stripped to his bones, the noise subsided, and the ghouls trudged on their way.
Oct. 18.Working on the road all day in heavy rain, but were called out again at night to form a bridgehead across the river in front of us. We are in possession of half the town on the near side of the river, but the Germans have destroyed all the bridges and hold the eastern half of the town.
The main road bridge in the centre of the town lay across the bed of the river in a maze of twisted steel-work—we were required to make a foot bridge across these ruins for the infantry to get across. Day climbed across with three men and a Lewis gun on the ruins of the old bridge and cleareda German machine-gun party out of the farther bank. After this we started work and made fair progress considering the vile conditions. With the river sucking and swirling below them and the cold rain numbing their fingers, it was anything but an easy task for the men to keep their foothold on the slippery, twisted girders. In addition we were shelled persistently through the night, and seven men were down when the first infantry went across about 4 a.m.
Oct. 19.An hour after our return to billets orders came through for us to move forward again. The other companies got two pontoon bridges across the river during the day and we billeted near at hand, to provide maintenance parties. I was very tired and turned into bed early, looking forward to a long night’s sleep.
Just as I was dozing off the orderly corporal came in with a message from the bridgepatrol asking me to go out as numerous things were going wrong. There is no worse torture for a really tired man than to allow him to get into a warm, comfortable bed for a few minutes and then turn him out into a stormy night. And I had been living all day on the strength of the night’s sleep that I was going to get!
Arrived at the bridges I had no time for regrets—the river was rising, the traffic was absolutely continuous, and everything that could go wrong was doing so.
However, we kept them going all night long with the exception of a twenty-minute stopping of one bridge, and Day relieved me at 6 a.m. I was relieved in more senses than one, for two or three times during the night I felt things getting too much for me, things that I would have enjoyed three years ago. Wild, angry thoughts went running through my mind as we struggled with that creaking, groaning bridge, andnursed it through the weary hours—and worst of all, the bitter thought that so long as we succeeded none of the sleeping millions at home would ever hear of the work we did. And thousands of men all over France were doing just the same
“That the Sons of Mary may overcome it,Pleasantly sleeping and unaware.”
“That the Sons of Mary may overcome it,Pleasantly sleeping and unaware.”
“That the Sons of Mary may overcome it,Pleasantly sleeping and unaware.”
“That the Sons of Mary may overcome it,
Pleasantly sleeping and unaware.”
Why should I be alone there in the dark with that nerve-racking responsibility, and why should we splash in that freezing water, heaving anchors, tightening trestle chains, and baling the leaky pontoons?—and all unknown!
These are bitter thoughts, but I am worn out—for months I have been living on my will power, but my body and my nerves were exhausted a year ago. I find it cynically amusing to wonder what the idealistic, rugby-playing self of 1913 would think of this introspective, nerve-shattered crock. Hewould have sniffed and turned away—as the world will do when we return.
Oct. 20.Standing to all day under one hour’s notice to move as the forward Division are attacking the ridge which overlooks the Scheldt. In the evening we heard that the attack was held up and failed, and we are to try our luck to-morrow. At 9.30 p.m. I rode forward with No. 2 Section with orders to join the Fusiliers before dawn. It was abnormally dark, raining persistently, and I had the greatest difficulty in finding our way—worst of all, I had to conquer an evergrowing feeling that I didn’t care whether I found it or not—even that little responsibility was too much for me. I wanted to be alone to cry. After two hours I fell into a coma and then dismounted and walked to prevent myself giving way altogether.
We found the Brigade at 3 a.m., and I put the men into a barn for two hours’ rest.I gave orders to be called at five, and turned into an arm-chair in the farm-house kitchen.
For the first time since I came to France my nerves gave way completely and I was tormented with fears of the morrow. I had just been told that we were to go forward with the Fusiliers against the banks of a canal and help them across as well as we could—there would be machine-gun fire and no cover. Those were the facts. We have done infinitely worse a thousand times and thought nothing of it.
But I lay in that chair for two hours actually shivering with fear and apprehension. My crazy mind wouldn’t rest, and I saw myself killed in a dozen different ways as we rushed for the canal bank—at one time I had the wildest impulse to run away and hide until the attack was over. I knew that was impossible, and then I thought I would report sick and pretend to faint. Iwas ready to do anything except face machine-gun fire again—once we got so close that I could see a German’s face leering behind his gun and the familiar death rattle was as loud as thunder in my ears. I sat and watched my hand shaking on the edge of the chair and had no more control over it than if it had belonged to some one else.
Somehow I pulled together when the orderly corporal came, paraded the section, mechanically inspected the tools, and then marched off. In ten minutes I was myself again and at 6.30 we reached the Fusiliers. At 7 the advance commenced in drizzling rain and we moved forward over the sodden fields.
Oct. 21.It was very misty at first, and the whole affair reminded me of a Laffan’s Plain manœuvre—the scattered groups of men worked steadily forward over the open fields and occasionally a nervous civilianwould take a peep at us from a farm-house window—there was no sign of war except, perhaps, an unnatural stillness which seemed to hang over the countryside like a mist. It gave one an uncanny feeling, this blundering forward in the mist across an unknown country—the only certainty, that Death was in front and that we must walk on until He declared Himself.
By eleven we were within a thousand yards of the canal and could dimly see the general line of the banks in front of us. Here, at least, we knew that there would be resistance, but as yet there came no sound from the rising ground in front. The ground between us and the canal was very open, so we rested some minutes behind the last thick hedges and took the opportunity of reorganising the units. Then we went forward again, a long straggling line of crouching figures who cursed and panted as they toiled over the swampy ground.
At last the storm broke, heavy machine-gun fire but at rather long range. The line flopped down into the mud, and groups of men began to work forward in short rushes to a ditch in front which seemed to offer cover. We reached this with very few casualties, but the fire was too hot for further progress. Sniping continued all day, and in places we pushed two or three hundred yards nearer to the canal. No. 2 Section took refuge in a farm-house and awaited developments.
After dusk I crawled forward with Jennings of the Fusiliers and got through on to the canal towpath—there were a lot of Huns round the canal and their outposts were fully 300 yards on our side of it. After some difficulty we got within about 50 yards of the bridge and I noticed that the Huns could still crawl across, although it was badly damaged—allowing for further demolitions I didn’t think we should havemuch trouble in getting a foot-bridge across the ruins—we were nearly caught once, and lay between the water and the towpath while a party of about ten Huns walked along the path not ten feet away. Got back safely in the small hours and had a short rest in soaking clothes on the farm-house floor.
I am too exhausted to feel tired.
Oct. 22.Apparently some of our people have got across the canal farther to the north, and at 9 a.m. the attack was resumed on that side with a view to forcing the Huns out of their position. Our orders were to co-operate by means of a demonstration against the canal, but the machine-gun fire was too heavy and we could do nothing except waste a lot of ammunition. I only remember seeing a German once during the whole day, and yet the slightest exposure on our part was answered by an immediate burst of fire—they stuck it very well, becausethe fighting on their right flank was very heavy and they would all have been taken if we had got through. For several hours during the morning the rifle and machine-gun fire on our left was very heavy, and the 18–pounders were continuously in action. Towards noon a battery of 68–pounders came into action and also some howitzers—several fires broke out in the houses, but the shells had no effect on the concealed gunners in the canal banks, and we waited in vain for the blue rocket that was to signal us forward. About two o’clock an intelligence officer came round and we learnt that the Germans stuck very hard this morning—we made practically no progress as a result of the battle, and our losses have been heavy.
At 4.30 the attack on our left was resumed, and the Queens made a very gallant advance which brought them down almost as far as our left flank on the canal—unfortunately,there was no support, and before dusk the weary men had to retreat to their original positions.
On our immediate right there was very little opposition, and the Durhams are firmly established across the canal. Farther south, however, our right Division repeated the performance of the Queens on a larger scale and had to abandon a hardly-won bridgehead across the river after a day of strenuous fighting.
At 8 p.m. I was informed by Brigade that owing to the retirement of the Queens I was covering a half-mile gap, and “should take steps accordingly.” I mounted a piquet with the Lewis gun a few hundred yards forward of the farm, and sent out patrols every half-hour, but the night passed off without incident. I took out two patrols myself but could find neither our own people nor Huns.
We have had a bad day to-day—hardfighting, heavy losses, and no progress—people at home seem to think that we are chasing a beaten army which runs so fast that we cannot keep in touch with them. Would that it were true; but we have been badly mauled to-day and there is precious little offensive spirit in our nineteen-year-olds.
I saw a boy of the Middlesex coming back with a finger shot away—they had run against a farm-house with three Huns and a machine-gun and had lost four men in taking it. He said that the bloody “die-hards” had lived up to their name again—four casualties!
And yet there was a day on Zandvoorde Ridge when twenty-three men, left out of 800, lay behind the piled-up bodies of their dead and held the line against the flower of the Pomeranian Guard—and they didn’t talk of “die hards.”
Oct. 23.The Brigade was taken out ofthe line this morning and at noon we had rejoined our transport. We were under orders to move almost at once and dragged ourselves wearily on to the road, the men singing a doleful dirge, “I’m sure we can’t stick it no longer.” For the sake of example I hobbled too, but would have sold my soul to get on Rosie’s back—to kill the temptation I loaded four men’s packs across her.
After dark we came across a battery of field guns standing to with their trails half across the road—by skilful driving and occasionally taking a wheel over the trails we got the limbers and the tool-carts past, but it was too much for the last pontoon—her off hind-wheel hit a trail, the wheel horses slipped on the pavé, and the whole contraption slithered sideways into the ditch. I wanted to cry, but fortunately found the necessary relief in telling the gunners what I thought of them. It took us almost anhour to get the wagon clear, and it was midnight before the men were into billets. There was a pile of straw for me in front of a roaring fire in the farm-house kitchen. I collapsed on to this, too exhausted even to loosen my boots or my tunic collar.
Oct. 24.Let there be no mistake—last night was the happiest night of my life, and getting up at six o’clock this morning was the most wonderful thing that I have ever done. I looked into a mirror and realised with amusement why the old farmer was so terrified when I staggered in last night. The scar under my left eye is still prominent, my clothes were sodden and even my tousled hair was matted with mud; with the exception of my tunic all my uniform is standard Tommy outfit, and I wore a five-days’ growth of beard—surely a more unkempt looking brigand never masqueraded as a British officer.
I looked at my great murderous maulers and wondered idly how they had evolved from the sensitive, manicured fingers that used to pen theses on “Colloidal Fuel” and “The Theory of Heat Distribution in Cylinder Walls.” And I found the comparison good.
No orders came through for us during the day, but we heard that another early morning attack on the canal had failed—all honour to those Hun machine-gunners.
After a day of strenuous cleaning, the company paraded in the afternoon and looked ready once more for anything that Hell could offer. I counted the faces that I could remember from the beginning, but there were very few left—and myself the only officer. It struck me, too, that the very men left were the ones who had run the greatest risks—hard-bitten devils like Stephens, who had been in the thick of every mess the company had struck—perhapsit is true that where there is no fear there is no danger.
Oct. 25.Spent another quiet day, but was rushed into the war again at very short notice in the evening. Out all night with two sections assisting forward company to put a trestle bridge across the canal lower down. There was an enormous German timber dump close at hand, and although most of the yard was burning fiercely we saved enough material to make an excellent job of the bridge. The German engineers are very thorough in their demolitions, and have made a perfect ruin of miles of this canal—apparently their explosive charges are much more liberal than we use ourselves.
Returned to the company in a drizzling dawn, but were cheered to note droves of prisoners along the road and hear that we have gone forward again.
Oct. 26.At 4.30 received orders to move company to billets in a farm far behind usand near to Courtrai—obviously to undergo a fattening process for further slaughter. After our arrival in the evening I had another of my black fits for no reason whatever—they occur more frequently now, and I must surely break up soon. The sober truth is that I am about as much use here now as my grandmother would be. But even if I am a wreck it is sweet to feel that I have wanted ten times more smashing than any of the others—I have given the Fates a run for their money and I believe I blew them once or twice.
Oct. 27.I have been in the saddle all day and feel like a king to-night. Silence and peace over the whole quiet countryside, and, as I rode home in the twilight, a touch of frost in the air to catch the horse’s breath and make my blood tingle. Oh! it was good to be alive, to feel the power of the horse beneath me, to feel the strength returning to my own shattered body and, above all,to think of cheerful firesides down there among the trees, where the wood smoke mingled with the gathering mists. It was “that sweet mood,
When pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind.”
When pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind.”
When pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind.”
When pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.”
I saw an English village with a quaint old Norman church, and there, too, the mists were gathering in the meadows round about.
Oct. 28.Now we know why we are here—to train, practise, and rehearse for the crossing of the Scheldt. All the Corps Engineers met in conference in the town and spent the day designing and testing various types of foot-bridge. The men had the pontoons out and the officers spent the day in polishing up their drill. I saw where we crossed the first time in the driving rain, with the machine-guns hammering in thehouses in front of us, and I saw the spot where I nursed the first pontoon bridge through an interminable night. But how different now!
A company of Canadian Railway troops were making a permanent bridge on the very spot where my crazy pontoons had all but foundered. A broad-gauge loco was hauling ballast up to the very edge of the river, and a steam pile-driver hissed and chattered over the trestles.
After all, our pontoons had played their part and it was comforting to see how our feeble, vanguard efforts were followed up.
Returned to the farm, I was delighted to hear that the recommendations for Military Medals had passed through—my own D.S.O. has dwindled into another “mention in despatches.”
Oct. 29.More conferences and bridge-building. I have been asked to reconnoitrethe existing bridges over the river, and the Huns are half a mile on this side of them! Spent several hours studying maps and aeroplane photos and discussing ways and means.
Oct. 30.More conferences and training. Completed my plans and decided to take Stephens out with me on the night of the 31st.
Oct. 31.At 2.30 p.m. I lay down quite peacefully, intending to sleep until dusk, when I could set out on my venture. I was looking forward to it, and felt perfectly confident.
Just as I was dozing off the orderly corporal came in, bringing, of all things, a warrant for me to go on leave to-morrow. Instantly the whole affair changed, and I was seized with a blue shivering funk. In six hours I was due to go through the German lines, and there, lying on the table was a bit of paper waiting to take me to England inthe morning. It was the cruellest stroke of all, for I felt certain that I should never return. I went back to my bunk and sweated and shivered with fear. My mind and my body seemed to be completely separated from each other, and I found it quite impossible to stop the quaking of my limbs. I saw Death in a thousand forms just as on the night before the attack at Courtrai. Sleep was impossible, so I got up at last and wrote these lines with a trembling hand. The others are chipping me about “My Last Will and Testament,” and there is the usual fatuous talk of medals. Day says that if I come back they will roll all my previous non-fructifying recommendations into one and make it a real V.C. at last. Oh! God, if they only knew—and they look to me as a sort of Bayard.—Written at Calais waiting for leave boat.
After leaving the Mess and that infernal warrant, I calmed down somewhat and wasable to get my mind on to the work ahead—my old campaigning instincts began to return and I became once more a scout, clear-headed and fearless. It was a grand night for my work, miserable and stormy, with rain and hail blowing in the gusty wind. Arrived in the outposts it dawned on me that Stephens would be quite useless, and I couldn’t remember why I had ever decided to take him—if things went all right he could do nothing, and if they found us it would be two corpses instead of one. He pleaded to come with me, and I had to hurt his feelings to get rid of him.
I got all the information I could from the outpost officers, said good-bye to them, and went forward towards the river. It was then about half a mile in front of me, and separated from our posts by a belt of marsh and flooded fields. This belt was traversed by two roads with a small bridge in each where they crossed a stream running parallelto the main river. I had to investigate these two roads and bridges and the main bridge where the two roads joined across the river. It was my plan to work up one road, look at the river, and the main bridge, and then return down the other road.
There was practically no cover on the road, but the night was dark and I felt fairly safe along the water’s edge. I calculated that I had gone 200 yards and then I waited, as I was a little nervous at having heard nothing, and felt certain that there would be posts along the road. After five minutes I heard the tapping of a mallet on stakes, and knew that they were wiring some 200 yards down the road. Still I waited, but I had no clear notion why. I assumed, of course, that there were protective troops on this side of the wiring party, but it was instinct rather than reason which made me halt. I was just preparing to go forward again when two men rose out of the roadnot 15 yards away, walked a few paces up and down the road, and then appeared to lie down again. I had all but walked on to their rifles and my heart thumped crazily. There was nothing for it but to take to the water and the marsh. I retreated 20 yards and waded in, holding my revolver over my head. It was deathly cold, and after about 100 yards I nearly gave it up—at times the water was up to my shoulders and I seemed to make no progress. The noise of the working party guided me, and eventually I judged that I was behind them and therefore about in line with the first small bridge.
About this time I realised that another five minutes in the water would kill me, and I struck back for the road, regardless of everything except a desire to get on dry land. Unfortunately, I blundered into a colony of waterfowl, and they flew up all round my head, making a terrific noise. My heart stood still and I waited again—wasthere a scout among those Huns on the road, who could read the meaning of the terrified waterfowl? Apparently not, for I still heard the regular tapping of the mallets, and several minutes later I was lying exhausted by the roadside. I half emptied my flask and pushed on up the road—I was right in the middle of the Huns now and crawling on my stomach as I did not know how near or far they might be—I thought the cold would kill me, and wondered what the Huns would think to find a dead Englishman inside their lines. To my unspeakable delight there was no one on the bridge, and I was able to make a thorough examination. I laughed at the Huns working solemnly down the road, and for a second forgot my terrible condition. Here I think my mind went a little dull, as I blundered straight on down the road until I had almost reached the river and the main bridge. It was sheer madness, but Iwould certainly have perished without the movement to aid my circulation. I remember thinking grimly that it would be just my fate to die of a cold after all that I had been through. I found a lot of Huns round the bridge, so I struck the river about 100 yards above it and then worked down under cover of the banks. I spent some twenty minutes under the bridge and all the time I could hear their voices in the darkness above me—the meaning of their words was drowned by the noise of the wind and the rain.
Now I had to get back down the other road before it began to grow light, and, as I truly imagined, deliver my message before I died. Half a mile inside the Hun lines, after spending two hours up to my shoulders in water on a November night my condition is better imagined than described. I ate a sodden mass of crumbs and bully that had once been sandwiches in my pocketand finished the rum. I was nearly caught in getting to the downstream side of the bridge and lay shivering under a hedge for several minutes while a party marched by within three paces of my head. I think they were the working party off the road and I noticed that it was beginning to grow lighter—luckily the storm grew worse. Eventually I got on to the second road and crawled back along the water’s edge until I came to my last bridge—there was a German machine-gun party sitting right in the middle of it. My brain was still perfect, but I had lost all sense of feeling in my body—I wanted to cry—they sat there between me and England, and I believe I had some idea of getting up and asking them to let me go home. For a few minutes I had no more will power than a child. Then some of our shells came over and I could hear them bursting on the road over the bridge. There was only one way backand that was as I had come—through the water. I forgot all about the stream and waded in. The cold seemed to pull me together, although, God knows, nothing could be colder than my own body. There was a bit of dry land between the flood and the stream, but I got across without being seen—I was keeping close to the bridge in the hope of seeing something of it as I passed. If I couldn’t wade the stream I was done, but I determined to try even if my head was under water and I had to hold my breath. It was not more than five feet deep in the centre and I got across and so over the bank into the flood on the far side. I had still to keep to the water, as I was afraid there would be a patrol on the road in advance of the people on the bridge. A few of our shells were still falling on the road, and I could hear the angry hisses as the red-hot bits of steel rained into the water round about. I did about 200 yardslike this and then I gave up—it was either the road or collapse and drown in the water. I got on to the road, worked back carefully until I felt safe, and then ran like the devil until I knew I was inside our posts. When I stopped I nearly fainted, so I set off again—my head pulling me up into the clouds like a bubble and my legs holding me to the road as if they were tons of lead.
Eventually I came across some gunners and they marvelled at the whisky I drank. I told them I had been out scouting and slipped into some water—I didn’t really know what had happened just at the time—I had vague impressions of a mass of water and some Germans sitting on a bridge, refusing to let me go home. Then I fell asleep, just sat down bang on the mess floor and collapsed.
They woke me after a couple of hours, lent me a horse, and directed me to the company.
To-morrow I shall be in England.
Nov. 9.In the paper this morning there is a brief announcement that the Second Army is across the Scheldt. I was proud to see it and felt amply rewarded for my terrible night in the water. It has left no apparent after-effects, so there must have been more resistance left in my old carcass than I gave myself credit for.
Nov. 11.It is over. These last few days I have hardly dared to hope for it, and now that it has come I can hardly realise exactly what it means. The thought of going back to it was killing me, and I have been suffering from the most ghastly nightmare dreams—sometimes I am stuck in the wire, unable to duck, with bullets whistling past my head—another time I am trying to run through knee-deep mud with the shell-bursts slowly overtaking me. I haven’t slept peacefully since my return, but think it will be better now.
I went out to see the celebrations to-night, and had only one regret—that my revolver was left in Flanders.
For of these how many know,Or, how many knowing, careOf the things that bought them thisIn the mud fields over there.
For of these how many know,Or, how many knowing, careOf the things that bought them thisIn the mud fields over there.
For of these how many know,Or, how many knowing, careOf the things that bought them thisIn the mud fields over there.
For of these how many know,
Or, how many knowing, care
Of the things that bought them this
In the mud fields over there.
It is most emphatically over and will forthwith be forgotten.
Stockholm, Sweden,30th Aug., 1920.
Stockholm, Sweden,30th Aug., 1920.
Stockholm, Sweden,30th Aug., 1920.
Stockholm, Sweden,
30th Aug., 1920.
It is late at night and I am lying on the silken cushions of a private yacht; my host’s daughter, a beautiful blue-eyed girl, is reclining by my side, her hand on my shoulder.
All around us the harbour lights are twinkling merrily and the warm breath of the idle breeze carries the sound of pleasant music from the gardens in the town. The little waves whisper and sigh seductively under the stem of the ship, and overhead, “the soft, lascivious stars leer from the velvet skies.” I recall a similar night at Colwyn in 1914 and wonder if these people, too, will fail to read the writing on the wall.
We are living once more in the days of “pomp and circumstance”—each morningI see their Guards march to the Royal Palace with brazen music and all the childish pageantry of war—each afternoon I see their sartorially perfect officers parade the Strandvagen before the gay-gowned beauties of the cafés.
Is there no one with the courage to tell them that war is not like this, that there will come a day without music, when there are no bright colours and no admiring eyes, but when “the lice are in their hair and the scabs are on their tongue”? Surely our years of sacrifice were vain if the most highly educated people in Europe remain in ignorance of the real nature of war and are open scoffers at the League of Nations. They believe that England is the biggest brigand in the world, and look upon Germany as the home of all Progress, valiantly defending herself against a league of jealous enemies. To me it is incredible and I remonstrate—they mention Ireland, Egypt,India, and Versailles. Then I realise that the bitterest passages in my diary are only too true—the sway of the old men has returned, the dead are forgotten, and betrayed. Please God that they may never know the futility of their sacrifice.
I am weary and tired of life myself; a mere shell of a man, without health or strength, whose vitality was eaten out by the Flanders mud. This ease and luxury is sent to mock me; I fling my cigar overboard with angry contempt.
Along the northern sky the summer sunset is mingling with the dawn in a riot of impossible colours. My mind turns back to a day when Gheluvelt lay smoking in the sun, England still slumbered, and the flower of the Prussian Army were pouring in overwhelming numbers along the road to Calais. The 1st Division was fought to a standstill, dying in thousands but yielding not an inch; the 7th was practically annihilatedbut somehow held their line, counterattacking again and again until the khaki drops were swallowed in the sea of gray; there was an open gap at last. Haig himself rode down the Menin road to call for a last effort from the weary men; a gunner officer, his arm hanging in shreds from the shoulder, took his last gun on to the open road and fired into the gray masses until he died; the Worcesters flung their remnants across the road, and the line was made again.
The whitest gentlemen of England died that day, and I would that I had rotted in their company before I saw their sacred trust betrayed. We have dropped their fiery torch and the silken cushions call us.
GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.