FranceJuly4, 1918
Iam now attached with two guns to the infantry on a special job. I live with the battalion—speak about “our battalion,” in fact—and share quarters with the Trench Mortar officer. The country is green and fragrant with dog-roses. The dead have been gathered up and lie in little scattered graveyards. Our living men spread their blankets between the mounds and at night hang their equipment on the crosses. War robs men of all fear of the supernatural—or is it that the dead have become our brothers?
One writes a description of battlefields to-day and it is untrue to-morrow. Everything has changed in the past year. Siege warfare, with deep trenches and guns in positions of observation, is becoming more rare; we are more mobile now and see more of the country. I believe, before many months are out, the dream of every gunner along the Western Front will have come true, and we shall be firing at the enemy over open sights and coming into action on the gallop. It will be far more sporting and exciting. The Trench Mortar officer with whom I am living remembers that kind of work in the early days, when my battery was still firing on the enemy while the Hun was bayoneting the batteries behind. He has a great tale of how he came right through the enemy without knowing, bringing up with him a precious load of small-arms ammunition to his General, who was cut off by the enemy. He and his five men were given rifles, and together with the waifs and strays of many broken regiments held the line against the advance on Calais. Experiences such as that are worth living for; I'm hopeful that before I take off khaki I may be in something of the kind.
You needn't think of me any more—at least for the present—as living in beastliness and corruption. I daresay the country where I am is almost as beautiful as where you are spending your holidays. The Hun did the Allies a good turn when he advanced, for he shoved us back out of the filth of three years' fighting into cleanness. One can see deserted cottages with their gardens full of flowers, and green woods shaking their plumes against blue skies. At one of our halts the men did themselves very well with baskets of trout; they caught the trout by the simple expedient of flinging bombs into the river. The concussion killed the fish and they floated to the surface.
For the present that is all my news.
FranceJuly10, 1918
Iam delighted to see that every day the prophecies I made inOut to Winare coming true. The attack that the Americans put on on 4th July is, to my mind, one of the most significant things that has happened yet. Their battle-cry, “Lusitania,” says everything in one word concerning their purpose in coming to France. If I were a Hun I should find it more terrifying than the most astounding statements of armaments and men. I can picture the enemy in those old shell-holes of the Somme that I know so well. It's early morning, and a low white mist steals ghost-like over that vast graveyard, where crumbling trenches and broken entanglements mark the resting-places of the dead. The enemy would be sleepy-eyed with his long vigil, but with the vanishing of night he would fancy himself safe. Suddenly, hurled through the dawn, comes the cry, “Lusitania!” It must have sounded like the voice of conscience—the old and boasted sin for which medals were struck, the infamy of which was worn as a decoration, rising out of the past to exact suffering for suffering, panic for panic, blood for blood. Whoever chose that battle-cry was a poet—he said everything in the shortest and most rememberable way. America is in France to act as the revenge of God. She has suffered in the spirit what France has suffered in the flesh; through being in France she has learnt from the French the justice of passionate, punishing hate. I can think that somewhere beneath the Atlantic the bodies of murdered children sat up at that cry; I can believe that the souls of their mothers went over the top with those American boys. “Lusitania!” The white-hot anger of chivalry was in the cry.
Yes, and we, too, are learning to hate. For years we have hesitated to dogmatize as to which side God favours; but now, since hospitals have been bombed and the women who came to nurse us have been slaughtered, Cromwell's religious arrogance has taken possession of our hearts—“Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered.” When it was only we men who were wounded and killed by the Hun we could afford to regard him with an amused tolerance, but now——This is how we have changed: we should welcome our chance to kill at close quarters and to forget mercy. This time last year we were proud to say that we had no personal animosity for the individual German; it sounded so strong and impartial. We don't feel that way now; can't feel that way. At last, because of our women who are dead, we have learnt the magnanimity of hatred. Germany has entered a new phase of the war—a phase which her persistent brutality has created. She will find no more smiling faces on our side of No Man's Land when she lifts up her hands, shouting “Kamerad!” We are not her comrades; we never shall be again so long as our race-memory lasts. Like Cain, the brand of murder is on her forehead and the hand of every living creature is against her. When she pleads with us her common humanity, we will answer “Lusitania!” and charge across the Golgotlias and the mists of the dawn, driving her into oblivion with the bayonet. No truth of the spirit which her voice utters will ever be truth for us again. It has taken four years to teach us our lesson; we were slow; we gave quarter; but we have learnt.
FranceJuly 11, 1918
I've returned from being with the infantry and am back with my battery now. For the next few days I shall probably be out of touch with my incoming mail.
I have spoken several times to you about the test of war; how it acknowledges one chief virtue—courage. A man may be a poet, painter, may speak with the tongue of angels; but, if he has not courage, he is as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The other day I was accidentally the witness to the promulgation of a court-martial. The man was an officer; he had been sentenced to be shot, but the order had been changed to cashiering. There, in the sunlight, all his brother officers were drawn up at attention. Across the fields the men whom he had commanded were playing baseball. He was led out bareheaded. The sentence and the crime for which he had been sentenced were read aloud to him in an unsteady voice. When that was ended, an officer stepped forward and stripped the buttons and the badges of rank from his uniform. It was like a funeral at which his honour was buried. Under an escort, he was given “Right turn,” and marched away to meet the balance of life that remained. In peace times he'd have been reckoned a decent-looking chap, a little smart, but handsome—the kind of fellow of whom some mother must have been proud and whom probably at least one girl loved. A tall chap, too—six foot at least. I see him standing in the strong sunlight, white-faced and dumb—better dead—despised. His fate was the fate which many of us feared before we put on khaki when the call first came. We had feared that we might not be able to stand the test and might be shot behind the lines. How and why we can stand it we ourselves cannot say. It was all a gamble at the start. Here was one man who had failed. The arithmetic of his spiritual values was at fault: he had chosen bitter life when death would have been splendid.
This must all sound very strange to you in your environment, where your honour and life are safe. Perhaps I should not intrude such scenes upon you.
FranceJuly15, 1918
The mail has just come up to us. The runner stuck his head into the hole in the trench where I live and shoved in a pile of letters. “How many for me?” I asked. “All of them,” he said.
I'm all alone at the battery, the major having gone forward to reconnoitre a position and all the other subalterns being away on duties—so I've had a quiet time browsing through my correspondence. A Hun cat sits at the top of the dug-out across the trench and blinks at me. We found him on the position. He's fat and sleek and plausible-looking. I can't get it out of my mind that he's kept up his strength by battening on the corpses of his former owners. Between the guns there are two graves; one to an unknown British and the other to an unknown German soldier.
The battlefield itself stretches away all billowy with hay for miles and miles. When a puff of wind blows across it, it rustles like fire. The sides of the trenches are gay with poppies and cornflowers. The larks sing industriously overhead, and above them, like the hum of a swarm of bees, pass the fighting planes. Miles to the rear I can hear the strife of bands, playing their battalions up to the fine. A brave, queer, battling world! If one lives to be old, he will talk about these days and persuade himself that he longs to be back, if the time ever comes when life has lost its challenge.
The Hun doesn't seem to be so frisky as he was in March and April. Now that he's quieting down, we begin to lose our hatred and to speak of him more tolerantly again. But whatever may be said in his defence, he's a nasty fellow.
Since I started this letter I've dined, done a lot of work, watched a marvellous sunset, and received orders to push up forward very early in the morning. I shall probably send you a line from the O.P. The mystery of night has settled down. Round the western rim of the horizon there is still a stain of red. Under the dusk, limbers and pack horses crawl along mud trails and sunken roads. We become populous when night has fallen.
FranceJuly17, 1918
To-night brought a great wad of American papers. What a time America is having—all shouting and anticipation of glory without any suspicion of the cost. War's fine when it's khaki and drums on Fifth Avenue—if it wasn't tortured bodies, broken hearts, and blinded eyes. Where I am the dead lie thick beneath the sod; poppies pour like blood across the landscape, and cornflowers stand tall in sockets empty of eyes. The inscription “Unknown Soldier” is written on many crosses that grow like weeds from the shell-holes. All the feet that marched away with shouting now lie silent; their owners have even lost their names. Could death do more? Where I live at present everything is blasted, stagnant, decayed, morose. War's a fine spectacle for those who only cheer from the pavement.
It isn't that I'm angry with people for seizing life and being gay. We're gay out here—but we've earned the right. Many of us are happier than we ever were in our lives. Why not? For the first time we're quite sure every minute of the day that we're doing right. And that certainty is the only excuse for being happy while the Front line is suffering the tortures of the damned.
I came down this morning from doing forward work; it had been raining in torrents and the trenches were awash. I sleep to-night at the battery and to-morrow I go forward again. It's really great fun forward when it's fine. All day you watch the Hun country for signs of movement and snipe his support-trenches and back-country. Far away on the horizon you watch plumes of smoke trail from the chimneys of his towns, and try to guess his intentions and plans. War's the greatest game of the intellect yet invented; very little of its success to-day is due to brute strength.
It's night now. I'm sitting in my shirt-sleeves, writing by the light of a candle in an empty bottle. A row is going on outside as of “armed men falling downstairs,” to borrow Stevenson's phrase. It's really more like a dozen celestial cats with kettles tied to their tails. I wonder what God thinks of it all; of all the kings, He alone is silent and takes no sides, notwithstanding the Kaiser's “Me und Gott.”
My jolly little major has just looked up to suggest that the war won't be ended until all the world is under arms. He's an optimist.
FranceJuly18, 1918
I'm up forward, sitting on a bank, looking at the Hun country through a hedge. I know you'd give anything to be with me. In front there's a big curtain of sea-grey sky, against which planes crawl like flies. A beautiful half-moon looks down at me with the tragic face of Harlequin. Far away across a plain furrowed by shell-fire the spires and domes of cities in the captured territory shine. Like all forbidden lands, there are times when the Hun country looks exquisitely and unreally beautiful, as though it were tempting us to cross the line.
I've just left off to watch a squadron of enemy planes which have been attempting to get across to our side. Everything has opened up on them; machine guns are spouting their luminous trails of tracer bullets; archies are bursting little cotton-wool clouds of death between them and their desire. They evidently belong to a circus, for they're slipping and tumbling and looping like great gulls to whom the air is native. Ah, now they've given it up and are going home thwarted. I wonder what the poor old moon thinks of all these antics and turmoils in the domain which has been hers absolutely for so many æons of nights.
The horrible and the beautiful blending in an ecstasy, that is what war is to-day. All one's senses are unnaturally sharpened for the appreciation of both happiness and pain. You walk down a road where a shell fell a minute ago; the question always in your mind is, “Why wasn't I there?” You shrug your shoulders and smile, “I may be there next time”—and bend all your energies towards being merry to-day. The threat of the end is very provocative of intensity.
It's nearly dark now and I'm writing by the moonlight. One might imagine that the angels were having pillow-fights in their bedrooms by the row that's going on in the sky. And there was a time when the occasional trolley beneath my windows used to keep me awake at night!
5 a.m. The letters came last night. You may imagine the place in which I read them—lying on a kind of coffin-shelf in a Hun dug-out with the usual buzzing of battened flies and the usual smell and snoring of an unwashed B.C. party. How good it is to receive letters; they're the only future we have. After I'd sent the runner down to the battery I had to go forward to a Gomorrha of fallen roofs, which stands almost on the edge of No Man's Land. Stagnant shell-holes, rank weeds, the silence of death, lay all about me, and along the horizon the Hun flares and rockets danced an impish jig of joy. When the war is ended we shall miss these nights. Strange as it sounds, we shall look back on them with wistfulness and regret. Our souls will never again bristle with the same panic of terror and daring. We shall become calm fellows, filling out our waistcoats to a contented rotundity; no one will believe that we were once the first fighting troops of the European cock-pit. We shall argue then, where to-day we strike. We shall have to preach to make men good, whereas to-day we club vice into stupor. We shall miss these nights.
I glance up from my page and gaze out through the narrow slit from which I observe. I see the dear scarlet poppies shining dewy amid the yellow dandelions and wild ox-eyed daisies. I am very happy this morning. The world seems a good place. For the moment I have even given over detesting the Hun. With luck, I tell myself, I shall sit in old gardens again and read the old volumes, and laugh with the same dear people that I used to love. With luck—but when?
France |July 19|, 1918
We're all sitting round the table studying maps of the entire Western Front and prophesying the rapid downfall of the Hun. It's too early to be optimistic, but things are going excellently and the American weight is already beginning to be felt. It may take two years to reach the Rhine, but we shall get there. Until we do get there, I don't think we shall be content to stop. We may not all be above ground for the end, but people who are like us will be there.
My batman has just returned to the guns from the wagon-lines, bringing me two letters and a post-card. They were most welcome. After reading them I went out into the moonlight to walk over to the guns, and, such is the nature of this country, though the journey was only 200 yards, I lost myself. Everything that was once a landmark is levelled flat—there's nothing but shell-holes covered with tangled grass, barbed wire, exploded shell-cases, and graves. I can quite understand how men have wandered clean across No Man's Land and found themselves the guests of the Hun.
I think I once mentioned the man we have cooking for our mess at present—how he was no good as a cook until he got word that his wife had been drowned in Canada; his grief seemed to give him a new pride in himself and since his disaster our meals have been excellent. This morning I found a curious document on my table, which ran as follows: “Sir, I kan't cock without stuf to cock with.” I was at a loss to discover its meaning for some time. Why couldn't he cock? Why should he want to cock? How does one cock? And whether he could or couldn't cock, why should he worry me about it?
Then the widower presented himself, standing sooty and forlorn in the trench outside the mess. The mystery was cleared up.
The mess-cart is just up, and I'm going to send this off, that it may reach you a day earlier.
FranceJuly 23, 1918
I'm sitting in my “summer-house” in the trench. One side is unwalled and exposed to the weather; a curtain of camouflage stretches over the front and disguises the fact that I am “in residence.” For the last twenty-four hours it's been raining like mad, blowing a hurricane and thundering as though all the clouds had a sneezing fit at once. You can imagine the state of the trenches and my own drowned condition when I returned to the battery this morning from my tour of duty up front. It seems hardly credible that in so short a time mud could become so muddy. However, I usually manage to enjoy myself. Yesterday while at the O.P. I read a ripping book by “Q.” with almost—not quite—the Thomas Hardy touch. It was calledThe Ship of Stars, and was published in 1899. Where it fails, when compared with Hardy, is in the thinness of its story and unreality of its plot. It has all the characters for a titanic drama, but having created them, “Q.” is afraid to let them be the brutes they would have been. How many novelists have failed through their determination to be quite gentlemanly, when merely to have been men would have made them famous! If ever I have a chance again I shall depict men as I have seen them out here—animals, capable of animal lusts, who have angels living in their hearts.
To-day has the complete autumn touch; we begin to think of the coming winter with its drenched and sullen melancholy—its days and nights of chill and damp, telescoping one into another in a grey monotony of grimness. Each summer the troops have told themselves, “We have spent our last winter in France,” but always and always there has been another.
Yet rain and mud and melancholy have their romance—they lend a blurred appearance of timelessness to a landscape and to life itself. A few nights ago I was forward observing for a raid which we put on. The usual panic of flares went up as the enemy became aware that our chaps were through his wire. Then machine guns started ticking like ten thousand lunatic clocks and of a sudden the S.O.S. barrage came down. One watched and waited, sending back orders and messages, trying to judge by signs how affairs were going. Gradually the clamour died away, and night became as silent and dark as ever. One waited anxiously for definite word; had our chaps gained what they were after, or had they walked into a baited trap?
Two hours elapsed; then through the loneliness one heard the lagging tramp of tired men, which came nearer and drew level. You saw them snowed on by the waning moon as they passed. You saw their rounded shoulders and the fatness of their heads—you knew that they were German prisoners. Limping in the rear, one arm flung about a comrade's neck, came our wounded. Just towards dawn the dead went by, lying with an air of complete rest upon their stretchers. It was like a Greek procession, frescoed on the mournful streak of vagueness which divides eternal darkness from the land of living men. Just so, patiently and uncomplainingly has all the world since Adam followed its appointed fate into the fold of unknowingness. We climb the hill and are lost to sight in the dawn. There's majesty in our departure after so much puny violence.
And God—He says nothing, though we all pray to Him. He alone among monarchs has taken no sides in this war. I like to think that the Union Jack waves above His palace and that His angels are dressed in khaki—which is quite absurd. I think of the irresistible British Tommies who have “gone west,” as whistling “Tipperary” in the streets of the New Jerusalem. They have haloes round their steel helmets and they've thrown away their gas-masks. But God gives me no licence for such imaginings, for He hasn't said a word since the first cannon boomed. In some moods one gets the idea that He's contemptuous; in others, that He takes no sides because His children are on both sides of No Man's Land. But in the darkest moments we know beyond dispute that it is His hands that make our hands strong and His heart that makes our hearts compassionate to endure. I have tried to inflame my heart with hatred, but I cannot. Hunnishness I would give my life to exterminate, but for the individual German I am sorry—sorry as for a murderer who has to be executed. I am determined, however, that he shall be executed. They are all apologists for the crimes that have been committed; the civilians, who have not actually murdered, are guilty of thieving life to the extent of having received and applauded the stolen goods.
We had a heated discussion to-day as to when the war would be ended; we were all of the opinion, “Not soon. Not in less than two years, anyway. After that it will take another twelve months to ship us home.” I believe that, and yet I hope. Along all the roads of France, in all the trenches, in every gun-pit you can hear one song being sung by poilus and Tommies. They sing it while they load their guns, they whistle it as they march up the line, they hum it while they munch their bully-beef and hard-tack. You hear it on the regimental bands and grinding out from gramophones in hidden dug-outs:
“Over there. Over there.
Send the word, send the word over there,
That the Yanks are coming——”
Men repeat that rag-time promise as though it were a prayer, “The Yanks are coming.” We could have won without the Yanks—we're sure of that. Still, we're glad they're coming and we walk jauntily. We may die before the promise is sufficiently fulfilled to tell. What does that matter? The Yanks are coming. We shall not have died in vain. They will reap the peace for the world which our blood has sown.
To-night you are in that high mountain place. It's three in the afternoon with you. I wish I could project myself across the world and stand beside you. Life's running away and there is so much to do besides killing people. But all those things, however splendid they were in achievement, would be shameful in the attempting until the war is ended.
Between writing this I've been making out the lines for the guns and running out to fire them—so forgive anything that is disjointed.
FranceJuly 29, 1918
Ihave just had a very large batch of letters to read. I feel simply overwhelmed with people's affection. I have to spend every moment of my leisure keeping up with my mighty correspondence. The mail very rarely brings me a bag which is totally empty. The American Red Cross in Paris keeps me in mind continually. I had thirty gramophone records and twelve razors from them the other day, together with a pressing invitation to get a French leave and spend it in Paris. But your letters bulk much larger in numbers than any that I receive from anywhere else. I always leave home-letters to the last—bread and butter first, cake last, is my rule.
I must apologize for the slackness of my correspondence for the past few days, but two of them were spent forward while taking part in a raid, and the third at the observing post. It rained pretty nearly all the time and sleep was not plentiful. Yesterday I spent in “pounding my ear” for hours; to-day I'm as fresh as a daisy and writing reams to you to make up for lost time.
You'll be sorry to hear that a favourite little chap of mine has been seriously wounded and may be dead by now. A year ago, at the Vimy show, he did yeoman service, and I got him recommended for the Military Medal. He was my runner on the famous day. He's been in all sorts of attacks for over three years, and at last a stray shell got him. It burst about ten feet away, wounding him in the head, arm, and knee, besides nearly cutting off a great toe. His name was Joy. He lived up to his name, and was carried out on the stretcher grim, but bravely smiling. You can't dodge your fate; it searches you out. You wonder—not fearfully, but curiously—whose turn it will be next. For yourself you don't much care; your regrets are for the others who are left. Still, don't you think that I'm going west, I have an instinct that I shall last to the end.
I think I mentioned the pathetic note of the mess cook, which I found awaiting me one morning on the breakfast table: “I kan't cock without stuf to cock with.” The history of our experiments in cooks would make a novel in itself. The man before the pathetic beggar was a miner in peace times; as a cook his meals were like charges of dynamite—they blasted our insides. The worst of them was that they were so deceptive, they looked innocent enough till it was too late to refuse them. You may lay it down as final that all cooks are the dirtiest men in any unit. The gentleman who couldn't “cock” earned for himself the title of the “World's Champion Long Distance Dirt Accumulator.” I was present when the O.C. discharged him. He sent for the man, and was stooping forward, doing up his boot, when he entered. The man looked like the wrath of God—as though he had been embracing all the denizens of Hell. Without looking up the O.C. commenced, “Where did you learn to prepare all these tasty meals you've been serving us?”
“I kan't cock without——”
“I know you can't cock,” said the O.C. tartly; “you can't even keep yourself clean. All you know how to do is to waste good food. I'm sending you down to the wagon-lines, and if you're not washed by guard-mounting, I've given orders to have you thrown into the horse-trough.”
Exit the “cock.”
Your letters mean so much to me. I feel that my returns are totally inadequate. Good-bye; some great news has come in and the major wants to discuss it.
FranceJuly30,1918
I'm writing to you to-day, because I may be out of touch for a few days, as it looks as though I was going to get my desire—the thing I came back for. Any time if my letters stop temporarily, don't get nervous. Such things happen when one is on active service.
It's about two years to-day since I landed in England for the first time in khaki; since then how one has changed! I can scarcely recognise myself at all. It's difficult to believe that I'm the same person. Without exaggeration, the world has become to me a much jollier place because of this martial experience. I don't know how it is with you, but my heart has grown wings. One has changed in so many ways—the things that once caused panic, he now welcomes. Nothing gives us more joy than the news that we're to be shoved into a great offensive. It's for each of us as though we had been invited to our own wedding. Danger, which we used to dodge, now allures us.
I read a very true article the other day on the things which we have lost through the war. We have lost our youth, many of us. We have foregone so many glorious springs—all the seasons have sunk their tones into the sombre brown-grey mud of the past four years. We have lost all our festivals of affection and emotion. Sundays, Christmases, Easters—they are all the same as other days—so many hours useful only for the further killing of men. “You will say,” writes my author, “that the war, after all, will not last for ever, and that the man and woman of average longevity will live through threescore-and-ten years of God's wonderful springs. That to a very minor extent is true. The war will not last for ever; but the memory of it, the suffering of it, the incalculable waste of it, will last for all that remains of our lives—which is 'for ever,' after all, so far as you and I are concerned.” He goes on to say that there are years and years—but the years in which a man and woman may know that they are alive are few—the years of love and of beauty.
I agree with all this writer says; his words voice an ache that is always in our hearts. But he forgets—life, love, youth and even beauty are not everything. The animals have them. What we have gained is a new standard of worth, which we have won at the expense of our bodies. To me that outweighs all that we have lost. I spoke to you in a previous letter of the divine discontent which goads us on, so that when we have attained a standard of which we never thought ourselves capable, we envy a new and nobler goal, and commence to race towards it. In one of Q.'. books I came across a verse which expresses this exactly:
“Oh that I were where I would be!
Then would I be where I am not.
But where I am there I must be;
And where I would be, I can not.”
Discontented, ungrateful creatures we are! And yet there is nobility in our discontent.
By the way, over the doorway of my O.P. is chalked this sound advice—“Do unto Fritzie as he doth unto you. But do it first.”
France
August13, 1918
Ihaven't seen a paper for nearly a fortnight, so don't know what news of the Front has been published and can risk telling you nothing. Suffice it to say that I'm having the most choice experience that I've had since I took up soldiering. We are winged persons—the body is nothing; to use Homer's phrase, “our souls rush out before us.” This is the top-notch of life; there was nothing like it before in all the ages. We triumph; we each individually contribute to the triumph, and, though our bodies are tired, our hearts are elated. We'll win the war for you and bring peace back; even the most dreary pessimist must believe that now.
I try to keep notes of the tremendous tragedies and glories which I witness hour by hour, so that one day I can paint the picture for you as it happened. All day I am reminded of that motto of the Gesta Romanorum, “What I spent, I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have.” So many men have given in this war—given in the sense of giving all. I think it must be true of them wherever they are now, that theyhavein proportion to their sacrifice. It should be written on the white crosses above all our soldiers, “What He Gave, He Has.” What we are trying to give is heaven to the world; it is just that those who fall should receive heaven in return.
France
August14, 1918
Iam writing to you in a lull—I may not have another opportunity for days. In a battle one has no transport for conveying letters—only for ammunition, wounded, and supplies. I'm stunningly well and bronzed. The weather is royal and tropical and, best of all, the Hun's tail is down while ours is pointing heavenwards. One of my gunners was complaining this morning that it was “a hell of a war.” It was the smell of dead cavalry horses that nauseated him. Another gunner cheered him up, “Where's the use of complaining, Bill? It's the only war we have.” That's the spirit of our men. It may be a hell of a war, but it's the only one we have, so we may as well grin and make the best of it. In the past few days I have seen more than in all my former experience. I can visualize Waterloo now—and the last trump: the hosts of death deploying before my eyes. That one still walks the earth seems wonderful. God is very lenient.
But there is nothing to fear in death—only the thing that is left is horrible—and how horrible! But the things that are left are not us—we have pushed onwards to God.
FranceAugust15, 1918
Ikeep on dropping you little notes to let you know that everything is all right with me. It makes me very happy to hear from you; it always does, but more so than ever nowadays.
You remember R.? A few days ago he was killed. He was just ahead of me, riding up the road. I did not see his face, but recognized his square-set figure and divisional patches. He's not had much of a run for his money, poor chap. It was his first show, but he died game.
How much longer have we got to go? It's like a long, long walk, with no milestones, towards an unknown destination. If we only knew how much farther our goal lay, it would be easier. I dreamed last night of Kootenay, all green and cool and somnolent. It was rest, rest, rest. One gazed through the apple-trees to the quiet lake and felt happy in the too much beauty. But please don't worry about me.
France
August17, 1918
I'm in the support trenches to-night carrying on with the infantry. This is my third day and I am relieved to-morrow. Yesterday I had a gorgeous spree which I will tell you about some day. I was out in front of our infantry in an attack, scouting for the enemy. This war may be boring at times, but its great moments hold thrills which you could find nowhere else. It may sound mad, but it's extraordinary fun to be chased by enemy machine-gun bullets. I've recently had fun of every kind.
Once again death is a familiar sight—tired bodies lying in the August sunshine. In places where men once were, birds are the only inhabitants remaining.
In this hole in the ground where I am sitting I found a copy of the New YorkTimesfor 30th June, with the first advertisement ofOut to Win. Less than thirty hours ago the Hun was sitting here and making himself quite comfortable. I wonder if he was the owner of the New YorkTimes.
I was relieved last night, and had a difficult walk back to the battery. There were several letters from you all awaiting me. How tired I was you may judge when I tell you that I fell asleep without reading them. For the first time in a fortnight I had my breeches off last night. Up forward one got drenched with sweat by day and lay sodden and itchy on the damp ground by night. But don't think we weren't cheerful—we were immensely happy. There's no game in the world like pushing back the Hun. I had another example of how we treat our prisoners. A young officer came in captive while I was shaving. “How long before we win?” I asked him. “Weare going to vin,” he replied. “If not, vhy because?” Our Tommies started kidding him. “Say, beau, you don't look much like winning now.” And then they offered him water and food, although we were short ourselves and his whole deportment was insolent.
During an attack, while I was within 200 yards of the advanced post and pinned under a barrage, a Canadian Tommy wormed his way towards me. “Say, sir, are you hungry? Have some maple sugar and cake?” Was I hungry! He had received a parcel from Canada the night before which he had taken with him into the attack. There, amongst whizz-bangs and exploding five-nines, we feasted together, washing it all down with water from the bottle of a neighbouring dead Hun.
You can't beat chaps who joke, think of home, go forward, and find time to love their enemies under shell-fire. They're extraordinary and as normal as the air.
FranceAugust20, 1918
To-day I have spent some time in composing recommendations for decorations for two of my signallers who were with me in my latest show. One of the lucky fellows came straight out of the death and racket to find his Blighty leave-warrant waiting for him. Not that I really envy him, for I wouldn't leave the Front at this moment if there were twenty leave-warrants offered to me. I suppose I'm a little mad about the war.
I'm still very tired from my last adventure and am limping about with very sore feet—but I'm very happy. I begin to feel that we're drawing to the end of the war. The Hun knows now that the jig is up. He was going to have defeated us this summer while the Americans were still preparing—instead of that we're pushing him back. I don't think he will gain another square yard of France. From now on he must go back and back.
This moving battle has been a grand experience; it enables you to see everything unfolding like a picture—tanks, cavalry, infantry, guns. The long marches were very wearying, and we were always pushing on again before we were rested. Not that we minded—the game was too big. The first day of the attack I sailed out into the blue alone, following up the Hun. I had the huge felicity of firing at his retreating back over open sights at a range of less than 1000 yards. We pushed so far that night that we got in front of our infantry and were turned back by enemy machine-gun fire. The Hun is a champion runner when he starts to go and difficult to keep up with. However, we caught him up several times after that and helped him to hurry a bit faster. I never saw anything finer in my life than the clouds of cavalry mustering—the way the horses showed their courage and never budged for shell-fire set an example to us men. The destruction burst in the midst of them, but they stood like statues till the order was given to advance. Then away they went, like a whirlwind of death, with the artillery following at the trot and coming into action point-blank. I came across one machine-gun emplacement that a horseman had charged. The horse lay dead on top of the emplacement, having smothered the machine gunner out of action. That day when I was off by myself with my two guns, I fed my horses on the oats of the fallen cavalry and my men on the rations in the haversacks of the dead. In the ripe wheat the dying stared at us with uninterested eyes as we passed. The infantry going cheering by when we were firing, waved their hands to us, shouting, “That's the stuff, boys. Give 'em hell!” We gave them hell, right enough.
I've come through without a scratch and now I'm off to bed. Don't worry if I don't write you—it's impossible sometimes, and I'll always cable through London as soon as I can.
France
August22,1918
Ican't sleep to-night. It's nearly one. The candle lights up the mud walls and makes the other occupants of my dug-out look contorted and grotesque. They sigh and toss in their dreams. Now an arm is thrown out and a face is turned. They've been through it, all of them, in the past few days. They have a haggard look. And somewhere in shell-holes, wheatfields, woods, they lie to-night—those others. Pain no longer touches them—their limbs have ceased to twitch and their breath is quiet. They have given their all. For them the war is finished—they can give no more.
Do people at home at all realize what our men are doing and have done? Coarse men, foulmouthed men—men whose best act in life is their manner in saying good-bye to it. And then there are the high-principled fellows from whom ideals are naturally to be expected—whatever we are, we all go out in the same way and in the same rush of determined glory. We climb the steep ascent of Heaven through peril, toil, and pain—and at last our spirits are cleansed.
I think continually of the mothers who stand behind these armies of millions. Mothers just like my mother, with the same hopes and ambitions for their sons. Poor mothers, they never forget the time when the hands that smite to-day were too strengthless to do more than grope at the breast. They follow us like ghosts; I seem to see their thoughts like a grey mist trailing behind and across our strewn battlefields. When the rain descends upon our dead, it is their tears that are falling. The whispering of the wheat is like the tiptoe rustling of approaching women.
Pray for us; we need your prayers—need them more than you think, perhaps. Tuck us up in our scooped-out holes with your love, the way you used to before we began to adventure. Above all be proud of us, whether we stand or fall—so proud that you will not fret. God will let us be little again for you in Heaven. We shall again reach up our arms to you, relying on your strength. We shall be afraid and cry out for your comfort. We're not brave—not brave naturally; we shall want you in Heaven to tell us we are safe.
So many thoughts and pictures come to me to-night. One is of a ravine I was in a few days ago, all my men mounted and waiting to move forward. Wounded horses of the enemy are limping through the grass. German wagons, caught by our shell-fire, stand silent, the drivers frozen to the seats with a terrifying look of amazement on their faces, their jaws loose and their bodies sagging. Others lie twisted in the grass—some in delirium, some watching. We shall need all our water before the day is over, and have no time to help them. Besides, our own dead are in sight and a cold anger is in our heart. The stretcher-bearers will be along presently—time enough for mercy when the battle is won! We ourselves may be dead before the sun has set. I know the anger of war now, the way I never did in the trenches. You can see your own killing. You can also see the enemy's work. And yet, through it all down come our wounded, supported by the wounded Huns.
“Those chaps are very good to you,” one of our officers said. The Tommy grinned. “They have to be. If they weren't, I'd let the daylight into them. I've a pocketful of bombs, and they know it.” Well, that's one incentive to friendship, however reluctant.
The Huns are brave—I know that now. They endure tests of pluck that are well-nigh incredible. We are not defeating craven curs. I can think of no one braver than the man who stays behind with a machine gun, fighting a rearguard action and covering his comrades' road to freedom. He knows that he will receive no quarter from our people and will never live to be thanked by his own. His lot is to die alone, hated by the last human being who watches him. They're brave men; they cease fighting only when they're dead.
What a contrast between love and hatred—dreaming of our mothers to the last and smashing the sons of other mothers. That's war!
France
August22, 1918
Here I am lying flat on my tummy in the grass and spying on the enemy 2000 yards away. I shall be here for twenty-four hours. There's no sort of cover and the sun is scalding. Luckily we've found water in a captured village near by and I sent our linesmen to refill our bottles. There's a lull for the moment and we stretch ourselves out in weary contentment The body is a traitor to the spirit—it can become very tired.
I begin to see the end of the war. I can feel it coming as I never did before since I struck France. The unbelievable truth begins to dawn on me that we'll be coming back to you—that we shall wake up one morning to find that the world has no further use for our bombs and bayonets. Strange! After so much killing, to kill will be again a crime. We shall begin to count our lives in years instead of in days.
How will the pictures one's memory holds seem then? I can see, as I saw the other day, a huge German lying on the edge of a wheatfield. His knees were arched. He was on his back. His head rolled wearily from side to side. The thing that fixed my attention was a rubber groundsheet flung hastily across his stomach, whether in disgust or pity, I cannot say. I had my guns drawn up in column, my men mounted, all ready to trot into action—so I had no time for compassion or curiosity. But from my saddle I saw an infantryman raise the ground-sheet and underneath there was nothing but a scarlet gap. There were many sights like that that day. There have been many since then. I have seen as many parts of the human body that the beautiful white skin tents, as a student of anatomy. What hatred and injustice has preceded the making possible of such acts!
But in these places where horrors have been committed, the birds still flit about their nests. When the tanks and the cavalry and the guns have pushed forward, Nature returns to her task of beautifying the world.
How I would like to sit down and talk with you all. When the war is over I can see us going away to some quiet place and re-living the past and re-building the future with words. I may see you sooner than either of us expect; there's always the chance of a Blighty. So far, beyond an attack of trench-fever from which I've almost recovered, I've come through scatheless.
By the time this reaches you I shall be looking forward to leave. Casualties have thinned out the numbers on the leave-list and I stand fairly high now. I ought to see England again in October.
France
August30,1918
This is only a brief note to say that all is well with me and to ask you not to worry. It's two years to-morrow since I first saw the Front—two centuries it seems. I'm different inside. I don't know whether my outside has changed much—but I wish sometimes that I could be back again. I begin to be a little afraid that I shan't be recognizable when I return.
The journalists have been very free in their descriptions of our doings—they have told you everything. If I told a tithe, my letter would not reach you.
France
September1, 1918
This is just another little note to let you know that I am safe and well. I am allowed to say so little to you; that's one of the worst penalties of this war—the silence. Yesterday your cable, sent in reply to mine and forwarded from London, arrived. My only chance of relieving your suspense when I have not been able to write for some time, is to get one of my English friends to cable to you.
Did you see the good news concerning R. B.? He's got his V.C. for saving life under shell-fire in Zeebrugge harbour. His M.L. was hit fifty times. I remember the way his neighbours used to patronize him before the war. They all laughed when he went to California to study for an aeroplane pilot. They didn't try to join themselves, but his keenness struck them as funny. What could a man who was half-blind do at the war, they asked—a man who ran his launch into logs on the lake, and who crashed in full daylight when approaching a wharf? When he had been awarded his flying certificate at the American Air School our R.F.C. refused to take him. He tried to get into the infantry, into everything, anything, and was universally turned down on the score of weak sight. His quixotic keenness made less keen spectators smile. Then, by a careless chance, he got himself accepted by the R.N.V.R. and was put on to a motor launch. Everyone pictured him as colliding with everything solid that came his way, and marvelled at the slipshod naval tests. But it wasn't his eyesight and limitations that really counted—it was his keenness. In two years he's a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Lieutenant-Commander. Before the war he was the kind of chap with whom girls danced out of kindness To-day he's a hero.
We were discussing him out here the other day; he's the type of hero this war has produced—a man not strong physically, a man self-depreciating and shy, a man with grave limitations and very conscious of his difference from other men. This was his chance to approve himself. People laughed that he should offer himself as a fighter at all, but he elbowed his way through their laughter to self-conquest. That's the grand side of war—its test of internals, of the heart and spirit of a man! bone and muscle and charm are only secondary.
The big things one sees done out here—done in the way of duty—and so quietly! Whether one comes back or stays, the test has made all the personal suffering worth while—for one hour of living to know that you have played the man and saved a fellow-creature's life. One never knows when these chances will come; they rush in on you unexpectedly and expect to find you ready. In the encounter the character built up in a lifetime is examined and reported on by the momentary result.
And yet how one suffers for the suffering he witnesses—the suffering of horses and Huns, as well as of the men on our own side. The silent, smashed forms carried past on the stretchers; the little groups of busy men among whom a shell bursts, leaving those who do not rise. And overhead the sky is blue and the wind blows happily through the sunshine. “Gone west”—that's all, to the land of departing suns. Some of us will stay to sleep among the gentlemen of France. In either event we are fortunate in having been given the privilege to serve our kind.
Prince of Wales Hospital, London,September6, 1918
Here I am once again in a clean white bed with the discreet feet of nurses, like those of nuns, making hardly any sound as they pass up and down the corridor. There's just one other officer in my room. His leg is full of machine-gun bullets, and, like myself, he's just arrived from France. I've not got used to this new security yet, this right to live, this ordered decency—all of which seems to be summed up in the presence of women. Less than three days ago I saw two of my gun-teams scuppered by shellfire and the horses rolling among the wounded men. I can't get the sight out of my mind. To be alive seems an unfair advantage I have taken.—And all the time I want to be back in the thick of it. It was so glorious—such a bon little war, as we say out there, while it lasted.
You'll want to know what happened. On 2nd September at dawn we set out as the point of the attacking wedge to hammer our way to Cambrai. You will have read this, and more than this, already in your papers. After we had fired on the barrage for several hours, and our infantry had advanced, we began to move our battery forward by sections. The major was away on leave to Blighty, so the captain was acting O.C. He went forward to observe and reconnoitre; I was left to move up the battery. My own section was the last to move. On the road I was met by a mounted orderly who handed me a written order to join another battery which was doing forward work on opportunity targets. I reported to this battery and had brought my two guns into position on their right flank, when the first shell burst. The gun-teams had not unhooked; it burst directly under the centre team and scuppered the lot, wounding all the drivers and killing one of the gunners. We had got the guns into action, when another shell burst beside the left-hand gun, near which I was standing, wounding all the gun-crew except one man. I myself got a piece in the head, between the ear and the left temple. It was a lucky chance that I wasn't killed outright. The fragment of shell struck upwards and under my steel helmet, cutting the chin-strap and the brass link which holds the strap to the helmet. It was diverted by a rivet in the strap, so instead of going straight into my head, it glanced along the skull. I was X-rayed in France and was to have been operated on, but there was no time with so many casualties coming down, so I was sent to England for the operation. I was in luck to escape so lightly. I was so grateful to my helmet that I hid it in my trench coat and smuggled it back to England with me as a curiosity—which is not allowed.
But to return to my story. After the second shell had caught us and others were popping all about us, I made up my mind that the enemy had a direct line on us. I have since been told that he put on a strong counter-attack and bent our line back for a time, so that our artillery were very near up and it's likely that he could observe us. I sent back for my teams after we had carried out our wounded, intending to drag the guns out farther to the right flank. Another gun-team was scuppered and all my gunners were knocked out but three men. The enemy now started to pay attention to my ammunition wagons, putting one shell straight in among the lot of them, so I had to leave the guns for the moment and get my wagons away. I then rode forward to where the other guns of my battery were in action and found that they had escaped casualties, so arranged to bring my guns in beside them. About an hour and a half after I was hit I went to an advance aid-post to have my head dressed. It was just a pile of stretchers and bandages in a ditch—the living under cover in the ditch, the dead lying out on top; here a doctor and four Red Cross orderlies were working in silence. I was ordered to report at the next post back for an anti-tetanus injection, so I got on my horse and rode. At the next post they had no anti-tetanus, so I was put on a lorry and driven back to Arras. From there I went to the Casualty Clearing Station, where I was dressed and got two hours' sleep—from there I travelled on the Red Cross train to the Base, arriving at 6 a.m., only eighteen hours from the time that I was in the fighting. The hospital I went to was the Number 20 General—the same one that I was in last year. That same morning I was X-rayed and starved all day in preparation for an operation which did not happen. In the evening I was warned for Blighty, but it was the midday of 4th September before I got on the train for the port of embarkation. The journey was rather long, for I did not reach Liverpool Street till two in the morning. Yesterday, as soon as I woke up, I sent you a cable. In the afternoon Mr. W. came to see me and is coming again to-day. I left the Front without a bit of kit, so my first S.O.S. was for a pair of pyjamas. Having studied the colour of my eyes and consulted with his lady-clerks, W. sent me a suit of baby blue silk ones with thin white stripes in them—so now I am ready to receive ladies.
3 p.m.I was X-rayed, and there is a splinter between the scalp and skull. Whether the skull is fractured I don't know; I think not, however, as I feel too well. What a contrast lying here in the quiet after so many night marches, so much secrecy, such tiger pounces forward in the dawn, such agony and courage and death. There were wounded men hobbling seven miles from the Drocourt-Quéant line where I was hit, to the hospital at Arras. The roads were packed with transports—ammunition, pontoons, rations—streaming forward, gunners and infantry marching up to the carnage with eager faces, passing the back-going traffic which was a scarlet tide of blood. It was worth living for—worth doing—that busting of the Hindenburg Line. I hope to be patched up in two months, so that I may be in on the final rush to the Rhine. I've only been out of the fighting three days and I want to be in it again.
Don't worry about me at all. I'm all right and brown and strong. Thank God I'm not dead yet and shall be able to fight again.
Note.—Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded on 2nd September in the attack on the Quéant-Drocourt Line, when the magnificent fighting of the Canadians broke the Hindenburg Line. The above letter describes that attack and the manner in which he got his wound.
London
September8, 1918
I've returned from this offensive with a very healthy hatred of the Hun. One of our tanks, commanded by a boy of twenty, got too far ahead and was captured. When the rest of the attacking line caught up, they found him stripped naked and bound to his tank—dead. The brutes had bombed him to death mother-naked. When I tell you that no prisoners were taken for the next twenty-four hours, I think you'll applaud and wonder why the twenty-four hours wasn't extended. The men said they got sick of the killing.
Why we're decent to these vermin at all amazes me, until I remember that I also am decent to them. I think the reason is that originally we set out to be good sportsmen and are ashamed of being forced into hatred. All the way down the line the German wounded received precisely the same treatment as our own men—and treatment that was just as prompt. At the Casualty Clearing Station, German officers sat at table with us and no difference was made. On the Red Cross train they were given beds in our carriage and our English sisters waited on them. I thought of how the German nurses treat our chaps, spitting into the food and the cups before they hand them to them. Every now and then you would see a wounded Canadian hop up the carriage and offer them cigarettes. They sat stiffly and insolently, with absurd yellow gloves on, looking as though every kindness shown was a national tribute to their superiority. There were so many of us that at night two had to lie on beds made for one. The Germans refused; they wanted a bed apiece. When they were told they would have to sit up if they would not share, they said they would sit up. Then the sister came along to investigate the disturbance. They eyed her with their obstinate pig-eyes, as though daring her to touch them. She told them that if they wanted to sit up all night they would have to do it in the corridor, as they prevented the bed above them from being pulled down. At the end of fifteen minutes they decided to share a bed as all of us had been doing, but they muttered and grumbled all night. There were a good many of us who wished for a Mills bomb and an open field in which to teach them manners. It seems to me that the German is incorrigible. He was born a boor and he can never respond to courtesy. Kindness and mercy are lost upon him; he accepts them as his right and becomes domineering. If any peacemaker thinks that Christian forbearance and magnanimity will make for a new brotherhood when peace terms are formulated, he is vastly mistaken. The German is a bully, and the only leadership that he acknowledges and the only righteousness to which he bows, is the leadership and the armed force of a bully stronger than himself. Sentimental leniency on the part of the Allies will only make him swell out his chest afresh.
You may have seen the account of a booby-trap which the Huns left behind—a crucified kitten. They banked on the humanity of our chaps to release the little beast; but the moment the first nail was drawn it exploded a mine which killed our Tommies. In contrast to this is an incident which occurred the night before our attack on the Hindenburg Line. A hare, frightened by shell-fire, came panting through our gun-position. Some of the fellows gave chase, till at last one fell on it and caught it. It started to cry like a baby in a heartrending sort of way. We hadn't had very much meat, and the intention in catching it had been to put it in the pot; but there was no one who could face up to killing it—so it was petted and set free again in the wheat. Queer tender-heartedness on the part of men who next morning were going to kill their kind! Their concern when the little beast began to sob was conscience-stricken and ludicrous.
London
September12, 1918
I've a great piece of news for you. It's exceedingly likely that I shall visit the States on the British Mission. This must read to you like moonshine—but it's a quite plausible fact. I shall not be allowed to go back to the Front for three months, as it will probably be that time before I am pronounced fit for active service. It is suggested that during that time I come to the States to speak on Anglo-American relations. I feel very loath to postpone my return to the Front by a single day, and would only do so if I were quite sure that I should not be fit for active service again before the winter settles down, when the attack will end. I don't want to miss an hour of the great offensive. If I agree to come to the States, I shall only do it on the pledge that I am sent straight back to France on my return. This would give me a right to speak to Americans as nothing else would. I could not speak of the war unless I was returning to it. I owe the Lord a death for every life of my men's that has been taken—and I want to get back to where I can pay the debt. But wouldn't it be ripping to have a few weeks all together again? Can't I picture myself in my little study at the top of the house and in my old bedroom! I may even manage a Christmas with you!
Having had my wound dressed and having togged myself up in my new uniform, I jumped into the inevitable taxi and went to lunch at the Ritz with some of the visiting American editors. It was delightfully refreshing to listen to Charlie Towne's, the editor of McClure's, wild enthusiasm for the courageous high spirits of England. “The streets are dark at night,” he said, “but in the people's hearts there is more light than ever.” Two stories were told, illuminatingly true, of the way in which the average Englishman carries on. There was an officer who had had an eye shot out; the cavity was filled with an artificial one. Towne felt a profound pity for him, but at the same time he was rather surprised to see that the chap wore a monocle in the eye that was sightless. At last he plucked up courage to ask him what was the object of the monocle. The chap smiled drolly. “I do it for a rag,” he said; “it makes me look more funny.”
A Canadian Tommy, without any legs, was being wheeled down a station platform. Another wounded Tommy called out to him, “You're not on the staff, Bill. Why don't yer get out and walk?”
“'Cause I'm as good as a dook now,” the chap replied; “for the rest of me life I'm a kerridge gent.”
The thing that seems to have impressed these American visitors most of all is the way in which our soldiers make adversity appear comic by their triumphant capacity for mockery.
Towne, being a lover of poetry, was terrifically keen to visit Goldsmith's grave. I hadn't the foggiest idea where it was, but after lunch we set out in search of it. At last we found it in a shady backwater of the Inner Temple—a simple slab on which the only inscription was the name, “Oliver Goldsmith.” I know of only one parallel to this for illustrious brevity; a gravestone in Paris, from which even the Christian name is omitted and on which the solitary word “Heine” is written. I liked to see the poet from Broadway bare his head as he stood by the long-dead English poet's grave. Behind us in the Temple chapel the confident soprano of boys' voices soared. It was a grey-blue day, made tawny for brave moments by fugitive stabs of sunshine. Lime trees dappled the cold courtyard with shadows; leaves drifted down like gilded largesse. Old men, with dimming eyes and stooped backs, shuffled from stairway to stairway, carrying heavy ledgers. The rumble of Fleet Street reached us comfortingly, like the sound of distant surf on an unseen shore. My thoughts wrenched themselves free from the scenes of blood and struggle in which I participated less than two weeks ago. Here, in that simple inscription, was the symbol of the one quality which survives Time's erasures—character which loved and won love intensely.
Queer letters you get from me! I write the way I feel from London or the battlefield. My room-mate is lying in bed, his poor shattered leg propped up on a pillow and a cheery smile about his lips. In the well of the hospital someone is playing—playing love-songs as though there were no war. The music, muted by distance, drifts in to me through the open window. I feel that life is mine again; I can hope. At the Front to hope too much was to court disappointment. To be alive is thrilling and delicious.