X"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"An army is more courageous than the individuals who compose it. The coward finds sufficient courage for his job while doing it with his regiment, and the brave is at his bravest. He has a courage which is not his own but which, somehow, he puts on with his uniform. He does deeds of daring he could not have done as a civilian. The army has a corporate courage and each soldier receives a portion of it just as he receives a ration of the army's food. It is added to what he has of his own.The badge of the army is courage. When a recruit joins the army he knows that he is putting away the civilian standard of courage with his derby hat, and is putting on the soldier's standard of courage with his uniform. His great fear is that he will not be able to live up to it. He wonders if he is made of the stuff that produces heroes. He is a mystery to himself and has a haunting fear that there may be a strain of the coward in his make-up. He wishes it were possible to have a rehearsal for he would rather die than fail on the appointed day.The chaplain fears that he will faint and become a hindrance instead of a help when he first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing station; and the recruit is afraid of being afraid in the hour of battle and of bringing dishonor and weakness upon his regiment. He will be glad when the trial is over--when he knows the stuff of which nature has made him. A friend of mine told me one day that he was walking over a heavily shelled field with a young aristocrat of a highly strung temperament. The man was afraid, but would not yield to his fear. His lips twitched and his face became drawn and white. His movements were jerky but he made no other sign. He talked about paltry things in which, at the moment, he had not the slightest interest, and passed jocular or sardonic remarks about the things that were happening around them. My friend ducked his head when a shell burst near as we all have done often enough, but the young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff as if he were being crowned. He held it up defiantly; was it not filled with the bluest blood of England? The shells might blow it off if they liked. That was their concern, not his, but they should never make him bow. His fathers had fought on British battlefields for centuries, and had never bowed their heads to a foe, and he would not break the great tradition. Shells might break his neck but they should never bend it. He would face the enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a neck as ever his fathers did. He knew his personal weakness and reinforced his strength with that of his fathers'. He was not afraid of death. He was afraid of being afraid.My friend was a coachman's son who by courage and capacity of the highest order had won a commission. He had no traditions either to haunt or help him, and he had often been tried in the fire and knew his strength. He was not afraid of being afraid. It was natural to duck when a shell burst near and it did him no harm and made no difference to the performance of his duties; so he ducked as he felt inclined, and then laughed at his nerves for the tricks they were allowing the shells to play on them. But, knowing his companion's more sensitive nature and temperamental weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff neck and proudly erect head. He showed a self-control which only centuries of breeding could give. Here was a hero indeed. The shells he was defying were as nothing to the fears which haunted his imaginative nature and which, with his back to the wall of his family traditions, he was fighting and keeping at bay. My friend could not refrain from complimenting him on resisting the natural tendency to duck the head when a shell screamed above them."Eton boys never duck," replied the young aristocrat.He was an Eton boy and would die rather than fall short of the Eton standard. In this war hundreds of them have died rather than save themselves by something which did not measure up to the Eton standard. The ranks of young British aristocrats have been terribly thinned in this war and I have heard their deeds spoken of with a reverence such as is only given to legendary heroes. They have gone sauntering over the crater-fields to their deaths with the same self-mastery and outward calm which the French aristocracy manifested as they mounted the steps of the guillotine in the Reign of Terror. To their own personal courage was added the courage of their race, and the accumulation of the centuries.We speak of our new armies. There can be no "new" armies of Britons. The tradition of our newest army goes back to Boadicea. Its forerunners, without shields or armor, and almost without weapons, dared the Romans--the proud conquerors of the world--to battle; and gave them the longest odds warriors ever gave. They knew they could not win but they knew they could die. Dead warriors they might become but never living slaves. They ran up Boadicea's proud banner because they knew that while the Romans might soak it in British blood, no power on earth could drag it through the mire.Our forefathers crossed swords with Cæsar and his Roman legions, and our newest army goes into battle with the prestige born of two thousand years of war. They have a morale that belongs to the race in addition to the morale they possess as individuals. It is said that "the British do not know when they are beaten." How should they know? They have had no teachers. All they know is that if they have not gained the victory the battle is not ended and must go on until they pitch their tents on the undisputed field. The German Emperor spreads out his War Map but it is as undecipherable as the mountains in the moon to our soldiers. Tyrants have never found them apt scholars at geography. They prefer to make their own maps even though they have no paint to color them with except the red blood in their veins. The Kaiser may roll up his War Map of Europe; our soldiers have no use for it, and will not commit to memory its new boundaries. They feel in their souls the capacity to make a new one more in line with their ideas of fair play."Eton boys never duck." If the muscles of their necks show a tendency to relax they call to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood in bygone days, and their necks become stiff and taut once more. Wellington said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. It is still true that "Eton boys never duck" to the foe; nor do the soldiers they lead.XI"MISSING"The word "Missing" has come to exercise an even more terrible power over the human heart than the word "Death." The latter kills the heart's joy and hope with a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy stroke from the executioner's axe. In a few cases the wounded victim is spared and allowed to recover, but in the majority of cases there is no reprieve and a second blow is struck after a period of suspense and suffering. A chaplain dreads the word. As he opens his correspondence after a battle, it fixes him as the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner fastened the wedding guest. It leaps from the page at him with the malignant suddenness of a serpent. Wounds and death he can explain to relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation. No one who has not been at the Front can conceive how a lad can disappear and no one see what becomes him. A man may read graphic accounts of conditions of life in the battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to visualize it with any real approach to truth.After the first day of the Somme Campaign we had hundreds of casualties and most of them were classed as "Missing." The soldiers went "over the top" and did not return, and no one knew why. They were simply "missing." Why did no one know their fate? It came about in this way. The men scrambled over the parapet and, forming in line, charged across No Man's Land in extended order. Some fell immediately. The wounded among them got back to the dressing station, and the bodies of the dead were found within a few days, at least. So far, there are no "Missing." The rest of the men press on, some falling at every step; the line thins, and the men get separated. When a man falls his neighbor cannot stay with him. He must press on to the objective, otherwise, if the unwounded stayed to succor the wounded, there would be none to continue the attack; and under the hail of shells and bullets sweeping the open ground, everyone would perish. The only way to succor the wounded is to press on, capture the enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine-gun fire. Consequently, the man who presses on does not, as a rule, know whether his comrade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took cover in a shell hole. And even though he were to know, he may be killed himself later, and his knowledge die with him.If the attack succeeds, and the German trench is held by us, No Man's Land can be searched. The wounded and dead are found, and but few are reported "missing." But if the attack fail, and the regiment has to retire to its own line, it becomes impossible for us to search that part of No Man's Land, adjoining the German trench (for there is rarely any truce after a battle in this war), and so, it is impossible to find out whether those who have failed to return were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners. The comrades who saw them fall are probably killed, for the return is as fatal as the attack. If they come back wounded they are taken straight to the hospitals and so have no chance of reporting to their officers the fate of those whom they saw fall. Only the unwounded return to the regiment and, in a lost battle, these are few and know but little of what happened to those around them. They were excited and were fighting for their lives. They had no leisure to observe the fate of others.On one occasion our men took some German trenches opposite them and held them for some hours by desperate fighting, but before dusk had to retire. Many were left dead or wounded in the captured trenches, and many fell on the return journey. The few who got back to us unwounded could give very little information about individuals who were missing. They had been separated one from another and fighting hour after hour with desperation. All therefore who did not return to the regiment or dressing station, and whose bodies were not recovered, were reported as "Missing" unless declared dead by reliable eye-witnesses. The evidence of eye-witnesses must be carefully examined before a regiment dare report a soldier dead on the strength of it. During an attack a man is in an abnormal state of excitement and the observations of his senses are not entirely reliable. Men imagine they see things, and frequently make mistakes in identity. I have known many cases in which a man has sworn that he saw another being carried to the dressing station, yet the missing man's body has afterwards been found near the German lines. The eye-witness simply mistook one man for another. No end of pain to relatives has been caused by these mistakes and a regiment rightly declines on such evidence to report a soldier as killed.Some weeks after the attack just referred to, we received letters from some of the officers and men who had been taken prisoners; information about others came through The Geneva Red Cross Society. Those of whom we heard nothing for six months we knew to be, in all probability, dead. Nine months later, the Germans retired from the position, and many of our dead were found still lying out in No Man's Land. Some were identified. Others could not be, their discs having perished by reason of the long exposure. Many of the dead had been left in the German trenches. These had been buried by the enemy and he had left no crosses to mark the graves. After more than a year there is no direct evidence of the death of many who fought on that day. They are "Missing," and we can only conclude that they were killed.In other cases, men are reported missing for several weeks, and then reported dead. A typical case may be cited to show how it comes about. We attacked one morning at dawn. The enemy were on the run, and in a state of exhaustion. An immediate attack would, it was believed, carry the position without much loss of life, even though our big guns had not had time to come up in support. Unfortunately the Germans were, unknown to us, reinforced during the night. Their new troops met our men with a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, and the regiment was ordered to retire. Several failed to return. We knew that some of the men had been forced to surrender, especially the wounded. Others had been killed. Those who returned unwounded were not able, however, to give us the names of those who had been killed or of those who had been taken prisoners. The attack had been made in the half-light of dawn so that our men could not be seen distinctly. They had also advanced in extended order so as to avoid making themselves an easy target. The half-light and the distance of one man from another made it difficult, therefore, for anyone to see either who fell or why they fell. Most of those who were killed or taken prisoners were therefore reported as "missing."A few days later the whole Division was moved to another part of the Front. A fresh regiment took our place, and, a few weeks later, with adequate artillery support, carried the German trenches. After the battle, burial parties were sent out by the regiment to bury both its own dead and ours who had been left in the German half of No Man's Land. Each grave was marked with the soldier's name, and his disc and paybook were sent to our regiment as proof of his death. The War Office was then informed that such and such a man "previously reported missing, is now reported killed."There are, however, cases of missing men which cannot be explained. The facts never come to light, and we can only guess what happened. They may have been buried by the enemy, or they may have been buried in the dark by some regimental burial party which could not find their discs. They may even have been buried by a shell or blown to fragments by a direct hit. We have no evidence.After the attack on Gommécourt a youth I knew had his wound dressed at the Regimental Aid post and was seen, by more than one of his chums, passing down the communication trench to the Advanced Dressing Station where I happened to be. Yet he never arrived, slight though his wound was. It was impossible for him to have got lost. His brother and I made every possible enquiry about him, but nothing ever came to light, and we both came to the conclusion that on his way down the trench he had been buried by a shell. In another case an officer was wounded and four stretcher bearers went out to bring him in. None were ever seen again, and later, when we came into possession of the ground, the body of none of them were found. It was scarcely possible for them to have been taken prisoners, and they were never reported as having been captured. We concluded, therefore, that a shell had both killed and buried them.One day a rifleman reported sick to the Doctor and was sent down the line to the Dressing Station whence he would be sent on to a Rest Camp. He was not seriously ill, and needed no escort. It was impossible for him to have wandered into the German lines, yet he never reported at the Dressing Station or anywhere else. Loss of memory is very rare, but even if that had happened to him, he could not have wandered about behind our lines without being found and arrested. No report of his burial ever reached us and we were led to the conclusion that he was killed by a shell on the way down, and in such a way that all means of identification were lost. In another case a private, wounded in the arm, was sent down the line in company with a party of stretcher bearers who were carrying a "lying case." Evidently he got separated from them in the dark, and was hit by a shell, for he never reached any dressing station, and his fate was never known.Conditions at the front are such that these mysterious disappearances must inevitably occur. Every possible arrangement which circumstances will allow is made to prevent them; but they cannot be altogether eliminated. People at home may sometimes think that more might have been done, but it is because they have no conception of the amazing conditions under which the war is carried on. Every officer and private knows that he may disappear without leaving a trace. That being so, they, if only from common prudence and the instinct of self-preservation, combine to reduce the danger to its lowest limits; but, when all has been done, war is war; and nothing can rob it of its horrors.Every day, officers and men die in trying to save their comrades, and nothing could be more unjust than to blame those who survive for not having done more to prevent others from being lost; for those who are surviving, to-day, may become missing to-morrow, and leave no trace behind. Officers have sometimes shown me letters from poor distracted relatives which could never have been written if they could have imagined the deadly peril in which the officers stood and the manifold distractions that wore them down. Sometimes an officer's letter is short and business-like in reply to an enquiry, but it must be remembered that his first duty is to the living. He must hold the line and save his men; and he has, despite the tragedy of his position, to answer not one enquiry but scores. And before he has finished answering all the enquiries, his own parents, perhaps, will be making enquiries about his own fate. Our officers are the bravest and kindest-hearted men that ever had the lives of others in their keeping; and when the chaplain asks them for details about any missing or slain soldier, they will go to endless trouble for him. They know what their own death will mean to their parents; and the knowledge makes their hearts go out in sympathy to the parents of their men, and it makes them do all that is possible to prevent lives being lost.When Moses died no man knew the place of his burial. It has not been found to this day. We know nothing of his last thoughts or of the manner of his death. His end is a perfect mystery. But we know that he died in the presence of God; that God strengthened him in the dread hour; and that with His own fingers He closed the lids over the prophet's brave, tender eyes. God buried Moses in a grave dug by His own hands and He will know where to find the poor worn-out body of the great patriot at the resurrection of the just. And God was with every one of our missing lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed in which each lies sleeping. The grave may have no cross above it, but it will often know the tread of an angel's feet as he comes to plant poppies, primroses and daffodils above the resting-place of the brave.XII"IT MUST BE SUNDAY"The Psalmist of Israel tells us that God has "ordained" the moon and the stars. These "flaming fires" are "ministers of His that do His pleasure." Nor are they the only ones chosen from Nature. Mungo Park, having laid down in the desert to die, notices beside him a tiny flower, and it awakens hope in him. The winter of his despair is ended. He rises again, and pushes on until he finds a human habitation where he is cared for by native women as though he were their brother. The little flower had been "ordained" to minister hope to a lost and despairing traveler.At the Front such ministering by Nature is of common occurrence. No Man's Land is desolate enough to look upon, but there is life there, and music. Larks have chosen it for their nests, and amid its desolation they rear their young. Even the pheasants have taken to some parts of it. If we could but know the thoughts of the wounded who have lain out there waiting for death, we should find that the moon and the stars, the birds and the field mice, had not allowed them die without some comforting of the spirit.One Sunday our regiment was resting in reserve trenches after a period in the firing line. It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun sank westward I administered the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The day was far spent but, as the bread was broken, there came to us a vision of the Face which the two disciples saw on another such evening in the far-off village of Emmaus. On the way back to my billet I met a platoon of Royal Engineers returning from the baths. One of them had been a member of my church in London, and he dropped out to talk with me. Those who have not been in the Expeditionary Force can hardly understand the pleasure a man feels when he meets someone he knew in the days of peace, or even someone who knows the street or town out of which he came. He was full of talk, and as I listened his excitement and pleasure bubbled over like a spring."Last night," he said, "was the night of my life. I never expected to see daylight again. Talk about a 'tight corner,' there was never one to match it, and as you know, my chums and I have been in many. The Huns simply plastered us with shells. The bombardment was terrific. It was like being in a hailstorm and we expected every moment to be our last."You know the trench which the infantry took yesterday? Well, we were there. We went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of it ready for the counter-attack. We were out in No Man's Land for about two hours, working as swiftly and silently as we could. Whenever the enemy sent his lights up, we laid down, and so far we had escaped notice and were congratulating ourselves that the work was nearly done, and that our skins were still whole. Then, somehow, the Germans spotted us, and let fly. It was like hell let loose. We ran to the trench for shelter, but it seemed as if nothing could save us from such a deluge of shells. It was just like being naked in a driving snow-storm. We felt as if there was no trench at all, and as if the gunners could see us in the dark. After that experience I can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after it. But we just sat tight with such cover as we had and made the best of it. There was nothing else to do. If we were to be killed, we should be killed. Nothing that we could do would have made any difference. Yet, though there didn't seem shelter for even a mouse, only one of us was hit, and that was the sergeant. He was rather badly 'done in,' and we could only save his life by getting him quickly to the dressing station.[image]"HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN"Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London"I am one of the taller and stronger men of my platoon so, of course, I volunteered as a stretcher-bearer. There was no communication trench, so we had no choice but to lift him up and make a dash across the open. They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare not delay because, if we were overtaken by daylight, it would be impossible to get him away till the next night, and by that time he would be dead. So we decided to try our luck. We had just lifted him up when a shell burst right on top of us, and knocked us all down. For a minute or two I was unconscious, and when I came round I thought I must surely be wounded, so I ran my fingers over my body but found neither blood nor a rent in my clothes. I was covered with chalk but that didn't matter. Except for a touch of concussion in the brain I was none the worse, and soon pulled myself together. The sergeant was a sight! He was half-buried, and we could scarce see him for chalk; but we dug him out and got him on the stretcher again. After that we sat down in the bottom of the trench till the effect of the shock had worn off a bit, for we all felt like rats that had been shaken by a terrier."Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shelling stopped. The calm that followed was wonderful. I never felt anything so restful before. It was like the delicious restfulness that, sometimes, immediately follows hours of fever. Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out of No Man's Land and began to sing. The effect on us was magical. It was the sweetest music I have ever heard, and I shall remember it to my dying day. The countryside was dark and silent, and, as I listened to the lark, old days came back to mind. You remember that Saturday midnight in the June before the war when you took us into Epping Forest to see the dawn break over it? Well, as I listened to the lark, I was back there in the forest. Then some impulse seized me and, hardly knowing what I did, I cried aloud, 'Why bless me, it must be Sunday,' and so it was, although I had forgotten."Then we jumped up for we saw that the dawn was breaking and, lifting the sergeant out of the trench, we rushed across the open ground in the direction of the dressing station. Talk about 'feeling protected!' Why, I felt that God was all around us--that no harm could touch us. A great calm stole over me, and I felt utterly devoid of fear. We had, as you know, to bring the sergeant some two miles to the dressing station, just down the road there, but we got him safely in, and I think he will get better."While we were talking, a shell burst near the trench where my men had been taking of the Sacrament, and another burst by the roadside close to the Engineers. With a laugh and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands, saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades. The shells were part of the game. In London we had been in the same football team. He had kept goal and I had played full back, and he regarded the shells that had fallen as bad shots at goal made by the opposing team. They might have been serious but, as it happened, the ball had each time gone out of play.I waited a minute or two in the hope of getting a lift. A motor car came along; I stopped it and got in; for at the Front everything is Government property and more or less at one's service. I found myself sitting by the side of a private, who had been wounded in the face and right hand by the shell that had just fallen near the platoon of Engineers.He had left his horse with a comrade, and was being driven to the Advanced Dressing Station by a driver who, happening to pass at the moment, had kindly offered him a lift. After a little wait at the Dressing Station I got on the front of an ambulance car. There were only two cases inside, and they were being taken to the Main Dressing Station in Arras. One of them had his feet and arms tied to the stretcher, for he was suffering from shell-shock; and three orderlies were in charge of him. The poor fellow laughed and cried alternately and struggled to break loose. "I'm a British soldier," he cried, "and I will not be tied up. I've done my bit, and this is the way you pay me out. I'll not have it." And time and again he struggled desperately to break away.The orderlies in charge of him were wise and tactful as women. They asked him questions about the fight, and he fought his battle over again. They praised his regiment and told him it had done magnificently, and he laughed and chuckled like a young mother, dandling her first baby on her knee. And so, without mishap, we reached the ruined town of Arras where nightly the shells fall among the forsaken houses in which our soldiers are billeted. The wounded private was carried into the hospital, and I walked away to my room in an adjoining street.So ended the day which, in the hour of dawn, the dark had told the young engineer "must be Sunday."XIIIOUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL USOn Easter Monday, in the Battle of Arras, I saw two sights such as I shall never forget. One revealed the kind and forgiving spirit of our men, the other their unflinching courage. After burying three non-commissioned officers who had been killed the day before, I reached the Advanced Dressing Station near which our regiment was "standing to" in a support trench. Other regiments of our Division were carrying out the attack and, with small loss, had taken the enemy lines. The German trenches had been blotted out by our shells but their deep dug-outs, with machine-guns at their mouths, remained untouched, and it was almost impossible for our soldiers to discover them until they got within a few yards of the entrances.The German commander's idea was to keep his men in the shelter of the dug-outs until our barrage lifted. They were then to rush out with machine-guns and rifles to destroy our men who were following it up. If the idea had been carried out, the German line would have been impregnable for our men would have been mown down like corn before the reaper. It failed because German human nature could not rise to the occasion. The German soldiers had been demoralized by the safety of the dug-outs and by the thunder of our shells above them. They cowered in the dug-outs when they should have rushed out. The critical moment passed, and with its passing our soldiers leapt to the entrances and threw down hand grenades. There was a wild cry of pain and fear from below. Arms went up and the cry of "Kamerad." The surrender was accepted and the beaten soldiers crawled out. From some dug-outs as many as two hundred prisoners were taken. In other parts of the line there was a stiff fight, but, on the whole, our casualties were very light. From my own observation I should say that we took more prisoners than we suffered casualties. Some companies could boast a prisoner for each man engaged in the attack.The Advanced Dressing Station was at the corner of Cross Roads and the sight around it was wonderful to behold. A crowd of prisoners was assembling ready to be marched to the cages, and wounded officers and men, British and German, were being bandaged. The prisoners were hungry. For some days our artillery had cut off their rations. A platoon of our soldiers came marching by, and, to save time, eating their breakfasts as they passed along. The prisoners looked at them with hungry eyes. Our men saw the look and stopped. Breaking rank for a moment they passed in and out among the prisoners and shared out their rations. "Here, Fritzy, old boy, take this," I heard all around me, and Fritz did not need asking twice. He took the biscuits and cheese gratefully and eagerly. The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and he felt that he had found friends where he had only expected to find enemies. He began to hope for kindness in his captivity. The scene was one of pure goodwill.Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy. Our Tommies laughed and cracked jokes which no German could understand, but I heard not a single taunt or bitter word. In fact, Fritz was treated more like a pet than a prisoner. One who had worked in London, and who spoke English, asked me for a cup of tea for a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I got one in the dressing station. The platoon of Tommies re-formed and marched away to the battle and the prisoners were led off to the cages. There were still large numbers of prisoners on the road, and they were moving about without guards. Many of them were being used as stretcher-bearers and they seemed to do their work out of goodwill and not of constraint.Their assistance was of great help to the wounded. The battle was going well with us. Everyone felt in good heart and kindly disposed. An officer who lay seriously wounded and waiting for a car told me of the splendid work which his regiment had done. His eyes shone with suppressed excitement and pride as he told the story. While he was speaking two soldiers came limping down the road and their appearance was greeted with a burst of laughter. One was English, the other German. Tommy had his arm round the German's neck and was leaning on him while Fritz, with his arm round the lad's waist, helped him along. They came along very slowly for both were wounded, but they laughed and talked together like long-lost brothers. Yet neither could understand a word the other said.I passed down the road towards the line. Gunners of the Territorials were hurriedly hitching their guns to the horses ready to advance to new positions. In the ruined village a party of engineers was already unloading a wagon of rails with which to build a light railway. I continued along the road towards the next village. It had just fallen into our hands and not one stone was left on another. There were scores of wounded men hobbling back from it and I gave my arm to such as needed it most. A badly wounded Tommy was being brought along on a wheeler by two orderlies and as I helped them through the traffic we heard the heavy rumble of the advancing field-guns.The road was cleared with the quickness of lightning. Out of the village the batteries burst at a mad gallop and down the road they came at break-neck speed. With the swiftness of a fire engine in a city street the rocking guns swept past. The gunners clung to the ammunition limbers with both hands and the drivers whipped and spurred the excited foam-flecked horses as though they were fiery beings leaping through the air and incapable of fatigue or weakness. Suddenly the drivers raised their whips as a sign to those behind, and the trembling horses and bounding guns came to a dead halt. The leading gun had overturned at a nasty place where the road dipped down into the hollow. The rest of the batteries stood exposed on the crest of the ridge. Before retiring the Germans had felled all the trees that grew by the roadside so that nothing might obstruct their line of vision. Such a catastrophe as this was what the enemy had been hoping for. The sun shone brilliantly, and our batteries were a direct target for the German gunners such as seldom occurs. Our boys were caught like rats in a trap. By the side of the road ran a shallow trench and near us two broad steps into it. We laid the wounded lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down by his side. Shells were falling all around and fountains of dirt and debris rose into the air and, on five or six occasions, covered us with their spray.I covered the lad's face. He was barely conscious and uttered no word. It seemed as if nothing could live in such a bombardment. A shell burst near, and the cry of dying horses rent the air. The traces were cut and the horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road. Every second I expected to see the horses and drivers in front of me blown into the air and I watched them with fascinated eyes. Not a man stirred. They sat on their horses and gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze. Not a man sought the trench and not a man relieved the tension by going forward to see what was wrong or to lend a hand. Each knew his place, and if death sought him it would know where to find him. The horses felt that they had brave men on their backs and, in that mysterious way peculiar to horses, caught the spirit of their riders. Every shell covered men and horses with chalk and soil, but they remained an immobile as statuary. It was magnificent and it was war. A driver in the battery beside us got wounded in the leg and hand. He jumped off his horse and came to us to be bandaged. Then he leapt back into the saddle. It seemed an age, but I suppose it was only a few minutes, before the obstruction was removed. The whips flashed in the air and the horses sprang forward. The guns rocked and swayed as they swept past us and within a few minutes they were in their new positions under the hill upon which lay the ruins of Neuville Vitasse.The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had started and we lifted out our wounded soldier and went in the direction of the dressing station. Some distance up the road my attention was called to one of the drivers whom the artillery had left in the care of some privates. He was living, but his skull was broken, and he would never wake again to consciousness. He was fast "going West." His day was over and his work was done. I got him lifted on to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station so that he might die in peace and be buried in the little soldiers' cemetery behind it.When I returned in the evening to our billet I told the transport officer of the magnificent bravery of the artillery drivers."Any other drivers would behave just as well, if caught in the same trap," he replied.He spoke the simple truth. They would. Such supreme courage and devotion to duty are common to the army. Their presence among all ranks and in all sections of the army makes the fact the more wonderful. Both officers and men love life, but they love duty more, and commanders in drawing up their plans know that they can rely on their soldiers to carry them out. Our Tommies never fail us whether in France, Mesopotamia, or Palestine. Devotion to duty is inwoven with the fibers of their hearts. They are men who, either in kindness to captives or courage amid disaster and destruction, never fail us.XIVTHE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLEThe war on the Western Front has been fought in a Roman Catholic country where crucifixes are erected at all the chief cross-roads to remind us that, in every moment of doubt as to the way of life, and on whichever road we finally decide to walk, whether rough or smooth, we shall need the Saviour and His redeeming love. We have seen a cross so often when on the march, or when passing down some trench, that it has become inextricably mixed up with the war. When we think of the great struggle the vision of the cross rises before us, and when we see the cross, we think of processions of wounded men who have been broken to save the world. Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to rest, we have placed over him, as the comment on his death, a simple white cross bearing his name. We never paint any tribute on it. None is needed, for nothing else could speak so eloquently as a cross--a white cross. White is the sacred color in the army of to-day, and the cross is the sacred form. In after years there will never be any doubt as to where the line of liberty ran that held back the flood and force of German tyranny. From the English Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all time with the crosses on the graves of the British and French soldiers. Whatever may be our views about the erection of crucifixes by the wayside and at the cross-roads, no one can deny that they have had an immense influence for good on our men during the war in France.The experience of many a gallant soldier is expressed in the following Belgian poem:"I came to a halt at the bend of the road;I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;I came to a halt at the bend of the road."O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee."And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup;And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up."For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave."Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'"Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?"The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier and has provided him with the only acceptable philosophy of the war. It has taught boys just entering upon life's experience that, out-topping all history and standing out against the background of all human life, is a Cross on which died the Son of God. It has made the hill of Calvary stand out above all other hills in history. Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon--these may stand at the foot of the hill, as did the Roman soldiers, but they are made to look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises above them, showing forth the figure of the Son of Man. Against the sky-line of human history the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in shadow. The wayside crosses at the Front and the flashes of roaring guns may not have taught our soldiers much history, but they have taught them the central fact of history; and all else will have to accommodate itself to that, or be disbelieved. The Cross of Christ is the center of the picture for evermore, and the grouping of all other figures must be round it.To the soldiers it can never again be made a detail in some other picture. Seen also in the light of their personal experience it has taught them that as a cross lies at the basis of the world's life and shows bare at every crisis of national and international life so, at the root of all individual life, is a cross. They have been taught to look for it at every parting of the ways. Suffering to redeem others and make others happy will now be seen as the true aim of life and not the grasping of personal pleasure or profit. They have stood where high explosive shells thresh out the corn from the chaff--the true from the false. They have seen facts in a light that lays things stark and bare; and the cant talked by skeptical armchair-philosophers will move them as little as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops. For three long years our front-line trenches have run through what was once a village called Neuve Chapelle. There is nothing left of it now. But there is something there which is tremendously impressive. It is a crucifix. It stands out above everything, for the land is quite flat around it. The cross is immediately behind our firing trench, and within two or three hundred yards of the German front trench. The figure of Christ is looking across the waste of No Man's Land. Under His right arm and under His left, are British soldiers holding the line. Two dud shells lie at the the foot. One is even touching the wood, but though hundreds of shells must have swept by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it remains undamaged. Trenches form a labyrinth all round it. When our men awake and "stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is the cross; and when at night they lie down in the side of the trench, or turn into their dug-outs, their last sight is the cross. It stands clear in the noon-day sun; and in the moonlight it takes on a solemn grandeur.I first saw it on a November afternoon when the sun was sinking under heavy banks of cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene as it must have been on the first Good Friday, when the sun died with its dying Lord, and darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and covered Him with its funeral pall to hide His dying agonies from the curious eyes of unbelieving men. I had had tea in a dug-out, and it was dark when I left. Machine-guns were sweeping No Man's Land to brush back enemies that might be creeping towards us through the long grass; and the air was filled with a million clear, cracking sounds. Star-shells rose and fell and their brilliant lights lit up the silent form on the cross.For three years, night and day, Christ has been standing there in the midst of our soldiers, with arms outstretched in blessing. They have looked up at Him through the clear starlight of a frosty night; and they have seen His pale face by the silver rays of the moon as she has sailed her course through the heavens. In the gloom of a stormy night they have seen the dark outline, and caught a passing glimpse of Christ's effigy by the flare of the star-shells. What must have been the thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts as all night long they have gazed at the cross; or of the officers as they have passed down the trench to see that all was well; or of some private sleeping in the trench and, being awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to restore blood-circulation? Deep thoughts, I imagine, much too deep for words of theirs or mine.And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was raging and the wounded, whose blood was turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what thoughts must have been theirs then? Did they not feel that He was their big Brother and remember that blood had flowed from Him as from them; that pain had racked Him as it racked them; and that He thought of His mother and of Nazareth as they thought of their mother and the little cottage they were never to see again? When their throats became parched and their lips swollen with thirst did they not remember how He, too, had cried for a drink; and, most of all, did they not call to mind the fact that He might have saved Himself, as they might, if He had cared more for His own happiness than for the world's? As their spirits passed out through the wounds in their bodies would they not ask Him to remember them as their now homeless souls knocked at the gate of His Kingdom? He had stood by them all through the long and bloody battle while hurricanes of shells swept over and around Him. I do not wonder that the men at the Front flock to the Lord's Supper to commemorate His death. They will not go without it. If the Sacrament be not provided, they ask for it. At home there was never such a demand for it as exists at the Front. There is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the Cross, between the soldier and his Saviour.And yet, to those who willed the war and drank to the day of its coming, even the Cross has no sacredness. It is to them but a tool of war. An officer told me that during the German retreat from the Somme they noticed a peculiar accuracy in the enemy's firing. The shells followed an easily distinguishable course. So many casualties occurred from this accurate shelling that the officers set themselves to discover the cause. They found that the circle of shells had for its center the cross-roads, and that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood up clearly as a land-mark. Evidently the crosses were being used to guide the gunners, and was causing the death of our men. But a more remarkable thing came to light. The cross stood close to the road, and when the Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the cross-roads to delay our advance. Everything near had been blown to bits by the explosion except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it. And yet it could not have escaped, except by a miracle. They therefore set themselves to examine the seeming miracle and came across one of the most astounding cases of fiendish cunning. They found that the Germans had made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that they could take it out or put it in at pleasure. Before blowing up the cross-roads they had taken the cross out of its socket and removed it to a safe distance, then, when the mine had exploded, they put the cross back so that it might be a landmark to direct their shooting. And now they were using Christ's instrument of redemption as an instrument for men's destruction.But our young officers resolved to restore the cross to its work of saving men. They waited till night fell, and then removed the cross to a point a hundred or two yards to the left. When in the morning the German gunners fired their shells their observers found that the shells fell too far wide of the cross and they could make nothing of the mystery. It looked as if someone had been tampering with their guns in the night. To put matters right they altered the position of their guns so that once more the shells made a circle round the cross. And henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the shells fell harmlessly into the outlying fields. Nor was this the only time during their retreat that the Germans put the cross to this base use and were foiled in their knavery.When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ and turns it into a tool to gain an advantage over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to ask who began the war, and folly to close our eyes to the horrors and depravities which are being reached in the waging of it.There is a new judgment of the nations now proceeding and who shall predict what shall be? The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and our attitude towards it decides our fate. I have seen the attitude of our soldiers towards the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards that for which it stands; and I find more comfort in their reverence for Christ and Christianity than in all their guns and impediments of war.The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks of time, and the nations will survive that stand beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of righteousness, liberty and truth.
X
"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"
An army is more courageous than the individuals who compose it. The coward finds sufficient courage for his job while doing it with his regiment, and the brave is at his bravest. He has a courage which is not his own but which, somehow, he puts on with his uniform. He does deeds of daring he could not have done as a civilian. The army has a corporate courage and each soldier receives a portion of it just as he receives a ration of the army's food. It is added to what he has of his own.
The badge of the army is courage. When a recruit joins the army he knows that he is putting away the civilian standard of courage with his derby hat, and is putting on the soldier's standard of courage with his uniform. His great fear is that he will not be able to live up to it. He wonders if he is made of the stuff that produces heroes. He is a mystery to himself and has a haunting fear that there may be a strain of the coward in his make-up. He wishes it were possible to have a rehearsal for he would rather die than fail on the appointed day.
The chaplain fears that he will faint and become a hindrance instead of a help when he first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing station; and the recruit is afraid of being afraid in the hour of battle and of bringing dishonor and weakness upon his regiment. He will be glad when the trial is over--when he knows the stuff of which nature has made him. A friend of mine told me one day that he was walking over a heavily shelled field with a young aristocrat of a highly strung temperament. The man was afraid, but would not yield to his fear. His lips twitched and his face became drawn and white. His movements were jerky but he made no other sign. He talked about paltry things in which, at the moment, he had not the slightest interest, and passed jocular or sardonic remarks about the things that were happening around them. My friend ducked his head when a shell burst near as we all have done often enough, but the young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff as if he were being crowned. He held it up defiantly; was it not filled with the bluest blood of England? The shells might blow it off if they liked. That was their concern, not his, but they should never make him bow. His fathers had fought on British battlefields for centuries, and had never bowed their heads to a foe, and he would not break the great tradition. Shells might break his neck but they should never bend it. He would face the enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a neck as ever his fathers did. He knew his personal weakness and reinforced his strength with that of his fathers'. He was not afraid of death. He was afraid of being afraid.
My friend was a coachman's son who by courage and capacity of the highest order had won a commission. He had no traditions either to haunt or help him, and he had often been tried in the fire and knew his strength. He was not afraid of being afraid. It was natural to duck when a shell burst near and it did him no harm and made no difference to the performance of his duties; so he ducked as he felt inclined, and then laughed at his nerves for the tricks they were allowing the shells to play on them. But, knowing his companion's more sensitive nature and temperamental weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff neck and proudly erect head. He showed a self-control which only centuries of breeding could give. Here was a hero indeed. The shells he was defying were as nothing to the fears which haunted his imaginative nature and which, with his back to the wall of his family traditions, he was fighting and keeping at bay. My friend could not refrain from complimenting him on resisting the natural tendency to duck the head when a shell screamed above them.
"Eton boys never duck," replied the young aristocrat.
He was an Eton boy and would die rather than fall short of the Eton standard. In this war hundreds of them have died rather than save themselves by something which did not measure up to the Eton standard. The ranks of young British aristocrats have been terribly thinned in this war and I have heard their deeds spoken of with a reverence such as is only given to legendary heroes. They have gone sauntering over the crater-fields to their deaths with the same self-mastery and outward calm which the French aristocracy manifested as they mounted the steps of the guillotine in the Reign of Terror. To their own personal courage was added the courage of their race, and the accumulation of the centuries.
We speak of our new armies. There can be no "new" armies of Britons. The tradition of our newest army goes back to Boadicea. Its forerunners, without shields or armor, and almost without weapons, dared the Romans--the proud conquerors of the world--to battle; and gave them the longest odds warriors ever gave. They knew they could not win but they knew they could die. Dead warriors they might become but never living slaves. They ran up Boadicea's proud banner because they knew that while the Romans might soak it in British blood, no power on earth could drag it through the mire.
Our forefathers crossed swords with Cæsar and his Roman legions, and our newest army goes into battle with the prestige born of two thousand years of war. They have a morale that belongs to the race in addition to the morale they possess as individuals. It is said that "the British do not know when they are beaten." How should they know? They have had no teachers. All they know is that if they have not gained the victory the battle is not ended and must go on until they pitch their tents on the undisputed field. The German Emperor spreads out his War Map but it is as undecipherable as the mountains in the moon to our soldiers. Tyrants have never found them apt scholars at geography. They prefer to make their own maps even though they have no paint to color them with except the red blood in their veins. The Kaiser may roll up his War Map of Europe; our soldiers have no use for it, and will not commit to memory its new boundaries. They feel in their souls the capacity to make a new one more in line with their ideas of fair play.
"Eton boys never duck." If the muscles of their necks show a tendency to relax they call to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood in bygone days, and their necks become stiff and taut once more. Wellington said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. It is still true that "Eton boys never duck" to the foe; nor do the soldiers they lead.
XI
"MISSING"
The word "Missing" has come to exercise an even more terrible power over the human heart than the word "Death." The latter kills the heart's joy and hope with a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy stroke from the executioner's axe. In a few cases the wounded victim is spared and allowed to recover, but in the majority of cases there is no reprieve and a second blow is struck after a period of suspense and suffering. A chaplain dreads the word. As he opens his correspondence after a battle, it fixes him as the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner fastened the wedding guest. It leaps from the page at him with the malignant suddenness of a serpent. Wounds and death he can explain to relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation. No one who has not been at the Front can conceive how a lad can disappear and no one see what becomes him. A man may read graphic accounts of conditions of life in the battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to visualize it with any real approach to truth.
After the first day of the Somme Campaign we had hundreds of casualties and most of them were classed as "Missing." The soldiers went "over the top" and did not return, and no one knew why. They were simply "missing." Why did no one know their fate? It came about in this way. The men scrambled over the parapet and, forming in line, charged across No Man's Land in extended order. Some fell immediately. The wounded among them got back to the dressing station, and the bodies of the dead were found within a few days, at least. So far, there are no "Missing." The rest of the men press on, some falling at every step; the line thins, and the men get separated. When a man falls his neighbor cannot stay with him. He must press on to the objective, otherwise, if the unwounded stayed to succor the wounded, there would be none to continue the attack; and under the hail of shells and bullets sweeping the open ground, everyone would perish. The only way to succor the wounded is to press on, capture the enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine-gun fire. Consequently, the man who presses on does not, as a rule, know whether his comrade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took cover in a shell hole. And even though he were to know, he may be killed himself later, and his knowledge die with him.
If the attack succeeds, and the German trench is held by us, No Man's Land can be searched. The wounded and dead are found, and but few are reported "missing." But if the attack fail, and the regiment has to retire to its own line, it becomes impossible for us to search that part of No Man's Land, adjoining the German trench (for there is rarely any truce after a battle in this war), and so, it is impossible to find out whether those who have failed to return were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners. The comrades who saw them fall are probably killed, for the return is as fatal as the attack. If they come back wounded they are taken straight to the hospitals and so have no chance of reporting to their officers the fate of those whom they saw fall. Only the unwounded return to the regiment and, in a lost battle, these are few and know but little of what happened to those around them. They were excited and were fighting for their lives. They had no leisure to observe the fate of others.
On one occasion our men took some German trenches opposite them and held them for some hours by desperate fighting, but before dusk had to retire. Many were left dead or wounded in the captured trenches, and many fell on the return journey. The few who got back to us unwounded could give very little information about individuals who were missing. They had been separated one from another and fighting hour after hour with desperation. All therefore who did not return to the regiment or dressing station, and whose bodies were not recovered, were reported as "Missing" unless declared dead by reliable eye-witnesses. The evidence of eye-witnesses must be carefully examined before a regiment dare report a soldier dead on the strength of it. During an attack a man is in an abnormal state of excitement and the observations of his senses are not entirely reliable. Men imagine they see things, and frequently make mistakes in identity. I have known many cases in which a man has sworn that he saw another being carried to the dressing station, yet the missing man's body has afterwards been found near the German lines. The eye-witness simply mistook one man for another. No end of pain to relatives has been caused by these mistakes and a regiment rightly declines on such evidence to report a soldier as killed.
Some weeks after the attack just referred to, we received letters from some of the officers and men who had been taken prisoners; information about others came through The Geneva Red Cross Society. Those of whom we heard nothing for six months we knew to be, in all probability, dead. Nine months later, the Germans retired from the position, and many of our dead were found still lying out in No Man's Land. Some were identified. Others could not be, their discs having perished by reason of the long exposure. Many of the dead had been left in the German trenches. These had been buried by the enemy and he had left no crosses to mark the graves. After more than a year there is no direct evidence of the death of many who fought on that day. They are "Missing," and we can only conclude that they were killed.
In other cases, men are reported missing for several weeks, and then reported dead. A typical case may be cited to show how it comes about. We attacked one morning at dawn. The enemy were on the run, and in a state of exhaustion. An immediate attack would, it was believed, carry the position without much loss of life, even though our big guns had not had time to come up in support. Unfortunately the Germans were, unknown to us, reinforced during the night. Their new troops met our men with a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, and the regiment was ordered to retire. Several failed to return. We knew that some of the men had been forced to surrender, especially the wounded. Others had been killed. Those who returned unwounded were not able, however, to give us the names of those who had been killed or of those who had been taken prisoners. The attack had been made in the half-light of dawn so that our men could not be seen distinctly. They had also advanced in extended order so as to avoid making themselves an easy target. The half-light and the distance of one man from another made it difficult, therefore, for anyone to see either who fell or why they fell. Most of those who were killed or taken prisoners were therefore reported as "missing."
A few days later the whole Division was moved to another part of the Front. A fresh regiment took our place, and, a few weeks later, with adequate artillery support, carried the German trenches. After the battle, burial parties were sent out by the regiment to bury both its own dead and ours who had been left in the German half of No Man's Land. Each grave was marked with the soldier's name, and his disc and paybook were sent to our regiment as proof of his death. The War Office was then informed that such and such a man "previously reported missing, is now reported killed."
There are, however, cases of missing men which cannot be explained. The facts never come to light, and we can only guess what happened. They may have been buried by the enemy, or they may have been buried in the dark by some regimental burial party which could not find their discs. They may even have been buried by a shell or blown to fragments by a direct hit. We have no evidence.
After the attack on Gommécourt a youth I knew had his wound dressed at the Regimental Aid post and was seen, by more than one of his chums, passing down the communication trench to the Advanced Dressing Station where I happened to be. Yet he never arrived, slight though his wound was. It was impossible for him to have got lost. His brother and I made every possible enquiry about him, but nothing ever came to light, and we both came to the conclusion that on his way down the trench he had been buried by a shell. In another case an officer was wounded and four stretcher bearers went out to bring him in. None were ever seen again, and later, when we came into possession of the ground, the body of none of them were found. It was scarcely possible for them to have been taken prisoners, and they were never reported as having been captured. We concluded, therefore, that a shell had both killed and buried them.
One day a rifleman reported sick to the Doctor and was sent down the line to the Dressing Station whence he would be sent on to a Rest Camp. He was not seriously ill, and needed no escort. It was impossible for him to have wandered into the German lines, yet he never reported at the Dressing Station or anywhere else. Loss of memory is very rare, but even if that had happened to him, he could not have wandered about behind our lines without being found and arrested. No report of his burial ever reached us and we were led to the conclusion that he was killed by a shell on the way down, and in such a way that all means of identification were lost. In another case a private, wounded in the arm, was sent down the line in company with a party of stretcher bearers who were carrying a "lying case." Evidently he got separated from them in the dark, and was hit by a shell, for he never reached any dressing station, and his fate was never known.
Conditions at the front are such that these mysterious disappearances must inevitably occur. Every possible arrangement which circumstances will allow is made to prevent them; but they cannot be altogether eliminated. People at home may sometimes think that more might have been done, but it is because they have no conception of the amazing conditions under which the war is carried on. Every officer and private knows that he may disappear without leaving a trace. That being so, they, if only from common prudence and the instinct of self-preservation, combine to reduce the danger to its lowest limits; but, when all has been done, war is war; and nothing can rob it of its horrors.
Every day, officers and men die in trying to save their comrades, and nothing could be more unjust than to blame those who survive for not having done more to prevent others from being lost; for those who are surviving, to-day, may become missing to-morrow, and leave no trace behind. Officers have sometimes shown me letters from poor distracted relatives which could never have been written if they could have imagined the deadly peril in which the officers stood and the manifold distractions that wore them down. Sometimes an officer's letter is short and business-like in reply to an enquiry, but it must be remembered that his first duty is to the living. He must hold the line and save his men; and he has, despite the tragedy of his position, to answer not one enquiry but scores. And before he has finished answering all the enquiries, his own parents, perhaps, will be making enquiries about his own fate. Our officers are the bravest and kindest-hearted men that ever had the lives of others in their keeping; and when the chaplain asks them for details about any missing or slain soldier, they will go to endless trouble for him. They know what their own death will mean to their parents; and the knowledge makes their hearts go out in sympathy to the parents of their men, and it makes them do all that is possible to prevent lives being lost.
When Moses died no man knew the place of his burial. It has not been found to this day. We know nothing of his last thoughts or of the manner of his death. His end is a perfect mystery. But we know that he died in the presence of God; that God strengthened him in the dread hour; and that with His own fingers He closed the lids over the prophet's brave, tender eyes. God buried Moses in a grave dug by His own hands and He will know where to find the poor worn-out body of the great patriot at the resurrection of the just. And God was with every one of our missing lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed in which each lies sleeping. The grave may have no cross above it, but it will often know the tread of an angel's feet as he comes to plant poppies, primroses and daffodils above the resting-place of the brave.
XII
"IT MUST BE SUNDAY"
The Psalmist of Israel tells us that God has "ordained" the moon and the stars. These "flaming fires" are "ministers of His that do His pleasure." Nor are they the only ones chosen from Nature. Mungo Park, having laid down in the desert to die, notices beside him a tiny flower, and it awakens hope in him. The winter of his despair is ended. He rises again, and pushes on until he finds a human habitation where he is cared for by native women as though he were their brother. The little flower had been "ordained" to minister hope to a lost and despairing traveler.
At the Front such ministering by Nature is of common occurrence. No Man's Land is desolate enough to look upon, but there is life there, and music. Larks have chosen it for their nests, and amid its desolation they rear their young. Even the pheasants have taken to some parts of it. If we could but know the thoughts of the wounded who have lain out there waiting for death, we should find that the moon and the stars, the birds and the field mice, had not allowed them die without some comforting of the spirit.
One Sunday our regiment was resting in reserve trenches after a period in the firing line. It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun sank westward I administered the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The day was far spent but, as the bread was broken, there came to us a vision of the Face which the two disciples saw on another such evening in the far-off village of Emmaus. On the way back to my billet I met a platoon of Royal Engineers returning from the baths. One of them had been a member of my church in London, and he dropped out to talk with me. Those who have not been in the Expeditionary Force can hardly understand the pleasure a man feels when he meets someone he knew in the days of peace, or even someone who knows the street or town out of which he came. He was full of talk, and as I listened his excitement and pleasure bubbled over like a spring.
"Last night," he said, "was the night of my life. I never expected to see daylight again. Talk about a 'tight corner,' there was never one to match it, and as you know, my chums and I have been in many. The Huns simply plastered us with shells. The bombardment was terrific. It was like being in a hailstorm and we expected every moment to be our last.
"You know the trench which the infantry took yesterday? Well, we were there. We went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of it ready for the counter-attack. We were out in No Man's Land for about two hours, working as swiftly and silently as we could. Whenever the enemy sent his lights up, we laid down, and so far we had escaped notice and were congratulating ourselves that the work was nearly done, and that our skins were still whole. Then, somehow, the Germans spotted us, and let fly. It was like hell let loose. We ran to the trench for shelter, but it seemed as if nothing could save us from such a deluge of shells. It was just like being naked in a driving snow-storm. We felt as if there was no trench at all, and as if the gunners could see us in the dark. After that experience I can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after it. But we just sat tight with such cover as we had and made the best of it. There was nothing else to do. If we were to be killed, we should be killed. Nothing that we could do would have made any difference. Yet, though there didn't seem shelter for even a mouse, only one of us was hit, and that was the sergeant. He was rather badly 'done in,' and we could only save his life by getting him quickly to the dressing station.
[image]"HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN"Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London
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"HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN"Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London
"I am one of the taller and stronger men of my platoon so, of course, I volunteered as a stretcher-bearer. There was no communication trench, so we had no choice but to lift him up and make a dash across the open. They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare not delay because, if we were overtaken by daylight, it would be impossible to get him away till the next night, and by that time he would be dead. So we decided to try our luck. We had just lifted him up when a shell burst right on top of us, and knocked us all down. For a minute or two I was unconscious, and when I came round I thought I must surely be wounded, so I ran my fingers over my body but found neither blood nor a rent in my clothes. I was covered with chalk but that didn't matter. Except for a touch of concussion in the brain I was none the worse, and soon pulled myself together. The sergeant was a sight! He was half-buried, and we could scarce see him for chalk; but we dug him out and got him on the stretcher again. After that we sat down in the bottom of the trench till the effect of the shock had worn off a bit, for we all felt like rats that had been shaken by a terrier.
"Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shelling stopped. The calm that followed was wonderful. I never felt anything so restful before. It was like the delicious restfulness that, sometimes, immediately follows hours of fever. Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out of No Man's Land and began to sing. The effect on us was magical. It was the sweetest music I have ever heard, and I shall remember it to my dying day. The countryside was dark and silent, and, as I listened to the lark, old days came back to mind. You remember that Saturday midnight in the June before the war when you took us into Epping Forest to see the dawn break over it? Well, as I listened to the lark, I was back there in the forest. Then some impulse seized me and, hardly knowing what I did, I cried aloud, 'Why bless me, it must be Sunday,' and so it was, although I had forgotten.
"Then we jumped up for we saw that the dawn was breaking and, lifting the sergeant out of the trench, we rushed across the open ground in the direction of the dressing station. Talk about 'feeling protected!' Why, I felt that God was all around us--that no harm could touch us. A great calm stole over me, and I felt utterly devoid of fear. We had, as you know, to bring the sergeant some two miles to the dressing station, just down the road there, but we got him safely in, and I think he will get better."
While we were talking, a shell burst near the trench where my men had been taking of the Sacrament, and another burst by the roadside close to the Engineers. With a laugh and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands, saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades. The shells were part of the game. In London we had been in the same football team. He had kept goal and I had played full back, and he regarded the shells that had fallen as bad shots at goal made by the opposing team. They might have been serious but, as it happened, the ball had each time gone out of play.
I waited a minute or two in the hope of getting a lift. A motor car came along; I stopped it and got in; for at the Front everything is Government property and more or less at one's service. I found myself sitting by the side of a private, who had been wounded in the face and right hand by the shell that had just fallen near the platoon of Engineers.
He had left his horse with a comrade, and was being driven to the Advanced Dressing Station by a driver who, happening to pass at the moment, had kindly offered him a lift. After a little wait at the Dressing Station I got on the front of an ambulance car. There were only two cases inside, and they were being taken to the Main Dressing Station in Arras. One of them had his feet and arms tied to the stretcher, for he was suffering from shell-shock; and three orderlies were in charge of him. The poor fellow laughed and cried alternately and struggled to break loose. "I'm a British soldier," he cried, "and I will not be tied up. I've done my bit, and this is the way you pay me out. I'll not have it." And time and again he struggled desperately to break away.
The orderlies in charge of him were wise and tactful as women. They asked him questions about the fight, and he fought his battle over again. They praised his regiment and told him it had done magnificently, and he laughed and chuckled like a young mother, dandling her first baby on her knee. And so, without mishap, we reached the ruined town of Arras where nightly the shells fall among the forsaken houses in which our soldiers are billeted. The wounded private was carried into the hospital, and I walked away to my room in an adjoining street.
So ended the day which, in the hour of dawn, the dark had told the young engineer "must be Sunday."
XIII
OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US
On Easter Monday, in the Battle of Arras, I saw two sights such as I shall never forget. One revealed the kind and forgiving spirit of our men, the other their unflinching courage. After burying three non-commissioned officers who had been killed the day before, I reached the Advanced Dressing Station near which our regiment was "standing to" in a support trench. Other regiments of our Division were carrying out the attack and, with small loss, had taken the enemy lines. The German trenches had been blotted out by our shells but their deep dug-outs, with machine-guns at their mouths, remained untouched, and it was almost impossible for our soldiers to discover them until they got within a few yards of the entrances.
The German commander's idea was to keep his men in the shelter of the dug-outs until our barrage lifted. They were then to rush out with machine-guns and rifles to destroy our men who were following it up. If the idea had been carried out, the German line would have been impregnable for our men would have been mown down like corn before the reaper. It failed because German human nature could not rise to the occasion. The German soldiers had been demoralized by the safety of the dug-outs and by the thunder of our shells above them. They cowered in the dug-outs when they should have rushed out. The critical moment passed, and with its passing our soldiers leapt to the entrances and threw down hand grenades. There was a wild cry of pain and fear from below. Arms went up and the cry of "Kamerad." The surrender was accepted and the beaten soldiers crawled out. From some dug-outs as many as two hundred prisoners were taken. In other parts of the line there was a stiff fight, but, on the whole, our casualties were very light. From my own observation I should say that we took more prisoners than we suffered casualties. Some companies could boast a prisoner for each man engaged in the attack.
The Advanced Dressing Station was at the corner of Cross Roads and the sight around it was wonderful to behold. A crowd of prisoners was assembling ready to be marched to the cages, and wounded officers and men, British and German, were being bandaged. The prisoners were hungry. For some days our artillery had cut off their rations. A platoon of our soldiers came marching by, and, to save time, eating their breakfasts as they passed along. The prisoners looked at them with hungry eyes. Our men saw the look and stopped. Breaking rank for a moment they passed in and out among the prisoners and shared out their rations. "Here, Fritzy, old boy, take this," I heard all around me, and Fritz did not need asking twice. He took the biscuits and cheese gratefully and eagerly. The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and he felt that he had found friends where he had only expected to find enemies. He began to hope for kindness in his captivity. The scene was one of pure goodwill.
Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy. Our Tommies laughed and cracked jokes which no German could understand, but I heard not a single taunt or bitter word. In fact, Fritz was treated more like a pet than a prisoner. One who had worked in London, and who spoke English, asked me for a cup of tea for a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I got one in the dressing station. The platoon of Tommies re-formed and marched away to the battle and the prisoners were led off to the cages. There were still large numbers of prisoners on the road, and they were moving about without guards. Many of them were being used as stretcher-bearers and they seemed to do their work out of goodwill and not of constraint.
Their assistance was of great help to the wounded. The battle was going well with us. Everyone felt in good heart and kindly disposed. An officer who lay seriously wounded and waiting for a car told me of the splendid work which his regiment had done. His eyes shone with suppressed excitement and pride as he told the story. While he was speaking two soldiers came limping down the road and their appearance was greeted with a burst of laughter. One was English, the other German. Tommy had his arm round the German's neck and was leaning on him while Fritz, with his arm round the lad's waist, helped him along. They came along very slowly for both were wounded, but they laughed and talked together like long-lost brothers. Yet neither could understand a word the other said.
I passed down the road towards the line. Gunners of the Territorials were hurriedly hitching their guns to the horses ready to advance to new positions. In the ruined village a party of engineers was already unloading a wagon of rails with which to build a light railway. I continued along the road towards the next village. It had just fallen into our hands and not one stone was left on another. There were scores of wounded men hobbling back from it and I gave my arm to such as needed it most. A badly wounded Tommy was being brought along on a wheeler by two orderlies and as I helped them through the traffic we heard the heavy rumble of the advancing field-guns.
The road was cleared with the quickness of lightning. Out of the village the batteries burst at a mad gallop and down the road they came at break-neck speed. With the swiftness of a fire engine in a city street the rocking guns swept past. The gunners clung to the ammunition limbers with both hands and the drivers whipped and spurred the excited foam-flecked horses as though they were fiery beings leaping through the air and incapable of fatigue or weakness. Suddenly the drivers raised their whips as a sign to those behind, and the trembling horses and bounding guns came to a dead halt. The leading gun had overturned at a nasty place where the road dipped down into the hollow. The rest of the batteries stood exposed on the crest of the ridge. Before retiring the Germans had felled all the trees that grew by the roadside so that nothing might obstruct their line of vision. Such a catastrophe as this was what the enemy had been hoping for. The sun shone brilliantly, and our batteries were a direct target for the German gunners such as seldom occurs. Our boys were caught like rats in a trap. By the side of the road ran a shallow trench and near us two broad steps into it. We laid the wounded lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down by his side. Shells were falling all around and fountains of dirt and debris rose into the air and, on five or six occasions, covered us with their spray.
I covered the lad's face. He was barely conscious and uttered no word. It seemed as if nothing could live in such a bombardment. A shell burst near, and the cry of dying horses rent the air. The traces were cut and the horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road. Every second I expected to see the horses and drivers in front of me blown into the air and I watched them with fascinated eyes. Not a man stirred. They sat on their horses and gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze. Not a man sought the trench and not a man relieved the tension by going forward to see what was wrong or to lend a hand. Each knew his place, and if death sought him it would know where to find him. The horses felt that they had brave men on their backs and, in that mysterious way peculiar to horses, caught the spirit of their riders. Every shell covered men and horses with chalk and soil, but they remained an immobile as statuary. It was magnificent and it was war. A driver in the battery beside us got wounded in the leg and hand. He jumped off his horse and came to us to be bandaged. Then he leapt back into the saddle. It seemed an age, but I suppose it was only a few minutes, before the obstruction was removed. The whips flashed in the air and the horses sprang forward. The guns rocked and swayed as they swept past us and within a few minutes they were in their new positions under the hill upon which lay the ruins of Neuville Vitasse.
The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had started and we lifted out our wounded soldier and went in the direction of the dressing station. Some distance up the road my attention was called to one of the drivers whom the artillery had left in the care of some privates. He was living, but his skull was broken, and he would never wake again to consciousness. He was fast "going West." His day was over and his work was done. I got him lifted on to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station so that he might die in peace and be buried in the little soldiers' cemetery behind it.
When I returned in the evening to our billet I told the transport officer of the magnificent bravery of the artillery drivers.
"Any other drivers would behave just as well, if caught in the same trap," he replied.
He spoke the simple truth. They would. Such supreme courage and devotion to duty are common to the army. Their presence among all ranks and in all sections of the army makes the fact the more wonderful. Both officers and men love life, but they love duty more, and commanders in drawing up their plans know that they can rely on their soldiers to carry them out. Our Tommies never fail us whether in France, Mesopotamia, or Palestine. Devotion to duty is inwoven with the fibers of their hearts. They are men who, either in kindness to captives or courage amid disaster and destruction, never fail us.
XIV
THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE
The war on the Western Front has been fought in a Roman Catholic country where crucifixes are erected at all the chief cross-roads to remind us that, in every moment of doubt as to the way of life, and on whichever road we finally decide to walk, whether rough or smooth, we shall need the Saviour and His redeeming love. We have seen a cross so often when on the march, or when passing down some trench, that it has become inextricably mixed up with the war. When we think of the great struggle the vision of the cross rises before us, and when we see the cross, we think of processions of wounded men who have been broken to save the world. Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to rest, we have placed over him, as the comment on his death, a simple white cross bearing his name. We never paint any tribute on it. None is needed, for nothing else could speak so eloquently as a cross--a white cross. White is the sacred color in the army of to-day, and the cross is the sacred form. In after years there will never be any doubt as to where the line of liberty ran that held back the flood and force of German tyranny. From the English Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all time with the crosses on the graves of the British and French soldiers. Whatever may be our views about the erection of crucifixes by the wayside and at the cross-roads, no one can deny that they have had an immense influence for good on our men during the war in France.
The experience of many a gallant soldier is expressed in the following Belgian poem:
"I came to a halt at the bend of the road;I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;I came to a halt at the bend of the road."O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee."And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup;And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up."For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave."Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'"Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?"
"I came to a halt at the bend of the road;I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;I came to a halt at the bend of the road.
"I came to a halt at the bend of the road;
I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;
I came to a halt at the bend of the road.
"O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee.
"O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,
My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;
O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee.
"And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup;And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up.
"And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,
I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup;
And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up.
"For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave.
"For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,
Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;
For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave.
"Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'
"Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'
And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.
Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'
"Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?"
"Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?
Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.
Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?"
The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier and has provided him with the only acceptable philosophy of the war. It has taught boys just entering upon life's experience that, out-topping all history and standing out against the background of all human life, is a Cross on which died the Son of God. It has made the hill of Calvary stand out above all other hills in history. Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon--these may stand at the foot of the hill, as did the Roman soldiers, but they are made to look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises above them, showing forth the figure of the Son of Man. Against the sky-line of human history the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in shadow. The wayside crosses at the Front and the flashes of roaring guns may not have taught our soldiers much history, but they have taught them the central fact of history; and all else will have to accommodate itself to that, or be disbelieved. The Cross of Christ is the center of the picture for evermore, and the grouping of all other figures must be round it.
To the soldiers it can never again be made a detail in some other picture. Seen also in the light of their personal experience it has taught them that as a cross lies at the basis of the world's life and shows bare at every crisis of national and international life so, at the root of all individual life, is a cross. They have been taught to look for it at every parting of the ways. Suffering to redeem others and make others happy will now be seen as the true aim of life and not the grasping of personal pleasure or profit. They have stood where high explosive shells thresh out the corn from the chaff--the true from the false. They have seen facts in a light that lays things stark and bare; and the cant talked by skeptical armchair-philosophers will move them as little as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops. For three long years our front-line trenches have run through what was once a village called Neuve Chapelle. There is nothing left of it now. But there is something there which is tremendously impressive. It is a crucifix. It stands out above everything, for the land is quite flat around it. The cross is immediately behind our firing trench, and within two or three hundred yards of the German front trench. The figure of Christ is looking across the waste of No Man's Land. Under His right arm and under His left, are British soldiers holding the line. Two dud shells lie at the the foot. One is even touching the wood, but though hundreds of shells must have swept by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it remains undamaged. Trenches form a labyrinth all round it. When our men awake and "stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is the cross; and when at night they lie down in the side of the trench, or turn into their dug-outs, their last sight is the cross. It stands clear in the noon-day sun; and in the moonlight it takes on a solemn grandeur.
I first saw it on a November afternoon when the sun was sinking under heavy banks of cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene as it must have been on the first Good Friday, when the sun died with its dying Lord, and darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and covered Him with its funeral pall to hide His dying agonies from the curious eyes of unbelieving men. I had had tea in a dug-out, and it was dark when I left. Machine-guns were sweeping No Man's Land to brush back enemies that might be creeping towards us through the long grass; and the air was filled with a million clear, cracking sounds. Star-shells rose and fell and their brilliant lights lit up the silent form on the cross.
For three years, night and day, Christ has been standing there in the midst of our soldiers, with arms outstretched in blessing. They have looked up at Him through the clear starlight of a frosty night; and they have seen His pale face by the silver rays of the moon as she has sailed her course through the heavens. In the gloom of a stormy night they have seen the dark outline, and caught a passing glimpse of Christ's effigy by the flare of the star-shells. What must have been the thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts as all night long they have gazed at the cross; or of the officers as they have passed down the trench to see that all was well; or of some private sleeping in the trench and, being awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to restore blood-circulation? Deep thoughts, I imagine, much too deep for words of theirs or mine.
And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was raging and the wounded, whose blood was turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what thoughts must have been theirs then? Did they not feel that He was their big Brother and remember that blood had flowed from Him as from them; that pain had racked Him as it racked them; and that He thought of His mother and of Nazareth as they thought of their mother and the little cottage they were never to see again? When their throats became parched and their lips swollen with thirst did they not remember how He, too, had cried for a drink; and, most of all, did they not call to mind the fact that He might have saved Himself, as they might, if He had cared more for His own happiness than for the world's? As their spirits passed out through the wounds in their bodies would they not ask Him to remember them as their now homeless souls knocked at the gate of His Kingdom? He had stood by them all through the long and bloody battle while hurricanes of shells swept over and around Him. I do not wonder that the men at the Front flock to the Lord's Supper to commemorate His death. They will not go without it. If the Sacrament be not provided, they ask for it. At home there was never such a demand for it as exists at the Front. There is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the Cross, between the soldier and his Saviour.
And yet, to those who willed the war and drank to the day of its coming, even the Cross has no sacredness. It is to them but a tool of war. An officer told me that during the German retreat from the Somme they noticed a peculiar accuracy in the enemy's firing. The shells followed an easily distinguishable course. So many casualties occurred from this accurate shelling that the officers set themselves to discover the cause. They found that the circle of shells had for its center the cross-roads, and that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood up clearly as a land-mark. Evidently the crosses were being used to guide the gunners, and was causing the death of our men. But a more remarkable thing came to light. The cross stood close to the road, and when the Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the cross-roads to delay our advance. Everything near had been blown to bits by the explosion except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it. And yet it could not have escaped, except by a miracle. They therefore set themselves to examine the seeming miracle and came across one of the most astounding cases of fiendish cunning. They found that the Germans had made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that they could take it out or put it in at pleasure. Before blowing up the cross-roads they had taken the cross out of its socket and removed it to a safe distance, then, when the mine had exploded, they put the cross back so that it might be a landmark to direct their shooting. And now they were using Christ's instrument of redemption as an instrument for men's destruction.
But our young officers resolved to restore the cross to its work of saving men. They waited till night fell, and then removed the cross to a point a hundred or two yards to the left. When in the morning the German gunners fired their shells their observers found that the shells fell too far wide of the cross and they could make nothing of the mystery. It looked as if someone had been tampering with their guns in the night. To put matters right they altered the position of their guns so that once more the shells made a circle round the cross. And henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the shells fell harmlessly into the outlying fields. Nor was this the only time during their retreat that the Germans put the cross to this base use and were foiled in their knavery.
When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ and turns it into a tool to gain an advantage over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to ask who began the war, and folly to close our eyes to the horrors and depravities which are being reached in the waging of it.
There is a new judgment of the nations now proceeding and who shall predict what shall be? The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and our attitude towards it decides our fate. I have seen the attitude of our soldiers towards the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards that for which it stands; and I find more comfort in their reverence for Christ and Christianity than in all their guns and impediments of war.
The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks of time, and the nations will survive that stand beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of righteousness, liberty and truth.