Towards The Goal - Mrs. Humphry Ward
But, like its own tanks, the War Office went steadily on, negotiating
one obstacle after another. Special courses for special subjects began
to be set up. Soon artillery officers had no longer to join their
batteries _at once_ on appointment; R.E. officers could be given a seven
weeks' training at Chatham; little enough, "for a man supposed to know
the use and repairs of telephones and telegraphs, or the way to build or
destroy a bridge, or how to meet the countless other needs with which a
sapper is called upon to deal!" Increasing attention was paid to staff
training and staff courses. And insufficient as it all was, for months,
the general results of this haphazard training, when the men actually
got into the field--all short-comings and disappointments admitted--were
nothing short of wonderful. Had the Germans forgotten that we are and
always have been a fighting people? That fact, at any rate, was brought
home to them by the unbroken spirit of the troops who held the line in
France and Flanders in 1915 against all attempts to break through; and
at Neuve Chapelle, or Loos, or a hundred other minor engagements, only
wanted numbers and ammunition--above all ammunition!--to win them the
full victory they had rightly earned.
Of this whole earlier stage, the _junior subaltern_ was the leading
figure. It was he--let me insist upon it anew--whose spirit made the new
armies. If the tender figure of the "_Lady of the Lamp_" has become for
many of us the chief symbol of the Crimean struggle, when Britain comes
to embody in sculpture or in painting that which has touched her most
deeply in this war, she will choose--surely--the figure of a boy of
nineteen, laughing, eager, undaunted, as quick to die as to live,
carrying in his young hands the "Luck" of England.
* * * * *
But with the end of 1915, the first stage, the elementary stage, of the
new Armies came to an end. When I stood, in March 1916, on the
Scherpenberg hill, looking out over the Salient, new conditions reigned.
The Officer Cadet Corps had been formed; a lively and continuous
intercourse between the realities of the front and the training at home
had been set up; special schools in all subjects of military interest
had been founded, often, as we have seen, by the zeal of individual
officers, to be then gradually incorporated in the Army system. Men
insufficiently trained in the early months had been given the
opportunity--which they eagerly took--of beginning at the beginning
again, correcting mistakes and incorporating all the latest knowledge.
Even a lieutenant-colonel, before commanding a battalion, could go to
school once more; and even for officers and men "in rest," there were,
and are, endless opportunities of seeing and learning, which few wish
to forgo.
And that brings me to what is now shaping itself--the final result. The
year just passed, indeed--from March to March--has practically rounded
our task--though the "learning" of the Army is never over!--and has seen
the transformation--whether temporary or permanent, who yet can
tell?--of the England of 1914, with its zealous mobs of untrained and
"tatterdemalion" recruits, into a great military power,[This letter was
finished just as the news of the Easter Monday Battle of Arras was
coming in.] disposing of armies in no whit inferior to those of Germany,
and bringing to bear upon the science of war--now that Germany has
forced us to it--the best intelligence, and the best _character_, of the
nation. The most insolent of the German military newspapers are already
bitterly confessing it.
* * * * *
My summary--short and imperfect as it is--of this first detailed account
of its work which the War Office has allowed to be made public--has
carried me far afield.
The motor has been waiting long at the door of the hospitable
headquarters which have entertained us! Let me return to it, to the
great spectacle of the present--after this retrospect of the Past.
Again the crowded roads--the young and vigorous troops--the manifold
sights illustrating branch after branch of the Army. I recall a draft,
tired with marching, clambering with joy into some empty lorries, and
sitting there peacefully content, with legs dangling and the ever
blessed cigarette for company, then an aeroplane station--then a
football field, with a violent game going on--a Casualty Clearing
Station, almost a large hospital--another football match!--a battery of
eighteen-pounders on the march, and beyond an old French market town
crowded with lorries and men. In the midst of it D---- suddenly draws my
attention to a succession of great nozzles passing us, with their teams
and limbers. I have stood beside the forging and tempering of their
brothers in the gun-shops of the north, have watched the testing and
callipering of their shining throats. They are 6-inch naval guns on
their way to the line--like everything else, part of the storm to come.
And in and out, among the lorries and the guns, stream the French folk,
women, children, old men, alert, industrious, full of hope, with
friendly looks for their Allies. Then the town passes, and we are out
again in the open country, leaving the mining village behind. We are not
very far at this point from that portion of the line which I saw last
year under General X's guidance. But everything looks very quiet and
rural, and when we emerged on the high ground of the school we had come
to see, I might have imagined myself on a Surrey or Hertfordshire
common. The officer in charge, a "mighty hunter" in civil life, showed
us his work with a quiet but most contagious enthusiasm. The problem
that he, and his colleagues engaged in similar work in other sections of
the front, had to solve, was--how to beat the Germans at their own game
of "sniping," which cost us so many lives in the first year and a half
of war; in other words, how to train a certain number of men to an art
of rifle-shooting, combining the instincts and devices of a "Pathfinder"
with the subtleties of modern optical and mechanical science. "Don't
think of this as meant primarily to kill," says the Chief of the School,
as he walks beside me--"it is meant primarily to _protect_. We lost our
best men--young and promising officers in particular--by the score
before we learnt the tricks of the German 'sniper' and how to meet
them." German "sniping," as our guide explains, is by no means all
tricks. For the most part, it means just first-rate shooting, combined
with the trained instinct and _flair_ of the sportsman. Is there
anything that England--and Scotland--should provide more abundantly?
Still, there are tricks, and our men have learnt them.
Of the many surprises of the school I may not now speak. Above all, it
is a school of _observation_. Nothing escapes the eye or the ear. Every
point, for instance, connected with our two unfamiliar figures will have
been elaborately noted by those men on the edge of the hill; the officer
in charge will presently get a careful report on us.
"We teach our men the old great game of war--wit against wit--courage
against courage--life against life. We try many men here, and reject a
good few. But the men who have gone through our training here are
valuable, both for attack and defence--above all, let me repeat it, they
are valuable for _protection_."
And what is meant by this, I have since learnt in greater detail. Before
these schools were started, _every day_ saw a heavy toll--especially of
officers' lives--taken by German snipers. Compare with this one of the
latest records: that out of fifteen battalions there were only nine men
killed by snipers _in three months._
We leave the hill, half sliding down the frozen watercourse that leads
to it, and are in the motor again, bound for an Army Headquarters.
No. 4
_April 14th_, 1917.
DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--As the news comes flashing in, these April days,
and all the world holds its breath to hear the latest messages from
Arras and the Vimy ridge, it is natural that in the memory of a woman
who, six weeks ago, was a spectator--before the curtain rose--of the
actual scene of such events, every incident and figure of that past
experience, as she looks back upon it, should gain a peculiar and
shining intensity.
The battle of the Vimy Ridge [_April 8th_] is clearly going to be the
second (the first was the German retreat on the Somme) of those
"decisive events" determining this year the upshot of the war, to which
the Commander-in-Chief, with so strong and just a confidence, directed
the eyes of this country some three months ago. When I was in the
neighbourhood of the great battlefield--one may say it now!--the whole
countryside was one vast preparation. The signs of the coming attack
were everywhere--troops, guns, ammunition, food dumps, hospitals, air
stations--every actor and every property in the vast and tragic play
were on the spot, ready for the moment and the word.
Yet, except in the Headquarters and Staff Councils of the Army nobody
knew when the moment and the word would come, and nobody spoke of them.
The most careful and exact organisation for the great movement was going
on. No visitor would hear anything of it. Only the nameless stir in the
air, the faces of officers at Headquarters, the general alacrity, the
endless _work_ everywhere, prophesied the great things ahead. Perpetual,
highly organised, scientific drudgery is three parts of war, it seems,
as men now wage it. The Army, as I saw it, was at work--desperately at
work!--but "dreaming on things to come."
One delightful hour of that March day stands out for me in particular.
The strong, attractive presence of an Army Commander, whose name will be
for ever linked with that of the battle of the Vimy ridge, surrounded by
a group of distinguished officers; a long table, and a too brief stay;
conversation that carries for me the thrill of the _actual thing_, close
by, though it may not differ very much from wartalk at home: these are
the chief impressions that remain. The General beside me, with that look
in his kind eyes which seems to tell of nights shortened by hard work,
says a few quietly confident things about the general situation, and
then we discuss a problem which one of the party--not a soldier--starts.
Is it true or untrue that long habituation to the seeing or inflicting
of pain and death, that the mere sights and sounds of the trenches tend
with time to brutalise men, and will make them callous when they return
to civil life? Do men grow hard and violent in this furnace after a
while, and will the national character suffer thereby in the future? The
General denies it strongly. "I see no signs of it. The kindness of the
men to each other, to the wounded, whether British or German, to the
French civilians, especially the women and children, is as marked as it
ever was. It is astonishing the good behaviour of the men in these
French towns; it is the rarest thing in the world to get a complaint."
I ask for some particulars of the way in which the British Army "runs"
the French towns and villages in our zone. How is it done? "It is all
summed up in three words," says an officer present, "M. le Maire!" What
we should have done without the local functionaries assigned by the
French system to every village and small town it is hard to say. They
are generally excellent people; they have the confidence of their fellow
townsmen, and know everything about them. Our authorities on taking over
a town or village do all the preliminaries through M. le Maire, and all
goes well.
The part played, indeed, by these local chiefs of the civil population
throughout France during the war has been an honourable and arduous--in
many cases a tragic--one. The murder, under the forms of a
court-martial, of the Maire of Senlis and his five fellow hostages
stands out among the innumerable German cruelties as one of peculiar
horror. Everywhere in the occupied departments the Maire has been the
surety for his fellows, and the Germans have handled them often as a
cruel boy torments some bird or beast he has captured, for the pleasure
of showing his power over it.
From the wife of the Maire of an important town in Lorraine I heard the
story of how her husband had been carried off as a hostage for three
weeks, while the Germans were in occupation. Meanwhile German officers
were billeted in her charming old house. "They used to say to me every
day with great politeness that they _hoped_ my husband would not be
shot. 'But why should he be shot, monsieur? He will do nothing to
deserve it.' On which they would shrug their shoulders and say, 'Madame,
c'est la guerre!' evidently wishing to see me terrified. But I never
gave them that pleasure."
A long drive home, through the dark and silent country. Yet everywhere
one feels the presence of the Army. We draw up to look at a sign-post at
some cross roads by the light of one of the motor lamps. Instantly a
couple of Tommies emerge from the darkness and give help. In passing
through a village a gate suddenly opens and a group of horses comes out,
led by two men in khaki; or from a Y.M.C.A. hut laughter and song float
out into the night. And soon in these farms and cottages everybody will
be asleep under the guard of the British Forces, while twenty miles
away, in the darkness, the guns we saw in the morning are endlessly
harassing and scourging the enemy lines, preparing for the day when the
thoughts now maturing in the minds of the Army leaders will leap in
flame to light.
* * * * *
To-day we are off for the Somme. I looked out anxiously with the dawn,
and saw streaks of white mist lying over the village and the sun
struggling through. But as we start on the road to Amiens, the mist
gains the upper hand, and we begin to be afraid that we shall not get
any of those wide views from the west of Albert over the Somme country
which are possible in clear weather. Again the high upland, and this
time _three_ tanks on the road, but motionless, alack! the nozzles of
their machine guns just visible on their great sides. Then a main road,
if it can be called a road since the thaw has been at work upon it.
Every mile or two, as our chauffeur explains, the pave "is all burst up"
from below, and we rock and lunge through holes and ruts that only an
Army motor can stand. But German prisoners are thick on the worst bits,
repairing as hard as they can. Was it perhaps on some of these men that
certain of the recent letters that are always coming into G.H.Q. have
been found? I will quote a few of those which have not yet seen
the light.
Here are a batch of letters written in January of this year from Hamburg
and its neighbourhood:
"It is indeed a miserable existence. How will it all end? There is
absolutely nothing to be got here. Honey costs _6s. 6d_. a pound, goose
fat _18s_. a pound. Lovely prices, aren't they? One cannot do much by
way of heating, as there is no coal. We can just freeze and starve at
home. Everybody is ill. All the infirmaries are overflowing. Small-pox
has broken out. You are being shot at the front, and at home we are
gradually perishing."
" ... On the Kaiser's birthday, military bands played everywhere. When
one passes and listens to this tomfoolery, and sees the emaciated and
overworked men in war-time, swaying to the sounds of music, and enjoying
it, one's very gall rises. Why music? Of course, if times were
different, one could enjoy music. But to-day! It should be the aim of
the higher authorities to put an end to this murder. In every sound of
music the dead cry for revenge. I can assure you that it is very
surprising that there has not been a single outbreak here, but it
neither can nor will last much longer. How can a human being subsist on
1/4 lb. of potatoes a day? I should very much like the Emperor to try
and live for a week on the fare we get. He would then say it is
impossible.... I heard something this week quite unexpectedly, which
although I had guessed it before, yet has depressed me still more.
However, we will hope for the best."
"You write to say that you are worse off than a beast of burden.... I
couldn't send you any cakes, as we had no more flour.... We have
abundant bread tickets. From Thursday to Saturday I can still buy five
loaves.... My health is bad; not my asthma, no, but my whole body is
collapsing. We are all slowly perishing, and this is what it is all
coming to."
" ... The outlook here is also sad. One cannot get a bucket of coal. The
stores and dealers have none. The schools are closing, as there is no
coal. Soon everybody will be in the same plight. Neither coal nor
vegetables can be bought. Holland is sending us nothing more, and we
have none. We get 3-1/2 lb. of potatoes per person. In the next few days
we shall only have swedes to eat, which must be dried."
* * * * *
A letter written from Hamburg in February, and others from Coblenz are
tragic reading:
" ... We shall soon have nothing more to eat. We earn no money,
absolutely none; it is sad but true. Many people are dying here from
inanition or under-feeding."
Or, take these from Neugersdorf, in Saxony:
"We cannot send you any butter, for we have none to eat ourselves. For
three weeks we have not been able to get any potatoes. So we only have
turnips to eat, and now there are no more to be had. We do not know what
we can get for dinner this week, and if we settle to get our food at the
Public Food-Kitchen we shall have to stand two hours for it."
"Here is February once more--one month nearer to peace. Otherwise all is
the same. Turnips! Turnips! Very few potatoes, only a little bread, and
no thought of butter or meat; on the other hand, any quantity of hunger.
I understand your case is not much better on the Somme."
Or this from a man of the Ersatz Battalion, 19th F.A.R., Dresden:
"Since January 16th I have been called up and put into the Foot
Artillery at Dresden. On the 16th we were first taken to the
Quartermaster's Stores, where 2,000 of us had to stand waiting in the
rain from 2.30 to 6.30.... On the 23rd I was transferred to the tennis
ground. We are more than 100 men in one room. Nearly all of us have
frozen limbs at present. The food, too, is bad; sometimes it cannot
possibly be eaten. Our training also is very quick, for we are to go
_into the field in six weeks_."
Or these from Itzehoe and Hanover:
"Could you get me some silk? It costs 8s. a metre here.... To-day, the
24th, all the shops were stormed for bread, and 1,000 loaves were stolen
from the bakery. There were several other thousand in stock. In some
shops the windows were smashed. In the grocers' shops the butter barrels
were rolled into the street. There were soldiers in civilian dress. The
Mayor wanted to hang them. There are no potatoes this week."
"To-day, the 27th, the bakers' shops in the ---- Road were stormed....
This afternoon the butchers' shops are to be stormed."
"If only peace would come soon! We have been standing to for an alarm
these last days, as the people here are storming all the bakers' shops.
It is a semi-revolution. It cannot last much longer."
To such a pass have the Kaiser and the Junker party brought their
countrymen! Here, no doubt, are some of the recipients of such letters
among the peaceful working groups in shabby green-grey, scattered along
the roads of France. As we pass, the German N.C.O. often looks up to
salute the officer who is with us, and the general aspect of the men--at
any rate of the younger men--is cheerfully phlegmatic. At least they are
safe from the British guns, and at least they have enough to eat. As to
this, let me quote, by way of contrast, a few passages from letters
written by prisoners in a British camp to their people at home. One
might feel a quick pleasure in the creature-comfort they express but for
the burning memory of our own prisoners, and the way in which thousands
of them have been cruelly ill-treated, tormented even, in Germany--worst
of all, perhaps, by German women.
The extracts are taken from letters written mostly in December and
January last:
(_a_) " ... Dear wife, don't fret about me, because the English treat us
very well. Only our own officers (N.C.O.'s) treat us even worse than
they do at home in barracks; but that we're accustomed to...."
(_b_) " ... I'm now a prisoner in English hands, and I'm quite comfortable
and content with my lot, for most of my comrades are dead. The English
treat us well, and everything that is said to the contrary is not true.
Our food is good. There are no meatless days, but we haven't any
cigars...."
(_c_) Written from hospital, near Manchester: " ... I've been a prisoner
since October, 1916. I'm extremely comfortable here.... Considering the
times, I really couldn't wish you all anything better than to be
here too!"
(_d_) " ... I am afraid I'm not in a position to send you very detailed
letters about my life at present, but I can tell you that I am quite all
right and comfortable, and that I wish every English prisoner were the
same. Our new Commandant is very humane--strict, but just. You can tell
everybody who thinks differently that I shall always be glad to prove
that he is wrong...."
(_e_) " ... I suppose you are all thinking that we are having a very bad
time here as prisoners. It's true we have to do without a good many
things, but that after all one must get accustomed to. The English are
really good people, which I never would have believed before I was taken
prisoner. They try all they can to make our lot easier for us, and you
know there are a great many of us now. So don't be distressed
for us...."
X is passed, a large and prosperous town, with mills in a hollow. We
climb the hill beyond it, and are off on a long and gradual descent to
Amiens. This Picard country presents everywhere the same general
features of rolling downland, thriving villages, old churches,
comfortable country houses, straight roads, and well-kept woods. The
battlefields of the Somme were once a continuation of it! But on this
March day the uplands are wind-swept and desolate; and chilly white
mists curl about them, with occasional bursts of pale sun.
Out of the mist there emerges suddenly an anti-aircraft section; then a
great Army Service dump; and presently we catch sight of a row of
hangars and the following notice, "Beware of aeroplanes ascending and
descending across roads." For a time the possibility of charging into a
biplane gives zest to our progress, as we fly along the road which cuts
the aerodrome; but, alack! there are none visible and we begin to drop
towards Amiens.
Then, outside the town, sentinels stop us, French and British; our
passes are examined; and, under their friendly looks--betraying a little
surprise!--we drive on into the old streets. I was in Amiens two years
before the war, between trains, that I might refresh a somewhat faded
memory of the cathedral. But not such a crowded, such a busy Amiens as
this! The streets are so full that we have to turn out of the main
street, directed by a French military policeman, and find our way by a
detour to the cathedral.
As we pass through Amiens arrangements are going on for the "taking
over" of another large section of the French line, south of Albert; as
far, it is rumoured, as Roye and Lagny. At last, with our new armies, we
can relieve more of the French divisions, who have borne so gallantly
and for so many months the burden of their long line. It is true that
the bulk of the German forces are massed against the British lines, and
that in some parts of the centre and the east, owing to the nature of
the ground, they are but thinly strung along the French front, which
accounts partly for the disproportion in the number of kilometres
covered by each Ally. But, also, we had to make our Army; the French,
God be thanked, had theirs ready, and gloriously have they stood the
brunt, as the defenders of civilisation, till we could take our
full share.
And now we, who began with 45 kilometres of the battle-line, have
gradually become responsible for 185, so that "at last," says a French
friend to me in Paris, "our men can have a rest, some of them for the
first time! And, by Heaven, they've earned it!"
Yet, in this "taking over" there are many feelings concerned. For the
French _poilu_ and our Tommy it is mostly the occasion for as much
fraternisation as their fragmentary knowledge of each other's speech
allows; the Frenchman is proud to show his line, the Britisher is proud
to take it over; there are laughter and eager good will; on the whole,
it is a red-letter day. But sometimes there strikes in a note "too deep
for tears." Here is a fragment from an account of a "taking over,"
written by an eye-witness:
Trains of a prodigious length are crawling up a French railway. One
follows so closely upon another that the rear truck of the first is
rarely out of sight of the engine-driver of the second. These trains are
full of British soldiers. Most of them are going to the front for the
first time. They are seated everywhere, on the trucks, on the roof--legs
dangling over the edge--inside, and even over the buffers. Presently
they arrive at their goal. The men clamber out on to the siding, collect
their equipment and are ready for a march up country. A few children run
alongside them, shouting, "Anglais!" "Anglais!" And some of them take
the soldiers' hands and walk on with them until they are tired.