XI Atkins and the Enemy
In one of his fine messages from the front, Sir John French, whom the New York World has described as the “best of war correspondents,” referred to the British soldier as “a difficult person to impress or depress.” He meant, of course, that it was no use trying to terrify Tommy Atkins. Nothing will do that. His stupendous sense of humor carries him, smiling, through every emergency.
But Atkins is a keen observer, and he takes on very clear and vivid impressions of men and affairs. He hates compromises and qualifications, and just lets you have his opinion—“biff!” as one officer expresses it.
“Bill and I have been thinking it over,” says one letter from the trenches, “and we’ve come to the conclusion that the German army system is rotten.” There you have the concentrated wisdom of hundreds of soldier critics who talk of the Kaiser’s great military machine as they know it from intimate contact with the fighting force it propels. They admit its mechanical perfection; it is the human factor that breaks down.
Nothing has impressed Tommy Atkins more than the lack of morale in the German soldiers. “Oh, they are brave enough, poor devils; but they’ve got no heart in the fighting,” he says. That is absolutely true. Hundreds of thousands of them have no notion of what they are fighting for. Some of the prisoners declared that when they left the garrisons they were “simply told they were going to maneuvers”; “others,” says a Royal Artilleryman, “had no idea they were fighting the English”; according to a Highland officer, surrendering Germans said their fellows had been assured that “America and Japan were fighting on their side, and that another Boer war was going on”; and a final illusion was dispelled when those captured by the Royal Irish were told that the civil war in Ireland had been “put off!”
It is not only that the men lack this moral preparation for war. Their system of fighting is demoralizing. “They come on in close formation, thousands of them, just like sheep being driven to the slaughter,” is the description that nine soldiers out of every ten give of the Germans going into action. “We just mow them down in heaps,” says an artilleryman. “Lord, even a woman couldn’t miss hitting them,” is the comment from the Infantry. And as for the cavalry: “Well, we just makes holes in them,” adds one of the Dragoons. At first they didn’t take cover at all, but just marched into action with their drums beating and bands playing, “like a blooming parade,” as Atkins puts it. After the first slaughter, however, they shrank from the attack, and there is ample evidence of eyewitnesses that the German infantry often had to be lashed into battle by their officers. “I saw a colonel striking his own men with his sword to prevent them running away,” is one of the many statements. Revolvers, too, were freely used for the same purpose.
But, generally speaking, there is iron discipline in the Kaiser’s army. The men obey their officers implicitly. Trooper E. Tugwell, of the Berwicks, tells this little story of a cavalry charge from which a German infantry regiment bolted—all but one company, whose officers ordered them to stand: “They faced round without attempting to fire a shot, and stood there like statues to meet the onslaught of our men. Our chaps couldn’t help admiring their fine discipline, but there’s not much room for sentiment in war, and we rode at them with the lance, and swept them away.” “They are big fellows, and, in a way, brave,” writes Private P. Case of the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, describing one of their attacks; “they must be brave, or they would not have kept advancing when they saw their dead so thick that they were practically standing up.” “Their officers simply won’t let them surrender,” says another writer, “and so long as there’s an officer about they’ll stand like sheep and be slaughtered by the thousand.” The essential difference between the German soldiers and our own is in the officering and training, and it is admirably expressed by Private Burrell, Northumberland Fusiliers. “We are led; they are driven,”F is Burrell’s epigram.
According to other letter writers, the German soldiers are absolutely tyrannized over by their officers. They are horribly ill-used, badly fed,G overworked, constantly under the lash. “They hate their officers like poison, and fear them ten times more than they fear death,” says Private Martin King. “Most of the prisoners that I’ve seen are only fit for the hospital, and many of them will never be fit for anything else this side of the grave. Their officers don’t seem to have any consideration for the men at all, and we have a suspicion that the heavy losses of German officers aren’t all due to our fire. There was one brought in who had certainly been hit by one of their own bullets, and in the back too.” Other soldiers say the same, and add that if it weren’t for dread of their officers the Germans would surrender wholesale. “Take the officers away, and their regiments fall to pieces,” is the dictum of one of the Somerset Light Infantry, “and that’s why we always pick off the German officers first.”
There is not the slightest divergence of opinion in the British ranks as to the German infantry fire. “Their shooting is laughable,” “they couldn’t hit a haystack in an entry,” and “asses with the rifle,” are how our men dispose of it. The Germans fire recklessly with their rifles planted against their hips, while Tommy Atkins takes cool and steady aim, and lets them have it from the shoulder. “We just knocked them over like nine-pins,” a Highlander explained. As to the German cavalry, one Tommy expressed the prevailing opinion to nicety. “I don’t want to be nasty,” he said, “but what we all pray for is just half-an-hour each way with three times our number of Uhlans.”
When it comes to artillery, however, Atkins has nothing but praise for the enemy. Their aeroplanes flutter over the British positions and give the gunners the exact range, and then they let go. “I can only figure it out as being something worse than the mouth of hell,” declares Private John Stiles, 1st Gloucesters, and it may be here left at that, as the devastating effects of artillery have already been dealt with in a previous chapter. One thing which has puzzled and sometimes baffled our men is the way the Germans conceal their guns. They display extraordinary ingenuity in this direction, hiding them inside haystacks, in leaf-covered trenches, and sometimes, unhappily, in Red Cross wagons.
Stories of German treachery are abundant, and official reports have dealt with such shameful practises as driving prisoners and refugees in front of them when attacking, abusing the protection of the White Flag, and wearing Red Cross brassards in action. The men have their own stories to tell. An Irish Guardsman records a white flag incident during the fighting on the Aisne: “Coldstreamers, Connaughts, Grenadiers, and Irish Guards were all in this affair, and the fight was going on well. Suddenly the Germans in front of us raised the white flag, and we ceased firing and went up to take our prisoners. The moment we got into the open, fierce fire from concealed artillery was turned on us, and the surrendered Germans picked up their rifles and pelted us with their fire. It was horrible. They trapped us completely, and very few escaped.” The German defense of these white flag incidents was given to Trooper G. Douglas by a prisoner who declared that the men were quite innocent of intention to deceive, but that whenever their officers saw the white flag they hauled it down, and compelled them to fight.
Many British soldiers suffered from the treachery of the Germans in wearing English and French uniforms, and their letters home are full of indignation at the practises of the enemy. It was in the fighting following such a ruse at Landrecies that the Honorable Archer-Windsor-Clive, of the Coldstream Guards, met his death. “Another time,” an artillery officer relates, “they ran into one of our regiments with some of their officers dressed in French uniforms. They said ‘Ne tirez-pas, nous sommes Français,’ and asked for the C.O. He came up, and then they calmly blew his brains out!” A similar act of treachery is recorded by Lieutenant Oswald Anne, R.A., in a letter published in the Leeds Mercury: “At one place where the Berkshire Regiment was on guard a German force arrived attired in French uniforms. To keep up the illusion, a German called out in French from the wire entanglements that they wanted to interview the commanding officer. A major of the Berkshires who spoke French, went forward, and was immediately shot down. This sort of thing is of daily occurrence.” Lieutenant Edgcumbe, son of Sir Robert Edgcumbe, Newquay, tells of another instance of treachery in which British uniforms were used, and declares, in common with many other officers, that he “will never again respect the Germans; they have no code of honor!”
They strip the uniforms from the dead, come on in night attacks shouting “Vive, l’Angleterre!” and sound the British bugle-call “Cease fire” in the thickest of the fight. Twice in one engagement the Germans stopped the British fire by the mean device of the bugle, and twice they charged desperately upon the silent ranks. But in nearly every case their punishment for these violations of the laws of civilized warfare has been swift and terrible, and no mercy has been shown them.
Charges of barbarity are also common in letters from the battlefields. One officer, who says he “never before realized what an awful thing war is,” writes: “We have with us in the trenches three girls who came to us for protection. One had no clothes on, having been outraged by the Germans. I have given her my shirt and divided my rations among them. In consequence I feel rather hungry, having had nothing for thirty-two hours, except some milk chocolate. Another poor girl has just come in, having had both her breasts cut off. Luckily I caught the Uhlan officer in the act, and with a rifle at 300 yards killed him. And now she is with us, but, poor girl, I am afraid she will die. She is very pretty and only about nineteen.”H
Captain Roffey, Lancashire Fusiliers, tells how he was found wounded, and handed over his revolver to the Germans, whereupon his captor used it to shoot him again, and left him for dead. There is no end to the stories of this kind, and one of the wounded vehemently declared that the “devilry of the Germans cannot be exaggerated.”
There are others amongst the wounded however, who have received nothing but kindness from the enemy. Lieutenant H.G.W. Irwin, South Lancashire Regiment, pays a tribute to the treatment he met with in the German lines; Captain J.B. George, Royal Irish, “could not have been better treated had he been the Crown Prince;” and one of the Officer’s Special Reserve says the stories of “brutality are only exceptions, and there are exceptions in every army.”
And here it is worth quoting a happy example of German chivalry. It is taken from one of Sir John French’s messages. A small party of French under a non-commissioned officer was cut off and surrounded. After a desperate resistance it was decided to go on fighting to the end. Finally, the N.C.O. and one man only were left, both being wounded. The Germans came up and shouted to them to lay down their arms. The German commander, however, signed to them to keep their arms, and then asked for permission to shake hands with the wounded non-commissioned officer, who was carried off on his stretcher with his rifle by his side.
After this account of what British soldiers think of the enemy, it is interesting to read what is the German opinion of Tommy Atkins. Evidently the fighting men do not share the Kaiser’s estimate of “French’s contemptible little army.” Three very interesting letters, written by German officers, and found in the possession of the captives, were published in an official despatch from General Headquarters. Here are extracts from each:
(1) “With the English troops we have great difficulties. They have a queer way of causing losses to the enemy. They make good trenches, in which they wait patiently. They carefully measure the ranges for their rifle fire, and then they open a truly hellish fire on the unsuspecting cavalry. This was the reason that we had such heavy losses.”
(2) “The English are very brave and fight to the last.... One of our companies has lost 130 men out of 240.”
(3) “We are fighting with the English Guards, Highlanders and Zouaves. The losses on both sides have been enormous. The English are marvelously trained in making use of the ground. One never sees them, and one is constantly under fire. Two days ago, early in the morning, we were attacked by immensely superior English forces (one brigade and two battalions) and were turned out of our positions. The fellows took five guns from us. It was a tremendous hand-to-hand fight. How I escaped myself I am not clear.... If we first beat the English, the French resistance will soon be broken.”
The admissions of prisoners that the Germans were amazed at the fighting qualities of the British soldier, and had acquired a wholesome dread of meeting him at close quarters, may have been colored by a trifling disposition to be amiable in their captivity; but letters such as those just quoted are honest statements for private reading in Germany, and were never intended to fall into British hands.
Although Tommy Atkins makes occasional jocular allusions to the enemy as “Sausages” there is no doubt that he considers the German army a very substantial fighting force. “The German is not a toy terrier, but a bloodhound thirsting for blood,” is one description of him; “getting to Berlin isn’t going to be a cheap excursion,” says another; and, to quote a third, “in spite of all we say about the Teuton, he is taking his punishment well, and we’ve got a big job on our hands.”