VIII “A First-Class Fighting Man”
“If ever I come back, and anybody at home talks to me about the glory of war, I shall be d——d rude to him.” That is an extract from the letter of an officer who has seen too much of the grim and ugly side of the campaign to find any romance in it. Yet out of all the horror there emerge incidents of conspicuous bravery that strike across the imagination like sunbeams, and cast a glow even in the darkest corners of the stricken field.
Valor is neither a philosophy nor a calculation. The soldier does not say to himself, “Look here, Atkins,
‘One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.’”
He goes into the business of war determined to get it over as quickly as possible,E and when he does something stupendous, as he does nearly ever day, it is just because the thing has to be done, and he is there to do it. Tommy Atkins doesn’t stop to think whether he is doing a brave thing, nor does he wait for orders to do it; he just sets about it as part of the day’s work, and looks very much abashed if anybody applauds him for it.
For instance, there is a man in the Buffs (the story is told by a driver of the Royal Marine Artillery), who picked up a wounded comrade and carried him for more than a mile under a vicious German fire that was exterminating nearly everything. It was a fine act of heroism. “Yet if anybody were to suggest the V.C. he’d break his jaw,” says the writer, “and as he’s a man with a 4.7 punch the men of his regiment keep very quiet about it.”
Some fine exploits are recorded of the Artillery. When the Munster Fusiliers were surrounded in one extended engagement a driver of the R.F.A. named Pledge, who was shut up with them, was asked to “cut through” and get the assistance of the Artillery. Lance-Corporal John McMillan, Black Watch, thus describes what happened: “Pledge mounted a horse and dashed through the German lines. His horse was brought to the ground, and, as we afterwards discovered, he sustained severe injuries to his legs. Nothing daunted, he got his horse on its feet, and again set off at a great pace. To get to the artillery he had to pass down a narrow road, which was lined with German riflemen. He did not stop, however, but dashed through without being hit by a single bullet. He conveyed the message to the artillery, which tore off to the assistance of the Munsters, and saved the situation.”
The saving of the guns is always an operation that calls for intrepidity, and many exploits of that kind are related. Lance-Corporal Bignell, Royal Berks, tells how he saw two R.F.A. drivers bring a gun out of action at Mons. Shells had been flying round the position, and the gunners had been killed, whereupon the two drivers went to rescue the gun. “It was a good quarter of a mile away,” says the witness, “yet they led their horses calmly through the hail of shell to where the gun stood. Then one man held the horses while the other limbered up. It seemed impossible that the men could live through the German fire, and from the trenches we watched them with great anxiety. But they came through all right, and we gave them a tremendous cheer as they brought the gun in.”
Sir John French in one of his despatches records that during the action at Le Cateau on August 26th the whole of the officers and men of one of the British batteries had been killed or wounded with the exception of one subaltern and two gunners. These continued to serve one gun, kept up a sound rate of fire, and came unhurt from the battlefield.
Another daring act is described by W.E. Motley, R.F.A. “Things became very warm for us,” he says, “when the Germans found the range. In fact it became so hot that an order was passed to abandon the guns temporarily. This is the time when our men don’t obey orders, so they stuck to their guns. They ceased their fire for a time. The enemy, thinking our guns were out of action, advanced rapidly. Then was the time our men proved their worth. They absolutely shattered the Germans with their shells.”
Some gallant stories are told of the Royal Engineers. One especially thrilling, is given in the words of Darino, a lyrical artist of the Comédie Française, who joined the Cuirassiers, and was a spectator of the scene he describes. A bridge had to be blown up, and the whole place was an inferno of mitrailleuse and rifle fire. “Into this,” he relates, “went your Engineers. A party of them rushed towards the bridge, and, though dropping one by one, were able to lay the charge before all were sacrificed. For a moment we waited. Then others came. Down towards the bridge they crept, seeking what cover they could in their eagerness to get near enough to light the fuse. Ah! it was then we Frenchmen witnessed something we shall never forget. One man dashed forward to his task in the open, only to fall dead. Another, and another, and another followed him, only to fall like his comrade, and not till the twelfth man had reached the fuse did the attempt succeed. As the bridge blew up with a mighty roar, we looked and saw that the brave twelfth man had also sacrificed his life.”
During the long retreat from Mons the Middlesex Regiment got into an awkward plight, and a bridge—the only one left to the Germans—had to be destroyed to protect them. This was done by a sergeant of the Engineers, but immediately afterwards his own head was blown away by a German shell. “The brave fellow certainly saved the position,” writes one of the Middlesex men, “for if the Germans had got across that night I’m afraid there would have been very few of us left.”
Other daring incidents may be told briefly. One of the liveliest is that of seven men of the Worcesters, who were told they could “go for a stroll.” While loitering along the road they encountered a party of Germans, and captured them all without firing a shot. “We just covered them with our rifles,” writes Private Styles; “so simple!” Sir John French relates a similar exploit of an officer who, while proceeding along the road in charge of a number of led horses, received information that there were some of the enemy in the neighborhood. Upon seeing them he gave the order to charge, whereupon three German officers and 106 men surrendered! On another occasion a portion of a supply column was cut off by a detachment of German cavalry and the officer in charge was summoned to surrender. He refused, and starting his motors off at full speed dashed safely through.
Hairbreadth escapes are related in hundreds of letters, and they have a dramatic quality that makes the ineffectual fires of imaginative fiction burn very low. Sergeant E.W. Turner, West Kents, writes to his sweetheart: “The bullet that wounded me at Mons went into one breast pocket and came out of the other, and in its course passed through your photo.” Private G. Ryder vouches for this: “We were having what you might call a dainty afternoon tea in the trenches under shell fire. The mugs were passed round with the biscuits and the ‘bully’ as best they could by the mess orderlies, but it was hard work messing through without getting more than we wanted. My next-door neighbor, so to speak, got a shrapnel bullet in his tin, and another two doors off had his biscuit shot out of his hand.” Lieutenant A.C. Johnstone, the Hants county cricketer, after escaping other bullets and shells which were dancing around him, was hit over the heart by a spent bullet, which on reaching hospital he found in his left-hand breast pocket. Private Plant, Manchester Regiment, had a cigarette shot out of his mouth, and a comrade got a bullet into his tin of bully beef. “It saves the trouble of opening it,” was his facetious remark.
One of the Royal Scots Fusiliers was saved by a cartridge clip. He felt the shock and thought he had been hit, but the bullet was diverted by the impact owing to a loose cartridge. Had it been struck higher up all the cartridges might have exploded. Another letter mentions a case where a man got two bullets; one struck his cartridge belt, and the other entered his sleeve and passed through his trousers as far as the knee, without even scratching him. Drummer E. O’Brien, South Lancashires, had his bugle and piccolo smashed, his cap carried away by a bullet, and another bullet through his coat before he was finally struck by a piece of shrapnel which injured his ankle; and another soldier records thus his adventures under fire: (1) Shell hit and shattered my rifle; (2) Cap shot off my head; (3) Bullet in muscle of right arm. “But never mind, my dear,” he comments, “I had a good run for my money.” Staff-Sergeant J.W. Butler, 1st Lincolns, was saved by a paper pad in his pocket book; the bullet embedded itself there.
Sapper McKenny, Royal Engineers, records the unique experience of a comrade whose cap was shot off so neatly that the bullet left a groove in his hair just like a barber’s parting! He thinks the German who fired the shot is probably a London hairdresser.
Private J. Drury, 3rd Coldstream Guards, also had a narrow escape, being hit by a bullet out of a shell between the left eye and the temple. “It struck there,” he relates, “but one of our men got it out with a safety pin, and now I’ve got it in my pocket!”
The amusing escapade of “wee Hecky MacAlister,” is told by Private T. McDougall, of the Highland Light Infantry. Hecky went into a burn for a swim, and suddenly found the attentions of the Germans were directed to him. “You know what a fine mark he is with his red head,” says the writer to his correspondent, and so they just hailed bullets at him. Hecky, however, “dooked and dooked,” and emerged from his bath happy but breathless after his submarine exploit.
But while the men in the trenches applaud all the brilliant exploits of their fellows, and laugh and jest over the lively escapes of the lucky ones who, in Atkins’s phraseology, “only get their hair parted,” there are other fine deeds done in the quiet corners of hospitals and out of the glamour of battle that move the strongest to tears. Such is the incident related by a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and it is a fitting story with which to close this chapter. One soldier, mortally wounded, was being attended by the doctor when his eye fell on a dying comrade. “See to him first, doctor,” he said faintly, “that poor bloke’s going home; he’ll be home before me.”