Part 12
And there were men from tribes less well known: the Gurhwals, a comparatively new regiment, who proved their mettle at “the Indian Neuve Chapelle.” This was an engagement in November, not to be confused with the later battle of Neuve Chapelle, where the Indian troops actually gained the town, but were obliged to fall back, because of the lack of adequate support. Then there were the Pathans, who shoot like the Leatherstockings, and look, it is said, not unlike him, with their blue eyes and brown hair and their muscular frames. They are the fairest of the native Indians. Then there were the Rajputs, who have been the great gentlemen of the hills for many hundreds of years. Some of them were not subjects of the King of England at all, but citizens of the Feudatory States of India, who came down from their mud huts and mountain fastnesses to make the grand tour, as it were, and fight with the cunning implements of the white man.
WINNERS OF V. C.’s
From whatever tribe they came, however, they proved themselves worthy to fight in any army of Europe, as the V. C.’s awarded in the course of the war to the members of the Indian army will show. From G. A. Leask’s book, _Heroes of the Great War_, we summarize a few of their exploits, but many must go unnoticed here:
The second Indian V. C. hero of the first year of the war, says Mr. Leask, was also one of the bravest. Naik Darwan Sing Negi, 1st Battalion 39th Gurhwal Rifles, gained his reward for great gallantry on the night of November 23-24, 1914, near Festubert.
The 1st Battalion 39th Gurhwals are recruited from that portion of the Himalayas lying within territory immediately west of Nepal, known as Gurhwal; and Naik, like most of the sturdy recruits drawn from this neighborhood, spent his boyhood herding his father’s sheep and goats on the bleak uplands and glacier valleys, often alone for weeks on end.
One of the fiercest battles of the war took place around Festubert in the La Bassée district. On November 23rd the Germans made a determined attack upon some trenches near Festubert, held by the Indian corps. A counter-attack was organized during the night of the 23rd-24th, as our men were very hard pressed. In this great onslaught the 39th Gurhwal Rifles, all hardy warriors like Darwan Sing Negi from the northern hills, took a leading part. They leaped over the parapet with fixed bayonets, their faces set and grim. With irresistible dash they advanced to the captured trenches and drove the enemy off with terrible loss.
Darwan Sing Negi received two severe wounds in the head and in the arm, but refused to give in. He led the way round each successive traverse, and we can imagine the terror he inspired in the hearts of the Germans when they saw this tall, fierce Indian hero, with white turban gleaming in the darkness, his eyes afire, advancing upon them with the bayonet. Although fired at by bombs and rifles at the closest range, nothing could daunt this fearless fighter. By his splendid courage and powerful arm he practically cleared the trench himself and so saved a serious situation. The fighting went on all the next day, but the heroic deed of Darwan Sing Negi on the previous night had averted the worst of the danger. He was decorated by the King just before his Majesty left France on December 5, 1914.
THE JEMADAR
The next month, April, saw the winning of another V. C. by an Indian officer. He was Jemadar Mir Dast, of the 55th (Coke’s) Rifles, though he won his distinction when he was attached to the 57th (Wilde’s) Rifles, both belonging to Indian Frontier Force.
The jemadar—corresponding to our lieutenant—had already distinguished himself before coming to Europe to fight for his King-Emperor. He possesses the coveted Indian Order of Merit for gallant services on the Indian frontier while acting as guardian of the northern boundary.
During both battles of Ypres the Indians fought magnificently. After the enemy’s poison-gas attack had made a temporary dent in the British line in the Ypres area, Sir John French ordered the Lahore Division of the Indian Corps, to which Mir Dast’s regiment was attached, to be moved up and placed at the disposal of the Second Army.
A few days later, this corps, supported by the British cavalry, was pushed up into the front firing-line. The time had come for the British to assume the offensive. Fighting with the French on one of their wings, the Indians were successful in pushing the enemy back some little distance toward the north. Again the Germans let loose their poison gas, and rendered further advance impossible. Such was the position on April 26th.
The Indians fought with determination to carry the German positions. A formidable series of trenches had to be assaulted in order to dislodge the enemy and so relieve the pressure on the rest of the line. Jemadar Mir Dast got his men ready and was waiting to advance. When the order was given to dash from the trenches, Mir Dast found himself detailed off to remain with his platoon in reserve. The others, advancing by short rushes, reached the crest of the first slope without a check, although a number fell by shell fire. On reaching the crest, however, the line came under a terrific machine gun and rifle fire. Whole swathes of men fell as if a scythe had been drawn across their legs. In spite of this, the line pressed on.
Then came the dramatic sequel. The Germans suddenly released their gas. Although the French Colonials were the chief sufferers, the Indian troops were affected by it. The poor fellows were totally unprovided with any form of protection against this devilish device, and were falling fast, being at the same time under a hail of machine gun fire. No troops could have withstood the terrible conditions, and the line was forced to give way.
Jemadar Mir Dast, from his trench, had seen the oncoming poison cloud, and noticed the retirement of a part of the line. He had one of two alternatives presented to him. Either he must retire in conformity with the rest of the troops, or endeavor to get his men to stand firm and resist the attack. Mir Dast decided to remain.
STOOD THE BRUNT
Behind the dense volumes of gas and with ceaseless pointblank fire, the Germans approached nearer and nearer. Undaunted in the trying ordeal, Mir Dast remained firm, and collected all the men available, among whom were many who were recovering from the effects of gas. So many British officers had been killed that there was no one left to lead but himself. He therefore assumed command of the forces he had collected, and kept the men together until ordered to retire, all the while holding up the oncoming Germans with rifle fire.
After dusk, Mir Dast left the trench with his small force. During this retirement, he picked up many men who were in the successive lines of trenches by which he passed, and brought them back to safety.
Throughout the attack, the resolute conduct of Mir Dast was beyond praise. As the little band wended its way to the rear he encouraged each man individually by his cheery words and courageous example. He saw an officer lying wounded, and at great risk went and brought him to cover. A few yards farther on he made out the writhing figure of a gassed Indian officer. In spite of a hot rifle fire the intrepid jemadar made for him, and, with assistance, got the suffering officer out of the zone of fire. Then a second British officer was observed. The jemadar, knowing every minute was precious if he himself was to escape the fire and gas, stopped once again to perform his heroic work of rescue.
In this way during the retirement the gallant Indian soldier brought in no less than eight wounded British and Indian officers. He was exposed in doing so to a very heavy fire, and was himself slightly wounded. Had he not shown such conspicuous bravery these eight men would have died on the field. Mir Dast not only received bullet wounds, but was rendered very weak through the effects of the German poison gas.
The gallantry of Mir Dast, as well as the behavior of the whole division at the second battle of Ypres, added yet another proud page to the record of the Indian army.
The jemadar, when well enough to be moved, was sent to England, and there received from the hands of the King-Emperor the V. C. he had so deservedly won.
He was much affected by the King’s praise and said afterwards, “What did I do?—nothing, only my duty; and to think that the great King-Emperor should shake me by the hand and praise me. I am his child.”
It must be remembered that India’s service in the war was entirely voluntary.
A LIVELY INTRODUCTION
An Ambulance Man’s First Twenty-four Hours at the Front Well Diversified
In a letter to his father, Dr. John B. Sullivan of Brooklyn, N. Y., an aid with the American Ambulance Field Service in France, Eugene Sullivan, who got quickly into the thick of things, tells the incidents of his first day where the Germans were busy. The letter appeared in the Brooklyn _Eagle_ as follows:
“Well, after being assigned to section ... we went immediately to the front by going to ..., base of sector, and arriving there were picked up by section chief and then brought to section headquarters. Next morning, at eight, was sent out as aid to learn roads, stations, _postes de secours_, etc. First station at.... Arriving there I expressed my disappointment, because everything looked so quiet, except for the village, which, by the way, at one time must have been lovely, but Germans had destroyed everything—every single house and building—only a few houses had walls standing. At the improvised relay station, or _poste de secours_, I left the ambulance and strolled to the top of a hill.
“Here I could see and was in plain sight of a German observation balloon, and the German must have taken a dislike to my position, physique or otherwise, because before long some nice big high explosive shells started to come my way—so much so I had to postpone my sight-seeing tour and retire to the _poste de secours_ and join the others who were in an _abri_, which is an enlarged rat-hole in the ground. While there an ambulance from a station nearer the first line of trenches came in with some _blessés_ (wounded) and left word that he was going to ... to the first hospital. It was then up to us to go forward to Pont ... to take the place of this ambulance, who on his return would take our place at ... Well, all went well and we hid the ambulance at Pont ... in some bushes to wait for some poor fellow to get his ‘ticket’ for the hospital. Very little happened that day, except for the shells flying over our heads and a few airplane scraps, but no wounded. Toward evening an extra ambulance arrived, and we in the first ambulance got word to go still further to the front, to where they have never had an ambulance before, but on account of shell-fire had to wait until darkness.
“This was like preparing me for the inevitable, but finally we got a French soldier to guide us, and the driver, Harry Dunn, the soldier, and yours truly, aid, started. All went well until about half over the rocky and muddy road to Dublin I noticed the soldiers running like mad for the trenches. For a few seconds I didn’t realize what it meant, until a shell burst right near us and pieces went hissing right over the top of the ambulance. Right then yours truly grabbed his steel helmet from the guide, who was holding it, and just planted it on his head, and, believe me, thought of home, mother, etc., said a few prayers, and finally landed under the cover of the French dressing station.
“Got well located and fixed a stretcher in lieu of a bed, and just about settled down to rest and sleep while waiting for candidates for ride in ambulance when the French batteries started up. They were a couple of hundred yards in rear of us and were firing over our heads, and I got up and stood at the door to see the fire of belching batteries, etc. Joe, each time one of those blame things went off my steel (crown) helmet just naturally rose off my head, but in a few minutes I got used to it and got well used to my surroundings and looked over everything. It seems all the fire of a couple of hours was just a small preliminary to an attack by a small company to jump into the German trenches, grab about a dozen prisoners and then back again—all so they could give the poor Boches the third degree for general information, etc.
WITNESSES AN AIR DUEL
“Finally, after all the firing, got a French soldier who had the good portion of his head left to take to the hospital, and as it was getting near daybreak we were ordered to ‘beat it’ under cover of darkness, or the little that was left of it. Got out all right, except that we darn near rode on top of a French battery, just as it was firing, only 100 feet in front of us, and, believe me, we hit only the high spots for about five miles. Got to hospital at ... O. K. and returned to ..., taking up our order of relief and settled down to enjoy some rest. Nothing doing for a couple of hours until just about 8 a.m., when our tour of duty (twenty-four hours) was finished, when a lot of machine-gun fire attracted our attention to the sky.
“There we saw—in my opinion—the most wonderful and yet most horrible duel between two airplanes, French and German. Saw every move they made, until finally the German—or Boche, we call them—machine broke into flames and immediately the observer of the German machine jumped 7,000 feet to his death, leaving his pilot to finish the struggle; but although the poor wretch made a grand effort to right his plane after a fall like a rocket for 1,000 feet, the tail of his machine and one wing broke off and just dropped.
“While dropping, the flames must have got to him, for he finally jumped, too, and his machine fell one way and he, all in flames, a little farther away. All the while the Frenchman in his victorious machine was flying—really dropping—and followed him down, making a spiral dive, and landed almost as quick. We jumped into our ambulance and hurried to the spot, and the sight which greeted us was horrible. I had my camera with me, but just couldn’t snap the picture. The victorious aviator then reached the spot and stood smilingly over the body while various ones took the picture.
“The German balloon observers took it all in and when the crowd of us gathered they had their artillery just drop some shells among us, so we ‘beat it,’ and that was the end of my first twenty-four hours on the front. Some baptism.
“A chap who came over with me—Osborn, of Dartmouth College—was only four days in active service with Section 28, and in going to the aid of one of his section ambulances got stalled himself and while repairing his car the Germans located him by a star shell which illuminates everything, and in this way they got a line on him and his ambulance. They paid no heed to red cross on ambulance, but let him have a shell, with the result that one leg was shattered and a piece of a shell went through his body and lung. The poor chap didn’t realize how seriously he was hurt or that he lost his leg later by amputation, but was apparently O. K., for on the morning of the day he died he was chatting merrily with every one, shaved himself and had a smoke. He even wrote a most wonderful and pathetic letter to his parents, and yet that night he died. Some say, or try to say, we don’t get under fire. I at least know what shell-fire is.”
At the date of the signing of the Armistice over 25 per cent. of the entire male population of the United States, between the ages of 18 and 31, were in military service. This represents a growth in the size of the American Army in 19 months of nearly twenty-fold, namely, from 189,674 in March, 1917, to 3,664,000 in November, 1918.
“A VALIANT GENTLEMAN”
So Comrades Named Dick Hall, One of the First of Ours to Die
Speaking at the Lafayette Day banquet given in New York the evening of Sept. 6, 1916, M. Jusserand, the French Ambassador, referring to the service of Americans in France before the United States entered the war, said:
“Serving in the ambulances, serving in the Legion, serving in the air, serving Liberty, obeying the same impulse as that which brought Lafayette to these shores, many young Americans leaving home and family have offered to France their lives. Those lives many have lost, and never, even in antique times, was there shown such abnegation and generosity, such firmness of character: men like that Victor Chapman, who died to rescue American and French co-aviators nearly overcome by a more numerous enemy, and whose father, so justly admired for his gifts of mind and heart, decided that his son’s remains should be buried where he had fallen: ‘Let him rest with his comrades’; or that Richard Hall, killed by a shell while on the search for our wounded and whose mother hesitated to accept a permit to visit his flower-wreathed tomb at the front, because French mothers are not allowed to do so; or that Harvard graduate, the poet of the Legion, Alan Seeger, who felt that his hour could not be far remote and in expectation of it had written from the blood-soaked battlefield where he had fought for Liberty. The Frenchman who goes up is possessed with a passion beside which any of the other forms of experience that are reckoned to make life worth while seem pale in comparison. It is a privilege to march at his side—so much so that nothing the world could give could make me wish myself anywhere else than where I am.”
And Emory Pottle, in telling for the _Century_ the story of a “Christmas at Pont-à-Mousson” (1915) when he and his fellows of the American Ambulance Service in that sector had a “bonne fête,” superintended by Mme. Marion and pretty little thirteen-year-old Jeanne, says:
“It was a gay meal, recklessly, happily so. No one in the sector to which we were attached was wounded that day. That, maybe, was the real holiday note. Though it may seem incredible, the meal ended with a huge plum pudding.
“It ended, too, with something very grave and as I now think of it, very beautiful. The festival meal and the gifts were forgotten in the face of it. For it was, oh! not strangely, one of those events which lift men, if ever so briefly, out of their daily selves into unseen things. Our chief of Section was called to the telephone. He came back—we all saw it—with saddened face. ‘Fellows,’ he said slowly, ‘Richard Hall of Section III has been killed, blown off his car by a stray shell in the Vosges. He is the first of us all to go.’
“We stood very silently and soberly about the table. Such news drove home abruptly, cruelly by reason of our Christmas gaieties—just what being there involved to us, to those who loved us. Very often we had jested and joked about death. None of us was a coward, I think; but—Hall dead—the first of the lot of us—dead—so far from home—Christmas!
“‘Boys, let’s drink to him, the first of us to lay down his life for France. Here’s to Dick Hall, good old scout!’
“So we drank, and I think no man there that night, where danger and death were always brooding darkly, failed to feel the dignity and honor of his calling.
A MOTHER’S GIFT TO THE CAUSE
“A long time after, the mother of Richard Hall said to a friend of mine—said with clear, sad, gentle eyes—‘I am glad to give my boy to so great a cause!’ And we on the edge of the sinister Bois le Pretre, when the news of the boy’s death came to us that Christmas day, felt, too, somehow, somewhere within us, that the cause was great, was ours.
“Late that night I stood alone for a time under the starry sky of that strange hell we inhabited. Oddly enough, I felt, so I recall, a calmness and a courage, even a sort of happiness, new and strange. Though its approaches might be loud and frightening, I knew again that ‘the ways of death are silent and serene;’ an honorable death, a death of one’s own choosing for an ideal, for a cause.”
An extract from a letter written to his parents on Decoration Day, 1916, by Louis P. Hall, Jr., next older brother of Richard—he, too, valiant in the Ambulance Service—gives an intimate glimpse of the qualities of heart and mind that endeared Richard Hall to his fellows and to all who knew him:
“To-day at two I attended a beautiful memorial exercise. It was held at the monument to Washington and Lafayette in the Place des États-Unis, here in Paris. And during these exercises I took a little part when my officers and myself placed a great floral tribute at the base of the monument among the many others. On the tri-color ribbons of this tribute from the American Ambulance were these words: ‘To Richard Hall and the other Americans who gave their lives for France.’
“And so it is, as you well know, that I have thought a great deal of Dick to-day. I believe I can recall almost every time I saw him during our last three months together in Alsace with the circumstances of each meeting. I can even remember many of the times and places we passed each other on the road. He invariably smiled as we waved to each other in passing, just as if he were as pleased to see me as I was to see him. And I wonder if that really could be true! How I did admire and love him as I knew him there in a life which brought forth all the best from a boy who had no worst. And coupled with his splendid character, indeed a part of it, was that fine reserve which never courted an open show of devotion from me. But he was my own brother and always must be my brother, what more could I have asked?... Though we were often miles apart for days at a time, each was doing his little share in alleviating that endless physical pain and bitter human suffering which made our own hardships seem as nothing. And there was always our next meeting, sometimes down in the valley, sometimes at a post in the mountains, when we would talk things over; but even then neither told the other all his inmost thoughts, for in such work our very depths were touched and stirred as they never had been touched and stirred before.”
FROM DARTMOUTH TO FRANCE
Richard Nelville Hall, less than 21 years old when killed, was the youngest son of Dr. and Mrs. Louis P. Hall, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In June, 1915, he was a senior at Dartmouth College and with other members of that class he enlisted with the American Ambulance Corps for a period of three months, and was assigned to Section Three. When his term was up there was such urgent need of men and the new enlistments were so few that Dick volunteered to remain in service until he could be spared more easily. About that time Louis P. Hall, Jr., his next older brother, enlisted and surprised Dick by appearing in the yard of the American Ambulance Corps in Paris. Dick had just driven in from the firing line. The meeting can be appreciated only by those who know what a bond of affectionate devotion united the brothers, and which is expressed in the foregoing quotation from Louis’ letter to his parents dated Decoration Day, 1916.