Part 1

LIVING BAYONETS

A Record of The Last Push

By Coningsby Dawson

London: John Lane, The Bodley Head New York:

1919

“Our spirits are living bayonets. The ideals which we carry in our hearts are more deadly to the enemy than any man-made weapons.”

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

LIVING BAYONETS

GERMANY PLEADS FOR PEACE

FOREWORD

THESE selections from collected letters of Coningsby Dawson have been edited by his sister, Muriel Dawson, and are published in response to hundreds of requests. Readers of his first volume of correspondence from the Front, issued under the title of “Khaki Courage,” have written from all over the country asking that a further series be given them. The generous appreciation and personal interest expressed by these readers have induced Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson’s family to publish these letters. They take up his story at the point where “Khaki Courage” laid it down, at the time when America entered the war.

LIVING BAYONETS

A RECORD OF THE LAST PUSH

I

France April 14, 1917

THE other night at twelve your letters came to me just as I was climbing into my bunk, so recently tenanted by a Hun. I immediately lit another candle, stuck it on the wall in a manner peculiar to myself, and started on a feast of genuine home gossip.

What a difference it must make to you to know that the United States are at last confessedly our Ally. Their financial and industrial support will be invaluable to us and will make a difference at once. And the moral advantage of having them on our side is the greatest wound to the spirit of Germany that she has received since the war started. It will be real fun to be able to come back to New York in khaki, won’t it?—instead of slinking in as a civilian. Besides, if I get wounded, I’ll be able to come home to visit you on leave now.

This big decision has made me almost gay ever since it happened. I have such a new affection for everything across the Atlantic—almost as if New York and the Hudson were just across the lawn from England, the nearest of near neighbours. I wish with all my heart that I could drop in on you for a day and just sit down on the sunny verandah and talk and talk. There’s so much I want to hear and so much I want to understand in the changed attitude of America. I’m sure everyone must be much more happy now that the cloud of reproach has lifted and the brightness of heroism is in the air. It shines in my imagination like the clear blueness above the white towers of New York. There’s one thing certain; now that the President has made up his mind, the country will go as baldheadedly for war as it has for everything else it ever set out to attain. The real momentousness of this happening hasn’t been appreciated by the fighting men out here yet. With a sublime arrogance they feel themselves quite capable of licking Germany without the assistance of anyone.

II

France April 17, 1917

Last night I was out on a working party—a moonlight night with sleet falling, and did not get back till past two. The first thing my flash-light fell on as I entered my dug-out was a pile of letters from home. At past 3 a.m. I was still reading them, when H. and B. woke up and asked if there was anything for them. There was. So there we were all lying in our bunks and reading our love-letters till nearly 4 a.m.

Yesterday I had a very exciting time. I was doing some reconnoitring along the front when a bullet whizzed by and almost scorched the ear of my sergeant. We hopped into a trench about two feet full of water. But whenever we showed ourselves the sniping started up again. At last we got tired of wading, so climbed out and made a dash across the open. None of us was caught, but by pure bad luck another sergeant of mine, who was waiting quite 300 yards away, got it in the back. He was a big, heavy chap, and we had quite a slippery time carrying him out on a stretcher to the dressing-station. That’s the second N.C.O. who’s been hit with me in the last ten days. The other chap got it in his side.

Either of these wounds would have been nice to get for anyone who wanted a rest. But I don’t want to get out yet; all the really sporting part of this war will be this summer. We are praying that we may come into action at the gallop, “Halt, action front!” bang off our rounds and follow up again.

For some reason, to-day my memory has been full of pictures of that wonderful leave we had together in London. Things have come back that I’d forgotten—visits to theatres, to restaurants, rides in taxis, so many things—all the time there’s that extraordinary atmosphere of intense love. I suppose I must have spent the night dreaming of you. Living in the daylight hours in this deep dug-out makes spring seem like winter; I expect that helps me to remember. How I wish I could have those ten days again. Perhaps our next will be in New York, when I come back in khaki for an odd week. The thought of such a happening in the future and the recollection of the meeting that is past are like coming to a fire out of a dark, cold night. This war is so monstrously impersonal; the attachments one forms with those among whom he lives are so few, that the passionately personal affections of the old days shine out like beacon fires. It will be wonderful when the war ends and one can sit still in a great hush.

Yesterday I had a day off for a bath behind the lines—I hadn’t tubbed for well over a month and hadn’t been back of the guns; also I had slept in my clothes—so you may judge that warm water and soap were a necessity. Afterwards I had great fun shopping for the mess, but I didn’t manage to buy much, as the country is all eaten up. All that is beautiful in the way of landscape lies ahead, so we’re very anxious to capture it from the Hun. One looks out over his back country, so green and beautiful and untouched, and feels like an Old Testament spy having a peep at the Promised Land. Without doubt it will be ours in the ordained time. When I went out this morning it was to see a blue, blue sky, a battery pulling into action and behind it a desolated town. But the feature that caught my attention was the spring sky. I stared and stared at it and thought of when the war is ended. To-day I had to go to another town which is in process of being battered. On my way back I passed through a wood—most of the trees were levelled to the ground. In the wood I found a hawk wounded by shrapnel, and pressing close behind a fallen trunk. And I found my first spring flower—a daffodil—which I am enclosing to you. I’ve sent you many flowers, but none which carries with it more love than this little withered daffodil—my first token of spring—gathered from a fought-over woodland of France.

Since writing thus far it has been raining cats and dogs, and I’ve been catching the mud, which leaks through my roof, in a soup-plate. Little things like mud and rain don’t damp our ardour, however; we press on and on to certain victory.

One of our officers came back from leave to-day—he’d spent his freedom in Devon, and was full of the beauty of the spring-time there. Happy Devon! War has changed the seasons in France. Winter started in October; it’s the middle of April and winter has not yet ended. Oh, to wake up again with the splendid assurance of a summer day with nothing but beauty—such a peaceful day as we have so often spent at Kootenay. That wounded hawk, crouching among the daffodils, is a symbol—we’re like that: beasts of prey for our country’s sake, maimed in mind and spirit, and waiting till our wings grow strong again. And yet—who would be anywhere else but here so long as the war lasts? Oh, the fine clean courage of the men in the face of danger and their brave endurance in the presence of privation! It passes understanding. I saw a chap with a mortal wound the other day thinking nothing of himself—only of his pal, who was but slightly wounded. The most unendurable people act like heroes in the face of death. There’s a fundamental nobility in all men which comes to the surface when life is most despairing.

III

France April 19, 1917

I sit in a hole in a recent battlefield. Over my head is some tattered canvas, upheld by Fritzie shovels. In a battered bucket wood splutters, and the rain it raineth every day. To make my appearance more gipsy-like I may add that my hands are cracked with the mud. When the war is ended I shall lie in bed for a month.

We’ve come through some very lively times of late, and I shall have plenty of local colour to impart to you when the war is ended. My mind is packed with vivid pictures which I cannot tell. This huge silence which rests between individuals is the most terrific thing about the war. You get the terror made concrete for you when you creep to your Observation Post and spy upon the Hun country. In the foreground is a long stretch of barbed wire, shell-holes and mud. Behind that a ruined town; then gradually, greenness growing more vivid as it recedes to the horizon. Nothing stirs. You may look through your telescope all day, but nothing stirs.

Yet you know that in every hole the hidden death lurks; should you for a moment forget and raise your head unwarily, you are reminded of your folly by the crack of a rifle. I’ve always made the mistake of believing the best of everyone—and, as a soldier, I’ve never been able to credit the fact that anyone of a big nation would count himself happy to get my scalp. The actual passes belief. I recall so vividly that story of the final war, written by a German, The Human Slaughter-house. The chap never realizes the awfulness of his job until for the first time he comes face to face with the young boy he’s called upon to kill. We kill by hundreds from a distance, but the destroyed and the destroyers rarely have a hint of each other’s identity. I came to a dug-out the other day in a battered trench. Even the water in the shell-holes was dyed by explosives to the colour of blood. Outside lay a German, face downwards in the mud—an old man with grizzled hair. I shoved my revolver round the mouth of the dug-out and called to anyone who was there to come out. A Cockney voice answered; then followed a scrambling; two huge feet came up through the dark; they belonged to a dead German; two of his comrades grinned cheerfully at me from behind the corpse and propelled it none too reverently into the mud. Behind the party I discovered my Cockney-adventurer—a machine-gunner who, having lost his company, made amends by capturing three Fritzes and killing two others with the aid of a pal with a shattered leg. I told him to bring his pal up. Under his directions the Fritzes trotted back into the hole and brought out the wounded fellow. They were extraordinarily meek-looking and quite surprisingly gentle; when I’d told them where the dressing-station was, they made a bandy-chair of their hands, placed our fellow’s arms about their necks and staggered away through the barrage—or curtain of fire, as the papers like to call it—back to safety with their wounded enemy. And yet within the hour all these people had been chucking bombs at one another.

A few days ago I was detailed for a novel experience—to follow up the infantry attack across No Man’s Land to the Hun Front line and as far as his support trenches. I called for volunteers to accompany me and had a splendid lot of chaps. My party got away with the adventure without a scratch—which was extraordinarily lucky. Moreover, we accomplished the particular job that we were called upon to do.

To-night I’m out from dusk to daylight poking through the darkness in a country where one dare not use a flash-light. Between two ruined towns I have to pass a battered Calvary.

The Christ upon His Cross is still untouched, though the shrine and surrounding trees are smashed to atoms. I think He means more to me like that—stripped of His gorgeousness—than ever. He seems so like ourselves in His lonely and unhallowed suffering. The road which leads to and from Him is symbolic—shell-torn, scattered with dead horses and men, while ahead the snarl of shrapnel darts across the sky and spends itself in little fleecy puffs. All this desolation will be re-created one day, the country will grow green and, in another country, greener than any upon earth, those dead men will walk and laugh—and in that other country the Christ will no longer hang alone and aloofly. I like to think of that—of the beauty in the future, if not in this, then in some other world. One grows tired, just like that image on the Cross. How little the body counts! War teaches us that.

IV

France April 22, 1917

I had a letter from each one of you the day before last, and they reached me within three weeks of being written—it made you all seem very near.

I am writing this to you from a mercifully deep dug-out, which was the home of Huns considerably less than a fortnight ago. I’m sure it was very obliging of them to think ahead and provide us with such safe hiding-places from their villainous shells. They have knocked the house down overhead. In the yard is a broken bird-cage—the owner must have set the captive free before he made good his own escape. Hanging at the head of my bunk is an iron crucifix and on the wall is a beautiful woman’s portrait. One hardly thinks of his enemy as being human these days—he seems only an impersonal devastating force; but it was a man with affections who lately tenanted my dug-out.

In a recent attack I saw a curious happening. I was up with the infantry as liaison officer when one of our planes was shot down. The pilot made an effort to land behind our trenches, but his machine was unmanageable and he came down in Boche territory—or what had been Boche territory a quarter of an hour before. Through my glasses I saw the pilot and observer get out and start to creep cautiously back. We ourselves didn’t know for certain where the Huns were—all we knew was that they were supposed to be withdrawing. When the airmen arrived at our battalion headquarters they were still scarcely convinced that our chaps were not Huns in khaki. When we gave them a meal of bully-beef they knew that wc were British. So very much I could tell you which is thrilling and heroic if only I were allowed.

Do you know, sometimes I marvel at my contented loneliness? It isn’t like me. I ought to be homesick and—but I’m not. I’m too much consumed with the frenzy of an ideal to care for anything but to see the principle for which we fight established. What one man can do isn’t much—only a Jesus can save the world singlehanded; the real satisfaction is in one’s own soul, that softness and success had not made him deaf to the voice of duty when she called to him. For me this undertaking is as holy as a crusade; if it were not I could not endure the sights. As it is I keep quiet in my soul, feeling humbly glad that I am allowed to fulfil the dreams of my boyhood. I always wanted to do something to save the world, you remember. First I was going to be a missionary; then a reformer; then a preacher; then a poet. Instead of any of these I “struck luck” as a novelist—and I can see now how success was corroding to one’s ideals. Success in America is so inevitably measured in terms of praise and money. I wanted to save the world; never in my wildest dreams did it occur to me that I should get my chance as a soldier. I remember when I was studying history at Oxford how I used to shudder at the descriptions of battles, especially mediaeval battles waged by mailed Titans. I don’t know what change has taken place in me; this is a more damnable war in its possibilities for suffering than any of a bygone age; in comparison, those old wars seem chivalrous and humane. And yet because of the spiritual goal for which we fight I no longer shudder. Yes, that is the reason for the change. A man doesn’t often get the chance in these commercial times to risk all that he holds most dear for humanity’s sake. I think of the morning family prayers of childhood in the old panelled room in Highbury and the petitions you used to make for us—everything has shaped towards this great moment in our lives; the past was a straight road leading to this crisis. I don’t forget the share you three contribute—the share of your brave loneliness and waiting. Your share is the greatest. God bless you.

Our major was twice wounded in the recent offensives and has now left us for a higher position. I was terribly sorry to lose him.

V

France April 30,1917

The mud has gone. Spring is here and the sun shines all the time. Oh, a most enjoyable war, I do assure you. When I wakened this morning I wandered up the thirty stairs from my dug-out into the former garden, which is now a scene of the utmost desolation. A row was going on as though the Celestial housemaid had lost her temper and given notice, and was tumbling all the plates from the pantry through the clouds. Above the clatter I heard a sound which was almost alarming: the clear, brave note of a thrush, piping, piping, piping. He didn’t seem to care a rap how often the guns blew their noses or how often the Hun shrapnel clashed like cymbals overhead; he had his song to sing in the sunshine, and was determined to sing it, no matter that the song might go unheard. So there I stood and listened to him among the ruins, as one might listen to a faithful priest in a fallen church. I re-created in imagination the people who had lived here for generations, their tragedies, kindnesses, love-affairs. It must have been a beautiful place once, for everywhere there are stumps of fruit-trees, hedges of box trodden almost underground, circular patches which were flower-beds. I can picture the exiles’ joy when they hear that their village has been recaptured. Presently they’ll come back, these old women and men—for their sons are fighting—and they’ll look in vain for even the landmarks of the little house which once sheltered their affections. The thrush in the tree is all that the Huns have left of past history. We British lose our men in the fight, but the sacrifice of the French is immeasurable, for when their sons are dead they have no quiet place of recollections. They can’t say, “Do you remember how he walked here two years back?” or “These hollyhocks he planted,” or “How he waved us goodbye as we watched him from the gate!” The same cyclone of passion which has taken their sons’ fives, has robbed them of everything tangible which would remind them of him.

As regards the U.S.A. joining with us, I have spoken with several Huns. They one and all seem very dejected about it, and seem to consider the loss of America’s friendship one of the greatest blows of the war.

VI

France May 10, 1917

It’s just back at the guns from a two days’ rest at the wagon-fines. It’s the first time I’ve been back since March. I rose early on a blazing morning and started down to the point where I was to meet my horses. I say “rose early,” but as a matter of fact I had only had four hours’ sleep in forty-eight, and hadn’t had my clothes off for nearly three weeks. As I drew away, the low thunder that we make grew less and less, the indescribable smell of bursting explosives fainter; soon I realized that a lark was singing overhead; then another—then another. Brave little birds to come so near to danger to sing for us. At the edge of a wood I found my chestnut mare, Kitty, and my groom—the chap who used to work at the Silver King mine, which overlooks our ranch at Kootenay. That we should share that memory always forms a bond of kindness between us. We didn’t stop long at the wagon-line, but soon started out to get farther back for lunch. I had it in the shack of an officer who was with me at Petewawa. Then off I went at a gallop for green trees and clean country. I hadn’t gone far before I came to a God’s Acre full of crowded little white crosses and newly turned earth. Our captain was with me, and he learnt that an old friend from one of our batteries was on the way down with a Union Jack spread over him. We went into the brown field where the men who have “gone west” lie so closely and snugly side by side, and came to a place where six shallow holes were dug like clay coffins. Presently, winding through the forest of crosses, the hard blue sky overhead, we saw the little band advancing, the stretcher carried high on the shoulders of four officers. The burden was set down and the flag lifted, showing the mummy-like form sewn up in the blanket in which the living man had slept. The chaplain began tremulously, “I am the Resurrection and the life; he who believeth in Me,” etc., and while he recited I watched the faces of the gunners drawn up at attention in the strong sunlight. To them, whatever else the ceremony meant, it at least meant this—a day away from the guns. Suddenly I discovered that the Lord’s Prayer was being said. Then heads were again covered and the word of command was given. “Right turn. Quick march.” The stretcher was gathered up and the little crowd dispersed. I suppose there is a woman somewhere who would have given ten’ years of life to have stood in my shoes beside that narrow grave. For myself I thought, “Well, the chap’s got what we long for most out here—rest. He won’t have to stand in the mud any more, when his feet are like stones and eyes like lead, watching and watching the rockets go up along the front. And he won’t have to guide his guns in at night, or wonder what life will do to him when the war is ended. He longed for sleep and now he sleeps endlessly.” It didn’t impress me as at all sad. He’d played his part like a man and was at last rewarded. But we—we were alive, and we hadn’t had a bath for a month—so we jumped on our horses and trotted off to the nearest shower.

It was five in the afternoon when we again took to the highway. We wanted to sponge out our minds by looking at something beautiful, just as we had sponged down our bodies. We, I should explain, were myself and the captain of my battery. Soon we found ourselves among fields from which all the wrinkles of trenches and pit-marks of shell-holes had been smoothed out. There was a river winding between tall trees unblasted by the curtain of fire. Peasants were at work on their little patches—women and either very old men or boys. We came to a town as quiet and unspoiled as those we used to visit in pre-war days. In a courtyard we tethered our horses and then sat down to one of those incomparable French meals. It was splendid after canned stuff, and you couldn’t hear the boom of a single gun. The peace of the place got hold of us—we didn’t want to go back too hurriedly, and kept postponing and postponing. A blue and gold haze with a touch of silver shining through it was blurring all the sky, when we remounted. We travelled slowly, singing—thinking up the twilight songs of other times. My thoughts went back to Scotch holidays at Arran and Loch Katrine—the daringly late evenings of childhood. Reluctantly we came back and saw the frantic city of Very lights grow up, which indicate the Hun front. The air began to be shaken again by the prolonged agony of rushing shells and stamping guns. It was only after midnight, when we had reached our hut, that I remembered the need of sleep. But when I struck a match on entering, I found letters from each one of you awaiting—so lay late in bed reading them by candlelight for another hour. One snatches at small pleasures and magnifies them into intensity.

Your letters told me about Khaki Courage, and seeing “Colonel Newcome,” and about the Highlanders in New York. What a very much more homely place America must be to you now. I must say I am keen to see the book. It’s not mine at all—it’s you dear home people’s—you called it out and you put it together.

Here I sit in the underground place which I have to call “home” at present. You go through all kinds of contortions to enter. Stephen Leacock could be very funny at my expense.

VII

France June 2, 1917