Part 11

But to return to my story. After the second shell had caught us and others were popping all about us, I made up my mind that the enemy had a direct line on us. I have since been told that he put on a strong counter-attack and bent our line back for a time, so that our artillery were very near up and it’s likely that he could observe us. I sent back for my teams after we had carried out our wounded, intending to drag the guns out farther to the right flank. Another gun-team was scuppered and all my gunners were knocked out but three men. The enemy now started to pay attention to my ammunition wagons, putting one shell straight in among the lot of them, so I had to leave the guns for the moment and get my wagons away. I then rode forward to where the other guns of my battery were in action and found that they had escaped casualties, so arranged to bring my guns in beside them. About an hour and a half after I was hit I went to an advance aid-post to have my head dressed. It was just a pile of stretchers and bandages in a ditch—the living under cover in the ditch, the dead lying out on top; here a doctor and four Red Cross orderlies were working in silence. I was ordered to report at the next post back for an anti-tetanus injection, so I got on my horse and rode. At the next post they had no anti-tetanus, so I was put on a lorry and driven back to Arras. From there I went to the Casualty Clearing Station, where I was dressed and got two hours’ sleep—from there I travelled on the Red Cross train to the Base, arriving at 6 a.m., only eighteen hours from the time that I was in the fighting. The hospital I went to was the Number 20 General—the same one that I was in last year. That same morning I was X-rayed and starved all day in preparation for an operation which did not happen. In the evening I was warned for Blighty, but it was the midday of 4th September before I got on the train for the port of embarkation. The journey was rather long, for I did not reach Liverpool Street till two in the morning. Yesterday, as soon as I woke up, I sent you a cable. In the afternoon Mr. W. came to see me and is coming again to-day. I left the Front without a bit of kit, so my first S.O.S. was for a pair of pyjamas. Having studied the colour of my eyes and consulted with his lady-clerks, W. sent me a suit of baby blue silk ones with thin white stripes in them—so now I am ready to receive ladies.

3 p.m. I was X-rayed, and there is a splinter between the scalp and skull. Whether the skull is fractured I don’t know; I think not, however, as I feel too well. What a contrast lying here in the quiet after so many night marches, so much secrecy, such tiger pounces forward in the dawn, such agony and courage and death. There were wounded men hobbling seven miles from the Drocourt-Quéant line where I was hit, to the hospital at Arras. The roads were packed with transports—ammunition, pontoons, rations—streaming forward, gunners and infantry marching up to the carnage with eager faces, passing the back-going traffic which was a scarlet tide of blood. It was worth living for—worth doing—that busting of the Hindenburg Line. I hope to be patched up in two months, so that I may be in on the final rush to the Rhine. I’ve only been out of the fighting three days and I want to be in it again.

Don’t worry about me at all. I’m all right and brown and strong. Thank God I’m not dead yet and shall be able to fight again.

Note.—Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded on 2nd September in the attack on the Quéant-Drocourt Line, when the magnificent fighting of the Canadians broke the Hindenburg Line. The above letter describes that attack and the manner in which he got his wound.

LXXVII

London

September 8, 1918

I’ve returned from this offensive with a very healthy hatred of the Hun. One of our tanks, commanded by a boy of twenty, got too far ahead and was captured. When the rest of the attacking line caught up, they found him stripped naked and bound to his tank—dead. The brutes had bombed him to death mother-naked. When I tell you that no prisoners were taken for the next twenty-four hours, I think you’ll applaud and wonder why the twenty-four hours wasn’t extended. The men said they got sick of the killing.

Why we’re decent to these vermin at all amazes me, until I remember that I also am decent to them. I think the reason is that originally we set out to be good sportsmen and are ashamed of being forced into hatred. All the way down the line the German wounded received precisely the same treatment as our own men—and treatment that was just as prompt. At the Casualty Clearing Station, German officers sat at table with us and no difference was made. On the Red Cross train they were given beds in our carriage and our English sisters waited on them. I thought of how the German nurses treat our chaps, spitting into the food and the cups before they hand them to them. Every now and then you would see a wounded Canadian hop up the carriage and offer them cigarettes. They sat stiffly and insolently, with absurd yellow gloves on, looking as though every kindness shown was a national tribute to their superiority. There were so many of us that at night two had to lie on beds made for one. The Germans refused; they wanted a bed apiece. When they were told they would have to sit up if they would not share, they said they would sit up. Then the sister came along to investigate the disturbance. They eyed her with their obstinate pig-eyes, as though daring her to touch them. She told them that if they wanted to sit up all night they would have to do it in the corridor, as they prevented the bed above them from being pulled down. At the end of fifteen minutes they decided to share a bed as all of us had been doing, but they muttered and grumbled all night. There were a good many of us who wished for a Mills bomb and an open field in which to teach them manners. It seems to me that the German is incorrigible. He was born a boor and he can never respond to courtesy. Kindness and mercy are lost upon him; he accepts them as his right and becomes domineering. If any peacemaker thinks that Christian forbearance and magnanimity will make for a new brotherhood when peace terms are formulated, he is vastly mistaken. The German is a bully, and the only leadership that he acknowledges and the only righteousness to which he bows, is the leadership and the armed force of a bully stronger than himself. Sentimental leniency on the part of the Allies will only make him swell out his chest afresh.

You may have seen the account of a booby-trap which the Huns left behind—a crucified kitten. They banked on the humanity of our chaps to release the little beast; but the moment the first nail was drawn it exploded a mine which killed our Tommies. In contrast to this is an incident which occurred the night before our attack on the Hindenburg Line. A hare, frightened by shell-fire, came panting through our gun-position. Some of the fellows gave chase, till at last one fell on it and caught it. It started to cry like a baby in a heartrending sort of way. We hadn’t had very much meat, and the intention in catching it had been to put it in the pot; but there was no one who could face up to killing it—so it was petted and set free again in the wheat. Queer tender-heartedness on the part of men who next morning were going to kill their kind! Their concern when the little beast began to sob was conscience-stricken and ludicrous.

LXXVIII

London

September 12, 1918

I’ve a great piece of news for you. It’s exceedingly likely that I shall visit the States on the British Mission. This must read to you like moonshine—but it’s a quite plausible fact. I shall not be allowed to go back to the Front for three months, as it will probably be that time before I am pronounced fit for active service. It is suggested that during that time I come to the States to speak on Anglo-American relations. I feel very loath to postpone my return to the Front by a single day, and would only do so if I were quite sure that I should not be fit for active service again before the winter settles down, when the attack will end. I don’t want to miss an hour of the great offensive. If I agree to come to the States, I shall only do it on the pledge that I am sent straight back to France on my return. This would give me a right to speak to Americans as nothing else would. I could not speak of the war unless I was returning to it. I owe the Lord a death for every life of my men’s that has been taken—and I want to get back to where I can pay the debt. But wouldn’t it be ripping to have a few weeks all together again? Can’t I picture myself in my little study at the top of the house and in my old bedroom! I may even manage a Christmas with you!

Having had my wound dressed and having togged myself up in my new uniform, I jumped into the inevitable taxi and went to lunch at the Ritz with some of the visiting American editors. It was delightfully refreshing to listen to Charlie Towne’s, the editor of McClure’s, wild enthusiasm for the courageous high spirits of England. “The streets are dark at night,” he said, “but in the people’s hearts there is more light than ever.” Two stories were told, illuminatingly true, of the way in which the average Englishman carries on. There was an officer who had had an eye shot out; the cavity was filled with an artificial one. Towne felt a profound pity for him, but at the same time he was rather surprised to see that the chap wore a monocle in the eye that was sightless. At last he plucked up courage to ask him what was the object of the monocle. The chap smiled drolly. “I do it for a rag,” he said; “it makes me look more funny.”

A Canadian Tommy, without any legs, was being wheeled down a station platform. Another wounded Tommy called out to him, “You’re not on the staff, Bill. Why don’t yer get out and walk?”

“'Cause I’m as good as a dook now,” the chap replied; “for the rest of me life I’m a kerridge gent.”

The thing that seems to have impressed these American visitors most of all is the way in which our soldiers make adversity appear comic by their triumphant capacity for mockery.

Towne, being a lover of poetry, was terrifically keen to visit Goldsmith’s grave. I hadn’t the foggiest idea where it was, but after lunch we set out in search of it. At last we found it in a shady backwater of the Inner Temple—a simple slab on which the only inscription was the name, “Oliver Goldsmith.” I know of only one parallel to this for illustrious brevity; a gravestone in Paris, from which even the Christian name is omitted and on which the solitary word “Heine” is written. I liked to see the poet from Broadway bare his head as he stood by the long-dead English poet’s grave. Behind us in the Temple chapel the confident soprano of boys’ voices soared. It was a grey-blue day, made tawny for brave moments by fugitive stabs of sunshine. Lime trees dappled the cold courtyard with shadows; leaves drifted down like gilded largesse. Old men, with dimming eyes and stooped backs, shuffled from stairway to stairway, carrying heavy ledgers. The rumble of Fleet Street reached us comfortingly, like the sound of distant surf on an unseen shore. My thoughts wrenched themselves free from the scenes of blood and struggle in which I participated less than two weeks ago. Here, in that simple inscription, was the symbol of the one quality which survives Time’s erasures—character which loved and won love intensely.

Queer letters you get from me! I write the way I feel from London or the battlefield. My room-mate is lying in bed, his poor shattered leg propped up on a pillow and a cheery smile about his lips. In the well of the hospital someone is playing—playing love-songs as though there were no war. The music, muted by distance, drifts in to me through the open window. I feel that life is mine again; I can hope. At the Front to hope too much was to court disappointment. To be alive is thrilling and delicious.

LXXIX

London October 6, 1918

It is Sunday morning. As I write the newsboys in the Strand are calling an extra-special. Before entering the Savoy for lunch I purchased a copy, which I read as I sat in the great gold and crimson lounge while I waited for a table. You know what the Savoy is like, crowded with actresses, would-be-taken-for actresses, officers on leave, chaps hobbling out of hospitals like myself, and a sprinkling of Jews with huge noses and a magnificent disregard for the fact that they are not in khaki. The orchestra was being kept up to the right pitch of frenzy in their efforts by a gentleman who is reported to get in more extra beats to the minute than any other person of his colour in London. The feet of the girls tripped into an unconscious one-step as they entered, as though they acted independently of their owners. At the end of the rather pompous hall, with its false air of being too respectable for naughtiness, lay the terrace and beyond that the Thames, benevolent and drowsy in the October sunshine. Everything was gay and normal as though nothing except the war had happened or would ever happen. I should like Berlin to have seen us—Berlin which waited breathless for the detonation of the latest Big Bertha which she had fired on the world.

I opened my paper. Across the top of it, in one-inch type headlines, ran the message:

GERMANY PLEADS FOR PEACE

I am sorry to have to disappoint Germany, but the truth is I didn’t blink an eyelid or turn a hair. I was scarcely mildly interested. I gazed round the crowd; their eyelids had not blinked and their hair had not turned. The Kaiser’s Big Bertha of peace had not roused them; she must have fired a dud. Everyone looked quite contented and animated, as if the war was going to last for ever.

My eye slipped down the two columns of close printing in which the mercy of the All Highest was revealed to the world. I learnt that the All Highest’s new Imperial Chancellor was celebrating his new office by playing a little trick on his own credulity; he was pretending that by Christmas Germany would have sponged out all her debts of infamy with words. Prince Max of Baden was in such a hurry to bring good-will upon earth that he had cabled to President Wilson proposals for a lasting peace; he had gone to this trouble and expense not because of anything that was happening on the Western Front, but solely “in the interests of suffering humanity.” Glancing at a parallel column I read words which would have led me to doubt the sincerity of any one less august: “Germans Defeated in All-day Battle. Tanks do Great Execution among Hun Infantry. 1000 Prisoners Taken.”

Then I turned back to see what this spokesman of a nation of humanitarians had to say for himself. I learnt that Germany had always been keen on the League of Nations: that she was anxious, as she had always been anxious, to rehabilitate Belgium; that her armies were still invincible, and that the Western Front was still unbroken; that the Kaiser was God’s latest revelation of His own perfection and His magnanimous shadow upon earth.

Liars! Blasphemous liars! How can one treat with a nation which has not even the sense to make its shamming decent and plausible? On the Western Front to-day in their ignominious retreat the Germans are showing their ancient ferocity for destruction. I know, for I have just come from before Cambrai. Cities are being levelled before they make their exit; civilian populations are being carried away captive; trains piled high with loot precede their departure; they leave behind them the desolation of death. While with “incomparable heroism” their armies are executing these brutalities, their Chancellor recalls us to a lost humanity and presupposes that we shall accept his professions at their face value.

I looked up from my paper at the Sunday crowd, chatting gaily as it passed through gaudy splendours into lunch. They were amazingly unmoved by anything that the German Chancellor had said. So far as their attitude betrayed them, he might never have become Chancellor. If I may state the case colloquially, they didn’t care a damn. There were American officers newly landed, men with the Mons ribbon, who had been in the game from the crack of the first gun, wounded Johnnies like myself, wearing the blue armlet which denotes that you are still in hospital. One and all were seizing this jolly moment before they again caught sight of the trenches and carried on with pounding the Hun. They weren’t going to spoil their leisure by discussing the perturbations of a German Chancellor.

Peace! For the Hun there shall be no peace. For him, for the next hundred years, whether we fight him or guard the wall which we shall build about him, there will be no peace. We, who have seen the mud of France grow red with blood as if with poppy petals, will never forget. That we die is nothing, provided always that two German lives pay for our death. Beyond the Rhine, Germany lies intact; her towns are still snug and smiling. One journeys to them through a hundred miles of rotting corpses—the corpses of men who were our friends; yet the Imperial Chancellor appeals to our humanity and reminds us of mercy.

Mercy! While I have been in hospital several batches of returned British prisoners have arrived. I have sat at table with them, seen their neglected wounds, and talked to them. One officer, in addition to his battlefield wound, has a face horribly disfigured. I scarcely know how to describe it. His jaw has been broken; his entire face has been pushed to one side. It was done by the butt of a Hun rifle in a prison hospital in Germany; an orderly woke him up by smashing his face in one morning as he lay in bed. You may say that this was the act of one man and cannot justly be taken as representative of a nation. The time has long gone by for such generous discriminations; in four years of warfare these ferocious cruelties have been too frequent and organized for their odium to be borne by individual men. When Germany speaks of mercy it is as though a condemned murderer on the scaffold appealed for his reprieve on the grounds of Christ’s commandment, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” Bullies grow fluent at quoting scripture only when they feel the rope about their necks; their use of scripture phrases at the eleventh hour is proof of cowardice—not of repentance.

Judas, the front-rank assassin of all times, set an example in decency which it would behove Germany to follow, when he went out into the garden and hanged himself.

There will be sentimentalists among the Allies who will speak of forgiveness and softer judgments. Their motives will be mixed and many: some will be camouflaged pacifists; some will be influenced by personal advantages, such as relations, business affiliations and financial investments in Germany; some will be war-weary mothers and wives who will pounce on the first opportunity of regaining their remaining men. None of them will be the men who have done the fighting. Germany has turned to the American President as the intercessor for Peace; the men at the Front look to America to back them up in exacting the final penalty—they look to America above all the other Allies for firmness for the reason that she is not war-weary, and because millions of her men who are in khaki have yet to prove their manhood to themselves. America beyond all Germany’s adversaries came into the war on indisputably righteous grounds: we look to her to insist on a meticulously righteous settlement. In the face of the enormities which have been perpetrated by the Hun armies from the first violation of Belgium’s neutrality up to now, no vengeance could be made adequate. The entire history of Germany’s method of making war is one of an increasing ingenuity in devising new methods of making nations suffer while withholding the release of death. The ravishing of women, the shooting of old men, the sending of the girlhood of occupied territories into the shame of unwilling prostitution, the wholesale destruction of all virtues that make life decent and desirable cannot be exacted as part of our penalty; but the extermination of the arch-culprits who have educated their human instruments out of manhood into bestiality can. If the Kaiser and the herd of human minotaurs who surround him escape the gallows, justice becomes a travesty and there is no murderer, however diabolical his atrocities, who deserves to be electrocuted.

With the turning of the tide in the Allies’ favour the voice of France is already making itself heard on the side of the argument for vengeance. Whoever forgets, France has her landscapes billowed into mire by shells, her gallant cities converted into monstrous blots of brick and dirt, always to remind her. She is demanding that for every French city laid low, a German city, when the day of settlement comes, shall suffer an equal nemesis. For these crimes against civilian rights and properties, Germany has no martial motive. They are wanton and carried out by organized incendiaries among her retreating armies, having no provocation of battle to excuse them. Moreover, as Dr. Hugh Bellot, the eminent International lawyer, has pointed out, Germany has condemned herself out of her own mouth. In her treatment, for instance, of such a city as St. Quentin, she commits three separate crimes against International law. First, against the person of the civilian; second, against the rights of movable property; third, against the rights of public and private property. In her own military manual, known as the German War Book, and regarded as her official guide for military conduct until this present war, she lays down that “the devastation of occupied territory, destruction of property, carrying away of inhabitants into bondage or captivity, and the right of plundering private property, formerly permitted, can no longer be entertained. The inhabitants are no longer to be regarded, generally speaking, as enemies, and are not to be molested in life, limb, honour or freedom.” Furthermore it states that “every insult, every disturbance against the domestic peace, every attack on family honour and morality, every unlawful and outrageous attack or act of violence, are just as strictly punishable as though they had been committed against the inhabitants of one’s own land.” There is not a single one of the above rulings that Germany is not violating at this moment in her enforced withdrawal from France; and it is at this time that her Chancellor appeals for peace in “the interests of suffering humanity.” Magnanimity! It is a fine, large-sounding word and one which it would be a disgrace to lose from our vocabulary; yet it is a word capable of much abuse if employed in our peace dealings with the enemy. The day for magnanimity has long gone by; in being magnanimous we are unjust to both our future generations and our valiant dead. There are deeds of such vileness and treachery that they put nations, equally with individuals, outside the pale of all possible magnanimity. For four years Germany has figured in history as a self-applauded assassin. While the rôle seemed to pay her, she gloried in her ruthlessness. She succeeded too well both on sea and land ever to persuade us that defeat has made her heart more tender. The only peace terms will be a carefully audited reckoning of all the happiness and innocence that she has strangled. That this may be accomplished the man at the Front is willing to go on risking life and sanity for twice four years, if need be: in the certainty that it will be accomplished, he will die without regret.