Part 5
On the brow of the hill and beyond there are increasing signs of German habitation. Near a vast white wallowing mine-crater there is a barricade of sand-bags and wire, the point of difference 'twixt friend and foe. After that one soon comes upon those wooden framed cellarways which plunge from the side of the trench into the bowels of the earth. They go down and down and are seldom explored by soldier or civilian. Some of these have their gruesome secrets in their dark depths. Many Germans were killed in them. Fear and industry conceived them. They were safe enough at ordinary times, but death-traps in an attack; a man at the bottom of a steep pit stood little chance against an enemy at the door with a bomb. The British and French in this case understood the war better than the Germans. A slighter cover or shelter whilst giving less sense of security did give vigilance and alertness. Germany dug the grave of her cause far from the ends she had in view and settled down to a war of concrete and defence when she should have understood her lines as the merest temporary abiding places on the way to victory. It prolonged the settlement for years.
How the cornflowers blossom on the German side! Did not they sow the seeds here for their Kaiser. They sowed the seed--and now it blossoms on the wilderness. Bright blue flowers shine in the midst of withered nature, otherwise in September 1920 the crest of Hill 70 is so covered with brittle yellow weeds that a match would set it aflame from end to end. It is like a dried inland beach of the old war. The waves no longer roll up with thunder and expire as once they did. But you can see in imagination the young Guards officer in his Burberry, cane in hand leading his flower of manhood--forward, forward, toward the shore of Lens--see the expiring first line and the second line that follows passing through and over it, the third that goes again---- They were the waves which at last crumbled all defences.
Not that Loos was a triumph of attack. Little justice will no doubt be done on our side to the German defence of Lens, but it was a defence which rivalled ours of Ypres. The enemy was driven back on both sides of it during the later campaigns of the war (chiefly in 1917). Technically and theoretically the Germans could be forced to yield it at any moment. But in practice it could not be taken from them. We'd take it were it of iron; they'd hold it were it of butter. Artillery laid the town flat, but artillery could not destroy the cellars, and of every cellar the German, with the reinforcement of iron and concrete, made a machine-gun nest or post for riflemen. For the rest, we held nearly all the Vermelles--Lens road, and the greater part of that from La Bassee to Lens. From Hill 70 one sees geographically a wide landscape of the war. It was a remarkable vantage-ground for beholding the doings of one's own side.
One aspect of the fighting on Hill 70 ought not to be forgotten, and that was the work of the stretcher-bearers who for the sake of each wounded comrade they brought in exposed themselves constantly to death. The heavy bodies, the uneven and entangled way down an exposed hillside, the shells howling and bursting, the sniper's bullet whipping through the air--these made up the stretcher-bearers' Calvary-walk. They did their duty and ceased to think of whether they themselves would live or die. And Loos was nothing to the Somme--as those will tell you who came through both.
But the battle of Loos was not ended at Loos. All the worst of the fighting was away to the left by Bois de Hugo and Chalk-pit wood where Scots and Coldstream strove again and again to establish a continuous line. The German system of trenches was entered, and Hulluch-ward, La Bassee-ward, a strife more bloody than Loos itself continued. On the night of the 29th September there is a relief on Hill 70--the 22nd Londons come in. The survivors of the Guards march off to billets in Sailly and about. But the fight continues for halves of trenches, for corners, for turnings. German and British are living in the same madhouse together and fighting for complete possession room by room.
Now the new British bomb appears--the Mills grenade, the trench-clearer. Germans are fought in the white alleys with bombs, bombs only and bombs ever. October 1915 was the great month of bomb-mania. Its emblem should be the man and the bomb ready to throw. The Guards were soon back in the fray, and on the night when the bombs came up so great was the fascination that "Jocks" and "Bill Browns" were bombing one another--each thinking the other was the enemy.
It is all indescribably wild now--Gun trench, Grab Alley, Big Willie, Hohenzollern and the rest, cement-coloured, or yellow with a withered prairie of weeds. Notices at various points indicate _chasse reservée_: the shooting rights are now reserved. Frenchmen with shot-guns and dogs prowl along the parapets, peppering the noisy partridges which they rouse up in scores. Decaying rifles lie in the trenches, rusty bayonets, and muddy shreds of belts and pouches. On the German side the inevitable litter of unexploded but sodden bombs; undo the metal protectors and you find the very string which caused them to explode has rotted in its case. No tourists turn up on these wild wastes. It is too terrible for them--and you cannot motor over innumerable pits.
On Sunday October 3rd you can picture the survivors of Loos at "Divine Service" at Sailly la Bourse. On the evening of the Sunday they marched to Gun trench. The trench was so called because the enemy had a gun on it. Fifty yards of the centre the Germans held, and the British were in the trench both on the left and on the right of the enemy, and strove to bomb him out of it entirely.
The gun was worked heavily, and shell after shell landed on parapet or parados scattering solid slag, ravaging chalk, burying men. The unburied were engaged all night digging out lost comrades and trench-repairing. It seems mere matter-of-fact when set down in dull print--but oh, the physical agonies of apprehension, the shuddering, the shattering of nerves physically under such conditions. It is easily understood how men were glad to be hit to get away and find peace. Death must at times have been eagerly desired and sought. It was called hell: it was hell. The new Kitchener divisions were thus not long in getting to the reality of war.
In the diaries of the time you find much reference to gas fatigue. British gas was used whenever the wind seemed favourable. Gas did not seem however to have power to stifle many enemy defenders. Gas fatigue was the carrying of the cylinders to the line. Emplacements were dug for cylinders below the parapet of the trench and "riveted" with sand-bags. Twenty or thirty cylinders would be thus ranged together at intervals of twenty-five yards. The cylinders contained the gas in liquid form, and ejection was worked on the syphon principle. This use of gas was seldom justified by results, and added an infernal torture and ugliness. It was a true diabolism. Almost always it afflicted the side which operated it as much as it did the enemy. Protection against gas was clumsy and inadequate. We started with the "stokers' pad" which was proved useless. Then we had a cotton pad soaked in hypo and tied on by veiling which was supposed to protect the eyes. And then followed cloth helmets soaked in hypo, helmets with mica eyes, very smelly, clammy, and unreliable. Mustard gas at a later date brought the respirator. But the protection at Loos and Hulluch was the old hypo bag of which not a few still lie about.
The war was becoming quite complicated and new. A Lewis gun was first used in the battle for Hohenzollern Redoubt, and in time each battalion, nay, each company, will have its Lewis gunners. Steel helmets were also issued at Hohenzollern and were considered curiosities. One battalion received five helmets! They were supposed to be for the special use of the bombers. But then everyone became a bomber in that battle.
It is with awe that one looks on the silent empty Hohenzollern system now, where trenches for many days were choked with dead. Some commanders in those days thought double rum-rations put the necessary devil into men to carry them through the ordeal of a fray, and it is common talk in the Army that some of the units that went into the storming of Hohenzollern Redoubt knew very little of what they were doing. One thing is certain: alcohol has power to banish fear from men's minds, if fear there happen to be. It dulls the brain to danger. But then alas, it often dulls it to much else. Cool heads were needed to meet the German. And the night-attack at Hohenzollern failed. The dead lay as if emptied out of sacks into the pits, into the trenches, some head downward, some with legs alone visible. Whilst it rained in London, and the evening crowds glided along Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly talking of anything and everything, happily, snugly,--away out there in the darkness lay such a scene. It was most near, but an impenetrable black curtain hid it from the eyes.
War in 1915 failed. We failed; the Germans failed. The German failure was the greater because it was not their rôle to stand and be attacked. Germans and Allies were not unequally matched. The result was a deadlock. Both sides came to the conclusion that no one in his wildest dreams of preparation for war had foreseen the number of shells and guns necessary to obtain victory. Fighting therefore slackened off in the trenches, and the real centre of war-activity was transferred to what we called "the home front," to the factories and war-industries of England, France, and Germany and Austria. All the wet and gloomy winter saw the ammunition heaping up for the myriad-fold destruction of men in 1916. Germany prepared a mountain of death to hurl at Verdun; Britain a mountain of death to hurl from the Somme. No serious discussion of the campaigns of 1915 was allowed to the peoples of the countries. Gallipoli however was evacuated and Serbia over-run, and Bulgaria came into the war on the other side. With the military power of the Tsar lying low Germany had fair hopes of victory. Neither Britain nor France had much to cheer them, but they knew that their resources were mighty, and they knew that their enemy on the Western front did not seem to want to fight and was continually on the defensive.
It did not stir the mind of the soldier much. The autumn leaves fell for the Germans, and Christmas came for the British Tommy, and unfulfilled promises in plenty. A winter of rain and mist above, and water and mud below, and a sense of "a long long way to Tipperary and to everywhere else" were the lot of the British soldier. The war lost its tension after the Hulluch fighting was over. Unofficial fraternisation set in on many fronts. This was a mutual understanding by the rank and file of both sides. The Germans were quickest in arranging it--indeed their alacrity in this direction suggested the belief that it was organised from above and was intended as a way of winning the war, by undermining discipline and worming out secrets and spying. This however was not so. For if it undermined one side it undermined the other as much also, and if one side learned secrets so could the other. Moreover officers on both sides disliked it, and they for their part could not fraternise with enemy officers. Their quarrel was more serious. Officers understood more about the war and had more of the collective guilt of the war upon their minds than had the rank and file. Not that a winter lull was not to their liking. They were glad enough of the effects of these _petites armistices_. On the French fronts more was arranged than on that held by the British. Parties came over into one another's trenches. In Russia unfortunately fraternisation resulted in a constant loss of Muscovite rifles and material in exchange for _Schnapps_. Probably the British fraternised least of all, and though one has heard of Tommy's concert party in which "Brother 'Ans was arst ter sing the 'im of 'ate" it did not amount to more than tacit agreements not to shoot.
The crack regiments on both sides were however indisposed for any kind of truce. They set the tone in discipline and were far from that Charlie Chaplin attitude towards the war which characterised some others. What was the astonishment of some of the Guardsmen when "taking over" at Laventie, after Loos and Hohenzollern, to see the easy-going way of warfare which had developed. "I saw a Jerry on top of the enemy parapet working away in broad daylight as cool as could be," said a sergeant. "Of course I at once got a bead on him."
"What're you going to do? You're surely not going to fire on him?" asked one of the men of the outgoing regiment. "You'll spoil the game."
"How's that?"
"Why, they'll begin shooting at you."
"What d'you think of that?" said the sergeant. "I fired just to let them know the Guards had come."
Nevertheless even the Guards were mollified. Warfare dwindled to nothing. "Jerry" was very confiding. Christmas was coming. The war after all was not so serious and perhaps would not be renewed in the Spring. Inactivity always seems to soften opposing rank and file toward one another. It tends to bring them back to the natural human relationship. By Christmas there was a widespread popular sense for a thoroughgoing reconciliation in no-man's land. What had happened at Christmas in 1914 was the needful precedent. It was a sort of playful legend in the army. On Christmas Day there would be a going over and a shaking of hands and exchange of souvenirs and drinks. Both sides looked forward to it.
But the authorities evidently thought it dangerous. Orders to the effect that there should be no fraternisation were sent out, and a staff-officer here and there spent Christmas Eve in the trenches to see that the orders were carried out. He could not however effect very much. At ten o'clock that night the men in all the trenches both German and English were talking without restraint, and the dark muddy lines of Laventie had a voice as of some great club at night when all the members are discussing at once. Germans were shouting invitations across, British were shouting invitations; and promises were made for next day. At dawn therefore parties went over, and whole battalions might have followed them had not the artillery at once set up a barrage. It was found also that sentries on both sides had been ordered to fire. Some obeyed, some did not. One Guards sentry was proud of having fired fifteen rounds. But he did not hit anyone. Meanwhile the troops about Neuve Chapelle and Aubers got across in large bodies. Even on the Guards' front men risked their lives to shake hands. Did not one thus lose his life that morning!
There is a little old cemetery by the side of the road a mile or so from Laventie, and there lie prominently side by side two corporals of the Sixth Black Watch (Newell and Willis) and behind their graves is that of a certain Sergeant Oliver who perished on Christmas Day. A tall rose tree with crimson roses blooming even in the autumn is growing from the earth where he lies. Beside him lies one who was both captain and knight, with only a dock rising from his feet. On all graves are weeds except on that of the man who gave his life to shake hands on Christmas Day.
* * * * *
The winter life of 1915-16 was one of mud and frostbite in the line, and taverns and songs when out. The whole corner of Northern France about Armentières begot a sort of British character. Not that it was like any district at home. Or that the way of life resembled anything anywhere else at any time. Tommy in the _estaminet_, Tommy with his sing-song in billets, Tommy on the march slogging through the mud--began as it were to belong to France and to the war. He ceased to look like an imported article. He was disposed to be at home, and like Mark Tapley, that most characteristic of English types of men, to be happy even under the most melancholy circumstances. The soldier, whatever his inward sorrows, often so deep, so poignant, always kept a cheery face and had a devil-may-care smile for whatever came along. Of course he had his grousing fits. But they passed. He was most himself when singing. To France he sang all the old songs he ever knew and more besides which he invented. How vulgar, in London how banal were the songs--"vulgar songs which make you cough and blow your nose" as Kipling put it, the seemingly maudlin _Hullo my dearie I want you to-night_ sort of song. But in France how real, how passionate! A group of men stand in the partial shelter of a shattered building crooning together whilst it rains, whilst it pours on the mud outside! In England the words which they sing are sentimental drivel, they are the barrel-organ and its handle turning, but in France they are the voice of a suppressed yearning and suffering--
I ... shall meet you ... to-night, dear-- In my beautee ... ful dream ... land. And your eyes will be bright, dear, With ... the love light ... that shines for me.
The only place where the soldier could meet her, till there came one of those madly-coveted greedily-snatched moments of leave, when a man dashed, with the mud of the trenches still on him, straight to "Blighty."
There was a curious note of self-pity in many of the sentimental songs, and men gloated over the love of home. The love of mother became warmer in imagination (_Lordy, lordy lordy, how I love her!_); the tenderness of wife and sweetheart became desired in a way which could only be expressed in songs--and in letters, those most precious of all tokens of the war, the letters which men sent from the front to those who loved them. The little English soldier sang his very heart out asking his Lizzie to "keep the kettle boiling," asking anyone and everyone to
Keep the home fires burning Till the boys come home!
Even so, he would not allow himself to get down-hearted or to remain for long in a sentimental mood. The humorous inventive vein came to his assistance. He did not possess ready-made chansonettes of the French type. The music-hall had not provided them, but he straightway began to invent them to satisfy the need. So sprang into being _Mademoiselle from Armenteers_ which was reputed to have fifty thousand verses--anyone could invent a verse at any moment. So was born _Roll on, my Three_, that soldiers' litany and chorus, _The one-eyed Riley_, and many another burlesque. Then every well-known hymn and popular song had its war parody expressing the soldier's mind in lighter vein---- Some of the parodies of popular songs improved on the originals. Thus--
I wore a tunic, an old khaki tunic, But you wore civilian clothes. Whilst we were in the trenches You were mashing all the wenches, What a blessing no one knows! We fought at Loos whilst you scoffed the booze.
on the basis of--
I wore a tulip, a bright yellow tulip, But you wore a red red rose.
was extremely diverting, as was
I've lost my oil-bottle and pull-through, I've lost my four by two.
on the basis of "Love's beautiful garden."
Endless were these songs and parodies now fast receding into limbo. Where so much was ugly and of the burlesque there was also much that was true and simple and direct, from the heart. Perhaps the most popular song in some regiments was, after all, "Mary." There was no parody of "Mary," and one was always hearing or singing--
The sweetest blossom on the tree Cannot compare with Ma ... ry!
The men lifted the roofs of the taverns with their songs. The war which increased life's suffering tenfold, increased life's music tenfold also.
So the winter was sung through, a winter of rain and snow, with low skies, with mists, mist on land and sea and in the eyes and in the mind, the melancholy interim of 1915-16, where no one understood anything except that there was suffering. Meanwhile however the munition-makers on the home fronts went on manufacturing the stuff of death in ever-increasing appalling vast quantities.
The Germans were the first to resume the struggle. 1916 presented itself as a year of destiny for Mittel-Europa and world-power. Russia lay low. Serbia was ravaged even to the shores of Greece. A galvanised Turkey had been raised from death and had driven France and Britain from the gates of the Hellespont. There remained but one vital enemy--France. Britain would soon compose the war if France were worsted. So now all the might of Prussia was forged into a weapon of assault, and the weapon was hurled in the centre.
There commenced the terrible manslaughter of Verdun. Irresistible Germany met immovable France, and men by the myriad were sent post-haste to heaven. Between the petty forts of a French city Europe heaped a great pyramid of skulls to the sky. As in Verestchagin's picture, one saw an emblem of war without compromise and without cowardice.
The French stubbornness before Verdun shone out like a miracle. It was an unexpected revelation of French tenacity and corporate strength. A Bismarckian contempt for the Frenchman had almost been the accepted measure of the French in Europe. They were considered degenerate, corrupt, lacking in spirit, loud to boast but quick to run away. The rapidity with which Germany overran France in 1914 had confirmed this opinion, despite the battle of the Marne. But Verdun revealed to Germany a new and terrible France. The whole of the rest of the war, as it were, paused to look on in wonder. France has raised now her memorials at Verdun, but it needs no monument. Verdun is written in iron upon Europe's heart. Dead called to the living there to join them. Verdun was never taken, but it always lured the enemy on--the lodestone of the charnel house.
Rightly understood, the battle of the Somme was not a greater battle than that of Verdun. It was similar; it was our Verdun battle. It also was a "blood-bath" for both sides. It also was a spending of the ammunition which the winter, spring, and summer preparations had brought forth. Tens of thousands of those who sang so light-heartedly through the winter found eternal peace, stretched like lost star-fishes in the Somme mud. From Albert with the Virgin leaning from the church-tower, to within sight of the miserable, hitherto uncoveted, town of Bapaume what a progress! One of the heaviest epics in history, the slowest, most heavy footed of charges! As if each man bore a hundredweight of lead on his feet to keep him back when he would have rushed to gain the day! Hundreds met their death, not through shot or shell, but by actual drowning in mud. Hundreds were sent back to the rear partially distraught before they got the signal to leap forth to personal attack. The massing of the Somme artillery out-Heroded Herod--the greatest concentration of noise and destruction that the world had known. The greatest strain of the Somme battle was mental, and its greatest effect was no doubt moral. The extent of territory gained was no indication of the true result of the battle. The actual numbers of the dead might have been a greater indication had they not generally been hidden at the time. For the peace-quorum of death was being approached--there was a large advance towards hate's _desirabilia_, the three and a half millions who had to be slain. Men might have taken some comfort from that dreadful thought had they known. But it was theirs to fight and labour on in blindness.