Part 4

"There's an old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned street; In a quaint little old-fashioned town; There's a street where the cobble stones harass the feet, As it straggles up hill and then down; And, though to and fro through the world I must go, My heart while it beats in my breast, Where e'er I may roam, to that old-fashioned home Will fly like a bird to its nest.

"In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned street, Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair; I can see their two faces so tender and sweet, And I love every wrinkle that's there. I love ev'ry mouse in that old-fashioned house In the street that runs up hill and down; Each stone and each stick, ev'ry cobble and brick, In that quaint little old-fashioned town."

The charm of the Army is its comradeship. Our soldiers have left their homes and friends but they have found new friends, and some of the friendships have become very precious. Men slept side by side in barn and trench, cooked their rations at the same little wood fire, and stood together in the hour of danger and imminent death. Many of them owe their lives to their comrades. There are few songs that express this wonderful comradeship, but there is one that is known and sung through the army. It represents the Songs of Comradeship:

"When you come to the end of a perfect day, And you sit alone with your thought, While the chimes ring out with a carol gay, For the joy that the day has brought; Do you think what the end of a perfect day Can mean to a tired heart, When the sun goes down with a flaming ray, And the dear friends have to part?

"Well, this is the end of a perfect day, Near the end of a journey too; But it leaves a thought that is big and strong, With a wish that is kind and true. For mem'ry has painted this perfect day With colors that never fade; And we find at the end of a perfect day _The soul of a friend we've made_."

The fifth class of song is that of the inner life. It is the Religious Hymn. The soldiers are extremely fond of hymns in their services. You cannot give them too many. "Rock of Ages," "Jesus lover of my soul," "Fight the good fight," "There is a green hill," "At even ere the sun was set," "O God our help in ages past," and "Eternal Father strong to save" cannot be chosen too often. But there are two hymns which have stood out above all others; they are "Abide with me," and "When I survey the wondrous Cross."

There is nothing written by the hand of man which can compete with these two in the blessing and strength which they have brought to our soldiers, especially during an offensive when death has cast his shadow over the hearts of all. During the bitterest weeks in the Somme fighting there was scarcely a service in which we did not sing "When I survey the wondrous Cross." With its assurance of redemption it gave comfort in the face of death. It also gave, for an example, the Supreme Sacrifice.

Some of the songs I have quoted look bare and ungainly as trees in winter, but when the musician has clothed them with music and the singer added to them a touch of his own personality they are fair as trees in summer. Still the fact remains that none of these songs will live on their own merits. They are not born to immortality. Like the daisies they have their day and pass away to make room for others. It is best so. There is not room in the world for everything to be immortal, and the transient has a work of its own to do. The charm and rare beauty of the English countryside are due to the transience of its flowers and foliage and little of the evergreen is enough. We tire of the eternal. The transient songs I have quoted here have been meat and drink to our soldiers in the most terrible war ever waged. They may be poor stuff in comparison with our classic songs but a good appetite can get nourishment out of plain food and grow strong on it. For the purpose in hand these songs have been better than the classics; otherwise they would not have been chosen. There is a time and place for all things. The robin may not be compared with the nightingale but it is not the less welcome, for it sings when the nightingale is silent. Our soldiers' songs will die, some are already dead, but they have done their work and justified their existence. They have given pleasure and strength to men as they went out to do immortal deeds. No wounded soldier, or parched traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water because it perished in the using; and so it is with the songs our soldiers sing.

*VI*

*EASTER SUNDAY*

Night and day for a week, the fearful bombardment continued. Our guns were everywhere, and belching forth without intermission. Dumps of shells were almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field, and processions of ammunition-wagons piled the shells up faster than the gorging guns could take them. The noise was something beyond imagination. It was as though all the devils in hell had come out to demoniacally celebrate the end of the world. We were living--two transport officers and I--in an empty farm-house that, some time before we came in, had been a target for direct hits. One shell had gone through the roof, and another through the gable wall. The windows had been shattered, and the garden and fields were pitted with shell-holes. Our first care had been to look at the cellar, but we had decided, if things became too hot, to make for the open fields. We all slept in the same room, and were at times wakened up by "an arrival" and passed an opinion as to its distance. If, for a time, none came nearer, we turned over and went to sleep again, for a man must sleep even though it be on the edge of a volcano.

One morning the servants found a shell nose-cap beneath the window--just that, and nothing more. The week was wearing on. Another morning some of the 7th Middlesex Regiment were in the baths in the village over the way, and a company of the London Scottish was passing by. Two shells fell in the road. The bathers scampered out of the bath and ran naked, here and there, for shelter; the Scottish "scattered"; but some forty-five soldiers, mostly kilted, lay in the road dead or wounded. In the dead of night a party of machine gunners, just returned from the firing-trench, stood outside their billet in our village square debating if they should make a cup of tea before turning in to sleep. A shell decided the matter, and, next morning, I laid two of them to rest in the little cemetery, and the others stood by as mourners.

The week of terror reached its crisis on the Sunday--an Easter Sunday never to be forgotten. The infantry of the Brigade had been away to a camp, beyond range, for a week's rest. They had now returned ready for the battle. Three of the regiments had taken up their positions in the reserve trenches, but my own regiment was quartered in the fatal village. The day dawned bright and fair, but its smiles were the smiles of a deceiver. The Germans had decided on the destruction of the village, a sort of devil's "hail-and-farewell" before being driven back at the points of bayonets. We were awakened by the firing of machine-guns over our heads, and rushed to the door to see a fight in the air. High up in the blue, two aeroplanes circled about for positions of vantage, and then rushed at one another like hawks in mortal combat. A silence followed. Then one rose and made off towards the battle-line but fell to a shot of our gunners before it could reach safety. The other, with its petrol-tank on fire, was planing down to earth. Down and down an invisible spiral staircase it seemed to rush, while the golden fire burnt at its vitals, and a trailing cloud of smoke marked its path of doom. Breathlessly we watched its descent. It was under perfect control, but its path to the ground was too long and spiral, and the faster it rushed through the air the greater the draught became and the more madly the flames leapt up. Every second was precious and the certainty of its doom made us sick. We saw the body of the observer fall out, and still the flaming machine pursued its course. Then the wings fell away and twirled to the ground like feathers, while the engine and the pilot dropped like a stone. When the bodies were picked up, it was found that the observer had been shot through the head, and that the pilot, with his dead comrade behind him, had worked the wheel until the furious encroaching flame had swept over him, and robbed him of mortal life.

Shells were now dropping in the village every few minutes. Our farm-house was on the right wing, and we stood watching the bombardment. With each burst there rose a cloud of black smoke and red brick-dust, and we knew that another cottage has been destroyed. Then the shells began to creep round to the right as if the enemy was feeling for the bridge over which the ammunition wagons were passing. On one side of the little bridge was a white bell-tent, and we watched the shells dropping within a few feet of it without destroying it. Between the tent and our street lay a stagnant pool, and we saw about a dozen shells fall in its water. The range was lengthening and it seemed as if some invisible octopus were stretching out its feelers towards us. A shell smashed against the farm-house at the bottom of our street. The deadly thing was coming nearer. Some of our sergeants were in a farm-house a few doors away, and, hearing a shell fall in the field between them and the pool, they came to the decision that the moment had come "to scatter," but they were too late. It would have been better had they stayed indoors. As they rushed out a shell burst over the yard three of them fell to the ground dead, and three more were blown back into the house by the force of the explosion. The coping stone of the outhouse where the shell burst was blown away and three ragged seams were scored on the green doorway of the yard outside which the three lads lay dead. One of them had, ten days before, shown me to my billet thirty yards farther up. He acted as interpreter to the regiment and as he had not to go into the line, we thought that he was one of those who would see the end of the war. Yet there he lay.

But the worst calamity of the day was yet to befall. Some fifteen or sixteen ammunition wagons, unable to get through the village, had halted in the Square--"Wipers Square" it had been named. Each wagon was loaded with nine-point-two shells. An enemy-shot fell on a wagon and set it on fire; then the village became like unto Sodom and Gomorrah on their day of doom. One or two drivers bravely stuck to their wagons, and got them out but the rest of the wagons were lost. The scene that followed was indescribable. Dore could never have pictured such horrors. The wagons all caught fire and their loads of shells began to explode. We stood out in the fields and watched the conflagration, while all the time the Germans continued to shell the village. The large village-hall and the houses on each side of the square were utterly destroyed. Great explosions sent fragments of wagons and houses sky-high, and showers of missiles fell even where we stood. The fore part of one wagon was blown on to the roof of a house. Houses caught fire and blazed all afternoon. Some machine-gunners joined us and told how, when choking smoke began to penetrate into their cellar they had to rush through the square and its bursting shells to preserve their lives. A German shell burst in a billet where a platoon of our men were sheltering in the cellar, and those who were not killed by the shell were crushed to death by the fall of the house. Another shell hit the roof of the house in the cellar of which was our Advanced Dressing Station for the morrow's battle. Two orderlies who happened to be in the street were killed, and the colonel was knocked down. In the cellars of almost every house were soldiers or civilians, and all day the ammunition wagons continued burning; shell after shell getting red hot and exploding.

All day the German bombardment continued and, amid a terrific din, our own gunners returned a score or more for every one received. By the bridge another long line of loaded ammunition wagons stood for two hours, and though shells were bursting close by, not one hit the wagons. The drivers stood by them and, as soon as the road was cleared, got them away to the guns. Yet, while the Square was burning and the German shells falling, hundreds of men from the London regiments entered the village from the right, and crossed the bridge to stack their packs so as to be ready for the coming battle. They walked in single file and with wide gaps between, but not a man ran or quickened his pace. My blood tingled with pride at their courage and anger at their carelessness. What _would_ make a British soldier run? An officer was walking near the pool. A shell fell near enough for fragments to kill him, but he merely looked round, stopped to light a cigarette and walked leisurely on as if nothing had happened. Three men stood with their backs against a small building near the bridge as if sheltering from the rain. Several shells fell uncomfortably near, so, concluding that the rain had changed its direction, they moved round the corner. And it was not till more shells had fallen near them that they condescended to move away altogether.

Yet this was not bravado for, so far as they knew, no one was watching them. It was due to a certain dignity peculiar to our fighting man. He is too proud to acknowledge defeat. He is a man, and whether any one is watching or not, he is not going to run away from a shell. Hundreds of lives must have been lost through this stubborn pride but, on the other hand, thousands of lives must have been saved by it, for it makes the Army absolutely proof against panic, than which, nothing is so fatal in war. In eighteen months on the Front I have never seen or heard of a single case of panic either with many or few. Our soldiers are always masters of themselves. They have the coolness to judge what is the wisest thing to do in the circumstances, and they have the nerve to carry it out. They run unnecessary risks through pride but never through panic. All that day on the bridge, a military policeman stood at his post of duty. Like Vesuvius of old the exploding shells in the Square sent up their deadly eruption, and like the Roman sentry at Pompeii, he stood at his post. As he stood there I saw a young French woman leave her house and pass him on the bridge. She was leaving the village for a safer place but she seemed quite composed and carried a basket on her left arm.

While our village was being destroyed we were startled by a tremendous explosion a few miles away; and looking to our left we saw a huge tongue of flame leap up to the sky, followed by a wonderful pillar of smoke which stood rigid for some moments like a monster tower of Babel reaching up to the heavens. Evidently a dump of cordite had been fired by an enemy shell. Farther off still, another dump was on fire. Time and again, bright flames leapt from the ground only to be smothered again by dense curling masses of smoke. It seemed as if our whole front was on fire, and news came to us that our main road of communication had been heavily shelled, and was now strewn with dead horses and men. Before the battle of the Somme there were no signs and portents so terrible as these: It was evident that the enemy knew what was in store for him on the morrow, and was preparing against it, but if the prelude was so magnificent in its terror, what would the battle be? Imagination staggered under the contemplation. By four o'clock the bombardment was almost at an end, and nearly all the shells in the Square had exploded. The soldiers began to creep out of the cellars. On passing through the Square we were amazed at the sight. In fact the Transport Officer passed through at my side without recognizing the place. At the entrance was a team of six dead mules lying prone on the ground and terribly torn. Two rows of houses had disappeared, leaving mere heaps of stones in their places. The pavement was torn up, and the wrecks of the ammunition wagons lay scattered about. Two houses were still burning. Our colonel and adjutant we found by the side of the stream. They had been in a cellar near the Square all day but, fortunately, they were little the worse for the experience. They were giving orders for the assembling of the scattered regiment.

By this time, civilians were leaving the cellars, and with armfuls of household goods hastening from the village. To them it seemed the end of all things--the day of doom. Some of them had slight wounds and as they passed us they cried mournfully, "Finis, Messieurs, Finis." All was lost. This exodus of the despairing civilians was the saddest sight of the day. By sunset the regiment had been gathered together--all except the wounded who had been sent to the Main Dressing Station and the dead who had been placed side by side and covered with blankets. Most of our officers and men had lost all their belongings, but in the twilight they marched out of the village and took their places in the reserve trenches near the other battalions. These had suffered no losses. They had been saved the long day's agony. Early in the morning the battle was to begin but the Westminsters knew that no worse experience could await them than that through which they had already passed.

Next morning I buried, near the ruined church, the bodies of the sergeants who had been killed a few doors from us; and on the following day I laid to rest, side by side, in one long grave, two drivers who had died at their posts in the Square, together with an officer and twenty men belonging to the 1st Queen's Westminster Rifles.

*VII*

*"NOW THE DAY IS OVER"*

Achicourt is a little village about a mile out of Arras. It has two churches, one Roman Catholic, the other, Lutheran. The former church has been utterly destroyed by German shells, and will have to be rebuilt from the foundations. The Lutheran church was less prominently placed, and its four walls are still standing. Its humility has saved it, but, as by fire. All its windows are gone, and its walls are torn and scarred by fragments of shells. Most of its slates have been destroyed and the rain pours through the roof. But, on dry days, and until the Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little place for services. It stood, however, at a corner of the village Square, and the Square was destroyed by hundreds of exploding shells on Easter Sunday. As I passed it in the afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered, my heart grew sad within me.

Often it had sheltered us at worship, and many of our most sacred memories will, for ever, cling like ivy to its walls. The door was smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as by lightning. The pews were strewn on the floor with their backs broken; even the frames of the windows had been blown out. There was a little portable organ that we had used with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the floor like a slaughtered child. The floor was white with plaster, as when a sharp frost has brought low the cherry blossom. Never again, I thought, should I gather my men for worship within its humble, hospitable walls. One more of the beautiful and sacred things of life had perished in this all-devouring war. Only the fields remained, and there all my future services must be held.

But "fears may be liars" and so mine proved. I had reckoned without the man in khaki--that master of fate whose head "beneath the bludgeonings of chance, is bloody but unbowed." In a week he had cleared the Square of its dead--mules and men--filled in its craters, and cleared away the debris that blocked the roads. He was even removing the fallen houses in order to mend the roads with their bricks and stones; and he had thrown together all the scraps of iron for salvage. There I found, lying side by side, the burned tin-soldiers of the children; officers' revolvers which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat; bayonets and rifle-barrels of the men; broken sewing machines of the women. He had taken in hand, too, the little church. Sacking was spread across the windows; the remnants of the little organ were carefully placed under the pulpit where they lay like the body of a saint beneath an altar; the floor was swept of its fallen plaster. The pews were repaired and placed in order again, and a new door was made. Even timber was brought for a new vestibule. The wood was rough and unpainted--Tommy had to use what he could get--but it served. The twisted railings were drawn away from the entrance, and, on the following Sunday, we were back in our old sanctuary. We felt that it was more sacred than ever. These are the deeds of our fighting-man that make us love him so much, and these are the acts of kindness and common sense that make us admire our commanders. Both officers and men have the heart of a lion in the hour of battle, the gentleness of a lamb when it is over. Whatever their circumstances, they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget the fathers that begat them.

Let him who doubts the future of England come hither. He will see the past through the present, and the future through both. Tommy's eyes are the crystal gazing-glasses in which he will discern the future. Tommy is living history and the prophecy of the future made flesh. The pessimists have not seen Tommy here, and that is why they are what they are. "Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his infinite freshness and resource. He is a sword that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the might of an enemy break, and he will be found flashing wherever there are wrongs to right and weak to be defended. On Easter Sunday he was calmly enduring the horror of the German bombardment and the explosions of his own dump of shells. On Easter Monday he was driving the Germans at the point of his bayonet, or accepting their surrender at the doors of their dug-outs! On Easter Tuesday and Wednesday he was repairing a little French chapel for worship. Take him which day you will, and you will find him mighty hard to match. To me he is the king of men, and his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness beyond the range of explanations.

After some weeks of fighting we had come to our last Sunday in Achicourt, and were gathered for the evening service. The chapel was jammed with officers and men, but not all my flock was there. There was Rifleman Gibson absent. He was carrying his beloved Lewis gun in an attack when a bullet struck him, and he died, as his comrades report, with a smile upon his face. Before going into the battle he had given me his father's address and thanked me for the spiritual help he had received at the services. It was his farewell to me, and his father now has the penciled words. And Rifleman Stone was absent, too. He was but a boy, and beautiful with youth and goodness. His comrades loved him as David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the love of women. Every day, they told me in their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his prayers and to read his Bible. One night after praying he laid him down and slept. He had often sung the evening hymn:

"Jesus protects; my fears, be gone! What can the Rock of Ages move? Safe in Thy arm I lay me down, Thy everlasting arms of love.

"While Thou art intimately nigh, Who, then, shall violate my rest? Sin, earth, and hell I now defy; I lean upon my Saviour's breast.

"Me for Thine own Thou lov'st to take, In time and in eternity, Thou never, never wilt forsake A helpless soul that trusts in Thee."