Part 6

One of the nurses we called "the Little Mother." She had gone to Canada five years before, but the war had brought her back, and well was it for us that it had. Among the patients was a doctor in the American A.M.C. His ancestors had left England generations ago and settled in New England, but he had come back at the call of war--a grandson of the Motherland. Then there was a lieutenant of British stock who had been born and brought up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were destroying his native city he took ship to enlist in the British army. "Anzac" was, as his nickname denotes, an Australian. He was in the Flying Corps. He had heard the call at school and had come "home" to the land of his fathers.

In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who had been born in China. But, out there in Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Motherland they had never seen, and came post haste to her help. Sitting near me as I write, is an officer back from the Argentine, and already, on his arm, is a gold wound-stripe. Another in the mess had been pearl-fishing in Australia, but stored his boats to come and fight. Another at our table was born in Australia. He was with Captain Falcon Scott on his last expedition, and saw him go out to the South Pole and death. He has already been wounded. When the war broke out its tumult seemed to wake our fathers and we felt them stir in our blood; for ancestors are not put into graves but are buried alive in their sons. We felt the call to defend our race as our fathers did in their day. It was a master instinct, and the millions of men who voluntarily left home and business to fight show how deeply nationality is rooted in human nature. Returning from a far land to die--if needs be--that their kind may live, the scattered sons of our Motherland have come by all the seas to defend her, in her hour of need.

"They came as the winds come When forests are rended; They came as the waves come When navies are stranded."

*IX*

*THE TERROR BY NIGHT*

June was a flaming month on the high ground we had captured beyond Arras. The Quartermaster and Transport Officer with whom I was messing were both "on leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the camp, a Baptist padre, whose regiment was near, came to live with me. I had a little brown tent five feet wide and six feet long which a rifleman had lent to me because the bell-tent I was expecting had not arrived. The rifleman did not need his tent, for he and his chums had built themselves a little dug-out. Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the other padre took possession of it, while I held on to the little brown shelter. Next to it was the kitchen where the servants slept and cooked. It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood, corrugated iron and ground-sheets. The Baptist chaplain's tent was round, my shelter oblong, but what shape the kitchen was, would pass the wit of man to say. It was a shape never seen on earth before. It had no ancestor and it could have no descendant. Such a design could not occur twice. Beyond the kitchen were the horse-lines of the regiment and close by them the regimental stores. It was so hot that we all wore our lightest clothing; and when the servants got lemons from Arras, the lemonade they made lasted about five minutes only, for what was left by us was quickly drunk up by the servants with the assistance of those who like to frequent such happy places as mess kitchens.

All our meals were served out of doors, under the blue sky. We had guests most days, for officers coming out from the homeland stayed with us for a night or a day before going up with the rations to join the regiment in the trench. Other officers had come down to stay with us on their way to a course at some military school; and one, at least, came to wait for the day on which he was to take his "leave." We were, therefore, a very merry party. It was almost like camping on the Yorkshire moors, for we had an uninterrupted view of many miles. To those who love vast stretches of wild barren country as I do, the scene under the flaming June sun was exceedingly impressive. There were no houses, streams, hedges, or trees, but the whole area was scored with trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing clearly at great distances. The ground, with but short spaces between, was covered with encampments. These consisted of the stores and horse-lines of the regiments and batteries in the line. The circle of the horizon was bounded by the charred ruins of French villages--Beaurains, Neuville, Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy and Tilloy. We could see the flashing of our own guns, and the black bursts of shells from those of the enemy.

All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes, and many were too high to be seen except through strong field glasses. We watched a German aeroplane circling over Arras and directing the fire of the long guns. Soon the streets were strewn with dead and wounded, for the town was full of troops. The firing only lasted a few minutes, however. One of our aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to single combat; and we soon saw the German machine falling from an immense height, wing over wing and head over tail, utterly out of control.

Dinner, in the cool of the evening, was a most pleasant meal. As we drank our coffee we watched the aeroplanes returning from the line like birds to their nests. Sometimes we counted as many as twenty, all heading for home at the same time. The sun set in red and golden splendor, and we wondered what darkness would bring. On the night before our arrival, the regiment which made way for us had one of its storemen killed by a shell; and on most nights a few shells fell in some part or other of the vast camp. One evening shells fell a little beyond us and the transport-sergeant moved his horse-lines. After that, he moved them every evening at dark, so that the ground where the enemy had observed the horses in the day-time was left vacant when he opened fire at night. It was a game of chess with horses and men for pawns, and life and death for the stakes.

On the evening before, our guest--a young lieutenant--was to go on leave, he got very uneasy. As gulls scent the approach of stormy weather and come inland, or blackbirds and larks feel the approach of winter and migrate to summer lands, so men can sometimes scent danger and coming death. He had with him a bottle of whisky, and he kept it on the table outside my tent--a safe place for it.

"I don't mind telling you, Padre," he said, as he poured out a glass, "I've got the 'wind-up' badly to-night. I don't like the feel of things. I would rather be in the trenches than here, because I know what is likely to happen there, but here in the open I feel strange and unprotected. I shall be glad when it is morning."

His feeling was quite natural. We always feel another man's dangers more than our own because they are new to us and we don't know what to expect or how to meet them. A man will choose a big danger that he is used to, sooner than a lesser danger that is new to him. Besides, the lieutenant had his "leave-warrant" in his breast pocket and that will sap any man's courage. He has a feeling that the shells are after his "leave-warrant" and that the gunners know where it is. He suspects that fate is malignant and takes a special delight in killing a man when he is on the way to "Blighty." Many a man has been killed with a "leave-warrant" in his pocket, or "commission papers" in it which were taking him home.

Our doctor told me how one night he and the chaplain who preceded me were riding on the front of an ambulance car when a shell burst and with a fragment killed the chaplain. In the padre's pocket was his warrant, and he was taking his last ride before going home; but instead of going home in "Blighty" he went to his _long_ home, and the warrant lies in the grave with him. A man feels particularly vulnerable when the long-looked-for "leave-warrant" is in his pocket. He does not fear death after "leave," but he does on the eve of "leave." He wants one more look at his home and loved ones before going on the long and lone journey which, despite all the comfort which the Christian religion gives, still retains much of its terror to the human spirit. There have been few better Christians than Samuel Johnson and John Bunyan, but neither of them could contemplate fording the river of death without misgivings. When they came to it they found it much less formidable than they had expected. Had they been at the Front with "leave-warrants" in their pockets to "Fleet Street, London," or "Elstow, Bedford," I fancy neither of them would have taken undue risks.

I could sympathize with the young lieutenant for, a few months before, a "leave-warrant" had made a bit of a coward of myself. I was in two minds whether or not to go up to the firing line to see the men again before shipping for home. The "leave-warrant" was in my pocket, and I was to go next morning; but the doctor's story of my predecessor came to my mind, and the "leave-warrant" spread itself out before the eyes of my imagination. I saw the faces of my wife, and mother, and dog, and the faces of my friends. The old home and the green fields stretched out before me; and I decided to see them first and the "boys" after. I had just been with my men, but it was a long time since I had been with those at home. If there was a shell with my name and address on it, I thought I would make the Hun wait till I had been home, before I let him deliver it into my hands. I think a "leave-warrant" would make a coward of any man. At any rate, the feeling is quite understood and recognized by everyone at the Front; and this young officer had been sent down from the trenches to us, three days before his train was due to start, so that he might have a better chance of using his "warrant," and at the same time, feel more at ease in mind.

I undressed and got into bed, and lay reading by the light of a candle when the lieutenant came to the tent door again. "It's no use, Padre," he said, "I can't go to bed yet. I feel too uneasy. I wish I were on the train." He went back to the bell-tent he was sharing with the other chaplain, and I put out my light.

There was the silence of a summer evening broken only by the distant bursting of shells. Then, suddenly, there was a crash about seventy yards from our tents, and two more near the horse-lines. "To run or not run?" that was the question; and my answer was in the negative. If I ran, it was just as likely that I should run into a shell, as out of the way of one. On Easter Sunday I had seen three of our non-commissioned officers killed in that way. Besides, I like my bed, once I have taken the trouble to get into it. I therefore put on my steel helmet which I had placed by the bed-side, and waited to see what would happen. (A steel helmet is a wonderful comfort when men are under fire. We may not have much in our heads but we feel more anxious about them than about all the rest of the body. The helmets are heavy and uncomfortable and we don't like wearing them, but, nevertheless, may blessings ever rest on the head of the man who invented them. I have seen scores of lives saved by them, and they have given infinite comfort and assurance in trying moments.)

A long silence elapsed, then the lieutenant appeared at the door of the tent again.

"You haven't been here all the time, have you?" he asked. "We went down to the old trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is rather cold and wearisome there, and I think the worst is over now. I'm just going to take another sip of the 'Scotch wine' and then turn in for the night; but I'm not going to undress."

Ten minutes later there was a tremendous crash as if a star had fallen on top of us. There came a blinding flash of light, a strong smell of powder, and a spluttering of bullets on the ground. That was enough to get the laziest man living out of bed, and to answer the question, "to run or not to run?" in the affirmative. I slipped on my boots without fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade my little tent a fond farewell. There were some old German gun-pits close by, and I sought refuge there. "Come in here, sir," cried a voice, and I found myself by the side of a sergeant. Then the cook ran in bare-foot and laughing. No one seemed to have been hit, and all had now sought shelter. We waited for some time and nothing further happened. The night was cold and I began to shiver in my pajamas. So I started to look about for a place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement had grown up between me and the little brown tent. There was a path across a shallow bit of trench, and underneath it I found the barber, lying comfortably on his bed. He invited me in, and said that I could have the bed, and he would sleep at the side of it on his ground-sheet. He could, he said, sleep as soundly on the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking. I therefore returned to my tent to get blankets. The time-fuse of a shell had gone through the kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my servant, but without doing him any injury and he proposed sleeping there for the night. He only agreed to move to some safer place, when I ordered him to do so. There was no one in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants were quite safe somewhere. On striking a light to get my blankets, I noticed three small holes in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel bullets had missed me only by inches. It had been a close shave and it was not inappropriate that I was now going to be the guest of a barber.

The psychological effect was not one I should have expected. The incident caused no shell-shock, and but little immediate excitement; so I was soon asleep. All the others were in a like case. The excitement came with the morning when we examined the tents and the ground. In the bell-tent there were ten shrapnel bullet holes. One had gone through the piece of wood on which the officers' clothing had been hung, and must have passed immediately over the body of the Baptist chaplain as he lay in bed. Others must have passed equally near the lieutenant who was not in bed, but, standing up at the time, fully dressed. In my own little tent I found eleven holes and they were in all parts of the canvas. Some of the bullets must have gone in at one side and out at the other, for only five were found embedded in the hard, chalky ground. A sixth had passed through the box at the bed-head and entered deeply into the book I had been reading. Outside the kitchen, the servants picked up a lump of shell a foot long and three or four inches wide. Well was it for them that the fragment fell outside the kitchen and not inside. The ground around the tents was sprinkled with shrapnel bullets and bits of shell. The shells which fell near the horses had burst on touching the ground, and not like ours, in the air. They had dug deep holes in the earth, and as the horses were within a few yards of them, it seemed miraculous that none was hurt. The transport had just returned from taking up the rations, and, as one of the drivers leapt off his horse, a bullet hit the saddle where his leg had been a second before. Not a man or horse received a scratch, although the shells had made a direct hit on our camp. On other occasions one shell has laid out scores of men and horses.

They say that sailors don't like padres on board ship, because they think the latter bring them bad luck. And most people are a little afraid of the figure thirteen, but though it was the thirteenth of June and there were two padres in the tents, we had the best of what is called "luck." So I think we may say it was one up for the padres. After breakfast we gathered together some of the fragments lying around the tents, and found the nose-cap of a shell which had burst seventy yards away. With these, and the time-fuse which hit my servant, the other chaplain and I went to a battery and asked the officers to tell us something about the gun, just as one might take a bone of some extinct creature to a scientist, and ask him to draw an outline of the whole animal. They told us that the gun was a long-range, high-velocity, naval gun with a possible range of fifteen miles. They knew where it was, but could not hit it. The shot was a large high-explosive, shrapnel shell, and the time-fuse indicated that it had come to us from about eleven miles away.

On our return we built ourselves dug-outs for the nights, and only lived in the tents by day. Sometimes we were shelled in the day-time, but by taking cover took no hurt, though a lad in the transport next to us was seriously wounded. When they were shelling us by day, we could distinctly hear the report of the gun, a second or two later, see the shell burst in the air; and a second later still, we could hear it. We saw the burst before we heard it.

I have given this personal incident not, I hope, out of any impulse of egotism, but because it furnishes those who have not been at the Front with an idea of the terror which assails our men by night, both in the trenches and in the "back areas." There can be but few who, having been any length of time at the Front, have not had similar experiences and equally narrow escapes. They are so common that men get used to them and do not take nearly enough care to protect themselves. Loss by such stray shells is expected, and the soldiers regard it much as a tradesman regards the deterioration of his stock. One gets used to the frequent occurrence of death as he does to anything else. At home there are thousands of preventable deaths--deaths through street accidents, diseases and underfeeding. The number could be enormously reduced if the nation would rouse itself. And human nature is much the same at the Front. Men prefer ease and comfort to safety. Also, men grow fatalistic. They have seen men sought out by shells after they have taken every precaution to escape them; and they have seen others go untouched when they seemed to be inviting shells to destroy them. Men are conscious of a Power that is not themselves directing their lives. They feel that in life which the Greek tragedians called Fate. They do not know quite what to call it. Most of them would call it Providence if they spoke frankly and gave it a name at all. One of the finest Christian officers I know told me that he believed that God's finger had already written what his fate should be. If he had to die nothing could save him, and if he had to live, nothing could kill him. All he was concerned with was to be able to do his duty, and take whatever God sent him. This, he said, was the only suitable working philosophy for a man at the Front.

There is a widespread fatalism at the Front, but it is the fatalism of Christ rather than of old Omar Khayyam: "Take no thought for your life ... for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things, but seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." And this works. It enables men to "put a cheerful courage on" and do their duty. There is none of the paralysis of will and cessation of effort which follows the fatalistic philosophy of the East. All that Omar Khayyam's fatalism leaves a man to strive after is "Red, Red Wine," in which he drowns memory, honor and reputation and character. When he has passed from among his peers, there is nothing left to remember him by but a "turned-down empty glass." The Christian fatalism at the Front destroys no man's initiative, but keeps him merry and bright, and helps him to "do his bit." When he shall pass from the banqueting-house of life, into the Great Unexplored, he will leave as his memorial, not a turned-down glass, but a world redeemed from tyranny and wrong.

*X*

*"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"*

An army is more courageous than the individuals who compose it. The coward finds sufficient courage for his job while doing it with his regiment, and the brave is at his bravest. He has a courage which is not his own but which, somehow, he puts on with his uniform. He does deeds of daring he could not have done as a civilian. The army has a corporate courage and each soldier receives a portion of it just as he receives a ration of the army's food. It is added to what he has of his own.

The badge of the army is courage. When a recruit joins the army he knows that he is putting away the civilian standard of courage with his derby hat, and is putting on the soldier's standard of courage with his uniform. His great fear is that he will not be able to live up to it. He wonders if he is made of the stuff that produces heroes. He is a mystery to himself and has a haunting fear that there may be a strain of the coward in his make-up. He wishes it were possible to have a rehearsal for he would rather die than fail on the appointed day.

The chaplain fears that he will faint and become a hindrance instead of a help when he first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing station; and the recruit is afraid of being afraid in the hour of battle and of bringing dishonor and weakness upon his regiment. He will be glad when the trial is over--when he knows the stuff of which nature has made him. A friend of mine told me one day that he was walking over a heavily shelled field with a young aristocrat of a highly strung temperament. The man was afraid, but would not yield to his fear. His lips twitched and his face became drawn and white. His movements were jerky but he made no other sign. He talked about paltry things in which, at the moment, he had not the slightest interest, and passed jocular or sardonic remarks about the things that were happening around them. My friend ducked his head when a shell burst near as we all have done often enough, but the young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff as if he were being crowned. He held it up defiantly; was it not filled with the bluest blood of England? The shells might blow it off if they liked. That was their concern, not his, but they should never make him bow. His fathers had fought on British battlefields for centuries, and had never bowed their heads to a foe, and he would not break the great tradition. Shells might break his neck but they should never bend it. He would face the enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a neck as ever his fathers did. He knew his personal weakness and reinforced his strength with that of his fathers'. He was not afraid of death. He was afraid of being afraid.

My friend was a coachman's son who by courage and capacity of the highest order had won a commission. He had no traditions either to haunt or help him, and he had often been tried in the fire and knew his strength. He was not afraid of being afraid. It was natural to duck when a shell burst near and it did him no harm and made no difference to the performance of his duties; so he ducked as he felt inclined, and then laughed at his nerves for the tricks they were allowing the shells to play on them. But, knowing his companion's more sensitive nature and temperamental weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff neck and proudly erect head. He showed a self-control which only centuries of breeding could give. Here was a hero indeed. The shells he was defying were as nothing to the fears which haunted his imaginative nature and which, with his back to the wall of his family traditions, he was fighting and keeping at bay. My friend could not refrain from complimenting him on resisting the natural tendency to duck the head when a shell screamed above them.

"Eton boys never duck," replied the young aristocrat.